"Oh, fudge, Wilson, you don't know anything about the problem, and yet you come here telling us old Californians what we ought to think about it. I'll admit anything you say in favor of the coolies. They're industrious and faithful and cheap; but they're more than that. The Chinese can drive us out of any line they want to take up. I've seen that done too many times to doubt it any longer."
"Well, if they can do it, why shouldn't they?" cried General Wilson. "Survival of the fittest--isn't that the law of nature? If the white race can't stand the competition, let it perish. But it won't perish. It'll manufacture things to sell to the Chinese, and trade will go on whether the white or the yellow man settles this coast."
"That may be all right for you fellows in the East; but even there you'll be hit. Just ask yourself which would be more profitable as customers, a million Chinese who spend ten cents a day on their supplies, or a million whites who spend a dollar?"
"Sophistry, sophistry, Kendrick!" puffed the general, apparently impressed by the illustration. "But why go after the Chinese alone? I was in Castle Garden a month ago, and the fellows they let through there are every whit as un-American as the Chinese. Why don't you holler about them?"
"Why," said Kendrick, "we're hollering about the pigs in our corn. You're the fellows to look out for the other side of the continent."
"Why don't we try to keep them out?" cried General Wilson. "Why, it's because we've got to have cheap labor for our mines and mills and railroads. We need it just as we need machinery, and we've got to take the disadvantages with the benefits, and no loud-mouthed agitator can deprive us of the right to get our workmen in the cheapest market. It's the law of trade, the fundamental principle at the bottom of political economy--the science on which the development of civilization must depend--"
General Wilson's oration was suddenly cut short by an outburst of sound from the street below, and with common instinct we hastened to the window to view the cause of the hubbub. On the pavement was a crowd of five or six hundred men, moving slowly up California Street, circling with cries of anger or derision about some indistinguishable center of attraction. The outer fringe of the crowd was constantly breaking into sprays of individuals who ran forward to secure a position in front, while those behind tried to leap on the shoulders of those before them, and the center was an effervescent mass of arms, heads and clubs.
The nucleus of disturbance, I was at last able to make out, was composed of two policemen dragging a hatless man between them.
"Oh," said Wharton Kendrick, "it's nothing worse than an attempt to lynch some fellow who's been caught at his crime. I suppose he's killed a woman, or something of the sort. But the police will get him to prison easily enough. There's never nerve enough in one of these crowds to take such a fellow and hang him."
"They ought to string 'em up on the spot," snapped General Wilson. Then repenting suddenly of this unprofessional exclamation, he added: "But the majesty of the law must be upheld. It is the shield of the innocent and the sword of the righteous."