Unfortunately the stream of foreign trade with China has been contaminated by many of the vices which disgrace our civilization. The pioneer traders were, as a rule, pirates and adventurers, who cheated and abused the Chinese most flagrantly. Gorst says that ``rapine, murder and a constant appeal to force chiefly characterized the commencement of Europe's commercial intercourse with China.'' There are many men of high character engaged in business in the great cities of China. I would not speak any disparaging word of those who are worthy of all respect. But it is all too evident that ``many Americans and Europeans doing business in Asia are living the life of the prodigal son who has not yet come to himself.'' Profane, intemperate, immoral, not living among the Chinese, but segregating themselves in foreign communities in the treaty ports, not speaking the Chinese language, frequently beating and cursing those who are in their employ, regarding the Chinese with hatred and contempt,—it is no wonder that they are hated in return and that their conduct has done much to justify the Chinese distrust of the foreigner. The foreign settlements in the port cities of China are notorious for their profligacy. Intemperance and immorality, gambling and Sabbath desecration run riot. When after his return from a long journey in Asia, the Rev. Dr. George Pentecost was asked— ``What are the darkest spots in the missionary outlook?'' he replied:—
``In lands of spiritual darkness, it is difficult to speak of `darkest spots.' I should say, however, that if there is a darkness more dark than other darkness, it is that which is cast into heathen darkness by the ungodliness of the American and European communities that have invaded the East for the sake of trade and empire. The corruption of Western godliness is the worst evil in the East. Of course there are noble exceptions among western commercial men and their families, but as a rule the European and American resident in the East is a constant contradiction to all and everything which the missionary stands for.''
Most of the criticisms of missionaries which find their way into the daily papers emanate from such men. The missionaries do not gamble or drink whiskey, nor will their wives and daughters attend or reciprocate entertainments at which wine, cards and dancing are the chief features. So, of course, the missionaries are ``canting hypocrites,'' and are believed to be doing no good, because the foreigner who has never visited a Chinese Christian Church, school or hospital in his life, does not see the evidences of missionary work in his immediate neighbourhood. The editor of the Japan Daily Mail justly says:—[29]
[29] April 7, 1901
``We do not suggest that these newspapers which denounce the missionaries so vehemently desire to be unjust or have any suspicion that they are unjust. But we do assert that they have manifestly taken on the colour of that section of every far eastern community whose units, for some strange reason, entertain an inveterate prejudice against the missionary and his works. Were it possible for these persons to give an intelligent explanation of the dislike with which the missionary inspires them, their opinions would command more respect. But they have never succeeded in making any logical presentment of their case, and no choice offers except to regard them as the victims of an antipathy which has no basis in reason or reflection, That a man should be anti-Christian and should de- vote his pen to propagating his views is strictly within his right, and we must not be understood as suggesting that the smallest reproach attaches to such a person. But on the other hand, it is within the right of the missionary to protest against being arraigned before judges habitually hostile to him, and it is within the right of the public to scrutinize the pronouncements of such judges with much suspicion.''
Charles Darwin did not hesitate to put the matter more bluntly still. He will surely not be deemed a prejudiced witness, but he plainly said of the traders and travellers who attack missionaries:—
``It is useless to argue against such reasoners. I believe that, disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as formerly, they will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to practice, or to a religion which they undervalue or despise.''
These facts are a suggestive commentary on the popular notion that civilization should precede Christianity. The Rev. Dr. James Stewart, the veteran missionary of South Africa, says that it is an ``unpleasant and startling statement, unfortunately true, that contact with European nations seems always to have resulted in further deterioration of the African races. . . . Trade and commerce have been on the West Coast of Africa for more than three centuries. What have they made of that region? Some of its tribes are more hopeless, more sunken morally and socially, and rapidly becoming more commercially valueless, than any tribes that may be found throughout the whole of the continent. Mere commercial influence by its example or its teaching during all that time has had little effect on the cruelty and reckless shedding of blood and the human sacrifices of the besotted paganism which still exists near that coast.'' Of his experience in New Guinea, James Chalmers declared:—``I have had twenty-one years' experience among natives. I have lived with the Christian native, and I have lived, and dined, and slept with cannibals. But I have never yet met with a single man or woman, or with a single people, that civilization without Christianity has civilized.''
Substantially similar statements might be made regarding other lands.
``The more we open the world to what we call civilization, and the more education we give it of the kind we call scientific, the greater are the dangers to modern society, unless in some way we contrive to make all the world better. Brigands armed with repeating rifles and supplied with smokeless gunpowder are brigands still, but ten times more dangerous than before. The vaste hordes of human beings in Asia and Africa, so long as they are left in seclusion, are dangerous to their immediate neighbours; but, when they have railroads, steamboats, tariffs, and machine guns, while they retain their savage ideals and barbarous customs, they become dangerous to all the rest of the world.''[30]
[30] Christian Register, December 3, 1903.
A Christless civilization is always and everywhere a curse rather than a blessing. From the Garden of Eden down, the fall of man has resulted from ``the increase of knowledge and of power unaccompanied by reverence…. No evolution is stable which neglects the moral factor or seeks to shake itself free from the eternal duties of obedience and of faith. . . . The Song of Lamech echoes from a remote antiquity the savage truth that `the first results of civilization are to equip hatred and render revenge more deadly, . . . a savage exultation in the fresh power of vengeance which all the novel instruments have placed in their inventor's hands.' ''[31]
[31] The Rev. Dr. George Adam Smith, D. D., ``Yale Lectures,'' pp. 95-97.
What is civilization without the gospel? The essential elements of our civilization are the fruits of Christianity, and the tree cannot be transplanted without its roots. Can a railroad or a plow convert a man? They can add to his material comfort; they can enlarge the opportunities of the gospel, but are they the gospel itself? What does civilization without Christianity mean? It means the lust of the European and American soldiers which is rotting the native Hawaiians, the European and American liquor which is debauching the Africans, the opium which is enervating the Chinese, 6,000 tons a year coming from India at a profit of $32,000,000 to the English Government.[32]
[32] The Rev. Dr. Henry van Dyke, Sermon.
How can such a civilization prepare the way for Christianity? As a matter of fact, the Chinese already have a civilization, and if our civilization is considered apart from its distinctively Christian elements, it is not so much superior to the Chinese as we are apt to imagine. The differences are chiefly matters of taste and education. The truth is that always and everywhere,—
``civilization, so far from obliterating iniquity, imports into the world iniquities of its own. It changes to some degree the aspects of iniquity, but does not make them less. Further than that its effect is rather regularly to dress iniquity in a less repulsive and more attractive form, and in that way makes it more difficult to get rid of than before. There is no sin so insinuating as refined and elegant sin, and of that civilization is the expert patron and champion. The sin that is the devil's chief stock in trade is not what is going on in Hester Street, but on the polite avenues. . . . Evangelization conducts to civilization, but civilization has no necessary bearing on evangelization; that is to say, there is in civilization no energy inherently calculated to yield gospel facts. By carrying schools and arts, trade and manufacture, among people that are now savages you may be able to refine the quality of their deviltry, but that is not even the first step towards making angels, or even saints of them.''[33]
[33] The Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, Sermon.
