attempt to present our side before the public, for we knew that such attempts were futile. It was only during the few weeks immediately preceding the election that the Japanese Association sent out a few documents, giving authentic facts on the question and that a number of sympathetic Americans began to realize the seriousness of the situation, and with no solicitation from the Japanese, came to their assistance. In the face of the complete monopoly of the public ear by the other side, we are justified in stating that the recent vote has proven that the sentiment in California is far from entirely against the Japanese. We must remember that California's voters number 1,360,000, of which about 400,000 did not vote. Many, perhaps a majority, of those who failed to vote were decent, intelligent, fair-minded people, who were disgusted with politics and politicians and took to the golf links or went motoring on the election day. Had these people exercised their franchise, the proportion of votes for and against the Initiative would have been more favorable to the Japanese.

Some Americans point to Hawaii as an example of the Orientalization of a white man's land, and sound warning against the Hawaiianization of California. With due respect to their intelligence, I am constrained to say that these Americans would render their country a better service if they would tell the truth about the American annexation of Hawaii. In the light of authentic history that annexation is far less justifiable than the Japanese annexation of Korea. It indeed had no justification whatever, except that American interests wanted the islands. But there is no use in discussing history here. The point is that the growth of the Hawaiian population is unique and abnormal,

and can not serve as a basis of forecast for any state on the continent.

To begin with, Hawaii was not a white man's land. Years before the American annexation of the islands, American capitalists went there to develop sugar plantations. As the islands were too far from the continent, and as their climate was too hot, these plantation operators could not get American labor, but relied upon labor brought from the Orient. So they brought Japanese laborers by the shipload. From the beginning these Americans never intended Hawaii to be a white man's land; they plainly intended it to be a land of the natives and Orientals. When America finally annexed it, practically in 1893, formally in 1897, she inherited the conditions that had already been established by ceaseless importation of Oriental labor by a handful of Americans who had been there to develop its sugar resources. Had America been in a position to apply to Hawaii the same restrictive measure that she has applied to continental United States, Hawaii would have had an entirely different sort of population.

To argue from Hawaii to California is illogical. Here in California the American population, since Chinese exclusion, has always been preponderant, and promises to be increasingly so. Today the Japanese population here constitutes only 2 per cent of the total population. With steady inflow of Caucasian population from across the Rockies, and with the increasing Caucasian births within the state, California has not the slightest chance of ever becoming a second Hawaii.

A significant fact in the present agitation against the Japanese is organized labor's apathy towards it. At the time of the San Francisco school incident of fifteen years ago, organized labor was the motive power

of agitation. In the movement leading to the enactment of the anti-Japanese land law of 1913, organized labor played the most prominent part. But in the present movement labor has been a follower, not a leader.

In August last the Labor Council of Stockton, the city near which George Shima, the Japanese "potato king,' has extensive farms, adopted these recommendations:

there is no bitter race antagonism towards the Japanese. This certainly could not be said with regard to California's treatment of the Chinese from 1860 to 1890.

In 1862 the Chinese Six Companies reported to the California Senate that 88 Chinese had been murdered, 11 of them by tax collectors, but the report received no attention. In 1867, 30 Chinese employed in grading in San

2. No fight to be made upon any person or persons who are legal residents of the United States;

3. Organize all workers who are capable of taking a union man's job;

4. We do not favor the removal of the Oriental from land to the industries."

A similar resolution was adopted by the Federated Trades Council of Sacramento, the city regarded as the hotbed of anti-Japanese agitation. In view of what trade-unions had said and done on the Japanese question, these resolutions seem almost increditable, but they were passed almost unanimously in Stockton and Sacramento.

This modification of attitude on the part of organized labor is mainly due to the fact that the Japanese no longer compete with American labor. The Japanese farmhands and domestic laborers are getting as much as, and in some cases even more than, their American fellows. Moreover, in the past several years Japanese farmers have become employers of American labor.

Thus American laborers have come to know that the Japanese are considerate and generous employers.

