NEW PHASES IN THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 187 



ter of the town. Its natural advantages made it the choice of the 

 early American settlers, and as such it would doubtless have 

 remained to-day had it not been for the advent of the Chinese. 

 These latter, seeing also its advantages, located themselves there. 

 As they increased in numbers, Christian civilization with instinct- 

 ive repugnance retreated before them, until, within this entire dis- 

 trict, once literally San Francisco itself, there is not a vestige of 

 American civilization remaining save in the abandoned homes, 

 churches, and other private and public buildings, each one of 

 which fairly swarms with hordes of unclean and unsavory Chi- 

 nese. A missionary writer, the Rev. Mr. Gibson, an advocate of 

 Chinese immigration for Christianizing purposes, tells the story in 

 his book, " The Chinese in America," of the abandonment of the 

 ' First Baptist Church " in San Francisco to the Chinese : 



" What was lately the First Baptist Church of San Francisco 

 is now a crowded Chinese tenement-house, full of all manner of 

 filthiness, shame, and sin. Where but lately was the altar of the 

 living God, now smokes the incense of idolatry. That sacred 

 temple, where once the voice of prayer and praise to God was 

 heard, now echoes with idolatrous chants and bacchanalian songs. 

 Instead of standing firm against the incoming hosts of idolatry 

 and sin, the Church of Christ has beaten an ignominious retreat, 

 has surrendered without a struggle one of the strongest fortifica- 

 tions and retreated in disorder before the advancing hosts of 

 idolatry." Thus, here as elsewhere, they have established their 

 supremacy, defied all laws for their government and the suppres- 

 sion of their vices/and erected themselves into an imperium in 

 imperio, conquering and still to conquer. 



If the further coming of this race be successfully prevented, it 

 will probably be contended that, among the new generations which 

 are to be born here, and which will be entitled to all the rights and 

 privileges of American citizenship by reason of that fact, the in- 

 fluences of Christian civilization will be so powerful as to oblit- 

 erate race habits and vices, and substitute those of our own race 

 for their own. There has been no test of this under these special 

 conditions, and therefore there can be nothing foretold with pre- 

 cision in regard to it. We can not lose sight of the fact, however, 

 that the children born of Chinese parents in San Francisco so far 

 are as distinctly Chinese in race, habits, superstitions, vices, and 

 costume as were their fathers before them. Thus far there has 

 not been a perceptible change in them. As in every other coun- 

 try where they have colonized the same results have followed, 

 why should we look for different results here ? It will be said 

 that they are quick to learn, and capable of excelling in all classes 

 of skilled labor, and therefore they should be equally responsive in 

 exchanging their race habits and civilization for our own. How- 



