The Negro when he was brought from Africa didn’t want to come…
An excerpt from “Damaged Cargoes”, available from Amazon, both Kindle and paperback.
https://www.amazon.com/Damaged-Cargoes-David-Turri-ebook/dp/B016Q3IHMW?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc
“What do you think of our little venture, young Bonham? Feeling some scruples, I’ll wager.”
He corralled Hamlin up against a wagon wheel.
“Back home, a war was fought over slavery. Your brother says you fought in it and were wounded. I respect that. But there’s a big difference between that and the trade in this part of the world in fit and strong young men and women.
“The Negro when he was brought from Africa didn’t want to come. The young men and women who board our vessels do so willingly.”
“They are children.”
“True, we deal, of late, with the younger end of the scale. But our business encompasses the whole range of strong and healthy woman-and-manhood.”
He searched his pockets and found a cigar.
“There are international marketplaces in Shanghai and Hong Kong from which young men and women from Japan and China are shipped under indenture and contract to the Dutch East Indies, Latin America, the sugarcane fields in Havana and Hawaii, the gold mines in Australia and California.”
The match blazed in front of Hamlin’s face.
“The younger ones – like those in there – work in the Shanghai foreign settlement as servants, housemaids, kitchen hands; in the gardens and the stables.”
He blew a stream of smoke at the sky
“The world is growing all the time. These people are needed and they go eagerly, bound over to work a certain number of years for a fixed sum and free passage. They work hard wherever they end up, scraping rubber in Malaya or building a rail line in the mountains of Peru.
“But a man has got a right to work and to receive a wage for his honest labor, which none of the people we ship out have a chance in hell of getting here. We offer them that right.”
He jabbed the air with his cigar.
“People in this country are shackles of their Daimyo Lords. That’s all they are – commodities. The Meiji appropriated the holdings of all the big Daimyo landowners so they will never again be a threat to the government. That means the Daimyos can’t support their people any longer.
“Up north, there is no rice. Whole villages are starving. Parents are killing their female born. They take the baby girls into the mountains and leave them there.
“Or their parents sell them to men like Nakamichi for much needed cash. Because of us, Ham, those children now have the chance to work for a future of their own.”
“Suddenly you’re missionaries.”
“We’re businessmen. I’m in this venture for profit and not ashamed to admit it. But, as a by-product, a lot of men and women, boys and girls, get a fresh start.”
