Two or three times a week, regular as clockwork, "John" came to the back door with his loaded baskets of the vegetables in season, fresh and good, various and cheap. Europeans had not the patience to grow them where they had so many enemies; it did not pay to do it, while he did it for us on such terms; it has been so all these years, and is so still. You will hardly find a private kitchen garden, except on the isolated stations, where the gardener is nearly always a Chinaman. Every little township depends, for the food it can least afford to do without, on the industry of this man who, of all others, is the most despised in the community, and of all others—tradesmen, at any rate—is the most reliable. I never was cheated, or in any way "let in," by a Chinaman, and never found him discourteous or disobliging. Those who clamour for his extinction from amongst us do not realise what country folk would miss if he were gone.
Poor John Chinaman! so industrious, so frugal, so inoffensive and law-abiding—an example to the white citizen of his class—if ever I feel ashamed of Australia it is on his account. Its treatment of him, who seems to have no friend amongst the nations, is indeed a strange satire upon the traditions of the British race. One can see a certain reasonableness in the poll tax of £50, hard as it seems that one only of the various aliens amongst us should be thus penalised (and for his industry too); it is, doubtless, advisable that we should prevent ourselves from being over-run (seeing that the earth is not for all); but the law which constitutes one Chinaman a factory is worthy of the Dark Ages, simply. Here is a sample of the sort of thing that Englishmen, with the Union Jack over their heads, can read in their newspapers of a morning as calmly as they read reports on the weather:—
"Hop Lee, who keeps a laundry in Gertrude Street, was charged at the Fitzroy Police Court this morning with having worked after hours on Saturday, the 26th January, contrary to the provisions of the Shops and Factories Act. Constable P—— deposed that about 5.30 P.M. on the day named he went into defendant's premises and found him ironing collars. In September 1899 the defendant was fined for a similar offence. As £5 is the minimum penalty for a second conviction, Hop Lee was mulcted in that amount and ordered to pay £1, 1s. costs.
"Sam Pittee, who also keeps a laundry in Gertrude Street, was then charged with a similar offence, also on the afternoon of the 26th January. The defendant having pleaded guilty, the Bench inflicted a fine of £1, with £1, 1s. costs."
These are not men employing hands, but poor cottage workers "on their own"; and the police—who cannot take them up for brawling, or thieving, or woman-beating—because they don't do such things—watch and spy, as perhaps is their duty, to see that they sit with their hands before them through all the cool hours, while the wash that customers may be clamouring for lies about them undone. One poor Chinaman was arrested and fined for—according to his defence in court, which it appeared was not listened to—ironing his own shirt out of factory hours. And when candidates for the Federal Senate and House of Representatives were making their stump speeches, a "Reverend" gentleman amongst them, now a M.H.R., shouted these words to his electors (to be quoted almost without comment in the papers next morning):—"Chinese should be either pole-axed or poll-taxed in such a manner as would make the country too hot for them."
Ah, poor country! By the mouths of dozens of her most patriotic children I have heard her sigh for the old days (before my time) when a deputy of the Crown and a few soldiers and policemen were all her Government. And no wonder.