servants at the wages offered, though these wages have been increasing."

In Seattle the Japenese domestics number about 1,200. The number of Japanese now employed is about the same as the number (1,217) of female servants and waitresses in Seattle reported by the census in 1900. With the phenomenal growth in population, the number of domestics has increased several fold, and doubtless the number of females so employed has increased during this time, in spite of the fact that the wages of Japanese were formerly lower than they now are. No doubt, however, the influx of Japanese has caused the wages of other domestics to rise less rapidly than they would otherwise have done, for the Japanese have added greatly to the number available for such work. But here, as throughout the Western States, and especially in the Pacific Coast States, there has been a scarcity of servants at the comparatively high wages which they command—wages which compare most favorably with those of women engaged in other occupations in the same cities and much higher than the wages which prevail in eastern localities. It should be added, moreover, that the presence of Asiatics in domestic service has not had the effect of causing it to be regarded as essentially Asiatic work, and to be shunned by others, as has been the case with certain occupations in some agricultural communities of California. Closely related to the branch of domestic service just discussed is the work done by Japanese "day workers." These men usually live in groups, averaging 5 or 6 in San Francisco, but in some instances containing sevral times as many, and go to private houses to do house cleaning, window cleaning, cooking, waiting on table, and gardening" on call." Frequently they live with cobblers, and at the cobbler shops, or other offices maintained, receive orders for work to be done.

The Japanese alone have made an organized effort to meet the desires of those in need of temporary and irregular service, and in California for years a large number have been thus occupied. The largest number are found in San Francisco, where in 1909 the number of groups reported by the Japanese-American Yearbook was 148. The number of persons in the groups was reported at 984, so that if allowance is made for individuals not connected with the groups reported, the number in the winter season, when it is largest, would be somewhat in excess of 1,000. The number of groups in Los Angeles is reported for 1909 as 18, a few of which are comparatively large. In almost every California town in which the Japanese have settled one or more of these house-cleaning groups is to be found. In other States, however, few exist, the largest number being in Denver, where there are 4 groups with an aggregate membership of about 130.

The position these "day workers" occupy is best shown by the investigation made of them in San Francisco. In addition to obtaining general information covering them, 14 groups, comprising 53 men, were investigated and personal schedules taken for each member.

a See Report on Japanese in City Trades and Employments and Business in San Francisco for such statistical data as are available in the reports of the (California) State Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The wage for cleaning was 30 or 35 cents per hour (depending largely upon whether calls from the given place were numerous or infrequent), or $2.50 per day; for waiting on table, 35 or 50 cents (with white coat), or $1 (with dress coat); for gardening, 50 cents per hour; for window cleaning, 5 cents per window. As would be expected, the work is irregular, so that the earnings of the 53 house cleaners varied between $20 per month as a minimum and $70 as a maximum. The average of the earnings of the 53 was $42.74 per month and $512.83 per year. The earnings of 4 were less than $30 per month; of 15, $30, but less than $40; of 12, $40, but less than $50; of 15, $50; of 6, $60, but less than $70; of 1, $70 per month. Their earnings per day were higher than formerly, when the number of newly arrived Japanese was larger than during the last two years. According to the testimony of Japanese employment agents, the rate per day for ordinary cleaning was $1.50 in 1900. By 1903 it had risen to $1.75, by 1907 to $2 per day."

In

A large number of Japanese were found to be employed in restaurants, hotel kitchens, barrooms, and similar places in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Smaller numbers were so employed in Portland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, and other localities. Seattle some 400 (not including 300 employed on boats on Puget Sound) were, in 1909, employed in restaurants and hotels, and some 200 more in barrooms and clubs. In San Francisco and Los Ageles the number employed in these places is much larger. In Portland, on the other hand, if the few employed as porters in stores conducted by white persons are included, the corresponding number is about 120, in Salt Lake, possibly 35. Any estimate, however, is at best a rough one, for accurate data as regards the number of Japanese and of others employed in these places can be obtained only by making a census of a very large percentage of them--which the Commission did not undertake to do. Any considerable number of Japanese gainfully employed in these places conducted by white men, however, are to be found only in the cities of the Pacific Coast States, where the settled Japanese population is large, and where comparatively large numbers have resided for more than eight or ten years.

