known as skilled trades, such as bricklayers, masons, plasterers, roofers, plumbers, carpenters, blacksmiths, weavers, coopers, engravers, jewelers, clockmakers and ship carpenters, the rate ranged from $4.50 to $8 per month. These wages, it must be remembered, represent those of the larger cities of China, and are, no doubt, as in all other countries of the world, larger than in the smaller towns and in the rural localities. The average cost of living for these different cities and provinces is given at about $3.00 per month. "The clothing of male laborers," the report continues, "is very simple and inexpensive. Two garments, generally, are only worn, trousers and a sort of loose blouse, both of ordinary cotton cloth, either white or blue. In cold weather these are padded with cotton batting. The better classes vary the upper garment by elongation, when the blouse becomes a robe, which is often covered by a third garment, a sleeveless tunic of cloth. Materials are varied as means allow, and silks and satins supplant the cotton cloth. The cost, of course, depends on material, but the essential cotton garments of laborers cost about $3.00, and two suits last at least a year." As to political rights, the common people have none and seem not to care for them. They seem to live in abject fear of rulers, but appear not to discuss the possibility of change. One would judge they never thought, and were contented with their abject condition. No emigration has ever occurred from this region. Education, even in the Chinese sense, is very limited, but most men can read a few characters and write them as well, and can keep accounts. This is the kind of laborers of whom China can furnish perhaps one hundred millions without in any way affecting its own industries or its own resources. This is the kind of labor which Mr. Harrison and his Republican friends have sought to bring into this country without restriction, to take the food from the mouths of our own workingmen, and then to raise the cry of high wages and protection. It certainly lies very little in their mouths to make such a cry after their own actions in the matter have been thoroughly exposed. VI. CHINESE COMPETITION IN THIS COUNTRY. WHAT IT MEANS IN SAN FRANCISCO-WAGES AND COST OF LIVING AND THE DEGRADATION OF THE INHABITANTS. As showing the rate at which the Chinese live in San Francisco, it has been ascertained from the most reliable sources that the average is about as follows: It has also been ascertained that only one-fourth of the clothing, which is certainly not extravagant in amount, was made of goods produced in this country; while of the food consumed 75 per cent. was imported from China. Of the earnings of these laborers fully 75 per cent. is sent each year to China. The rate of wages for which these people are willing to work in San Francisco is shown in the following table: RATES OF WAGES PAID TO CHINESE. CLASS OF LABOR. 6 00 per month. Average. 20 00 per month. $25 00 per month... $18 00 per month... $21 50 per month. own account.... ALMOST ABSOLUTE LACK OF CHINESE HOMES. As showing the domestic condition of these people, it may not be amiss to say that out of 96,723 Chinese residents of the Pacific Coast States and Territories in 1880, only 4,513 were women, a disproportion absolutely unknown in any community which ever existed since the creation of Eve, and one which shows that these people when migrating here have no idea of becoming part and parcel of our American citizenship, so that the "little brown man," of whom Senator Hoar spoke so lovingly a few years ago in the Senate, has come to this country for the purposes of revenue only, and has no idea of remaining longer than it is necessary to acquire the small sum which will enable him to set up as a rich man and capitalist at home. THE TERRIBLE CONDITION OF THE CHINESE QUARTER. In July 1885, there was published in the city of San Francisco a report made by the special committee of the Board of Supervisors of that county, upon the condition of the Chinese Quarter. The section of the city known as the Chinese Quarter is included in twelve blocks. In these twelve blocks were found bunks to the number of 15,180, each bunk being occupied on an average by two persons. The further results of this system are set forth in the following: All great cities have their slums and localities where filth, disease, crime, and misery abound; but in the very best aspect which "Chinatown" can be made to present, it must stand apart, conspicuous and beyond them all in the extreme degree of all these horrible attributes, the rankest outgrowth of human degradation that can be found upon this continent. Here it may be truly said that human beings exist under conditions (as regards their mode of life and the air they breathe) scarcely one degree above those under which the rats of our water-front and other vermin live, breathe, and have their being. And this order of things seems inseparable from the very nature of the race, and probably must be accepted and borne with-must be endured, if it cannot be cured-restricted and loooked after, so far as possible, with unceasing vigilance, so that, whatever of benefit, "of degree" even, that may be derived from such modification of the evil of