The Chico Chinese Massacre

The recent massacre of Chinese at a camp near Chico has excited universal horror and indignation, and we are glad to see that the citizens of Chico have lost no time in expressing their sentiments in regard to the atrocious crime, and in combining to take active measures for the detection of the criminals.

Governor Irwin is said to have fixed a reward of five hundred dollars for the first conviction, and two hundred and fifty dollars for each subsequent conviction, of the murderers; and other rewards offered already raise the amount promised for the avengement of the crime to four thousand dollars.

So far this is well, but we submit that in a case of such enormity nothing should be left undone that can tend to make and emphasize the public detestation of the offense, and that the Governor should, if he had at his disposal for the purpose at all, offer a higher reward than he has done.

It is already placed beyond question that the murderers were white men.

The magistrate of Chico has received a threatening letter since the commission of the massacre, informing him that his life will be forfeited if he undertakes to hunt down the assassins.

This is proof that they not only disclaim any interest in or responsibility for the massacre of the Chinese by assassination, but have formed a reward themselves for the reward offered for their arrest.

They evidently possess some kind of organization, and who support one another in their infamous practices, and from the insolence and audacity of their proceedings since the massacre, menacing with death those who endeavor to discover the perpetrators, it is clear that half-measures will be of no use in dealing with them.

The fact that this is not the first attack upon Chinese in that county, but rather the culmination of a long list of less daring outrages, tends to show that there is some kind of local organization of assassins and murderers in that region.

Wherever they are, and whatever their ramifications, it is absolutely necessary, alike in the interest of law and order and for the good name of the State, that the scoundrels should be ferreted out and punished.

Nor will it be worth their while to indulge the error of supposing that they will be shielded by the sympathy of the people of California, or that because they call themselves white men and their victims were Chinese, there is any disposition to treat them with lenity.

They have committed a crime which, horrifies the lives of every one not to the outraged law, and every son of a citizen of California possesses sense enough to distinguish between right and wrong who is not prepared to indorse the views and express the sympathies of these and any other illegal and cowardly murderers.

We sincerely hope that the purpose and the energies of the people of Chico will not now end.

The crime is too atrocious to be wiped out without the blood of its authors being either put rifled if the first attempt to secure the criminals should fail.

The fame of all who reside in Chico and Butte county, and in a less direct manner the fair fame of all who call California their home, is involved in the administration of justice in a case of this kind.

A failure to hunt down the assassins would be regarded all over the country as a condonation of the crime.

It would be said that the murderers were not taken because the public sympathized with them, and did not care enough about the lives of Chinamen to desire that the law should be vindicated.

More than this, the escape of these villains would react most disastrously upon public sentiment throughout the East, and at Washington.

All the efforts of the people of the Pacific Coast to secure limitation of Chinese immigration must be impotent so long as American brutality and barbarism are suffered to display themselves in this hideous fashion.

It is impossible to appeal to Congress for “protection” against Chinese competition, while dastardly white assassins are doing their best to convince the world that Mongolian or any other race of civilization must be preferable to that illustrated by these atrocious outrages.

If, indeed, there are any persons in California so misguided as to imagine that crimes like the Chico massacre can be palliated, or who secretly sympathize with the wretches who perpetrated them, or who excuse such an universal sympathy for law and order, and co-operate to follow and punish them.

Nor is there any class of Chinese which is not a more desirable element in a civilized community than these murderous villains.

If a choice had to be made between them and the Chinamen, all intelligent and law-abiding persons would unquestionably prefer the latter.

It is evidently time that this should be clearly understood, and that the worthless murderers who apparently think they are appealing to popular sympathy and approval in slaughtering better men than themselves, be comprehended how utterly and—essentially they are loathed and repudiated by the white race of California.

The press of this State has for years stood by the people in their efforts to procure such Congressional action upon the Chinese question as they desired.

That attitude continues; but now the people must stand by the press in insisting that these massacres and outrages shall be effectually avenged.

The time for appeals to the reason of the brutishly-inclined has passed, and it has become necessary to speak to them in stern language which the lowest grade of intelligence alone fit to be comprehended.

California cannot afford to be made a by-word throughout the civilized world, because of the crimes of a few ruffians.

She must rise and crush the vermin, and vindicate law and order.