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Story
May 6, 1870
The Charleston Daily News
Charleston, Charleston County, South Carolina
What is this article about?
Report on the third and final day of a South Carolina convention in Charleston, focusing on debates and resolutions for attracting foreign immigration, including Chinese laborers for low-country plantations, establishing direct trade with Europe via steamship lines, and developing industrial resources to revive the post-war economy.
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THE CONVENTION.
THE
GREAT LABOR QUESTION—LANDS
FOR THE LANDLESS.
IMPORTANT
DEBATE
ON
CHINESE IMMI
GRATION.
THE
PIGTAILS
CARRY
THE
DAY
ENERGETIC MEASURES LOOKING TO DI-
RECT TRADE WITH EUROPE.
A Hearty Welcome to Northern Settlers.
THE
ADJOURNMENT SINE DIE.
Third and Last Day.
The convention was called to order at a quarter to 11 o'clock, A. M., the president in the chair.
The journal of yesterday was read and approved.
The president laid before the body a communication from the president of the Charleston Board of Trade, inviting the delegates to visit the rooms of said organization during their stay in the city. On motion, the invitation was accepted, and the thanks of the convention were returned for the same.
The president also submitted a communication from General R. Y. Harris, one of the vice-presidents and chairman of the delegation from the Cotton States Agricultural and Fair Association of Georgia, stating that he had been compelled by indisposition to leave for home, and requesting the president of the convention to tender to its members and guests an invitation to visit Augusta, Ga., on the occasion of the Floral Fair, to be held in that city on the 11th of May next—it also being the occasion of the annual meeting of the stockholders of the Georgia Railroad Company. The request was likewise made that the convention would appoint a delegation to represent the body at the meeting in Augusta, and promise was given that everything possible would be done for their comfort and gratification—the railroads to and from Augusta charging but one fare.
On motion of Wm. M. Lawton, Esq., the invitation was accepted, and the thanks of the convention tendered to the Cotton States Agricultural Association for the same, and it was ordered that a delegation be appointed by the chair to visit Augusta and participate in the proceedings incident to the Floral Fair.
The president subsequently appointed the following committee for the purpose: Hon. Charles Macbeth, Joseph Walker, E. W. Marshall, G. F. Moffett, W. Ravenel, E. Seibels, J. D. Gaillard, Dr. J. H. Furman, J. P. Thomas, J. L. Coker, J. W. Morris, S. S. Marshall, A. B. Springs.
Reports of Committees.
Mr. J. K. Vance, of Newberry, chairman of the Committee on Chinese Immigration, made the following report, which, on his motion, after reading, was laid on the table for further action.
CHINESE IMMIGRATION.
The special committee to whom was referred a resolution on the subject of Chinese labor, ask leave to report:
That the limited time allowed will not permit the preparation of an elaborate report, but they believe the subject well deserves the consideration of the convention.
Your committee are of the opinion that the introduction of Chinese labor would be of great benefit to a large portion of South Carolina. In the lower part of the State and on the islands, where rice and long cotton is cultivated, and where it is supposed white labor cannot be permanently or profitably employed, it would seem to be a great acquisition.
The Chinaman is reported to enjoy almost perfect health on the low river lands in the most unhealthy regions of the South and Southwest.
Chinese labor is not an experiment, because in Louisiana it has been tried with great success, and very much to the satisfaction of those who have procured it.
It is important, however, that this labor should be procured from the rural districts, since the labor brought from the seaport towns is likely to be very much demoralized, and not likely to give satisfaction.
The Chinese laborer has shown himself industrious, frugal, obedient and attentive to the interest of his employer. He is by nature mild and pacific. His shrewdness and wonderful imitative powers enable him readily to acquire the necessary information and to perform with facility every kind of farm labor.
Admiral Semmes, who has had opportunity to see these people at home, says in his most interesting work—“Service Afloat”—that “the Chinaman is born to industry;” that he is the cheapest producer on the face of the earth, because his habits are simple and frugal.” The same distinguished gentleman, speaking of a visit to an English merchant, residing in China, at whose country seat he dined and spent the night, says: “His household was a pattern of neatness and comfort—there was an air of cleanliness and neatness throughout—which one rarely ever sees in a bachelor establishment. His servants were all Chinese—and males. Chihi and Hu-Chin, and the rest of them, ploughed his fields, mowed his hay, stabled his horses, cooked his dinners, waited on his guests, washed his linen, made his bed and marked his game of billiards. If there had been a baby to nurse, it would have been all the same.”
We think that the Chinaman cannot be surpassed, either as servant or laborer, by any other, whether you place him in the house, the garden, the field, the workshop, or on the railroad.
It is gratifying to your committee to be able to report, on reliable information, that the Chinese laborer can be brought into our State at a price within the means of most of our planters—say at an expense of not more than one hundred and twenty-five dollars per head, the whole or a greater part of which would be refunded by the laborer. In one instance, where a number of Chinese laborers have recently been brought to New Orleans, the cost per head was sixty-five dollars, all of which the laborer contracts to refund from his first earnings. These people have contracted for five years at fifty cents per day, and all lost time to be accounted for at the same rate. They work from sunrise until sunset, allowing one hour for dinner, and agree to obey unquestioned all orders from the owner or manager.
Your committee think that it is only necessary to use the same means to introduce the Chinese as is employed for the introduction of other foreign laborers. Money and concert of action will bring them.
And they are needed. A vast portion of our lands are lying waste and uncultivated. We can give employment to all who may come; and while giving a hearty welcome to others, we hope the convention will not overlook that source from which an almost inexhaustible supply of labor may be obtained, and which, perchance, may do as much towards developing the resources of our State as any other.
All of which is respectfully submitted.
J. K. VANCE, Chairman.
Mr. B. F. Crayton, of Anderson, chairman of the Committee on Industrial Resources, stated that a report had been prepared on that subject and would be read, by Professor John McCrady, as follows:
INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES.
Your committee, feeling assured that the very comprehensive character of the duty assigned them, viz: that of reporting on the industrial resources of the State, is itself an evidence that no exhaustive treatment of the subject is expected by the convention, nor even a specific account of what has been done towards the development of those resources, limit themselves to a few general considerations, as to their nature, and the best policy for promoting their development.
From South Carolina to Texas inclusive, the climate of the Atlantic and Gulf States is of that intermediate kind which embraces the features of both of the tropics and the temperate zone, and while exposed to many of the evils of both, likewise enjoys in combination many of the advantages of each. It is precisely in such a climate that the utmost diversities of industries can most easily nourish, provided only that the markets of the world be open to it, and there be a population sufficiently dense to make division of labor possible. Indeed, it may be safely said that no other climate but one offers equal opportunities for diversifying labor. The natural products of our country exhibit this diversified character. We have here, side by side, the animals and plants of the tropics, and those of the temperate zone—pines by the side of palms, wheat growing in sight of rice fields, apples ripening in the same orchard with oranges, crows and bears and foxes inhabiting the same swamps with the ibis, the vulture, the parokeet and the crocodile, though our forefathers, unacquainted with tropical animals, gave them the names of cranes, buzzards and alligators, which make us forget their equatorial character, and prevent us from reflecting, when we read of such things in books of foreign travel, that they are, in truth, nothing but what we see about us every day. In our waters is found equal variety. The herring, which is peculiarly a Northern fish, is sold in our market by the side of the fishes of the Caribbean Sea; and the muscle, the clam and the oyster all useful as food—are found even where the Peninsula of Florida is built up of coral reefs, like the South Sea Islands. Even in the domain of the miner there is something to remind us of this commingling of temperate and tropical features in the aspects of Nature by which we are surrounded. For, does not the guano of the equatorial islands find its counterpart in our phosphate beds? and does not the coal, which is rather characteristic of temperate climates, show itself not far from these highly prized deposits?
In short, the climate of the Southern States, their geological structure, their great rivers, and the seas by which they are washed, offer every incentive which climate can offer to a development of the utmost diversity of physical and intellectual labor.
But it is, perhaps, feared by some that a climate like this may be incapable of supporting such diversified industry in consequence of the very variety of its products, that what yields everything with facility will yield the best of nothing.
