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WHITE AND
AND YELLOW
YELLOW IN CALIFORNIA

BY WALTER V. WOEHLKE

All the utterances of the Japanese both in California and in Tokyo, all the statements by university men like Dr. David Starr Jordan, Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler, and ex-President Eliot, all the statements made by missionaries in the Orient, dwell on international law and treaty obligations, and thus emphasize the Japanese side of the race question which is now agitating California. It is right that our treaty obligations should be insisted upon and should not be neglected, but this complicated and aggravated problem cannot be solved without a thorough knowledge of the attitude of the white mass of Californian population towards the immigrants from Japan. The following article is by a man who has made a thorough and sympathetic study of the social conditions of the general immigration problem. Mr. Woehlke knows social and political conditions in Europe as well as in this country. Moreover, he is now a citizen of California, where he is a member of the staff of "Sunset," the well-known monthly publication of the Pacific Coast. We have not yet seen a better analysis of the antagonisms at the root of the present race conflict in California than that which he presents, and, to quote a phrase from his personal letter to the editors of The Outlook, we may add that he has "tried to perform the analysis with perfect fairness."-THE EDITORS.

I

IN size California is second to Texas only. Its land surface covers an area of ninetynine million acres. Of this area Japanese residents in 1912 owned in fee a total of 12,726 acres, according to the report of the State Labor Commissioner; as tenants the Japanese occupied, according to authoritative estimates, 18,000 additional acres. Their aggregate land holdings, in fee and by lease, constituted twelve-hundredths of one per cent of California's area. Of the total population the Japanese, fifty-eight thousand in number, formed two and one-half per cent.

One-fifth of all the Japanese in California reside in Los Angeles County. An even larger number of the Mikado's subjects is concentrated in the delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, on gigantic asparagus beds and potato fields protected by great dikes against overflow. The remaining portion of the Japanese is scattered over the full thousand-mile length of the Golden State.

Los Angeles County did not ask for antialien land laws. From the delta country came protests against the passage of the bills. Except in two or three small districts, as around Vacaville and Florin, yellow was nowhere the dominant color. As a class, the farmers of California did not clamor for antiJapanese land legislation. Neither merchants nor bankers asked for restrictive measures; except for a perfunctory pulling of the strings that made the Japanese marionette go me

chanically through its accustomed paces, the stump speakers of organized labor paid no heed to the yellow men in the campaign preceding the November election. California was engrossed in preparations for the opening of the Panama Canal; busy building its two Expositions. California had forgotten— for the moment at least-that a Japanese problem existed.

When the Legislature began its sessions in January, no clamor for anti-alien land legislation arose. The introduction of the bills was

barely noticed. In March the legislators adjourned for a month, went home to listen to the opinions of their constituents on pending measures. On minimum wages for women, on blue-sky laws, on workmen's compensation and mothers' pension bills, floods of advice poured upon the lawmakers, but nothing was said or even murmured for or against the bills prohibiting the ownership of land by aliens ineligible to citizenship. Uninstructed, unenlightened, the legislators returned to Sacramento. At the beginning, throughout the first weeks of the session's second half, the anti-Japanese measures could have been killed, as they were killed two years ago, on the plea that the success of the Expositions must not be jeopardized, without rousing more than an evanescent ripple of mild protest. California simply did not care. Nor would California have cared had the bills been passed and been declared ineffective by the courts.

Perhaps no other State was more astonished than California when the Tokyo jingoes blew the war trumpet, when the Japanese Government brought pressure to bear upon Washington, when the press of the country raked the Sacramento statesmen fore and aft with verbal grapeshot. Immediately California was aroused from its indifference, took pen in hand and deluged Sacramento with letters demanding the passage of the bills obnoxious to the Nipponese.

The abrupt change in California's attitude was but the reflection of the Japanese mailed fist.

Caucasian granite was set against Asiatic gneiss. The ancient antagonism, born before the days of Kublai Khan and Attila, stirred the primeval blood lust. Peaceable men of family, while deprecating the idea of war on so insignificant a pretext, talked of shouldering the musket if the need should arise.

When steel strikes flint, sparks fly. And the presence of Asiatics in large numbers will always make of California a potential powder barrel.

Why does the Pacific Coast in general, British Columbia included, why does California specifically, exhibit such an intense dislike of the Japanese?

The determined, brutal war waged by California against the admission of Chinese immigrants was based on the difference in the standard of living. The Chinese could subsist luxuriously on a ration costing one-tenth of the white man's needed food; the Chinese could outstarve the whites: therefore the Chinese must go. Beginning in 1852, California agitated, murdered, persecuted, and talked until the Burlingame Treaty, containing the most-favored-nation clause, was abrogated and exclusion became a fact. Economic considerations were the mainspring of the agitation.

