them their standing among the nations of the earth, are their thrift and industry, their respect and pursuit of the arts of peace and learning, and their love of order and law. It is their untiring industry which has made them so valuable to the Pacific States, and when there is less demand and remuneration for their labor, they will cease to come. This has been the case in the Indian Archipelago, Siam, and India, and will prove true in this country and Australia. They have no desire to found new colonies in far off regions, or they would long ago have possessed the great islands of Borneo and Sumatra; they will follow a remunerative lead, but are not disposed to venture all on a chance of sudden gain. Their countrymen in other provinces are more ready to ridicule and despise the Cantonese for going among the barbarians than to follow their example; for they say, China can teach the uncouth people of those lands, but we need not risk life and luck to go and do it.

The trait which has caused most trouble where they have emigrated, is their aptitude at combining together in every kind of association. In their own land, they form into clubs and companies, guilds and cabals, societies and unions, clans and leagues, of one kind and another. Sometimes it is to resist government, and sometimes to coöperate and help it. Clan will rise up against clan about some petty quarrel, and the local authorities simply look on at the deadly struggle for supremacy; and when it is settled, both parties will join in various companies, and unite in friendly efforts to maintain a guard against marauders and rebels in aid of the national defense. This democratic spirit has preserved the people from the extremities of official tyranny and taxation; while, on the other hand, their ignorance and prejudice weakens them when they resist improvements, and vent their spite against competitors in trade. They carry this habit of combination abroad, using it for mutual protection and to secure a common end; sometimes, like our masonic lodges, which are much like the huui of the Chinese, it may be made a means of crushing a rival or removing an enemy, but this is the exception. Mr. Blaine says that "inside the municipal law and independent of it, the Chinese in California administer a code among themselves, even pronouncing the death penalty, and executing it

in criminal secrecy." If he has no proof of this extreme result to adduce, the united assertions of the Six Companies in their Memorial, that "they have never had organized or secret tribunals to administer justice in this country; many of our misunderstandings and difficulties we have settled among ourselves in the way of arbitration," are far more worthy of credence.

In comparison with the stringent rules of trade-unions and strikes, and the ruthless acts of internationals, communists, and ku-klux when banded against law and order, the sternest acts of Chinese huui abroad are less savage. Yet their tendency to unite in such leagues is one habit which might develop into aggression, as well as limit itself to protection. In California the wrongs hitherto suffered by them have all been from the heavy hand of those whose exorbitant demands for wages could brook no rivalry in labor, and who would not see or acknowledge that the cheap Chinaman had prepared work for the skilled American and ready Irishman. They have added three hundred millions to the value of property in California alone, hardly a cent of which would or could have been earned by the latter; and yet all the stress has been laid on the $180,000,000 which they carried back to China with them, as if it had pauperized the State. Few of them have got into the hospital or almshouse, and considering their bringing up at home in heathenism, ignorance, vice, and degradation, few were in the State prison. The tables give one hundred and ninetyeight Chinese against three hundred and forty-seven white criminals.

Another objection against a great Chinese immigration, is that they do not bring their families, but this insures the return to a larger extent of those who come here merely to find a good market for their labor, and of itself shows the perfect unsoundness of Mr. Blaine's awful picture of the vast immigration threatened as delineated in his letter. Still, if they wished to marry, where are the women? The existence of polygamy in China enables a man to bring home another wife if he likes; while, in fact, he seldom does so. The women refuse to go abroad for a good many reasons, and the men who leave home are mostly young and unmarried. Their difficult language

also operates as a serious obstacle to adopting our usages and learning our ways of life; and, moreover, compels them to receive orders from their countrymen who serve as the interpreters and headmen in contracts with their employers.

I will not go further into these reasons, for those who seek more information can easily get it. The well-written veto of President Hayes, which prevented the obloquy that Congressmen tried to fasten on our national reputation, proved its strength of reasoning in this, that their second vote for the bill was less than the first. He conclusively shows that Congress has neither the power to make a treaty nor break one; much more, then, it cannot, as this Bill does, indirectly abrogate or nullify a treaty, and give no hint of its purpose. He properly shows that the will of the nation can be declared in some other way in respect to its continuance, and that there is no other objection against its existence than the declaration respecting immigration.

