SOCIETY. 47 



leave. But the chief sufferer would be San Francisco, which 

 would find many factories closed, five hundred houses vacant, 

 and several thousand white men deprived of their incomes. 



The idea that industrious, economical, and skillful laborers 

 can impoverish a country, is absurd. They must enrich it. 

 The lower the wages for which they work, the greater the prof- 

 it made by the remainder of the community. The more of 

 the cheap laborers, the better for the others. The white men 

 have vast advantages in the possession of all the capital, the 

 language, the mechanical skill, the government, and the ex- 

 clusive right of claiming mines and preempting farms on the 

 Federal domain. Under these circumstances, if they cannot 

 compete with the Chinamen, then for the welfare of California, 

 they should give way before the stronger race. But there is 

 no danger that the white men would be driven out of Cali- 

 fornia. On the contrary, the more Chinamen, the more white 

 men. 



Fears have been entertained that the poor whites would be 

 swamped by the immigration of Celestials, not only to Cali- 

 fornia, but also to the Atlantic States and Europe ; but there is 

 no ground for apprehension. The estimate of 350,000,000 in- 

 habitants for China is too high by 100,000,000, according to 

 the latest authorities ; and if the Chinese emigrants were kindly 

 received and properly taught the useful arts in Christian lands, 

 factories in the valleys of the Yangtze and Hoangho would 

 soon furnish employment for their surplus labor. It is the in- 

 terest of California that the Chinese should emigrate, partly 

 to stimulate business in China, partly to increase production 

 on all the coasts of the Pacific, and partly to provide numer- 

 ous skilled laborers, who will go back to their native country 

 and help to build up their manufactories of iron, cotton, silk, 

 wool, etc., with the help of steam. China has the coal, the 

 iron, the labor, and the capital, and when the skill shall be pro- 

 vided, the work will soon be done. Our prosperity is intim- 

 ately associated with that of our Asiatic neighbors. 



