The Club had now been running a month. It had been most enjoyable. When
Yap Sing had been installed as cook and housekeeper he was given a
memorandum book, on the first page of which was written an order for
such supplies as the Club might require at the stores and markets.
Brewster had objected to this at first, inasmuch as the Mongolian was a
stranger, and because it was not good to make bills. But he was
overruled by the explanation that almost everything required, except
fresh vegetables and, now and then, fresh meat, had already been
provided, and that the Chinaman could not cheat very much with seven men
to watch him.
But from the first day the Club fared sumptuously. Yap Sing was a
thorough artist in his way. He had a trick of preparing substantials and
dainties, and of arranging a table, which was wonderful. His breakfasts
and suppers were masterpieces, and daily as the dinner buckets, which
Yap Sing had filled, were opened at the mines, the members of the Club
were the envy of all the men, underground, who were their companions. It
was a change from the boarding houses, so delicious, that the members of
the Club did not care to consider what the probable extra expense would
be. Moreover, each had a feeling that so long as the rest were satisfied
it was not worth while to interrupt the pleasant course which events
were taking by intruding questions which possibly might lead to
unpleasant developments.
But on pay day the bills were sent in. For provisions and crockery they
amounted to more than three hundred dollars, or about one dollar and a
half per day for each member of the Club. This was in addition to the
stock of food purchased at the beginning.
The first thought was that Yap Sing had been robbing the Club. He was
called in, confronted with the bills and questioned as to what he had to
say to the amount.
He declared it to be his belief that it was "belly cheapee."
Miller took up the case for the plaintiffs and said: "But, Yap, you
understand when you came here a month ago we had plenty of
provisions--flour, butter, bacon, lard, tea, coffee, sugar--everything
required except fresh vegetables and, now and then, fresh meat."
"Yes, me sabbe; got plentie now, allee samee," said Yap.
"But, Yap," said Miller, "you know in boarding-houses and restaurants
board is only eight dollars a week. Besides what you had at the
beginning, this is costing a dollar and a half a day for each one of us.
What have you to say to that?"
"Me say him heap cheapee," said Yap. "Me no care for bloarding-housie;
me no care for lestaulent; me heap sabbie 'em. You likie 'em, you
bletter go lare eatie. You no likie loyster; you likie hashie. You no
likie tlenderloin; you likie corn beefe. You no likie turkie; you likie
bull beefe. You no likie plum puddie; you likie dlied apples. All litie,
me cookie him; me no care. You no likie bloiled tongue, loast chickie
and devil ham for dinner bucket; you likie blead and onion. All litie,
me fixie him. You wantie one d----d cheapee miners' bloarding-housie.
All litie, no difflence me."
It was hard to argue the point with the countryman of Confucius.
Notwithstanding the magnificent fare, the impression was general that
Yap Sing had been feeding three or four of his cousins and making a
little private pocket change for himself by the transaction, but it
would have been useless to try to convict him. Indeed, it would have
been impossible, for when any particularly outrageous item was pointed
out he would cite some special occasion when he had outdone himself in
his art.
"What a time-keeper he would make for a mine!" said Carlin. "He would
have his pay-roll full every day if he had to rob a graveyard of all the
names on its monuments to fill it."
"What a superintendent he would make!" said Miller. "There would not be
an item in the monthly accounts that he would not be prepared to explain
with entire satisfaction and appalling promptness, and all the time he
would have looked like a sorrowful statue of unappreciated innocence."
"What a mining expert he would be!" said Ashley. "With his faculty for
making doubtful things look plausible, and his powers of expression, he
would convince the ordinary man that he could see further into the
ground than you could bore with a diamond drill."
"But his cooking is lovely; you must all admit that," said Wright.
"If there be blame anywhere, it rests on us," said Brewster, "for we
could all see that we were living a little high, and yet not one of us
so much as cautioned Yap to go slow."
It was finally decided that there must be a return to sound and economic
principles. Yap was paid his month's salary and instructed that, in
future, the fare must be reduced to plain, solid miner's food. The money
to pay all the bills, together with what was due on the previous month,
and also the rent, was contributed and placed in Miller's hands as
treasurer and paymaster, that he might pay the accounts, and the Club
settled down to its pipes and conversation.
In the meantime the honorary members had come in. As usual, the first
theme was the condition of stocks. Miller believed that Silver Hill was
the best buy on the lode, Corrigan had heard that day that a secret
drift had been run west from the thirteen hundred level of the Con.
Virginia; that up in the Andes ground an immense body of ore had been
cut through, but that nothing would come of it until the Bonanza firm
could gather in more of the stock. Carlin was disposed to believe that a
development was about to be made in Chollar Potosi, because during the
past month the superintendent had come up twice from Oakland,
California, to look at the property. Strong was disposed to unload all
the stocks that he had and invest in Belcher and Crown Point because the
superintendent of both mines had that day assured him that they had no
developments worth mentioning.
At length the conversation turned on silver. The Club had that day
received a portion of their month's pay in silver, and some grumbled,
thinking they should have received their full wages in gold. After a
good deal had been said, the Professor, who had been quietly reading and
had taken no part in the discussion, was asked for his opinion. He
answered as follows:
"It is not right to pay laboring men in a depreciated currency; it is a
still greater wrong that there is a discount on silver. It is the
steadiest measure of values that mankind has ever found; it is the only
metal that three-fifths of the human race can measure their daily
transactions in; its full adoption by our Government, as a measure of
values and basis of money, would mean prosperity; its rejection during
the past five years and the denying to it its old sovereignty, have
wrought incalculable loss.
"Here on the Comstock it sleeps in the same matrix with gold, the
proportion in bullion being about forty-four per cent. gold to fifty-six
per cent. silver. The Nation cannot make a better adjustment than to
keep that proportion good in her securities. Five years ago silver
commanded a premium over gold. Since then two dollars in gold to one in
silver have been taken from the earth, but silver is at a discount,
because through unwise if not dishonest legislation, its sovereignty as
a measure of values, its recognition as money was taken away. The whole
burden was put upon gold, and the result is that the purchasing power of
gold has been enhanced, and silver is, or seems to be, at a discount.
Those who have accomplished this wrong affect to scorn the proposition
that legislation could restore to silver its old value, ignoring the
fact that the present apparent depreciation is due entirely to
unfriendly legislation, and conveniently forgetting that with silver,
everything else is at a discount when measured by gold. That is, gold is
inflated by the discriminations which have been made in its favor. The
chief use of silver in the world is for a measure of values, as the
chief use of wheat is for material out of which to make bread. Were men
forbidden to make any more bread from wheaten flour and compelled to use
corn meal as a substitute, would the present prices of wheat and corn
remain respectively the same?
"Silver should be restored to its old full sovereignty, side by side
with gold. Then, in this country, just as little of either metal as
possible should be used in men's daily transactions. Handling gold and
silver directly in trade is but continuing the barter of savage men, and
is a relic of a dark age. Moreover, the loss by abrasion is very great.
Both metals should be cast into ingots and their values stamped upon
them. Then they should be stored in the Treasury and certificates
representing their value should be issued as the money of the people. If
this makes the Government a banker no matter, so long as it supplies to
the people a money on which there can be no loss. The thought that this
would drain our land of gold has not much force, because the trade
balances are coming our way and will soon be very heavy; if the gold
shall be taken away something will have to be returned in lieu of it,
and after all the truth is that four-fifths of our people do not see a
gold piece twice a year. Our internal commerce is very much greater than
our foreign commerce, and to keep that moving without jar should be the
first anxiety of American statesmen. For that purpose nothing could be
better than the silver certificate.