In San Francisco a few hundred Japanese are employed as cooks' helpers, dishwashers, and general "kitchen help" in restaurants and hotels conducted by white men, as against, perhaps, 1,000 white persons employed in these capacities. They are generally paid $30, $35, or $40 per month, with board. These wages are less than the union scale about one-third of the white men engaged in these occupations in 1909 were members of the Cooks' Helpers' Union-for a six-day week of twelve hours per day. The union scale in effect provides for a wage of $12 per week for cooks' helpers and pantrymen, and $10 per week for "vegetable men," dishwashers, porters, and "miscellaneous help," with 25 cents per hour for overtime, with board, in restaurants, and for $45 and $35 per month for the two classes, respectively, with "found," in hotels. The nonunion whites, many of whom are very young or very old men, have no trade, and shift from place to place, are paid smaller wages. For 947 men supplied during 1907 and 1908 by San Francisco employment agencies for positions as "kitchen help," the median wage reported was $30 per month."

• Quoted from Report on the Japanese in City Employments and Business in San Francisco.

As reported in the Thirteenth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of California, p. 150. Approximately 45 per cent of the number reported were employed outside of San Francisco, but chiefly in the cities on the other side of San Francisco Bay, where about the same scale of wages prevails.

The Japanese now earn higher wages than those reported for the nonunion white men, but they are men in the prime of life and frequently, if not usually, work for seven days per week. Moreover, the wages of Japanese have increased in these occupations, as they have in domestic service. White men have been displaced to a certain extent because the Japanese have been—

willing to do various kinds of work regarded by the union man as no part of his occupation, and to work seven days per week, as the union men do not. Moreover, they have worked for less than the union scale of wages, while they are more capable and more regular in their habits than many of the nonunion white men, who receive about the same or less wages."

In so far as known, Japanese have not been employed as cooks or as waiters in restaurants or hotels in San Francisco. They have, however, been employed in these capacities to some extent in saloons, but here Chinese cooks have been far more numerous and the Japanese have commonly been employed to serve the free lunches, to do cleaning, and to act as porters. They have never been employed in any considerable number in saloons frequented extensively by workingmen, however, and as a result of a movement initiated in the spring of 1909 by the Asiatic Exclusion League to restrict their employment, by the end of the year they were employed in fewer public houses than formerly. Before the "campaign was made against them they were found in a large percentage of the saloons of the city, which in 1907 numbered 2,375.

It would appear that the situation in Seattle and Los Angeles is not materially different from that in San Francisco. As kitchen and barroom help, the Japanese in Seattle have displaced white persons, though this displacement is by no means complete. Their wages are usually $10, less frequently $11, $12, or $13, per week of seven days, with board, but not lodging, included. The secretary of the Cooks and Waiters' Union of Seattle asserts that

there is no longer any regular scale of wages for white employees engaged in this line of work, but from the few data collected the wages of this class are about the same as, or a little higher than, those paid to Japanese. The change of races employed is explained by the fact that reliable white persons have found it easy to secure more remunerative and more agreeable employment, while the Japanese, being more regular in their work, more willing to work long hours, and more easily secured when needed, have been preferred by the employers to the less desirable class of white persons available.

The Japanese have not been employed as cooks and waiters, for this trade is well organized, requires skill and experience, and for waiters a good knowledge of the English language. In barrooms they number about 200 and earn $10, $12, or $14 per week for work like that described in San Francisco.

The most important difference between Seattle and San Francisco is found in the absence in the former city of any well-organized opposition to the employment of Japanese. This has enabled the members of that race to secure and retain employment as bell boys in the

• Quoted from Report on the Japanese in City Employments and Business in San Francisco.

Number based upon number of license taxes paid as reported in Census Bulletin 105.

• Quoted from special report on Japanese in City Employments and Business in Washington, with Special Reference to Seattle.

hotels, an occupation they have not been admitted to in San Francisco. Perhaps the Japanese working in this capacity in Seattle are almost as numerous as the other classes taken collectively. Such employment is of recent date, though in at least one instance an experiment was made with them in this capacity several years ago. În a few instances negroes, but in most instances white youths, have been displaced.

