estion of Chinese immigration is a large one. It has its social
and its political aspects. It is found all along the Pacific coast
that Chinamen make good and faithful servants. The outcry against them
as competing with white laborers and artisans is more the result of
political agitation for political purposes than good judgment. Where
they have been displaced on farms, in mills, in warehouses, in
domestic life, white men and women have not been found to take their
places and do the work which they can do so well. Under the Geary Act
immigration has been restricted and the numbers of the Chinese in the
United States have been gradually decreasing. In the year 1854 there
were only 3,000 Chinese in the City of San Francisco; but even then
there was agitation against them. It was Governor Bigler who called
them "coolies," and this term they repudiated with the same abhorrence
which the negro or black man has for the term "nigger." They kept on
increasing, however, until in 1875 there were in the whole State of
California 130,000. Of this number 30,000 were in San Francisco.
To-day there are only about 46,000 in California and there are not
more than thirty thousand of these in the City of San Francisco. There
are only 110,000 Chinese altogether in the United States proper. Even
the most ardent exclusionist can see from this that there is nothing
to dread as to an overwhelming influx that will threaten the integrity
and existence of our civilisation. The labour-question and the
race-question and the international question, aroused by the presence
of the Chinese within our borders, will from time to time cause
agitation and provoke discussion and heated debate and evoke oratory
of one kind or another; but the question which should be uppermost in
the minds of wise statesmen is how shall they be assimilated to our
life? How shall we make them Christians? The answer will be the
best solution of the whole matter, if it has in mind the spiritual
interests of the Chinaman and of all other heathen on our shores.
There is indeed a plague spot in Chinatown, the social fester,
which can and ought to be removed. But this is true of American San
Francisco as well as of Chinatown. What, we may ask, are the men and
women of as beautiful a city as ever sat on Bay or Lake or Sea-Shore
or River, doing for its purgation, for its release from moral
defilement and "garments spotted with the flesh?" This indeed is one
of the searching questions