The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-11-26

law The governments expenses are
several hundred thousand dollars every
year, and yet many Cinnamon manage to
evade official vigilance.
I'D Great transportation companies
operating both on sea and land, are
against the law, and want it TO die.
(0 If the law is renewed the United
States will lose trade. China will resent
the action, and throw her commercial
favors to our rivals in this day of the
Oriental awakening.
1t is an astonishingly weak presenta-
ton of the case. The execution of all
important laws is difficult and expensive
the laws against murder, theft, coun-
terfeiting. smuggling, and so forth-but
they are not permitted to lapse on that
account. Counterfeit money makes its
appearance despite the efforts to prevent
it, and dutiable goods get in here and
there Lot the customs officials be ever so
alert But the counterfeiter and the
smuggler remain on the black list, and
appropriations continue for their suppress
sion. If a larger and more expensive
: service is necessary for the better pro-
lection of our shores against Chinese
immigration, let the officials ask for 1t.
Congress can well afford TO provide it.
OF course the transportation compa-
MES whose business is in that quarter of
the world are against the law. 1t mill
tates against their interests. Let the law
die and give them free hand and their
agents drumming up customers will ap-
near in every part of China. The pig
tailed gentleman win have the glories of
America presented to him as never be-
fore The effort TO put restriction on
immigration from Europe with view of
shutting out anarchists was opposed by
the steamship companies operating on
the Atlantic. They wanted no discrim-
nation. All passage-money looked alike
10 them Not what the man abroad be-
lieVes or stands for; not what kind of
an influence he would exert in the Unit
ed States; but is his roll large enough to
pay for ticket across the sea and pass
him at the port of inspection is the sole
question with the transportation compa-
MES.
Trade with China as the cost of per-
hitting her surplus population to over
run the United States? Where is the
party that would make those terms? We
want our share of China's increasing
foreign trade. but we cannot afford to
seek il except on trade basis. We have
a great deal that China needs, and, in
the language of the drummer We ask
her to examine our line of samples. We
claim to be able to stock her as cheaply
and satisfactorily as any of our rivals
and she will find it to her interests to
give us a hearing before making her pur-
chases. But in the language of Mr.. Bry-
an-and for the first time his famous
phrase has real application-we cannot
afford to put the dollar above the man.
To increase our foreign trade at the ex-
pense of American labor would be an
act of folly which the people at the polls
would resent in a way never to be for
gotten.
1t is said that the fight for renewal of
the Geary law is solely In the interests of
the labor organizations. If that were
true it would not deserve to win. But
it is not true. The labor organizations
are fighting in the interests of the whole
land. The lowering of wages would be
but one of many undesirable results that
unrestrained Chinese immigration would
infict upon this country, and from the
effects of which we should never recover.
Fortunately for everybody in interest,
the Geary law does not expire until next
spring, and there is ample time before
Congress will be called upon to act to
present the case in all of it's bearings
The friends Of the law need fear moth
ing from the fullest discussion.