Such a conclusion, however, is forbidden by a simple array of facts. The cotton and the rice we produce are the best in the world, nevertheless the wheat has likewise been recognized as having no superior. And, in the opinion of your committee, there can be no doubt that the difficulties of obtaining the best of any grain product in a climate of so catholic a character, is precisely such difficulty as is necessary to incite the human intellect to the exercise of patient and minute observation, coupled with reflective ingenuity.
But that such a climate as we possess is really capable of developing and supporting this diversity of occupation, may be established in another way. There is no climate in Europe exactly comparable with ours. If we travel eastward in search of a counterpart, we shall pass over the whole of the old world, until we reach China and Japan. There alone do we find all our chief characteristics repeated, though of course, in forms which, belonging to the old world, are so far different from those of the new. But our extremes of temperature: our cold winters and hot summers; our commingled tropical and temperate fauna and flora, are as familiar to the Chinese as to ourselves. The United States and the Flowery Kingdom are what the physical geographers might call homologous parts of the continents. The same relative situation to the equator; the same coast configuration; the same great rivers; the same warm ocean current like the Gulf Stream, flowing northward along the coast; the same system of hurricanes, which the seamen of those seas know as Typhoons.
And what is the aspect which industrial pursuits present in that country, physically so like our own? We see there the densest population on the globe, whose existence in their crowded state is only rendered possible by the diversity of their industries. There is not land enough in China for its hundreds of millions to cultivate, and the consequence is that millions are engaged in manufactures of many kinds and of rare excellence, and whenever all cannot find the means of living on the land, the rivers and the seas are made to yield their harvest, whole villages are built upon the water and on the water whole populations are born, live and die, as their neighbors are born, live and die upon the land.
Now, such is the similarity of climate, that it is not too much to say that there is hardly an important product of China which may not be equally well produced in the Southern States. We have already surpassed these Chinese in the culture of cotton, rice and sugar cane, and, without doubt, whenever, with the proper means we set ourselves seriously to the task, we will surpass them in the culture of tea and of silk, both of which, it has been demonstrated, we can produce.
That the white race is both intellectually and physically the superior of the wonderful Mongolians of whom we have been speaking, has never been doubted. If in their hands the climate of China can do such things, in the hands of the white race the similar climate in which we live, can do much more. The difference lies in this, that in China, increasing density of population has created industrial diversity by necessitating it, while we are striving after a diversity of pursuits, but are foiled by scarcity of population. It may be laid down as a universal economic principle, perhaps without an exception, that no scanty peopled country, whatever its advantages, ever exhibited a really diversified industry. The problem we are striving to solve, if it is not insoluble, is at least one of the most difficult in the whole circle of human endeavors, and if we do solve it successfully, we shall be greater than success in war, however glorious, could have made us. Being without that density of population which would of itself create diversity of occupation, and which our Northern neighbors have had so long, we are striving to exhibit such a diversity of resources and capacity of development as will attract capital and the streams of immigration poured out year after year from Europe into climates more like than ours to that of the home of the white race. Your committee do not mean to report that the thing is impossible, but to point out its true difficulties as the best preparation for surmounting them.
If ever we succeed, it will be only by the union and concentration of all the intellect and all the capital there is among us upon the one great problem. And it is this very union and concentration which is so hard to maintain when the few thousands of our population are scattered over so wide an extent of country.
Your committee would then suggest that there is no way in which our people can so well provide for the future development of the almost inexhaustible resources of the climate, the soil and the waters, bestowed upon them by Providence, as by providing for a consistent and permanent unanimity of purpose and concert of action by frequent gatherings like the present convention, by forming and sustaining local clubs and societies, and by maintaining periodical publications devoted to the discussion of the industrial resources of the State. The attraction of mind against mind attained by such means, while it tends to produce unanimity of purpose, conduces also to a division of labor, and diversified industry is only the full development of division of labor.
They must also learn to value those scientific methods of investigation, which alone can be sure of eventually reaching precise and trustworthy results. They must be willing, too, to risk something in the investment of capital upon experiments. Knowledge and money are two different forms of power, which go on accumulating much faster when they work together, than when each is left to trial alone. We must learn to organize, for a common purpose, the administrative skill of the successful man of business, and the skill in research, which is the gift of the successful man of science. And for this purpose we must combine scientific education, as far as possible, with education in business.
One of the ways by which a people may be forced into a full development of its resources, is by foreign conquest, shutting out from it every other avenue of progress; and it may emerge from such subjugation, the conqueror of its conquerors.
Respectfully submitted.
B. F. CRAYTON.
For the Committee.
On motion of Rev. T. S. Boinest, it was ordered that the report be received as information, and be printed with the proceedings of the convention.
SPECIAL ORDER.
On motion of Mr. Seibels, it was ordered that the reports of the committees on Immigration and Direct Trade be considered together.
On motion of Wm. L. Trenholm, Esq., they were taken from the table and considered immediately.
Mr. Trenholm stated that he had been requested to explain more at length the views of the respective committees, especially with regard to the relationship existing between the two subjects of immigration and direct trade. They were in fact inseparable. We might have immigration without direct trade, but it was impossible to have direct trade without immigration, for the reason that no trade could exist where the carrying was in but one direction. It was easy to load a vessel for Europe with the products of the South; but for the permanent success of a line of steamers, it was absolutely essential that the return trip should convey at least two hundred immigrants to pay expenses. Whatever cargo might be brought in addition, would then constitute the profit. Immigration was, therefore, the one element wanting to make direct trade between Charleston and Europe a feature of our prosperity. If we have immigrants from the North or West, said Mr. Trenholm, they will undoubtedly occupy our lands, and increase our population and industrial force, but in a commercial point of view, looking to the establishment of direct communication with Europe, we must secure immigrants from abroad.
This is one reason why the Committee on Immigration turned their attention specially to the subject of foreign immigration, and why such a close relationship exists between it and the subject of direct trade.
Again, it is necessary to make an apparent discrimination between the foreign and domestic emigrant. The first travels thousands of miles, and requires some inducement to remain among us rather than to continue his journey Westward. The other travels but four or five hundred miles, and would generally secure his land and make his arrangements for a settlement among us in advance of his coming. To pay the passage of the foreigner, therefore, is to jeopardize money, because we cannot count upon his determination when he arrives; but to compensate him for the payment of his passage, we may put our lands at so low a figure as to induce him to stay and work out his own welfare. It may even be well to give him lands for this purpose, although the Pennsylvanian or New Yorker settling by his side should be required to pay for their acquisitions. It is necessary to make a distinction of this character, and the partiality exhibited is less than it seems.
But we are told there are several difficulties in the way of immigration—and first, that according to the laws, no contract made on a foreign soil can be enforced in South Carolina. If these contracts cannot be enforced, there is no use for this convention to advise individuals or societies to bring emigrants to the State. It is better to stand still until we see our way clearly, than to make an elaborate effort that will be quoted to our disadvantage by our rivals.
The South has been in existence as long as the North, and longer than the Northwest, and yet we have had comparatively little immigration. On the contrary, the census of 1860 shows that of the native population 153,000 natives of South Carolina are living in other States and Territories. Had they remained, in all probability the native population of the State would to-day be nearly double. Various causes have existed to draw away from us both our home and a foreign population, but as regards the foreigner, the chief obstacle with which we have had to contend is the prejudice against us abroad. German papers are constantly filled with warnings. Their readers are told that although slavery has been abolished, immigrants are only wanted here to take the place of the slaves, and that they would be subjected to the same sort of treatment; consequently that in going to America they should seek the great prairies of the West, where they would be citizens of a free republic. We all know how untruthful are these representations, yet we cannot shut our eyes to the difficulty of successfully opposing them. Time alone can cure the evil.
As regards emigration from South Carolina, our condition has materially changed since the war. We may not see the progress that has been made, but its steps are nevertheless marked, and the same considerations which will hereafter induce the native population to remain, will doubtless eventually operate to draw a European immigration to our State.
Now what are the inducements to the foreigner? They are sketched in the plan proposed by the committee. We offer lands. We propose to divide them into farms of ten, twenty and forty acres, according to the character and wants of the settler. If a single man comes, he will be contented with a small farm. If a family or a company of four or five come, they will be located upon a body of land sufficient for all their purposes, and if it were possible to introduce a mutual or co-operative system among them, it would be one of the best things that could be done.