Another significant point is the difference of California's attitude towards the Chinese up to a score of years ago from that towards the Japanese today. As we have noted

a mob, and were seriously injured. In those days it was a common sight in San Francisco and other cities to see Chinese pelted with stones or mud, beaten or kicked, having vegetables or laundry stolen from their baskets and even having their queues cut. On one occasion 150 Chinese, landing from the Sacramento boat in San Francisco, were ruthlessly beaten and robbed.

In July, 1877, the storm of violence broke over the whole city of San Francisco. At the first flash of riots twentyfive wash houses were set on fire. This was followed by an orgy of outrages. For months no Chinese was safe from physical assaults. An epidemic of arson and robbery swept the city and the surrounding country. In many towns Chinese laundries were subjected to incendiarism. If the Chinese attempted to escape from burning houses, they were invariably beaten and kicked, often robbed and shot, and sometimes compelled to die in the flames. The Chinese could no longer attend safely the mission schools in the cities. Many were obliged to seek refuge in the mountains and in the remote country districts. The crowning outrage was perpetrated in Truckee in November, 1878, when the entire Chinese population of 1,000 persons was ruthlessly driven out of the town.

What California said about the Chinese was as vicious as the physical injuries which she inflicted upon them.

The utterances used were so vile that we are ashamed to reproduce them here. California may congratulate herself that she has spoken no such language about the Japanese.

It has been the tactics of the advocates of the Alien Land Law to create the impression that Japan herself does not allow foreigners to own or lease land. As a conclusive evidence that foreign residents in Japan do own and lease land, I present the following figures:

1. 169 corporations, organized exclusively by foreigners, own 656 acres, of which about 164 acres are farm lands.

2. 69 foreign individuals, including 20 Americans, own, in the names of Japanese, 195 acres, of which 18 acres are farm lands. 3. 336 foreigners, including 55 Americans, hold perpetual leases on 430 acres of city lots.

4. 335 foreigners, including 100 Americans, hold superficies on 547 acres of land of which 52 acres are farm lands, the balance being city lots, forests, pastures, etc.

True, these figures show that foreign, and especially American, holdings in Japan are very small. But this is due, not to the impediment of the law, but to the scarcity of available land, and the

consequent high price of real property.

Under Japan's existing laws, foreigners as individuals can not own land, but corporations organized by aliens in compliance with the provisions of the Japanese Commercial Code can own land. Again the Civil Code of Japan allows aliens to lease land of any description for fifty years, and to hold the right of superficies for unlimited periods. Furthermore, foreigners in Japan still enjoy the benefit of perpetual lease, a peculiar prerogative established in the days of exterritoriality.

Everyone realizes that the contact of different peoples and civilizations is liable to create friction. The simplest way to avoid this friction would be to build a Chinese wall around each country, and return to the "blessed" isolation of many centuries ago. But it is now idle to talk of such a plan. The unalterable fact is that the West has gone to the East, and the East has come to the West. And, be it remembered, it was the Western gun which forced open the doors of the East. The only sensible and honorable course the East and West can now follow is a course of mutual concession, of mutual tolerance, of "live and let live." Unless Japan and America are willing to pursue this course, the peace of the Pacific can not be maintained.

IN

the object of the discussion that is to follow.

First of all, it must be fully recognized that there is a real distinction between the Japanese question in the Far East and the Japanese question in

America; and that the latter, being entirely domestic, is wholly separate from and independent of the former. Comment on the alleged militaristic and bureaucratic form of government of Japan and discussions of Japan's policy toward China and Korea, the Shantung and Siberian questions and the Korean problem, should by no means include, as being in any way related to the Japanese question in America. It is regrettable, therefore, to observe that the anti-Japanese propagandists have deliberately intermingled the Far Eastern question with the domestic one, with resultant confusion and misunderstanding. However, the student and the statesman appreciate that as these two questions are separate and distinct in magnitude and significance, each must be approached with a different attitude and met with a different policy of solution; for the Japanese in America have begun to develop a distinct social consciousness, and have commenced to solve their problems here with the aid of the American people and in conformity with American spirit and ideals.