"The Government has commenced to coin silver and has partially
remonetized it. It is only partial because gold is still made the
absolute measure of values and preference is reserved for it in ways
which will keep silver depressed until there shall come a demand for it
which cannot at once be met; then it will be discovered that it is still
one of the precious metals and it will take its place in trade as it has
its place here in the mines, side by side and the full brother of gold.
Were the Government to-morrow to commence to absorb and hoard all the
product of our mines and keep this up for a generation, issuing
certificates on the same for the full value, at the end of about thirty
years there would be on deposit as security for the paper afloat more
than one thousand millions of dollars. This seems like a vast sum, but
it would then amount to but ten dollars per capita for our people. You
have each received two and a half times that amount to-day on account of
your last month's wages, and the only serious inconvenience it has
inflicted upon you is the discount which wicked legislation has given to
silver.
"But long before one thousand millions in silver could be secured it
would command a premium, because that would mean one-fourth of all the
silver in circulation, and this old world cannot spare to one Nation
that amount and still keep her commerce running and the arts supplied."
"But, Professor," said Alex, "why hoard the metals? Why may not money be
represented by paper backed by the Nation's faith? Why pile up the
metals in the Government vaults when the printing press can supply as
good money as the people want?"
"That," replied the Professor, "is an argument for times of peace and
prosperity only. The failure of one crop would so lessen the faith of
the people that a serious discount would fall upon the money that was
only backed by faith. And suppose Europe were to combine to fight the
United States, then what would the loss be to the people? We can only
estimate the amount by thinking what the United States currency was
worth in 1864.
"Such a combination is not at all impossible. There is a vast country to
the south of us, the trade of which should be ours, and with the
Governments of which we have notified Europe there must be no
interference from beyond the Atlantic. There are channels for ships to
be hewed through the Spanish American Isthmus, and their control is to
become a question.
"Above all, the light and majesty of our Republic are becoming a terror
to the Old World. Think of it. The immigrants that come to us annually,
together with the young men and women that annually reach their majority
here, are enough to supply the places of all the people of this coast
were they to go away. Who can estimate the swelling strength that is
sufficient to fully equip a new state annually?
"Before the spectacle thrones are toppling and kings sleep on pillows of
thorns. If our soil was adjacent to Europe, the nations would combine
and assail us to-morrow, in sheer self-defense. They have tremendous
armies; they are accumulating mighty navies and arming them as ships
were never armed before. Suppose that sometime they decide that the
world's equilibrium is being disturbed by the Great Republic, even as
they did when Napoleon the first became their terror, and that, as with
him, they determine that our country shall be divided or crushed. What
then? Of course they will maneuver to have a rebellion in our country
and espouse the cause of the weaker side. This is what nearly happened
in 1862; what would have surely happened had not Great Britain possessed
the knowledge that if she joined with France in the proposed scheme,
whatever the outcome might be, one thing was certain, for a season at
least, there would be no night on the sea; the light made by British
ships in flames would make perpetual day.
"Then ocean commerce was carried mostly in ships that had to trust alone
to the fickle winds for headway. In twenty years more steam will be the
motive power for carrying all valuable freights, and will be
comparatively safe as against pursuing cruisers.
"Imagine such a crisis upon us, what then would the unsupported paper
dollar be worth? But imagine that behind the Republic there was in the
treasury a thousand millions of dollars in silver, the original money of
the world, and another thousand millions in gold, what combination of
forces could place the money of the Nation in danger of loss by
depreciation?
"Gold and silver when produced are simply the measures of the labor
required to produce them; they are labor made imperishable; and when
either is destroyed--and demonetization is destruction--just so much
labor is destroyed, and you who work have to make up the loss by working
more hours for a dollar. You are supposed to receive the same wages that
the miners did who worked on this lode six years ago, for a month's
work. But you do not because, through the mistake of honest men or the
manipulation of knaves, twenty per cent. of the twenty-five dollars paid
you in silver for last month's work has been destroyed; and now those
who have dealt this blow insist that money can in no wise be changed in
value by legislation.