To influence these people, we must send agents abroad with proper credentials endorsed by high Federal authority, so that their statements may be credited by the press and the people. They must be men of culture, who understand our political system, familiar with foreign languages, and capable of commanding the respect of those among whom they sojourn.
At home there should be a central agency, representing all local societies in the State. That agency should consist of our ablest and most influential foreign-born citizens, and prepared with means and information, to afford every facility to the immigrant that he desires. Arrangements should be made with transportation agents to make him comfortable on his passage; he should be received and provided with a comfortable temporary home on his arrival, and at the proper time be transferred to that portion of the State to which he desires to go, or where his services may have been previously engaged. In short, no obstacles ought to be interposed. If his judgment dictates the propriety of going to California or the West, the same regard for his person and welfare should mark his treatment as if he had been pledged to remain upon our own soil. Deal with him honestly, secure his friendship, and attract all the influences that surround him, for no man is destitute of influence, and in time, under such a generous system of conduct, we shall succeed in diverting to our own shores the great tide that now flows into the ports of the North.
We need not trouble ourselves about the details now, but let us subscribe our lands, obtain from them the funds necessary to organize societies, and put ourselves in a position to make practical arrangements for a system of immigration on which both the emigrant and the people can depend.
Mr. John Hanckel said that the idea of direct trade with Europe was by no means a novel one, although now for the first time it was coupled with a scheme for immigration. Before the war money had been subscribed and a steamer built for the purpose, and it was a curious fact that she was the first ship loaded with cotton which passed through the Suez Canal; but owing to the events which followed secession, the enterprise was temporarily abandoned, and only revived at the present time.
He desired to illustrate the ease with which direct trade could be established. The resolutions called for the building of four steamers. The cost of each of these would not exceed $150,000 or $200,000. One-half of the stock would be taken in Europe, leaving then from $75,000 to $100,000 to be raised in this country. Of this amount the South Carolina Railroad Company had agreed to invest $25,000 on each steamer. Other railroads might be induced to take another sixth, which would leave only from $25,000 to $35,000 to be subscribed by individuals. Nor would this money be raised at once, but in instalments, payable say in one or two years, so that almost every man in the convention could, if he felt so disposed, raise the requisite amount for this great undertaking.
The benefit would inure not to Charleston alone, but to the entire State and her sister States; to the planter rather than to the merchant. It therefore behooved every man interested either in the subject of immigration or of direct trade, to use his utmost endeavors to effect the completion of this work, and thus secure the means whereby both labor and capital would accrue for the common good.
In conclusion he (Mr. Hanckel) moved that the resolutions be read and adopted.
The resolutions are as follows:
Resolved, That the convention recommend that a company be formed for the establishment of a permanent line of freight and immigrant steamers to a port in Europe, in shares of $25 each.
Resolved, That a committee be appointed by the chair to obtain subscriptions from the various railroad companies and corporations interested in commerce, and also take measures for the establishment of a company on a permanent basis, to form a line to consist of four steamers.
Resolved, That the chairman of each delegation be charged with the duty of obtaining subscriptions in their section, with power to appoint sub-committees, who will report to the chairman of the committee appointed by the convention the names and amounts subscribed.
Mr. Wm. M. Lawton sustained the resolutions in a few pertinent remarks, demonstrating the advantages which other States, especially Tennessee, had secured by the adoption of a similar policy, and urged immediate action by the convention.
THE PIGTAILS.
Mr. D. Wyatt Aiken said: I also am strongly in favor of these resolutions, but I want to go a step further. If we merely desired to multiply our numbers, we might as well open once more the doors of Africa or any other nation; but if we wish to introduce a people who are the best laborers in the world—a people who will enable us to make more cotton, that with it we may make money to make more cotton still, I am satisfied that there is no class of emigrants superior to the Chinese. Two months ago I travelled sixty miles above New Orleans to see a party of them at work on a plantation, and as the gentleman who was with me said, you may ride by in a railroad at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and from its neatness pick out every house in which a Chinaman lives. I went into the fields, and although there were eighteen Chinamen at work, not one of them raised his head to look at me. There were twice the number of negroes, and there was not one of them who didn't stop his work to look at us. That was a difference to begin with. My companion remarked that he never saw such hoeing hands as Chinamen in his life. All they wanted was rice and beefsteak. They never left the plantation, unless told to go, and a more quiet, industrious, and apparently contented set of people I never saw in my life. This was my experience on five plantations.
Three gentlemen arrived with fifty thousand dollars in gold, and left New Orleans a few months ago for China. They went into the rural districts, hired nine hundred Chinamen and one hundred Chinese women, and chartered three vessels to bring them out. These vessels are now on their way to America, and the passengers of one of them are destined for the State of Arkansas.
I saw one of the contracts sent back from Hong Kong, printed and signed—on the one side Chinese, on the other side English. Its substance was that not a Chinaman received a dollar until he landed on the levee at New Orleans. Then his pay began. The bargain was to work from daylight to dark—no sunrise about it—with an intermission of one hour at noon, and the price fifty cents a day. They asked for twenty pounds of fresh meat and forty pounds of rice every month, for a house and a garden. The contract was for five years, and at the expiration of that time they are to be sent back if they desire it, at the expense of the employer.
Suppose the coast of South Carolina were lined with such a class—do you suppose we should pay our present prices for rice? Now I do not advocate Chinese labor for the up-country, but for the lower portion of the State you cannot find its equal in the world.
The German does not want rich lands where the accompaniment is malaria and disease, but put him on a hill and he knows that twelve inches below the surface there is a mine. Not long ago I saw two Germans following each other, with ploughs drawn by four oxen, and each plough was in the same furrow. Don't you know that such industry will make men rich? An old German living near Atlanta obtained, last year, from those red hills around the city, $100 worth of strawberries from a single acre, and from three acres sold $500 worth of grapes. He said to me, I think this place is where Adam must have lived, for it certainly is an Eden. This is the class of people we want in South Carolina. I do not care whether they come from Germany or from Pennsylvania; but my idea is to bring them, so to speak, one by one. I want those who come to come as South Carolinians, and to live as South Carolinians—and not exist as a community that will absorb either my habits or the habits of others.
To secure this immigration nothing practicable, in my judgment, has been submitted either by individuals or by committees. My own idea is to let every man attach a value to his land, make a plat of it, and submit it to an association. The aggregate may amount to half a million of dollars. Then let us send the titles to some firm in Bremen, Liverpool or Paris, and say “we will give you these titles if you will put down one able-bodied emigrant for every twenty-five acres.” If we are as patriotic as we ought to be, we can afford to put these lands at one dollar per acre, and then the foreign agent may charge three to cover the expenses of emigration and his own commissions. This plan I conceive to be feasible, and certainly far more practicable than the employment of a dozen agents who will spend our money and talk nippantly while they make a European tour. Fifteen or twenty thousand dollars have been already expended by the State in salaries, and what good has been done? Not so much as what was effected by that little society in Newberry District, of which the delegate from that locality gave us an account yesterday.
We want laborers, it is true. There is a great deal in muscle, but there is more in the intellect, which eventually will control this entire question of labor; and if we can effect our object and bring a few thousand of the hardy sons of the old country into our midst, we shall quickly solve all the agricultural and political problems by which we are now beset.
Mr. Aiken alluded to the inducements that should be offered to emigrants. Among these were good homes. No emigrant would remain in South Carolina who found himself unprovided at the outset with the barest necessaries of life. We must seek to break down the idea which prevails at the North and elsewhere, that South Carolina is not a safe place to live in, and that there is not as much of the milk of human kindness to be found among our people as among any other people on the face of the globe.
Mr. J. P. Thomas said he was glad to observe that there was no substantial difference between the views advanced by gentlemen and the sentiments expressed in the report of the committee. The regeneration of South Carolina was to be effected by these agencies. First, we should not forget the great truth, that in the industrial, as in the political world, those who would be independent must themselves work.
In the second place, we should employ the material around us, and make the most of it. Finally, these energies should be supplemented by the introduction of as large a foreign and Northern element as we can command.
