Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

CHAPTER 1.

THE EAR­LY DAYS OF HONG KONG.

Time was when so-​called Chris­tian civ­iliza­tion seemed able to send its vices abroad and keep its virtues at home. When men went by long sea voy­ages to the far East in sail­ing ves­sels, in the in­ter­ests of con­quest or com­merce, and fell vic­tims to their en­vi­ron­ments and weak wills, far re­moved from the re­straints of re­li­gious in­flu­ences, and from the pos­si­bil­ity of ex­po­sure and dis­grace in wrong­do­ing, they lived with the prospect be­fore them, not al­ways un­ful­filled, of re­turn­ing to home and to virtue to die.

That day has passed for­ev­er. With the in­ven­tion of steam as a lo­co­mo­tive pow­er of great ve­loc­ity, with the in­tro­duc­tion of the ca­ble, and lat­er, the wire­less teleg­ra­phy; with the mas­tery of these nat­ural forces and their in­tro­duc­tion in ev­ery part of the world, we see the old world be­ing drawn near­er and near­er to us by ten thou­sand in­vis­ible cords of com­mer­cial in­ter­ests, un­til short­ly, prob­ably with­in the life­time of you and me, the once worn out and al­most strand­ed wreck will be found quick­ened with new life and moored along­side us. The Ori­ent is al­ready feel­ing the thrill of re­newed life. It is re­spond­ing to the touch of the youth and vig­or of the West and be­com­ing re­ju­ve­nat­ed; it is draw­ing clos­er and clos­er in its ea­ger­ness for the warmth of new in­ter­ests. The West is no longer alone in seek­ing a union; the East is com­ing to the West. And that part of the East which first re­sponds to the West is the old ac­quain­tance; the one that knows most about us, our ways and our re­sources; the el­ement with which the long sea-​voy­ager min­gled in the days when it seemed more dif­fi­cult for man to be vir­tu­ous, be­cause sep­arat­ed so far from fam­ily and friends and liv­ing in in­tense lone­li­ness. The el­ement which now draws clos­est to us is that por­tion of the Ori­ent with which the ad­ven­tur­er warred and sinned long ago, and which bears the deep scars of sin and bat­tle.

As the old hulk is moored along­side, in or­der that the man of West­ern en­ter­prise may cross with greater fa­cil­ity the gang­plank and de­vel­op la­tent re­sources on the oth­er side, the East­ern­er hur­ries across from his side to ours with no less ea­ger­ness, to pick up gold in a land where it seems so abun­dant to him. Al­most un­no­ticed, the Ori­ent is tele­scop­ing its way in­to the very heart of the Oc­ci­dent, and with fear­ful por­tent and per­il, par­tic­ular­ly to the West­ern wom­an.

This is not what is de­sired, but it will be in­evitable. Ex­clu­sion laws must fi­nal­ly give way be­fore the pres­sure. Al­ready the Ori­ent is knock­ing vig­or­ous­ly at the door of the Oc­ci­dent, and un­less ad­mis­sion is grant­ed soon, mea­sures of re­tal­ia­tion will be op­er­at­ed to force an en­trance. How to ad­min­is­ter them the Ori­ent al­ready knows, for has not the door to his domi­cile been al­ready forced open by the West­ern trad­er? The Ori­ent is fast arm­ing for the con­flict.

