died on the passage. Arrived in Cuba, their services were sold at high rates and great profits. They were kept at work much beyond the usual hours of labor, denied holidays, beaten, mutilated, and starved, and from these causes they died in large numbers. When the contracts expired, instead of being allowed their freedom, if they refused to renew their contracts, they were treated as vagrants and held as convicts until they reengaged themselves or were sold into service. At the end of the second contract, they were again subjected to the same treatment. And the various extortions practiced and the high rates of passports made escape from the island extremely difficult.
When this report was made public it so shocked the moral sense of the world that even the Spanish government, which was the last of the civilized nations to adhere to the system of slavery, was forced to enter into treaty stipulations with China, whereby a stop was put to the most iniquitous practices of the system of contract service; and the Portuguese government was forced to close the barracoons at Macao. Chinese consuls were sent to Cuba, Peru, and other countries where Chinese coolies were found in considerable numbers, and they were afforded the opportunity of receiving and investigating their complaints.
The first legislation looking to the suppression of the Chinese coolie trade was passed by the British Parliament in 1855, making it unlawful for British ships to engage in it, and giving full power to the colonial government at Hongkong, where the trade was first established, to take measures against it. This drove
