The Nation

April 1, 1886

“THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CHINESE QUESTION"

THE country has heard so many wild statements and so much incoherent rhetoric from anti-Chinese agitators of the Denis Kearney type that it is refreshing to get a sober statement of facts such as Col. Fred. A. Bee, the Chinese Consul at San Francisco, has recently published, in the shape of a memorial to the people and the Congress of the United States. It is only when one has thus brought together before him the testimony of the leading citizens of California and the evidence of official records that be fully realizes the madness, as well as the brutality, of the warfare which a professedly Christian State is now waging upon an unoffending race.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors a few weeks ago published a book which gave fresh currency to all the familiar old charges in their most aggravated form, and Colonel Bee's pamphlet takes up these charges in succession. The book embodies the report made last summer by a special committee of the Supervisors upon this question, and Colonel Bee says that the man who is the author and father of this report expects that it will give him the nomination for Mayor. Some of its statements were so preposterous that even certain San Francisco papers had independence enough to protest against them, the News-Letter pronouncing the report " more than usually sensational and misleading," while the Argus, after quoting the diatribe against the Chinese quarter, declared that " there are numerous patches in other parts of the city that can hold their own for unadulterated immorality, death-dealing filth, and general cussedness against any part of Chinatown."

The cry that the Chinese are really slaves is again raised. Colonel Bee says that this charge was made originally about twenty-five years ago, and the Legislature of 1862 appointed a committee to investigate it, which reported that, after most thorough inquiry, they were "satisfied that there is no system of slavery or coolyism among the Chinese in this State," and that "they are as free as any persons in the State." The same charge was again brought in 1876, and an exhaustive inquiry was made by the Congressional Committee of which Senator Morton was chairman, who reported that "Chinese labor in California is as free as any other; they all come as free men, and are their own masters absolutely." Colonel Bee describes the origin and sets forth the character of the famous "Six Companies." The first Chinese immigrants who entered the mining region came from the six districts in the province of Canton, and they simply imitated a custom which they found among the Caucasian miners, who had formed organizations and established headquarters for the mutual advantage of men from the same State, Colonel Bee himself at that time belonging to the New York headquarters. -The Chinese organizations are simply benevolent societies, which give aid to the new-comer, look after the sick, and send home the dead; and the only foundation for the charge that they maintain tribunals outside our laws is the fact that the presidents of the companies occasionally act as arbitrators to settle difficulties between their countrymen, although neither party is ever bound by their findings. The Supervisors' book contains several pages of testimony to the depravity of the Chinese, which was taken ten years ago before a one-sided legislative committee, the Chinese not being permitted to present their case. Colonel Bee presents about thirty pages of the testimony which was given later in the same year by leading citizens of California before the Morton Committee. As to the character of the Chinese merchants, Joseph A. Coolidge, Secretary and Manager for ten years of the Merchants' Exchange, testified that "they are intelligent, shrewd, courteous, and gentlemanly, honorable in their business transactions "; that he had been "informed by merchants who have had extensive business transactions with them that the usual contracts in writing were unnecessary, their word being a sufficient guarantee for their fulfillment, and in a term of years, in which business to the extent of millions of dollars was transacted, not one cent has been lost by bad faith on their part." Richard G. Sneath, former manager of the Merchants' Exchange, President of a bank, and a merchant for twenty years, said upon this point: "I have dealt a great deal with the Chinese merchants in this city. I have always found them truthful, honorable, and perfectly reliable in all their business engagements. 1 have done business with them perhaps to the amount of several millions of dollars. I have never had a single one of them fail to live up to his contracts. I never lost a dollar by them m all my business engagements with them, though we commonly accepted a Chinaman's word as good for a cargo of merchandise, while a written contract was demanded of white men." So much for the merchants. Now for the laborers. Solomon Heydenfeldt, a resident of California for twenty-seven years, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court for five years, testified that he considered the Chinese '' the best laboring class we have among us; more faithful, more reliable, and more intelligent than an equal number of European immigrants; more industrious than the corresponding class of whites; thoroughly reliable and perfectly faithful to their engagements. Very few of the ordinary laboring class cannot read and write their own language."

