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