The men of the days of sail­ing ves­sels, who went to the far East and made sport of and tram­pled up­on the virtue of the wom­en of a weak­er na­tion, have not all died in peace, leav­ing their vices far off and gath­er­ing virtues about them to crown their old age with ven­er­able­ness. Some have lived to see that what­so­ev­er man soweth that shall he al­so reap. They have lived to see the tide set­ting in in the oth­er di­rec­tion, and the hu­man wreck­age of past vices swept by the cur­rent of im­mi­gra­tion close to their own domi­cile. Their own chil­dren are in dan­ger of be­ing en­gulfed in the pol­lut­ing flood of Ori­en­tal life in our midst. Af­ter many days vices come home. Man sowed the wind; the whirl­wind must be reaped. The Ori­en­tal slave trad­er and the Ori­en­tal slave promise to be­come a ter­ri­ble men­ace and scourge to our twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry civ­iliza­tion. Here­in lies great per­il to Amer­ican wom­an­hood. Whether we wish it to be so or not,--whether we per­ceive from the first that it is so or not, there is a sol­idar­ity of wom­an­hood that men and wom­en must reck­on with. The man who wrongs an­oth­er's daugh­ter per­ceives af­ter­wards that he wronged his own daugh­ter there­by. We can­not, with­out sin against hu­man­ity, ask the scoffer's ques­tion, “Am I my sis­ter's keep­er?”--not even con­cern­ing the poor­est and mean­est for­eign wom­an, for the rea­son that _she is our sis­ter_. The con­di­tions that sur­round the Hong Kong slave girl in Cal­ifor­nia are bound in time to have their in­flu­ence up­on the so­cial, le­gal and moral sta­tus of all Cal­ifor­nia wom­en, and lat­er of all Amer­ican wom­an­hood.

In con­sid­er­ing the life his­to­ry of the Chi­nese wom­an liv­ing in our Chi­na­towns in Amer­ica, there­fore, we are study­ing mat­ters of vi­tal im­por­tance to us. And in or­der to a clear un­der­stand­ing of the mat­ter, we must go back to the be­gin­ning of the slave-​trade which has brought these wom­en to the West.

Four points on the south coast of Chi­na are of es­pe­cial in­ter­est to us, be­ing the sources of sup­ply of this slave-​trade. These are Macao, Can­ton, Kowloon and Hong Kong, and the wom­en com­ing to the West from this re­gion all pass through Hong Kong, re­main­ing there a longer or short­er time, the lat­ter place be­ing the em­po­ri­um and thor­ough­fare of all the sur­round­ing ports.

The south coast of Chi­na is split by a Y-​shaped gap, at about its mid­dle, where the Can­ton riv­er bursts the con­fines of its banks and plunges in­to the sea. The lips of this mouth of the riv­er are ev­ert­ed like those of an abo­rig­inal African, and like a pen­dant from the east­ern lip hangs the Is­land of Hong Kong, sep­arat­ed from the main­land by wa­ter on­ly one-​fourth of a mile wide. From the op­po­site or west­ern lip hangs an­oth­er pen­dant, a small is­land up­on which is sit­uat­ed the Por­tuguese city of Macao. The main­land ad­join­ing Hong Kong is the penin­su­la of Kowloon, ced­ed to the British with the is­land of Hong Kong. Well up in the mouth of the riv­er on its west­ern bank, some eighty miles from Hong Kong, is the city of Can­ton.

Let us imag­ine for a mo­ment that the on-​com­ing civ­iliza­tion of our coun­try pushed the Amer­ican In­di­ans not west­ward but south­ward to­ward the Gulf of Mex­ico and along the banks of the Mis­sis­sip­pi, and com­pressed them on ev­ery side un­til at last they were obliged to take to boats in the mouth of the Mis­sis­sip­pi and live there per­pet­ual­ly, sel­dom step­ping foot on land.

Now we are the bet­ter able to un­der­stand ex­act­ly what took place with an abo­rig­inal tribe in Chi­na. These abo­rig­ines were, cen­turies ago, pushed south­ward by an on-​com­ing civ­iliza­tion un­til at last, by im­pe­ri­al de­cree, they were for­bid­den to live any­where ex­cept on boats in the mouth of the Can­ton riv­er, float­ing up and down that stream, and sail­ing about Hong Kong and Macao in the more open sea.

