The immigration of Chinese into California has attracted the attention of Congress. It appears that the Chinese immigrants, on settling there, persist in maintaining their allegiance to China; and under these circumstances the Senate voted a resolution, December 19, making inquiry into the propriety of discouraging such emigration.
14 August 1869
A person named Koopmanschaap, a Hollander by birth and a coolie contractor, was recently the lion of a day in New York, having previously been the hero of the Memphis Convention which assembled to devise means of supplying the Southern States with labor. The sentiment of the Convention seems to have been expressed by Mr. J. W. Clapp, who remarked that "the South" did not wish European laborers, as they wanted to own land, while, in his opinion, "the South" preferred labor that could be managed "as of old." In other words, he thought that "the South" wanted an ignorant, brutish, servile population of laborers, instead of intelligent, industrious, self-respecting workmen. Mr. Koopmanschaap was evidently the right man to gratify such a desire. In reply to the question of a reporter in New York, the coolie contractor said that in the Southern States "nothing but coerced labor will bring about prosperity." Mr. Koopmanschaap had apparently overlooked the law of which we spoke, and which forbids any citizen or foreign resident in this country to prepare any kind of vessel for the purpose of bringing coolies "to be disposed of, or sold, or transferred, for any term of years or for any time whatever, as servants or apprentices, or to be held to service or labor." Of course the law does not forbid free and voluntary emigration.
The inducements for honest emigration to this country are so palpable and persuasive, the flood is always sure to be so large, and the difficulties incident to a rapid increase of the resident foreign population in the present circumstances of the country are so evident, that nothing is more imperative than the prevention of this illicit emigration. America has an endless welcome for the industrious laborer who comes hither to secure larger opportunities for himself and his children, but no country welcomes an inundation of foreign barbarism. Nothing, indeed, can be more absurd or more characteristic than the resolutions of the Democratic Convention in California virtually denouncing the Chinese laborers who have been brought here; for they are innocent, and the resolutions merely stimulate a local hostility already enough inflamed. Besides, the Chinese movement has begun, and will not be stayed. The wise course is to restrain it within its natural limits by rigidly preventing the opening of a new slave-trade under the name of encouraging emigration. Meanwhile any artificial and immense increase of a population in the Southern States which, as Mr. Koopmanschaap remarks, must supplant the colored laborers, with the probable annexation of Cuba and a million and a half of Spanish creoles and slaves, opens a prospect which need dismay no one, but which is not necessarily delightful. It is not the number of the population but its quality that makes a great nation; nor do abundant labor and cheap wages announce an imminent millennium. The power of assimilation of a nation like ours is indeed immense; and all that can be asked is that it be reasonably treated.
23 October 1869
During the eight months from January 1, 1869, out of 21,624 immigrants to San Francisco 11,000 were Chinese. The number of Chinese immigrants to California from 1848 to 1868, inclusive, was 108,000.
22 January 1870
THE Mongolian invasion has begun at last in good
earnest, and the advance-guard of the peaceful army has
already crossed the Missouri River. On the 26th of December
the first detachment of Chinese laborers engaged to work on
a railroad now building in Texas, numbering 250 men,
arrived opposite Council Bluffs, Iowa. The river was
covered with a pack of broken ice sufficiently strong to
prevent the passage of boats. A plank walk was laid across
the uneven surface, on which the Celestials passed over to
the eastern side of the river, as shown in our
illustration, carrying their baggage on poles balanced over
the shoulder, in true Oriental fashion. Most of these men
were employed in the construction of the Pacific Railroad.
They are under the charge of General J. A. WALKER, who expects to return in the spring,
should this experiment prove a success, for a still larger
detachment.16 July 1870
It may be assumed, therefore, that the Chinese movement will continue. The trades unions may perplex the easy solution of the question, but they can not prohibit the immigration. If this be true, two things are evident. First, that the "cooly trade" -- the enterprises of gentlemen like Mr. Koopmanschoop -- should be absolutely prohibited. The voluntary movement can not be stayed; but the forced movement -- the immigration by contract, which, as we have heretofore shown, is the revival of the slave trade -- should be strictly forbidden. Then the treatment of those who do come should be as honorable and generous as that which is accorded to the people of all other countries. Any attempt to outlaw the Chinese, to draw upon them a peculiar contumely, to treat them harshly and with personal abuse, would certainly be resented by the conscience and good sense of the country. The Government will do its duty if it rigorously interferes with the wholesale importation of these laborers. And if the whole subject is left to the operation of natural laws, freed from all forcing, we doubt if any honest American laborer need fear the result.
27 August 1870
Mr. Phillips and Mr. Seymour agree upon one point, and that is, that the country does not want cheap labor, but well-paid labor. That is true; and when we are told of the material development which every where languishes for the want of labor, it seems to be forgotten that moral and spiritual development is still more essential to a nation. If five millions of laborers could be brought into the country to-morrow; because there is work enough for five million more hands, it would by no means follow that it would be an advantage to the country. The problem of civilization is not quite so easy as that. The considerations are many and complex. Thus the difficulty with the free-trade argument is that the mutual control and dependence of social and political laws are apparently forgotten. If the advantage of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market were all that needed to be urged upon a country, free trade would soon be universal. The question to be answered is whether a country may not sometimes buy a greater advantage of another kind by buying goods in the dearer market.
Yet, in the discussion of the Chinese question, it must not be forgotten that one of the most progressive steps in civilization is the perception of the essential identity of men and races. The tendency of all modern scholarship is to reveal the unity of man, and unquestionably the true tendency of civilization is toward "the federation of the world." Merely to denounce Asiatics, therefore, as if to be an Asiatic were to be a kind of monster, or to disparage the Chinese as "pagans," as if an epithet were an argument, is at once to perplex truth in the minds of all who know any thing of the actual civilization and moral code of China. Certainly we do not wish to repeat the follies of that country, nor to suppose that, in this time and in this land, any Chinese wall of exclusion can be built. We may trust American sagacity to defend American civilization from obliteration by that of Asia, without supposing it necessary to preach hatred and horror of one of the chief human races, as if every individual of it were a nameless sinner. It is very evident, from the position already taken by leading men of all parties, that no vast Chinese current will be suffered to pour itself upon this continent. We shall not wreck ourselves upon a bald theory. Indeed, our Constitution already discriminates among the native inhabitants. It excludes Indians not taxed from the numerical basis of representation. To effect what is easily attainable under the circumstances, let us not have recourse to a crusade of sentiment against Asia.
