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But, according to the New York "American" (Dem.), "California is right, legally right, constitutionally right, morally right, ethnologically right, right for her own best interests, right for the best interests of the whole country, including New York, and right for the best interests of all the citizens of this country, including the citizens of New York-even the class of congenital toadies and tories. California is within her State's rights, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, when she decides that individuals who have not been naturalized may not hold land within her confines." Moreover, "California is acting to her own best advantage in making such a law, because the Japanese would not make good citizens and do not make good residents. They are a race which this Nation cannot and should not assimilate. They would inflict upon us another and greater race problem than we have yet dealt with, and we already have race problems which are difficult enough to solve." The " American," which is universally recognized as typical of the sensational press, then details as follows:

The Japanese in the numbers in which they are invading California are not only objectionable, they are dangerous. They begin by occupying a small portion of a district and making themselves there so obnoxious by their personal attitude and Oriental peculiarities that the Caucasian residents of that district soon become willing to sell their properties and leave the section. The Japanese then buy up these depreciated properties at bargain prices and bring in more Japanese to extend the ill effects of their colonization.

The Japanese are never on good terms with their Caucasian neighbors. They never employ a Caucasian when they can employ a Japanese. They live encysted in their Orientalism, as a foreign growth within the American body politic, an ever-increasing danger to the well-being of our social and political system. These Japanese are not, and never will be, and never want to be, Americans. Worse than that, they are actively and essentially antagonistic to American ideas and to the welfare of the American Nation.

They are Japanese citizens. More than that, they are Japanese soldiers, and when their numbers become sufficient they may at any time become a Japanese army directed definitely, positively, and powerfully against the Government and the people of this country.

The exchange of cablegrams between the State Department at Washington and the Foreign Office at Tokyo will not settle the Japanese question of California, remarks the Toledo Blade" (Prog.). "Lecturing the people of the Pacific Coast for interfering in inter

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national affairs will not settle it. The problem is there and bids fair to stick until just one thing is done-the placing of restrictions upon Japanese immigration and Japanese occupation of land and Japanese commercial developments." The "Blade" continues

It is a matter of great importance that the friendly relations with Japan shall not be strained to the breaking point. But it is far more important that the Pacific coast of America shall remain a country in which a white man can make a living, can be on terms of intimacy with his neighbors, and can maintain the standards of living and morality which he thinks proper. injured, and if she must find some other land on So that if Japan's dignity is going to be which to quarter her surplus population, she might as well suffer these hurts and inconveniences now as upon some other day.

It is time for the whole Nation to decide, exclaims the Detroit "Journal" (Rep.) and the other pro-California papers, "whether the interests of Japanese capital, or the wording of a carelessly drawn treaty, are more important than the interests of the Caucasian race on this continent." This newspaper continues in an anti-Japanese strain.

In contrast to such anti-Japanese comments are to be found such editorial expressions of appreciation of the Japanese people as the following from the Sioux Falls (S. Dak.) "Press," which, however, recognizes the right of California to first consideration :

The Japanese, a sensitive people, resent any discrimination against them. They believe, since they joined in with the Western nations by the adoption in 1889 of a constitution, that they are entitled to some consideration. Their victory over plodding China, the old China, in the war of 1894-95 gave them a world prestige, and when, ten years later, they triumphed over Russia the Japanese won a position abreast of the most modern of nations. They feel that they should be entitled to make their way in any part of the world they choose to live in.

Most interesting of all comment is that of the California press. For instance, the Sacramento "Bee" (Prog.) declares, as do many California papers: "As a matter of fact, the alien land bills before the Legislature have no more application to the citizens of Japan than to those of any other nation. They conflict with no Japanese treaty right or obligation, and would not have the effect of denying to Japanese any right or privilege which Americans have in Japan." On the other hand, not all California papers are anti-Japanese. The San Francisco "Evening Post" (Ind.) says: "California has worried along without these laws for fifty years, and no great injury has resulted." The San

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In cases of this kind there is always the easy plan of having some dummy carry the title; and there are forty other devices entirely within the law which come to the same thing. . . . Some years ago our neighboring State of Oregon had a law prohibiting aliens from owning lands, with the effect that formal title in all instances of alien ownership was held by an attorney or some other person especially chosen under an easy arrangement of guarantees. It matters little whether the law be passed or rejected, since in any event whoever wants to acquire our lands and has the money to pay for them is not likely to be estopped. At the same time it would in Japan be regarded as a gratuitous affrontfutile, to be sure, but none the less an exhibition of an inhospitable spirit.