"The trouble is our law-makers do not estimate at half its worth their
own country. They stand in awe of what they call the money centers of
the world, and refuse to see that already the world is placed at a
disadvantage by our Republic; that within thirty years all existing
nations, all the nations that have existed through all the long watches
of the past, will, in material wealth and strength, seem mean and poor
in comparison with our own.
"Look at it! Five hundred thousand foreigners absorbed annually, and not
a ripple made where they merge with the mighty current of our people!
What is equal to a new State, with all its people and equipments,
launched upon the Union every year--it makes me think of the Creator
launching worlds--with immeasurable resources yet to be utilized; the
wealth of the country already equal to that of Great Britain, with all
her twelve hundred years of spoils; all our earnings our own; no five
millions of people toiling to support another million that stand on
guard, as is required in France and Germany and Russia and Austria and
Italy; our great Southern staple commanding tribute from all the world;
hungry Europe looking to our Northern States for meat and bread, and to
our rivers for fish; our Western miners supplying to business the tonic
which keeps its every artery throbbing with buoyant health, while over
all is our flag, which symbols a sovereignty so awful in power and yet
so beneficent in mercies, that while the laws command and protect, they
bring no friction in their contact; rather they guarantee the perfect
liberty of every child of the Republic, to seize with equal hand upon
every opportunity for fortune, or for fame, which our country holds
within her august grasp.
"To carry on the business of such a land an ocean of money is needed,
and infinitely more will be required in future. And for this money there
must be a solid basis; not merely a faith which expands with this year's
prosperity and contracts with next year's calamity; not something which
the death of a millionaire or a visitation of grasshoppers will throw
down; but something which is the first-born child of labor, and is
therefore immortal and without change. This is represented by gold and
silver, and to commerce they are what 'the great twin brethren' at Lake
Regillus were to Rome."
When the Professor ceased speaking, Harding said: "Professor, what you
have been saying about our Republic sounds to me almost like a
coincidence. Did you dream what you have been saying?"
The Professor replied that he did not, and asked what in the world
prompted such a question.
Harding smiled and blushed, and then said: "Because I had a dream last
night."
All wanted to hear what it was.
"You won't laugh, Carlin?" said Harding.
Carlin said he would not.
"And you will not call me a fool, Wright?" Harding asked.
Wright promised to conceal his sentiments, if necessary.
"You will not call it a mirage, Corrigan?" asked Harding.
Corrigan agreed to refrain.
"And, Colonel, you will not ask mysterious questions about who usually
sits as a commission of lunacy in Virginia City?" Harding inquired.
The Colonel agreed to restrain himself.
"And, Alex, you will not expose me in the paper?" questioned Harding.
Alex promised to be merciful to the public.
In final appeal, Harding said: "And you, Professor, you will not say it
is a tough, hard formation and too nearly primitive to carry any
treasure?"
The Professor assured him that faults and displacements were common in
the richest mineral-bearing veins.
"Well," said Harding, "I was tired and nervous last night. I could not
sleep, and so determined to get up and read for an hour. I happened to
pick up a volume of Roman history, and became so absorbed in it that I
read for an hour or two more than I ought to. I went to bed at last, and
my body dropped to sleep in a moment, but my brain was still half awake,
and for a while ran things on its own account in a confused sort of a
way.
"I thought I was sitting here alone, when, suddenly, a stranger appeared
and began to pace, slowly, up and down the room. He had an eye like a
hawk, nose like an eagle's beak and an air that was altogether martial.
His walk had the perfect, measured step of the trained veteran soldier.
After watching him for a little space, I grew bold and demanded of him
his name and business. When I spoke the sound of my own voice startled
me, for he was more savage looking than a shift boss. He turned round to
me--don't laugh, I pray you--and said:
"'I am that Scipio to whom Hannibal the terrible capitulated. I was
proud of my Rome and my Romans. We were the "Iron Nation," truly. All
that human valor and human endurance could do we accomplished. Amid the
snows of the Alps and the sands of Africa we were alike invincible. We
were not deficient either in brain power. We left monuments enough to
abundantly establish that fact. To us the whole civilized world yielded
fealty, but we were barbarians after all. Listen!'
