through its numerous agents and representatives in this country, and by the administration itself on various occasions, warning them of the danger of legislating for their own preservation.

When President Roosevelt interfered there was a protest against Federal interference. When, under Senator (then Governor) Johnson's administration, the land question came up and we passed a law forbidding the ownership of land by aliens ineligible to citizenship, the same protest, prior to that legislation, came out from Washington, and Mr. Bryan personally visited Sacramento, and we all protested that the Federal Government should not take a hand. I was intimately associated then with this work and was in Sacramento when Mr. Bryan arrived there and met him at the governor's house, and his principal concern was to draft a law in such language, dulcet and sweet, that it would give no offense to the Japanese. The right of the State was not questioned. So the Japanese were not mentioned by name, you will recall, only aliens ineligible to citizenship were barred from owning land. Now, the California Legislature this year, instead of resenting Federal interference, as they formerly did, invite Federal interference, and appeal to the President and to Secretary Lansing to stop them; in other words, from passing laws in the interest of the people of the State, and, I think, they will be held accountable for that evasion of their duty. If the legislature acted it would have helped the President. But that does not go to the essence of the question at all except to show historically the attitude of the State of California.

Japan, by this gentlemen's agreement, as I have explained, has undertaken to keep the undesirable laborers out of this country. Well, they are coming into this country. There is a very great increase in the number of Japanese coming into continental United States, and I think it will be so determined by the next census. They come over the border. They have arrested as many as 40 in one day without passports coming over the border and deported them. I was down on the border at Mexicali and at Andrade in the last four weeks and had the personal testimony of the immigration officials and of the customs officials at those points. However, it is a matter of public record that they are arresting Japanese coming over the border all the time. There is a great Japanese fishing fleet which comes daily into San Diego and to Los Angeles Harbors. They have concessions on the Mexican coast, and these are seagoing boats, and probably go out 50 miles under motor, and they are suspected of having brought in Japanese. I accused the Japanese consul in Los Angeles with having connived at this infraction of the gentlemen's agreement, the admission of Japanese into continental United States through Mexico without passports, and he denied it; but I was able to verify it through the official records of the department.

It seems that during the war ships from Japan carrying large numbers of Japanese would lay off to Los Angeles Harbor on the way to Mexico or South America. The regulations were very strict and the customs officials would not permit anybody to board those steamers, but the Japanese consul came to the customs officials and said, "I have six or seven men I want to go on board, and I will vouch that they will not in any way trespass upon the laws of the United States, and that it is merely to give a welcome or to meet relatives on board

and greet them on the part of these Japanese." So he certified to the good faith of the Japanese who went on board, and then the collector discovered that they were given maps and information and money to facilitate their entrance into the United States by way of Mexico, where they were landed. So that work is going on all the time, and our border is inadequately protected because the immigration officials tell me they have not sufficient appropriation to police that extensive border, both north and south of us. Of course they have not. It is a very extensive border, and I should think it would be a very easy matter to get over the border unless it were thoroughly guarded. They come down from British Columbia into the United States. I have not examined that part of it because my concern was all with California. So they are spread all over California and ultimately all over the United States.

There is another way that the Japanese gentlemen's agreement is being evaded, and that is by the shipment of picture brides into this country. Under the agreement the wife of a man may come in. So it is necessary, therefore, in order to get the woman in, to make a wife of her, and they exchange photographs, and although the contracting parties have never seen each other, on the other side of the greatest ocean in the world, each of them, still the woman comes in and claims to be a wife, and because Japan certifies that she is a wife, the immigration officials have to admit her.

What is the object of this? It is twofold, as I see it. The woman coming in and taking up the duties of wifehood becomes a mother in due course, and a child born upon the soil is entitled to own land; and as a matter of fact the Japanese are now in the names of their minor children taking agricultural land for which they are by the law denied the privilege of ownership-a clear evasion of the lawand then the Japanese himself, in contempt of our law, enters upon the land and becomes a competitor with the white people. These women are not only wives but they are laborers. I have photographs in my office and I have seen with my own eyes these women side by side with the men doing exactly the same work over a period of the same hours up to the very period, almost, of bearing a child, and when the child is born, they go back to work with the child strapped like a papoose upon their backs, and they are laborers just as much as the men are laborers. So they accomplish the dual purpose of defeating the law by getting in actual laborers and in defeating the land law by getting in by the birth route persons eligible to hold land.