I regret, said Mr. Thomas, that invidious distinctions have been made on the floor of the convention to-day. The proposition is not whether we shall be South Carolinians or Germans, but that we shall stand shoulder to shoulder, irrespective of nationality, in carrying forward this great work. If the Carolinian has been great in the past, it is in our power to make him wiser, nobler and greater in the future. We can learn much in South Carolina. It is within the province of the North to teach us; the German may teach us; and, indeed, if there is any one thing that has made our country grand and great, it is the composite character of the population among us. It is the combined energies of the people which makes the future magnificent in its possibilities. We have the generous spirit of the Cavalier; the refinement of the Huguenot; the thrifty energy and solid character of the German; the sturdiness of the Englishman; the steadiness of the Scotchman; the large-heartedness of the Irishman, and the vivacity of the Frenchman, represented among us, and exerting their influences on the weal or woe of society: and it will be a happy day for the South when our people shall illustrate the grand and glorious results of a common work for the common good.
The question then being taken on the adoption of the resolutions, it was decided in the affirmative.
Mr. W. L. Trenholm offered the following resolutions:
Resolved, That this convention is sincerely convinced of the paramount importance of introducing foreign immigration into the South, not only for the sake of the direct results upon our population and industry, but because of its indirect effect in leading to the establishment of direct trade.
Resolved, That this convention earnestly commend to all the people of the State the subject of foreign emigration, as one worthy of their early and most assiduous attention.
Resolved, That in order to give effect to the report of the Committee on Immigration, the president of the convention, at his leisure, and after conference with representatives from the various county delegations, be requested to appoint a committee on land and immigration, to consist of one resident land owner in each county, and no less than twelve residents of Charleston. The committee thus appointed to be instructed to keep the subject before the public, to encourage immigration and collect whatever information is possible, for the use of all persons or corporations desirous of making a practical experiment.
Resolved, That this convention extend to all persons in the United States and elsewhere, desirous of settling in South Carolina, a cordial invitation to do so, and at the same time assure them of a hearty welcome and such counsel and assurance as they may require, in whatever neighborhood they determine to locate.
Mr. R. Dozier, of Georgetown, offered the following as an additional resolution:
Resolved, That this convention recommend the formation of a joint stock company among the citizens of South Carolina, for the purpose of introducing Chinese laborers into this State.
Mr. W. A. Trenholm said he could not accept the resolution as an addendum to those which he had offered. The Chinese question had not been sufficiently discussed to be intelligently voted upon by himself, at least, and he thought it inadvisable to introduce such a proposition at this time for the consideration of the convention. In his present view, he was opposed to the introduction of a barbarous element into the State.
Mr. Dozier said that, not desiring to embarrass the main resolutions, he would withdraw his own and submit it independently.
The question then being taken on the adoption of the series of resolutions offered by Mr. Trenholm, it was decided in the affirmative.
Mr. Hanckel offered the following:
Resolved, That the Committee on the Freight and Immigrant Steamship Line, to be appointed by the chair, be authorized to fill vacancies or increase its numbers from time to time, as its necessities demand.
The resolution was agreed to.
The president designated as the committee: Messrs. Robert Auger, Chairman; Henry Gourdin, D. F. Fleming, F. J. Pelzer, A. S. Johnstone, Henry Bischoff and John Hanckel.
Mr. Dozier then submitted his resolution, before referred to, and said that if Germans or others were necessary to develop the resources of the upper portion of the State, it was equally important to the interests of the low country that Chinese labor should be employed to cultivate the rice and cotton fields. It had been said on the floor that the Chinese were barbarians. He would not concede the truth of that remark, but even if they were, it constituted no objection to the Mongolian as a laborer. In the absence and demoralization of the negro, it was essential to the interests of this section of this State that the work on plantations should be done by those capable of enduring the climate, and the universal testimony was that there was no race superior to the Chinese for this purpose.
Colonel T. Y. Simons said he opposed Chinese immigration on general principles, which might be briefly summed up—the simple statement that that race did not possess the place side by side with the immigrants from the old world. Experiments in California demonstrated that they had added nothing to the permanence of the country, nor been of any benefit to its civilization. Had they proved a success, as immigrants, the public would have been quickly convinced of the fact, and there would be no difficulty in obtaining an abundance of this species of labor. What the State wanted was a healthy immigration from the North with its attendant blessings of a population who would produce wealth, and enhance the welfare of the country now and hereafter.
Hon. John Townsend contended that there was no antagonism between the two schemes proposed. The only question was where the European and where the Chinese should be employed. That part was settled by nature itself. The white man would supply the deficiency in the up-country, and the Chinaman would take the place of the negro in the low-country, wherever he had disappeared. It was the most susceptible labor that could now be obtained, and known by experiment to be both skilful and successful.
Mr. John H. Screven, of Beaufort, demanded fair play for the coast, and if the convention were sincere in its determination to provide labor for all portions of the State, they would certainly not ignore that portion of it which had suffered the most during the war. If co-operation were expected of the low-country planters, they must be treated with justice in this matter.
Mr. Theodore G. Barker opposed the introduction of Chinese in any shape whatever. Important as the question was, the question of labor in South Carolina, more important still, was the question of our life and political salvation, and one must be sacrificed if necessary to save the other.
Another important consideration was that the German would not consent to work side by side with the coolie: the same objection existed abroad with reference to the coolie as existed to slavery in the past. But the gravest of all considerations was the danger, politically, that would result from an infusion of Chinese, who might, in the course of time, increase the difficulties which already exist to a lamentable degree.
Mr. George H. Walter warmly sustained the resolution, and cited Demerara as an instance of a country which had been regenerated by Chinese labor, and he firmly believed that if introduced in the lower country of South Carolina similar results would be produced. At any rate it was but just that the claims of that section should not be ignored, while discussing the wants of the up-country.
Mr. Brawley, of Chester, made a very earnest speech in favor of what he called the "Pigtails."
It had been said that the Chinese had done nothing in California. Had the Pacific Railroad, the most modern product of civilization, been forgotten? Was it not built by these contemptible rat-eaters, and had they not they demonstrated skill and ability as laborers? Instances were abundant which proved that this race was calculated to supply a great deficiency in our midst, and if the convention intended to do justice to the low country, they would not listen to the special objections, based as these objections were, upon purely political considerations.
Mr. Trenholm threw out the idea that the low country would not be entirely denuded of its colored population, but that, as foreign emigration crowded into the upper part of the State, the colored element would give way before it and seek their natural abiding place, on the coast. In time, therefore, this evil would be cured by natural causes, and the rice planter would not want for an abundance of muscle with which to carry forward his enterprise as of old.
The debate was continued by Messrs. Bonham, Barker, Screven, Butler, Dozier, Clemson, and others, but when the question was finally taken it was decided in the affirmative, and the resolution was adopted as originally submitted.
ADJOURNMENT SINE DIE.
Mr. Seibels moved that the convention do now resolve itself into committee of the whole, which being agreed to, Mr. William M. Lawton took the chair.
Whereupon Mr. Seibels offered a resolution of thanks to the president for his patient administration of the duties of his office, and to the secretaries for their official services during the sessions.
The resolution was agreed to.
The thanks of the convention were, on motion of General Bonham, tendered to Mr. John Chadwick for the use of the Academy of Music.
The president, on resuming the chair, responded as follows:
Allow me, gentlemen of the convention, to congratulate you upon the liberal, practical and earnest spirit which has marked your deliberations—every movement going simply and directly to the purpose for which you assembled. Our principal object—the introduction from abroad of a thrifty and hardy population to supplement our numbers—is one surrounded with many difficulties, and I am not prepared to say that the scheme you have decided upon will meet with unqualified success. They commend themselves, however, warmly to my judgment, as steps in the right direction, and, as far as I can see, all that, under present circumstances, we can do. I trust that a success will attend them far beyond that which the most sanguine can hope, and that the day is near at hand when our beloved State will resume the comfort and prosperity which once marked her condition.
I beg to thank you for the courteous manner in which you have met my effort at presiding over your deliberations.
On motion of F. W. Dawson, Esq., the convention then adjourned sine die.
THE
GREAT LABOR QUESTION—LANDS
FOR THE LANDLESS.
IMPORTANT
DEBATE
ON
CHINESE IMMI
GRATION.
THE
PIGTAILS
CARRY
THE
DAY
ENERGETIC MEASURES LOOKING TO DI-
RECT TRADE WITH EUROPE.
A Hearty Welcome to Northern Settlers.
THE
ADJOURNMENT SINE DIE.
Third and Last Day.
