California has, according to Cronise—­a good authority—­40,000,000 acres of arable land.  It has, according to the last census, 560,247 people, of whom 149,473 live in San Francisco, and yet nowhere in the United States have I heard so much complaint of “nothing to do” as in San Francisco.  One of the leading cries of the demagogues here is that the Chinese are crowding white men out of employment.  But one of the complaints most frequently heard from men who need to get work done is that they can get nobody to do it.  A hundred times and more, in my travels through the State, I have found Chinese serving not only as laborers, but holding positions where great skill and faithfulness were required; and almost every time the employer has said to me, “I would rather, of course, employ a white man, but I can not get one whom I can trust, and who will stick to his work.”  In some cases this was not said, but the employer spoke straight out that he had tried white men, and preferred the Chinese as more faithful and painstaking, more accurate, and less eye-servants.

A gentleman told me that he had once advertised in the San Francisco papers for one hundred laborers; his office was besieged for three days.  Three hundred and fifty offered themselves, all presumably ruined by Chinese cheap labor; but all but a dozen refused to accept work when they heard that they were required to go “out of the city.”

The charge that the Chinese underbid the whites in the labor market is bosh.  When they first come over, and are ignorant of our language, habits, customs, and manner of work, they no doubt work cheaply; but they know very accurately the current rate of wages and the condition of the labor market, and they manage to get as much as any body, or, if they take less in some cases, it is because they can not do a full day’s work.  It is a fact, however, that they do a great deal of work which white men will not do out here; they do not stand idle, but take the first job that is offered them.  And the result is that they are used all over the State, more and more, because they chiefly, of the laboring population, will work steadily and keep their engagements.

Moreover, the admirable organization of the Chinese labor is an irresistible convenience to the farmer, vineyardist, and other employer.  “How do you arrange to get your Chinese?” I asked a man in the country who was employing more than a hundred in several gangs.  He replied:  “I have only to go or send to a Chinese employment office in San Francisco, and say that I need so many men for such work and at such pay.  Directly up come the men, with a foreman of their own, with whom alone I have to deal.  I tell only him what I want done; I settle with him alone; I complain to him, and hold him alone responsible.  He understands English; and this system simplifies things amazingly.  If I employed white men I should have to instruct, reprove, watch, and pay each one separately; and of a hundred, a quarter, at least, would be dropping out day after day for one cause or another.  Moreover, with my Chinese comes up a cook for every twenty men, whom I pay, and provisions of their own which they buy.  Thus I have nobody to feed and care for.  They do it themselves.”