Why is Japan so much interested in sending its people to California? Here is a profession in this gentleman's agreement that they desire to keep their people at home. There is no such desire. It is just as helpful to Japan to have California peopled under our flag by her nationals as it would be for Japan to hold California as a tributary colony, because all the money these people make-and they have made vast sums of money, especially during the war period, and they are making money all the time-goes to Japan. They control many of our crops. That money does not circulate among the various trades and industries percolating back to its original source and like the circulating fluid in the human body giving nourishment and health wherever it goes, but it goes from the

173526-20-2

Japanese producer who takes it out of the soil to the Japanese middleman, to the Japanese storekeeper, to the Japanese banker, and thence back to Japan. You can trace it from one stage to another: and hence all that wonderful production we hear of in California is not distributed among the people of California. It is largely confined to the Japanese.

For instance, the Japanese control the potato crop and the berry crop. They control a very large part of the fruit, bean, tomato, and garden truck crop, and I was told that in the city of Los Angelesthe name of the man was given to me but I do not recall there is a man who controls the berry crop. He sits in his office at a telephone and dictates to the suburban towns through the several dealers there what price they shall charge for a box of strawberries on that day. In some towns in will be 12 cents and in others 15 cents or 18 cents, or 20 cents, depending upon the local supply and demand. The potato king is a well-known figure in California and controls the potato crop.

Mr. THOMPSON. Are both of those people Japanese?

Senator PHELAN. Yes. So the question is very serious economically to any State wherever they may see fit to find lodgment. Where the States have cold, winter weather, and inhospitable climates, they do not go; but California is ideal in the fertility of the soil and in the character of the climate for the Japanese, and hence it is an exposed territory and the whole question for public action here in Congress centers upon California, and it is there that you must go to seek your information, because there is where Japan is trying the experiment and trying the indulgence of the United States, and if the protest does not come from there you will find the other Pacific States peopled very soon by as large a number proportionately. There are a great many there now, already, and finally they work back through the southern and eastern States wherever they can find lodgment. I was surprised to see that in the State of Colorado, which is a very fine State, too, I know people go there for their health, consumptives, tubercular patients, and while I do not know it very well myself, it must have a fine and equable climate, and there the Japanese have made a stand and a bill was introduced in the legislature denying them the ownership of land at the last session of the legislature; and I have the testimony here which I could exhibit to you of the Japanese newspapers reporting the great alarm that was sent out by the Japanese associations, that they were sleeping at their posts, that they had allowed the legislature to introduce this hostile legislation and to get busy. It passed the house, and they got busy and the Japanese association stopped it in the senate of Colorado, and they will always do it unless there is somebody to take up a positive, aggresive opposition against them. The legislatures are poor bodies, after all. As a woman suffragist told me, you can pussy foot anything through the legislatures, and that is why there is a strong movement, so solemn is the obligation we assume, to require the ratification of constitutional amendments by referendum.

Mr. SABATH. You have reference to State legislatures?

Senator PHELAN. Oh, wholly and exclusively. So the Colorado Legislature through its senate rejected a bill which certainly should

have been passed if they knew the menace of the Japanese. There is no reason why land legislation should not be passed because Japan, as you know, forbids ownership of her soil by foreigners, and she has denied the admission of Chinese into Japan now, adopting our policy, if you please, with respect to protection of our own people. She does not want the Japanese, who is getting a dollar a day there in industrial enterprises, to enter into competition with the Chinese, who will accept 15 cents or 20 cents a day. So the other day they shipped back to China 200 Chinese who were smuggled into their country. So Japan can not, with clean hands, make any protest whatever against any law you pass that looks to the exclusion of Japanese on economic grounds. They have established the principle

themselves.

I have here the number of these picture brides that are coming into the United States. I will give you the aggregate: From 1915 to 1919, the United States, mainland, 13,913; in Hawaii, 6,864; total for the United States, 20,877.