The convention was called to order at a quarter to 11 o'clock, A. M., the president in the chair.
The journal of yesterday was read and approved.
The president laid before the body a communication from the president of the Charleston Board of Trade, inviting the delegates to visit the rooms of said organization during their stay in the city. On motion, the invitation was accepted, and the thanks of the convention were returned for the same.
The president also submitted a communication from General R. Y. Harris, one of the vice-presidents and chairman of the delegation from the Cotton States Agricultural and Fair Association of Georgia, stating that he had been compelled by indisposition to leave for home, and requesting the president of the convention to tender to its members and guests an invitation to visit Augusta, Ga., on the occasion of the Floral Fair, to be held in that city on the 11th of May next—it also being the occasion of the annual meeting of the stockholders of the Georgia Railroad Company. The request was likewise made that the convention would appoint a delegation to represent the body at the meeting in Augusta, and promise was given that everything possible would be done for their comfort and gratification—the railroads to and from Augusta charging but one fare.
On motion of Wm. M. Lawton, Esq., the invitation was accepted, and the thanks of the convention tendered to the Cotton States Agricultural Association for the same, and it was ordered that a delegation be appointed by the chair to visit Augusta and participate in the proceedings incident to the Floral Fair.
The president subsequently appointed the following committee for the purpose: Hon. Charles Macbeth, Joseph Walker, E. W. Marshall, G. F. Moffett, W. Ravenel, E. Seibels, J. D. Gaillard, Dr. J. H. Furman, J. P. Thomas, J. L. Coker, J. W. Morris, S. S. Marshall, A. B. Springs.
Reports of Committees.
Mr. J. K. Vance, of Newberry, chairman of the Committee on Chinese Immigration, made the following report, which, on his motion, after reading, was laid on the table for further action.
CHINESE IMMIGRATION.
The special committee to whom was referred a resolution on the subject of Chinese labor, ask leave to report:
That the limited time allowed will not permit the preparation of an elaborate report, but they believe the subject well deserves the consideration of the convention.
Your committee are of the opinion that the introduction of Chinese labor would be of great benefit to a large portion of South Carolina. In the lower part of the State and on the islands, where rice and long cotton is cultivated, and where it is supposed white labor cannot be permanently or profitably employed, it would seem to be a great acquisition.
The Chinaman is reported to enjoy almost perfect health on the low river lands in the most unhealthy regions of the South and Southwest.
Chinese labor is not an experiment, because in Louisiana it has been tried with great success, and very much to the satisfaction of those who have procured it.
It is important, however, that this labor should be procured from the rural districts, since the labor brought from the seaport towns is likely to be very much demoralized, and not likely to give satisfaction.
The Chinese laborer has shown himself industrious, frugal, obedient and attentive to the interest of his employer. He is by nature mild and pacific. His shrewdness and wonderful imitative powers enable him readily to acquire the necessary information and to perform with facility every kind of farm labor.
Admiral Semmes, who has had opportunity to see these people at home, says in his most interesting work—“Service Afloat”—that “the Chinaman is born to industry;” that he is the cheapest producer on the face of the earth, because his habits are simple and frugal.” The same distinguished gentleman, speaking of a visit to an English merchant, residing in China, at whose country seat he dined and spent the night, says: “His household was a pattern of neatness and comfort—there was an air of cleanliness and neatness throughout—which one rarely ever sees in a bachelor establishment. His servants were all Chinese—and males. Chihi and Hu-Chin, and the rest of them, ploughed his fields, mowed his hay, stabled his horses, cooked his dinners, waited on his guests, washed his linen, made his bed and marked his game of billiards. If there had been a baby to nurse, it would have been all the same.”
We think that the Chinaman cannot be surpassed, either as servant or laborer, by any other, whether you place him in the house, the garden, the field, the workshop, or on the railroad.
It is gratifying to your committee to be able to report, on reliable information, that the Chinese laborer can be brought into our State at a price within the means of most of our planters—say at an expense of not more than one hundred and twenty-five dollars per head, the whole or a greater part of which would be refunded by the laborer. In one instance, where a number of Chinese laborers have recently been brought to New Orleans, the cost per head was sixty-five dollars, all of which the laborer contracts to refund from his first earnings. These people have contracted for five years at fifty cents per day, and all lost time to be accounted for at the same rate. They work from sunrise until sunset, allowing one hour for dinner, and agree to obey unquestioned all orders from the owner or manager.
Your committee think that it is only necessary to use the same means to introduce the Chinese as is employed for the introduction of other foreign laborers. Money and concert of action will bring them.
And they are needed. A vast portion of our lands are lying waste and uncultivated. We can give employment to all who may come; and while giving a hearty welcome to others, we hope the convention will not overlook that source from which an almost inexhaustible supply of labor may be obtained, and which, perchance, may do as much towards developing the resources of our State as any other.
All of which is respectfully submitted.
J. K. VANCE, Chairman.
Mr. B. F. Crayton, of Anderson, chairman of the Committee on Industrial Resources, stated that a report had been prepared on that subject and would be read, by Professor John McCrady, as follows:
INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES.
Your committee, feeling assured that the very comprehensive character of the duty assigned them, viz: that of reporting on the industrial resources of the State, is itself an evidence that no exhaustive treatment of the subject is expected by the convention, nor even a specific account of what has been done towards the development of those resources, limit themselves to a few general considerations, as to their nature, and the best policy for promoting their development.
From South Carolina to Texas inclusive, the climate of the Atlantic and Gulf States is of that intermediate kind which embraces the features of both of the tropics and the temperate zone, and while exposed to many of the evils of both, likewise enjoys in combination many of the advantages of each. It is precisely in such a climate that the utmost diversities of industries can most easily nourish, provided only that the markets of the world be open to it, and there be a population sufficiently dense to make division of labor possible. Indeed, it may be safely said that no other climate but one offers equal opportunities for diversifying labor. The natural products of our country exhibit this diversified character. We have here, side by side, the animals and plants of the tropics, and those of the temperate zone—pines by the side of palms, wheat growing in sight of rice fields, apples ripening in the same orchard with oranges, crows and bears and foxes inhabiting the same swamps with the ibis, the vulture, the parokeet and the crocodile, though our forefathers, unacquainted with tropical animals, gave them the names of cranes, buzzards and alligators, which make us forget their equatorial character, and prevent us from reflecting, when we read of such things in books of foreign travel, that they are, in truth, nothing but what we see about us every day. In our waters is found equal variety. The herring, which is peculiarly a Northern fish, is sold in our market by the side of the fishes of the Caribbean Sea; and the muscle, the clam and the oyster all useful as food—are found even where the Peninsula of Florida is built up of coral reefs, like the South Sea Islands. Even in the domain of the miner there is something to remind us of this commingling of temperate and tropical features in the aspects of Nature by which we are surrounded. For, does not the guano of the equatorial islands find its counterpart in our phosphate beds? and does not the coal, which is rather characteristic of temperate climates, show itself not far from these highly prized deposits?
In short, the climate of the Southern States, their geological structure, their great rivers, and the seas by which they are washed, offer every incentive which climate can offer to a development of the utmost diversity of physical and intellectual labor.
But it is, perhaps, feared by some that a climate like this may be incapable of supporting such diversified industry in consequence of the very variety of its products, that what yields everything with facility will yield the best of nothing.
Such a conclusion, however, is forbidden by a simple array of facts. The cotton and the rice we produce are the best in the world, nevertheless the wheat has likewise been recognized as having no superior. And, in the opinion of your committee, there can be no doubt that the difficulties of obtaining the best of any grain product in a climate of so catholic a character, is precisely such difficulty as is necessary to incite the human intellect to the exercise of patient and minute observation, coupled with reflective ingenuity.
But that such a climate as we possess is really capable of developing and supporting this diversity of occupation, may be established in another way. There is no climate in Europe exactly comparable with ours. If we travel eastward in search of a counterpart, we shall pass over the whole of the old world, until we reach China and Japan. There alone do we find all our chief characteristics repeated, though of course, in forms which, belonging to the old world, are so far different from those of the new. But our extremes of temperature: our cold winters and hot summers; our commingled tropical and temperate fauna and flora, are as familiar to the Chinese as to ourselves. The United States and the Flowery Kingdom are what the physical geographers might call homologous parts of the continents. The same relative situation to the equator; the same coast configuration; the same great rivers; the same warm ocean current like the Gulf Stream, flowing northward along the coast; the same system of hurricanes, which the seamen of those seas know as Typhoons.
