No. 81.
Mr. Bailey
to Mr. Davis.
United States
Consulate,
Hong-Kong, September 12, 1873.
(Received Oct. 23.)
No. 207.]
Sir: Referring to my 197, relating to the Macao
coolie trade and the connection of Hong-Kong therewith, I have the honor to
inclose an article, marked No. 1, from the China Mail of September 1,
regarding “the expulsion of the coolie-ships” from Hong-Kong. The article is
couched in the spirit of jubilate Deo at the final
expulsion of all coolie-ships from the harbors of this colony.
On Monday, August 24, in obedience to an official notification from the
colonial government, seven coolie-ships then in the harbor, being repaired,
fitted, and supplied for the Macao traffic, were compelled to lift their
anchors and put to sea. At the close of that day not a coolie-ship remained
in the waters of the colony, and none have presumed to enter since.
Most of these ships moved direct to Whampoa, within Chinese territory, only
twelve miles from Canton, where foreign docks, chiefly owned by Hong-Kong
residents, exist for the repair of vessels. But the sequel proves, as will
be seen by an extract, marked No. 2, from the China Mail of September 9, and
one from the Hong-Kong Times of September 11, that the cordon of
international reprobation is closing inexorably around the doomed traffic.
The Chinese authorities have forbidden the Macao coolie-ships from resorting
to Whampoa, and have warned those now
[Page 204]
there to leave forthwith. I would respectfully suggest
whether the state of affairs is not now ripe for a final blow to be given by
the United States and Great Britain, joining in an identical protest to
Portugal, for the total suppression of the traffic, and thus end it forever.
This would seem to be the supreme juncture for such a movement, to be
supplemented by those two governments with a cordial support of China in
strong repressive measures.
It is a well-known historical fact that the tenure of Portugal’s sovereignty
to Macao rests upon a most flimsy basis. I quote from Denny’s “Treaty Ports
of China and Japan”—Trübner & Co., London, 1867—the following summary:
“It will thus be seen that the claim on the part of Portugal to consider
Macao as an integral portion of the dominions of the crown rests on no
better foundation than the permission granted by the provincial mandarins to
certain Portuguese subjects to settle on this site. It is absurd to suppose
that the jealous government of China, in the plenitude of its power, would
voluntarily cede any portion of its territory to a foreign sovereign; and
the rule of Portugal at Macao can, therefore, remain absolute only so long
as it rests unchallenged by the Chinese government.”
With a vigorous protest to Portugal, keeping the question of her title to
Macao in front of the discussion, would it not seem to be potential in
bringing her to an attitude demanded by justice and humanity?
When the late Mr. Seward came to Hong-Kong in the winter of 1870–’71, he had
several conversations with Chief Justice Smale relative to the Macao
coolie-trade, a subject at that time paramount, absorbing all minor topics,
and, therefore, eagerly discussed in all circles. Knowing the great weight
and authority of Mr. Seward’s views at home and abroad, and he having been
here within the very atmosphere tainted with the traffic, I take the liberty
of giving the substance of those conversations as I have gathered it from
various sources. Mr. Seward said, “He had studied the character of the Macao
coolie-trade, and held it to be essentially a trade in slaves, aggravated by
the fact that the slave of the Macao trade was a man of intellect and
cultivation, to whom servitude is the more galling. He therefore felt that
its destruction was a duty devolving on England and America.
He had studied the history of the occupation of Macao by Portugal, and agreed
generally in the narrative of Portuguese usurpations contained in “The
Treaty Ports of China and Japan;” and he held this view of the want of title
in Portugal to sovereignty over Macao was a defect of which America and
England ought to take advantage as a means of coercing Portugal into
observance of the requisitions of China as to emigration, so that no Chinese
subjects should be kidnapped from China and removed to Macao, to be thence
forced into coolie-ships, the patent fact being that the small peninsula of
Macao would not, out of its small Chinese population, furnish a hundred
Chinese coolies a year to emigrant ships.
