5TA AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
the importation of females from China, there are painful facts of late 
development which show that they are brought to this country for pur- 
_ poses of public prostitution—a nefarious traffic in which both Ameri- 
can and Chinese enterprise is enlisted. Women are at a great discount 
in China, as in all heathen countries. They are sold by their parents to 
escape starvation. The wife and daughters of a bankrupt Chinese are 
sold among his other goods and chattels to meet the demands of rapacious 
creditors. Many immigrants to this country were compelled to mort- 
gage their families in order to pay their passage-money. Bat, as if 
this legal traffic did not suffice to meet the bestial demands of our 
Christian civilization, it is understood that a regular system of piracy 
in theriver and maritime provinces of China overridesthe weak lecal police 
and seizes whole villages, holding the rich for ransom, and selling the poor 
into slavery. This system of piracy was illustrated by a placard lately 
posted in the streets of San Francisco by a Chinaman, reciting the abduc- 
tion of his sister by these wretches, and her transportation to a brothel in 
that American city. The facts were made public in a legal investigation. 
Itis evident, that with the Chinese female immigration already secured, 
no permanent family organization can be expected, and that consequently 
the Chinese race will not be propagated in this country. Their continu- 
ance as a part of our population is then limited to the natural life of the 
immigrant. Nothing in their deportment points to any permanent 
assimilation with our social system. ‘That the present aggregate of 
Chinese in this country will probably be greatly enlarged in coming 
years there is little room to doubt; but that they will become interested 
_ in our political affairs, or that they will ever amount to a considerable 
part of our population, does not appear from any facts yet developed. 
Certain parties and interestsin this country are demanding legisla- 
tion which shall restrict or prohibit the further importation of these 
cheap laborers. It is not at all likely, however, that such unanimity of 
public sentiment will be secured asis necessary to secure this adverse legis- 
lation. By a majority of two-thirds of both houses of Congress, ratified 
by three-fourths of the State legislatures, all political disqualifieations 
arising from “ race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” have been 
abolished. To revive in the case of the Asiaticthe restrictions and 
disabilities that- have just been removed from the African; to nar- 
row down a broad principle of the universal brotherhood of mankind to 
which this nation was educated only through bloodshed and suffering, will 
require a majority equal to that by which the fifteenth amendment Was 
ingrafted upon our organic law. It will require also a repudiation of 
the Burlingame treaty. It is scarcely possible that the American peo- 
ple can be persuaded upon mere theoretical consideration to re- 
peal their late organic legislation, or to repudiate their public faith. 
That the introduction of cheap Asiatic labor upon an extended scale 
may ultimately affect some of our industries is possible. Labor-saving 
machinery has been doing the same with every improvement that has 
been introduced, yet no one would now be willing to go back to the 
days of primitive, rude processes. It has been found that the disorgan- 
ization of industry resulting from past improvements of this character 
has been but temporary and superficial—preliminary to higher organi- 
zation of productive and financial interests. They have been found to 
elevate and ameliorate the laborer himself. Labor-saving processes 
save much of the drudgery which once oppressed the heart and brain 
and muscles of the toiling laborer. Machinery is now the mud-sill of 
society. While it has cheapened production by superseding useless and 
cumbrous processes of hand labor, it has, by enlarging preduction, 