And what is the aspect which industrial pursuits present in that country, physically so like our own? We see there the densest population on the globe, whose existence in their crowded state is only rendered possible by the diversity of their industries. There is not land enough in China for its hundreds of millions to cultivate, and the consequence is that millions are engaged in manufactures of many kinds and of rare excellence, and whenever all cannot find the means of living on the land, the rivers and the seas are made to yield their harvest, whole villages are built upon the water and on the water whole populations are born, live and die, as their neighbors are born, live and die upon the land.
Now, such is the similarity of climate, that it is not too much to say that there is hardly an important product of China which may not be equally well produced in the Southern States. We have already surpassed these Chinese in the culture of cotton, rice and sugar cane, and, without doubt, whenever, with the proper means we set ourselves seriously to the task, we will surpass them in the culture of tea and of silk, both of which, it has been demonstrated, we can produce.
That the white race is both intellectually and physically the superior of the wonderful Mongolians of whom we have been speaking, has never been doubted. If in their hands the climate of China can do such things, in the hands of the white race the similar climate in which we live, can do much more. The difference lies in this, that in China, increasing density of population has created industrial diversity by necessitating it, while we are striving after a diversity of pursuits, but are foiled by scarcity of population. It may be laid down as a universal economic principle, perhaps without an exception, that no scanty peopled country, whatever its advantages, ever exhibited a really diversified industry. The problem we are striving to solve, if it is not insoluble, is at least one of the most difficult in the whole circle of human endeavors, and if we do solve it successfully, we shall be greater than success in war, however glorious, could have made us. Being without that density of population which would of itself create diversity of occupation, and which our Northern neighbors have had so long, we are striving to exhibit such a diversity of resources and capacity of development as will attract capital and the streams of immigration poured out year after year from Europe into climates more like than ours to that of the home of the white race. Your committee do not mean to report that the thing is impossible, but to point out its true difficulties as the best preparation for surmounting them.
If ever we succeed, it will be only by the union and concentration of all the intellect and all the capital there is among us upon the one great problem. And it is this very union and concentration which is so hard to maintain when the few thousands of our population are scattered over so wide an extent of country.
Your committee would then suggest that there is no way in which our people can so well provide for the future development of the almost inexhaustible resources of the climate, the soil and the waters, bestowed upon them by Providence, as by providing for a consistent and permanent unanimity of purpose and concert of action by frequent gatherings like the present convention, by forming and sustaining local clubs and societies, and by maintaining periodical publications devoted to the discussion of the industrial resources of the State. The attraction of mind against mind attained by such means, while it tends to produce unanimity of purpose, conduces also to a division of labor, and diversified industry is only the full development of division of labor.
They must also learn to value those scientific methods of investigation, which alone can be sure of eventually reaching precise and trustworthy results. They must be willing, too, to risk something in the investment of capital upon experiments. Knowledge and money are two different forms of power, which go on accumulating much faster when they work together, than when each is left to trial alone. We must learn to organize, for a common purpose, the administrative skill of the successful man of business, and the skill in research, which is the gift of the successful man of science. And for this purpose we must combine scientific education, as far as possible, with education in business.
One of the ways by which a people may be forced into a full development of its resources, is by foreign conquest, shutting out from it every other avenue of progress; and it may emerge from such subjugation, the conqueror of its conquerors.
Respectfully submitted.
B. F. CRAYTON.
For the Committee.
On motion of Rev. T. S. Boinest, it was ordered that the report be received as information, and be printed with the proceedings of the convention.
SPECIAL ORDER.
On motion of Mr. Seibels, it was ordered that the reports of the committees on Immigration and Direct Trade be considered together.
On motion of Wm. L. Trenholm, Esq., they were taken from the table and considered immediately.
Mr. Trenholm stated that he had been requested to explain more at length the views of the respective committees, especially with regard to the relationship existing between the two subjects of immigration and direct trade. They were in fact inseparable. We might have immigration without direct trade, but it was impossible to have direct trade without immigration, for the reason that no trade could exist where the carrying was in but one direction. It was easy to load a vessel for Europe with the products of the South; but for the permanent success of a line of steamers, it was absolutely essential that the return trip should convey at least two hundred immigrants to pay expenses. Whatever cargo might be brought in addition, would then constitute the profit. Immigration was, therefore, the one element wanting to make direct trade between Charleston and Europe a feature of our prosperity. If we have immigrants from the North or West, said Mr. Trenholm, they will undoubtedly occupy our lands, and increase our population and industrial force, but in a commercial point of view, looking to the establishment of direct communication with Europe, we must secure immigrants from abroad.
This is one reason why the Committee on Immigration turned their attention specially to the subject of foreign immigration, and why such a close relationship exists between it and the subject of direct trade.
Again, it is necessary to make an apparent discrimination between the foreign and domestic emigrant. The first travels thousands of miles, and requires some inducement to remain among us rather than to continue his journey Westward. The other travels but four or five hundred miles, and would generally secure his land and make his arrangements for a settlement among us in advance of his coming. To pay the passage of the foreigner, therefore, is to jeopardize money, because we cannot count upon his determination when he arrives; but to compensate him for the payment of his passage, we may put our lands at so low a figure as to induce him to stay and work out his own welfare. It may even be well to give him lands for this purpose, although the Pennsylvanian or New Yorker settling by his side should be required to pay for their acquisitions. It is necessary to make a distinction of this character, and the partiality exhibited is less than it seems.
But we are told there are several difficulties in the way of immigration—and first, that according to the laws, no contract made on a foreign soil can be enforced in South Carolina. If these contracts cannot be enforced, there is no use for this convention to advise individuals or societies to bring emigrants to the State. It is better to stand still until we see our way clearly, than to make an elaborate effort that will be quoted to our disadvantage by our rivals.
The South has been in existence as long as the North, and longer than the Northwest, and yet we have had comparatively little immigration. On the contrary, the census of 1860 shows that of the native population 153,000 natives of South Carolina are living in other States and Territories. Had they remained, in all probability the native population of the State would to-day be nearly double. Various causes have existed to draw away from us both our home and a foreign population, but as regards the foreigner, the chief obstacle with which we have had to contend is the prejudice against us abroad. German papers are constantly filled with warnings. Their readers are told that although slavery has been abolished, immigrants are only wanted here to take the place of the slaves, and that they would be subjected to the same sort of treatment; consequently that in going to America they should seek the great prairies of the West, where they would be citizens of a free republic. We all know how untruthful are these representations, yet we cannot shut our eyes to the difficulty of successfully opposing them. Time alone can cure the evil.
As regards emigration from South Carolina, our condition has materially changed since the war. We may not see the progress that has been made, but its steps are nevertheless marked, and the same considerations which will hereafter induce the native population to remain, will doubtless eventually operate to draw a European immigration to our State.
Now what are the inducements to the foreigner? They are sketched in the plan proposed by the committee. We offer lands. We propose to divide them into farms of ten, twenty and forty acres, according to the character and wants of the settler. If a single man comes, he will be contented with a small farm. If a family or a company of four or five come, they will be located upon a body of land sufficient for all their purposes, and if it were possible to introduce a mutual or co-operative system among them, it would be one of the best things that could be done.
To influence these people, we must send agents abroad with proper credentials endorsed by high Federal authority, so that their statements may be credited by the press and the people. They must be men of culture, who understand our political system, familiar with foreign languages, and capable of commanding the respect of those among whom they sojourn.
At home there should be a central agency, representing all local societies in the State. That agency should consist of our ablest and most influential foreign-born citizens, and prepared with means and information, to afford every facility to the immigrant that he desires. Arrangements should be made with transportation agents to make him comfortable on his passage; he should be received and provided with a comfortable temporary home on his arrival, and at the proper time be transferred to that portion of the State to which he desires to go, or where his services may have been previously engaged. In short, no obstacles ought to be interposed. If his judgment dictates the propriety of going to California or the West, the same regard for his person and welfare should mark his treatment as if he had been pledged to remain upon our own soil. Deal with him honestly, secure his friendship, and attract all the influences that surround him, for no man is destitute of influence, and in time, under such a generous system of conduct, we shall succeed in diverting to our own shores the great tide that now flows into the ports of the North.
