Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/198

186 Chinese in all respects than they are to-day with all their experience of contact with American civilization. True, they have been the gainers to the extent of the knowledge and skill they have acquired in the field of skilled labor and the use of machinery, but it has made no impression upon their race-habits and instanced no sign of assimilation with the race which surrounds them.

We are accustomed to regard our own ethnological stock as the dominant race of mankind; and yet, wherever the Chinese have colonized among us, we have yielded the ground before their advancing hosts, and have surrendered to them a dominance in law, social habits, and religion. While all other races which combine to form the American people proper yield common obedience to the laws, and may be regarded as a common brotherhood in social and political citizenship, the Chinese have remained a law unto themselves, and in the estimation of the Christian communities in which they have established themselves they are the same unchanged and unchangeable heathen race that they were when they landed upon our shores. Such have been the results of nearly forty years of contact of the two races. If we consider this period too short a time in which to look for contrary results, what shall we say of the fact—for fact it is—that in the Philippine Islands, where the Chinese have been colonized now for nearly three hundred years, precisely the same results have come about—no better and no worse? Not only have they maintained their race characteristics, but in every instance they have proved themselves to be the stronger, in so far as the acquisition of material wealth and advantage are concerned, maintaining all the while their religion against all efforts at conversion.

"In 1871," says the Baron von Hübner, "the entire English trade with China, amounting to £42,000,000 sterling, was transacted through English firms." Since that time, he adds that, "with the exception of some great influential English firms, all the same trade has passed into the hands of Chinese merchants." In Macao similar results have obtained.

When the Manchus conquered China, they swept all before them and introduced Manchu habits and customs. But steadily these innovations gave way to Chinese influences. "You may now," says the Abbe' Hue, "traverse Manchuria to the river Amoor without being at all aware that you are not traveling in a province of China. The local coloring has been totally effaced. The Manchu Tartars have almost totally abdicated their own manners, and adopted instead those of the Chinese."

Has Chinese colonization in San Francisco shown any different results? Let us see. That portion of San Francisco known today as Chinatown was originally the residence and business