their presence among us, may, at least, be attained, not daring to hope that there can be any radical remedy for the great, overshadowing evil which Chinese immigration has inflicted upon this people. Your committee have found, both from their own and individual observations and from the reports of their surveyors, that it is almost the universal custom among the Chinese to herd together as compactly as possible, both as regards living and sleeping rooms and sleeping accommodations. It is almost an invariable rule that every “bunk" in Chinatown (beds being almost unknown in that locality) is occupied by two persons Not only is this true, but in very many instances these bunks are again occupied by "relays" in the daytime, so that there is no hour, night or day, when there are not thousands of Chinamen sleeping under the effects of opium, or otherwise, in the bunks which we have found there. Besides these bunks, rolls of bedding, for use in sleeping on floors and various other sleeping accommodations, are found. All these bunks, rolls, etc., have been carefully noted and enumerated in their reports furnished to us by the surveyors; and from them we reach the following results of an estimated enumeration of the population of "Chinatown." HOW THESE HUMAN HERDS LIVE. They describe the methods of living in Chinatown with its filth and its vile smells as follows: Descend into the basement of almost any building in Chinatown at night; pick your way by the aid of the policeman's candle along the dark and narrow passageway, black and grimy with a quarter of a century's accumulation of filth; step with care lest you fall into a cesspool of sewage abominations with which these subterranean depths abound. Now follow your guide through a door, which he forces, into a sleeping room. The air is thick with smoke and fetid with an indescribable odor of reeking vapors. The atmosphere is tangible. Tangible-if we may be licensed to use the word in this instance-to four out of the five human senses. Tangible to the sight, tangible to the touch, tangible to the taste, and, oh, how tangible to the smell. You may even hear it as the opiumsmoker sucks it through his pipe-bowl into his tainted lungs, and you breathe it yourself as if it were of the substance and tenacity of tar. It is a sense of a horror you have never before experienced, revolting to the last degree sickening and stupefying. Through this semi-opaque atmosphere you discover perhaps eight or ten-never less than two or three-bunks, the greater part or all of which are occupied by two persons, some in a state of stupefaction from opium, some rapidly smoking, themselves into that condition, and all in dirt and filth. Before the door was opened for your entrance every aperture was closed, and here, had they not been thus rudely dis. turbed, they would have slept in the dense and poisonous atmosphere until morning, proof against the baneful effects of the carbonic acid gas generated by this human defiance of chemical laws, and proof against all the zymotic poisons that would be fatal to a people of any other race in an hour of such surroundings and such conditions. HOW "PROTECTION" IS PREVENTED BY THESE PEOPLE. They also advert at some length and with considerable bitterness to the men who would cry for the protection of American labor, and yet would permit the influx of this element to come into competition with our own, as follows: The essentially American policy of a tariff for protection to home industry is not alone on trial as against the opposing doctrine of free trade. Protection against the "pauper labor of Europe" as a system of public policy may be advocated, upheld and practiced as we will, but it is clear that the doctrine is absolutely nullified, and the laws that are enacted to support it are successfully and effectually evaded by the importation, not of the products of pauper labor, but of pauper labor itself, of a far lower grade than that of Europe, viz: the Asiatic. The political party which claims to be the party of protection to home industry by means of a high tariff necessarily stultifies itself if it fails to set itself against the greater of these dangers, the importation of Asiatic pauper labor, as well as against the free importation of the products of European pauper labor. For it is clear that Asiatic labor here upon our own soil, which can exist here at a less cost for living than can even the pauper labor of Europe exist upon European soil, not only possesses a dominant advantage over home labor, but also over the "pauper labor of Europe" itself, about which we declaim so earnestly. If this "Asiatic pauper labor," toler ated upon our own soil, can produce here any article of manufacture cheaper than the same article can be produced in Europe, the advantage is not alone the difference in the cheapness of the product, but in the tariff which is imposed on the article thus manufactured in Europe and imported here. Therefore the Asiatic laborer residing here literally commands the situation. The result of such a competition is indisputable. Either the American laborer must come down to a level with the imported "little brown man" in habits of life and desires, or he must become a helpless pauper himself. This is not the