There are more than a hundred opium dens in the Chinese quarters.  These places are used for no other purpose whatever at any time.  If it were the Chinese alone who frequented them, but little would be thought of it.  Hundreds of white people, men, women and the youth of both sexes, have, however, become victims to this loathsome habit.  So completely enslaved are they, that there is no escape from the tyrant.  For all the poverty and untold misery this has brought upon these unfortunates, the Chinese are responsible.  Vices cluster around Chinese social life, and nearly every house has its opium-smoking apartment, or rooms where the lottery or some kind of gambling is carried on.

The residents of Chinatown have a government of their own, with its social and economic regulations, and its police and penal department, and they even inflict the death penalty, but in such a secret way that the outside world seldom hears of these acts of high authority.  This social and commercial policy is controlled by six companies, to one of which every Chinaman in the country owes allegiance and is tributary.  These companies severally represent different provinces in the Chinese Empire, and upon every arrival of a steamer from that country, and before the passengers are landed, the Chinese portion of them are visited by an official of the six companies, who ascertains what province each arriving coolie is from.  That decides as to which company he will belong.

Every Chinaman who comes is assured of his return to China, or, if he is so unfortunate as to die while in exile, that his bones will be sent home.  This very important matter is one of the duties of the six companies.  This comforting assurance, however, is not shared in by the women, whom, excepting those who are the wives of men of the better class, are brought over by a vile class of traders, and sold as chattels, or slaves, having no relation to the six companies.

There is in the Chinese quarters a ghastly underground place, where the bones of the departed are conveyed, after they have remained a certain time in the ground.  Here they are scraped, cleaned and packed, preparatory to their last journey back to the fatherland, and their final resting place.  Among the Chinese residents of San Francisco there are comparatively few of those of the higher class.  The difference between them and the masses is very pronounced, and they appreciate the difference to the fullest extent.  They are educated, well-bred gentlemen.  The coolie and lower class are an ignorant, repulsive and ill-mannered people.  They seem to be mere brutes, and not a gleam of intelligence is apparent in their dull, expressionless faces.