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 question before the American people is, Has an American citizen the
right to conduct his own business to suit himself and employ whom he
wishes? Has the laborer the right to work for whom and what rate he
pleases? The imported socialists, anarchists, and their converts among
Americans say no, and it will require but little to precipitate a
bloody war, when labor, led by red-handed murderers, will enact in New
York and all over the United States the horrors of the French Commune.
The republic for a great and enlightened country has too many criminals.
I am told by a prohibition clergyman that the curse of drink and license
has its fangs in the heart of the land. He tells me that the Americans
pay yearly $1,172,000,000 for their alcoholic drink; for bread,
$600,000,000; for tobacco, $625,000,000; for education, $197,000,000;
for ministers' salaries, $14,000,000. It has been found that the
downfall of eighty-one per cent of criminals is traceable to drink. He
said: "Our republic is a failure morally, as we have 2,550,000 drunkards
and people addicted to drink. We have 600,000 prostitutes, and many more
doubtless that are not known, and in nine cases out of ten their
downfall can be traced to drink."
I listen to this side of the story, and then I see wonderful
philanthropy, institutions for the prevention of crime, good men at work
according to their light, millions employed to educate the young,
thousands of churches and societies to aid man in making man better.
When I listen to these men, and see tens of thousands of Christian men
and women living pure lives, building up vast cities, great monuments
for the future, I feel that I can not judge the Americans. They perhaps
expect too much from their freedom and their republican ideas. I shall
never be a republican. I believe that we all have all the freedom we
deserve. It is well to remember that man is an animal. After all his
polish and refinement, he has animal tastes and desires, and if he makes
laws that are in direct opposition to the indulgence which his animal
nature suggests, he certainly must have some method of enforcing the
laws. Like all animals, some men are easily influenced and others not,
and the human animal has not made progress so far but that he needs
watching in order to make him conform to what he has decided or elected
to call right.
You will expect me to compare the American to the Chinaman, but it is
impossible. Some things which we look upon as right, the American
considers grievous sins. The point of view is entirely at variance, but
I have boundless faith in the brilliant and good men and women I have
met in America. I say this despite my other impressions, which also
hold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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