1867, there were only eight, and all of them in Boston and Charlestown, none in the Pacific ports. In 1868 the whole number was 46; in 1869, 974; in 1870, 1,116. The total of arrivals of females reported to June 30, 1870, is 2,144.

In regard to occupation, the returns for the year ending June 30, 1870, exhibit the following facts: Physicians, 6; carpenters, 71; stonecutters, 14; mechanics, (trade not stated,) 14; bakers, 3; barbers, 7; tailors, male 16, female 11; cooks, (male,) 42; farmers, 733; interpreters, 4; laborers, 12,782; merchants, 43; peddlers, 2 ; sailors, 8; occupation not stated, 11; without occupation, 1,973; total, 15,740.

CHARACTER OF IMMIGRANTS.

In regard to character and condition, no exact information is attainable. We may believe, however, that the earlier immigrants would be the worst specimens of the race. They came mainly from the southwestern coast of China, where morality and stability are reported to be at a lower standard than elsewhere; where, indeed, the fortuneseeker, the profligate, the exile from home, the ruined in fortune and in character, most congregat Yet, in addition to the uniform testimony of those who have had the best opportunities for observation that they are for the class more sober, more industrious, more orderly and faithful than the same class from European countries, we have the following facts well attested in regard to their intelligence which are worthy of careful attention. Of the Chinese in North Adams all can read and write their own language. On the Pacific Railroad every Chinese laborer, so far as known, was also able to read and write. Of the Chinese in San Francisco, by the recent census it appears that all can read and write their own language, while there are 7,658 foreigners who can neither read nor write. Of these, 6,882 are from Ireland; 248 from Italy; 283 from Mexico; 40 colored from the Southern States; 29 from England. Of native Americans 9 are returned as unable to read and write.

RESIDENCES OF IMMIGRANTS.

Of the distribution of the Chinese, accurate intelligence is as yet unattainable. The recent census in San Francisco returns 9,777 males and 2,040 females, or a total of 11,817 Chinese in a population of 150,361. Nearly all the Chinese females in the country are in San Francisco or the immediate vicinity. Some thousands of male Chinese, it is understood, are employed on the Central Pacific Railroad. There are many mining camps made up chiefly of Chinese. They also constitute the majority of the population in some towns and villages in the Pacific States, as also in some silk, tea, and cotton plantations. Ninety-five males are employed at North Adams, Massachusetts; 68 at Belleville, New Jersey ; 167, all males, are reported as having arrived at New Orleans in the year ending June 30, 1870. In Oregon 2,304 males, 51 females are returned for the four years ending June 30, 1870; in New York 70 males, 9 females; in Philadelphia 13 males. The number now in New York is estimated to be 200, only two or three being adult females, “exemplary mothers of families.” These, it is reported, all came from Havana. A large portion of these are cigar-makers and earn large wages; there are some candy-makers, jewelers, and bakers; a majority, however, are house servants. A good proportion have intermarried with native or naturalized whites. The use of opium was two years ago well-nigh universal among them ; but reformatory laborg have effected a prohibition of its use in a majority of the houses, and many have been reclaimed at the hospitals.

CHINESE COMPANIES.

In San Francisco the Chinese have united themselves into associations for mutual help and benefit, organized after the pattern to which they had been wonted in their native country. The specific objects of these “companies” are stated to be "to improve the life of their members and to instruct them in principles of benevolence.” Membership is voluntary. Dr. Speer, who took especial pains to ascertain the true character of these “Chinese companies,” regards them as “institutions which have no parallel for ability and philanthropy among the immigrants from any other nation or people to our wide shores." Their funds" are not used for mercantile purposes or to obtain revenue.” They are simply mutual aid societies. One of them reports to Dr. Speer that the total membership in it from the beginning is about 16,500. Of these perhaps 3,700 have returned; more than 300 have died; 3,400 separated last year to form a new company; and about 9,200 remain in California. They do not appear to be directly engaged in promoting emigration from China; have of course nothing to do with any importation of men in servitude of any kind; but are purely philanthropic organizations.

