worse than other fugitive slave laws in other states. It passed the assembly on February 5 by a vote of forty-two ayes to eleven noes. On April 5, Broderick called it up in the senate and offered various amendments, which showed that he was taking his departure from, or at least was not harmonizing with, the slave power. Two days afterwards Ralston moved a substitute excluding blacks and mulattoes from the state and not permitting them to hold property or sue. This was lost by nineteen noes to four ayes, consisting of Ralston, Martin E. Cooke, Charles F. Lott and Royal T. Sprague. On April 8 the fugitive slave bill passed the senate by fourteen ayes to nine noes, among whom were Broderick and the four last above named; and on April 15, 1852, it received the governor's signature and became a law.' Meanwhile Archibald C. Peachy presented in the assembly a memorial from citizens of South Carolina and Florida in reference to their removing to this state and bringing their "property" with them. On the other hand Patrick Cannay offered a petition in the assembly from free negroes of San Francisco, praying such a change in the laws as would enable them to give testimony against white men. But such was the prejudice then existing against negroes that when Richard P. Hammond offered a resolution that the house should decline to receive or entertain any petition upon such a subject from such a source, it was adopted by a vote of fortyseven ayes to a single no, which was that of Augustus F. Hinchman."

Next in violence for race prejudice to the anti-negro feeling was the anti-Chinese movement, which commenced about this time. A few Chinese immigrants, who may be called the pioneers of that people as settlers or sojourners in California, had come in the early part of 1848. A few more followed in the course of the year. In 1849, according to custom-house statistics, about three hundred and twenty-five came and in 1850 about four hundred and fifty. They were treated with distinguished consideration. On August 29, 1850, in San Francisco, on the occasion of funeral services commemorative of the death

1 Assembly Journal, 1852, 95, 146, 147; Senate Journal, 1852, 257-285. 2 Assembly Journal, 1852, 159, 160, 395, 396.

of President Taylor, in which all the citizens led by John B. Weller as grand marshal participated, the Chinese were invited to join and were assigned a prominent position in the procession. On October 29, 1850, at the celebration in San Francisco of the admission of California into the union, the Chinese again turned out in large numbers and formed a striking feature in the ceremonies of the day. Their welcome and the opportunities afforded in California to make money encouraged others to come. In 1851 the immigration of Chinese was about twenty. seven hundred and among them were a few dissolute women, the forerunners of a numerous and bad following. One of these women, usually known as Miss Atoy, was infamous throughout the country for her attractions and her conquests.'

It was the practice of the Chinese then as now to huddle together in special and confined quarters and to dress and live as they had dressed and lived in China. Almost all their clothing and most all their food, which consisted in great part of rice, were imported from their native land. As a class they were harmless, peaceful and exceedingly industrious; but, as they were remarkably economical and spent little or none of their earnings except for the necessaries of life and this chiefly to merchants of their own nationality, they soon began to provoke the prejudice and ill-will of those who could not see any value in their labor to the country. Nearly all the very early Chinese immigrants came to the country under a system of contract, by which their passage was paid and they were to labor for a stated term at certain rates of wages, high for China but very low for California; and the business of hiring them out and administering their affairs in general was in the hands of associations, organized in accordance with Chinese laws and usually known as Chinese companies, to which they were said. to belong and owe faith and fealty. As the number of immigrants increased the number of companies increased also, until there were six chief large associations of this kind, commonly called "The Six Chinese Companies," which were entirely separate and distinct from one another but, having like interests, 'Fourgeand's Prospects of California, California Star, April 1, 1848; Annals of San Francisco, 288, 294, 384.

usually agreed in their policy and worked together for similar objects. They were governed among themselves by their own laws and customs, among which were some very curious ones, such as their idolatry, their worship of ancestors and their obligation to send back to China the bones of those who might die in California; and they had various methods of enforcing their laws and customs without appealing to the American courts and tribunals-all of which tended to isolate and exclude them from the sympathy of their fellow-laborers.

