To go back to the matter of the poll tax and the system of indentured
slavery, the bosses mapped out every part of the city and province in
wage areas. Here, no wages under twenty-five dollars, to which green
hands were sent; here, a better quarter, no wages under forty dollars;
and so on up as high as sixty dollars for mill work and camp cooking.
About this time riots turned the searchlight on all matters Oriental; and
the boss system merged in straight industrial unionism. You still go to
a boss to get your gangs of workmen; but the boss is secretary of a
benevolent association; and if he takes any higher toll than an
employment agent's commission, the immigration department has never been
able to detect it. "I have no hesitation in saying," declared an
immigration official, "that for four years there has not been a case of
boss slavery that could be proved in the courts. There has not been a
case that could be proved in the courts of women and children being
brought in for evil purposes. Only merchants' wives, students, and that
class can come in. The other day an old fellow tried to bring a young
woman in. We suspected he had left an old wife in China; but we could
not prove it; so we charged him five hundred dollars for the entrance of
this one and had them married on the spot. Whenever there is the
slightest doubt about their being married, we take no chances, charge
them five hundred dollars and have the knot tied right here and now.
Then the man has to treat the woman as a wife and support her; or she can
sue him; and we can punish and deport him. There is no more of little
girls being brought in to be sold for slavery and worse."
All the same, some evils of the boss system still exist. The boss system
taught the Chinaman organization, and to-day, even with higher wages,
your forty-five dollars a month cook will do no gardening. You ask him
why. "They will cut my throat," he tells you; and if he goes out to mow
the lawn, he is soon surrounded by fellow countrymen who hoot and jeer
him.
"Would they cut his throat?" I asked a Chinaman.
"No; but maybe, the benevolent association or his tong fine him."
So you see why labor no longer fears the Chinaman and welcomes him to
industrial unionism, a revolution in the attitude of labor which has
taken place in the last year. Make a note of these facts:
The poll tax has trebled expenses for the householder.
The poll tax has created industrial unionism among the Chinese.
The poll tax has not kept the Chinaman out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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