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The Chinese Defended

View a copy of “The Chinese Defended.”  Montreal Daily Star 29 September 1896.

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“E.E.” Replies to Her Critics of Saturday, and is supported by a Brooklyn Doctor.  Both claim that Mongolians are Entitled to Consideration at Canada’s Hands.

To the Editor of the Star:

Sir. – Two letters referring to mine of the 19th appeared in your Star on Saturday.  I wish to answer those communications at length, and if you will kindly give me space you will be giving the Chinese an opportunity to have a fair fight with those who will persist in slandering them.  Up till now their enemies have had it all their own way, but “even a worm will turn.”

Mr. Buchanan need not affect to pass over as a joke what I brought forward as the chief cause for the persecution of the Chinese.  If he has been amongst them as he asserts, he will know that whenever they are ill used by the whites in the street they are called such names as “Yellow face,” “Pig-tail,” “Slanty-eyes” and so forth.  I myself have heard those epithets bestowed on handsome Chinamen by men who were themselves as homely as can be made.

He says that he has been Mr. Maxwell’s personal friend for thirty years.  No doubt about that “Birds of a feather flock together.”  He and Mr. Maxwell are like the bigots of olden time, who, in the name of religion, burnt and tortured poor innocent old women, the only reason given for such acts being their belief that their victims were witches and liable to harm the community in which they lived.

“It would take too much time to follow E.E. in her long attack upon ‘persecutors.’ I only wish to assure the public that she is all wrong about the people who differ from her, and I desire briefly to show the other side of the argument without abusing the other side as E.E. does so consistently.”

It is the party who begins the battle who “attacks.”  The party who stands up for the persecuted is a defender.  And, after all, where is the “other side” Mr. Buchanan alludes to.  There are a lot of men howling like wolves after the Chinese on one side, but there is really no party to howl back.  Sir Henry Joly and Mr. Fraser present the Chinese case in a fair light as just men, but they have no thought of fighting on the same lines as the saintly Mr. Maxwell, who, with grief at his heart and tears in his eyes is forced by duty to explode so many “unpleasant truths” on the backs of the Chinese.  Listen to Mr. Buchanan:

“I have lived four years in the very heart of the Chinese, at the canneries, on the Fraser River; have had them sleep in my house; have fed them; have protected them; have striven to give them the gospel; have visited their boarding houses, gambling dens, opium joints stores, etc.; have protested against their vices, and have been acquainted with scores of them in every relation of life, and my contention is that they are an unmitigated evil.  So much do I believe this that I have helped in every way the F.M.C. of the Presbyterian Church to provide the only antidote to the Chinamen’s vices, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The artfulness of that paragraph quite staggers me  The readers of the Star can see for themselves that Mr. Buchanan has advertised all his own virtues, especially that of benevolence, and to show them off to good advantage puts them alongside of the Chinamen’s vices, and all this is done, you know, ‘without abusing the other side.’

It makes me shudder to think of the Gospel being mixed up with a dose of “envy, malice and uncharitableness,” and then rammed into the poor Chinese.  I feel like praying, “Lord, save the poor Chinese from the Gospel.”  I believe that it is infinitely better to be a heathen than a Christian such as Mr. Buchanan.  God is just, and he will provide a heaven for the heathen whom He has made heathen.

I would like to ask from whom Mr. Buchanan protected the Chinese.  From himself?  Surely they have no worse enemy.  I am positive that he didn’t find that hey worked “too cheap” for him.  I wish I could see and talk with those Chinese whom Mr. Buchanan fed and housed and protected.

I am a little surprised that Mr. Buchanan, who has “helped in every way the F.M.C. of the Presbyterian Church to provide the only antidote for the Chinaman’s vices—the Gospel for the Lord Jesus Christ,” should want to keep the Chinaman away from that antidote.  It is really unkind of him—unless, of course, he has not as much faith in that antidote as he pretends to have.  I know if I were a Chinaman, and Mr. Buchanan came to me with his antidote, I’d dash it to the ground, declaring it was poison.

Mr. Buchanan echoes Mr. Maxwell when he says: “The white man is under the restraint of civilization, and endeavors to hide his wrong doing, while the Chinaman has no sense of wrong and no sense of shame.”

Why, the Chinese are the oldest civilized people on the face of this earth—as all widely educated people know, their’s is a grand civilization.

The Chinese who come to Canada, are mostly country boys; they have had a common school education, and from an early age have been trained to work—and the habit of working is strong on them.  How, then, can they be gaol birds, dissipated characters and diseased?  Such cannot work, we know that.  The Chinaman by his labor here proves himself to be what he claims he is.  It is impossible for a hard-working man to be an out and bad fellow.  Why, the poor things have no time to indulge in the vices they are charged with.

