University of Virginia Library

DISGRACEFUL PERSECUTION OF A BOY.

IN San Francisco, the other day, “A well-dressed boy, on his way to Sunday-school,
was arrested and thrown into the city prison for stoning Chinamen.”

What a commentary is this upon human justice! What sad prominence it
gives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the weak! San Francisco has
little right to take credit to herself for her treatment of this poor boy. What
had the child's education been? How should he suppose it was wrong to stone
a Chinamen? Before we side against him, along with outraged San Francisco,
let us give him a chance—let us hear the testimony for the defence.

He was a “well-dressed” boy, and a Sunday-school scholar, and therefore,
the chances are that his parents were intelligent, well-to-do people, with just
enough natural villainy in their composition to make them yearn after the
daily papers, and enjoy them; and so this boy had opportunities to learn all
through the week how to do right, as well as on Sunday.

It was in this way that he found out that the great commonwealth of California
imposes an unlawful mining-tax upon John the foreigner, and allows Patrick
the foreigner to dig gold for nothing—probably because the degraded
Mongol is at no expense for whisky, and the refined Celt cannot exist without it.

It was in this way that he found out that a respectable number of the tax-gatherers—it
would be unkind to say all of them—collect the tax twice, instead
of once; and that, inasmuch as they do it solely to discourage Chinese immigration
into the mines, it is a thing that is much applauded, and likewise regarded
as being singularly facetious.

It was in this way that he found out that when a white man robs a sluice-box
(by the term white man is meant Spaniards, Mexicans, Portuguese, Irish, Hondurans,
Peruvians, Chileans, &c., &c.), they make him leave the camp; and when
a Chinaman does that thing, they hang him.

It was in this way that he found out that in many districts of the vast Pacific
coast, so strong is the wild, free love of justice in the hearts of the people, that
whenever any secret and mysterious crime is committed, they say, “Let justice
be done, though the heavens fall,” and go straightway and swing a Chinaman.

It was in this way that he found out that by studying one half of each day's
“local items,” it would appear that the police of San Francisco were either
asleep or dead, and by studying the other half it would seem that the reporters
were gone mad with admiration of the energy, the virtue, the high effectiveness,
and the dare-devil intrepidity of that very police—making exultant mention of
how “the Argus-eyed officer So-and-so,” captured a wretched knave of a Chinaman
who was stealing chickens, and brought him gloriously to the city prison;
and how “the gallant officer Such-and-such-a-one,” quietly kept an eye on the
movements of an “unsuspecting, almond-eyed son of Confucius” (your reporter
is nothing if not facetious), following him around with that far-off look of
vacancy and unconsciousness always so finely affected by that inscrutible being,
the forty-dollar policeman, during a waking interval, and captured him at last
in the very act of placing his hands in a suspicious manner upon a paper of
tacks, left by the owner in an exposed situation; and how one officer performed
this prodigious thing, and another officer that, and another the other—and
pretty much every one of these performances having for a dazzling central
incident a Chinaman guilty of a shilling's worth of crime, an unfortunate, whose
misdemeanor must be hurraed into something enormous in order to keep the
public from noticing how many really important rascals went uncaptured in
the meantime, and how overrated those glorified policemen actually are.

It was in this way that the boy found out that the Legislature, being aware
that the Constitution has made America an asylum for the poor and the
oppressed of all nations, and that, therefore, the poor and oppressed who fly to
our shelter must not be charged a disabling admission fee, made a law that

every Chinman, upon landing, must be vaccinated upon the wharf, and pay to
the State's appointed officer ten dollars for the service, when there are plenty of
doctors in San Francisco who would be glad enough to do it for him for fifty
cents.

It was in this way that the boy found out that a Chinaman had no rights
that any man was bound to respect; that he had no sorrows that any man was
bound to pity; that neither his life nor his liberty was worth the purchase of a
penny when a white man needed a scapegoat; that nobody loved Chinamen,
nobody befriended them, nobody spared them suffering when it was convenient
to inflict it; everybody, individuals, communities, the majesty of the State itself,
joined in hating, abusing, and persecuting these humble strangers.

And, therefore, what could have been more natural than for this sunny-hearted
boy, tripping along to Sunday-school, with his mind teeming with freshly-learned
incentives to high and virtuous action, to say to himself—

“Ah, there goes a Chinaman! God will not love me if I do not stone him.”

And for this he was arrested and put in the city jail.

Everything conspired to teach him that it was a high and holy thing to stone
a Chinaman, and yet he no sooner attempts to do his duty that he is punished
for it—he, poor chap, who has been aware all his life that one of the principal
recreations of the police, out toward the Gold Refinery, is to look on with
tranquil enjoyment while the butchers of Brannan Street set their dogs on unoffending
Chinamen, and make them flee for their lives.[1]

Keeping in mind the tuition in the humanities which the entire “Pacific
coast” gives its youth, there is a very sublimity of incongruity in the virtuous
flourish with which the good city fathers of San Francisco proclaim (as they

have lately done) that “The police are positively ordered to arrest all boys, of
every description and wherever found, who engage in assaulting Chinamen.”

Still, let us be truly glad they have made the order, notwithstanding its
inconsistency; and let us rest perfectly confident the police are glad, too.
Because there is no personal peril in arresting boys, provided they be of the
small kind, and the reporters will have to laud their performances just as loyally
as ever, or go without items.

The new form for local items in San Francisco will now be:—“The ever
vigilant and efficient officer So-and-so succeeded, yesterday afternoon, in arresting
Master Tommy Jones, after a determined resistance,” etc., etc., followed by
the customary statistics and final hurrah, with its unconscious sarcasm: “We
are happy in being able to state that this is the forty-seventh boy arrested by
this gallant officer since the new ordinance went into effect. The most extraordinary
activity prevails in the police department. Nothing like it has been seen
since we can remember.”