They must have been al­ways a hardy peo­ple, for the riv­er pop­ula­tion about Can­ton num­bers to­day near­ly 200,000 souls. In 1730, the sever­ity of the laws reg­ulat­ing their lives was re­laxed some­what by im­pe­ri­al de­cree, and since then some of them have dwelt in vil­lages along the riv­er bank. But to the present day these peo­ple, known as the Tan­ka Tribe, or the “salt­wa­ter” peo­ple, by the na­tives, may not in­ter-​mar­ry with oth­er Chi­nese, nor are they ev­er al­lowed to at­tain to of­fi­cial hon­ors.

Liv­ing al­ways on boats near the riv­er's mouth, these were the first Chi­nese to come in con­tact with for­eign sail­ing ves­sels which ap­proached Chi­na in the ear­li­est days. They sold their wares to the for­eign­ers; they pi­lot­ed their boats in­to port; they did the laun­dry work for the ships. In many ways they showed friend­li­ness to the for­eign­ers while as yet the lands­man viewed the new-​com­ers with sus­pi­cion. Their wom­en were gross­ly cor­rupt­ed by con­tact with the for­eign voy­agers and sailors.

Hong Kong was a long way off at the be­gin­ning of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, when Great Britain be­gan to send Gov­ern­ment-​man­ufac­tured opi­um from In­dia to Chi­na, and when Chi­na pro­hib­it­ed the trade the drug was smug­gled in. When Chi­nese of­fi­cials at last rose up to check this in­va­sion by for­eign trade, wars fol­lowed in which Chi­na was worsted, and the is­land of Hong Kong, to­geth­er with the Kowloon penin­su­la, be­came a British pos­ses­sion as war in­dem­ni­ty. Hong Kong is a “mere dot in the ocean less than twen­ty-​sev­en miles in cir­cum­fer­ence,” and when Great Britain took pos­ses­sion its in­hab­itants were lim­it­ed to “a few fish­er­men and cot­tagers.”

The Tankas helped the British in many ways in wag­ing these wars, and when peace was es­tab­lished went to live with them on the is­land. This ac­tion on the part of these “riv­er peo­ple” is sig­nif­icant as show­ing as much or more at­tach­ment to the for­eign­er than to the oth­er class­es of Chi­nese. There seems al­ways to be less con­science in wrong­ing an alien peo­ple than in in­jur­ing a peo­ple to whom one is close­ly at­tached, and this sense of es­trange­ment from oth­er Chi­nese may ac­count to some ex­tent for the fa­cil­ity with which this abo­rig­inal peo­ple en­gaged, a lit­tle lat­er, in the trade in wom­en and girls brought from the main­land to meet the de­mands of prof­li­gate for­eign­ers.

Sir Charles El­liott, Gov­er­nor of Hong Kong, wish­ing to at­tract Chi­nese im­mi­gra­tion to the is­land, is­sued, on Febru­ary 1st and 2nd, 1841, two procla­ma­tions in the name of the Queen, to the ef­fect that there would be no in­ter­fer­ence with the free ex­er­cise on the part of the Chi­nese of their re­li­gious rites, cer­emonies and so­cial cus­toms, “pend­ing Her Majesty's plea­sure.”

Fol­low­ing the cus­tom of all Ori­en­tal peo­ple, to whom mar­riage is a trade in the per­sons of wom­en, when the Tankas saw that the for­eign­ers had come to that dis­tant part al­most uni­ver­sal­ly with­out wife or fam­ily, they of­fered to sell them wom­en and girls, and the British seem to have pur­chased them at first, but af­ter­wards they mod­ified the prac­tice to mere­ly pay­ing a month­ly stipend. All slav­ery through­out British pos­ses­sions had been pro­hib­it­ed on­ly a few years be­fore the set­tle­ment of Hong Kong, in 1833, when 20,000,000 pounds had been dis­tribut­ed by Eng­land as a boon to slave-​hold­ers.