gospel of the "Sand Lot;" it is the gospel of political truth, upon which all parties should agree who have the welfare of society at heart, and to whom humanity itself ought not to plead in vain. Cool and dispassionate consideration of this great overshadowing question is now the necessity of the hour, uninfluenced by the senseless jargon of "The Chinese must go," or any shibboleth of the demagogue. Planted here in this young but already great metropolis is a Mongolian population, forming about one-eighth of the entire community, and probably one-fourth of the laboring classes, equal to the task of competition in any line of skilled or unskilled manufacture. Their habits and mode of life render the cost of support lessthan one-fifth of that of the ordinary American laborer, who exercises what is commonly recognized as the strictest rules of economy and thrift. This first coming of the wave of Chinese labor is to-day in more than successful competition with the home workman here in the production of every article of clothing, cigars, and other like necessities and luxuries of life, to the extent that, practically, [the occupation of the skilled home laborer is gone, Indeed, even at this early stage of the contact. HOW THE INFLUX OF THIS SERVILE CLASS CONTINUES. It is within the province and scope of this report to supply this "missing link" through the facts which have been collated in this investigation, and about which there can surely be no dispute, if human evidence is of value at all in the search for truth, hidden where it may be: Your committee, then, apart from theorizing, invite the attention of the Board and of the American people to their exhibits of facts relating to this subject of Chinese labor here in San Francisco alone, and the inevitable result which must sooner or later be reached all over the land as the Chinese tide advances and sweeps competition to the winds. It need not be said that the discussion of this phase of the question is useless now because of the treaty and the legislation which is supposed to prohibit Chinese immigration; for the fact is but too apparent to every resident of San Francisco that Chinese immigration is still flowing in in appalling numbers, and the treaty and the prohibitory legislation scarcely modifies the strength of the tide, much less prohibits. Therefore it is more than in order at this time to analyze and discuss the effect of Chinese pauper labor upon the welfare of the American laborer and the American people. HOW THE CHINESE ARE DRIVING OUT WOMEN AS WELL AS MEN. In setting forth the kind of work done by these men-how it has taken the bread from the mouths of men, women and children in San Francisco-they say: There are employed in Chinatown to-day not less than 2,326 Chinese workmen engaged in the manufacture of clothing of various descriptions, boots and shoes, leather, cigars, etc., all of which are produced for consumption here in competition with the American workmen engaged in the same line of manufacture. Most of this labor is carried on through the use of the best modern machinery, in the operation of which the Chinese workman becomes an adept in a short space of time. Machinery for the manufacture of boots and shoes in the large establishments operated by Chinese labor supplies a large share of the demand for the whole Pacific coast. The Hop Kee Company, on Dupont street, an establishment employing at some seasons of the year three hundred men, finds a market for its goods as far east as Salt Lake City at present, and will at no distant day invade the country east of the Mississippi, giving manufacturers there an opportunity to become pratically acquainted with the effects of "Chinese cheap labor" and the results which follow in its train. In the manufacture of clothing, ladies' underwear, shirts, etc., 1,245 sewing machines are kept actively at work, all operated by male laborers with a skill that is equal to the best efforts of the American woman, as well as the American man, in this direction, and all run with such quick-handed, untiring energy, that it suggests one of the most curious physiological problems of the day to understand how a people, nurtured and fed as they are, can possess the vitality and physical force necessary to the results which they achieve in this direction. Most of this labor is carried on by "piece work" and to fill orders for large " down-town commercial houses" engaged in the sale of the class of goods thus produced. The heavy, strong-stitched jean overalls which find so large a market on the coast are made by the Chinese workmen at the rate of about 55 cents per dozen pairs. The work thus producedat a price which would reduce the American worker, male and female, to a lower level than the "woman" in "The Song of the Shirt "-the China man thrives upon and is prosperous and happy. But it is a prosperity and happiness that is based upon a mode of life that a homeless cur upon the streets might not envy, upon which the American laborer could not exist until a succession of generations had so brutalized and blunted his race proclivities that he had degenerated into a condition worse than barbarism and become a curse to civilization, instead of what he is to-day, the vital strength of a nation. |