the
American is compelled to earn income sufficient to maintain the wife and
babies. There can be but one end to this. If this immigration is
permitted to continue, American labor must surely be reduced to the
level of the Chinese competitor--the American's wants measured by his
wants, the American's comforts be made no greater than the comforts of
the Chinaman, and the American laborer, not having been educated to
maintain himself according to this standard, must either meet his
Chinese competitor on his own level, or else take up his pack and leave
his native land. The entire trade of China, if we had it all, is not
worth such a sacrifice."

Mr. Geary forgets that when Chinamen go to America they adapt themselves
to prevailing conditions. Chinese cooks in the States to-day receive
from $30 to $50 per month and board; Chinese laborers from $20 to $30,
and some of them $2 per day. In China, where there is an enormous
population, prices are lower, people are not wasteful, and the
necessities of life do not cost so much. The Chinaman goes to America to
obtain the benefit of _high_ wages, not to _reduce_ wages. I have never
seen such poverty and wretchedness in China as I have seen in London,
or such vice and poverty as can be seen in any large American city. Mr.
Geary scorns the treaties between his country and China, and laughs at
our commercial relations. He says, "There is nothing in the Chinese
trade, or rather the loss of it, to alarm any American. We would be
better off without any part or portion of it."

In answer to this I would suggest that China take him at his word, and I
assure you that if every Chinaman could be recalled, if in six months or
less we could take the eighty or one hundred thousand Chinamen out of
the country, the region where they now live would be demoralized. The
Chinese control the vegetable-garden business on the Pacific Coast; they
virtually control the laundry business; and that the Americans want
them, and want cheaper labor than they are getting from the Irish and
Italians, is shown by the fact that they continue to patronize our
people, and that in various lines Chinamen have the monopoly. Even when
the "hoodlums" of San Francisco were fighting the Chinese, the American
women did not withdraw their patronage, and while the men were off
speaking on the sand-lots against employing our people their wives were
buying vegetables from them.

Why? Because their hypocritical husbands and b