filled up the margin of betterment. Only a few years ago many sincere sympathizers with the condition of the laboring class regarded any permanent improvement of it as an impossibility, so much so that the utilitarian economists, in their calculations of the cost of production, took what would barely suffice to support a laborer as their estimate of the labor cost. John Stuart Mill thought that nothing less than a huge state colonization scheme, on a sufficient scale to reduce the population by a large fraction, was the only possible beginning for effecting any improvement. Such is the difficulty of raising the standard of the laborer when once it has been degraded through any cause, as, for instance, by the invasion of industrialism, by the too sudden introduction of machinery, or by improvident increase in numbers. When a class has once been so degraded by the lowering of its standard of living, its wages, and its efficiency, most of the endeavors to raise it again have proved failures. Some American economists think that the United States is rapidly nearing a point where, at least as far as agricultural products are concerned, the law of diminishing returns will begin to operate. As the social structure now is, this means, as above pointed out, certainly higher rents for landlords, perhaps higher profits for capitalists, and certainly lower wages and higher-priced necessaries for laborers. It would be far better, then, for the greatest numbers that the population should remain stationary, and certainly that it should not be increased by immigration. The American laborer now has a sufficiently high standard of living to make it worth while for him to maintain it. Prudential restraints upon marriage and population, the negative check advocated by Malthus, will affect him. He feels that his position to-day is of sufficient worth to be transmitted, unimpaired, to his son. If he is not submerged by an influx of population from without, there is little danger of his lowering his own wages or standard of living. One argument of the advocates of free Chinese immigration, especially in the West, is that we cannot develop our resources without more labor. But why develop resources that are not to benefit all? An increase in the laboring population at present would only enable our resources to be exploited for the benefit of the few. No American could wish to see the margin of cultivation in this country so extended that it should be necessary for even the little strips along the railroads to be cultivated, or for the rocky mountain-sides to be terraced with earth, painfully carried there on the backs of peasants, as is now the case in Europe. A huge gross product is not of itself to be desired if it has to be divided into progressively smaller parts. We might have greater growth, but never greater development. If growth alone was what we needed, then China herself could well be our model. As the "margin of cultivation descends," i.e., as increase of population drives us out to inferior lands where necessaries are more expensively raised, it can be seen in another way to work to the relative disadvantage of the masses. A finely wrought garment, costing say forty dollars, made out of raw wool costing a dollar, would not be much increased in price, relatively at least, if the wool finally had to be raised at a cost of two dollars. But what a difference that increase in the cost of the raw material would make in a poor man's garment that cost only four or five dollars! It is in this way that the law of diminishing returns by increase of population bears hardest upon the poor. In discussing the policy of the admission of Asiatics into this country, there is one question that overshadows all others in importance: What effect would the invasion of the Chinese have upon the welfare of the laboring class? Would it lower their efficiency? Would it lower their standard of living, and make their struggle for existence harder? Would it decrease the number of comfortable and happy homes that form the foundation of our system of free government? A wise settlement of this issue depends upon honest and enlightened answers to these questions. That country cannot be in a healthy state where the efficiency and the standard of living of the laboring class are permitted to deteriorate; it is no longer in a progressive state where the efficiency and the standard of living are not improving. X There is no doubt, as our opponents maintain, that the admission of the Chinese would cause an enlargement of our national wealth and a great increase of production; but the distribution of wealth, not its production, is to-day our most serious public problem. In this age of science and invention, production can well be left to take care of itself. It is its equitable distribution that must now be the concern of the country. The increasing recurrence of strikes in modern times must have convinced every one that the recent settlement of labor disputes is nothing more than a truce. It is not a permanent industrial peace. The new organization of capital and labor that is now necessary to bring about lasting peace and harmony between those engaged in production will require greater sympathy, greater trust and confidence, and a clearer mutual understanding between the employers and the employed. Any such new organization will require the formation of a closer union between these two classes. These requirements can never be fulfilled between the individual members of races so alien to one another as ourselves and the Chinese. It is not compulsory state socialism, but the gradual and voluntary adaptation to our industries of different systems of coöperation or profit-sharing, to which all the great political economists of the English-speaking races look forward as the salvation of the laboring class. This would necessitate not only all the requirements mentioned above, but such a uniformity of laws, customs, and manners as exists between closely kindred races only. If the laborer, over and above his wages, is to participate in the profits of production, he becomes -in a restricted sense, it is true-a partner of the concern in which he works. If a portion of his profits is obliged to go toward the purchase of a certain amount of stock in the concern, as is now frequently the case in Europe, he will ultimately have some small voice in its direction. Such an improved system would never be possible between Chinese coolies and American capitalists. It is at a time like this, when both capitalists and laborers strongly feel the need of one another, that a system more fair and equitable than the present one is likely to be evolved. But if we admit a large immigration of Chinese, who make the capitalists independent of white labor, all progress toward an improved