PROBABLE INCREASE OF IMMIGRATION. It is, however, the stupendous proportions of the future of this migration which most forcibly arrest the attention. The great facts on which this future may reasonably be forecast and measured are, first, the immensity of the supply, and particularly as set over against the vastness of the demand. The source of supply is oceanic; the basin into which it naturally settles, under the great law of supply and demand, is conti- nental. A homogeneous people, numbering over 400,000,000, writhing under the distresses of repletion, have found an outlet, a way of escape and deliverance, into a broad and goodly land. They are characteristically adventurons, and, while patient under difficulties, yet persistent and steadfast of purpose. “We can spare," said a Chinese missionary, 40,000,000 of laborers, and shall not feel it in China. The tide of human migration, in its eastward course, has reached its bounds in the Old World; it stays on the Pacific coast only as an ever-rolling, ever-swelling stream at a dam, ever accumulating volume and purpose. It is in the clear intent of Providence that sooner or later, in quiet current or in bursting flood, it pour itself into the open, empty basin of the American continent.

HINDERANCES TO EMIGRATION IN CHINA.

There is little in the circumstances or in the disposition of the Chinese to withstand this movement of population toward its equilibrium. The southeastern parts of China, from which the emigration chiefly moves at present, are so densely populated that it is difficult to obtain the means of subsistence. It is here, mainly, that infanticide prevails—an acknowledged immorality, an enforced necessity. The filial sentiment of affection and respect toward ancestors, in cases where, from want, the life of a dependent parent or child must be sacrificed, desperately saves the old and lets go its hold on the child. It is not want of natural affection, but hard necessity, which is the source of Chinese infanticide. The want of food, even where there is not absolute starvation, as is often the case, occasions disease and protracted suffering and premature death, and frequently terrible pestilence. The stern, driving law of self-preservation enforces the natural method of relief by migration.

Although not properly to be regarded as a migratory people, the Chinese yet are wanting in that powerful sentiment which so characterizes some races-love of country. The love of home and of family in the Chinese takes the place of the love of country and of nation in other peoples. It is a most noticeable fact that the Chinese are still properly to be placed in the patriarchal, tribal stage of development; they have not reached the stage of nationality. Rebellions, revolts against the national authority when deemed oppressive, hence, are of the commonest and most customary occurrence. Their religion is predominantly ancestral; their most sacred places are the depositories of ancestral remains. To be gathered with their fathers in the world of spirits is the governing religious aspiration. The government itself is characteristically patriarchal, and political as well as religious institutions-indeed, the social life generally-bear this family stamp. Removal of family goods, of ancestral remains, and tablets carries with it what elsewhere assumes the form of local attachment, and place, country, is left without regret. In natural correspondence with this family sentiment, as displacing proper national feeling, love of country, and attachment to native soil, is the universal worship paid to the kitchen god, the household divinity of China, which has no local abode, no temple, no fixed place, but is represented only on paper, that is burned every year to represent its departure to the spirit land, and is replaced by a new engraving to mark its return.

The great hinderances to migration, consequently, arising from political and religious associations, and consisting in attachments to native land, and the social bonds of a true nationality, politically and religiously organized, are relatively weak or entirely wanting among the Chinese, and the pressure from overcrowded population finds its check not in the national but only in the proper family associations. Let but the integrity of the family life be maintained secure, let but the ancestral remains, the ancestral images, and tablets, the monuments and representatives of the dead, together with the living membership of the family, be assured safe conveyance and safe transplanting, and the repugnance to expatriation is so weakened that it is easily overborne by the pressure of want.

