A Darwinian View: How Chinese Survive on Less Food

DOCUMENT #10: Debate Over the Chinese, California Constitutional Convention

Delegate J. H. Miller, Demr 9, 1878.

Miller was from San Francisco. He was a lawyer who had played an important role in Indiana

politics. He had been a Brigadier General in the Union Army and came to California after the

Civil War. A conservative Republican, Miller had run on the Non-partisan ticket.

"| answer, cheap labor may, under certain conditions, be in an economic sense, an

advantage, but not so to us. immigration has been a blessing to the United States; not

because it cheapened labor, but because it brought within our borders, in aid of the great

work at development, men who established homes, whose accumulations swelled the

aggregate of the wealth of the nation; men who have become a part of the nation and

contributors to Anglo-Saxon civilization... For thousands of years, China has been tilled to the

verge with a redundant population. The life of the average Chinaman has been a mere

struggle tor animal existence. He bears with him the heredity of poverty and unrelenting toil

for food for thousands of years. His physical organs have become adapted to insufficient

food. There has been a process of selection going on in China under which the heavy

feeders have fallen out and under the law of the 'survival of the fittest' none but those who

can practice the most rigid self-denial as to food remain. They have also been trained by

centuries of incessant toil to procure the maximum of subsistence from the soil.”