Lowell is said to have administered the following stinging rebuke to the skeptical critics who sneered about missionaries and declared the adequacy of civilization without them:—
``When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, manhood respected, womanhood honoured, and human life held in due regard; when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way, and laid the foundation and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move thither and there ventilate their views.''
But we may add Darwin's conjecture that ``should a voyager chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have extended thus far.'' Bishop Thoburn says that no nation without Christianity has ever advanced a step, and that while in Washington there are 6,000 models of plows invented by Americans, India is using the same plow as in the days of David and Solomon. But wherever Christ's gospel goes, true civilization appears. ``A better soul will soon make better circumstances; but better circumstances will not necessarily make a better soul.''[34]
[34] The Rev. Dr. James H. Snowden.
``We must be here to work,And men who work can only work for men,And not to work in vain must comprehendHumanity, and so work humanly,And raise men's bodies still by raising souls.''
[35] Part of this chapter appeared as an article in the American Monthly Review of Reviews, February, 1904.
THE extension of trade has naturally been accompanied not only by the increase of foreign steamship lines to the numerous port cities of China, but by the development of almost innumerable coastwise and river vessels. Many of these are owned and operated by the Chinese themselves, but as steamers came with the foreigners and as they drive out the native junks and bring beggary to their owners, the masses of the Chinese cannot be expected to feel kindly towards such competition, however desirable the steamer may appear to be from the view-point of a more disinterested observer. But this interference with native customs has been far less revolutionary than that of the railways.
The pressure of foreign commerce upon China has naturally resulted in demands for concessions to build railways, in order that the country might be opened up for traffic and the products of the interior be more easily and quickly brought to the coast. The first railroad in China was built by British promoters in 1876. It ran from Shanghai to Woosung, only fourteen miles. Great was the excitement of the populace, and no sooner was it completed than the Government bought it, tore up the road- bed, and dumped the engines into the river. That ended railway-building till 1881, when, largely through the influence of Wu Ting-fang, late Chinese Minister to the United States, the Chinese themselves, under the guidance of an English engineer, built a little line from the Kai-ping coal mines to Taku, at the mouth of the Pei-ho River and the ocean gate way to the capital. Seeing the benefit of this road, the Chinese raised further funds, borrowed more from the English, and gradually extended it 144 miles to Shan-hai Kwan on the north, while they ran another line to Tien-tsin, twenty-seven miles from Tong-ku, and thence onward seventy-nine miles direct to Peking. This system forms the Imperial Railway and belongs to the Chinese Government, though bonds are held by the English, who loaned money for construction, and though English and American engineers built and superintended the system. The local staff, however, is Chinese.
No more concessions were granted to foreigners till 1895, but then they were given so rapidly that, in 1899 when the Boxer Society first began to attract attention, there were, including the Imperial Railway, not only 566 miles in operation, but 6,000 miles were projected, and engineers were surveying rights of way through whole provinces. Much of the completed work was undone during the destructive madness of the Boxer uprising, but reconstruction began as soon as the tumult was quelled. According to the Archiv fur Eisenbahnwesen of Germany, the total length of the railways in use in 1903 in China was 1,236 kilometers or about 742 miles.
Several foreign nations have taken an aggressive part in this movement. In the north, Russia, not satisfied with a terminus at cold Vladivostok where ice closes the harbour nearly half the year, steadily demanded concessions which would enable her Trans-Siberian Railway to reach an ice-free winter port, and thus give her a commanding position in the Pacific and a channel through which the trade of northern Asia might reach and enrich Russia's vast possessions in Siberia and Europe. So Russian diplomacy rested not till it had secured the right to extend the Trans-Siberian Railway southward from Sungari through Manchuria to Tachi-chao near Mukden. From there one branch runs southward to Port Arthur and Dalny and another southwestward to Shan-hai Kwan, where the great Wall of China touches the sea. As connection is made at that point with the Imperial Railway to Taku, Tien-tsin and Peking, Moscow 5,746 miles away, is brought within seventeen days of Peking. Thus, Russian influence had an almost unrestricted entrance to China on the North, while a third branch from Mukden to Wiju, on the Korean frontier, will connect with a projected line running from that point southward to Seoul, the capital of Korea. A St. Petersburg dispatch, dated November 26, 1903, states that a survey has just been completed from Kiakhta, Siberia, to Peking by way of Gugon, a distance of about a thousand miles. This road, if built, will give the Russians a short cut direct to the capital.
In the populous province of Shantung, a German railroad, opened April 8, 1901, runs from Tsing-tau on Kiao-chou Bay into the heart of the populous Shantung Province via Weihsien. The line already reaches the capital, Chinan-fu, while ulterior plans include a line from Tsing-tau via Ichou-fu to Chinan-fu, so that German lines will ere long completely encircle this mighty Province. At Chinan-fu, this road will meet another great trunk line, partly German and partly English, which is being pushed southward from Tien-tsin to Chin-kiang. An English sydicate, known as the British-Chinese Corporation, is to control a route from Shanghai via Soochow and Chin-kiang to Nanking and Soochow via Hangchow to Ningpo, while the Anglo-Chinese Railway Syndicate of London is said to be planning a railway from Canton to Cheng-tu-fu, the provincial capital of Sze-chuen. Meanwhile, the original line from Shanghai to Wu-sung has been reconstructed by the English.
One of the most valuable concessions in China has been obtained by the Anglo-Italian Syndicate in the Provinces of Shan-si and Shen-si for it gives the right to construct railways and to operate coal mines in a region where some of the most extensive anthracite deposits in the world are located. A beginning has already been made, and when the lines are completed, the industrial revolution in China will be mightily advanced.
An alleged Belgian syndicate, to which was formed with then wholly disinterested assistance of the French and Russian legations, obtained in 1896 a concession to construct the Lu Han Railway from Peking 750 miles southward to Hankow, the commercial metropolis on the middle Yang-tze River. It is significant, however, that while the Belgian syndicate was temporarily embarrassed, the Russo-Chinese Bank of Peking aided the Chinese Director-General of Railways to begin the section running from Peking to Paoting-fu. The road is open to Shunte-fu, 300 miles south of Peking and to Hsu-chou, 434 kilometers north of Hankow. The Russo-Chinese Bank is building a branch line from Ching-ting via Tai-yuen-fu to Singan-fu in Shen-si, where it will be well started on the beaten caravan route between north China and Russian Central Asia. On November 13, 1903, the Belgian International Eastern Company signed a contract to construct a railway from Kai- feng-fu, the capital of the Province of Honan, 110 miles west to Honan-fu.
I found the line running south from Peking well-built with solid road-bed, massive stone culverts, iron bridges, and heavy steel rails. The first and second class coaches are not attractive in appearance, and though the fare for the former is double that of the latter, the chief discernible difference is that in the first class compartment, which is usually in one end of a second- class car, the seats are curved and the passengers fewer in number, while in the second-class the seats are straight boards and are apt to be crowded with Chinese coolies. Neither class is upholstered and neither would be considered comfortable in America, but after the weeks I had spent in a mule-litter, anything on rails seemed luxurious. Our train was a mixed one,— the first-class compartments containing a few French officers, the second-class filled with Chinese coolies and French soldiers, while a half-dozen flat cars were loaded with horses and mules. A large Roger's locomotive from Paterson, New Jersey, drew our long train smoothly and easily, though the schedule was so slow and the stops so long that we were seven hours and a half in making a run of a hundred miles.