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The Los Angeles Times" (Ind. Rep.) extends its greetings to " the amazing State Legislature at Sacramento," and begs its members to adjourn and go home at once without "involving the Nation in a war with Japan and making California an object of derision from Bangor to New Orleans. . Unhappily there is no power anywhere," says this newspaper, "to prorogue the Legislature, and all the Times' can do is to give utterance to the appeal of all good citizens of whatever politics Adjourn, gentlemen, if you have any regard for the welfare of the State.'' President Wilson's message to the people and legislative authorities of California" is, declares the New York "Sun" (Ind.), in no sense an interference with their prerogative to make laws governing the owning and leasing of land by aliens; it is an appeal, such as may properly be made by the President at this time, not to involve the United States Government in an unnecessary and dangerous controversy about the privileges accorded to the Japanese in the treaty of 1911. "Wherever

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there is a law that denies the Japanese the privilege' to own or lease and occupy houses, manufactories, warehouses, and shops,' or to lease land for residential and commercial purposes,' it is unconstitutional."

As South Carolina was the first State to secede from the Union, this Nationalistic view expressed by the Columbia "State (Dem.) is noteworthy :

A State that is denied by the Federal Constitution the right to make war, and that has not the power to defend itself from conquest and subjugation if attacked, is assuming the right to enact legislation insulting to foreign countries and against the policy and protest of the United States Government and that might eventuate in war. And when the Governor and Legislature of California claim the right to enact such legislation on the ground that California is a sovereign State, the absence of frankness and logic is startling, because, did they not rely upon the power of the United States to defend their State from any reprisal their course might incite, such action would not be considered for a moment.

No State has the right, and no State should have the power, to assume an attitude toward another country that interferes with the foreign policy of the United States Government, or that could involve the United States in war.

"Six years ago," says the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, writing to the Baltimore "Evening Sun" (Ind. Dem.), "when the San Francisco School Board attempted to exclude Japanese children from those public schools attended by white children, the writer, then Attorney-General, instituted appropriate legal proceedings to protect the former in their rights under the treaty then in force. It became unnecessary to prosecute these suits to final decree, for some of the leading city and State officials, having come to the National Capital at the invitation of President Roosevelt, were led by the representations there made to them to advise the modification of the School Board's orders in such manner as to remove the cause of offense." Mr. Bonaparte adds:

This precedent may or may not commend itself to President Wilson; we are entitled to ask that he attain satisfactory results by whatever methods he may deem the most appropriate; but, however this may be, it would be a source of profound regret to those anxious to see our relations what these should be with the great young island Empire, now become our Western neighbor, and it might be a cause of grave danger to our country's peace and prosperity if such questions were held of negligible moment or determined by considerations of temporary partisan advantage or by quibbles as to States' rights. To thus deal with them would be, in every sense of the term, playing with fire.

F

A REVIEW OF THE FACTS

NOR the people of India "How to control famine" is not an academic question, any more than "How to control floods" is an academic question to the citizens of stricken Dayton. In its issue of January 11 The Outlook published an article on India's Chronic Famine," written by Basanta Koomar Roy, extension lecturer of the University of Wisconsin. He spoke, of course, for himself and not for The Outlook. The article was published as an interesting contribution to the discussion of a question of very vital importance and as a representative protest from a member of that nation most intimately concerned in the solution of this difficult problem.

THE CHARGES AGAINST ENGLAND

Briefly summarized, Professor Roy's argument was as follows: From the eleventh century to the nineteenth century England, Scotland, and Wales had one hundred and seven famines. During the nineteenth century there were only two scarcities of food. From the eleventh century to the beginning of English rule, in 1745, India had but eighteen famines. During the latter half of the eighteenth century India had seven famines. During the nineteenth century there were thirty-one famines, that destroyed over thirty-two million lives. This terrible death-list was not caused by overpopulation, Professor Roy says, because India, as a whole, ranks but ninth in density of population per square mile. It was not caused by an excessive birth-rate, for here India ranks but tenth. It was not caused by failure of rainfall, because India has the heaviest rainfall in the world. Famine, believes Professor Roy, "is a gift of the British to India. . . .” "The trouble," he says, "is that water is no longer stored as the Hindus used to store it, because . . . the British Government in India pays more attention to strategic railways and the efficiency of the army . . . than to irrigation. . . ." Famine exists because "Indian farmers are rack-rented and the last penny is squeezed out of them, even in a fat year." An "impoverishing land tax is a principal item of India's revenue. The British Government must have this revenue to keep up her expensive system of government in the poorest country in the world. . . .”