The shiploads that are coming in-I call them shiploads, but I mean the number of brides who are coming in on the frequently arriving ships in San Francisco are progressively increasing all the time, and the Japanese press exhorts them-"Now, hurry up while the running is good." They fear there will be some restriction, and they are rushing over the border and through the ports where that is permissible, as in the case of these picture brides, their men and their women.

Mr. RAKER. That means, Senator, does it not, that within a year after their arrival there is a native Japanese born who can obtain title to real estate, and they are immediately conveying real estate to those infant children almost as fast as they are born?

Senator PHELAN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator, you are familiar with the charge that is made that the Japanese babies born in the United States are frequently sent back to Japan to be brought to young manhood because they can be raised there so much cheaper than in the United States? Senator PHELAN. Oh, yes; and there is no way of identifying these children. I believe they are very particular now in bringing them to the county clerks and other officials to have their birth registered. Of course, if a child dies-and there is a tremendous infant mortality among them and among all children-they could easily substitute another child. Their object is to get Japanese born upon the soil, and our officials tell us there is no way of getting a close record and no way of following the child through his young life and to identify him later as the same child that was registered. The Japanese have a much more nearly perfect registration than our own, but that is not available to us. In the Hawaiian Islands, when I was down there two years ago, the public officials threw up their hands and said: "We have no means of ascertaining the number of births here," but the Japanese consul has, and that is another point-they owe allegiance to the Japanese consul. The consul is their man and not the county clerk or the mayor of the city or the governor of the State, or the President of the Union. Their allegiance is to the Mikado, and that vast number of Japanese on the western coast now would rise as a man in case of conflict between the

United States and Japan in support of the demands of their country, wherever they may be. They are so wedded to it and dislike the United States. There is unquestionable evidence that they have a racial loathing for the people of the United States, and it is not only an economic question, therefore, but it is a military question. In case of a conflict with Japan we would have to meet, not only a frontal attack but a rear attack, and hence the necessity of keeping ourselves prepared where we have such a large body of aliens notoriously hostile and who are still controlled by their national officers in the United States. Their consuls are the people to whom they look. They are not assimilated and they can not be assimilated, certainly not physically, and it would be after a great many generations, and perhaps hundreds of years, before they could be assimilated civilly, so that they could take up our burdens and live side by side with us on terms of social equality.

Mr. KLECZKA. Under the California law can a minor hold real estate in its own name?

Senator PHELAN. By guardian.

Mr. KLECZKA. And the transfers are made by guardians?
Senator PHELAN. Yes.

Mr. THOMPSON. Senator, you spoke about their giving birth to children within a year after their arrival. How prolific are they in the production of children?

Senator PHELAN. The Japanese are a very prolific race. Dr. Pomeroy, health officer, Los Angeles, Calif., reported last month that one-third of the births outside incorporated cities of his county were Japanese, as follows: White, 48 per cent; Japanese, 33.4 per cent; Mexican, 18.2 per cent; Chinese, 1 per cent; Negro, 3 per cent. have here also the report of the bureau of vital statistics of the State Board of Health of the State of California, and I will read it to you. This is a table of births classified by sex and race and naming each county in the State:

Births, 52,230 babies in 1917, including 27,888 boys and 25,342 girls, while of the 50,638 in 1916 the males were 26,000 and the females 24,000. This is what will interest you. The race distribution of births in 1917 was: White, 37,313: Japanese, 4,108; Chinese, 419; Negro, 328; and Indian, 62. The figures for 1916-this is a comparison-white, 46,272; Japanese, 3,721, etc.

The percentage of white births during the 12 years has decreased thus: In 1906 it was 98.4; then it goes on year by year-the next year, 1907, 1908, etc.—until finally in 1907 it was 90.6. There was a decrease of 8 per cent in the white births during that period. While there was a decrease in the population of white babies, there was a marked increase in Japanese birth registrations, as follows:

From 1906, the same period, until 1917, as follows: 134, 221, 455, 682, 719, 995, 1,467, 2,215, 2,874, 3,342, 3,721, and 4,108. In less than 10 years there was an increase of 3,000 per cent.

Mr. SIEGEL. According to that, there has been a decrease in the white children born of about 10 per cent.

Senator PHELAN. Yes; that is the comparison between the white and the Japanese. The white is going down, while the Japanese is going up with a portentous rapidity.