THE CHINESE LABOUR PROBLEM

Otago Witness, Issue 1374, 30 March 1878, Page 5

THE CHINESE LABOUR PROBLEM-

There is such a thing as being too selfish by half, and we would suggest to those gentlemen who persist in employing Chinese labour to the exclusion, of their own people, that they may awake to a knowledge of this fact when it will be too late to change their record. We put it to them on prudential grounds, therefore, whether they had not better employ free American labour than starve and degrade it to pamper the mute serfs of the Six Chinese Companies. We ask them to consider the question — to reason it out for themselves fairly and candidly, not from the selfish stand-point of personal convenience or interest merely, but from the labour and citizen's stand-point. If they do, we are convinced they will come to the conclusion that their conduct is as unwise as it is dangerous. It won't pay, gentlemen, in the long run to outface public sentiment. It won't do for a man to call upon his neighbour to assist him, should extremity arise, when he is busily engaged in undermining hia neighbour's house, shutting him out from employment, and doing his boat to reduce him, by the sheer force of ad verso circumstances, to a condition of legal vagabondage, which is but the initial step to crime. Society must protecb itself ; it cannot afford to protect those who seek riches and gain by striking at the foundation of the social system. Society is tolerant, but it is just ; and when public equity comes to be done, the wholesale degraders of free American labour will have a tangled account to balance, — San Francisco Post.