THE "HEATHEN CHINEE"

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 207, 29 February 1912, Page 6

THE "HEATHEN CHINEE"

THE YELLOW MAX'S TROUBLES. HIS ENTRY INTO THE FRUIT LINE RESENTED. A disturbance which threatened to develop into something more sorious occurred in Christchurch on Saturday night. Recently a number of Chinese, evidently considering that the field for enterprise offered by the laundry and the market garden was not sufficiently wide, entered into the retail fruit business. 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 espedially business was brisk. About 9 p.m. on Saturday last the crowd was patronising the shop in Cashel street very freely when, it appeared, 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, telling 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 appeared, 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 shop at the emporiums of white men. Their chief argument seemed to be that the Chinamen had no wives and families to keep, and could live cheaply. Eventually the proprietors were compelled to shut the shop. 1 The mob then espied two Chinamen ; who were walking along High street. To escape from the evident hostility of the i.crowd these took refuge in a tobaccoj nist's shop. The crowd did not follow 1 them, but congregated outside and contented itself with making personal remarks about its victims, r Eventually the police arrived, and under a guard of six policemen the two Chinese were escorted to their shop in Lower High street. The crowd followed | them and took up its station outside the : shop, which was quickly shut up, and for a short time the mob continued to make uncomplimentary remarks at the expense of the yellow race generally. Someone threw a stone,-which crashed through one of the' windows in the living rooms in the upper 'storey. The police then prepared to take active measures in the case of those who appeared to be f the ringleaders, but were unable to dis- ■ cover the person who threw the stone. For some time the mob kept its station on the road, and many fierce arguments as to the rights and wrongs of alien immigration took place. It was due to the tactful methods of the police that the crowd, which at one j time appeared belligerent, gradually calmed down. A few who seemed disposed to persist in their militant attitude quickly quietened when threatened I with arrest.