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.
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