These rowdies were “Hoodlums;” and it is the Hoodlums chiefly who clamor about the Chinese, and who are “ruined by Chinese cheap labor.”  The anti-Chinese agitation in San Francisco has led me to look a little closely into this matter, and I declare my belief that there are not a hundred decent men who work for a living in that city engaged in this crusade against the Chinese.  If you could to-day assemble there all who join in this persecution, and if then you took from this assemblage all the Hoodlums, all the bar-room loafers, and all the political demagogues, I don’t believe you would have a hundred men left on the ground.  That is to say, the people who actually earn the bread they eat do not persecute the Chinese.

If an Eastern reader suggests that it argues a lack of public spirit in the decent part of the community to allow the roughs to rule in this matter, I take leave to remind him of the time, not very long ago, when the same combination of Hoodlum and demagogue mobbed negroes in New York, and threatened vengeance if colored people were allowed to ride in the street-cars.  Here, as there then, there are unfortunately newspapers which ignorantly pander to this vile class, and help to swell the cry of persecution.  And here, as in New York a few years ago, it results that the proscribed race is hardly dealt with, not only by the roughs, but sometimes in the courts, and gets scant and hard justice dealt out to it.  The courageous and upright action of Mayor Alvord in vetoing the inhuman and silly acts of the city supervisors, which, by-the-way, has made him one of the most popular men in California, for the moment shamed the demagogues and silenced the rowdies; but there are means of annoying the Chinese within the law, which are still used.  For instance, there is an ordinance declaring a fine for overcrowding tenement-houses, and requiring that in every room there shall be five hundred cubic feet of air for each occupant, and for violating this a fine of ten dollars is imposed.  This ordinance is enforced only against the Chinese—­so I am assured on the best authority, and they only are fined.  But justice would seem to demand not only that the law should be enforced against all alike, but that the owner of the property should be made liable for its misuse as well as the unfortunate and ignorant occupants.

The Chinese quarter in San Francisco consists, for the most part, of a lot of decayed rookeries which would put our own Five Points to the blush.  The Chinese live here very much as the Five Points’ population lives in New York.  And here, as there, respectable people—­or people at any rate who would think themselves insulted if you called their respectability in question—­own these filthy and decayed tenements; live in comfort on the rent paid them by the Chinese; perhaps go to church on Sunday, and, no doubt, thank God that they are not as other people.  It is very good to fine a poor devil of a Chinaman because he lives in an overcrowded tenement; but what a stir there would be if some enterprising San Francisco journal should give a description of these holes, and the different uses they are put to, and add the names and residences of the owners.