THE CHINESE IN AMERICA

West Coast Times, Issue 10341, 3 August 1896, Page 4

THE CHINESE IN AMERICA

An Px-Wan«anui resident now living in San Francisco, Mr J. 0. Kearney writes a warning letter to thf* Wanganui Herald, with reference to thp advent of Asiatics to New Zealand. It is inexplicable to him how the women of New Zealand can take sides with tho Chinese, when, from his pcint of view, they are the persons who suffer most by Mongolian competition. His indictment against John Chinaman, as he has found him in his San Francisco haunts, is a severe one. The people of New Zealand must not, he says, judge the Chinese by 'he mild, unassuming odd ones scattered about the country. If eyerthey get together in numbers they* will open the eyes of European men and women "If you were here for 20 years v>u could not find ouUH the bad qualities of the Mongolians. First, they w?ll work for any wages offered to them ; second, they arp all for China— if they wantia chopper or domestic article of any kind they must send to their country for it; third, they arc most immoral brutes; fourth, their thieving propensities are very largely developed, and where they are in numbers the law cannot keep them in subjection, for they rob and cheat their customers in defiance of all law. Of all the murders that have been committed at Chinatown not one conviction has been obtained by the police. Although there might be forty Chinamen looking on there is not one of them but deliberately swears he never saw it. When they make any money they go back to China, and the place is poorer in consequence. It is all verjwell for Lady Stout and her rich friends to advocate the incoming of the Mongolian, because it is the upper class who would gain by getting their labour done cheap. The working ela«*<.;e<; do not employ them; so it is the rich that would gain by their cheap labour, to the detriment of the labouring classes of the country. It ih the merchants and moneyed men who keep the Chinese here, but I think that there will be a cleaning out some time, and it is the state of the labour market that will start it. It would astonish you to see the strings of young women waging every morning at the la* bom offices looking for work, while Chinamen and Japs are filling their places. It was bad enough with Chinamen, but now we are getting Japanese. Within my own neighbourhood I know of ■ Japanese doing the housework for 2 dollars a month where a white girl would receive 15 or 20." Is this the class of people, he aska, to allow in our country; and he replies to his own question that it would bring an awful disaster.