DEMAND FOR LABOR IN AMERICA. While China thus presses, America invites; a territory vast as China itself remains unoccupied, except by roving tribes subsisting on game and fish, and wild vegetable products. An area capable of absorbing the entire population of China proper, now desert, craves occupancy by civilized men-by men that in fixed settlements will till the soil and cultivate the arts. The earth was made to be occupied and improved by man; the human race has, since the great epoch of the dispersion, been under orders to spread and occupy. The sentiment of the American people has been, from the first, in harmony with this great providential ordering. Its language has been that of Henry: “Encourage emigration, encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants of the Old World to come and settle in the land of promise ; make it the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and the happy as well as the asylum of the distressed; fill up the measure of your population as speedily as you can.” The wants of the country for men are still as great as they were in the times of Henry. We have a vast territory to be occupied; we have a vastly extended field of industrial wants to be filled. There is a special adaptation in the extent and character of these wants to the numbers and character of the Chinese people. We have a desert territory capable of sustaining a population of hundreds of millions to be subdued and tilled and made productive. The Chinese are most expert and successful tillers of the soil; industrious, economical, patient. We have boundless mineral tracts to be developed and wrought. The Chinese have proved themselves successful miners, working on contentedly where the more grasping, more wasteful, more restless American has abandoned his work. We have experienced these last few years a lack of seamen, and a difficulty of procuring men at moderate prices has crippled our commerce. The Chinese have proved themselves excellent seamen, and are now extensively employed as such on the Pacific coast. We have vast public improvements to be constructed. The Pacific States, the great central Territories, and the Mississippi Valley, to say nothing of the Eastern States that are still devising and promoting new works everywhere to supplement and perfect their facilities for inter-communication, are to have soon most gigantic systems of railroads, of which we hardly see as yet thé rudimentary outlines. The Chinese have proved themselves, in the construction and operation of the Pacific Railroad, the best of laborers, quiet, orderly, industrious, and every way satisfactory to their employers; indeed, the most satisfactory class of laborers in this department of labor yet tried on our continent.

Our manufacturing enterprises, particularly in the Pacific and Mississippi Valley States, are needing laborers at less cost than can now be obtained, in order to compete with foreign production; the Chinese have met this want with most emphatic success. When the Pacific Railroad brought production on the Pacific coast into more direct competition with the eastern, it was found impossible to continue operations, not too lucrative before, except at a loss; the introduction of the cheaper Chinese labor brought deliverance. The Chinaman has been found to be apt to learn and faithful to practice in these manufacturing industries. Even in the remote East, as at North Adams, in Massachusetts, and at Belleville, in New Jersey, the problem of initiating him into our peculiar mechanical employments has proved thus far successful and encouraging.

In like manner on southern plantations and on northern farms, as well as in universal household work, there is a great want and an ever-swelling demand; for these employments as for others the new race has recommended itself everywhere, in the exhibition of those qualities which are chiefly required of capacity and fidelity as well as in the matter of economy and cheapness. The Chinese are expert in agricultural employments, capable of patient toil, careful, saving, trusty; and, in the household, docile quiet, neat, prudent, faithful, economical. In the mining camps of the Pacific States, as in the new settlements on railroads, the Chinese are the preferred cooks and laundrymen, even where cost is disregarded.

In short, the immense and importunate demand for labor in our country finds in this immigration its satisfactory and abundant supply. If left to itself, it is most apparent that this immigration must come in in a steadily swelling flood, which, regarded in its immensity simply, is absolutely appalling. China could spare millions a year for years to come without feeling the loss except in the sense of relief; and America can absorb these millions, so far as sustaining labor is concerned, with no sense of repletion.

CHECKS TO IMMIGRATION.

The question arises just here, what now shall limit this threatening inundation of alienism and paganism? There are the general providential checks that hamper all excessively impetuous movements among men. The Chinese must first hear of the new land and of the possibilities of his obtaining support there. He must preserve the means of transportation. Ships must be built. Agencies must be established. Fields of employment must be found. These all are natural or general providential checks wbich will to a greater or less degree give steadiness and moderation to the movement.

GOVERNMENTAL ACTION.

But there are positive artificial checks, so to speak, operating or may be expected to operate more or less. There is the direct interposition of government. In 1862 the atrocities of the so-called coolie trade, chiefly directed to Peru, Trinidad, and Cuba, occasioned the act of Congress of February 19, of that year, prohibiting under heavy penalties the transportation of “inhabitants or subjects of China known as “coolies,”

for any term of years or for any time whatever, as servants or apprentices, or to be held to service or labor.” The term “coolie” properly denotes simply a laborer; it has acquired its opprobrious use only from its associations with the flagitious proceedings connected with the trade mentioned to Peru and the West Indies, which are to be paralleled only with those of the African slave trade. The act of 1862 accordingly pro426

ANNTIL REPORT OF THE

ANNU.IL

OF THE

libits absolutely all transportation of Chinese laborers under whatever pretext or in whatever way to be held to service or labor;” but expressly excepts, however, from its prohibition all free and voluntary emigration of any Chinese subject, provided a permit or certificate is procured from a consul, or consular agent, containing name and setting forth the fact of such voluntary emigration. This act also extends the provisions of the act of Februnry 22, 1847, regulating carriage of passengers in merchant Venkels. This wine and humane legislation effectnally broke up all the flagitious coolie traffic in American vessels, and prevented its extension to this conntry.