Railway-building in South China, outside of French territory, began with a line from Canton to Hankow which was projected in 1895 by Senator Calvin S. Brice, William Barclay Parsons being the engineer. The usual governmental difficulties were encountered, but in 1902 an imperial decree gave the concession to the American-China Development Company. American capital was to finance the road, though with some European aid. The company had the power, under its concession, to issue fifty-year five per cent. gold bonds to the amount of $42,500,000, the interest being guaranteed by the Chinese Government. The main line will be 700 miles long, and branches will increase the total mileage to 900. On November 15, 1903, a section ten miles long from Canton to Fat-shan was formally opened for traffic in the presence of the Hon. Francis May, colonial secretary and registrar-general of the Hongkong Government, a large number of Europeans and Americans, and immense crowds of Chinese who manifested their excitement by an almost incessant rattle of fire-crackers. By October, 1904, trains were running regularly to Sam-shui, about twenty-five miles beyond Fat-shan. This is a branch line. The main line will run on the other side of the West River. In 1905, the government decided to complete the line itself and cancelled the concession, paying the company as indemnity $6,750,000. A line from Kowloon to Canton has been planned for some time and it is likely to be hastened by the announcement in the South China Morning Post, May 12, 1904, that an American- Chinese syndicate had obtained a concession, granted to the authorities of Macao by China through a special Portuguese Minister, to construct a railway from Macao to Canton. The syndicate hopes to secure American capital and the British merchants of Hongkong are a little nervous as they think of the possibility of an independent outlet for the Canton-Hankow Railway at Macao.
It will thus be seen that if these vast schemes can be realized there will not only be numerous lines running from the coast into the interior, but a great trunk line from Canton through the very heart of the Empire to Peking, where other roads can be taken not only to Manchuria and Korea but to any part of Europe.
In the farther south, the French are equally busy. By the Franco-Chinese Convention of June 20, 1895, a French company secured the right to construct a railroad from Lao- kai to Yun-nan-fu. The French had a road from Hai-fong in Tong-king to Sang-chou at the Chinese frontier, and in 1896 they obtained from China a concession to extend it to Nanning- fu, on the West River. This privilege has since been enlarged so that the line will be continued to the treaty port of Pak-hoi on the Gulf of Tong-king. The French fondly dream of the time when they can extend their Yun-nan Railway northward till it taps and makes tributary to French Indo-China the vast and fertile valley of the upper Yang-tze River. Meanwhile, the English talk of a line from Kowloon, opposite Hongkong, to Canton, and of connecting their Burma Railroad, which already runs from Rangoon to Kun-long ferry, with the Yang-tze valley, so that the enormous trade of southern interior China may not flow into a French port, as the French so ardently desire, but into an English city.
It would be impossible to describe adequately the far- reaching effect upon China and the Chinese of this extension of modern railways. We have had an illustration of its meaning in America, where the transcontinental railroads resulted in the amazing development of our western plains and of the Pacific Coast. The effect of such a development in China can hardly be overestimated, for China has more than ten times the population of the trans-Mississippi region while its territory is vaster and equally rich in natural resources. As I travelled through the land, it seemed to me that almost the whole northern part of the Empire was composed of illimitable fields of wheat and millet, and that in the south the millions of paddy plots formed a rice-field of continental proportions. Hidden away in China's mountains and underlying her boundless plateaus are immense deposits of coal and iron; while above any other country on the globe, China has the labour for the development of agriculture and manufacture. Think of the influence not only upon the Chinese but the whole world, when railroads not only carry the corn of Hunan to the famine sufferers in Shantung, but when they bring the coal, iron and other products of Chinese soil and industry within reach of steamship lines running to Europe and America. To make all these resources available to the rest of the world, and in turn to introduce among the 426,000,000 of the Chinese the products and inventions of Europe and America, is to bring about an economic transformation of stupendous proportions.
Imagine, too, what changes are involved in the substitution of the locomotive for the coolie as a motive power, the freight car for the wheelbarrow in the shipment of produce, and the passenger coach for the cart and the mule-litter in the transportation of people. Railways will inevitably inaugurate in China a new era, and when a new era is inaugurated for one-third of the human race the other two-thirds are certain to be affected in many ways.
That the transformation is attended by outbreaks of violence is natural enough. Even such a people as the English and the Scotch were at first inimical to railroads, and it is notorious that the great Stephenson had to meet not only ridicule but strenuous opposition. Everybody knows, too, that in the United States stage companies and stage drivers did all they could to prevent the building of railroads, and that learned gentlemen made eloquent speeches which proved to the entire satisfaction of their authors that railways would disarrange all the conditions of society and business and bring untold evils in their train. If the alert and progressive Anglo-Saxon took this initial position, is it surprising that it should be taken with far greater intensity by Orientals who for uncounted centuries have plodded along in perfect contentment, and who now find that the whole order of living to which they and their fathers have become adapted is being shaken to its foundation by the iron horse of the foreigner? Millions of coolies earn a living by carrying merchandise in baskets or wheeling it in barrows at five cents a day. A single railroad train does the work of a thousand coolies, and thus deprives them of their means of support. Myriads of farmers grew the beans and peanuts out of which illuminating oil was made. But since American kerosene was introduced in 1864, its use has become well-nigh universal, and the families who depended upon the bean-oil and peanut-oil market are starving. Cotton clothing is generally worn in China, except by the better classes, and China formerly made her own cotton cloth. Now American manufacturers can sell cotton in China cheaper than the Chinese can make it themselves.
All this is, of course, inevitable. It is indeed for the best interests of the people of China themselves, but it enables us to understand why so many of the Chinese resent the introduction of foreign goods. That much of this business is passing into the hands of the Chinese themselves does not help the matter, for the people know that the goods are foreign, and that the foreigners are responsible for their introduction.
Nor are racial prejudices and vested interests the only foes which the railway has to encounter in China. As we have seen, the Chinese, while not very religious, are very superstitious. They people the earth and air with spirits, who, in their judgment, have baleful power over man. Before these spirits they tremble in terror, and no inconsiderable part of their time and labour is devoted to outwitting them, for the Chinese do not worship the spirits, except to propitiate and deceive them. They believe that the spirits cannot turn a corner, but must move in a straight line. Accordingly, in China you do not often find one window opposite another window, lest the spirits may pass through. You will seldom find a straight road from one village to another village, but only a distractingly circuitous path, while the roads are not only crooked, but so atrociously bad that it is difficult for the foreign traveller to keep his temper. The Chinese do not count their own inconvenience if they can only baffle their demoniac foes. It is the custom of the Chinese to bury their dead wherever a geomancer indicates a ``lucky'' place. So particular are they about this that the bodies of the wealthy are often kept for a considerable period while a suitable place of interment is being found. In Canton there is a spacious enclosure where the coffins sometimes lie for years, each in a room more or less elaborate according to the taste or ability of the family. The place once chosen immediately becomes sacred. In a land which has been so densely populated for thousands of years, graves are therefore not only innumerable but omnipresent. In my travels in China, I was hardly ever out of sight of these conical mounds of the dead, and as a rule I could count hundreds of them from my shendza.
