Year: 1879

it is one ocean. The voice of Almighty


Providence calling for the regeneration
of China contrasts itself, as the greatest
modern political and religious theme


with this small pining cry of narrow
minded anti Chinese crusade on the Pa
ciic Coast. To which will you listen-to
the crack of the hoodlum's whip or to
the voice of Providence requiring Ameri
ca to do justice, and to occupy her oppor-
tunities2 The question is whether you
will listen to what God has said in our
history concerning despised races, and
take instruction from the penalties we
have suffered for injustice in the past,
and do your duty at this time to race,
not with 100000 in it, but with four
hundred millions. The great Eastern
question presents an exigency which, in
its relation to the whole world, has an
Importance comparable to the import
ance belonging to the slavery contest in
our own land


You say that when l take this point of
view l suggest precisely the reason why
we should be cautious about an immense
| Chinese immigration. Four hundred
millions Of people in the Chinese Empire!
Can they not easily spare fifty millions,
or as many as we now have in the United
States ? Is is not question whether the
United States will become New China :?
l face that inquiry; but, if you please,
we must beware of statistics, when none
have been taken in the Chinese Empire
for a hundred years. Rather more than
a cen tury ago statistics were collected
showing that China had two hundred
millions of people. and know the stand
ard writers on statistics say there are
now between four and five hundred mil
lions of people in China, but our last in
formation is that this is a great overesti-
mate. hold in my hands here a sum-
mary of the very remarkable letters Just
published in San Francisco by Chinese
mandarin and literate of the first rank
He is perhaps a politician, but he has
succeeded in shaking public confidence
as to the average estimated population of
China. He thinks the population Of the
Celestial Empire has decreased in the
last 100 years. His conclusion is that
probably there are not 200,000,000 of peo-
pie in China to day. There has been no
census taken in China for the last 100
years, simply because it was supposed
deficit in the population would be re-
vealed. presume that the estimates by
this mandarin are under the mark, new
ertheless confess my confidence is sha-
ken in the statement that there are
between four hundred and five hundred
millions in China.


The Pacific Coast needs manufactur-
ers. Labor is so costly in California that
manufacturers there can not compete
with the East. The influx of Chinese
labor will make it possible to apply capi-
tai advantageously to the diversification
of industry in California


The Chinaman's s standard of living will
grow higher. His competition with the
American laborer will thus become less
dangerous and excite less class rancor.


| have an aspiration concerning the
Pacific Coast, as we'll as the Atlantic, and
John Bright express it. There is an
other and far brighter vision before me-"
this friend of the working poor and of
free institutions said in speech at Bir-
mingham, December Is, 1862, in the
darkest days of our civil war, when aris-
tocrats hoped for a division of the Amer
lean Union. 81 see one vast confedera-
tion stretching from the frozen North in
unbroken line to the torrid South, and
from the wild billows of the Atlantic
westward to the calmer waters of the Pa
cifc main, and I see one people, one Ian
guage, and one law and one faith, and
over that wide continent the home of
freedom and refuge for the oppressed
OF every race and cline" Applause'l