Alta California, San Francisco
Monday, March 8, 1852
Importation of Chinese on Labor Contracts
Our Chinese neighbors are usually looked upon as a race so wedded to old custom and locality as to be
averse to any change, much more so to so great a one as emigration to a strange country would involve.
Yet the early navigators found colonies of this painstaking, industrious race scattered through the
Archipelego, their numbers constantly increasing, supplying a material of labor without which many of
the ports which now have large commerce would be almost valueless. They are the merchants and contractors,
the mechanics and the laborers. They are found ship-building in Siam, shop-keeping in Singapore, cultivating
and mining in Borneo, and conducting almost the whole traffic of the Phillippines; and not at all averse
to adding thieving and piracy to their other vocations in either place, provided it may be safe. In every
location where the execution of the law is active, they are orderly and industrious citizens - valuable, indeed,
in countries whose climate and the ease with which every want is supplied, have made indolence habitual. In all the
situations in which they are thus found the system is the same: the Cooleys are imported by the wealthy Chinese,
receiving from them a certain amount of labor in payment for their passage and to support their families.
In the same newspaper, Monday, May 10, 1852
The First Chinese Emigrants to California arrived in the Brig Eagle, from Hongkong, in the month of
February, 1848 - two men and one woman. But four arrived during the succeeding twelve months. Total in California
May 7th, 1852 11,787. Of this number 7 are women, the remaining are men and boys.
Shasta Courier - Sat., Dec. 03, 1853
"What is to be Done with the Chinamen?
|