Every visitor to Canton and Chefoo will recall the hilly regions just outside of the old city walls that are literally covered with graves, those of the richer classes being marked by small stone or brick amphitheatres. Yet these are cemeteries not because they have been set apart for that purpose, but because graves have gradually filled all available spaces.
The Chinese reverence their dead and venerate the spots in which they lie. From a Chinese view-point it is an awful thing to desecrate them. Not only property and those sacred feelings with which all peoples regard their dead are involved but also the vital religious question of ancestral worship. Accordingly Chinese law protects all graves by heavy sanctions, imposing the death penalty by strangling on the malefactor who opens a grave without the permission of the owner, and by decapitation if in doing so the coffin is opened or broken so as to expose the body to view. Imagine then their feelings when they see haughty foreigners run a railroad straight as an arrow from city to city, opening a highway over which the dreaded spirits may run, and ruthlessly tearing through the tombs hallowed by the most sacred associations.
No degree of care can avoid the irritations caused by railway construction. In building the line from Tsing-tau to Kiao-chou, a distance of forty-six miles, the Germans, as far as practicable, ran around the places most thickly covered with graves. But in spite of this, no less than 3,000 graves had to be removed. It was impossible to settle with the individual owners, as it was difficult in many cases to ascertain who they were, most of the graves being unmarked, and some of the families concerned having died out or moved away. Moreover, the Oriental has no idea of time, and dearly loves to haggle, especially with a foreigner whom he feels no compunction in swindling. So the railway company made its negotiations with the local magistrates, showing them the routes, indicating the graves that were in the way, and paying them an average of $3 (Mexican) for removing each grave, they to find and settle with the owners. This was believed to be fair, for $3 is a large sum where the coin in common circulation is the copper ``cash,'' so small in value that 1,600 of them equal a gold dollar, and where a few dozen cash will buy a day's food for an adult. But while some of the Chinese were glad to accept this arrangement, others were not. They wanted more, or they had special affection for the dead, or that particular spot had been carefully selected because it was favoured by the spirits. Besides, the magistrates doubtless kept a part of the price as their share. Chinese officials are underpaid, are expected to ``squeeze'' commissions, and no funds can pass through their hands without a percentage of loss. Then, as the Asiatic is very deliberate, the company was obliged to specify a date by which all designated graves must be removed. As many of the bodies were not taken up within that time, the company had to remove them.
In these circumstances, we should not be surprised that some of the most furiously anti-foreign feeling in China was in the villages along the line of that railroad. Why should the hated foreigner force his line through their country when the people did not want it? Of course, it would save time, but, as an official naively said, ``We are not in a hurry.'' So the villagers watched the construction with ill-concealed anger, and to-day that railroad, as well as most other railroads in North China, can only be kept open by detachments of foreign soldiers at all the important stations. I saw them at almost every stop,—German soldiers from Tsing-tau to Kiao-chou, British from Tong-ku to Peking, French from Peking to Paoting-fu, etc.
Nevertheless, railways in China are usually profitable. It is true that the opposition to the building of a railroad is apt to be bitter, that mobs are occasionally destructive, and that locomotives and other rolling stock rapidly deteriorate under native handling unless closely watched by foreign superintendents. But, on the other hand, the Government is usually forced to pay indemnities for losses resulting from violence. The road, too, once built, is in time appreciated by the thrifty Chinese, who swallow their prejudices and patronize it in such enormous numbers, and ship by it such quantities of their produce, that the business speedily becomes remunerative, while the population and the resources of the country are so great as to afford almost unlimited opportunity for the development of traffic.
As a rule, on all the roads, the first-class compartments, when there are any, have comparatively few passengers, chiefly officials and foreigners. The second-class cars are well filled with respectable-looking people, who are apparently small merchants, students, minor officials, etc. The third-class cars, which are usually more numerous, are packed with chattering peasants. The first-class fares are about the same as ordinary rates in the United States. The second-class are about half the first-class rates, and the third-class are often less than the equivalent of a cent a mile. This is a wise adjustment in a land where the average man is so thrifty and so poor that he would not and could not pay a price which would be deemed moderate in America, and where his scale of living makes him content with the rudest accommodations. Very little baggage is carried free, twenty pounds only on the German lines, so that excess baggage charges amount to more than in America.
The freight cars, during my visit, were, for the most part, loaded with the materials and supplies necessitated by the work of railway-construction and by the extensive rebuilding of the native and foreign property which had been destroyed by the Boxers. But in normal conditions the railways carry inland a large number of foreign manufactured articles, and in turn bring to the ports the wheat, rice, peanuts, ore, coal, pelts, silk, wool, cotton, matting, paper, straw-braid, earthenware, sugar, tea, tobacco, fireworks, fruit, vegetables, and other products of the interior. Short hauls are the rule, thus far, both for passengers and freight. This is partly because the long-distance lines within the Empire are not yet completed, and partly because the typical Chinese of the lower classes in the interior provinces has never been a score of miles away from his native village in his life, and has been so accustomed to regard a wheelbarrow trip of a dozen miles as a long journey that he is a little cautious, at first, in lengthening his radius of movement. But he soon learns, especially as the struggle for existence in an overcrowded country begets a desire to take advantage of an opportunity to better his condition elsewhere. Once fairly started, he is apt to go far, as the numbers of Chinese in Siam, the Philippines, and America clearly show. The literary and official classes are less apt to go abroad, but they are more accustomed to moving about within the limits of the Empire, as they must go to the central cities for their examinations, and as offices are held for such short terms that magistrates are frequently shifted from province to province. When this vast population of naturally industrious and commer- cial people becomes accustomed to railways and gets to moving freely upon them, stupendous things are likely to happen, both for China and for the world.
And so the foreign syndicates relentlessly continue the work of railway-construction. Trade cannot be checked. It advances by an inherent energy which it is futile to ignore. And it ought to advance for the result will inevitably be to the advantage of China. A locomotive brings intellectual and physical benefits, the appliances which mitigate the poverty and barrenness of existence and increase the ability to provide for the necessities and the comforts of life. In one of our great locomotive works in America I once saw twelve engines in construction for China, and my imagination kindled as I thought what a locomotive means amid that stagnant swarm of humanity, how impossible it is that any village through which it has once run should continue to be what it was before, how its whistle puts to flight a whole brood of hoary superstitions and summons a long-slumbering people to new life. We need regret only that these benefits are so often accompanied by the evils which disgrace our civilization.
The Political Force and the NationalProtest
THE political force was set in motion partly by the ambitions of European powers to extend their influence in Asia, and partly by the necessity for protecting the commercial interests referred to in the preceding chapters. The conservatism and exclusiveness of the Chinese, the disturbance of economic conditions caused by the introduction of foreign goods, and the greed and brutality of foreign traders combined to arouse a fierce opposition to the lodgment of the foreigner. The early trading ships were usually armed, and exasperated by the haughtiness and duplicity of the Chinese officials and their greedy disposition to mulct the white trader, they did not hesitate to use force in effecting their purpose.
