Chinese laborers

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Large Chinese houses monopolize the trade, and the Chinese artisan and day-laborer have driven out all others. Ninety thousand of the one hundred thousand of the population are Chinese.
Now that the exclusiveness of China has been broken in upon, and emigration permitted, what a destiny awaits such a people in the workshops and fields of the western world! Already they are filling up the States on the Pacific coast, and silently, but surely, possessing themselves of all the avenues of industry in those States, thrusting aside the more expensive European and American laborers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in the effort to carry out the policy of excluding Chinese laborers, Chinese coolies, grave injustice and wrong have been done by this Nation to the people of China, and therefore ultimately to this Nation itself. Chinese students, business and professional men of all kinds--not only merchants, but bankers, doctors, manufacturers, professors, travelers, and the like--should be encouraged to come here, and treated on precisely the same footing that we treat students, business men, travelers, and the like of other nations. ”

“ 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 Chinese have become so acclimated that they can prosper in any part of our country.... I would have a law to register the Asiatic laborers who come into the country. It is impossible to protect ourselves from persons who come in surreptitiously. ”

“ In this part of China too, one frequently finds laborers more than seventy years of age working daily at their trades, and it is not unusual to hear of persons who have reached the age of ninety or more.
The intellectuality of the Chinese is made evident by so many obvious and weighty facts, that it seems strange that persons of ordinary intelligence and information should ever have questioned it. ”

“ In the mining districts the Chinese occupied claims which had been abandoned as exhausted by their original proprietors, or acted as cooks and menial servants. In the towns they performed various duties. Their stolid patience and their capacity for long and sustained work made them in one way ideal laborers for the development of a new country; but their extreme frugality and their willingness to work for a small wage made them formidable competitors of white labor. ”

“ What profoundly [xvii] impresses any visitor to China is the stamina and the working capacity of the common people. Tireless laborers these Chinese are, whether they work for themselves or the European. What they will be able to accomplish with labor-saving machinery no one can predict. Certainly should they accept modern methods of work, with the same enthusiasm that they have adopted new methods of government, the markets of the world will be upset by the product of these four hundred million. ”

“ Unless employees of the lower social grade can be imported in such numbers as to meet every call for domestic servants, there must exist, as now, the discrepancy between supply and demand. The old struggle between free labor and slave labor must be repeated in miniature wherever the social chasm exists between two classes of laborers. The introduction to any considerable extent of Chinese servants would drive out European labor as that has in a measure driven out native born American service. ”

“ As the demand increased and the supply of willing contract laborers became insufficient, Chinese in large numbers were kidnapped from their homes, native procurers or pimps being employed to do the needful work of the so-called contractors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She was the colossus of the nations, and swiftly her voice was heard in no uncertain tones in the affairs and councils of the nations. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover in a new country, where there was much manual labour to be done in developing resources and constructing railways, and where there were comparatively few white labourers, the Chinese speedily proved to be a valuable factor. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He was hoping to bring the standards of Chinese labor up to those of the West, and he was making use of the political power of labor in China as an added instrument of the national economic revolution.
The Chinese nation could and should not continue, as a nation, on a scale of living lower than that of the Western nations. He urged the Chinese workers, as the class most affected, to fight for the economic advancement of themselves and of their nation. “Comrades, the people meeting here are all workers and represent a part of the nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They say, namely, (1) that the Chinese work for wages below the minimum necessary to maintain life for the white man, and so reduce the standard of living and crowd out the white working-man. There can scarcely be any question that the white laboring man is not able to compete economically with the Chinese laborer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”