The 'Social Curse' Argument: A Seattle Paper Builds the Case Against the Chinese

Slowly but barely, just as the tide sweeps up, are the people of the great cities of the East awakening to the fact that the presence of Chinese among them is a social evil second to none that can be imagined. From New York, from Philadelphia, from Chicago, in short from every city into which this race has penetrated, bearing with them their burden of moral and physical leprosy, comes the news over the wires of the raiding of opium dens, and the discovery of stupefied lads and girls therein. The people of the East have been slow to learn that this race — confessedly industrious, and ordinarily peaceable — are not a desirable addition to the population of any city or country. Not until their advent was such a place as an opium den known; now wherever a handful of Chinese are gathered together, there is to be found this type of Oriental dissipation and pitfall for the rising generation. There seems to be a peculiar fascination in the indulgence of opium smoking that but few, having once acquired the habit, have power of will sufficient to refrain from its use. It is in the first instance generally the result of idle curiosity, indulged in merely to observe and experience the effect of an unknown drug. But it is playing with fire, and there is hardly a village on the Pacific Coast that cannot in the ruin of some bright youth bear testimony to its relentless hold upon its victims.

It was not alone upon the ground of Chinese competition with our American white labor that the protest of the Pacific Coast against the farther importation of these Orientals to our shores was based, but to this was added an aggregate of personal experience and observation which made the vote in the Pacific States in favor of restricting and forbidding the farther influx of these heathens to our land almost unanimous. The Chinese Minister at Washington is reported to have recently said that a demand for the repeal of the 'Anti-Importation Law' would come from the American people before the ten years limitation has expired, and that it would first be heard on the Pacific Coast. He bases his opinion on the assumption that the services of the race are indispensable, that we cannot get along without them. We do not believe it. Within the next ten years this western land will teem with industrious laborers from our own people in the East, men who with wives and little ones have crossed the continent in search of land and work and homes. Of this class the country is in need. All the proceeds of their labor go to swell the riches of our country. Their surplus earnings are reinvested here, and their children grow up faithful, loyal, intelligent citizens of the land of their youth. It never can be good policy to bring this class of willing workers, these men with houses and families, into competition with a foreign race, whose presence is a social curse, and who are by heredity unfitted to become citizens and heads of families in a land they visit only to strip it like a swarm of locusts. There will never come a time, upon this Coast at least, when a fair expression of the popular wish will be in favor of Chinese immigration; and while, with pro-Chinese advocates, we may grant that certain public works have been more rapidly advanced by reason of their presence, it may now be truthfully replied that the pressing need — if need it ever was — of utilizing this heathen horde is fast becoming less, and will, long ere the decade expires, cease to exist.