Chinese laborer

“ If this immigration is permitted to continue, American labor must surely be reduced to the level of the Chinese competitor—the American's wants measured by his wants, the [Pg 287] American's comforts be made no greater than the comforts of the Chinaman, and the American laborer, not having been educated to maintain himself according to this standard, must either meet his Chinese competitor on his own level, or else take up his pack and leave his native land. The entire trade of China, if we had it all, is not worth such a sacrifice. ”

“ In America I want to and can. I am sorry, but ‘Good-bye, Italy.’”
The same opportunity for riches attracts the Chinese. He lives in a land that, labor as he will, is barely able to feed its almost half a billion human mouths. His wages [27] at home are so meagre he can never hope for independence; two cents per day is what the farm laborer in Shantung earns. Since as a laborer he cannot legally enter the United States, he comes in under cover of darkness over the Mexican or Canadian borders, or any other way he can devise. The same hope of wealth attracts the Chinese. ”

“ It will thus be seen that all Chinese laborers who came to this country prior to the treaty of 1880 were to be treated the same as the citizens and subjects of the most favored nation; that is to say, they were to be protected by our laws the same as we protect our own citizens.
These Chinese laborers are inoffensive, peaceable and law-abiding. They are honest, keeping their contracts, doing as they agree. They are exceedingly industrious, always ready to work and always giving satisfaction to their employers. ”

“ And certainly if there is any body of laborers against which the working people of America need protection, it is the coolie labor of Asia. The fact that the Japanese and Chinese laborers enter industries in which there is a scarcity of whites does not affect the case, for it is not the direct loss of jobs, but the lowering—or at least the changing—of the standards of living that brings injury to the mass." The Outlook, September 21, 1907. RACE PROBLEMS: Existing Treaties between the United States and China concerning the Admission of Chinamen. ”

“ The last and strongest argument in favor of the general exclusion of Chinese laborers from this country, however, is the racial argument. The Chinese are just as different in race from us as the negro, and if racial heredity counts for anything it is fatuous to hope to assimilate them to the social type of the whites. Moreover, if we should open our doors to the mass of Chinese laborers China would be able to swamp us with Chinese immigrants. With its hundreds of millions of population China could spare to us several hundred thousand immigrants each year without feeling the loss. ”

“ That the presence in our country of Chinese laborers, imported by capitalists in large numbers for servile use, is an evil entailing want and its attendant train of misery and crime on all classes of the American people, and should be prohibited by legislation. ”

“ The questions arising in connection with Chinese immigration stand by themselves. The conditions in China are such that the entire Chinese coolie class, that is, the class of Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, legitimately come under the head of undesirable immigrants to this country, because of their numbers, the low wages for which they work, and their low standard of living. ”

“ Exclusion of all Chinese laborers, with certain definite, carefully guarded exceptions, was the manifest end in view, and for a long time the same design has characterized legislation by Congress. 'In the opinion of the government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof.' See Act of May 6, 1882, 22 Stats. ”

“ Soon they were not only laborers, but also capitalists, in a small way. Then they began to buy land and work in their own fields, gardens, and orchards. The industries that produced food from land as the result of intensive cultivation with human labor were rapidly passing into the hands of the Chinese. ”

“ They are industrious and peaceable, generally speaking, and it would be impossible readily to supply our manufactories with labor, but for the Chinese. Their wages—the wages of the laborers, I mean—average $1 a day. ”

“ Chinese laborers limited.After the extermination of the Chinese, food and all Chinese other necessaries of life were difficult to obtain on account of the utter unreliability of the natives for work; but by 1605 the number of Chinese3 had again so increased that a decree was issued limiting them to six thousand, “these to be employed in the cultivation of the country;” while at the same time their rapid increase was taken advantage of by the captain-general for his own interest, as he exacted eight dollars from each Chinaman for permission to remain. ”

“ Within the last few years, the Chinese have begun to emigrate to the western parts of the United States. They will maintain themselves on small wages; and wherever they come into actual competition with slave labor, it cannot compete with them. ”

“ The labour market of China is undoubtedly enormous, but the supply does not respond as readily to the demand as in Europe, because the distances are great and the means of communication correspondingly few and difficult. However, the labourers living on the banks of the Yang-tsze, who are called ‘Water-fowls,’ constantly flock into Shanghai in search of work. They belong to that class of poor creatures who crowd the great Chinese cities, and whose only home is their sampang, in which an entire family accommodates itself in a space that would barely suffice for a single European. ”

“ Moreover, the admirable organization of the Chinese labor is an irresistible convenience to the farmer, vineyardist, and other employer. "How do you arrange to get your Chinese?" I asked a man in the country who was employing more than a hundred in several gangs. He replied: "I have only to go or send to a Chinese employment office in San Francisco, and say that I need so many men for such work and at such pay. Directly up come the men, with a foreman of their own, with whom alone I have to deal. ”

“ To add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy has sent to China—the greatest and oldest despotism in the world—for a cheap working slave. It rakes the slums of Asia to find the meanest slave on earth—the Chinese coolie—and imports him here to meet the free American in the Labor market, and still further widen the breach between the rich and the poor, still further to degrade white Labor. ”