Then opium smoking comes up.  Without going into the history of opium smoking by the Chinese, which, as we all know, would tell against the whites, I would say that if, as Mr. Buchanan says, ninety-five per cent of them smoke opium, then he must take back his statement that a Chinaman lives cheap, for opium smoking is expensive.  The fascinating pipe costs each smoker from one to five dollars per day.  I have certain knowledge about this, and feel justified in saying that those who smoke opium amongst the Chinese are in very small minority.

Gambling is as much a white man’s vice as a Chinaman’s, and the white man has less excuse, for the Chinaman has few amusements, and I myself have often felt glad that they could while away an evening in a game of cards or dominoes.  “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Regarding the cost of living—he declares no Chinaman in British Columbia spends more than five dollars per month – how can this be true when he says his rice and tea cost $4.  Will one dollar pay for all his other necessaries such as pork, chickens, fish, vegetables and also lodging, to say nothing of tobacco?  A Chinese laborer lives as well as a white laborer in like condition.  Rice is more expensive than bread as the staff of life in this country.  We have tried it with a large family of children.

I can see nothing in collecting leavings of hotels and so forth—white people do the same all over America.   I have known respectable English families in the city ho have made very good meals out of the leavings of hotels.

“They huddle together and live in tents three feet high and six feet long.”

 Well, we always find the poor in masses.  In New York the most crowded part is where the Italians congregate.  I could live in the Chinatown of that city, but there are other places there through which I would not venture to walk, and the denizens of such places were all white people.

 “Now as to the result of all this their physical health is always bad and they become the victims of disease, which we white people call vice and crime.”

What! When men fall sick from being badly fed and badly housed, he calls them “vicious criminals!”  On the top of a poor man’s misfortunes he pours vials of wrath and denunciation.  That’s what I call savage.

The majority of Montreal’s five hundred have come from British Columbia, and that is how I know all about the British Columbians.  I know just how the Chinese have made British Columbia what it is to-day—it is their industry which has made it fit for the white people to work in—those white people who are now trying to drive them out.  Why, the Chinese are the pioneers of British Columbia; they are the true British Columbians, and it is they and not the whites who should be claiming privileges from the Government.

Really, the white men ought to feel ashamed to complain about the Chinese—the latter labor under so many disadvantages.  A Scotch gentleman who has lived both in China and British Columbia and whose word cannot be doubted has told me how the Chinamen are taxed in every possible way.  First, a head tax, then a tax for being allowed to work, and innumerable other taxes which are being imposed upon them even while they are walking down the street, getting on to boats, cars, etc.  All who own a little land or a shanty are taxed over and over again  A collector of taxes told him that a Chinaman always paid his taxes, even when they were illegally claimed, for he was afraid to kick against paying them, like the white man, who generally got off.

The Chinamen too contributes liberally to the collection plate in his Sunday school.  How many white laboring men in B.C. give to like causes.

It is true outside of what is needed for the necessaries of life and his taxes, the Chinaman spends little, but there is usually a wife and sometimes a father and mother and children at home to support.  Chinamen marry very young, and there is not a bachelor in every two hundred of the Chinamen who come to this country—and the Chinaman does not shirk his responsibilities, nor yet does he carry his heart on his sleeve.  He has affections, but he betrays them in actions, not words.  Emigrants from other lands talk liberally and weep copiously about those they have left behind, but the Chinaman unbosoms not himself.  In sturdy silence he works and sends home every month a cheerful letter, and if possible, some of his earnings.

There is no danger of “the teeming population of China overflowing this fair country.”  The Chinaman likes his own land too well—he is an exile here—he has no wish to remove—and if some Chinamen are coming in all the time—others are going out.

I must quote Mr. Buchanan yet again.  His letter is but an echo of dozens of others which have been written from time to time concerning the Chinese.  Very foolish prejudiced effusions, yet at the same time calculated to stir up the ignorant.  Mr. Buchanan says.

“In conclusion, Mr. Editor, let me says that letters like that of E.E., while they are intended to help the Chinese, are only calculated to do them an injustice and an injury.”

If Mr. Buchanan honestly believed in his conclusions, he would never have written the letter which was published in Saturday’s “Star.” Which can plainly be seen was written because he believed I had succeeded in proving Mr. Maxwell’s charges false and unfounded, and because being “personally interested” in Mr. Maxwell, and holding the same opinions what I had said reflected just as much against himself as against his dear friend.

I would like to make a few remarks on what E.S. has written, but have taken up too much space already.  Besides I can see that E.S. is a straight and downright hater of the Chinese and does not pose as a “giver of the Gospel.”  Therefore, he or she is harmless—violent speeches only affect us for a minute.  It is the enemy who pretends to be a friend whom one has to guard against.  I should judge, however, that E.S. has had no personal acquaintance with the Chinese people—has perhaps been reading some dime novels in which Six Companies of Assassins play a conspicuous part.  I believe the Hoodlums have got up some such stories.

- Edith Eaton.

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