Not Good Mixers

The one test of citizenship which the American sets up for any man of any race, creed or country is, that he shall be a "good mixer."

The Chinese are remarkably quick to learn and to adapt themselves to whatever situation they happen to encounter, but they seem to have not the slightest faculty for making friends. Everywhere they are looked on with contempt and subjected to rude treatment of every description.

This is so not only in San Francisco, but in all cities where they locate in any considerable numbers. In New York, we notice that the Mayor has found it necessary to issue an order holding the captains of police districts strictly responsible for failure to give Chinamen efficient protection. But whatever their rights may be, the fact is that they are pretty well outlawed by public opinion, and they do not seem to make any progress toward a better social standing.

Senator EDMUNDS put the pith of the whole argument against Chinese immigration into a short speech, the other day, when he said that the reasons for their exclusion were that the fundamental prosperity of the Republic consists of the homogeneity of its people; that the Chinamen here did not assimilate socially or politically, and were not homogeneous with our population, and it did not now appear they could assimilate.

He favored a limitation of the period of suspension to ten years, as conforming the bill more directly to the spirit of the treaty. As thus modified, this legislation would be equivalent to saying, not that we deny the assimilation of the Chinaman, if he is capable of that, but only that we shall suspend the immigration of hundreds of thousands of his race until we have tried the experiment as to our compatibility with the Chinese already here.