Japanese labor is not cheap labor. Japanese do not work for less pay than white men, except temporarily to obtain the white man's job by underbidding him. Last summer the women of Hollywood, a fashionable suburb of Los Angeles, locked out the Japanese domestic workers. The house-cleaners and gardeners had gradually raised the wage scale to thirty-five cents an hour. Twentyfive cents and no more will we pay !" declared the housewives. The Japanese smiled very politely, but did not change the rate card. Hollywood is still paying them thirty-five "ents an hour.

Except to rout Caucasians or Chinese from intrenched positions, the Japanese do not underbid their competitors in the labor market. Their standard of living is as high as that of other nationalities. They dress well, eat well, spend money without stint for entertainment. The percentage of criminals among them is low. Be it work in the household, in orchard or vineyard, they perform the task with speed and unusual intelligence—if they are so minded. Their clannishness is no more pronounced than the group adhesion of a dozen other nationalities whose ignorance of the English language forces them into linguistic colonies. The number of the Japanese in California is not increasing. They readily, eagerly adopt the dress, the manners and methods of their new home.

Is there, then, no reason for the periodic anti-Japanese outbursts on the Pacific coast?

Before the Japanese came, every immigrant, whether from northern Europe or southern, from England, Germany, Sweden, Italy, or Greece, tacitly acknowledged the superiority of the native-born, accepted his position in the social scale humbly, without question, totally severed the tie that bound him to the old home. Peasant or college graduate, the immigrant realized-or was made to realizethat he was an apprentice ignorant of the country and its ways, an uninvited probationer, marked as an inferior by speech, dress, and demeanor. Public opinion inexorably forced him to the bottom of the social ladder. So frequently was he reminded that no one asked him to come, so often was he urged, should he complain, to betake himself whence he came, that a very high valuation of that unattainable distinction, American nativity, grew up in the immigrant's mind. Even the educated, clear-thinking immigrant, no matter how specious the claim of racial superiority might appear to him, keenly felt the pressure of a patronizing, almost hostile environment, and often accepted, unconsciously perhaps, the subordinate rank accorded him and his nation by those born beneath the Flag. Of the force behind this grinding denationalizing process none but an immigrant can gain an adequate conception.

But this subtle process of self-degradation so pleasing to American nostrils never takes place in the Japanese soul. In his scanty baggage the immigrant brings from Nippon an abiding belief in the grandeur of his nation, a feeling of superiority over the rest of the world as unyielding, as well developed.

race.

as deeply rooted as the American pride of The Japanese is the first immigrant who has not only failed to pay homage at the shrine of American nativity, but who has also challenged the right of the Caucasian to march at the head of the procession. By his assertion of equality the yellow Japanese immigrant has stung American pride to the quick. At the same time his refusal to worship American nativity implied an assumption of superiority over the naturalized white immigrant who did thus worship. And the naturalized Americans, feeling the double slight, resented the implication bitterly. None is louder in the demand for Japanese exclusion than the white immigrant or his offspring.

Perhaps this analysis of the relations between Californians and the Japanese seems far-fetched, too fine-spun to account for hard facts. An episode in the writer's own experience will strengthen its fabric.

George Shima is a Japanese potato farmer. A penniless immigrant twenty years ago, he has amassed wealth, acquired a reputation for honesty, ability, shrewdness, and daring among the white men with whom he came in contact. Two years ago I asked for an interview with this best-known member of the Japanese colony on the Pacific Coast. Shima. replied that he would be in Berkeley through out the ensuing month. In due time, after a journey of five hundred miles, a yellow servant, broom in hand, clad in a red sweater, ushered me into a reception-room decorated exquisitely with hangings and draperies of pale-blue silk. There was a murmur of voices in the adjoining apartment when my card was presented. Presently he in the red sweater returned to the pale-blue room.

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Mr. Shima no can see you."

"Ask him what time he will be at his San Francisco office to-morrow."

"Mr. Shima no can see you to-morrow. No can see you any time just now."

The red-sweatered servant smiled politely, inscrutably, as I stumbled down the stairs of the imposing residence, blushing crimson, furious, feeling humiliated beyond measure. This from a Japanese! Days passed before an impartial view of the situation and the saving grace of humor-a quality unfortunately lacking in the make-up of the Japanese-salved the sting of the snub.