structure must at once cease. The Chinese are capable of working under the present unsatisfactory system only. By their admission all progress to an improved organization of capital and labor would be arrested. X With the facilities offered by the modern system of ocean transportation, the Chinese could, in an incredibly short time, if the traffic paid, pour in upon our land a turbid flood that would submerge a great portion of our laboring class. We should have ultimately, then, a hybrid type of civilization, half European, half Asiatic, with a large proportion of the white population unemployed, and most of the remainder degraded to the level of the groaning millions of Asia-the type of society in which progress to a better state would be an impossibility← If we must have protection, it is far better for us to protect ourselves against the man than against his trade. What effect a large invasion of Chinamen would have upon us under our present régime has recently been very thoroughly discussed; but as we are in an advancing, not a stationary, state, the question how they would travel with us along the. path of progress seems an important consideration. Whether they would accelerate or retard our journey toward that land of promise, full of plenty for all, which has been the hope of so many of our noblest minds, is the question. Any one who reads President Hadley's book on "The Education of the American Citizen," and learns from it what qualities 89 must now be cultivated in order to maintain more than the mere form of free institutions, will realize that the Chinaman can have no place in our social system. The highest forms of government require the highest races of people. To adapt the Chinaman to our institutions, we should be obliged to begin by eradicating his religion, superstitions, traditions, ideals, and customs-all of which have been so welded to his mind after four thousand years of inheritance as to have become a part of himself. › While the Chinese question is frequently treated as a modern race problem, it is really a phase of the oldest political problem of history. We can never know how often in pre-historic times some little gleam of progress may have been put out by an overwhelming wave of barbarism. From the earliest beginnings of history, the civilization of Europe has frequently been attacked and imperilled by the barbaric hordes of Asia. It is impossible to estimate the loss that would have ensued if the band of Greeks at Marathon had not beaten back ten times its number of Asiatic invaders. But the spark of European civilization, surrounded as it was by the blackness of Asiatic barbarism, was kept aflame by Grecian valor. The most brilliant period of Athenian civilization was the result! When we contemplate what the modern world owes to Athens when we remember that it was from her we learned our first lessons of civil and intellectual freedom; that it was there that the foundation of philosophy, science, and all the fine arts was securely laid; and that it is her spirit and her genius that have run through all the civilizations coming afterward- we can form some conception of how important it then was to keep the Asiatics from breaking into Europe.3. -- 130 For many centuries afterward Europe was constantly threatened by Asia. In the fifth century civilization again barely escaped being blotted off our planet by the success of Attila and his Asiatic hordes. Three centuries later the Arabs had to be driven back across the Pyrenees; again, five centuries later still, if the two-great branches of the Tartar race, instead of quarrelling on the edge of Europe, had combined, they would have subjugated and destroyed the best of everything there. After the repulse of the Turks from the siege of Vienna, civilization gradually became strong enough to take care of itself, and the danger of the extinction of civilization by an invasion from Asia passed away. But from that time onward the expulsion of the Turks from Europe has always been a burning question, and up to the present we have continued the policy of excluding Asiatics from our shores. 15 These illustrations are advanced not because their bearing upon our present subject is so direct, but in order to put the burden of proof where it belongs upon those who now advocate the admittance of Asiatics into a civilization that has flourished only by fighting them off. They also demonstrate that, contrary to the usual impression, progress is the exception and not the rule. It is not every race that has inherent progressive tendencies; and when we consider what narrow escapes from total extinction civilization has several times had, both progress and civilization appear almost like lucky accidents. It therefore behooves us to guard both with tenderest care. Yet, in an age when the brotherhood of man has become more fully recognized, when the world is growing narrower and our sympathy at the same time is growing broader, it might not be considered just to discuss this question without reference to the welfare of the Chinaman himself. Luckily for us his exclusion would put no burden on our national conscience, as the Chinaman has a great industrial destiny in his own country. Few realize that China is as yet sparsely populated. It is a little more than one-third as thickly populated to a square mile as the most sparsely populated part of Europe. It is not one-quarter as thickly populated as the most thickly populated part of that continent. I can confirm the testimony of other travellers as to the great extent of uncultivated land in its interior. Its immense mineral wealth has not yet begun to be developed, and it is said to contain the largest deposits of coal yet anywhere discovered. Contrary to the popular impression, the Chinaman is not a far-seeing business man. He is not enterprising. His sole idea in business is to turn his capital over rapidly and get quick returns in trade. If those returns come from the outset he will work as hard as Germans or Americans, and perhaps even more steadily than they. But the idea of laying out the profits of capital for several years, in order to drain marshes or irrigate wastes, never occurs to him. Not only China, but the huge continent of Asia, is now awaiting the regeneration it is soon to have. In the course of twenty-five years, European capital and European foresight, which are now attempting to build up that continent, so much larger and so much less developed than our own, will create an enormous demand and a relatively high wage for the labor of the Chinese coolie. Let Chinese merchants, travellers, and students come here, as before, to carry back to China the benefits of our improvements and experiments, but let our country itself be dedicated to progress as well as to freedom. TRUXTUN BEALE. |