The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-03-08
SLAVERY AMONG ASIATlCs.

The Federal Grand Jury Will, 1t is re-
ported, be asked to investigate, the sys-
tenn of slavery which is said to obtain
in the Oriental quarter. Whether its
attention will be directed to specific in
stances of human bondage we do not
know, though the jury must, of course.
get hold of such incidents to enable it
to bring indictments. Already detec-
tiyeS have been at work. Undoubtedly
! their task was hard one, owing TO
7 the facility with which the lower-class
Oriental tells an untruth for the benefit
of himself or any one else of his race
in whom he has an interest; but hard
as it was, the task of the Grand Jury
in getting at the facts of slavery, if
such facts exist, promises to be con-
siderably harder.
Once in a long time a Chinese or
japanese woman announces herself as
a slave and calls upon the law to rescue
her, but the cases are few and far be-
tween and some of them are manifest
ly fraudulent. AS the fruit of long ex''
perience, the San Francisco authorities
do not always receive the escaping
slave girl with open arms any more
than they do the Chinaman who COL
fesses that he was Struggled into the
country and has no right to stay. One
of the first slave girls" to put herself
into the hands of the San Francisco
police was given over TO a charity, the
good women composing which trium-
phantly shipped her back to China at
their own expense. 1t turned out aft.
lerward that she was the daughter OF
a merchant who wanted to sell her to
a mandarin and was not unwilling to
save trans-Pacific passage money. She
actually went and with light heart,
from freedom to bondage. The scheme
worked so we'll that whenever a mer-
chant wanted to send his wife OF
daughter back to the old home he had
her escape" to the aSSage-paying> So
lciety and in due time-for this was be-
fore the day of the Geary law-he got
her back again. Since exclusion began
with all it's Photographic and book
record appurtenances, there has not
been much doing at San Francisco In
the escaping slave" line. Occasionally
a girl gets miffed and runs away from
home to the arms of the authorities
police or charitable, but she generally
goes back again. If in slavery she is
mot displeased, for sometimes in that
state she has more comforts than she
gets under the family roof.
The form of slavery that exists
among the coolie Japanese is apt to be
paternal or maternal. Girls sold or in
dentured make money for their parents
by the process of sale. How farS this
system goes in Honolulu we do not
know; but it is said to exist and to be
! supplemented by a species of bondage
which has no parental standing or ex-
cuse.. If this is true it Is proper sub
:" ject for the Federal Grand Jury to in
;vestigate, though we confess, to misgiv.
ings that anything indictable can be-
proved. True, there have been one OF
two high priced offers to charitable
people to take Japanese women off the
hands of alleged masters" but col
fusion is suspected and if the money
had been paid it might have been di
vided afterwards by chuckling conspir-
ators. The great difficulty the Jury
will have is to- discover any woman
who, if enslaved, really wants to es
cape from bondage or who will tell the
truth in the witness box about her po
HtfcaF and social condition.