He was very emphatic in his opinion that it was the duty of America and
England to join in an identical protest to Portugal, and to enforce that
protest by making Portugal feel all the evil consequences of unfriendly
relations with her two best friends as the result of non-compliance with the
requisitions of civilization and humanity; even to the extent of not
interfering in case China should claim her own again in Macao.
He spoke in warm language of what he hoped would be the benefit to
civilization of united action by America and England.
But his views on this subject do not rest alone on unrecorded conversations.
[Page 205]
In his book of “Travels around
the World,” on page 275, written at Hong-Kong, speaking of the Macao system,
he says: “The system of abduction prevailing there is an abomination
scarcely less execrable than the African slave-trade. The emigrants are
promiscuously taken by fraud and force; ignorant of their destination,
without security for their labor or their freedom, they are hurried on board
‘sailing-crafts’”
If it is possible to suppose that farther evidence is required to show that
the Macao coolie-trade is in reality the slave-trade, I inclose a statement,
marked No. 3, made by Mr. J. B. Steere, an American gentleman engaged in
scientific pursuits, sent out by the president and board of regents of the
University of Michigan to make collections in natural history, &c.,
&c. Mr. Steere has recently arrived in China from Peru, where he has
spent three years in traversing that country in many directions. He is a
keen observer, and his letters from Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian
Institute, Governor Baldwin, of Michigan, and others, leave no question as
to his high character and learning.
Mr. Steere’s statement is so clear and unequivocal that it needs no
commentary by me to show that the Macao coolie in Peru is in the bonds of a
slavery more galling than the African slave; and the only wonder is that the
nations do not wipe out in a day the power to do evil in the petty quasi colony from whence alone springs all this
woe.
I have, &c.,
[Inclosure 1.]
From the China Mail.
Hong-Kong, Monday, September 1,
1873.
the expulsion of the
coolie-ships.
Nothing affords more ground for reflection to the thoughful observer than
the manner in which certain gigantic abuses, apparantly rooted as firmly
as abuses can ever be, have sometimes disappeared, with a rapidity quite
unexpected, before the march of events, as a snow-wreath vanishes at the
touch of the first warm wind. All but the very young of the present
generation must remember the hopeless feeling with which, from ten to
fifteen years ago, they regarded such subjects as slavery in America,
the subjugated and divided condition of Italy, or serfdom in Russia.
Dark as the night was, there were no signs that it was the darkness of
the hour before the dawn. The cry “How long?” had gone up until men had
almost ceased to hope for change, or to believe in its possibility. It
was to be expected that such abuses would die hard; but there seemed
little chance of their dying at all. And yet, ere two decades have
passed, the very abuses we have cited are almost forgotten by the rising
generation, which has, in its turn, its own foes to grapple with.
Only one year ago a person who had seriously said, in any average
Hong-Kong company, that Macao coolie-ships would not on this date be
tolerated in the waters of the colony, would have been looked upon much
in the same way as a fanciful enthusiast who had proposed to revive
protection and re-enact the laws against regrating. Half a score of the
soundest, most practical, and most utterly conclusive arguments would
have been sprung on him, not a few based on the alleged impossibility of
excluding coolie-ships—some on the amount of money involved in the
trade, which would effectually bar the way against legislation; but the
most approved reply would have been that he was talking simple nonsense,
and there the matter would have dropped. And yet, within so few months,
we find coolie-ships quietly turned out of this harbor. At the moment we
write there is not one within its limits, and we hope there never again
will be one. And this, too, in spite of the somewhat large special
interests involved, with a sufficient public approval which cannot be
mistaken. Those who, a few months ago, ventured absolutely to defend the
coolie traffic are prudently silent; those who
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upheld it on the score of those fallacious general
considerations which have so often been set up against practical
reforms, have forgotten to philosophize; and even those who are out of
pocket seemed disinclined to cry out.