So fearful of his dignity, so afraid of insults should he emerge from his armor of hauteur, is the successful Japanese in California that; unwittingly perhaps, his very manner is a con

stant irritation to Californians. Despite his innate courtesy, the Japanese cannot understand Occidental ways, cannot learn to meet those around him on a hail-fellow-well-met basis. He cannot understand the American attitude toward the immigrant of all hues and shades. He imagines that he is singled out for insults, stiffens when he is slapped on the shoulder, and becomes domineering when his standing is questioned. After the introduction of the anti-alien land bills, for instance, scores of Japanese farmers and merchants hastened to the white business men with whom they dealt, to produce dealers and transportation companies, demanding that influence be brought to bear upon the Legislature against the passage of the bills.

The Californians are the Southerners of the West. Like their Mississippi brethren, they consider a white skin as an admission ticket to the front seats in this mundane show, the gallery being reserved for those of other hues. The first set of statutes adopted by the new State in 1850 excluded the testimony of Indians and Negroes in suits, civil or criminal, against white defendants, and the Supreme Court at once extended this disability to Mongolians. "A race of people whom nature has marked as inferior were the words used by Chief Justice Murray when in 1855 he deprived Asiatics of all political rights. A memorial by colored persons respectfully asking for the repeal of the statute was treated with contempt by the Legislature, which passed a law levying a tax of fifty dollars per head on every immigrant "not eligible to citizenship," a law which was promptly declared unconstitutional. Every Governor for thirty years advocated the exclusion of the Chinese; the Legislature gave striking proof of the State's kinship with the South when it refused by an overwhelming majority to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. When a new Constitution was constructed for the State in 1879, the builders embodied in the organic law a clause enjoining the Legislature never to desist in its efforts against the admission of Asiatic immigrants. So deep and strong was the feeling against Asiatics that a member of the Workingmen's party moved to amend the first clause in the bill of rights to have it read," All men capable of becoming citizens of the United States are by nature free and independent," a proposition advanced in all seriousness, though it was immediately drowned in a wave of laughter.

64

At that Constitutional Convention C. V.
Stuart, a delegate from the farming region
of Sonoma, came to the rescue of the Chi-
nese in a brilliant, convincing speech. In
his praise of the Celestials Stuart said, among
other things, that they were
who could be procured for servants—that is,
"the only men
for servants who would do what they were
wanted to." And even this friend of John
Chinaman modified his praise by the asser-
tion that one good white man was worth two
yellow ones of the same caliber.

The Japanese did not come to California
until after the passage of the Chinese Exclu
sion Act in 1882. Like their cousins from
the mainland, the insular immigrants became
farm laborers, house servants, ⚫hewers of
wood and drawers of water.
rendered the same menial services that the
The Japanese
Chinaman used to perform, but the Japanese
was not submissive, obedient, pliant, yield-
ing. The Japanese was not a servant who
would do what he was wanted to."
Japanese "talked back."
The

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After the victory over the Russians, the Japanese immigrants, having embarked in all lines of business with eminent success, began to insist openly upon the equality of white and yellow, developed a tender skin, a sensitiveness incompatible with their status as immigrants, the Californians thought. Lifting chin and squaring shoulders, the Japanese asserted by their bearing that they were at least as good as any white man.

What was worse, they proved the assertion.

Thousands of well-bred, well-educated Japanese who sought their fortune on the Pacific Coast showed beyond doubt that they were the white man's match in any line of endeavor. On the farm, in trade and business, they outstripped their competitors, exerted an influence far greater than their number warranted. Three times in succession Shima, the Japanese grower, virtually cornered the potato market of the Pacific coast through superior knowledge, better foresight, and greater daring. As the Italians and Portuguese had displaced the Swedes and Norwegians in the Californian fishing industry, so the Japanese commenced to displace the Latins. No line of business was "safe" from the yellow invasion.

Not all of the remarkable business success of the Japanese was due to superior ability and greater industry of the individual immirant. A large measure of the victories was

10 May

due to the low standard of business ethics that is a distinguishing mark of many of the Japanese, to the unscrupulous, questionable methods employed by the brown men without hesitation. In the spring of 1909, for instance, twenty Japanese banks accepted deposits from white and yellow men. At the end of the year all but three were closed, and examination of the wrecked institutions revealed that they had been plundered by every trick and device known to the shrewdest, crookedest white promoter. Simultaneously with the downfall of the banks, scores of Japanese merchants, individuals, and firms hastened to the referee in bankruptcy, thus forestalling any attempt to force repayment of loans made to them by friendly directors of the defunct banks.