Recognition of the Japanese problem socially and politically began in America about the year 1900. The typical attitude of that day finds expression in the retiring message of Governor Gage of California, which gave warning of an incoming of Japanese immigrants who were similar in the quality of inferiority with the Chinese, and who maintained the same low standards of wages and living. But that attitude soon changed, and with Japan's successful emergence from the war with Russia, America commenced to recognize the different and superior qualities of the Japanese as compared to the Chinese. President Roosevelt, in a message to Congress, made special mention of this matter, and although he

by no means favored a rapid mingling of the American and Japanese races, he remarked the advantages that might accrue from mutual contact and friendly relations.

Thus, the attitude toward the Japanese has changed with the passing of time, and since the new outburst of anti-Japanese agitation, and particularly since early in 1919, a new position has been taken, namely, that the Japanese are unassimilable, and hence, undesirable, despite their generally admitted good qualities. Thus we find a lack of rationality in antiJapanese criticism because of the radically different and contradictory arguments that have been advanced. This changing and contradictory tendency to a considerable extent reflects the superficialness and weakness of the argument and attitude of the antiJapanese agitators who, in their capricity and to influence the indifferent and uninformed public, have used different arguments at different times. and for different occasions. For ulterior purposes which, being usually political, have been designed to advance their own personal selfish ends, these individuals have sought to prejudice the public against the Japanese. Such being true, it is vitally important that the arguments of anti-Japanese propagandists be carefully examined; and for the sincere student of the Japanese question a scientific consideration of all the facts must precede any final conclusions. In the following statement, for the benefit of those who are honestly interested in the Japanese question, I shall endeavor to present the true facts and treat them in a scientific manner.

For the purpose of discovering what the actual degree of the so-called menace may be I will treat of the population, birth-rate and economic activities of the Japanese in this

country; and as two-thirds of all the Japanese in continental America live in California, I will use California facts and statistics as typical of the whole situation.

JAPANESE POPULATION

In an attempt to prove that in the Japanese population there is ground for alarm, much eloquence, great exaggeration and ridiculous miscalculation has been indulged in, but when the subject receives the careful analysis that is its due, nothing is found to occasion alarm. The census of 1910 gives the Japanese population of California as 41,356, and according to the census of 1920, it is now 70,196, an increase of about sixty-five per cent. Meanwhile, the total population of the state has increased about fifty per cent, or from 2,250,000, approximately, in 1910, to 3,426,000 in 1920. It is true that the California State Board of Control has estimated the present Japanese population of the state as 87,279, but this is admittedly only an estimate, while the figures of the Census Bureau are based upon actual and accurate enumeration and must, necessarily, be accepted as official. However, even admitting the estimate of the Board of Control to be correct, the increase of Japanese population in California is in no sense alarming for, with no abnormal influences at play, the total state population has increased, as we have seen, approximately fifty per cent during the same period. Upon the other hand we find that abnormal conditions prevailed among the Japanese in 1910, for at that time men above the age of maturity greatly predominated, and women and children were comparatively few in number, the actual figures showing that the men were more than five times as numerous as the women. Since then, and up to the year 1919, approximately

13,000 women have been added, so that only today is the Japanese population approaching a normal condition. In other words, the increase in population since 1910 has been due principally to the increase of wives, hence, of children. With Japanese population approaching a normal state, and with the strict observance of the "Gentlemen's Agreement," which practically bars any increase through new arrivals, growth of Japanese population will be slight and will furnish no just ground for fear.

BIRTH-RATE

The high birth-rate among the Japanese in California has furnished one of the main arguments of the anti-Japanese agitators. Mr. V. S. McClatchy, for example, has by foolishly conceived figures sought to show that a continuance of the present birth-rate will mean that in the near future the Japanese in California will outnumber the whites. Such arguments, being almost wholly imaginative, have no practical relation with actuality, and are designed only to appeal to the more ignorant masses by arousing fear and excitement. Necessarily, they are valueless to the scientific investigator. Even the report of the State Board of Control which shows the Japanese birth-rate to be 46.44 and that of the whites to be 16.59, respectively, per thousand population, has furnished no scientific basis for comparison. Such elementary facts as sex distribution, marital conditions, age group and age composition, intellectual status and social environment, have not been supplied; nor has there been made any comparison between the birth-rate of the Japanese and that of other immigrant races, or that obtaining among the whites of the same age group, intellectual status and financial condition. It is obvious that before