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FOREIGNERS IN CHINA CHINESE EMIGRATION. 811
European a glass of beer. He is open to barter, and if you don't open your
for the whole aim of the Chinese is to accumulate
eyes you must open your purse,
a fortune.
" The Chinese traders are, however, a good pattern for the Malays, who have
been greatly influenced by them. Besides being good shop-keepers they are very
industrious ; many are artisans, excellent carpenters, good tailors, shoemakers, and
jewellers. But their curse is their taste for gambling. In the evening, when
business is over, they will sit with a friend or two under the verandah, lighted up
with a grotesque Chinese lantern suspended from the ceiling, smoke the indispensable
opium pipe, and have a game of cards, over which the betting is fast and
furious. When it happens that John is entirely ruined by card-playing, his gold
buttons and everything conceivable gone, he will proceed to the gold and diamond
mines, and try to repair his lost fortune." *
In the countries where they do not compete with the dominant race the
Chinese immigrants soon become indispensable. Thus they have created the
prosperity of Singapore, where, but for them, all industrial and commercial activity
would soon be arrested. But elsewhere they often come into collision with competitors
in the labour market. Thus, while the thinly peopled colony of West
Australia gladly welcomes Chinese settlers to tend the herds and develop a few
local industries, the more prosperous states of Queensland, New South Wales, and
Victoria, in East Australia, resent the presence of this frugal, thrifty, and laborious
element, which has too decided an advantage in the competition with the European
labouring classes. They are reproached with gradually monopolizing certain
industries, such as mining, and the more feminine occupations of washing and
domestic service. Such is their thrift that they contrive to grow rich where others
starve. But the poll taxes imposed in spite of the treaties, the vexatious measures
of all sorts, and in many cases open violence and massacres, have greatly reduced
their numbers, and even diverted the stream of migration altogether from some
parts of Australia and California. The Imperial Government has consented to sign
a treaty with the United States, limiting the right of its subjects
to settle in the
republic. The authorities in the Philippines and Dutch East Indies also oppose
every obstacle to their intrusion, restricting them to certain districts, excluding
them from various professions, burdening them with special taxes, and subjecting
them to all kinds of obnoxious police regulations. But the movement can no
longer be permanently arrested. The Chinese Mohammedans have even begun
to take part in the pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina, and some of these have
ali-ciidy settled in the Arabian Peninsula. Thus the relations of the white and
yellow peoples become constantly more frequent, and at a thousand different
points we arc brought face to face with the urgent question how best to reconcile
the conflicting interests of the two races, differing so profoundly
traditions, habits, and ideas.
Curl Rock's " Head Hunters of Borneo," 1882, pp. 169, 170.
in character,