Is it too much to hope—are we over-sanguine for venturing to believe—that
the collapse and overthrow of this objectionable traffic are as
unexpectedly near as has been the expulsion of its vessels from
Hong-Kong? Ten years hence will the Macao trade be a tale that old
residents of China will tell to youngsters? Three years hence will it
not be forgotten, as the events of three years ago are forgotten in
China only? We devoutly hope that it may, and are not without reason for
our hope. The Chinese are drawing their lines closer and closer around
Macao. Many of the native crimps and kidnappers have suffered the
punishment—more deserved by their employers—of decapitation. The crimp
who has decoyed hundreds to semi-slavery, or worse, now finds his own
wretched and worthless life in danger. We are informed from trustworthy
sources that coolies are not to be had for money, and they are certainly
not likely to come for love. This action on the part of the Chinese
authorities is a welcome sign that they are waking up, or are being
stirred up, to a sense of their responsibilities in the matter. We do
not hesitate to say that, putting aside all questions of humanity, for
the mere sake of foreign interests, amicable relations with and progress
in China, the treaty powers ought to strain every nerve to induce a
healthy action by the Chinese in this matter. No means of influencing
public opinion, either here or at home, should be left untried. A huge
abuse like the Macao coolie-trade yields only to an accumulated
avalanche of reprobation. Every right-thinking person should consider
what responsibility rests upon him, even in his conversation, to see
that he is helping the world forward and not backward.
If the Chinese can only be induced to shut coolie-ships out from Whampoa
and the coast ports, the end of the trade cannot be far off. At the same
time we would suggest that establishments which repair these vessels at
Whampoa incur a very grave responsibility. The impossibility of finding
a dock will do more to stop the trade than any other outside influence
short of the display of force, which, although we should by no means
object to see it exerted, will, we hope, not be necessitated. We have
heard a good deal of a dock at Macao. Such a dock will be a monument of
disgrace to the Chinese if it ever is completed. The Chinese should put
an absolute veto on such an undertaking, and every treaty power should
use its utmost influence to induce them to do so. Macao is in Chinese
eyes no more legally Portuguese soil than Peking is, and its inhabitants
are held to have no more right to make a dock at the one place than at
the other. It is only within a very few years that they have ventured to
think of building anything there without Chinese permission, and the
Chinese naturally believe that the sooner they resume that lordship of
the soil of which they have temporarily allowed themselves to be
deprived, the better.
No doubt it would be at least impolite to adopt this tone had Macao
justified its actual status as a foreign city. But she has not. There is
no blinking the fact that for years past she has knowingly connived,
under cover of unobjectionably worded regulations, at a system fraught
with all that is bad, and she cannot therefore feel surprised if those
who protest against the acts she indorses adduce the very mortifying
argument that she not merely has no international status, but that she
declines to attain it lest it should compel the cessation of a traffic
from which she derives her chief revenue. It cannot be doubted that
after the Fatchoy scandal, Mauritius, the Cape, and all other English
ports will be closed to vessels employed on a similar voyage. Under
these disadvantages, here and elsewhere, it is not easy to see how the
organized involuntary emigration from Macao is to be carried on. It is
also to be hoped that France, Italy, Belgium, and any other European
powers that have not yet perceived the disgrace of being associated with
Spain and Peru in this detestable traffic, will speedily quit such
questionable company, and forbid their subjects and vessels to engage in
the lucrative but sentimentally objectionable pursuit of man-stealing.
It is curious to note that the heaviest blow yet struck at the traffic
should emanate from a Hong-Kong government.
[Inclosure 2.]
Extract from the China Mail, September
9.
We learn on good authority that the Chinese government has resolved to
henceforth forbid Macao coolie-ships from resorting to Whampoa, and that
those there on Saturday last have been warned by the acting commissioner
of customs to leave forthwith. Thus the last blow is struck at what may
be termed the outside assistance hitherto rendered to the trade, and
Macao will henceforth have to depend upon her own resources to prosecute
it. It is not impossible that the total extinction of the trade will
shortly follow. By way of a beginning, Chinese have intimated that the
reception of the Peruvian minister at Peking “will not he
favorable.”
