[Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands by Charles Nordhoff]@TWC D-Link book
Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

CHAPTER V
4/13

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.


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