The displacement appears to have been due to difficulties met with in securing a reliable class of young men for such work rather than to a desire to economize in the matter of wages. The Japanese are paid from $15 to $25 per month, and from "tips" they frequently receive as much as $30 more.a

The Japanese, though not numerously employed in establishments conducted by white men in Portland, are conspicuously employed as bell boys in the hotels. In this capacity they are now employed to the exclusion of other races in most of the high-priced hotels of the city. They earn about $30 per month and board. Japanese were similarly employed in a number of hotels in southern California, but within the last two or three years, largely because of the sentiment prevailing against them, especially in other employments than as common laborers, they have been discharged from several hotels, so that their employment in this capacity is now exceptional.

As janitors of office buildings, cleaners, porters in stores, and as elevator boys, some Japanese are employed in all of the larger cities of the Pacific Coast States. With few exceptions, however, their numbers are small, though the work is of such a character that the collection of accurate data would involve the taking of a census. In Seattle they are more numerously employed as porters and "general help" in stores than in any other city. In fact, they are very generally found in the larger stores in the better shopping district, and it is estimated that at least 300 are so employed. Their wages are $10, $12, or $14 per week, the rates which are paid to Japanese porters employed in other establishments. In most of these stores they were first given employment within the last few years, when with the phenomenal growth of the city it has been difficult to secure responsible men to serve in such capacities at the wages which have been paid. It has been difficult to get and to keep good white employees. In San Francisco and other California cities the number of Japanese similarly employed in white stores appears to be smaller, judging from the comparatively small numbers so employed living in boarding and lodging houses. Yet one or a few are employed as porters in a considerable percentage of the drug stores, and in some of the grocery, clothing, and millinery stores. In some instances they are employed merely as "general help," in others as attendants to replace goods which have been displayed to prospective purchasers.

These are the more important occupations in which the Japanese have been employed in the western cities. Excluding the employment in industrial establishments discussed in the preceding chapter, in so far as it happens to be located in cities and towns, the Japanese have not been employed to any considerable extent by white persons in any other occupation or trade. A few Japanese carpenters are found following their trade in practically all of the cities in which

a Quoted from special report on Japanese in City Employments and Business in Washington, with Special Reference to Seattle.

there is any considerable number of that race, but they are employed largely in making alterations in buildings occupied and in installing fixtures in establishments conducted by their countrymen. In this the situation differs materially from that which obtains in Honolulu, where the Japanese engage regularly in practically all of the building trades and enter into contracts for the construction of some substantial structures. The fact that, from the data collected, there are many carpenters and other builders in the continental United States who are not following their trades is explained partly by the extreme differences in the character of building practiced here and in their native land, but more by the same general group of facts which explain why the Japanese have not engaged to any great extent in city occupations other than domestic service and those closely related to it and in establishments conducted by their countrymen. A few details with reference to Japanese in industry in San Francisco, where the instances of such employment have been more numerous than elsewhere, will make the situation clear.

The Japanese have not made the headway the Chinese made in industry in San Francisco at an earlier time, partly because they have had less time in which to make progress, but largely because of other factors in the situation.

The members of the latter race at one time predominated in the shoe factories, in the manufacture of clothing, and in cigar making. The opposition to them was so strong, however, that most of them were discharged from the factories engaged in these branches of production. Moreover, this widespread opposition to the Chinese prevented occupations in other establishments conducted by white proprietors from being opened to them. No doubt this experience accounts largely for the fact that the Japanese have never been conspicuously employed in any branch of manufacture in San Francisco. At the same time a large influx of Italians and the immigration of smaller numbers of Russians, Mexicans, Spaniards, and Porto Ricans, along with other races, has provided an abundance of cheap labor for manufactures requiring little skill and which are not attractive to higher classes of workmen. At the time of the immigration of Chinese in large numbers these classes of "cheap labor " found little place in the population of San Francisco.

An attempt to employ Japanese in the manufacture of shoes soon resulted in failure. Because of the strong opposition to them, they have been employed only to a slight extent in the manufacture of cigars and cigarettes. Even the small number employed has decreased in recent years, with the result that the agents of the Commission found them employed (as cigarette makers) in only one of the cigar factories investigated. In the large overall and shirt factories they have not been employed. The employment of a few at $2 per day in minor positions in the stove industry a few years ago was discontinued because of the organized opposition of the

с

a See reports on "Immigrants in the cigar and cigarette industry of San Francisco and "Immigrant labor in the manufacture of clothing in San Francisco."

See discussion of the shoe-repairing industry, p. 126.

c See report on "Immigrant labor in the cigar and cigarette industry of San Francisco."