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THE COOLY IMPORTATION |
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Harper’s
Weekly, August 31, 1867, pages 546-547 (Editorial) |
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During the
week ending July 20 nearly eleven hundred coolies were landed in
Cuba. Two thousand, whose terms of service have expired in Cuba, are
to be introduced into Louisiana, and it is a matter to which public
attention should be intelligently directed. Webster defines cooly as
an East Indian porter or carrier. The name coolies is applied
distinctively to the laborers of India and China. The former never
emigrate spontaneously, as we learn from an elaborate article in the
Tribune, but they are removed through the agency of
emigration officers of the French and Danish Governments to the
colonies of those Powers. Mauritius receives the larger number. In
the year 1865 the British West Indies received about four thousand,
which was less than an average supply. These coolies engage under a
contract of five or ten years, and five-sixths of them usually
return home at the end of their term. Their treatment in the
colonies depends upon the local authorities. In Demerara the system
has worked well. In Jamaica, where the planters seem to be the most
impracticable of men, it has wholly failed. |
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The
Chinese cooly emigration is much larger. Many go to Australia to dig
gold, or to engage in trade. Many are drawn by the gold to
California, and they are there monopolizing the railroad work.
Thirty or forty thousand coolies are annually sent by agents to Peru
and Cuba. These agents, as may be supposed, are not of good
character. Only males are sent, and they generally contract for
eight years. The passage is a kind of middle passage of the old
African slave-trade, and there are frequent mutinies. A late writer
describes the Indian cooly as mild and tractable and the Chinese as
the reverse; but while the Chinese despises his white master as of
an inferior race, the Indian hates him. The Indian is less bound to
his native land than the Chinese, but he is less strong, and a more
inefficient laborer. Their wants are few, they work steadily, and
they are satisfied with small wages. |
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Is it
desirable that the population of the Southern States of this country
should be increased by such accessions? These people are the lowest
and in every way the least desirable portion of nations the most
alien to us and our civilization. They are not needed as laborers;
and their introduction into a section of the country in which the
traditions and habits of slavery are still fresh could result only
in establishing a new form of slavery, and infinitely perplexing and
delaying the natural and desirable consequences of emancipation. The
acts of Congress of February 12, 1862, and July 4, 1864, were
leveled at the trade in coolies by American vessels, and are plainly
intended to prevent their wholesale importation into the country. It
is ridiculous to treat the business of cooly emigration as the free
and voluntary passage of foreigners into the country, and if the
existing acts are not sufficient to prevent it new acts should be
passed. No greater disadvantage to this country can well be
conceived than the unnatural addition of hundreds of thousands of
the worst kind of Hindoos and Chinese to the population of the
Southern States, composed as at present half of newly emancipated
slaves and half of a sullen, late slaveholding class, hostile to the
Government, despising the freedmen, and the more willing to gratify
their habits of absolute control over the laborer if it can be done
in a way plainly perilous to the country. |
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Natural
and legitimate immigration we would not, of course, repel. But a
wholly artificial and unnecessary and pernicious increase of the
population we would strenuously oppose. If it was an incalculable
blunder as well as crime to allow the African slave-trade, it is not
less so to tolerate the cooly importation. |
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Harper’s
Weekly, August 31, 1867, pages 546-547 (Editorial) |
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