Herman Heynemann, President of a woollen factory and an employer of Chinese laborers for fifteen years, said: "We have not had a single case before the police court of murder, or rows among themselves, or theft upon the proprietors. I think there are few factories run entirely by white labor that could say as much." Donald McLennan, manager of a woollen mill and employer of 800 Chinese operatives, replied to questions regarding their character: "I never found a case of theft among them. They are very steady people; I have never seen a drunken Chinaman in my life." Colonel William W. Hollister, one of the largest farmers in the State and a long-time employer of the Chinaman, gave this opinion of him "as a worker and man":

"As a laborer he is most submissive and kindly, 'ready to do what you want done, with entire goodwill. He descends to the lowest employments, and, when properly treated, thinks of no degradation in the lowest of labors. As a man I have found him honest, and as a rule very intelligent. Who ever saw a drunken Chinaman? His moral condition is so good that I think out of the whole 400 Chinese population in Santa Barbara there have been but five arrests in the course of a y ear. Two of them were dismissed: two cases were for petty larceny, stealing vegetables, or something like that, from their own people. 1 never saw a better population in my life. If the teachings of paganism make honest men, as I find the Chinamen to be. I think seriously of becoming a pagan myself."

As to their sanitary habits, Mr. Coolidge said: "In cleanliness of person they are remarkable. I have observed them closely in their various occupations, and on the streets, and cannot call to mind an instance of dirty face, or hands, or of soiled garments." William F. Babcock, director in a quicksilver mining company, which employed 120 Chinamen, said that "every night of their lives every Chinaman bathes himself from head to foot. If you will look at their hands and feet and necks, you will see them as clean and neat-looking people as you ever saw in the world. They are different from the lower white classes." Dr. Arthur B. Stout, a member of the State Board of Health, whose residence was almost in' the Chinese quarter, said that the death-rate was greater among the whites than among the Chinese, although the latter, live very closely in their quarter, and he thus accounted for the fact:

"Their frugal life gives them more Immunity from disease. They eat only what is necessary to live upon. They eat to live, and do not five to eat. They are clean in their habits, and they drink no whiskey. I have never seen a drunken Chinaman in my life. They consequently obtain a better resisting power to the attack of disease."

Dr. Stout, being asked how the Chinese quarter compared with other parts of the city, replied that the squalor was not much greater, and that the difference was largely due to the fact that less care was taken of the quarter by the city authorities. "I can take you down to the lower part of the city," he told Mr. Morton and the other Congressmen, "and show you much more squalor in the form of neglect, want of drainage, and want of proper care, than you would find in the Chinese quarter. There has been a great exaggeration in all those charges against the Chinese."

Since this testimony was taken the Exclusion Act has been passed, all danger of the Pacific Coast being overrun by the '' barbarians" is gone, and the proportion of the Chinese to the whole population is steadily sinking. Why is it that the white population are filled with such hostility against them? This was one of the questions which the Morton Committee repeatedly asked, and two of the answers which they elicited are worth quoting. Said Mr. Babcock, “I think it arises from politicians, office-holders, and foreigners, as a general thing. Very many of our population pander to this low taste, you may call it, and join in the outcry against the Chinese in order to get the foreign vote and popularity among them. That is my idea."

Mr. Heynemann's notion of the cause was this, “The same cause that has been prevalent all over the earth—strangeness of manners. It used to be in England that any man who did not speak English was a ' bloody foreigner.' It did not make any difference whether he was the best man in the world, he was a ' bloody foreigner,' and it was the height of contempt to use that expression. If this race, instead of keeping themselves in their peculiar dress, were to drink whiskey and patronize the bar-rooms to-day, just like others do, the prejudice would disappear immediately."