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Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands by Charles Nordhoff
page 172 of 346 (49%)
crowding white men out of employment. But one of the complaints most
frequently heard from men who need to get work done is that they can
get nobody to do it. A hundred times and more, in my travels through the
State, I have found Chinese serving not only as laborers, but holding
positions where great skill and faithfulness were required; and almost
every time the employer has said to me, "I would rather, of course, employ
a white man, but I can not get one whom I can trust, and who will stick
to his work." In some cases this was not said, but the employer spoke
straight out that he had tried white men, and preferred the Chinese as
more faithful and painstaking, more accurate, and less eye-servants.

A gentleman told me that he had once advertised in the San Francisco
papers for one hundred laborers; his office was besieged for three days.
Three hundred and fifty offered themselves, all presumably ruined by
Chinese cheap labor; but all but a dozen refused to accept work when they
heard that they were required to go "out of the city."

The charge that the Chinese underbid the whites in the labor market is
bosh. When they first come over, and are ignorant of our language, habits,
customs, and manner of work, they no doubt work cheaply; but they know
very accurately the current rate of wages and the condition of the labor
market, and they manage to get as much as any body, or, if they take less
in some cases, it is because they can not do a full day's work. It is a
fact, however, that they do a great deal of work which white men will
not do out here; they do not stand idle, but take the first job that is
offered them. And the result is that they are used all over the State,
more and more, because they chiefly, of the laboring population, will work
steadily and keep their engagements.

Moreover, the admirable organization of the Chinese labor is an
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