We need not trouble ourselves about the details now, but let us subscribe our lands, obtain from them the funds necessary to organize societies, and put ourselves in a position to make practical arrangements for a system of immigration on which both the emigrant and the people can depend.
Mr. John Hanckel said that the idea of direct trade with Europe was by no means a novel one, although now for the first time it was coupled with a scheme for immigration. Before the war money had been subscribed and a steamer built for the purpose, and it was a curious fact that she was the first ship loaded with cotton which passed through the Suez Canal; but owing to the events which followed secession, the enterprise was temporarily abandoned, and only revived at the present time.
He desired to illustrate the ease with which direct trade could be established. The resolutions called for the building of four steamers. The cost of each of these would not exceed $150,000 or $200,000. One-half of the stock would be taken in Europe, leaving then from $75,000 to $100,000 to be raised in this country. Of this amount the South Carolina Railroad Company had agreed to invest $25,000 on each steamer. Other railroads might be induced to take another sixth, which would leave only from $25,000 to $35,000 to be subscribed by individuals. Nor would this money be raised at once, but in instalments, payable say in one or two years, so that almost every man in the convention could, if he felt so disposed, raise the requisite amount for this great undertaking.
The benefit would inure not to Charleston alone, but to the entire State and her sister States; to the planter rather than to the merchant. It therefore behooved every man interested either in the subject of immigration or of direct trade, to use his utmost endeavors to effect the completion of this work, and thus secure the means whereby both labor and capital would accrue for the common good.
In conclusion he (Mr. Hanckel) moved that the resolutions be read and adopted.
The resolutions are as follows:
Resolved, That the convention recommend that a company be formed for the establishment of a permanent line of freight and immigrant steamers to a port in Europe, in shares of $25 each.
Resolved, That a committee be appointed by the chair to obtain subscriptions from the various railroad companies and corporations interested in commerce, and also take measures for the establishment of a company on a permanent basis, to form a line to consist of four steamers.
Resolved, That the chairman of each delegation be charged with the duty of obtaining subscriptions in their section, with power to appoint sub-committees, who will report to the chairman of the committee appointed by the convention the names and amounts subscribed.
Mr. Wm. M. Lawton sustained the resolutions in a few pertinent remarks, demonstrating the advantages which other States, especially Tennessee, had secured by the adoption of a similar policy, and urged immediate action by the convention.
THE PIGTAILS.
Mr. D. Wyatt Aiken said: I also am strongly in favor of these resolutions, but I want to go a step further. If we merely desired to multiply our numbers, we might as well open once more the doors of Africa or any other nation; but if we wish to introduce a people who are the best laborers in the world—a people who will enable us to make more cotton, that with it we may make money to make more cotton still, I am satisfied that there is no class of emigrants superior to the Chinese. Two months ago I travelled sixty miles above New Orleans to see a party of them at work on a plantation, and as the gentleman who was with me said, you may ride by in a railroad at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and from its neatness pick out every house in which a Chinaman lives. I went into the fields, and although there were eighteen Chinamen at work, not one of them raised his head to look at me. There were twice the number of negroes, and there was not one of them who didn't stop his work to look at us. That was a difference to begin with. My companion remarked that he never saw such hoeing hands as Chinamen in his life. All they wanted was rice and beefsteak. They never left the plantation, unless told to go, and a more quiet, industrious, and apparently contented set of people I never saw in my life. This was my experience on five plantations.
Three gentlemen arrived with fifty thousand dollars in gold, and left New Orleans a few months ago for China. They went into the rural districts, hired nine hundred Chinamen and one hundred Chinese women, and chartered three vessels to bring them out. These vessels are now on their way to America, and the passengers of one of them are destined for the State of Arkansas.
I saw one of the contracts sent back from Hong Kong, printed and signed—on the one side Chinese, on the other side English. Its substance was that not a Chinaman received a dollar until he landed on the levee at New Orleans. Then his pay began. The bargain was to work from daylight to dark—no sunrise about it—with an intermission of one hour at noon, and the price fifty cents a day. They asked for twenty pounds of fresh meat and forty pounds of rice every month, for a house and a garden. The contract was for five years, and at the expiration of that time they are to be sent back if they desire it, at the expense of the employer.
Suppose the coast of South Carolina were lined with such a class—do you suppose we should pay our present prices for rice? Now I do not advocate Chinese labor for the up-country, but for the lower portion of the State you cannot find its equal in the world.
The German does not want rich lands where the accompaniment is malaria and disease, but put him on a hill and he knows that twelve inches below the surface there is a mine. Not long ago I saw two Germans following each other, with ploughs drawn by four oxen, and each plough was in the same furrow. Don't you know that such industry will make men rich? An old German living near Atlanta obtained, last year, from those red hills around the city, $100 worth of strawberries from a single acre, and from three acres sold $500 worth of grapes. He said to me, I think this place is where Adam must have lived, for it certainly is an Eden. This is the class of people we want in South Carolina. I do not care whether they come from Germany or from Pennsylvania; but my idea is to bring them, so to speak, one by one. I want those who come to come as South Carolinians, and to live as South Carolinians—and not exist as a community that will absorb either my habits or the habits of others.
To secure this immigration nothing practicable, in my judgment, has been submitted either by individuals or by committees. My own idea is to let every man attach a value to his land, make a plat of it, and submit it to an association. The aggregate may amount to half a million of dollars. Then let us send the titles to some firm in Bremen, Liverpool or Paris, and say “we will give you these titles if you will put down one able-bodied emigrant for every twenty-five acres.” If we are as patriotic as we ought to be, we can afford to put these lands at one dollar per acre, and then the foreign agent may charge three to cover the expenses of emigration and his own commissions. This plan I conceive to be feasible, and certainly far more practicable than the employment of a dozen agents who will spend our money and talk nippantly while they make a European tour. Fifteen or twenty thousand dollars have been already expended by the State in salaries, and what good has been done? Not so much as what was effected by that little society in Newberry District, of which the delegate from that locality gave us an account yesterday.
We want laborers, it is true. There is a great deal in muscle, but there is more in the intellect, which eventually will control this entire question of labor; and if we can effect our object and bring a few thousand of the hardy sons of the old country into our midst, we shall quickly solve all the agricultural and political problems by which we are now beset.
Mr. Aiken alluded to the inducements that should be offered to emigrants. Among these were good homes. No emigrant would remain in South Carolina who found himself unprovided at the outset with the barest necessaries of life. We must seek to break down the idea which prevails at the North and elsewhere, that South Carolina is not a safe place to live in, and that there is not as much of the milk of human kindness to be found among our people as among any other people on the face of the globe.
Mr. J. P. Thomas said he was glad to observe that there was no substantial difference between the views advanced by gentlemen and the sentiments expressed in the report of the committee. The regeneration of South Carolina was to be effected by these agencies. First, we should not forget the great truth, that in the industrial, as in the political world, those who would be independent must themselves work.
In the second place, we should employ the material around us, and make the most of it. Finally, these energies should be supplemented by the introduction of as large a foreign and Northern element as we can command.
I regret, said Mr. Thomas, that invidious distinctions have been made on the floor of the convention to-day. The proposition is not whether we shall be South Carolinians or Germans, but that we shall stand shoulder to shoulder, irrespective of nationality, in carrying forward this great work. If the Carolinian has been great in the past, it is in our power to make him wiser, nobler and greater in the future. We can learn much in South Carolina. It is within the province of the North to teach us; the German may teach us; and, indeed, if there is any one thing that has made our country grand and great, it is the composite character of the population among us. It is the combined energies of the people which makes the future magnificent in its possibilities. We have the generous spirit of the Cavalier; the refinement of the Huguenot; the thrifty energy and solid character of the German; the sturdiness of the Englishman; the steadiness of the Scotchman; the large-heartedness of the Irishman, and the vivacity of the Frenchman, represented among us, and exerting their influences on the weal or woe of society: and it will be a happy day for the South when our people shall illustrate the grand and glorious results of a common work for the common good.
The question then being taken on the adoption of the resolutions, it was decided in the affirmative.
Mr. W. L. Trenholm offered the following resolutions:
Resolved, That this convention is sincerely convinced of the paramount importance of introducing foreign immigration into the South, not only for the sake of the direct results upon our population and industry, but because of its indirect effect in leading to the establishment of direct trade.
