The extent to which they carry organization and administration is something quite curious. For instance, there are not only organized bands of laborers, submitting themselves to the control and management of a foreman; benevolent societies, administering charity and, to a large extent, justice; employment societies, which make advances to gangs and individuals all over the State; but there is in San Francisco a society or organization for the importation of prostitutes from China. The existence of this organization was not suspected until during last summer some of its victims appealed to a city missionary to save them from a life of vice. Thereupon suit was brought by Chinese in the courts for money which they claimed these women owed; and, on an examination, I was told, no attempt was made to conceal the fact that a regularly formed commercial organization was engaged in either buying or kidnapping young women in China, bringing them to San Francisco, there furnishing them clothing and habitations, and receiving from them a share of the money they gained by prostitution.
But the Chinaman is here; treaty laws made by our Government with his give him the right to come here, and to live here securely. And this is to be said, that if we could to-day expel the Chinese from California, more than half the capital now invested there would be idle or leave the State, many of the most important industries would entirely stop, and the prosperity of California would receive a blow from which it would not recover for twenty years. They are, as a class, peaceable, patient, ingenious, and industrious. That they deprive any white man of work is absurd, in a State which has scarcely half a million of people, and which can support ten millions, and needs at least three millions to develop fairly its abundant natural wealth; and no matter what he is, or what the effect of his presence might be, it is shameful that he should be meanly maltreated and persecuted among a people who boast themselves Christian and claim to be civilized.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MENDOCINO COAST AND CLEAR LAKE—GENERAL VIEW.
Some of the most picturesque country in California lies on or near the coast north of San Francisco. The coast counties, Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, Klamath, and Del Norte, are the least visited by strangers, and yet with Napa, Lake, and Trinity, they make up a region which contains a very great deal of wild and fine scenery, and which abounds with game, and shows to the traveler many varieties of life and several of the peculiar industries of California.
Those who have passed through the lovely Napa Valley, by way of Calistoga, to the Geysers, or who have visited the same place by way of Healdsburg and the pretty Russian River Valley, have no more than a faint idea of what a tourist may see and enjoy who will devote two weeks to a journey along the sea-coast of Marin and Mendocino counties, returning by way of Clear Lake—a fine sheet of water, whose borders contain some remarkable volcanic features.
The northern coast counties are made up largely of mountains, but imbosomed in these lie many charming little, and several quite spacious, valleys, in which you are surprised to find a multitude of farmers living, isolated from the world, that life of careless and easy prosperity which is the lot of farmers in the fat valleys of California.