Yellow Agony in Melbourne

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 28, 16 August 1887, Page 3

Yellow Agony in Melbourne

The chief sufferers by what they call the “ Yellow Evil ” are the cabinetmakers of Melbourne. "The Chinese cabinetmakers ” said one of the principal furniture warehousemen in the eilloiiy to a reporter of the Melbourne Telegraph, “are a fearful curse." They have driven white men almost altogether Out of the market. I would gladly put a stop to it had I the power, and I have asked those in the trade with me to Pembine and refuse to purchase any of their stuff, but they will not agree. And the furniture is bad, too. The merchant brought out bookcases, chests of drawers, washstands—liandsome-look-ing articles certainly, and exhibiting, to the amateur, good workmanship. “ Look at this,” he said, and pointed to a corner where the beading was breaking away, to clots of varnish here and there; or, pulling out a drawer, he demonstrated the bad way it was fitted, showed the clumsily-fitted backs, the insecure locks, and a host of other faults not at first detected. Fifteen Europeans were discharged from one shop, six from another, and three from a third on a recent Saturday, so that the number of white men making the furniture the colony wants is only ninety-two. This is as absurd as it is true. This is what one of them says “ I have tried longer than I can tell you to keep my billet, but now it is all over. I have seen one after another of my mates give it up and turn their hands to something else that the Chinese had not taken up. Some of them succeeded, and others did not. We are better off anyhow than they are in Sydney, for there the yellow men have the trade, and do not leave the Australian a single thing to make. If the sellers would only tell the people that the furniture is of Chinese make there would be a lot of difference; but they hide that, and every stick they get they call European-made furniture. Things the Europeans really have made they offer as imported goods, and they can readily do this, because there is not a dealer who will say that what we put together is not quite equal to anything they have sent out from England.”