ion." "A lady (good
scrubber) will go out by the day; $2." When you meet these "ladies," in
nine cases out of ten they are Irish from the peasant class--untidy,
insolent, often dissipated in the sense of drink. When they apply for a
position they put the employer through a course of questions. Some want
references from the last girl, I am told. Some want one thing, some
another, and all must have time for pleasure. Few have the air of
servants or inferiors, but are often offensive in appearance and
manners. I have never been called "John" by the girls who came to the
door where I called to pay a visit, but I could see that they all wished
so to address me. In England, where classes are acknowledged and a
servant is hired as a servant, and is one, an entirely different state
of affairs holds. They are respectful, having been educated to be
servants, know that they are servants, and as a result are cared for and
treated as old retainers and pensioners of the family.

The whole story of exclusion is a blot upon the American national honor,
and the most mystifying part of it is that intelligent people, the best
people, are not a party to it. The railroads want the Chinese laborer.
The great ranches of the West need him; people want cooks at $15 and $20
a month instead of $30 or $50. In a word, America is suffering for what
she must have some time--cheap labor; yet the low elements force the
issue. Congressmen are dominated by labor organizations on the Pacific
slope, and there are hundreds of Dennis Kearneys to-day where there was
one a few years ago. To make the case more exasperating, the Americans,
in their dire necessity, have imported swarms of low Mexicans to take
the place of the Chinese on the railroads, against whom there seems to
be no Irish hand raised. The Irish and Mexicans are of a piece. I know
from inquiry everywhere that the country at large would welcome
thousands of servants and field-workers in vineyards and orchards which
can not be made to pay if worked by expensive labor.

The Americans try to keep us out, but they also try to convert those who
get in. They have what they call Chinese missions, to which Chinamen go.
To be converted? No. To learn the language? Yes. I am told by an
American friend that here and in China over fifty thousand Chinese have
embraced Christianity. On the Atlantic coast I am assured that eight
hundred Chinamen are Christians, and on the Pacific slope two thousand
have embrace