THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2159, 19 February 1880, Page 3

THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA.

The,following is the: description given "by an pcpptplished American editor of a Chinese model lodging house in San Francisco :—A Caucasian in good condition, used'to r cleanly ways, would he carried out in convulsions after a few hours enforced stay in one of such human'pig styes. This phrase forcible as it is, by no means expresses the pne of these resorts. A bed in pne.of them costs five cents. It is against, wretches lodged in this manner,' with the abillity to endure and to thrive upon the most uusupportable mephitic gases, that the San Francisco white labor comes in competition. It, is a .burning' shame,. which .cries aloud to heaven for remedy and reparation.' Cast, your eye as 'you wander through

Chinatown’s noisome beehives, at this workshop. It is ten o’clock at night. You have traversed a long underground passage and you have come to a Chinese cooper shop. Though it is near midnight this cooper, who scarcely bears the semblance of a human being, is still hard at his task. There does not seem to he enough oxygen in this little den to nourish the little lamp by whose aid he works. You have stepped over disgusting pools on your way to his door. The walls of the room in which he works drip deadly moisture. What this man can find to live for would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer. Annihilation would he an unspeakable boon compared to such an existance. Let us cross the ; wa,y to what is called the “Last Chance.” We enter a room whose earthen floor is covered, in places, to a depth of half an inch, with malodrous water. Here are brought the aged Chinamen who are about to die. One of these outcasts was there as wc entered. He was lying on a little piece of matting and covered with what seemed to be a coarse rug. The rising and falling of this covering was all I hat showed that ho was still alive. He took not the slightest notice of onr intrusion Poor wretch! No Picture ever drawn by the pen of Dante limned forth more greviously the hopelessness and helpnessness and drear abandonment of which humanity is sometimes the victim than this Celestial (?) castaway —yea, though Dante employed all the accessories which his livety imagination could utilise from the horror property room of the other world.