THE CHINESE QUESTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8381, 15 March 1907, Page 5

THE CHINESE QUESTION.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—At the outset I must crave your indulgence. Your correspondent, "Fairplay," has thoughtlessly, even recklessly, raised questions which only an exhaustive reply will dispose of. The questions are of such supreme importance that I ask to be allowed to trespass somewhat largely upon your valuable space. If, in the course of this reply, the attention of your readers should be arrested —and i more especially those of them who are young New Zealanders —then your space and my time will have both been profitably occupied. By the way, your correspondent, "Fairplay" dates his letter from Tinui, but he must forgive me when I say that he appears to have a remarkably close acquaintance with the Chinese of Masterton, notwithstanding the distance from which he has to view and study the ways of his friends. It would have been better, though, had this self-constituted champion of the Chinese dealt with principles, and let personalities and platitudes alone. If it will affect the position so far as "Fairplay" and myself are concerned, let me say at once that if the choice were that I must go without fruit for ever or go into a Chinese shop to buy it, then I would eat no fruit. Let me repeat here, that those who deal with the Chinese identify themselves with the customs and habits of the Chinese. There is no escape from this truth. No one can truthfully say that he is unaware of the disclosures made in the courts of the colony: nor can anyone say with honesty that he does not know the nature of the Chinese quarters in the cities—Haining Street, for example, though there are worse places even than that plague-spot. The customers of the Chinese storekeeper or fruiterer aim a blow at the European trader every time they expend money in a Chinese shop; for do not the white customers demand (by their act and patronage) that the white trader shali live and act as does the Chinese? With regard to what I have said and written'concerning the immorality of the Asiatic, there is no need that particulars should be given, for one has to consider into whose hands an ordinary newspaper habitually goes. Let it suffice, then, to say it i is perfectly well-known that little girls and thoughtless and ill-cared-for young women are enticed into Chinese shops and tampered with. While only a comparatively few cases reach the Courts, there are too many which go unpunished in which the work of degradation is only too complete. There has never been a raid on Chinese premises, nor a domiciliary visit by the police, j that European girls and women have not been found in Chinese dens under the most loathsome conditions. If "Fairplay" can salve his conscience with the reflection that the white men also have their vices, and that because of such vices the deeper deep of Chinese filthiness is not so very much worse after all, then God pity a country that should have many men such as "'Fairplay" within its borders. Your correspondent repeats the old and absolutely untrue statement that the Chinese is law-abiding. It is notorious that the breaks the law habitually and persisi tently, whether it be the ciyil or the moral law. The reason is that he is not concerned at all about the observance of our laws. The Chinese begins by being unable to understand the laws of our country, and finishes by refusing to regard them in any way —excepting under pressure. When the childlike and bland individual is laid by the heels and hauled before a court, he smiles and says: "No savee!" See him travel by rail. He purchases a second-class ticket, because he knows there are two classes, and that the second is the cheaper. He will walk into a first-class compartment, knowing he has no right to be there, and he will smile at the guard and cry again, "No savee!" He will sell goods at illegal hours, he will sell cigarettes to small boys though he knows it is against the law, and excuse himself again with the well-known parrot-cry. It is notorious that scores of Chinese traders IcII by short-weight; that they palm off bad fruit; that their groceries are of an inferior grade; that their premises are insanitary,; the way they ripen was proved in Wellington,' and the other facts above-written have been demonstrated in the cities of this colony. Then, the Chinese conducts lotteries, gambles, smuggles opium for the degradation of his own countrymen and the mean white, carries on the vilest practices in dens of infamy, and his cry is still the same, "No savee!" This being I have endeavoured to sketch is the law-abiding, gentle, inoffensive, harmless Chow, 'the well-beloved of such people as "Fairplay." As a matter of abstract justice, should not the Chinese be compelled to subscribe to all the laws which govern the white trader, and not be permitted to set at defiance the moral law and get round the provisions of the civil law by pretence of innocence? How do I account for the attitude of the Chinese and his want of morality? In this way: the Chinese is a fatalist, a sensualist, steeped in superstition, ahd regarding woman as merely a means to an end. His code is entirely different from ours—and the East changes not. Let me put the matter of the gross immorality of the yellow person to "Fairplay" and to all who sympathise with him in his affection for the Chinese in this way : Seeing that it has been abundantly proven that whenever the Chinese is permitted to live in European countries, a large number of white girls and women are debauched and degraded whose daughter shall it be? Will "Fairplay" give his own daughter or sister over to the horrors of a Chinese den; or does he- like many another snuffling hypocrite—say that [ it shall be the other fellow's sister or I child. "Fairplay" regards my attitude as lacking in the essential of British justice. Let us examine that phrase in the light of facts. British justice! It was British justice that compelled the Chinese nation to accept opium—the British metaphorically rammed the opium down the Chinese throat at the end of a bayonet. British justice deprived the Boers of their country in order that foreign capitalists might employ tens of thousands of Chinese coolies, to the detriment of the white, men who had wrung' the country i'rem

| its former owners; the Chinese [ coolies to be kept in compounds and ! make the very air vile with their shocking viciousness. British justice perm its to flock into Liverpool (under conrtact to British sweaters and "boss" Chinese) to displace the already half-starved British worker. British justice permits i hundreds of thousands of undesirable aliens to find a habitation in London and other cities of Britain —there to be employed in the sweating denswhile the native-born British are "assisted" to leave Britain's shores in tens of thousands every year. British justice permits the sweating den to exist, wherein women and children labour sixteen hours per day for a "wage" of five shillings per week. British justice permits of the invasion of Natal by Asiatics, with the consequent displacement of white labour, on the plea that these Asiatics are British subjects, but in reality because their labour is cheap. The same excuse is made for the filling of the islands of Fiji with Indian cOolies, , and a Mr Lazarus (backed by British justice) is calling for thousands more coolies and for black boys from the South Sea Islands, until the churches have cried aloud that it is within measurable distance of time when the Cross will have gone down before the Crescent in the Islands of the Sunny South. British justice is responsible for an agreement with France in the New Hebrides whereby the kanakas are to be bouncj to the planters—slavery without a doubt, but called Dy another name —and the "blackbirding" schooner, with its accompanying horrors, will be legalised once again, and British ships of war will be told off to punish anyone who interferes with this system of slavery. My friend, "Fairplay," is considerably exercised in his mind as to my proposal to boycott the Chinese storekeeper or fruiterer. Does he know the position of a Britisher in China or Japan? Neither the Japanese nor Chinese Government permits a Britisher to open a shop in their respective countries. Any rights of trading have to be paid for or fought for, and on the least provocation the boycott is exercised against any of the nations doing business in the lands of the pigtail or crysanthemum. The Chinese ports are only kept open to trade by the force of the presence "of British warships and those of other nations. How thin the veneer of pretence is was I shown when the expeditionary force of the Powers had to be undertakeu to Peking. "Fairplay" is of opiniou that it would be a good thing if Europeans in Masterton and district were to take a leaf out of the book of the Chinese gardener, storekeeper, or fruiterer. That is to say, the white man should work anything from twelve to sixteen hours a day, live in a wretched hovel, wear anything in the shape of clothes, never marry, lead a questionable existence, run an opium den on the sly, employ no one except those imported under contract by the "boss" Chinese, and thus be enablsd to cut down the profits on vegetables, fruit and general goods, so that no one but he who lives as a Chinese does could carry on business at ail. The white people who do business with a Chinese, though in ever so small a way, is guilty of un-, fairness to his brother white. If "Fairplay" desires me to admit that the Chinese is cheap, I will not even agree to that. . He may be cheap in a way, but he is very nasty —and "Fairplay" knows it. • Sir, the calibre of "Fairplay" may be judged by his reference to the Maoris. He says: "He (Mr Hornsby) also raves about keeping New, Zealand white when a proportion of the best land in the North Island is under the ■ ownership of niggers." The Maoris (who are not niggers) are the owners of the country referred to. We deprived them of the remainder of their lands (British justice again!); but we proved them to be brave foes, generous friends, kindly and even noble. We admitted (them to equality with us—-the firsti known instance in the history of our race and conquests. Just a word, Mr Editor, in connection with your leading article of a day or two since. I hope something will be done in the coming session to deal with the Yellow Peril, and I shall do whatever lies in my power to help the movement. Indeed, I would introduce legislation if there were the remotest chance of it succeeding; but you know the position in which a private member k stands. I may shortly arrange to deliver an address at Masterton on the Asiatic question, when I hope "Fairplay" and all the mean whites ! will come along.—l am, etc., J. T. M. HORNSBY. | Carterton March 14th, 1907.