"Just then there floated in through the open window what seemed a full
diapason of far-off but exquisite music.
"'Do you know what that is?' he asked. 'It is the echo of the melody
which the children of this Republic awaken, singing in their free
schools. It smites upon and charms the ear of the sentinel angel, whose
station is in the sun, through one-eighth of his daily round; those
echoes that with an enchantment all their own ride on the swift pinions
of the hours over all the three thousand miles between the seas.
"My Rome had nothing like that. We trusted alone to the law of might,
and though we tried to be just, the slave was chained daily at our
gates; we sold into slavery our captives taken in war; we fought
gladiators and wild beasts for the amusement of our daughters and wives;
we never learned to temper justice with mercy; only the first leaves of
the book of knowledge were opened to us; our brains and our bodies were
disciplined, but our hearts were darkened and we perished because we
were no longer fit to rule.
"'Whether by evolution the world has advanced, or whether, indeed, the
lessons of that Nazarene, whom our soldiers crucified, are bearing
celestial fruit, who knows! But surely our Rome, with all its power, all
its splendor, all its heroic men and stately women; its victories in the
field, its pageants in the Imperial City on the days when, returning
from a conquest, our chieftians were laurel-crowned; our art, our
eloquence--all, were nothing compared with this song of songs. It
started at first where the sullen waves wash against Plymouth Rock; it
swelled in volume while the deep woods gave place to smiling fields;
over mountain and desert it rolled in full tones and only ceases, at
last, where the roar of the deep sea, breaking outside the Golden Gate,
or meeting in everlasting anger the Oregon upon her stormy bar, gives
notice that the pioneer must halt at last in his westward march.'
"As he ceased to speak the melody was heard again, sweeter, clearer and
fuller than before. My guest faded away before me and I awoke. In all
the air there was no sound save the deep respirations of the hoisting
engine in the Norcross works, and the murmur of the winds, as on slow
beating wings they floated up over the Divide and swept on, out over the
desert."
The verdict of the Club was that if old Scipio talked in that strain he
had softened down immensely since the days when he was setting his
legions in array against the swarthy hosts of the mighty Carthagenian.
After a while Corrigan spoke: "You native Americans," he said, "at least
the majority of yees, do not half appreciate your country. I was but a
lad whin, after a winter of half starvation, in the care of an uncle, I
lift Ireland in an English imigrant ship. One mornin' as me uncle and
meself were watchin' from the deck a sail rose out of the say directly
in our path. It grew larger and larger, in a little while the hull
appeared, and soon after we could discern that it was a frigate. The
wind was off her beam, blowing fresh; every sail was crowded on, and as
her black beak rose and fell with the says, I thought her more beautiful
than the smile of the sunlight on the hills of Kildare. Half careened as
she was under the pressure on her sails, but still resolutely rushing
on, she made a pictur' of courage which has shone before me eyes a
thousand times since, when me heart has been heavy. She drew quite near,
and as she swung upon her tack her flag was dipped in salute. Then me
uncle bent and said: 'Barney, lad, mark will that flag! That is an
Amirican ship of war.'
"Great God! Child that I was, I think in that moment I knew how the
young mother feels, when in the curtained dimness of her room, she half
fainting, hears the blissful whisper that unto her is born a son.
"There was the ensign of the land which held all joy in thought for us;
which to us opened the gates of hope; that wondrous land in the air of
which the pallid cheek of Want grows rosy red and Irish hearts cast off
hereditary dispair.
"I rushed forward, where thray hundred imigrants were listlessly
lounging about the deck, and, in mad excitement, shouted: 'See! See! It
is the Amirican flag!' Just then the sunlight caught in its folds and
turned it to gold.
