In the meantime, I observe that the trains to most of the southern States are at this moment crowded with negroes from the more Northern ones, who seem either to have been alarmed by the reported intention of importing Coolies, or to have been attracted by the pressing demand for labour.
Mr. Koopmanschap has also made his proposals public in S. Carolina, where another man named Joseph, likewise a Resident at San Francisco, is competing with him. Mr. Joseph is a native of S. Carolina, and offers to furnish any number of such labourers for $5 on arrival a head, and $20 additional a head after the termination of a year of labour to be deducted from their wages.
The latter asserts that the Chinese will work for $8 a month and subsistence, and will travel across the ocean and the Continent at their own expense for the purpose of obtaining employment at such a rate.
But it does not seem that in S. Carolina any of the planters have yet been tempted to make the experiment of trying Chinese labour, and from the remaining Southern States I have not been able to obtain any precise information as yet. I am inclined to think, however, that the matter is in abeyance for the moment, and that the Planters are unwilling to incur the first outlay, which in Mr. Koopmanschap's proposal is considerable, until public opinion be more positively expressed upon the expediency of the importation of Coolies, and until any intended Legislation upon the matter may have been carried out.
I have …
Edw. Thornton
EX.