Finally, India is drained of food by exportation to England." India, even in the worst famine years, has exported grain to a value of over sixty million dollars." "It is an irony of ironies that people should starve in India while there is plenty in the land. . . . The people of India are realizing the hopeless economic derangement of their life which expresses itself in ghastly mortality from famine, plague, and malaria, and, as they are bound to elevate the economic status of their country, they are demanding more political power. . . . At any cost, chronic but avoidable' famines of India must be stopped."

HAVE INDIAN FAMINES INCREASED?

To these sweeping charges made by Professor Roy have come in several replies. Readers question both his conclusions and the data upon which these conclusions are based. Mr. Walter Phelps Hall, writing from New York, makes a convincing attack upon Professor Roy's description of conditions in India and upon the historical comparison which he draws between England and India.

"To some extent," he says, "Professor Roy's contentions are founded on insufficient data and to some extent illogically deduced from such facts as are given.

"As a matter of fact, as Mr. Morison assures us in his Economic Transition in India.''there is not a tittle of evidence' to support the assertion that famines are more frequent under the British régime. From the earliest recorded history of India to the present, we may trace a constant and repeated tale of drought, famine, and disaster. . .

"It is quite possible that a greater number of famines are recorded in Great Britain before the eighteenth century than in India. Almost inevitably must this be so, inasmuch as the history of India, in complete contradistinction to that of England, can never be known save in its broadest outlines. But to infer on that account that Great Britain has suffered six times as severely as India is a reductio ad absurdum. On the other hand, it is logical to assume that famines have been more prevalent in India than in England, since facilities for the transportation of grain in the former country were of the poorest, but, in the latter, provided to no inconsiderable extent by the sea.

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"Let us," continues Mr. Hall, analyze, however, Mr. Roy's statistics. His exact words are:

"In the first quarter of the nineteenth century there were five famines with 1,000,000 deaths; in the second quarter, 500,000 deaths; in the third quarter, six famines with 5,000,000 deaths; and in the last quarter, eighteen famines with 26,000,000 deaths.

"What justification is there for this estimate? An immediate glance at the second quarter shows that Mr. Roy has for that period neglected to give any number of famines. Mr. Digby, however, from whom his information is obtained, says that there were two-less than one-half the number for the preceding quarter, and deaths also less by half. Here at the start is a curious admission from one who would saddle upon the British Government the responsibility of Indian famines. Throughout the nineteenth century the sphere of British influence was constantly growing, yet he who would attack that influence as the main cause of famine is forced to concede, by his own figures, that famines lessened during the very period in which that influence increased.

"But it must be conceded that our knowledge of famine conditions throughout the first half of the nineteenth century is largely guesswork. There was then no census, no bureau of vital statistics, no famine commission, indeed no direct assumption of governmental responsibility by Great Britain until after 1857. Famines undoubtedly there were. but no scientific data exist to determine their number and intensity."

ANALYZING THE FIGURES

"Turn now," continues Mr. Hall, "to Mr. Roy's figures for the last quarter of the century. Eighteen famines he ascribes to this period; the total number of deaths therefrom, twenty-six million. Of the eighteen, Prosperous British India,' the source of Mr. Roy's information, mentions only two that were widespread, and these were far from covering all India. The other famines, so called, were more truly local scarcities, bringing inevitably in their train distress and want. Whenever a crop failure is noted in India, it is termed in customary parlance a famine, improperly so from our connotation of the word. Famine, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is an extreme and general scarcity of food.' In this literal sense, owing to the wisely directed activity of the British Government, which shall be dis

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So much for the famines: now for the mortality of twenty-six millions. This estimate is derived in large measure, self-confessedly, from what the increase in population would have been had earlier census ratios been maintained. The fact that other causes than famine could have influenced this growth does not seem to have dawned upon the author of Prosperous British India.' Famine has not been noticeable of late in Great Britain or France, yet in both countries the rate of increase is lower. Furthermore, in India the taking of the census in earlier decades was very incomplete, and as the census became more and more thorough, huge increases took place apparently in population, but in reality in the enumeration of people hitherto uncounted. That process has stopped now, and the last census consequently did not maintain the usual ratio. But the author was blind to this fact, and whenever the official statistics of death were not sufficiently high for his purpose, they were jacked up offhand. Suppose, however, that we take these figures at their face value. Twenty-six million deaths resulting from famine in the last quarter of the century means for India less than onehalf of one per cent a year—a large death rate, be it granted; but, in view of the horrible diseases and suffering which any diminishing of the standard of living in a poverty-stricken country entails, hardly as frightful as the figures would seem to imply."