But the nations of Europe, becoming more and more convinced of the magnitude of the Chinese market, pressed resolutely on; and with the hope of creating a better understanding and of opening the ports to trade, they sent envoys to China. The arrival of these envoys precipitated a new controversy, for the Chinese Government from time immemorial considered itself the supreme government of the world, and, not being accustomed to receive the agents of other nations except as inferiors, was not disposed to accord the white man any different treatment. The result was a series of collisions followed by territorial aggressions that were numerous enough to infuriate a more peaceably disposed people than the Chinese.
The Portuguese were the first to come, a ship of those ven- turesome traders appearing near Canton in 1516. Its reception was kindly, but when the next year brought eight armed vessels and an envoy, the friendliness of the Chinese changed to suspicion which ripened into hostility when the Portuguese became overbearing and threatening. Violence met with violence. It is said that armed parties of Portuguese went into villages and carried off Chinese women. Feuds multiplied and became more bloody. At Ningpo, the Chinese made awful reprisal by destroying thirty-five Portuguese ships and killing 800 of their crews. The execution of one or more of the members of a delegation to Peking brought matters to a crisis, and in 1534, the Portuguese transferred their factories to Macao, which they have ever since held, though it was not till 1887 that their position there was officially recognized. Portuguese power has waned and Macao to-day is an unimportant place politically, but it is significant that this early foreign settlement in China has been and still is such a moral plague spot that the Chinese may be pardoned if their first impressions of the white man were unfavourable.
The Spaniards were the next Europeans with whom the Chinese came into contact. In this case, however, the contact was due not so much to the coming of the Spaniards to China as to their occupation in 1543 of the Philippine Islands, with which the Chinese had long traded and where they had already settled in considerable numbers. Mutual jealousies resulted and Castilian arrogance and brutality ere long engendered such bitterness that massacre after massacre of the Chinese occurred, that of 1603 almost exterminating the Chinese population of Manila.
The growing demand for coffee, which Europeans had first received in 1580 from Arabia, brought Dutch ships into Asiatic waters in 1598. After hostile experiences with the Portuguese at Macao, they seized the Pescadores Islands in 1622. But the opposition of the Chinese led the Dutch to withdraw to Formosa, where their stormy relations with natives, Chinese from the mainland and Japanese finally resulted in their expulsion in 1662. Since then the Dutch have contented themselves with a few trading factories chiefly at Canton and with their possessions in Malaysia, so that they have been less aggressive in China than several other European nations.
A more formidable power appeared on the scene in 1635, when four ships[36] of the English East India Company sailed up the Pearl River. The temper of the newcomers was quickly shown when the Chinese, incited by the jealous Portuguese, sought to prevent their lodgment, for the English, so the record quaintly runs, ``did on a sudden display their bloody ensigns, and . . . each ship began to play furiously upon the forts with their broadsides . . . put on board all their ordnance, fired the council-house, and demolished all they could.'' Then they sailed on to Canton, and when their peremptory demand for trading privileges was met with evasion and excuses, they ``pillaged and burned many vessels and villages . . . spreading destruction with fire and sword.'' Describing this incident, Sir George Staunton, Secretary of the first British embassy to China, naively remarked—``The unfortunate circumstances under which the English first got footing in China must have operated to their disadvantage and rendered their situation for some time peculiarly unpleasant.''[37] But as early as 1684, they had established themselves in Canton.
[36] Parker, ``China,'' p. 9, places the number of ships at five and the date as 1637.
[37] Foster, ``American Diplomacy in the Orient,'' p. 5.
June 15, 1834, a British Commission headed by Lord Napier arrived at Macao, and the 25th of the same month proceeded to Canton empowered by an act of Parliament to negotiate with the Chinese regarding trade ``to and from the dominions of the Emperor of China, and for the purpose of protecting and promoting such trade.''[38] The government of Canton, however, refused to receive Lord Napier's letter for the character- istic reason that it did not purport to be a petition from an inferior to a superior. In explaining the matter to the Hong merchants with a view to their bringing the explanation to the attention of Lord Napier, the haughty Governor reminded them that foreigners were allowed in China only as trading agents, and that no functionary of any political rank could be allowed to enter the Empire unless special permission were given by the Imperial Government in response to a respectful petition. He added:—
[38] Foster, p. 57.
``To sum up the whole matter, the nation has its laws. Even England has its laws. How much more the Celestial Empire! How flaming bright are its great laws and ordinances. More terrible than the awful thunderbolts! Under this whole bright heaven, none dares to disobey them. Under its shelter are the four seas. Subject to its soothing care are ten thousand kingdoms. The said barbarian eye (Lord Napier), having come over a sea of several myriads of miles in extent to examine and have superintendence of affairs, must be a man thoroughly acquainted with the principles of high dignity.''[39]
[39] Foster, p. 59.
As might be expected, the equally haughty British representative indignantly protested; but without avail. He was asked to return to Macao, and was informed that the Governor could not have any further communication with him except through the Hong merchants, and in the form of a respectful petition. The Governor indignantly declared:—
``There has never been such a thing as outside barbarians sending a letter. . . . It is contrary to everything of dignity and decorum. The thing is most decidedly impossible. . . . The barbarians of this nation (Great Britain) coming to or leaving Canton have beyond their trade not any public business; and the commissioned officers of the Celestial Empire never take cognizance of the trivial affairs of trade. . . . The some hundreds of thousands of commercial duties yearly coming from the said nation concern not the Celestial Empire to the extent of a hair or a feather's down. The possession or absence of them is utterly unworthy of one careful thought.''[40]
[40] Ibid, p. 60.
Whereupon the proud Briton published and distributed a review of the case, as he saw it, which closed as follows:—
``Governor Loo has the assurance to state in the edict of the 2d instant that `the King (my master) has hitherto been reverently obedient.' I must now request you to declare to them (the Hong merchants) that His Majesty, the King of England, is a great and powerful monarch, that he rules over an extent of territory in the four quarters of the world more comprehensive in space and infinitely more so in power than the whole empire of China; that he commands armies of bold and fierce soldiers, who have conquered wherever they went; and that he is possessed of great ships, where no native of China has ever yet dared to show his face. Let the Governor then judge if such a monarch will be `reverently obedient' to any one.''[41]
[41] Foster, pp. 61, 62.
The result of the increasing irritation was a decree by the Governor of Canton peremptorily forbidding all further trade with the English, and in retaliation the landing of a British force, the sailing of British war-ships up the river and a battle at the Bogue Forts which guarded the entrance of Canton. A truce was finally arranged and Lord Napier's commission left for Macao, August 21st, where he died September 11th of an illness which his physician declared was directly due to the nervous strain and the many humiliations which he had suffered in his intercourse with the Chinese authorities. The Governor meantime complacently reported to Peking that he had driven off the barbarians!
The strain was intensified by the determination of the British to bring opium into China. The Chinese authorities protested and in 1839 the Chinese destroyed 22,299 chests of opium valued at $9,000,000, from motives about as laudable as those which led our revolutionary sires to empty English tea into Boston Harbor. England responded by making war, the result of which was to force the drug upon an unwilling people, so that the vice which is to-day doing more to ruin the Chinese than all other vices combined is directly traceable to the conduct of a Christian nation, though the England of to-day is presumably ashamed of this crime of the England of two generations ago.
