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I do know that this sickly shirking offers the freest invitation to the 

 Mongolian competitor. Your finikin white man cannot stand the 

 burden and heat of the day levee building, and the Chinaman slides 

 softly into the place and does stand it. Yet the finikin white man 

 will hold a levee at a free lunch table, and levy tribute at the street 

 corners on his working acquaintances. Remember, please, I am not 

 so blind to facts as to include all white laborers under the idle head, 

 but I am — as you are — sufficiently awake to the fact that specimens 

 of the class are awfully numerous. It has been my constant cry to 

 the lounging unemployed, " Go into the country and work!" The 

 cry is caught up by superintendent, overseer, and rancher, and sent 

 back, "Come into the country to work ! ' : But the hard fact is that 

 the ill-treated bummers shift their shoulders, change legs, but other- 

 wise do not budge an inch. They are like the children in the mar- 

 ket-place, who did not dance, though they were piped to never so 

 wisely. Talk about strikes— strikers are not occasional in San Fran- 

 cisco, they are incessant; striking is not sporadic, it is an epidemic. 

 Poor men who have not had a "meal's vittels for a fortnight," strike 

 you for a dime about every other block. A millionaire said to me 

 only a fortnight ago — a millionaire, by the by, who has not scrupled 

 to work with his hands when he could find none for his head — said 

 he, "The number of do-nothings is frightfully on the increase in San 

 Francisco. I declare that not a day passes but I am applied to by 

 half a dozen or half a score for relief — pecuniary relief. Men whom 

 I thought to be well fixed, as well as professional spongers, ask for 

 anything from twenty dollars to twenty-five cents. They are most 

 persistent, too, and are evidently so hard-pressed that it is a question 

 of actual existence with them." 



Here steps in the strong anti-coolie man, rabid with Chinaphobia, 

 and cries, " Give the reason, give the cause of this shameful beggary. 

 Tell your hearers, would it exist if fair encouragement were given to 

 white labor, and the pig-tailed, rat-eyed, cat-footed heathen choked 

 off? Tell them if the reason stands that way or no." 



Well, ladies and gentlemen, I don't believe it does. I believe 

 cause and effect are muddled by these strong anti-coolie people, and 

 whilst I am conscious of the possibility of disaster arising from too 

 great an influx of outside forces, I do not hold to averting that possi- 

 ble disaster by injustice. I put it to you, if there is any difference 

 between the loafer who stones the working Chinaman and the rascal 

 who tears down his neighbor's fences to let in stray stock for fear they 

 should come through the unmended gaps in his own. The result of 

 honest inquiry amongst master-farmers and contractors leads to the 

 belief that had they to depend solely upon white labor work would 

 lag and stop. Whether it be harvesting or plowing, shearing or 

 herding, fruit picking or making butter, the great difficulty seems to 

 be in engaging men who will stay. If the work is a trifle hard, they 

 get sick about lunch time, ask for fifty cents for physic, and are seen 

 no more. Remember, again, I grant there are exceptions, but am I 

 not right in the general phrasing of my rule? 



These master-farmers and contractors say again, "We would rather 

 employ white men than Chinese, because we believe white men do a 

 better day's w r ork. It is the exception for us to refuse the white man 

 employment, and it is the exception for him to remain with us over 

 a week. The consequence is, interruptions and set-backs, whilst the 

 Chinese work on quietly, though slowly, month in and month out." 



