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10
EAST ASIA.
already been opened in London and New York. To these outward signs correspond
profound internal modifications. There is an interchange of ideas as well as of
commodities, and the peoples of the East and West begin to understand each other,
and consequently to perceive how much they have in common. The world has
become too narrow to allow of any further isolated evolutions of culture in separate
geographical areas without blending in a general civilisation of a higher order.
The European and Asiatic races formerly dwelt altogether apart ; now the United
.States of America have been peopled by emigrants who have made this region
another Europe ; and thus it is that the Chinese nation now finds itself hemmed in
between two Europes those of the Old and New Continents. From east and west
come the same types and ideas, and a continuous current sets from people to people
around the globe, across seas and continents.
The historic period on which mankind is now entering, through the definite
union of .the Eastern and Western worlds, is pregnant with great events. As the
ruffled surface of the water seeks its level by the force of gravity,
so the conditions
tend to balance themselves in the labour markets. Considered merely as the owner
of a pair of hands, man is himself as much a commodity as is the produce of his
labour. The industries of all nations, drawn more and more into the struggle for
existence, seek to produce cheaply by purchasing at the lowest price the raw
material and the " hands " to work it up. But where will manufacturing states
like those of New England find more skilful and frugal that is, less expensive
hands than those of the extreme East ? Where will the great agricultural farms,
like those of Minnesota and Wisconsin, find more tractable gangs of labourers,
more painstaking and less exacting, than those from the banks of the Si-kiang or
Yang-tze? Europeans are 'amazed at the industry, skill, intelligence, spirit of
order, and thrift displayed by the working element in China and Japan. In the
workshops and arsenals of the seaports the most delicate operations may be safely
intrusted to Chinese hands ; while eye-witnesses bear unanimous testimony to the
superior intelligence and instruction of the peasantry over the corresponding classes
in Europe. If the Chinese gardeners have not modified their system in the
neighbourhood of the coast factories, it is only because they have had nothing to
learn from the stranger.
The struggle between white and yellow labour a struggle which threatens to set
the two hemispheres by the ears has even already begun in certain new districts
where European and Asiatic immigrants meet on common ground. In California, New
South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria the white labourers have had to compete
in most of their trades with the Chinese, and the streets, workshops, farms, and
mines have been the scenes of frequent bloodshed, occasioned less by national
hatred than by international rivalry in the labour market. Continued over a whole
generation, this social warfare has already cost more lives than a pitched battle :
it even increases in virulence as the competition grows more fierce. Hitherto the
white element has had the best of it in California and Australia, With large
majorities in the legislatures, they have triumphed over the manufacturers,
farmers, and contractors, whose interest it is to secure cheap labour ; and they