(2)
6. These Emigrants are very rarely accompanied by their wives or families; indeed never on their first emigrating, but occasionally after having visited the Straits Settlement and acquired property, they return to China for their families.
7. Captain Thomsett also informed me that almost the whole of the women that have gone to California were concubines, or were taken as a speculation by Chinamen, for the purposes of prostitution.
8. The Emigrants paying their own passages are of a far superior class physically and in energy and intelligence to those leaving under contract.
9. Steady voluntary Emigration has been going on for so many years to the Straits Settlements and many of the Islands of the Indian Archipelago, that at present the Chinese not only monopolize all the petty trade of those Countries, but perform also almost all the hard daily labor in agriculture and about the wharves and shipping which is avoided by the Malays and natives. This I witnessed at Penang and Singapore, and am informed it is the same in the Province of Wellesley, where sugar and coffee estates are being settled by our enterprising countrymen.
10. The wages of the laborers about the wharves at Penang and Singapore I ascertained to be 45 cents a day; on the estates at Wellesley from $3 to $4 a month; and in the agricultural districts of China merely nominal, indeed barely sufficient to procure the necessaries of life.
11. The facilities afforded to emigrants for visiting their native lands from Australia and California, as well as from the Straits Settlement, must always, quite independently of their gains, operate in favor of those Countries. The steamers of the Pacific Mail Steam-ship Company afford quick and cheap passages to California and back. Between the Australian Colonies and China there is constant intercourse by sailing ships, and with the Straits Settlements by sailing ships, steamers, and junks. The number of Chinese returning to China through Hong Kong from various places out of China in 1867 was 9,866. (See Appendix No. 1); in 1866, 9,453 returned. It is worthy of remark that the return shows 97 returning from the Havana. This is the first year that any Chinese have been reported as returning from Cuba.
12. Throughout China, wherever Australia and California are known and spoken of, the former is referred to by the name of "Shan Kham Shan," or the old gold country, whilst the latter is referred to as "Kow Kham Shan " or the new gold country; appellations which are sufficient of themselves to account for the large Emigration to those places.
13. Hundreds of these free Emigrants return annually to China, bringing with them large gains, some to remain permanently, others on a mere visit to their native land, and not a few for the purpose of deporting laborers from thence, whose wages they turn to purposes of profit; but speaking on the authority of all with whom I have conversed on the subject, I may say that no Chinaman ever leaves his country with the intention of a permanent residence abroad, and
(3)
that when they find their absence is likely to be of long duration, they arrange with their friends for the conveyance of their bodies after death to their native country for interment.
14. But a very few years ago a ship chartered for the purpose arrived at Hong Kong from California with some 80 or 90 corpses of Chinese for interment in their native land.
15. I heard many anecdotes during my stay in China, showing the strength of this feeling, but there cannot be a stronger illustration of it than in the establishment at Canton named the "City of the Dead," which is for the reception and preservation above ground in air-tight coffins of the bodies of Chinese, natives of other places, who may die at Canton or the neighbourhood, till their friends should have the means or find it convenient to send them for interment to the places of their birth. I visited the institution and found several hundred bodies, many of which had been there for years.
16. I have gathered from the California newspapers that the labour on the Railways is now nearly monopolized by the Chinese, as they work (or I should rather say, are hired out by the Chinese speculators who have advanced the passage money,) at much lower rates than on those for which the working class of other countries can labour, and in consequence of this competition a very strong popular prejudice is arising against the Chinese.
17. To furnish some idea of the extent of the present Emigration from China to California under my third classification, and the existing feeling in California as regards the state of the labour market, I quote the following extract from a San Francisco newspaper:- "The steamer which arrived here on Tuesday last from China brought as live freight no less than 735 Chinamen, and of these it is rumoured that more than two-thirds are neither more nor less than regular coolies, &c. The law of Congress on the subject of coolies does not forbid the voluntary immigration of Chinese to this country; neither does it forbid any man or company of men from going to China and bringing over creatures whom they may work as so much machinery, and at wages which none but these wretched people will consent to receive. Of course we cannot at present prevent Chinese from swarming in upon us, but the time is sure to come when the working classes will rise in their force and expel the incubus which hangs so heavily upon them. American laborers will not stand it. They consent to receive as competitors in the labor market, all who may voluntarily prefer to remain in California, but when capitalists (Chinese) combine to bring over thousands of Chinamen to work a series of years for mere gruel, the industrious and enlightened American is bound to look into the foul conspiracy against the dignity and reward of labour. Unless summarily checked they will soon see these Coolies filling all our factories and monopolizing the labor of the farm and the various other pursuits. These Chinese do not come here with any idea of liberty or of making this country their permanent home. They come only on a contract for work, expecting, when they have accumulated a few dollars, to go back, or be taken back by...
698