Hong Kong's first Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil was held in 1844, and its first or­di­nance was an an­ti-​slav­ery mea­sure in the form of an at­tempt to de­fine the law re­lat­ing to slav­ery. It was a long pro­cess in those days for the Colony to get the Queen's ap­proval of its leg­isla­tive mea­sures, so that a year had elapsed be­fore a dis­patch was re­turned from the Home Gov­ern­ment dis­al­low­ing the Or­di­nance as su­per­flu­ous, slav­ery be­ing al­ready for­bid­den, and slave-​deal­ing in­dictable by law. On the same day, Jan­uary 24th, 1845, the fol­low­ing procla­ma­tion was made: “Where­as, the Acts of the British Par­lia­ment for the abo­li­tion of the slave trade, and for the abo­li­tion of slav­ery, ex­tend by their own prop­er force and au­thor­ity to Hong Kong: This is to ap­prise all per­sons of the same, and to give no­tice that these Acts will be en­forced by all Her Majesty's of­fi­cers, civ­il and mil­itary, with­in this Colony.”

The “for­eign­ers,” by which name, ac­cord­ing to a cus­tom which pre­vails to this day in the East, we shall call per­sons of British, Eu­ro­pean or Amer­ican birth,--called a na­tive mis­tress a “pro­tect­ed wom­an,” and her “pro­tec­tor” set her up in an es­tab­lish­ment by her­self, apart from his abode, and here chil­dren were born to the for­eign­er, some to be ed­ucat­ed in mis­sion­ary schools and else­where by their il­le­git­imate fa­thers and af­ter­wards be­come use­ful men and wom­en, but prob­ably the ma­jor­ity, more ne­glect­ed, to be­come use­less and prof­li­gate,--if girls, mis­tress­es to for­eign­ers, or, as the large num­ber of half-​castes in the im­moral hous­es at Hong Kong at the present time demon­strates, to fall to the low­est depths of degra­da­tion.

These “pro­tect­ed wom­en,” en­riched be­yond any­thing they had even known be­fore the for­eign­er came to that part of the world, with the usu­al thrift of the Chi­nese tem­per­ament, sought for a way to in­vest their earn­ings, and quite nat­ural­ly, could think of noth­ing so prof­itable as se­cur­ing wom­en and girls to meet the de­mands of the for­eign­ers. Mar­riage hav­ing al­ways been, to the Ori­en­tal mind, scarce­ly any­thing be­yond the mere trade in the per­sons of wom­en, it was but a step from that at­ti­tude of mind to the sell­ing of girls to the for­eign­er, and the rear­ing of them for that ob­ject. The “pro­tect­ed wom­en,” be­ing of the Tan­ka tribe, were well sit­uat­ed for this pur­pose, for they had many re­la­tions of kin­dred and friend­ship all up and down the Can­ton riv­er, and the busi­ness of the prepa­ra­tion of slave girls for the for­eign­ers and for for­eign mar­kets (as the trade ex­pand­ed) grad­ual­ly ex­tend­ed back­wards up the Can­ton riv­er, un­til many of its boats were al­most giv­en over to it. “Flow­er-​boats” were prob­ably nev­er un­known to this riv­er, but, be­sides their use as broth­els, they be­came stocked with lit­tle girls un­der train­ing for vice, un­der the in­cite­ment of an ev­er-​grow­ing slave trade. These lit­tle girls were bought, stolen or en­ticed from the main­land by these riv­er peo­ple, to swell the num­ber of their own chil­dren des­tined to the in­fa­mous slave trade. Chi­nese law for­bids this kind of slav­ery, but, as we have seen, the Tan­ka peo­ple were sort of out­laws, the riv­er life fa­cil­itat­ed such a busi­ness, and Hong Kong was near at hand.

