The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1882.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3556, 1 December 1882, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1882.

Some little time back our cablegrams stated that, owing to the scarcity of good domestic and other servants, it was gravely proposed to introduce Chinese labor into England. Naturally enough such a proposal created a great deal oi excitement, and we heard of open-air meetiugs to protest against the innovation. An excellent article in the Pall Mall Gazette appeared at the time, and showed how groundless was the alarm. We have had similar scares in the Australasian Colonies, which were not confined to the working classes alone, but were developed fully in the Houses of Legislature. Had our legislators been actuated by knowledge of the subject upon which they subsequently made laws, instead of being moved to action by fear of a sudden Mongolian invasion, they, perhaps, would not nave passed the Chinese Exclusion Acts that now figure in so many Colonial Statute Books. Our London contemporary points out that it would be alarming if a country with 350,000,000 inhabitants took to exporting her surplus millions, But as yet there is nothing at which to be frightened. Up to the present time the whole of the emigration from China has been from a single province, and chiefly from two crowded agricultural districts within that one province. In other parts of China there appears to be no disposition to emigrate, and the increase of the Chinese population in America has only been 11,000 in ten years. In the matter of wages, of competing with the ordinary European laborer, the Pall Mall Gazette ea y ß :—Aβ yet there has been no instance of Chinamen competing for low wages. If they have been taken to India they have received more than double what is usually paid to the Hindoo labourer. In America they received wages equal to those of the average English workman. In Australia they have taken to occupations in which they have had the opportunity of competing with high rates of pay. In addition they have been allowed to live pretty much as they liked, without inconvenient interference from sanitary authorities. If circumstances bad been less favourable to the acquisition of money, it is probable that we should have heard little or nothing of the Chinese movement. The Chinaman who emigrates leaves a family at home. He has to reimburse the emigration companies for the expenses of his transit; and he has to cave up against his return. Iα a country where wages are low, and men are not allowed to pig together in barns, the temptations to undersell native labour are too few to justify an extravagant fear of the wholesale importation of Chinese. Even the idea that Chinamen would extensively displace the English domestic servant has not so much iv it as a superficial knowledge ot what has taken place in America haa led many persons to infer. As a domestic the Chinaman is decidedly peculiar. He will take the work of the cook, or the chambermaid, or the nurse, but not that of the general servant. "If a Chinaman goes into a family to cook," said a witness before the American Congressional Committee, "be declares 'me no do chamber work, me do cooking.' Chinamen undertake one branch only." 'I'hey were employed as domestic servants because the female " help " would only take service in the great cities. Much the same rule held good in other employments in the United States. The favourable conditions of labour had made the ordinary workman so independent and untrustworthy that capitalists were driven to the employment of Chinese. When ten thousand labourers were needeu on the Central Pacific railroad, the most vigorous efforts were only equal to procuring about eight hundred white men, and Chinamen were therefore the only resource of the contractors. The case was the same in cotton and eoap and cigar factories. Chinese were employed because the native was either capricious and untrustworthy or scarce. The tendency of this wae, of course, to depress wages, but not nearly to the Chinese level. In factories, where a white man pot from three to five dollars a day, and a boy a dollar and a half, the Chinaman was only paid one dollar, with a dollar and a half for the Chinese " boss," or foreman. So far as concerns American industries two highly beneficial results followed on the employment of the Celestials. Manufacturers were enabled to compete in markets which had been closed to tbem, and native workmen began to recognize the fact that to work one clay and to drink another was a habit that was fatai to their chances of employment.