"O, but thin there was a transformation sane. Ivery person on that deck
sprang up and shouted. Men waved their hats and women embraced each
other, and with a mighty 'All Hail' those Irish imigrants--Irish no
longer, but henceforth forever to be Amiricans--greeted that flag. In
response the marines manned the yards, and off to us across the wathers
came the first ringing Amirican chare that we had iver heard. We
answered back with a yell like that which might have been awakened at
Babel. It was not a disciplined chare, but simply a wild cry of joy, and
it was none the less hearty that over us swung haughtily the red cross
of St. George.
"You native Amiricans are like spiled children, that niver having known
an unsatisfied want, surfeit on dainties."
Corrigan relapsed into silence, but his eyes were glistening and there
was a tremble about his lips. His mind was still in the burial place,
where "memory was calling up its dead."
While the spell of Barney's words was still upon the Club, Yap Sing
softly opened the door and announced that the evening luncheon was
ready. The heathen had inaugurated these luncheons on the first day of
his coming. They were at once accepted and had become a regular thing.
Seeing that they were received approvingly, Yap had exhausted every
device to make them a marked feature of the Club.
On this occasion the table was fully set, but there was no food on the
table. Beside each plate stood a glass of water and a dish of salt. When
the company was seated, Yap went to the cooking range, took out and set
upon the table an immense platter which was piled high with huge baked
potatoes, after which, with a face utterly destitute of expression, he
went to his bench in the corner of the room and sat down.
Wright, who was nearest him, said: "What is the matter, Yap? Are you
sick?"
"Nothing matter; me no sickie," said Yap.
"But why do you not bring on the supper?" asked Wright.
"No catchie any more," was the answer.
"What! Just potatoes straight, Yap? What is the matter?" said Wright.
"I no sabbie what's the matter," said the sullen Oriental. "You livie
belly cheapie now. Potato belly good. Blenty potato, blenty saltie,
blenty cold water; no makie you sickie; I dink belly good."
The Club took in the situation with great hilarity; the cause of Yap
Sing's frugality was briefly explained to the guests; each seized a
potato and commenced their meal.
At length Carlin asked Yap Sing if he could not furnish a little butter
with the salt. Yap shook his head resolutely, and said:
"No catchie. Blutter five bittie [sixty-two and a half cents] one pound.
No buy blutter for five bittie to putee on potato; too muchie money
allee time pay out for hashie."
Then Ashley asked for a pickle, but Yap Sing was firm. Said he: "Pickle
slix bittie one bottle; no can standee."
A great many other things were banteringly asked for, from cold tongue
and horse-radish to blackberry jam; but the imperturbable face of the
Mongolian never relaxed and his ears remained deaf to all entreaties.
The potatoes were eaten with a decided relish, though there was no
seasoning except salt, and when the repast was over the Club still sat
at the table while the Colonel delivered a dissertation upon the virtues
of the potato in general and upon the Nevada potato in particular. He
insisted that the potato was the great modern mind food, and instanced
the effect of potato diet upon the people of Ireland, pointing out that
the failure of a crop there meant mental prostration and despair, while
the news of a bountiful crop was a certain sign of a lively revolution
within the year. From a scientific standpoint he demonstrated that no
where else on the continent were the conditions absolutely perfect for
producing potatoes that were potatoes, except upon the high, dry,
slightly alkaline table lands between the Sierras and the Wasatch Range,
and, giving his lively imagination full play, he pictured that region as
it would be fifty years hence; when transportation shall be reduced;
when artesian wells shall be plenty; when the rich men of the earth will
not be able to give entertainments without presenting their guests with
Nevada or Utah potatoes, and when to say that a man has a potato estate
in the desert will be as it now is to say that a man has a wheat farm in
Dakota, an orange orchard in Los Angeles, or a cotton plantation in
Texas.
While talking, the Colonel managed, between sentences, to dispose of a
second potato.