In lat­er years Dr. Ei­tel, Chi­nese in­ter­preter to the Gov­er­nor, stat­ed:

“Al­most ev­ery so-​called 'pro­tect­ed wom­an,' i.e. kept mis­tress of for­eign­ers here, be­longs to the Tan­ka tribe, looked down up­on and kept at a dis­tance by all the oth­er Chi­nese class­es. It is among these Tan­ka wom­en, and es­pe­cial­ly un­der the pro­tec­tion of these 'pro­tect­ed' Tan­ka wom­en, that pri­vate pros­ti­tu­tion and the sale of girls for con­cu­bi­nage flour­ish­es, be­ing looked up­on as a le­git­imate pro­fes­sion. Con­se­quent­ly, al­most ev­ery 'pro­tect­ed wom­an' keeps a nurs­ery of pur­chased chil­dren or a few ser­vant girls who are be­ing reared with a view to their even­tu­al dis­pos­al, ac­cord­ing to their per­son­al qual­ifi­ca­tions, ei­ther among for­eign­ers here as kept wom­en, or among Chi­nese res­idents as their con­cu­bines, or to be sold for ex­port to Sin­ga­pore, San Fran­cis­co, or Aus­tralia. Those 'pro­tect­ed wom­en,' more­over, gen­er­al­ly act as 'pro­tec­tors' each to a few oth­er Tan­ka wom­en who live by sly pros­ti­tu­tion.”

When once a man en­ters the ser­vice of Sa­tan he is gen­er­al­ly pressed along in­to it to lengths he did not at first in­tend to go. So it proved in the case of many for­eign­ers at Hong Kong. The for­eign­er ex­tend­ed his “pro­tec­tion” to a na­tive mis­tress. That “pro­tect­ed wom­an” ex­tend­ed his name as “pro­tec­tor” over the in­mates of her se­cret broth­el; and in­to that house pro­tect­ed large­ly from of­fi­cial in­ter­fer­ence, pur­chased and kid­naped girls were in­tro­duced and reared for the trade in wom­en. The sen­si­tive point seems to have been that an en­force­ment of the an­ti-​slav­ery laws would have in­ter­fered in many in­stances with the il­lic­it re­la­tions of the for­eign­er, ex­pos­ing him to ig­nominy and send­ing the moth­er of his chil­dren to prison. It was suf­fi­cient for the “pro­tect­ed” wom­an to say, when the of­fi­cer of the law rapped at her door, “This is not a broth­el, but the pri­vate fam­ily res­idence of Mr. So-​and-​So,” nam­ing some for­eign­er,--per­haps a high-​placed of­fi­cial,--and the of­fi­cer's search would pro­ceed no fur­ther.

It was claimed that this slav­ery, and al­so do­mes­tic slav­ery, which sprang up so sud­den­ly af­ter the set­tle­ment of Hong Kong by the British, was the out­growth of Chi­nese cus­toms, and could not be sup­pressed but with the great­est dif­fi­cul­ty, and their sup­pres­sion was an un­war­rantable in­ter­fer­ence with Chi­nese cus­toms, Sir Charles El­liott hav­ing giv­en promise from the first that such cus­toms should not be in­ter­fered with. But, as we have shown, that promise was on­ly made, “pend­ing Her Majesty's plea­sure,” which had been very plain­ly and point­ed­ly ex­pressed lat­er as op­posed to slav­ery.

As to the mat­ter of “cus­tom,” Sir John Smale, Chief Jus­tice of Hong Kong, said, in 1879, in the Supreme Court, on the oc­ca­sion of sen­tenc­ing pris­on­ers for slave trad­ing and kid­nap­ing:

