We publish elsewhere a remarkable amount of the great Chinese
Hoey or secret trading society of San Francisco; upon which the police have, by no means unwillingly, laid their hands. It is difficult to see what they can do, for the Hoey is a legal in- stitution in America, but they probably will make it the basis of an application to the Legislature. The difficulty, and indeed the impossibility, of putting down such a society is that it executes its decrees through agents, who are seldom caught, and when caught are silent, and that no civilised Govern- ment can punish on suspicion. They never, we believe, attack Europeans, and in Singapore and Calcutta the " woman difficulty" does not exist, as the Chinese intermarry with Portuguese and others, only bringing up their children in their own way. The revelation will, we greatly fear, be fatal to Chinese settlements in America.
Previous page
