THE COLOUR LINE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 63, 9 March 1912, Page 2

THE COLOUR LINE.

RESENTMENT OF CHINESE COM PETITION. CHRISTCHURCH DISTURBANCE. A disturbance which threatened tc * develop into something more serious occurred in Christchurch on February 2-lt>h, 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,, says the “Press.” They established fruit shops in Cashel Street 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, business was brisk. About 9 p.m. on Saturday last the crowd was patronising the shop in Cashel Street very freely when, it appears, a hawker with a barrow took up his station in the street just in front of the shop, and began to make remarks to the customers entering, tolling 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 simp at the emporiums of white men., Thcia : chief argument seemed to ho that the Chinamen had no wives and fdmilies to keep, and could live cheaply. Eventually the proprietors were compelled to shut the shop. The mob t-her espied two Chinamen who were walking along High Street. To escape fro-n the evident hostility of the crowc these took refuge An a tobacconist’; shop. The crowd did not follow then hut congregated outside, and content cd itself with making personal remarks about its victims. Eventually the police arrived, and under a guart of -six policemen the two Chinamer were escorted ,to their shop in Lowci High Street. The crowd followed then and took up its station butside tin shop, which was quickly -shut up, am for a short time continued to make uncomplimentary remarks at the expense of the yellow race generally. Someone threw a stone, which ora-slbec through one of the windows in tin living rooms in the upper storey. Tin police then prepared to take activ: measures in the case of those who ap peared to be tho ringleaders, Ini were unable to discover the person win threw the. stone. ; For some time tin moh kept its station on the road,, ant many fierce , •arguments as to, tin rights and wrongs of alien, immigratioi took place. It was duo-to ,tho tactful methods of‘the police that tlx crowd, which at one time appearec 1 belligerent, gradually calmed down. A fpw, who seemed disposed to persist ii - their ujjilitant, attitude quickly quiet cned when threatened with arrests.