With the Chinaman conditions are different. In the first place, since
China obtained freedom from the old cast-iron dynasty, Chinamen have not
wanted to colonize in Canada. The leaders of the young China party laid
their plots and published their liberty journals from presses in the
basement of Vancouver and Victoria shops, but having gained their
liberty, they went back to China. The Chinaman does not want to
colonize. He does not want a vote. He wants only to earn his money on
the Pacific Coast and hoard it and go home to China with it. The fact
that he does not want to remain in the country but comes only to work and
go back has always been used as an argument against him. Neither does he
consider himself your equal. Nor does he want to marry your daughter,
nor have you consider him a prince of the royal blood in disguise--a pose
in which the little Jap is as great an adept as the English cockney who
drops enough "h's" to build a monument, all the while he is telling you
of his royal blue blood. If you mistake the Chinaman for a prince in
disguise, the results will be just what they were with a poor girl In New
York four or five years ago. The results will be just what they always
are when you mistake a mongrel for a thoroughbred.
All the same, dismiss the idea from your mind that labor is behind the
opposition to Chinese immigration! A few years ago, when Oriental labor
came tumbling into British Columbia at the rate of twelve thousand in a
single year--when the Chinese alone had come to number fifteen or sixteen
thousand--labor was alarmed; but a twofold change has taken place since
that time. First, labor has found that it can better control the
Chinaman by letting him enter Canada, than by keeping him in China and
letting the product of cheap labor come in. Second, the Chinaman has
demonstrated his solidarity as a unit in the labor war. If he comes, he
will not foregather with capital. That is certain! He will affiliate
with the unions for higher wages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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