CHINESE EMIGRATION TO THE WEST INDIES.
Next to the emigration from Ireland and Germany during the last few years, the most remarkable movement of any portion of the human family is that which has lately begun in China. With a population equal to forty or fifty Irelands, the Celestial Empire is quite as much overcrowded as the latter country was before the potato famine ; but it is only within the last few years that the surplus population has begun to venture to distant countries in search of employment; and as there is evidently a great demand for labour in many parts of the globe, the move- ment is likely to go forward at such a rate as may ultimately exercise a powerful influence on the character of the Chinese population. Among other places to which the men of the Middle Empire have found their way lately, the colony of British Guiana seems to be one of the places where they have done very well, in spite of the attempts of certain Colonial journals to represent the Chinese emigration as a failure. From a return of despatches relating to Chinese immigrants recently in- troduced into Guiana and Trinidad, we are glad to see that, in both colo- nies, but especially in the former, the planters speak in very high terms of the manner in which the Chinese have conducted themselves. They are described as possessing strength, industry, and intelligence ; and as being so fond of money that they are willing to exert their strength to the utmost in order to earn good wages. The rate of pay offered to those who wish to leave their native land is very small—only five dollars per month with food and lodging, or seven dollars' ithout. These contract prices of labour, however, are very soon broken by mutual con- sent, in favour of task-work, which is much more satisfactory to both the planter and the Chinese coolie. The latter is said to make very good wages ; his strength and power of enduring heat and fatigue being far superior to that of the Indian coolie. One great difficulty in the way of a successful immigration and colonization in the West Indies by means of Chinese labourers, is the want of female immigrants. When the project was first mooted about two years ago, Governor Barkly, in his letter to Earl Grey, ascribed the difficulty of procuring female emigrants from China to the practice of female infanticide, and to the custom of crippling the feet of the women, "so as to unfit them not merely for agricultural labour, but for locomotion." This proves to have been a mistake, how- ever. Mr. White, the Government Emigration Agent, who went to China for the express purpose of obtaining information on the subject, and of organizing the conveyance of labourers to Guiana and Trinidad, although doubtful at first whether it would be possible to obtain Chinese women, admits that, " after more extended inquiry," the difficulties are not so great as he had been led to believe. "Many of the intending emigrants, who applied at the office in Hongkong to be registered, stated that they would send for their wives and children after they had been a short time in the colony " ; and as for their feet, the class of women who are likely to emigrate are those accustomed to manual labour, and they are said to have "full-grown and undeformed feet, are strong and well formed, and would be very useful on a plantation." Hopes are held out, that if arrange- ments could be made for conveying a sufficient proportion of female emi- grants to Guiana, the Chinese would settle there in large numbers ; and as many of them are ambftioyit as well as hard-working, they might ulti- mately form a very useful middle class. All accounts agree in represent- ing them as greatly superior to both African and Bengal labourers in every rftpeet, The heaviest drawback, however, either as regards male or female emi- gration, is the cost of conveyance ; and this has been greatly aggravated
by the excessive dearness of freights within the last twelvemonth. Were China within easy reach of the West Indies, the transportation of la- bourers would go on at a prodigious rate. But, even before the late ad- vance in freights, the cost of introducing Chinese emigrants into Guiana was 100 dollars per head, while those from America and Sierra Leone coat only 30 dollars. Now that the demand for tonnage is so much greater all over the world, and that the Cuban authorities are offering 130 dollars for every Chinese labourer landed in that island, the difficulty of obtain_ ing a sufficient supply of labour for the West Indies becomes every day greater.
Were the Chinese population not exceedingly ignorant of what is going on in a country much nearer to them than the West Indies, they would never dream of taking so long a voyage, and binding themselves to work for ls. a day. At the very moment when such contracts were making at Hongkong, common labourers at the Diggings were earning 20s. to 408. a day. Well might Adam Smith say, that of all commodities human la- bour is the one most difficult to transport from where it is in excess to where it is most in demand.
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