lation must be carried on in an unwelcome environment. Instead of being encouraged to live among the American people, they are either forced to segregate themselves in their own communities or at least are driven in upon each other to satisfy their social cravings. This dwelling together in mass intensifies their sentiments and makes more persistent their race characteristics. An individual alone is not the same as when he is in a crowd of like-minded persons. For the same reason a Japanese living alone in an American community will think and act quite differently from his countrymen massed in one section of a city or living in a country district where Japanese predominate. The most serious barrier to their assimilation is not the wide differences in civilization between the two races, but is rather the race prejudice which prevents them from entering fully into American life.

1

CHAPTER VII

THE REACTION OF THE JAPANESE TO AMERICAN
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

TH

HE entrance of the Japanese immigrants into new callings, the necessity of adapting themselves to different methods of work, their struggle for existence under strange conditions of life involve mental changes of great significance. The nature of their occupations limits their activities to definite lines and determines the objects of their attention as well as the class of people with whom they associate. For these reasons a study of the reaction of the Japanese to American economic conditions is important in any attempt to estimate the fitness of these people for American life.

The characteristic occupation of the early Japanese immigrants was that of domestic service. They were attracted to this kind of work not because they were particularly well qualified for it, but because they found it an employment in which there was a demand for their services. Many of the Japanese who came to America at that time were young men so desirous of securing a western education that they were willing to do any kind of work to support themselves while pursuing their studies. Their purpose was to carry back to Japan not a large amount of money, but an educa

tion that would fit them for good positions in their native land. The work of domestic service was especially popular among the poor student class because they were able to improve their English by living and working in American homes. Dr. Nitobe, in his description of the Japanese in California in 1890, wrote as follows:

The Japanese in California range generally from eighteen to thirty years in age, and represent by no means the laboring classes. Many of them are the sons of old samurai full of ambition and energy, yet without means to obtain a liberal education. As to their means of subsistence, there are very few who are professional men or who are mere drudges. There are two Japanese physicians practicing in San Francisco. Law students are debarred by statute from pleading in the state courts. Very few Japanese names are to be found in the college catalogues of the state. There is, however, an instructor of Chinese and Japanese languages in the Maclay Institute of Theology at San Fernando. The majority- we might say nearly all of the Japanese in California make their living as waiters, domestics, and shop boys, while the stronger serve as sailors or coasters. It is usual with many of them to make an arrangement with their employers by which they are allowed an hour or two each day in order to attend schools; this, of course, at the sacrifice of their wages. One cannot too much admire the pluck of some of the boys who, by laboring under unaccustomed disadvantages, are still ambitious to carry home the learning of the West.1

1 Nitobe, I., The Intercourse Between the United States and Japan, p. 184.

Another writer, in an article published in 1897, emphasized this same characteristic of the Japanese immigrants:

Most of the Japanese are employed as household servants and as waiters in hotels and restaurants. They are generally inspired with a desire to possess an American education, and they have visions of some day attaining this and returning to Japan equipped to engage in some of the higher, more profitable occupations of life.1

The reaction of an ambitious Japanese student to the conditions imposed by the work of a domestic servant can be very clearly seen in an interesting article entitled "The Confession of a Japanese Servant," which appeared in the Independent of September 21, 1905. The author, a Japanese boy of the middle class, came to America determined to acquire a western education. Lack of funds compelled him to seek employment soon after his arrival. He thus states his first experience in securing work:

Great disappointment and regret I have experienced when I was told that I, the boy of seventeen years old, smaller in stature indeed than ordinary fourteen years old American boy, imperfect in English knowledge, I can be of any use here, but become a domestic servant, as the field for Japanese very narrow and limited. Thus reluctantly I have submitted to be a recruit of the army of domestic servants of which I ever dreamed up to this time. The place where I got to work in the first time was a boarding house. My duties were to peel potatoes, Japanese on the Pacific Coast," the

1 Bennett, J. E., "The Chautauquan, 26: 186.

wash the dishes, a few laundry work, and also I was expected to do whatever mistress, waitress, and cook has told me.

When I first entered the kitchen wearing a white apron, what an uncomfortable and mortifying feeling I experienced. I thought I shall never be able to proceed the work. I felt as if I am pressed down on my shoulder with loaded tons of weight. My heart palpitates. I did not know what I am and what to say. I stood by door of kitchen motionless like a stone, with a dumbfound silence. The cook gave me a scornful look and said nothing. What would the boys in Japan say if they found me out. I am thus employed in the kitchen receiving the orders from the maidservant whom I have once looked down and thought never to be equal while I was dining at my uncle's house. I feel the homesick. I was so lonesome and so sorry that I came to America. Ignoring the kind advice of my friends, rejecting the offer of help from my uncle at home, quickened by my youthful sentiment to be the independent, and believing the work alone to be the noble, I came to this country to educate myself worthy to my father's name. How beautiful idea it was while it existed in imagination, but how hard it is when it came to practice. There was no honor, no responsibility, no sense of duty, but the pliancy of servitude was the cardinal requirement. There is no personal liberty while your manhood is completely ignored.

The unaccustomed work and the humiliation involved in the position of a servant were more than he could endure, and so he asked to be discharged. The reasons he gave for wishing to leave illustrate the lack of frankness and indirectness of the Japanese, which have caused so many misunderstandings with their American employers: