Year: 1877

CHIC > Opes


San Francisco CALL


Every now and then some East
ern writer shows his capacity to
talk glibly Of things he knows
nothing about, by discussing the
effect OF Chinese labor in California.
The latest, most fiippant and most
dogmatic dissertation of this nature
we clip from the Philadelphia Com
mercial List, and runs as follows:


"The hostility to the Chinese
in California has its rise among
those who object to cheap labor.
This, it seems, is q crime in the
eyes of those who are unwilling to
work and to earn their wages.
Never till now was it discovered
that cheap labor and frugal habits
were a disadvantage to a nation or
a State"


OF course, tits of little use to in
form this writer that the Chinese
are not objected to so much on
account of the cheapness of their
labor as on account of man.
ners and customs, which will
ever prevent them from assum-
ing the ordinary obligations OF
American citizens. They do not
take upon themselves the burden
almost every American carries in
the race in which the Chinese are
his competitors. First, as we have
often explained, there is a differ
ence between their standard of liv-
ing and ours. The American
laborer requires a home-at least,
apartments-where wife and chill
dren can be gathered in domestic
privacy. The Chinese herd like
cattle. The male comes here unin-
numbered, and, ranking himself no
higher than a beast of burden,
looks about for work to sustain life.
He can live on twenty cents a day
if he can earn no more. His home
is a berth in a twenty-foot square
room, where twenty, thirty or forty
of his fellows crowd in and sleep.
He is quite willing to earn more
than twenty cents in day, but any
improvements in his finance does
not suggest a more civilized method
Of living. He either saves his earn
ings to take back to the Flowery
Kingdom, or he squanders his
earnings in opium-smoking and
gaming with his countrymen. Ex-
cept Chinese merchants, who do
not come under the conditions of
the average laborer, there are no
Chinese in California who. live in
the decent style of an American
laborer. Not one in a hundred has
any incumbrance in the way of wife
and child. The man stands alone
and looks out for himself. The wo-
men are mostly outcasts, and their
children are not permitted to stand
in their way. This is the kind of
civilization to which all advocates
of Chinese labor conspire to reduce
the laboring class of America. The
American laborer can contend with
his Chinese competitor by stripping
himself in like manner for the con-
test Then farewell to our cosy
homes, our thronging schools, our
social gatherings, our aspirations
for a life above that of the dumb
brute. The whole business of life
will be to live--to earn something
to cat, clothes and shelter for the
body. Competition with the Chinese
means descent to their mode of life.
Ours is too expensive to be sup.
ported by the low wages to which
they are accustomed. 1T be urged
that the Chinese will readily de-
mand higher wages when he finds
his work in demand, the reply is
that the supply of this cheap labor
is practically without limit There
are probably not less than a hun
dred million Chinese men who are
in worse condition in their own
country than these laborers with
us. The number which will come
here will be limited only by the uses
that they can be put to. They
can come i'm snch nnmhers no to