[Page 207]
Extract from the Hong-Kong Times, September
11.
the coolie vessels at
whampoa.
The following courteous “notice to quit” was served on all the captains
of Peruvian coolie-ships lying in Whampoa on Saturday. The last of them
was beating down the second bar yesterday en
route for Macao, which is now the center of the obnoxious trade
and their only resort. What will be the next step to be taken by the
Chinese government? The better class of the Macao Portuguese seem to
have foreseen it, in a future not very distant, for a telegram to that
effect was sent to Lisbon on Tuesday through the Great Northern
Telegraph Company. The days of the coolie traffic are doomed, and we
shall quietly wait and note the issue of events:
“Canton, September 6, 1873.
“Sir: I have to acquaint you that
instructions have been received from H. E. Viceroy, through the
superintendent of trade, ordering that you will leave this port and
the adjacent waters at once with the vessel which you are the master
of. Your ship’s paper will be handed to you by the tide-surveyor at
Whampoa, who will take your receipt for the same. At the same time I
have to notify you that no vessel being destined for the carriage of
Chinese coolies and belonging to non-treaty power will in future be
allowed to enter this port.
“I am, sir, your obedient servant,
“H. O. BROWN.”
[Inclosure.]
Mr. Steere to Mr.
Bailey.
Dear Sir: At your request I send you the result
of my observations upon Chinese labor in Peru. I entered Peru from the
Amazon, crossing the mountains through Cha-chapoyas and Cajamarca,
reaching the Pacific coast at Malabugo, near Trujillo. I afterward
visited much of the northern part of Peru, including the towns of
Trujillo, San Pedro, Pacasmayo, &c. I also went east of Lima upon
the line of the Owga Railroad, reaching the vicinity of Yuli, and made
some short excursions through the country immediately about Lima.
The coast country of Peru, that part lying between the Cordilleras and
the Pacific, is rainless, but was highly cultivated by the people who
possessed it before the Spanish conquest, as is still apparent from the
frequent remains of terraces and ditches for irrigation. Community of
labor was required to keep these immense works in repair, and when the
system was interfered with by the Spaniards, and the laborers sent to
the mines, the whole country soon became a desert, the few remaining
Indians going into the mountains, where the soil, though less
productive, is watered by the rains. With few exceptions this coast
country is still a desert of drifting sand, though immediately becoming
fertile by irrigation. It is to cultivate these lands that Chinese
laborers have been imported, there being but a few hundred upon the
Guano Islands, and none that I have seen or heard of in the mines.
Coolie labor was first employed to any great extent in Peru during the
war of secession in the United States, and it was used in the
cultivation of cotton. At the close of the war the Peruvian growers
could not compete with the United States, and the cotton-fields were to
a great extent abandoned, the dry bushes often still standing on lands
that have again gone back to desert. At this time it was found that the
Chinese could be profitably employed in raising sugar-cane, and the
importation was kept up. The cultivation of sugar-cane is steadily
increasing, and new estates are being continually opened, and the best
of sugar machinery imported from the United States and England. Many of
the estates are very large, some employing as many as a thousand coolies
each. The proprietors are in many cases English and German, and
foreigners are generally employed as engineers, &c.
The number of Chinese in Peru is variously estimated by the Peruvians
themselves at from eighty thousand to one hundred and fifty
thousand.
Twenty-five ships, mostly of American build, but under the Peruvian flag,
are engaged in the trade, and these carry from five to nine hundred
each, and, when coolies are plenty, can make about two voyages a year.
The ship in which I made the voyage from Callao to China was of thirteen
hundred tons burden, and her hold was fitted up with bunks for eight
hundred Chinese. There were two tiers of platforms, one above the other,
running entirely around the vessel, and upon them were numbered, in
Chinese and Arabic, the space allotted each man, which was something
less than two feet
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in width
and five in length. There was also a double tier of the same running
down the center of the ship, leaving a narrow passage on each side
between the bunks. The voyage from Callao to China is made in from sixty
to seventy days, but the return-trip is generally over a hundred, as the
winds are contrary.
