Their presence in the kitchen would tend to alleviate
domestic conditions that are responsible in large measure for the
breaking up of American home life. It is a ludicrous error to suppose
that all the Chinese who come to America are laundrymen at home. Let
Mrs. S. L. Baldwin, a returned missionary who labored in China for
eighteen years and knows the people she pleads for, bear her witness:
[Sidenote: A Missionary's Plea for the Chinese]
"The Chinese are exactly the same class as the immigrants from other
lands. The needy poor, with few exceptions, must ever be the immigrant
class. Those who come to us across the Pacific are largely from the
respectable farming class, who fall into laundry work, shoemaking, etc.,
because these branches of industry are chiefly open to them. I have no
fear of the Chinese immigrants suffering in comparison with those who
come across the Atlantic. It is not the Chinaman who is too lazy to
work, and goes to the almshouse or jail. It is not he who reels through
our streets, defies our Sabbath laws, deluges our country with beer,
and opposes all work for temperance and the salvation of our sons from
the liquor curse. It is not the man from across the Pacific who commits
the fearful crimes, and who is longing to put his hand to our political
wheel and rule the United States.
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