“ All those words which our writers on social subjects are so fond of inditing against the modern factory system have no meaning to the Chinaman. Those complaints about long hours at mechanical work rendering the worker little better than a machine are doubtless true of the white race, but are quite beside the point as applied to the Chinese. If the Chinaman is well paid in the factory he will prefer rather than otherwise that the work should be mechanical ”

“ The ups and downs of the labor movement in China at the same time mark the trend of the national movement as a whole, In the three stages of the Chinese labor movement, from the sailors' strike in 1922 up to the railwaymen's strike of 1923, from this to the Shanghai events, and from the Shanghai events to the present time, the Chinese working class has shown its fighting ability and its valour in the front ranks of the revolution. ”

“ No; all these measures rather indicate the existence of a racial jealousy, for as a rule [344] the Chinaman is more industrious and more temperate than the European. The question of Chinese labour has in our times become one of the economic problems of the Far East, of America and Australia, and recently also of South Africa. ”

“ Japan egged her on, and the proud Western peoples listened with respectful ears.
China’s swift and remarkable rise was due, perhaps more than to anything else, to the superlative quality of her labour. The Chinese was the perfect type of industry. He had always been that. For sheer ability to work no worker in the world could compare with him. Work was the breath of his nostrils. ”

“ A great responsibility rests on Chinese labor, and if you are equal to the task, China will become a great nation and you a mighty working class.”302 The Chinese workers were performing not only a duty that they owed to themselves—they were also acting patriotically.
In advancing the national economic revolution by advancing themselves, they could not afford to lose sight of the political part of the revolution. “Beyond the economic struggle for the shortening of the working day and the increase of wages, there are before you other much more important questions of a political character. ”

“ The importers of Chinese had no difficulty in securing openings for their cargoes now, and when transportation from California to the Eastern States is cheapened, as it soon will be, they will extend their operations into the Middle and Eastern States, unless prevented by law, for wherever there is a white man or woman at work for wages, whether at the shoe bench, in the factory, or on the farm, there is an opening for a Chinaman. No matter how low the wages may be, the Chinaman can afford to work for still lower wages, and if the competition is free, he will take the white man’s place. ”

“ He has so many mouths to feed; there is so much work to be done; when all the work that there is to be done is done by hand labour, even then there are thousands of mouths that cannot be filled, and if labour-saving machinery is introduced, what will become of the millions who will be thrown out of employment? So argues the ordinary Chinese, and for fear of making matters worse than they are, he votes plump against the introduction of foreign machinery. This was the spirit of the proletariat towards the opening of the country by railway lines. ”

“ The history of the slave trade in this country during the past twenty years is an extraordinary chapter which has never been fully ventilated, and which if probed to the bottom, would show the Chinese in America as adepts in the art of defying American laws and traditions.
⁠The preponderance of males among the Chinese in this country is suggestive of the insecure tenure of their residences here. But few Chinamen bring their wives with them, as they are here merely to earn a competency, when they will reutrn, and all their money, or the greater part of it, is sent to China. ”

“ Even now, when the scarcity of Chinese labor and the consequent rise in wages have eliminated the question of cheapness, the Chinese [Pg 277] have still the advantage over all other servile labor in convenience and efficiency. They are patient, docile, industrious, and above all ‘honest’ in the business sense that they keep their contracts. Also, they cost nothing but money. Any other sort of labor costs human effort and worry, in addition to the money. But Chinese labor can be bought like any other commodity, at so much a dozen or a hundred. ”

“ Can we make a show equally in favor of the wages of the workingmen on this sun-rise side of the continent, where the Chinese are insignificant as a competing power? The truth is, all this cry about their taking the bread out of our children’s mouths is simply nonsense. ”

“ A trip up the river to Canton, the southern capital of China, an immense city with 2,000,000 population, was full of interest. Half the population seemingly live in boats.
What indefatigable workers the Chinese are. They seem to work all night and they seem to work all day. They are busy as ants. If one cannot find employment otherwise he will make it! Barring the beggars, there are no unemployed and no unemployables. What a mighty force they must become in the world's economy. ”

“ Formidable competitors.Invigorated by the severe struggle for existence which they have experienced in their over-populated country, the Chinese appear to preserve their capacity for labor perfectly unimpaired by any climate. ”

“ This point also should readily be appreciated by the people of Japan, who find it generally necessary to exclude Chinese labour on precisely the same ground—that is, because a Chinaman can live on less than a Japanese, and can consequently work for lower wages. ”

“ Concrete resolutions were adopted on all problems of the movement. The May 30 movement had raised the level of the entire working class. Previously the politcal side of the trade unions had not been firm; now the trade unions were deep in the political struggle and were leading it. Active and permanent contact had been established with the International labor movement. The Chinese labor movement had become mature. ”

“ For field-work, the China-man is fully equal to the European labourer. I speak advisedly, having tried them together, side by side, for months at a time. In a recent Singapore paper I find it stated, that the Home Authorities have authorised an agent to treat for the transmission of Chinese labourers from the Straits' settlements to the West Indies; and, from my knowledge of those places, I have no doubt that thousands of men will be induced to avail themselves of this new market for their labour. ”

“ There is no kind of labour or employment which a Chinaman will not readily undertake; and they appear to succeed equally well in all, with the exception of tending sheep or cattle, which is an occupation they are little fond of.
The town has something of a Chinese aspect, from the number of Chinamen who are employed in every capacity; and the fruits and vegetables are principally cultivated and brought to market by people of that nation. ”