In 1Nto the Chinese government, hitherto oj,posed to emigration, consented to allow it under certnin restrictions and conditions in a convention primarily made between the Chinese, British, and French authorities, but extended and applied to all American traffic. This convention furnishes the fullest and wisest protection to the emigrant in leaving China, in his transportation, in his labor and wages abroad, and in his return home, that perhaps governmental interposition and supervision can secure.

Further, the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, and the fourteenth amendment declaring who shall be citizens and prohibiting any abridgment of the privileges or immunities of citizens, or the rlenial by any State " to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its Inwn," while opposed to all introduction of Chinese which shall be subject to oppression or any kind of servitude, yet in their general tendency and effect are protective and favorable to immigration. The Stato legislation which oppressed the Chinaman by excluding him from our courts as a witness or as a party except as a delinquent or acnlprit, was annulled by these humane ordinances of the General Government.

Nor can the reasonably expect that any new governmental action will be interposed to hamper or hinder this emigration. The Chinese government will not in any rational probability reverse its whole tendency to a free intercourse with foreign nations which has so wonderfully characterized its course for the last thirty years. By the treaty with Great Britain, of August 29, 1842, to which it was constrained after an unsuccerful resistance, and by that of 1844 with the United States, ports were opened for foreign trace that had hitherto been entirely closed ; and in the Anglo-French invasion of 1838 treaties were wrung from the Chinese government that effectually demoralized their old wall of exclusiveness, and that mark a new epoch in its history. It haul now learned that there were mightier powers, a better civilization, higher intelligence, more advanced arts, a richer culture every way among the long despised barbarians; and it now began to seek a frerr intercourse and traffic with the western nations, and also to further the introduction of their arts and sciences. It is apparent that America is with the Chinese the favorite country, preferred before all the other western nations. It has been always madle to share in all the privileges accorded to other nations, and besides has secured for itself special preferences. The singular honor was conferred on an American to introduce China into the circle of civilized nations, and establish a permanent diplomatic intercourse. The imperial college, instituted in Peking, to instruct the Chinese in foreign science and arts, is placed under the presidency and general management of an American scholar and philanthropist. Alihough such a revolution from the old exclusiveness of China and hatred of foreigners might naturally be expected to occasion liere and there outbursts of opposition among n people characteristically conservative and jealous of change, there cannot reasonably be anticipated any such reversal of the new policy as shall work a hinderance to the current of emigration to this country,

Nor should we anticipate any such hinderance from our own people. To oppose this immigration by legislation, direct or indirect, would be to contradict all the antecedents of our history and the characteristic spirit and sentiment of our people, never more emphatically and decisively pronounced than in the last few years. The principle of no caste has been finally adopted and established in America, as it has ever prevailed in China. So long, accordingly, as we invite to our shores all in Europe who would improve their condition, we must keep unobstructed the channels of immigration from Asin. Certainly wo cannot retrace our steps by breaking up in the interest of exclusiveness the trenty with China, ratified by the United States Senate, July 16, 16H, which guarantees reciprocity of rights in regard to trade, residence, and education.