Another factor accounting for the success of the Japanese immigrants has its roots in the discipline and co-operation of the group, a factor which gave the Asiatics a decided advantage over the rampantly individualistic natives. Collective action, collective bargaining, are strong weapons, and the Japanese, as a race, wielded them effectively.

The successful white immigrant vanishes
in the melting-pot. In thought, ideals, dress,
and appearance he conforms with the major-
ity. His children are American to the bone.
But the Japanese, no matter how great his
material success, never loses the mark of the
foreigner. Dress cannot cover color of skin;
the keenest mind fails to change the shape of
the eyes. Instinctively the mass of the whites
resents the proud, erect bearing, the immacu-
late clothes, the exquisite manners of the
successful, well-bred Japanese, who in the
immigrant. Fully conscious of their per-
estimate of the mob always remains a " Jap "
sonal superiority over the rank and file of
those who clamor for exclusion, the Japanese
of this class, unable to appreciate or under-
stand the view-point of the white mass, in-
crease the resentment against themselves by
a stiffening of the solemn dignity which
covers them all like a touch-me-not mantle.

"Cocky" is the popular expression used
Nipponese character.
in California to describe this feature of the
Yet this "cockiness

is but the expression of the poise and dignity
that is one of the finest features of the Jap-
anese national character.

costly, screaming clothes evokes an amused,
The Negro who swaggers down the street in
tolerant smile. It is different when a Jap-
anese gentleman in black frock coat and silk

hat steps into his motor car. The lifted brows, the inscrutable eyes, every step, gesture, and stare, every nod and smile, lead to unconscious comparison not always flattering to the white man, constitute an aggressive challenge against the cherished ideal of Caucasian superiority.

America expects every immigrant to divorce himself completely from his native land, to pledge himself to his new bride for better or for worse, to rely upon American courts, not upon foreign diplomats, for the redress of any wrong. If southeastern Europe had protested as vigorously, had threatened reprisals for the killing of unnumbered "wops. (the vulgar name for the Italian and Hungarian), as frequently as Japan has protested and threatened on account of proposed changes in the legal status of its citizens in California, the East and the Middle West would long ago have brought about radical alterations in the Nation's immigration policy. Official Tokyo's veiled threats of hostilitiesor what California considered veiled threatsunofficial Tokyo's rabid war talk, have done more to increase California's dislike of its yellow residents than ten years' agitation by the Asiatic Exclusion League.

Nor can it be said that California always failed to treat the Japanese with forbearance. During the friction resulting from the segregation policy of the San Francisco School Board, the Los Angeles authorities had evidence of the illicit sale of liquor in thirty Japanese establishments whose owners, shrewdly surmising that the authorities would hesitate to create a new storm-center, openly violated the law of the land, and continued to

violate it with impunity until the war cloud had vanished beyond the horizon. But the memory of that humiliating condition rankles to this day in the proud Caucasian breast.

Segregation of school children, prohibition of landownership, these are but pretexts put forward to teach the yellow immigrants that their presence, their claims of equality, are distasteful to a very large part of California's white population. Clear-headed Californians deplore the attempted discrimination, they realize the virtues of the Japanese, acknowledge the great economic service they have been and are rendering. But they also realize that the anti-Japanese agitation, like the thirty years' propaganda against the Chinese, will not die; will recur and breed more trouble in ever new forms until the status of the Japanese is by international treaty definitely and finally settled to the satisfaction of the Pacific Coast. Tokyo cannot control the dangerous tongues of its mobs; California cannot control the ballots of its voters. passionately the thoughtful Californians ask Sacramento to stop pricking the yellow skin, urge that the United States should cease condemning California for the display of traits not peculiar to the Golden State but to be found in every part of the Nation, and that the ethnological as well as the legal phase of the problem should be brought to the attention of Japan. The sooner both nations take clear cognizance of all angles of the situation, of its human as well as its legal aspects, cool-headed Californians maintain, the sooner both parties discern and calmly admit the potential danger, the more quickly will a permanent solution be found.

THE NORTH ROOM

BY LOUISE MOREY BOWMAN

The little room wherein I sleep and wake
Has windows northward set, against a wall,

And though it's white and sweet, with warmth and air,
The real sun does not creep inside at all.
But from my neighbor's windows, in the wall,
The sunlight flashes bravely back to mine;
Pale yellow gleams—they dance upon my bed,
And stand to me for symbol and for sign.

Set wide thy little windows, O my soul!

And welcome sun that shines on others, bright, Nor mourning that it is not now thine own,— Even reflected sunbeams can give light.

Dis

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