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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4238, 20 October 1874, Page 2

The intelligent San Francisco correspondent of the jS'cvj Zealand Herald gives anything but a pleasing picture of the progress of Mongolian colonisation m the 3 Pacific Slope States, under the Buneinohame treaty. The Chinese crowd every avenue of business, and materially interfere with the progress of the Golden State. Speaking of San Francisco, this writer says : There are sixty thousand Chinamen in 'this city—nearly one-third of the entire population. It is a physical, moral, and mental impossibility that this people can ever become amalgamated with the Caucasian races. Except in the imitative arts they are a thousand years behind the citizens of this country, and they will never overtake the distance. Morality, religion, cleanliness, are purely abstract terms with them, and the sole motive power In their nature, the desire to make money/ is the only principle they have in common with the “Melican man." Again, they have no interest at stake in the country, and are governed by a secret society composed of wealthy men of their own race. There are six Chinese companies here, very wealthy and very powerful. Whatever social discipline is exercised is through the influence of these companies, who tax their humble brethren with as much regularity and persistency as their models in this respect, the U.S.A. Customs officials. The most recent instance is the levying a tax of six dollars on every adult Chinaman, as a subscription to a fund for clean scraping his bones when dead. Steadily and surely the Chinese workman is driving the American to the wall. In every branch of trade they are ramifying, to an extent scarcely credible. Only the other day a swell Californian found himself in a state of intense disgust when ho discovered that a pair of unmentionables, fbr which he had been measured by a tiptop tailor, were the workmanship of a Chinaman. American capitalists are now compelled to employ Chinamen ’because the American laborer has been driven from, the State by them. Nearly all'the servant girls (excuse the bull) are Chinamen. They are ’ cooks, housemaids, laundry maids, gardeners, anything and everything. As shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, cabinet-makers, tobacco spumes, and cigar-makers they are a drug. Only from the heavier lines, such as blacksmiths, masons, and builders’ workshops, are they at present excluded. It is quite true that many of the railway lines now terminating in ’Frisco might not have been built had the promoters been obliged to employ American labor. It might have been better, however, to have allowed the lines to wait than to force them at the expense of the loss of probably 100,000 bona fide settlers. The Chinese import on their own account, through their own merchants, not only all the goods they sell, but all the food they consume and all the clothing they wear. The bulk of then: earnings find their way to China,

The same writer points out that although the steamboat, manufacturing, and railroad interests are benefited by the Chinese immigration,’the displacement of Europeans, which is the necessary consequence, must finally tell upon the resources of the country. The Chinese do not marry and settle in the country. They do not amalgamate with the Caucasian race, and indeed live a people apart, having in San Francisco “regularly-framed “laws of their own, a secret police, secret “ tax collectors, and secret tribunals. At “ the instance of the latter, many Ohina- “ men have ceased to be,” adds the writer from whom we quote. This question has been frequently brought up as one of paramount importance, by the Governors of California, in their messages to the General Assembly, but the interests of the great capitalist-monopolies in the Eastern States prevented any legislative action in Congress to remedy the evil. But the Chinese question will yet prove a great national difficulty, quite as insoluble as the Negro question in the old Slave States. The social effects in San Francisco itself are thus truthfully stated by the Herald’s correspondent :

As a first fruits of Chinese cheap labor, ye have growing up here bands of hoodlums (Anolicc, City Arabs), who are such because it is utterly impossible for them to find employment in the city, and they are unfitted, being city born, for agricultural life. Every avenue has been closed to them by the insatiable Mongol. San Quenten, the jail, has over 900 of this hoodlum element in safe custody, yet the streets and by-ways are full of them. Two-thirds of the crime of San Francisco results from the fact that parents jjnd It next to impossible to get their boys into any»W,Vb'«t.rcgiilar employment. Even the business of and the nnW'fViA ll the hands of the inevitable “ John,” c^m^to^lS^o^l^^ 0111 b ° y3 lßtobe ' We should t.o'-r- o-- - —- o.ioe of our neighbors. The Mongolian element in New Zealand is not unmanageable at present, but it is quite strong enough in Otago, and we should regret to see it further strengthened. The colony derives little or, no permanent advantage from the Chinese. They make no permanent improvements, contribute nothing to maintain the institutions of the country, and take their departure when they have scraped together enough money to enable them to live in their native land.