It would, however, be inaccurate to represent Chinese objection to British opium as the sole cause of the ``Opium War'' of 1840, for the indignities to which foreign traders and foreign diplomats were continually subjected in their efforts to establish commercial and political relations with the Chinese were rapidly drifting the two nations into war. Still, it was peculiarly unfortunate and it put foreigners grievously in the wrong before the Chinese that the overt act which developed the long- gathering bitterness into open rupture was the righteous if irregular seizure by the Chinese of a poison that the English from motives of unscrupulous greed were determined to force upon an unwilling people. The probability that war would have broken out in time even if there had been no dispute about opium does not mitigate the fact that from the beginning, foreign intercourse with China was so identified with an iniquitous traffic that the Chinese had ample cause to distrust and dislike the white man.
This hostility was intensified when the war resulted in the defeat of the Chinese and the treaty of Nanking in 1842 with its repudiation of all their demands, the compulsory cession of the island of Hongkong, the opening of not only Canton but Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Ningpo as treaty ports, the location of a British Consul in each port, and, most necessary but most humiliating of all, the recognition of the extra-territorial rights of all foreigners so that no matter what their crime, they could not be tried by Chinese courts but only by their own consuls. This treaty contributed so much to the opening of China that Dr. S. Wells Williams characterized it as ``one of the turning points in the history of mankind, involving the welfare of all nations in its wide-reaching consequences.'' It was therefore a lasting benefit to China and to the world. But the Chinese did not then and do not yet appreciate the benefit, especially as they saw clearly enough that the motive of the conqueror was his own aggrandizement.
Unhappily, too, the next war between England and China, though fundamentally due to the same conditions as the ``Opium War,'' was again precipitated by a quarrel over opium, the lorcha Arrow loaded with the obnoxious drug and flying the British flag being seized by the Chinese. Once more they suffered sore defeat and humiliating terms of peace in the treaty of 1858. The effort of the Peking Government to close the Pei-ho River against an armed force caused a third war in 1860 in which the British and French captured Peking, and by their excesses and cruelties still further added to the already long list of reasons why the Chinese should hate their European foes.
Nor did foreign aggression stop with this war. In 1861, England, in order to protect her interests at Hongkong, wrested from China the adjacent peninsula of Kowloon. In 1886, she took Upper Burma, which China regarded as one of her dependencies. In 1898, finding that Hongkong was still within the range of modern cannon in Chinese waters seven miles away, England calmly took 400 square miles of additional territory, including Mirs and Deep Bays.
The visitor does not wonder that the British coveted Hongkong, for it is one of the best harbours in the world. Certainly no other is more impressive. Noble hills, almost mountains, for many are over 1,000 feet and the highest is 3,200, rise on every side. Crafts of all kinds, from sampans and slipper- boats to ocean liners and war-ships, crowd the waters, for this is the third greatest port in the world, being exceeded in the amount of its tonnage only by Liverpool and New York. The city is very attractive from the water as it lies at the foot and on the slopes of the famous Peak. The Chinese are said to number, as in Shanghai, over 300,000, while the foreign population is only 5,000. But to the superficial observer the proportions appear reversed as the foreign buildings are so spa- cious and handsome that they almost fill the foreground. The business section of the city is hot and steaming, but an inclined tramway makes the Peak accessible and many of the British merchants have built handsome villas on that cooler, breezier summit, 1,800 feet above the sea. The view is superb, a majestic panorama of mountains, harbour, shipping, islands, ocean and city. By its possession and fortification of this island of Hongkong, England to-day so completely controls the gateway to South China that the Chinese cannot get access to Canton, the largest city in the Empire, without running the gauntlet of British guns and mines which could easily sink any ships that the Peking Government could send against it, and the whole of the vast and populous basin of the Pearl or West River is at the mercy of the British whenever they care to take it. When we add to these invaluable holdings, the rights that England has acquired in the Yang-tze Valley and at Wei-hai Wei in Shantung, we do not wonder that Mr. E. H. Parker, formerly British Consul at Kiung-Chou, rather naively remarks:—
``In view of all this, no one will say, however much in matters of detail we may have erred in judgment, that Great Britain has failed to secure for herself, on the whole, a considerable number of miscellaneous commercial and political advantages from the facheuse situation arising out of an attitude on the part of the Chinese so hostile to progress.''[42]
[42] ``China,'' pp. 95, 96.
France, as far back as 1787, obtained the Peninsula of Tourane and the Island of Pulu Condore by ``treaty'' with the King of Cochin-China. The French soon began to regard Annam as within their sphere of influence. In 1858, they seized Saigon and from it as a base extended French power throughout Cochin-China and Cambodia, the treaty of 1862 giving an enforced legal sanction to these extensive claims. Not content with this, France steadily pushed her conquests northward, compelling one concession after another until in 1882, she coolly decided to annex Tong-king. The Chinese objected, but the war ended in a treaty, signed June 9, 1885, which gave France the coveted region. These vast regions, which China had for centuries regarded as tributary provinces, are now virtually French territory and are openly governed as such.
The beginnings of Russia's designs upon China are lost in the haze of mediaeval antiquity. Russian imperial guards are frequently mentioned at the Mongol Court of Peking in the thirteenth century.[43] In 1652, the Russians definitely began their struggle with the Manchus for the Valley of the Amur, a struggle which in spite of temporary defeats and innumerable disputes Russia steadily and relentlessly continued until she obtained the Lower Amur in 1855, the Ussuri district in 1860 and finally, by the Cassini Convention of September, 1896, the right to extend the Siberian Railway from Nerchinsk through Manchuria. How Russia pressed her aggressions in this region we shall have occasion to note in a later chapter.
[43] Parker, ``China,'' p. 96.
THE relations of the United States with China have, as a rule, been more sympathetic than those of European nations. Americans have not sought territorial advantage in China and on more than one occasion, our Government has exerted its influence in favour of peace and justice for the sorely beset Celestials.
The flag of the United States first appeared in Chinese waters on a trading ship in 1785. From the beginning, Americans had less trouble with the Chinese than Europeans had experienced, partly because they had recently been at war with the English whom the Chinese hated and feared, and partly because they were less violently aggressive in dealing with the Chinese. By the treaties of July and October, 1844, the United States peacefully reaped the advantages which England had obtained at the cost of war. November 17, 1856, two American ships were fired upon by the Bogue Forts, but in spite of the hostilities which resulted, the representatives of the United States appeared to find more favour with the Chinese than those of any other power in the negotiations at Tien-tsin in 1858, and their treaty was signed a week before those of the French and the British. Article X provided that the ``United States shall have the right to appoint consuls and other commercial agents, to reside at such places in the dominions of China as shall be agreed to be opened''; and Article XXX that,
``should at any time the Ta-Tsing Empire grant to any nation or the merchants or citizens of any nation any right, privileges or favour connected with either navigation, commerce, political or other intercourse which is not conferred by this treaty, such right, privilege and favour shall at once freely inure to the benefit of the United States, its public officers, merchants and citizens.''