When the pipes were resumed, the joke of Yap Sing was fully discussed,
and finally the Chinese question came up for consideration.
Strong took up this latter theme and said:
"The men of the Eastern States think that we of the West are a cruel,
half-barbarous race, because we look with distrust upon the swelling
hosts of Mongolians that are swarming like locusts upon this coast. They
say: 'Our land has ever been open to the oppressed, no matter in what
guise they come. The men of the West are the first to stretch bars
across the Golden Gate to keep out a people. And this people are
peaceable and industrious; all they petition for is to come in and work.
Still, there is a cry which swells into passionate invective against
them. It must be the cry of barbarism and ignorance. It surely fairly
reeks with injustice and cruelty and sets aside a fundamental principle
of our Government which dedicates our land to freedom and opens all its
gates to honest endeavor.'
"Those people will not stop to think that we came here from among
themselves. We were no more ignorant, we were no worse than they when we
came away. We have had better wages and better food since our coming
than the ordinary men of the East obtain. Almost all of us have dreamed
of homes, of wives and children that are men's right to possess, but
which are not for us; and though they of the East do not know it, this
experience has softened, not hardened our hearts, toward the weak and
the oppressed. If they of the East would reflect they would have to
conclude that it is not avarice that moves us; that there must be a less
ungenerous and deeper reason.
"Our only comfort is, that, by and by, maybe while some of us still
live, those men and women who now upbraid us, will, with their souls on
their knees, ask pardon for so misjudging us.
"We quarantine ships when a contagion is raging among her crew; we frame
protective laws to hold the price of labor up to living American rates;
New England approves these precautions, but when we ask to have the same
rules, in another form, enforced upon our coast, her people and her
statesmen, in scorn and wrath, declare that we are monsters.
"There is Yap Sing in the kitchen. You have just paid him forty dollars
for a month's work. All the clothes that he wears were made in China. If
he boarded himself, as nearly as possible, he would eat only the food
sent here from China. Of his forty dollars just received, thirty at
least will be returned to China and be absorbed there. There are one
hundred thousand of his people in this State and California. We will
suppose that they save only thirty cents each per day. That means, for
all, nine hundred thousand dollars per month, or more than ten million
dollars per annum that they send away. This is the drain which two
States with less than one million inhabitants are annually subjected to.
How long would Massachusetts bear a similar drain, before through all
her length and breadth, her cities would blaze with riots, all her air
grow black with murder? Ireland, with six times as many people, and with
the richest of soils, on half that tax, has become so poor that around
her is drawn the pity of the world.
"'But,' say the Eastern people, 'you must receive them, Christianize
them, and after awhile they will assimilate with you.'
"Waiving the degradation to us, which that implies, they propose an
impossibility. They might just as well go down to where the Atlantic
beats against the shore, and shout across the waste to the Gulf stream,
commanding it to assimilate with the 'common waters' of the sea. Not
more mysterious is the law that holds that river of the deep within its
liquid banks, than is the instinct which prevents the Chinaman from
shaking off his second nature and becoming an American. He looks back
through the halo of four thousand years, sees that without change, the
nation of his forefathers has existed, and with him all other existing
nations except Japan and India and Persia, are parvenues.
"For thousands of years, he and his fathers before him, have been waging
a hand-to-hand conflict with Want. He has stripped and disciplined
himself until he is superior to all hardships except famine, and that he
holds at bay longer than any other living creature could.
"Through this training process from their forms everything has
disappeared except a capacity to work; in their brains every attribute
has died except the selfish ones; in their hearts nearly all generous
emotions have been starved to death. The faces of the men have given up
their beards, the women have surrendered their breasts and the ability
to blush has faded from their faces.
"Like all animals of fixed colors they change neither in habits nor
disposition. In four thousand years they have changed no more than have
the wolves that make their lairs in the foothills of the Ural mountains,
except that they have learned to economize until they can even live upon
half the air which the white man requires to exist in. They have trained
their stomachs until they are no longer the stomachs of men; but such as
are possessed by beasts of prey; they thrive on food from which the
Caucasian turns with loathing, and on this dreadful fare work for
sixteen hours out of the twenty-four.