They commenced to flock to the mines almost from the start. But at first they mined with very little success. It was remarked

of them in 1849 that, instead of doing what the Americans called digging, they merely scratched; they were like women in the handling of tools; and as they from the beginning recognized the danger of in any manner interfering with the whites, they worked only claims that the whites had passed by or abandoned, and were satisfied with making a dollar or two a day. But by degrees they learned better how to handle tools and in some instances, even in the very early mining times, undertook large and extensive works. An example of this was the working of what was known as Mississippi Bar near Slate Range on the Middle Fork of Yuba river. There were about one hundred and fifty Chinamen engaged and, for the purpose in imitation of the Americans of reaching the auriferous gravel, they constructed a wing-dam several hundred yards in length, built of pine logs, which excluded the water from half the bed of the river as far as it extended. They were said to have expended a vast amount of unnecessary labor and to have spent months in what whites would have accomplished in weeks. But they kept right on with their work and, although the returns to each man were not great, the yield altogether was very large.

By degrees they began also to branch out into occupations which interfered or were supposed to interfere with the wages of white labor. They not only hired out as servants and laborers; but they became laundrymen and turned their attention successfully to various mechanical branches of industry, which would Borthwick's Three Years in California, 143.

2 Borthwick's Three Years in California, 264, 265.

yield them wages, and in a number of ways picked up money, which would have otherwise gone into white hands. They established bars and restaurants in many of the mining towns. At one of these at Sonora, a Chinese woman, finely dressed in European style, sat behind the bar and served out drinks to the customers, while the Chinese proprietor entertained them with music from a drum resembling the top of a human skull covered with parchment and beaten with two small sticks, a guitar like a long stick with a little knob on the end of it, and a sort of fiddle with two strings. When asked whether the woman was his wife, he replied with apparent indignation, "Oh no; only hired woman-China woman; hired for show; that's all." Many others throughout the country were equally smart; and it was soon found that in one way and another they were gathering up large amounts of treasure.1

Though the Chinamen had some vices, such as gambling and smoking opium, it was remarked that their money almost invariably went into the hands of other Chinamen and eventually found its way into the hands of one or other of the Six Companies and thence to China. They would buy some provisions, such as flour and fresh pork and a few other eatables which they could not get from China; but otherwise they did not patronize the butcher, the baker or the grocer. Almost the only articles of American dress they adopted were heavy boots; and, as they always wore them very loose like their blouses and other garments, it got to be said that a Chinaman always picked out the largest boots he could find for his money, without any reference to fit. It thus became apparent that the Chinese were not only foreigners and that the prejudices against foreigners applied to them as well as to others; but that they were foreigners who had little or nothing in common with other people, who in the aggregate collected much of the gold of the mining regions and sent it out of the country, and who were timorous, unwarlike and easily imposed upon. It did not take long under the circumstances for the miners, who were prejudiced against foreigners in general, to move against the Chinese. They claimed that individuals of a community ought to exist only by supplying the wants of others 1 Borthwick's Three Years in California, 330, 331.

and that when a man neither did this, nor had any wants of his own but such as he provided for himself, he was of no use to his neighbor. But when, in addition to this, such a man also diminished the productiveness of the country he was a positive disadvantage and, in proportion to the amount of wealth he removed, was a public nuisance. What was true of an individual was also true of a class; and therefore, according to their views, the Chinese, though the best, faithfulest, most easily managed and most reliable of laborers and though all their labor and in various ways a large portion of their wealth remained in California, were very destructive and detrimental to the interests of the country.'

The first expulsion of Chinese from the mines appears to have taken place at what was known as Chinese Camp in Tuolumne county in the autumn of 1849. There was said to be about sixty Chinamen working there at what was called "dry washing' under the tuition of a few Sonorans and in the employ of an English company. The party that expelled them, like the generality of persons engaged in that kind of business, were a lot of loafers, who destroyed the industry of the Chinamen but were too lazy and shiftless to replace it with any industry of their own. The spot, which paid well then and afterwards yielded immense returns, was for the time abandoned and did no one any good. A few other expulsions in other localities took place; but there was no general movement, as there had been against foreigners in general, for the reason probably that the Chinamen had not as yet come in such numbers as to cause apprehensions in the minds of any except a comparatively very few. Such was the state of affairs about the end of 1851; but in 1852 there commenced an unprecedentedly large immigration, far exceeding anything that had occurred before, and amounting before the end of that year, according to custom-house statistics, to upwards of eighteen thousand four hundred. The knowledge that this immigration was on its way or was about to get under way gave a sudden start to the anti-Chinese movement, which has long outlasted the movements against other foreigners as well as those against negroes.

It will be recollected that Governor McDougal at the begin1 Borthwick's Three Years in California, 264.