In the settlement of damages, the Chinese agreed to pay to the United States half a million taels, then worth $735,288. When the adjustments with individual claimants left a balance of $453,400 in the treasury, Congress, to the unbounded and grateful surprise of the Chinese, gave it back to them. Mr. Burlingame, the celebrated United States Minister to China, became the most popular foreign minister in Peking within a short time after his arrival in 1862, and so highly did the Chinese Government appreciate his efforts in its behalf that during the American Civil War it promptly complied with his request to issue an edict forbidding all Confederate ships of war from entering Chinese ports. Mr. Foster declares that ``such an order enforced by the governments of Europe would have saved the American commercial marine from destruction and shortened the Civil War.''[44]
[44] Foster, ``American Diplomacy in the Orient,'' p. 259.
The treaty of Washington in 1868 gave great satisfaction to the Chinese Government as it contained pacific and, appreciative references to China, an express disclaimer of any designs upon the Empire and a willingness to admit Chinese to the United States. The treaty of 1880, however, considerably modified this willingness and the treaty of 1894 rather sharply restricted further immigration. But in the commercial treaty of 1880, the United States, at the request of the Chinese Government, agreed to a clause peremptorily forbidding any citizen of the United States from engaging in the opium traffic with the Chinese or in any Chinese port.
Our national policy was admirably expressed in the note sent by the Hon. Frederick F. Low, United States Minister at Peking, to the Tsung-li Yamen, March 20, 1871:—
``To assure peace in the future, the people must be better informed of the purposes of foreigners. They must be taught that merchants are engaged in trade which cannot but be beneficial to both native and foreigner, and that missionaries seek only the welfare of the people, and are engaged in no political plots or intrigues against the Government. Whenever cases occur in which the missionaries overstep the bounds of decorum, or interfere in matters with which they have no proper concern, let each case be reported promptly to the Minister of the country to which it belongs. Such isolated instances should not produce prejudice or engender hatred against those who observe their obligations, nor should sweeping complaints be made against all on this account. Those from the United States sincerely desire the reformation of those whom they teach, and to do this they urge the examination of the Holy Scriptures, wherein the great doctrines of the present and a future state, and also the resurrection of the soul, are set forth, with the obligation of repentance, belief in the Saviour, and the duties of man to himself and others. It is owing, in a great degree, to the prevalence of a belief in the truth of the Scnptures that Western nations have attained their power and prosperity. To enlighten the people is a duty which the officials owe to the people, to foreigners, and themselves; for if, in consequence of ignorance, the people grow discontented, and insurrection and riots occur, and the lives and property of foreigners are destroyed or imperilled, the Government cannot escape its responsibility for these unlawful acts.''
Referring to this note, the Hon. J. C. B. Davis, actingSecretary of State, wrote to Mr. Low, October 19, 1871:—
``The President regards it (your note to the Tsung-li Yamen) as wise and judicious. . . . Your prompt and able answer to these propositions leaves little to be said by the Department. . . . We stand upon our treaty rights; we ask no more, we expect no less. If other nations demand more, if they advance pretensions inconsistent with the dignity of China as an independent Power, we are no parties to such acts. Our influence, so far as it may be legitimately and peacefully exerted, will be used to prevent such demands or pretensions, should there be serious reason to apprehend that they will be put forth. We feel that the Government of the Emperor is actuated by friendly feelings towards the United States.''
But while the Government of the United States has been thus considerate and just in its dealings with the Chinese in China, it has, singularly enough, been most inconsiderate and unjust in its treatment of Chinese in its own territory, and its policy in this respect has done not a little to exasperate the Chinese. The Chinese began to come to America in 1848, when two men and one woman arrived in San Francisco on the brig Eagle. The discovery of gold soon brought multitudes, the year 1852 alone seeing 2,026 arrivals. There are now about 45,000 Chinese in California and 14,000 in Oregon and Washington. New York has about 6,300 Chinese, Philadelphia 1,150, Boston 1,250, and many other cities have little groups, while individual Chinese are scattered all over the country, though the total for the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, is only 89,863.
The attitude of the people of the Pacific coast towards the the Chinese is an interesting study. At first, they welcomed their Oriental visitors. In January, 1853, the Hon. H. H. Haight, afterwards Governor of California, offered at a representative meeting of San Francisco citizens this resolution— ``Resolved that we regard with pleasure the presence of greater numbers of these people (Chinese) among us as affording the best opportunity of doing them good and through them of exerting our influence in their native land.'' And this resolution was unanimously adopted. Moreover in a new country, where there was much manual labour to be done in developing resources and constructing railways, and where there were comparatively few white labourers, the Chinese speedily proved to be a valuable factor. They were frugal, patient, willing, industrious and cheap, and so the corporations in particular encouraged them to come.
But as the number of immigrants increased, first dislike, then irritation and finally alarm developed, particularly among the working classes who found their means of livelihood threatened by the competition of cheaper labour. The newspapers began to give sensational accounts of the ``yellow deluge'' that might ``swamp our institutions'' and to enlarge upon the danger that white labourers would not come to California on account of the presence of Chinese. The ``sand lot orator'' appeared with his frenized harangues and the political demagogue sought favour with the multitudes by pandering to their passions. Race prejudice, moreover, must always be taken into account, especially when two races attempt to live together. The terms Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, Roman and enemy are suggestive of the distrust with which one race usually regards another. Christianity has done much to moderate it, but it still exists, and let the resident of the North and East who remembers the recent race riots in Illinois and Ohio and New York think charitably of his brethren who are confronted by the Chinese problem in California. So May 6, 1882, Congress passed the Restriction Act, which, as amended July 5, 1884, and reenacted in 1903, is now in force.
There are thousands of high-minded Christian people who are unselfishly and lovingly toiling for the temporal and spiritual welfare of this Asiatic population in America. They rightly feel that the people of the United States have a special duty towards these Orientals, that the purifying power of Christianity can remove the dangers incident to their presence in our communities, and that if we treat them aright they will, on their return to China, mightily influence their countrymen. But the kindly efforts of these Christian people are unfortunately insufficient to offset the general policy of the American people as a whole, especially as that policy is embodied in a stern law that is most harshly enforced.
Americans are apt to think of themselves as China's best friends and the facts stated show that there is some ground for the claim. But before we exalt ourselves overmuch, we might profitably read the correspondence between the Chinese Ministers at Washington and our Secretaries of State regarding the outrages upon Chinese in the United States. Many Chinese have suffered from mob violence in San Francisco and Tacoma and other Pacific Coast cities almost as sorely as Americans have suffered in China. Some years ago, they were wantonly butchered in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and it was as difficult for the Chinese to get indemnity out of our Government as it was for the Powers to get indemnity out of China for the Boxer outrages.