“Can Chi­nese slav­ery, as it _de fac­to_ ex­ists in Hong Kong, be con­sid­ered a Chi­nese cus­tom which can be brought with­in the in­tent and mean­ing of ei­ther of the procla­ma­tions of 1841 so as to be sanc­tioned by the procla­ma­tions? I as­sert that it can­not.... A cus­tom is 'such a us­age as by com­mon con­sent and uni­form prac­tice has be­come a law.' In 1841 there could have been no cus­tom of slav­ery in Hong Kong as now set up, for, save a few fish­er­men and cot­tagers, the is­land was un­in­hab­it­ed; and be­tween 1841 and 1844, the date of the Or­di­nance ex­press­ly pro­hibit­ing slav­ery, there was no time for such a cus­tom to have grown up; and slav­ery in ev­ery form hav­ing been by ex­press law pro­hib­it­ed by the Roy­al procla­ma­tion of the Queen in 1845, no cus­tom con­trary to that law could, af­ter that date, grow up, be­cause the thing was by ex­press law il­le­gal. I go fur­ther, and I find that the pe­nal law of Chi­na, whilst it fa­cil­itates the adop­tion of chil­dren in­to a fam­ily to keep up its suc­ces­sion, pro­hibits by sec­tion 78 the re­ceiv­ing in­to his house by any one of a per­son of a dif­fer­ent sur­name, declar­ing him guilty of 'con­found­ing fam­ily dis­tinc­tions,' and pun­ish­ing him with 60 blows; the fa­ther of the son who shall 'give away' ... his son is to be sub­ject to the same pun­ish­ment. Again, sec­tion 79 en­acts that whoso­ev­er shall re­ceive and de­tain the strayed or lost child of a re­spectable per­son, and, in­stead of tak­ing it be­fore the mag­is­trate, sell such child as a slave, shall be pun­ished by 100 blows and three years' ban­ish­ment. Whoso­ev­er shall sell such child for mar­riage or adop­tion in­to any fam­ily as son or grand­son shall be pun­ished with 90 blows and ban­ish­ment for two years and a half. Whoso­ev­er shall dis­pose of a strayed or lost slave shall suf­fer the pun­ish­ment pro­vid­ed by the law re­duced one de­gree. If any per­son shall re­ceive or de­tain a fugi­tive child, and, in­stead of tak­ing it be­fore the mag­is­trate, sell such child for a slave, he shall be pun­ished by 90 blows and ban­ish­ment for two years and a half. Whoso­ev­er shall sell any such fugi­tive child for mar­riage or adop­tion shall suf­fer the pun­ish­ment of 80 blows and two years' ban­ish­ment.... Whoso­ev­er shall de­tain for his own use as a slave, wife, or child, any such lost, strayed or fugi­tive child or slave, shall be equal­ly li­able to be pun­ished as above men­tioned, but if on­ly guilty of de­tain­ing the same for a short time the pun­ish­ment shall not ex­ceed 80 blows. When the pur­chas­er or the ne­go­tia­tor of the pur­chase shall be aware of the un­law­ful­ness of the trans­ac­tion he shall suf­fer pun­ish­ment one de­gree less than that in­flict­ed on the sell­er, and the amount of the pe­cu­niary con­sid­er­ation shall he for­feit­ed to Gov­ern­ment, but when he or they are foun have been un­ac­quaint­ed there­with they shall not be li­able to pun­ish­ment, and the mon­ey shall be re­stored to the par­ty from whom it had been re­ceived.” The Chief Jus­tice con­tin­ues: “Af­ter read­ing these ex­tracts from the Pe­nal Code of Chi­na--an old Code re­vised from time to time ... I can­not see how it can be main­tained that any form of slav­ery was ev­er tol­er­at­ed by law in Hong Kong, as it _de fac­to_ ex­ists here, or how the words of the two procla­ma­tions of 1841 could be said to bear the col­or of tol­er­at­ing slav­ery un­der the British flag in Hong Kong. It is clear to me that the Queen's procla­ma­tion of 1845, which I have al­ready quot­ed at full, de­clares slav­ery ab­so­lute­ly il­le­gal here.”

