The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1900-07-05

many OF the persons with whom he comes
in contact during business hours. Some
thirty years ago a long-legged lad from
the Orient came across the seas to this
coast in the steerage of a steamer. He
had first opened his almond eyes-in the
province of Sun Ming, farming district.
Farmers in China do not live on the land
they cultivate. Space is too precious.
They bunch their families into
compact little houses separated by
alleys, and go daily forth TO their till
Ing of the soil In California, where
ranches cover thousands of acres a farmer
turns colt to pasture in ten-acre lot.
In China a man who owns zen acres is
considered wealthy. The boy farmer had
heard fabulous tales of the New World.
They lured him from the raising of vege-
tables. He left his ancestral home and
Travelled to Ogden, Utah. There he went
to work in somebody's kitchen as cook
But Chin Tan Sun, amid his new sur
reundings, thought of other things than
bread making and stove polishing and
dish washing He dreamed of wealth
and power. though none would have
guessed that he was other than an ex-
cellent household machine, content to go
no further afield than the slip-slip saudled
feet on a kitchen floor would carry him,
until he could save enough from his wages
TO insure the sending of his bones back
to China should he die in the land of the
white devils.
A girl of Scandinavian parentage, good
looking and Industrious was employed as
domestic in neighboring family Chin
Tan Sun courted and married her. They
came 10 San Francisco and commenced
housekeeping on jackson street in China
town with the dollars that had been earn
ed in the Ogden kitchen. Chin Tan Sun,
keenly on the alert for an opportunity to
begin the amassing of a fortune, con-
ceived a clever idea This idea was the
originating of the little lottery scheme
There were at this time fifteen Chinese
lotteries running in China town. Each con-
Quoted two drawings daily. Chin put his
idea into immediate practice and brilliant
success followed. He opened what he call
ed the American Lottery Company, selling
tickets with numbers duplicating those
of the fifteen gambling concerns. He
sought American patronage and white peo-
pie began to play the Chinese lottery. He
paid with instant promptness all winning
claims, and in year became a compare
lively rich man.
Chin Tan Sun developed marvellous bust
ness capacity. He bought small interest
in numerous stores. lie learned to speak
English fuently. His dealings were in
variaby on a cash basis, no matter how
large the sum involved. He opened up a
dozen gambling houses in Oakland whose
show windows displayed fans and punk
sticks and bazaar articles in general as a
blind to conceal the unla wful operat tons
in the locked rooms back of them. He
kept the police busy raiding the gambling
joints and himself busy Juggling coin into
court with which to deposit cash bail for
his employees who had been gathered in
by the blue-coated arm of the law Fines
he paid with stoical indifference.
One day an Oakland judge imposed
fine of ten times the usual amount in his
determination to teach Chin lesson
Then Chin showed fight. Through his
attorney he had the municipal records
searched and the result turned Oak
land upside down, for, to relate briefly
It was discovered that the charter was
invalid; that the court in which Chin's
agent had been convicted was not even
a de facto court; nor would Chin con-
sent to have his man set free, though
the Superior Court itself, sitting en-
banc on the case-an event that had
never occurred there before-wanted 20
dismiss the troublesome matter. And
so Oakland had to provide itself with
brand-new charter while the ehrewdest
Chinese that the law had to deal with
laughed in his flowing sleeve; laughed
and went on piling up wealth that could