The coolies are taken at Macao under contract to serve eight years,
receiving food and clothing and four dollars per month. Before their
arrival in Callao their cues are cut off, and they are dressed in suits
of nankin cotton, and are ready for sale. Those Who wish to buy coolies
go on board and select those they want, paying about $400 each, and
receiving the contracts as evidence of ownership., They are then taken
to the estates, and are to all intents and purposes slaves for the term
of eight years, and whether they receive their four dollars per month
and are liberated at the end of their term of service depends wholly
upon the honor and honesty of the owner, for the estates are far apart,
and roads, mails, or other means of communication are rare.
There are no special means of correcting the evils of this system, and
the coolie seldom or never appears before the courts of the country.
When they try to escape they are hunted down, and men are continually
scouring the country in this business. They are bought and sold like
other property, the transferring of the contract being proof of
sale.
I noticed especially the miserable appearace of those upon, the estates;
they were poorly clothed, were very thin in flesh, and looked despondent
and despairing as if they did not care whether they lived or died. This
appearance is likely produced by insufficient food and clothing, as
those I saw at work upon the railroads being built by Mr. Henry Meiggs,
who receive the same rations as the other laborers, appeared robust and
contented.
Those who oversee them at their work often carry heavy whips, which they
use in hurrying the slow and indolent. The stocks and irons are
frequently used in their punishment, and I saw at one estate between
thirty and forty come up from their work heavily ironed, and holding up
their chains with one hand to keep them from galling their ankles, while
they carried their spades, with which they had been at work, with the
other. The owner of the estate told us that they had attempted to run
away. There are stories circulated in the country of Chinese being
burned at the stake, and some of them may well be true, judging from the
late occurrences in Lima, where the dictator, Colonel Gutierrez, and his
brother were hanged naked to the towers of the cathedral, and then cut
down and allowed to fall sixty or seventy feet to the stone pavement
below, and afterward burned in the public plaza. Crimes committed by the
coolies are generally punished by their owners, as they are too valuable
to pass their time in the public prisons. This is even the case with
murder, the penalty for this crime, when the victim is also a coolie,
being that the murderer shall work out the term of service of his
victim, added to his own.
The mortality among the Chinese is very great, and I have heard it
estimated that less than a third live out their term of service, though
there is no means of ascertaining the exact truth. It is true that every
estate has a Chinese burial-place, which is thickly covered with little
heaps, each marking the spot where a Chinaman lies a few inches under
the sand without shroud or coffin.
Suicide is very frequent among them, and this often by hanging. Small
trees about the buildings upon the estates were often shown me that had
borne many fruits of this kind. The laborer in Peru is compelled to pay
his debts in labor, and as long as he can be kept in debt he cannot
leave the service of his master. This system has made a great part of
the Indians of Peru serfs or peons. At the end of the Chinaman’s term of
service, if this is not prolonged by the owner, by keeping him in debt
and in bondage until death, he generally makes his way to the town and
hires out as cook, and after making a little money he opens a small
eating-house or fonda, where the improvident people of the country find
it easier to buy their food than to cook it themselves. When the
Chinaman has made a few hundred dollars in this way he returns home. The
vessel in which I came from Calloa to China brought eleven, all of them
apparently broken in health and going home to die, though one of them
was said to have with him about $25,000. Ten or twelve Chinamen seem to
be about the average number who return upon ships that take out from six
to nine hundred, though a few may make their way back by way of
California.
There is a feeling of insecurity in Peru from the presence of this great
number of desperate men, who have no ties to bind them with the people
of the country or to keep them from taking vengeance in case of
insurrection. Every one goes armed, and every farm-house is a little
armory. There have already been some instances of the coolies rising and
murdering all the Peruvians they met with, and in one case at least the
military had to be sent to quell them, but as yet there has beeen no
combined action among them.
With respect,
