THE QUESTION THAT IS NOW AGITATING THE PACIFIC STATES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 173, 21 July 1876, Page 13

THE QUESTION THAT IS NOW AGITATING THE PACIFIC STATES.

(From the San Francisco • Chronicle.') .: . . . , The decision of the Supreme Court declaring California legislation to prevent the immigration of Mongolians to this State unconstitutional has had the effect of awakening a lively public attention to this great and growing evil. In this respect it is welcome. The time has arrived when something must be done for the protection of society, or there is danger that the State will in time be overrun with these barbarous hordes, and be no longer desirable as a place of residence for white people. There is a repulsive inside history connected with this people which can only be learned by frequent visits to their haunts and the study of the habits which make their residence among us undesirable. It is evident that those who have never visited California are in gross ignorance of the afflictions their influx entails upon the State. They are remote from the scene, and refuse us their sympathies and assistance to get rid of the evil, because they cannot realise its threatening character nor understand the extent to which its encroachments have reached. Every steamship that arrives from the Orient adds from 500 to 1,000 of these people to our population. They are poured into this city, where many of them remain, while the others scatter abroad ; and as subsistence is, of course, a necessity of their lives, they underbid and supplant poor white men in different vocations, go into our charitable institutions, or commit crime m order to obtain it. At this rate of increase, with an empire containing 400,000,000 of souls to draw from, at no distant day the Chinese may absorb and outnumber the 600,000 of our white population. These people cannot become citizens, nor do they, as a general thing, desire citizenship. They are brought here as serfs, under contract to the different wealthy Chinese companies, and after they have acquired a few hundred dollars, which is a fortune to them, depart to China to enjoy it. Their] return thus enriched stimulates emigration, which may be expected to grow larger from year to year, so long as the State is denied the right to place restrictions upon their coming. They are not only serfs, but idolators. They have no homesteads but their shops, where they huddle together like sheep, and like sheep are moved by a common impulse, by the mob spirit, when they have a real or imaginary wrong to avenge. There are but few women among them who are not of the viler sort, and this is one of the most obnoxious features of their communities. We presume no remedy can be obtained through the steamship lines, who, as long as they are paid for carrying this sort of human freight, will not refuse it. Then Congress must be appealed to, as is proposed, for redress. If the law could be made to reach the Chinese companies, by forbidding them to make advances to these serfs, coolies, or whatever else they may be called, and which, in fact, are the deepest roots of the evil, it would be reached, for there is not one in a thousand of the class most objectionable who would otherwise be able to reach our shores.