We are pretty sure that a fair examination of the rise and nature of this influx of laborers will prove that it has not been caused by the stipulations of the treaty; that the Government of China has not the least control over it, treaty or no treaty; and that the Chinese will not ever become a menace or a scourge. We, as a people, may be thankful that the discussion and vote in Congress have attracted attention to the nature of treaty obligations when there was no imminent peril demanding hasty legislation, or delicate questions stirring up national rivalries. Mr. Blaine's course in the debate has served, too, to draw attention to it and to him; and he has been well answered by Mr. Garrison, and still better by Mr. Beecher, whose excellent address on the third of March, in Philadelphia, touches every point in the matter. Mr. Blaine has spoken and written on this question without careful examination into his alleged facts, or analyzing his deductions; and he will probably, by and by, find the truth of the Chinese proverb, "A word once spoken, four horses cannot catch it."

ARTICLE II-AN EXPERIMENT IN COÖPERATION.

AT the present time, when the merits and demerits of coöperative Trading are so eagerly discussed, it may be worth while to study the history of an Experiment in Coöperation which has, from the first, been a triumphant success. The Society of Equitable Pioneers in Rochdale, Lancashire, England, has now been in existence for thirty-five years and has undoubtedly done more than any other organization to attract general attention to a system which threatens to revolutionize the principle upon which retail trading has hitherto been carried on.

Like many other popular movements, this experiment in Coöperation sprang out of a difference of opinion between two great classes of the community. In the year 1843, when the flannel trade of Rochdale was brisk, the weavers appealed to the masters for an advance of wages. The employers do not seem to have been averse to considering the demands of their men, but apparently there was considerable difficulty in arriving at any collective agreement. As a consequence the advance was refused. Then, although probably not by any means for the first time, the question appears to have presented itself to these Lancashire weavers-Why should we not become our own masters? The mills were in a very unsettled condition. One employer after another had been asked for the advance in wages; and in case he failed to grant it, his hands had turned The men thus thrown out of employ were supported by a subscription of two pence per week from each weaver still at work.

out.

About this time, at one of the Sunday afternoon discussions which were very general among thoughtful working men in those disturbed Chartist days, the question was proposed and debated: "What are the best means of improving the condition of the people?" Out of this discussion seems to have grown a combination between the agitators among the flannel weavers, and certain hard-headed, practical advocates of coöpe

ration. The fraternity comprised enthusiasts of many different schools, some men who were, politically, red-hot Chartists; others who were, socially, ardent believers in temperance reform; others again who were, religiously, disciples of Robert Owen, and who believed a great deal more in him and in themselves than they did in the creeds of Christendom.

As the result of long and careful discussion it was resolved to found a Coöperative Provision store. The society was to be formally enrolled under Act of Parliament; it was to carry on its business on the ready-money principle, and it was to be started on a capital of two pence per week, paid in by each member, a sum which was shortly changed, as the operations of the society increased, to three pence.

Three collectors were appointed, who gathered up the money from the various members at their houses every Sunday; a time which is still largely employed for this purpose by the unpaid agents of benefit societies. The working men in the Lancashire towns may be rightly divided into two classesthe respectable, who spend their Sundays in religious exercises, in interesting themselves on behalf of their sick and burial societies, or in tramping over the hills and moors in small clubs, in search of rare plants, a diversion which concludes with a dinner at some public house; and the thriftless, who beguile the hours of the dreariest day in that dreary region with running dogs and flying pigeons.

The Rochdale experimenters borrowed such features as were applicable to their project from a Manchester Communistic publication entitled, "The Rational Sick and Burial Society's Laws;" and they registered their association under the title of the "Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers."

At the outset they thus formulated their views:

'The objects and plans of this Society are to form arrangements for the pecuniary benefit, and the improvement of the social and domestic condition of its members by raising a sufficient amount of capital, in shares of one pound each, to bring into operation the following plans and arrangement:

'The establishment of a store for the sale of provisions, clothing, etc.

'The building, purchasing, or erecting a number of houses,