As A Chinaman Saw Us: Passages from His Letters to a Friend at Home
General
As A Chinaman Saw Us: Passages from His Letters to a Friend at Home
United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs
The negro is a factor in the national unrest. They outnumber the whites
in some localities, and hence vote themselves many offices, while the
few whites pay eighty or eighty-five per cent of the taxes and the
negroes supply from eighty to ninety per cent of the criminals. While
this is going on in the South and the whites are rising and preparing to
disfranchise the blacks in many States, the people of Boston and
Cambridge are discussing the propriety of the whites and blacks
marrying to settle the question of social equality. Such proposals I
have read. Reprinted in the South, they added fuel to the flame.
Another element of distress in America is the attitude of labor, the
policy of the Government of letting in the lowest of the low from every
nation except the Chinese, against whom the only charge has been that
they are too industrious and thus a menace to the whites. The swarms of
people from the low and criminal classes of Europe have enabled the
anarchists to obtain such a foothold that in this free country the
President of the United States is almost as closely guarded as the
Emperor of Russia. The White House is surrounded and guarded by
detectives of various kinds. The secret-service department is equal in
its equipment to that of many European nations, and millions are spent
in watching criminals and putting down their strikes and riots. The
doctrine of freedom to all appeals so well to the ignorant laborer that
he has decided to control the entire situation, and to this end labor is
divided into "unions," and in many sections business has been ruined.
The demands of these ignorant men are so preposterous that they can
scarcely be credited. The merchant no longer owns his business or
directs it. The laborer tells him what to pay, how to pay it, when and
how long the hours shall be--in fact, undertakes to usurp entire
control. If the owner protests, the laborers all stop work, strike,
appoint guards, who attack, kill, or intimidate any one who attempts to
take their place. In this way it is said that one billion dollars have
been lost in the last few years. Contracts have been broken, men
ruined, localities and cities placed in the greatest jeopardy, and
hundreds of lives lost. Every branch of trade has its "union," and in so
many cases have the laborers been successful that a national panic comes
almost in sight. Never was there a more farcical illustration of
freedom. Irrational, ignorant Irishmen, who had not the mental capacity
to earn more than a dollar a day, dictated to merchant princes and
millionaire contractors. In New York it was proved that the leaders of
the strikers sold out to employers, and accepted bribes to call off
strikes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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