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Show "CHEAP LABOR." It has been the custom to speak of "cheap labor" as a great advantage to a country. There cannot, to our thinking, be a greater mistake. Labor is "cheap" when the laborer receives little to reward re-ward him for his toil, and what diminishes dimin-ishes the comforts of the great majority of the people, certainly cannot be con-siderd con-siderd as a benefit to any country. The Chinaman furnishes the cheapest kind of "cheap labor" in this country. He lives on cheap food which a white ' man cannot eat; and having no family to support, lodges with others in a hovel unfit for animals, to say nothing of human hu-man beings. This mode of living enables him to sell his labor at a lower rate than a white man possibly can, and therefore the Chinaman can work wlr'e the American citizen and his family must starve. No wonder that the people of the Pacific Coast have imbibed an undying undy-ing hatred toward the race which furnishes fur-nishes such "cheap labor," since it is all done at their expense, and simply because be-cause the one is a civilized being and must live as such, while the other is a barbarian and content to exist as barbarians bar-barians do. The question of "cheap labor" as fur- nished by the Chinese to the exclusion oi American workmgraen, is more a matter mat-ter of civilization, than of barter, trade, or money-getting or commercial advantage, advan-tage, and this is the light in which it should be looked at.- Apropos of this view, we give the following extracts from a sermon recently delivered by an eminent emi-nent Pacific Coast divine : The Chinaman has no care for American schools or American policy. He imports hia goods, and hia money is not used to advance American institutions. The American Ameri-can citizen who lives by his labor has children child-ren -whom he is trying to feed and clothe ana educate. He is trying to live and rear his family according to the genius of American Ameri-can institutions. There is an irreconcilable irrecon-cilable inequality in the picture, somewhere. some-where. I insist that the American Ameri-can laborer has the right to keep, his home sacred and his citizenship inviolpte. He has the right to. trade with whom he chooses. Trade is a great system for the re- lief of mankind. It is a system of mutual j benefit. But trade that perpetuates this Chinese evil is unworthy of continuance. ' The voice of humanitv and Chria- I tian civilization demand that American laborers la-borers 6hould be protected, and America must not be so short-sighted as to place herself her-self second to any nation on earth. |