The truth, then, seems to be that a great de­mand had arisen for Chi­nese wom­en at Hong Kong, the most di­rect cause be­ing the ir­reg­ular con­duct of for­eign­ers--of­fi­cials, pri­vate in­di­vid­uals, sol­diers and sailors--who gath­ered there at the time of the opi­um wars, and set­tled there in large num­bers when Hong Kong be­came a British pos­ses­sion. This de­mand was re­spond­ed to from the na­tive side, for it was said: “When the colony of Hong Kong was first es­tab­lished in 1842, it was forth­with in­vad­ed by broth­el keep­ers and pros­ti­tutes from the ad­join­ing dis­tricts of the main­land of Chi­na, who brought with them the na­tion­al Chi­nese sys­tem of pros­ti­tu­tion, and have ev­er since la­bored to car­ry it in­to ef­fect in all its de­tails.”[A] The de­mand that brought this sup­ply was fur­ther added to from two sources, first, Chi­nese res­idents at­tract­ed to Hong Kong had made mon­ey there rapid­ly, and had fall­en in­to prof­li­gate and lux­uri­ous man­ners of life, and sec­ond, Chi­nese go­ing abroad to Aus­tralia, Sin­ga­pore and San Fran­cis­co, cre­at­ed a de­mand for im­moral wom­en in these for­eign lands which called for sup­plies from Hong Kong, and at Sin­ga­pore the de­mand came al­so from the class of for­eign­ers who resid­ed there.

[Foot­note A: Hong Kong was oc­cu­pied by the British in 1841, but not ced­ed un­til 1842.]

The sys­tem of man­age­ment of pros­ti­tu­tion was orig­inal­ly Chi­nese, and dif­fers much from any­thing known un­der West­ern civ­iliza­tion, in that the wom­en are nev­er what we speak of as “fall­en wom­en,” be­cause not the vic­tims of se­duc­tion nor of base propen­si­ties that have led to the choice of such a life. They are ei­ther slaves trained for or sold in­to shame, or wom­en tem­porar­ily held for debt by a sort of mort­gage. To this Chi­nese sys­tem of pros­ti­tu­tion, how­ev­er, there was soon ap­plied at Hong Kong a Gov­ern­ment sys­tem of reg­ula­tion or li­cense un­der surveil­lance. This mod­ified the sys­tem, in­ten­si­fied the slav­ery, and was the cause of re­duc­ing many wom­en from the re­spectable ranks of Chi­nese life at once and ar­bi­trar­ily to the low­est depths of degra­da­tion, as we shall ex­plain and demon­strate in sub­se­quent chap­ters.

The na­tive wom­an, rent­ed for a month­ly stipend from her own­ers was called “pro­tect­ed” at Hong Kong. What charm this word “pro­tec­tion,” and the ti­tle “Pro­tec­tor” has held for cer­tain per­sons, as ap­plied to the male sex! “Man, the nat­ural pro­tec­tor of wom­an.” For­sooth, to pro­tect her from what? Rat­tlesnakes, buf­fa­lo, li­ons, wild­cats no more over­run the coun­try, and why is this re­la­tion of “pro­tec­tor” still claimed? Why, to pro­tect wom­an from rude­ness, and in­sult and some­times even worse. But from whence comes that dan­ger of rude­ness and in­sult or worse from which man is to pro­tect wom­an? From man, of course. Man is, then, wom­an's nat­ural pro­tec­tor to pro­tect her from man, her nat­ural pro­tec­tor. He is to set him­self the task of de­fend­ing her from his in­jury of her, and he is charmed with the av­oca­tion. He will pro­tect her as Abra­ham pro­tect­ed Sarah when he took her in­to Egypt. “Do so-​and-​so,” said Abra­ham to Sarah, “that it may be well with me,--for thy sake.” The his­to­ry of the Chi­nese slave wom­an as she came in con­tact with the for­eign­er at Hong Kong and at Sin­ga­pore pro­ceeds all along a path­way la­belled “pro­tec­tion,” down to the last ditch of hu­man degra­da­tion. “Well with me,” was the mo­tive in the mind of the “pro­tec­tor.” “For thy sake,” the ar­gu­ment for the thing as put be­fore the wom­an and be­fore the world.