President Cleveland, in a message to Congress in 1885, felt obliged to make an allusion to this that was doubtless as humiliating to him as it was to decent Americans everywhere. The Chinese Minister to the United States, in his presentation of the case to Secretary of State Bayard, ``massed the evidence going to show that the massacre of the subjects of a friendly Power, residing in this country, was as unprovoked as it was brutal; that the Governor and Prosecuting Attorney of the Territory openly declared that no man could be punished for the crime, though the murderers attempted no concealment; and that all the pretended judicial proceedings were a burlesque.'' All this Mr. Bayard was forced to admit. Indeed he did not hesitate to characterize the proceedings as ``the wretched travesty of the forms of justice,'' nor did he conceal his ``indignation at the bloody outrages and shocking wrongs inflicted upon a body of your countrymen,'' and his mortification that ``such a blot should have been cast upon the record of our Government.'' There was sarcastic significance in the cartoon of the Chicago Inter-Ocean representing a Chinese reading a daily paper one of whose columns was headed ``Massacre of Americans in China,'' while the other column bore the heading, ``Massacre of Chinese in America.'' Uncle Sam stands at his elbow and ejaculates, ``Horrible, isn't it?'' To which the Celestial blandly inquires, ``Which?''
In the North American Review for March, 1904, Mr. Wong Kai Kah, an educated Chinese gentleman, plainly but courteously discusses this subject under the caption of ``A Menace to America's Oriental Trade.'' He justly complains that though the exclusion law expressly exempts Chinese merchants, students and travellers, yet as a matter of fact a Chinese gentleman is treated on his arrival as if he were a criminal and is ``detained in the pen on the steamship wharf or imprisoned like a felon until the customs officials are satisfied.''
The Hon. Chester Holcombe, formerly Secretary of the American Legation at Peking and a member of the Chinese Immigration Commission of 1880, cites some illlustrations of the harshness and unreasonableness of the exclusion law.[45] A Chinese merchant of San Francisco visited his native land and brought back a bride, only to find that she was forbidden to land on American soil. Another Chinese merchant and wife, of unquestioned standing in San Francisco, made a trip to China, and while there a child was born. On returning to their home in America, the sapient officials could interpose no objection to the readmission of the parents, but peremptorily refused to admit the three-months old baby, as, never having been in this country, it had no right to enter it! Neither of these preposterous decisions could be charged to the stupidity or malice of the local officials, for both were appealed to the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington and were officially sustained by him as in accordance with the law, though in the latter case, the Secretary, then the Hon. Daniel Manning, in approving the action, had the courageous good sense to write: ``Burn all this correspondence, let the poor little baby go ashore, and don't make a fool of yourself.''
[45] Article in The Outlook, April 23, 1904.
Still more irritating and insulting, if that were possible, was the treatment of the Chinese exhibitors at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis in 1904. Our Government formally invited China to participate, sending a special commission to Peking to urge acceptance. China accepted in good faith, and then the Treasury Department in Washington drew up a series of regulations requiring ``that each exhibitor, upon arrival at any seaport in this country, should be photographed three times for purposes of identification, and should file a bond in the penal sum of $5,000, the conditions of which were that he would proceed directly and by the shortest route to St. Louis, would not leave the Exposition grounds at any time after his arrival there, and would depart for China by the first steamer sailing after the close of the Exposition. Thus a sort of Chinese rogues' gallery was to be established at each port, and the Fair grounds were to be made a prison pen for those who had come here as invited guests of the nation, whose presence and aid were needed to make the display a success. It is only just to add that, upon a most vigorous protest made against these courteous(?) regulations by the Chinese Government and a threat to cancel their acceptance or our invitation, the rules were withdrawn and others more decent substituted. But the fact that they were prepared and seriously presented to China shows to what an extent of injustice and discourtesy our mistaken attitude and action in regard to Chinese immigration has carried us.''
No right-minded American can read without poignant shame, Luella Miner's recent account[46] of the experiences of Fay Chi Ho and Kung Hsiang Hsi, two Chinese students who, after showing magnificent devotion to American missionaries during the horrors of the Boxer massacres, sought to enter the United States. They were young men of education and Christian character who wished to complete their education at Oberlin College, but they were treated by the United States officials at San Francisco and other cities with a suspicion and brutality that were ``more worthy of Turkey than of free Christian America.'' Arriving at the Golden Gate, September 12, 1901, it was not until January 10, 1903, that they succeeded in reaching Oberlin, and those sixteen months were filled with indignities from which all the efforts of influential friends and of the Chinese Minister to the United States were unable to protect them. Whatever reasons there may be for excluding coolie labourers, there can be none for excluding the bright young men who come here to study. ``An open door for our merchants, our railway projectors, our missionaries, we cry, and at the same time we slam the door in the faces of Chinese merchants and travellers and students—the best classes who seek our shores.''
[46] ``Two Heroes of Cathay,'' p. 223 sq.
The fear that the Chinese would inundate the United States if they were permitted to come under the same conditions as Europeans is not justified by the numbers that came before the exclusion laws became so stringent, the total Chinese population of the United States up to 1880, when there was no obstacle to their coming except the general immigration law, being only 105,465—the merest handful among our scores of millions of people. The objections that they are addicted to gambling and immorality, that they come only for temporary mercenary purposes and that they do not become members of the body politic but segregate themselves in special communities, might be urged with equal justice by the Chinese against the foreign communities in the port cities of China. Segregating themselves, indeed! How can the Chinese help themselves, when they are not allowed to become naturalized and are treated with a dislike and contempt which force them back upon one another?
As for the charge that they teach the opium habit to white boys and girls, it may be safely affirmed that all the Americans who have acquired that dread habit from the Chinese are not equal to a tenth of the number of Chinese women and girls who have been given foul diseases by white men in China. Mr. Holcombe declares:—
``Our unfair treatment of China in this business will some day return to plague us. Entirely aside from the cavalier and insulting manner with which we have dealt with China, and the inevitably injurious effect upon our relations and interests there, it must be said that our action has been undignified, unworthy of any great nation, a sad criticism upon our sense of power and ability to rule our affairs with wisdom and moderation, and unbecoming our high position among the leading governments of the world. . . . We have treated Chinese immigrants—never more than a handful when compared with our population—as though we were in a frenzy of fear of them. We have forsaken our wits in this question, abandoned all self-control, and belittled our manhood by treating each incoming Chinaman as though he were the embodiment of some huge and hideous power which, once landed upon our shores, could not be dealt with or kept within bounds. Yet in point of fact he is far more easily kept in bounds and held obedient to law than some immigrants from Europe. . . . It must be admitted as beyond question that the coming of the Chinese to these shores should be held under constant supervision and strict limitations. And so should immigration from all other countries. The time has come when we ought to pick and choose with far greater care than is exercised, and to exclude large numbers who are now admitted…. It is this discrimination alone which is unjust to China, which she naturally resents, and which does us serious harm in our relations with her people.''
Commenting on the regulations promulgated by the Secretary of Commerce and Labour, July 27, 1903, regarding the admission of Chinese, the Hon. David J. Brewer, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, declared:—
``Can anything be more harsh and arbitrary? Coming into a port of the United States, as these petitioners did into the port of Malone, placed as they were in a house of detention, shut off from communication with friends and counsel, examined before an inspector with no one to advise or counsel, only such witnesses present as the inspector may designate, and upon an adverse decision compelled to give notice of appeal within two days, within three days the transcript forwarded to the Commissioner- General, and nothing to be considered by him except the testimony obtained in this star chamber proceeding. This is called due process of law to protect the rights of an American citizen, and sufficient to prevent inquiry in the courts….