Furthermore, it may be somewhat paradoxically stated that England is responsible

for the death of these millions by famine, solely because she has protected this surplus population from being killed in war. The "Pax Britannica," the first general peace India has ever known, has brought not only quiet but population. Professor Roy has seen fit to ignore this side of the question entirely.

A REPLY FROM A SCOTCHMAN OF THE
INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE

From Scotland comes an answer to Professor Roy's statement that neither lack of rainfall nor excess of population is the primary cause of Indian famines. Mr. William C. Macpherson, for thirty-three years a member of the Indian Civil Service, not only contradicts Professor Roy on this part, but further attests his belief in the value of those strategic railways which Professor Roy so heartily condemns. There are two ways of solving the famine problem, he believes : increased production and improved distribution.

The causes of the recurring famines in India," says Mr. Macpherson," are undoubtedly to be found, since wars ceased, firstly in the precariousness of the rainfall, and secondly in the density of the population and their dependence chiefly upon agriculture.

"When Professor Basanta Koomar Roy informs us that India has the heaviest rainfall in the world and that, in the country as a whole, rain never fails, it must also be remembered that India has an area of 134 million square miles; that is, it is fifteen times the area of Great Britain and Ireland, or half the area of the United States of America. Rainfall at Cherrapunji in Assam and on the Western Ghats of the Bombay Presidency is of no use to Behar and the Northwest Provinces and to the parched districts of Rajputana, Sind, or the Deccan. In 1899, the last year of great famine, the rainfall of Sind was under one one-hundredth of an inch, and of Rajputana and the Punjab it was under 21⁄2 inches.

"When, again, Professor Roy compares the density of the population of India with that of European countries, and when, finding that the total figures give 211 to the square mile for India, 405 to England and Wales, and 589 to Belgium, he argues that it is quite evident that over-population is not the real cause of famine in India, it must be answered that such a comparison is altogether misleading, unless it be also borne in mind that the distribution of the peoples compared

is in no way similar. In England half of the people live in large towns; in India only 10 per cent live in large towns. Large areas lie waste in India; but there are also large districts of two to three million inhabitants with a density of 1,000 persons to the square mile, of whom 90 per cent subsist on agriculture. The whole population of India is 315 millions, and of this population threequarters live on agriculture. There is hardly an acre of cultivated land for each person This dependence of a vast population on agriculture and the occasional failure of the periodic rains are the dominant facts to be kept in mind.

"In Britain, it has been pointed out, agriculture is only one of the six or seven great industries; in India it is beyond comparison the chief industry. If the rains do not fall in India at the right season, scarcity or failure of harvest in the unirrigated lands is inevitable, and want of employment and distress, which may deepen into famine, are also inevitable. The landless laborers, for whom there is no work in plowing, weeding, and harvesting, are the first to suffer, and their sufferings are the most severe. The critic of Indian administration rightly goes on to urge that irrigation should be extended, more canals should be made, and more water should be stored from the rainfall for distribution over the fields. This argument is entirely accepted by the Indian Government in so far as reasonable schemes are proposed involving reasonable expenditure. The ultimate test which has been applied to such schemes is not whether they would yield water rates sufficient to give interest on the capital expenditure, not even whether such rates would pay annual working expenses, but whether the schemes would afford such protection to tracts benefited, such insurance of crops, and such saving of famine expenditure as would justify the undertaking. Local conditions do not everywhere allow of irrigation, and there are large areas in Bengal and Assam, where the rainfall is abundant, which do not require irrigation, but drainage and embankment against floods."

WHAT ENGLAND HAS DONE FOR IRRIGATION

Mr. Macpherson adds: “Mr. Roy writes that 'the trouble is that water is no longer stored as the Hindus used to store it,' but he omits to mention that, with few exceptions, the existing system of large irrigation works has been entirely constructed by the British Gov

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