In the Traveller, under this title, Mrs. S. L. Baldwin, of East Boston, writes an article, one of many, on the Chinese Question, from which a few extracts are here made, by request of Rev. Mrs. Eddy.
From a Christian standpoint we are ...compelled, by the stern justice of facts, to concede that Heathen China has kept her treaty with us, while we have violated our part of the compact.
The days are surely coming when a verdict shall be passed upon the black anti-Chinese, anti-humanity page of our history.... There always is the way of right. If when these people came to our shores, and the selfishness and violence of competing foreigners began to show themselves, the authorities of California, in defiance of political results to them selves, had at once taken their stand by fair dealing,... giving all fully to understand that this is a land where honest industry is respected, and where one man has just the same right to live and work as another, so long as he obeys the laws;... if the shield of law had been interposed between the Chinese and their tormentors;... if proper residences at regular rental had been furnished them, and the same sanitary care given to their part of the city as to the rest; if the honorable authorities of San Francisco, knowing well the swindling of these strangers by all manner of wicked men, from many of their tax-collectors down to the hoodlum, had employed an interpreter familiar with the Chinese people, language, and customs, to look after the interests of a people so helpless among them; if these same authorities had spent a little less energy in vilifying the Chinese, and a great deal more in closing up the gambling and opium dens in Chinatown;... if the municipal, State, and national governments had kept our treaty-obligations with China, and exemplified our great principles of justice, truth, and freedom, joining with Christian individuals and churches in the endeavor to educate and redeem these strangers who are so open to and appreciative of kindness, instead of all uniting by every possible method to wrong, and degrade them, inevitably prejudicing them against our civilization and Christianity,—how different and far-reaching would have been the result!