POLITICAL BEARINGS OF THE IMMIGRATIOX. Nor can any reasonable opposition arise from any quarter. We have nothing to fear from a migration of Chinese that shall be left open and be anobstructed except by those general checks which Providenco ordains shall rise of themselves to moderate whatever is impetuons and excessive in the movements of the race, in regard to any pernicious effect such a migration might have on our political integrity and purity. We are to bear in mind in estimating this political effect that the Chinese are, as alrendy observed, properly still in the family stage of development, and have not yet attained the proper spirit of nationality. The Chinaman on his arrival in this country accordingly manifests littlo disposition to enter into our political life. Thus, although by the unjust legislation of California, he is subjected, if he engages in mining, to an onerous tax, from which he would be exempt simply on condition of becoming naturalized or declaring his intention to become a citizen, it is not known that he has ever availed himself

of this mode of obtaining exemption. At this germinal stage of the migration, then; there is no ground to apprehend a dangerous incursion of Chinese voters, even if partisan zeal should here and there override or evade the legislative safeguards to naturalization and admission to citizenship. We need only to look forward to that stage, which may indeed be near at hand, when the Chinaman, satisfied that he can be secure in family settlements, shall bring over his ancestral memorials and fix himself permanently in the country. In estimating the possible evils from such an inundation of Chinese voters in the future we must bear in mind that the Chinaman, who, in his own land, is a stranger to the social inequalities which feudalism so firmly rooted in European civilization, comes to us in hereditary sympathy with the political equality which is the glory of our land. He comes habituated in all his past life to feel that the high places in government are, out of the imperial circle at least, open to all alike-to the most obscure or to the most eminent in social conditionand are reached only by long training and the most exact and thorough competitive examinations; that political distinction comes surely and solely to merit, carefully and impartially ascertained.

INDUSTRIAL OPPOSITION TO IMMIGRATION.

More forniidable, if not more unreasonable, is the opposition to the free admission of the Chinese that may spring from industrial interests. This opposition has already manifested itself in loud denunciations against the cheapening of labor threatened in such a large influx of foreigners. Doubtless this hostility, which has been active and violent in some quarters, has operated as a partial check, rather indirectly than directly, to immigration. But it should be borne in mind in estimating the force of this opposition that, as being against all reason, it cannot be either lasting or very effective. It comes chiefly from men who have themselves profited by their free admission to the open hospitalities of the land, and so with an exceedingly ill grace. It is against nature, against the spirit of our people and all its antecedents, against the true interests of our national prosperity. It is but another form of the old narrow-minded hostility to the introduction of labor-saving machinery. We acknowledge its own unreasonableness in the unsoundness of the reasons it urges. To cheapen production is not necessarily to cheapen labor. The substitution of machinery and of animal force for human labor has ever worked, in the long run, to the benefit of the laborer, as it has both cheapened the cost of the necessaries of life and also opened fields of more remunerative employment. The allegations of ignorance and incompetency are disproved by the successful competition of the Chinese in every department of industry, in navigation, in mining, in railroad construction, in agriculture, in superintending machinery, in the family occupations of the laundry and the kitchen, in the common mechanic arts, as of shoemaking and tailoring, and also in mercantile employments. If, indeed, the Chinaman were no more intelligent than a brute, there is no more reason for opposing his importation than for opposing the importation of camels. If he be in truth a man, and brings intelligence and reason with his manual force, there is certainly still less ground of objection.

This industrial opposition, which is not a legitimate outgrowth of our national spirit, and is essentially selfish and short-sighted, can work save only locally and exceptionally. The very laborer who has ignorantly been led away into the fiercest hostility to Chinamen willingly accepts them when they come to do the more menial work and drudgery of his own calling. In this way, in fact, we see how the difficulty disappears; how the labor problem is to be quickly solved. The Chinaman takes the lower place, the more repulsive, the less remunerative work, to the glad relief of the white man, who is thus lifted to a higher plane of social condition. In solving this problem it must not be forgotten that the Chinaman is just as eager to improve his condition as any other man; just as earnest to obtain the largest remuneration possible, and, accordingly, just as earnest to keep up the rewards of labor to the highest mark.

This industrial opposition to the immigration of the Chinese must hence be regarded as against all reason and the true interest of our people, and consequently as only temporary and ineffectual. Combinations to resist the employment of the Chinese have in fact been forced to give way after the briefest struggle, and the momentary damming up has been followed by a larger, freer flood.

DANGER FROM INTRODUCTION OF PAGANISM.

Still another check may be apprehended from those who tremble at the thought of the introduction among our people of so much paganism and superstition. The existence of idolatry, or of ignorance and immorality, is certainly an evil to be deplored anywhere. But it is not diminished in amount by being simply transported to other