Resolved, That this convention earnestly commend to all the people of the State the subject of foreign emigration, as one worthy of their early and most assiduous attention.
Resolved, That in order to give effect to the report of the Committee on Immigration, the president of the convention, at his leisure, and after conference with representatives from the various county delegations, be requested to appoint a committee on land and immigration, to consist of one resident land owner in each county, and no less than twelve residents of Charleston. The committee thus appointed to be instructed to keep the subject before the public, to encourage immigration and collect whatever information is possible, for the use of all persons or corporations desirous of making a practical experiment.
Resolved, That this convention extend to all persons in the United States and elsewhere, desirous of settling in South Carolina, a cordial invitation to do so, and at the same time assure them of a hearty welcome and such counsel and assurance as they may require, in whatever neighborhood they determine to locate.
Mr. R. Dozier, of Georgetown, offered the following as an additional resolution:
Resolved, That this convention recommend the formation of a joint stock company among the citizens of South Carolina, for the purpose of introducing Chinese laborers into this State.
Mr. W. A. Trenholm said he could not accept the resolution as an addendum to those which he had offered. The Chinese question had not been sufficiently discussed to be intelligently voted upon by himself, at least, and he thought it inadvisable to introduce such a proposition at this time for the consideration of the convention. In his present view, he was opposed to the introduction of a barbarous element into the State.
Mr. Dozier said that, not desiring to embarrass the main resolutions, he would withdraw his own and submit it independently.
The question then being taken on the adoption of the series of resolutions offered by Mr. Trenholm, it was decided in the affirmative.
Mr. Hanckel offered the following:
Resolved, That the Committee on the Freight and Immigrant Steamship Line, to be appointed by the chair, be authorized to fill vacancies or increase its numbers from time to time, as its necessities demand.
The resolution was agreed to.
The president designated as the committee: Messrs. Robert Auger, Chairman; Henry Gourdin, D. F. Fleming, F. J. Pelzer, A. S. Johnstone, Henry Bischoff and John Hanckel.
Mr. Dozier then submitted his resolution, before referred to, and said that if Germans or others were necessary to develop the resources of the upper portion of the State, it was equally important to the interests of the low country that Chinese labor should be employed to cultivate the rice and cotton fields. It had been said on the floor that the Chinese were barbarians. He would not concede the truth of that remark, but even if they were, it constituted no objection to the Mongolian as a laborer. In the absence and demoralization of the negro, it was essential to the interests of this section of this State that the work on plantations should be done by those capable of enduring the climate, and the universal testimony was that there was no race superior to the Chinese for this purpose.
Colonel T. Y. Simons said he opposed Chinese immigration on general principles, which might be briefly summed up—the simple statement that that race did not possess the place side by side with the immigrants from the old world. Experiments in California demonstrated that they had added nothing to the permanence of the country, nor been of any benefit to its civilization. Had they proved a success, as immigrants, the public would have been quickly convinced of the fact, and there would be no difficulty in obtaining an abundance of this species of labor. What the State wanted was a healthy immigration from the North with its attendant blessings of a population who would produce wealth, and enhance the welfare of the country now and hereafter.
Hon. John Townsend contended that there was no antagonism between the two schemes proposed. The only question was where the European and where the Chinese should be employed. That part was settled by nature itself. The white man would supply the deficiency in the up-country, and the Chinaman would take the place of the negro in the low-country, wherever he had disappeared. It was the most susceptible labor that could now be obtained, and known by experiment to be both skilful and successful.
Mr. John H. Screven, of Beaufort, demanded fair play for the coast, and if the convention were sincere in its determination to provide labor for all portions of the State, they would certainly not ignore that portion of it which had suffered the most during the war. If co-operation were expected of the low-country planters, they must be treated with justice in this matter.
Mr. Theodore G. Barker opposed the introduction of Chinese in any shape whatever. Important as the question was, the question of labor in South Carolina, more important still, was the question of our life and political salvation, and one must be sacrificed if necessary to save the other.
Another important consideration was that the German would not consent to work side by side with the coolie: the same objection existed abroad with reference to the coolie as existed to slavery in the past. But the gravest of all considerations was the danger, politically, that would result from an infusion of Chinese, who might, in the course of time, increase the difficulties which already exist to a lamentable degree.
Mr. George H. Walter warmly sustained the resolution, and cited Demerara as an instance of a country which had been regenerated by Chinese labor, and he firmly believed that if introduced in the lower country of South Carolina similar results would be produced. At any rate it was but just that the claims of that section should not be ignored, while discussing the wants of the up-country.
Mr. Brawley, of Chester, made a very earnest speech in favor of what he called the "Pigtails."
It had been said that the Chinese had done nothing in California. Had the Pacific Railroad, the most modern product of civilization, been forgotten? Was it not built by these contemptible rat-eaters, and had they not they demonstrated skill and ability as laborers? Instances were abundant which proved that this race was calculated to supply a great deficiency in our midst, and if the convention intended to do justice to the low country, they would not listen to the special objections, based as these objections were, upon purely political considerations.
Mr. Trenholm threw out the idea that the low country would not be entirely denuded of its colored population, but that, as foreign emigration crowded into the upper part of the State, the colored element would give way before it and seek their natural abiding place, on the coast. In time, therefore, this evil would be cured by natural causes, and the rice planter would not want for an abundance of muscle with which to carry forward his enterprise as of old.
The debate was continued by Messrs. Bonham, Barker, Screven, Butler, Dozier, Clemson, and others, but when the question was finally taken it was decided in the affirmative, and the resolution was adopted as originally submitted.
ADJOURNMENT SINE DIE.
Mr. Seibels moved that the convention do now resolve itself into committee of the whole, which being agreed to, Mr. William M. Lawton took the chair.
Whereupon Mr. Seibels offered a resolution of thanks to the president for his patient administration of the duties of his office, and to the secretaries for their official services during the sessions.
The resolution was agreed to.
The thanks of the convention were, on motion of General Bonham, tendered to Mr. John Chadwick for the use of the Academy of Music.
The president, on resuming the chair, responded as follows:
Allow me, gentlemen of the convention, to congratulate you upon the liberal, practical and earnest spirit which has marked your deliberations—every movement going simply and directly to the purpose for which you assembled. Our principal object—the introduction from abroad of a thrifty and hardy population to supplement our numbers—is one surrounded with many difficulties, and I am not prepared to say that the scheme you have decided upon will meet with unqualified success. They commend themselves, however, warmly to my judgment, as steps in the right direction, and, as far as I can see, all that, under present circumstances, we can do. I trust that a success will attend them far beyond that which the most sanguine can hope, and that the day is near at hand when our beloved State will resume the comfort and prosperity which once marked her condition.
I beg to thank you for the courteous manner in which you have met my effort at presiding over your deliberations.
On motion of F. W. Dawson, Esq., the convention then adjourned sine die.
What sub-type of article is it?
Historical Event
What themes does it cover?
Triumph
Exploration
Survival
What keywords are associated?
Chinese Immigration
Direct Trade
South Carolina Convention
Labor Debate
Economic Development
Post War Recovery
European Immigrants
What entities or persons were involved?
J. K. Vance
B. F. Crayton
John Mccrady
Wm. L. Trenholm
John Hanckel
D. Wyatt Aiken
J. P. Thomas
R. Dozier
T. Y. Simons
John Townsend
John H. Screven
Theodore G. Barker
George H. Walter
Wm. M. Lawton
Where did it happen?
Charleston, South Carolina
Story Details
Key Persons
J. K. Vance
B. F. Crayton
John Mccrady
Wm. L. Trenholm
John Hanckel
D. Wyatt Aiken
J. P. Thomas
R. Dozier
T. Y. Simons
John Townsend
John H. Screven
Theodore G. Barker
George H. Walter
Wm. M. Lawton
Location
Charleston, South Carolina
Event Date
Third And Last Day
Story Details
The convention convenes for its final day, approves invitations and appointments, hears reports on Chinese immigration and industrial resources praising Chinese laborers and Southern climate potential, debates linking immigration to direct European trade via steamships, adopts resolutions for immigration committees, steamship company, and Chinese labor introduction despite opposition, then adjourns with thanks.