YELLOW VERSUS WHITE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14927, 27 February 1912, Page 9

YELLOW VERSUS WHITE.

AN ANTI-CHINESE CHOWD.

COMPETITION NOT WELCOMED. [BY TELEGB.\rn. —OWV COKRBSPON'nEST.J CHRiSTCHtrRcn, Monday. A disturbance, which threatened to develop into something more serious, occurred in Christchurch on Saturday night. Recently a number of Chinese, evidently considering that the field for enterprise offered by the laundry and tho market garden was not sufficiently wide, entered into the retail fruit business. They established fruit shops in Cashel-etreet and Lower High-street, and by means of attractive window dressing and very reasonable prices attracted a good deal of custom. On Saturday nights especially bnsi- I ness was brisk. About nine p.m. on Saturday last the i crowd was patronising tho shop in Cashel- I street very freely when it appeared that a hawker with a barrow took up his sta- ( tion in tho street just in front of the shop, ■ and began to make remarks to the customers entering, telling them not to deal with Chinamen. A crowd, composed chiefly of those elements which the prospect of trouble always brings together, quickly collected and joined in the cry. The customers, it happened, were chiefly women, who were doing their marketing for Sunday, and this fact seemed to arouse the anger of the crowd, the members of which loudly requested them to shop at ♦he emporiums of white men. Their chief ! argument seemed to be that the Chinamen had no wives and families to keep, and could live cheaply. Eventually tho proprietors were compelled to shut tho shop. The mob then espied two Chinamen, who were walking along High-street to escape from the evident hostility of the crowd. These took refuge in a tobacconist's shop. The crowd did not follow them, but congregated outside, and contented itself with making personal remarks about its victims. Eventually the police arrived, and tinder a guard of six policemen the two Chinese were escorted to their shop in Lower Highstreet. The crowd followed them, and took up its station outside the shop, which was quickly shut up, and for a short time continued to make uncomplimentary remarks at the expense of the yellow race generally. Some one threw a stone which crashed through one of the windows in the living rooms in the upper storey. The police then prepared to take active measures in the case of those who appeared to be the ringleaders, but wore unable to discover the person who threw the stone. For ' some time the mob kept its station on the road, and many fierce arguments as to the rights and wrongs of alien immigration took place. It was due to the tactful methods of tho police that the crowd, which at on© time appeared belligerent, gradually calmed down. A few who seemed disposed to persist in their militant atti- ' tude quickly quietened when threatened I with arrest.