"The moral sentiments starved to death in their souls centuries ago.
They hold woman as but an article of merchandise and delight to profit
by her shame.
"Other foreigners come to America to share the fortunes of Americans.
Even the poor Italian, with organ and monkey, dreams while turning his
organ's crank, that this year or next, or sometime, he will be able to
procure a little home, have a garden of his own, and that his children
will grow up--sanctified by citizenship--defenders of our flag.
"But the Chinaman comes with no purpose except for plunder; the sole
intention is to get from the land all that is possible, with the design
of carrying it or sending it back to native land. The robbery is none
the less direct and effective for being carried on with a non-combatant
smile instead of by force.
"It is such a race as this that we are asked to welcome and compete
with, and when we explain that the food we each require--we, without
wife or child to share with--costs more in the market daily than these
creatures are willing to work for and board themselves; the question,
with a lofty disdain, is asked: 'Are you afraid to compete with a
Chinaman?'
"It is an unworthy question, born of ignorance and a false
sentimentality; for no mortal can overcome the impossible.
"In the cities these creatures fill the places of domestics and absorb
all the simpler trades. The natural results follow. Girls and boys grow
up without ever being disciplined to labor. But girls and boys must have
food and clothes. If their parents can not clothe and feed them other
people must. If poor girls with heads and hands untrained have nothing
but youth and beauty to offer for food, when hungry enough they will
barter both for bread.
"The vices and diseases which the Chinese have already scattered
broadcast over the west, are maturing in a harvest of measureless and
indescribable suffering.
"The Chinese add no defense to the State. They have no patriotism except
for native land; they are all children of degraded mothers, and as
soldiers are worthless.
"Moreover it is not a question of sharing our country with them; it is
simply a question of whether we should surrender it to them or not. When
the western nations thoroughly understand the Chinese they will realize
that with their numbers, their imitative faculties, their capacity to
live and to work on food which no white man can eat, with their
appalling thrift and absence of moral faculties, they are, to-day, the
terror of the earth.
"The nations forced China to open her gates to them. It was one of the
saddest mistakes of civilization.
"To ask that their further coming be stopped, is simply making a
plea for the future generations of Americans, a prayer for the
preservation of our Republic. It springs from man's primal right of
self-preservation, and when we are told that we should share our country
and its blessings with the Chinese, the first answer is that they
possess already one-tenth of the habitable globe; their empire has
everything within it to support a nation; they have, besides, the
hoarded wealth of a hundred generations, and if these were not enough,
there are still left illimitable acres of savage lands. Let them go
occupy and subdue them.
"The civilization of China had been as perfect as it now is for two
thousand years when our forefathers were still barbarians. While our
race has been subduing itself and at the same time learning the lessons
which lead up to submission to order and to law; while, moreover, it has
been bringing under the aegis of freedom a savage continent, the
Mongolian has remained stationary. To assert that we should now turn
over this inheritance (of which we are but the trustees for the future),
or any part of it, to 'the little brown men,' is to forget that a
nation's first duty is like a father's, who, by instinct, watches over
his own child with more solicitude than over the child of a stranger,
and who, above all things, will not place his child under the influence
of anything that will at once contaminate and despoil him.
"Finally, by excluding these people no principle of our Government is
set aside, and no vital practice which has grown up under our form of
government. Ours is a land of perfect freedom, but we arrest robbers and
close our doors to lewd women. While these precautions are right and
necessary it is necessary and right to turn back from our shores the
sinister hosts of the Orient."
With this the whole Club except Brewster heartily agreed. Brewster
merely said: "Maybe you are right, but your argument ignores the saving
grace of Christianity, and maybe conflicts with God's plans."
Then the good-nights were said.