YVi III “Japan’s Message to America” (A REPLY) Considering the impelling cause which moves the Japanese nation to desire the good will of the American people; the necessity to Japan of free intercourse with the civilization of the West, now shut off by immigration exclusion; the calamity which inevitably must befall that nation through a continuance of the isolation thrust upon her by this policy. The doctrine of exclusion shown to rest upon a mistaken belief regarding the effect of labor immigration upon wages of intra-country workmen; the popular opinion being that such immigration lowers wages, whereas, in truth, it raises wages and increases general prosperity. It is the nature of every soul to assent to the truth, to dissent from the false, and to remain in suspense as to that which is uncertain; so it is Its nature to be moved toward the desire for good, and to aversion from the evil; and with respect to that which is neither good nor bad he feels indifferent. For as the money changer is not allowed to reject Caesar’s coin, nor the seller of herbs, but if you show the coin, whether he chooses or not, he must give up what is sold for the^ coin, so it is also in the matter of the soul. When the good appears it immediately attracts to itself; the evil repels from Itself. But the soul will never reject the manifest appearance of the good, any more than persons will reject Caesar’s coin. On this principle depends every movement both of man and God. — Epictetus, Bk. 3, ch. III. BY JOHN E. BENNETT OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAR / Our National Tendency and its Goal Being a discussion of the Political and Industrial direction of the United States under the Influence of prevailing economic forces, and statement of the causes thereof, and the means to avert the conclusion to which those forces are proceeding. Together with an Address before the Chinese Students Association of America at its Con- vention held In San Francisco in January, 1914, , upon THE STUDENT IN ORIENTAL IMMIGRATION Considering the effect upon China and Japan of the Policy of the United States in shutting off migration of the Orient with the West, the real cause that moves industrial migration, and the condition that confronts Oriental Stu- dents seeking education in the. United States, by reason of these influences. ffy JOHN E. BENNETT, of the San Francisco {Fjar Copies of the above and the witliin pamphlet may be had by addressing the author at 1310-11 Humboldt Bank Building, San Francisco, Cal. The author retains no copyright on either of the above pamphlets, and anyone is privileged to publish the Sipie J!or sale or otherwise, provided only an entire pamphlet is printed and not a part thereof. Newspapers and magazines may make excerpts. “Japan’s Message to America” (A REPLY) Considering the impelling cause which moves the Japanese nation to desire the good will of the American people; the necessity to Japan of free intercourse with the civilization of the West, now shut off by immigration exclusion; the calamity which inevitably must befall that nation through a continuance of the isolation thrust upon her by this policy. The doctrine of exclusion shown to rest upon a mistaken belief regarding the effect of labor immigration upon wages of intra-country workmen; the popular opinion being that such immigration lowers wages, whereas, in truth, it raises wages and increases general prosperity. It is the nature of every soul to assent to the truth, to dissent from the false, and to remain in suspense as to that which is uncertain; so it is its nature to be moved toward the desire for good, and to aversion from the evil; and with respect to that which is neither good nor bad he feels indifferent. For as the money changer is not allowed to reject Caesar’s coin, nor the seller of herbs, but if you show the coin, whether he chooses or not, he must give up what is sold for the coin, so it is also in the matter of the soul. When the good appears it immediately attracts to itself; the evil repels from itself. But the soul will never reject the manifest appearance of the good, any more than persons will reject Caesar's coin. On this principle depends every movement both of man and God. — Epictetus, Bk. 3, ch. III. BY OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAR Copies of this pamphlet may be had by addressing the author, at 1310-11 Humboldt Bank Building, San Francisco, Cal. PRESS OF SCHWABACHER-FREY STATIONERY CO., SAN FRANCISCO. “JAPAN’S MESSAGETO AMERICA” (A REPLY) By JOHN E. BENNETT (Thirty-five leading Japanese contributed articles upon Japan’s indus- trial, ethical and sociological conditions, to the compilation of a book designed for circulation in the United States, entitled Japan’s Message to America. A copy of this work was by the editor, Mr. Naoichi Masaoka, sent Mr. Bennett with a request that he write his views upon it. Mr. Bennett selected the work as a theme for the following article.) I take this book seriously. Here are two hundred and sixty-two pages of a bound volume, containing articles by thirty-four of the leading men and perhaps the most distinguished woman, barring the Empress, in Japan; the leading article written by the celebrated Count Shigenobo Okuma, now Premier of Japan, the compilation containing dissertations by the great Baron Ei-ichi Shibusawa, the most notable business man of the Orient; by Baron Kentaro Kaneko, distinguished in international law and in Japanese official life; by Baron Shimpei Goto, physician, sanitary engineer, civil governor, who conducted the wonderful sanitary service of the Japanese army during the Russian war; by Baron Rempei Kondo, president of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha; by Hon. Soicliiro Asano, head of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha ; by Hon. Tckugoro Nakahashi, president of the Osaka Sliosen Kaisha — all great steamship systems of Japan ; by Baron Buei Nakano, president of the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce; Dr. Juichi Soyecla, president of Nippon Kogyo Bank, whom we know so favorably and well in San Fran- cisco through his visit here last year; Mr. Takejiro Tckanami, head of the railway system of Japan, president of the Imperial Board; Viscount Yataro Michima, Governor of the Bank of Japan; Hon. Kojiro Matsukata, presi- dent of the Kawasaki shipbuilding yard; Rev. Tasuku Harada, head of the Doshisha University; Hon. Eikichi Kamada, head of the Iveio University; Mr. Masataro Sawayanagi, president of the Kyoto Imperial University; Mr. Kenzo Iwahara, managing director of the great Mitsui interests, the Alitsui Russan Kaisha ; by merchants, financiers, builders, educators, theo- logians, lawyers, journalists — all presenting articles bearing upon vital interests of Japan, the entire compiled under direction of the eminent editor Mr. Naoichi Masaoka, sent forward to the United States under the title of Japan’s Message to America, and distributed amongst our leading 3 people. Altogether, one would say, a remarkable volume and an extraor- dinary circumstance. I think, indeed, it is probably unparalleled in the history of intercourse amongst nations. There is no doubt that these men comprise the Japan of today. Eliminate them and the several interests for which they stand, and there is removed the vital heart of Japan, that remaining being the body and integumen; in very truth the message is Japan’s message, and it is directed to America. The force of this incident may be realized when there is contemplated such a thing as a book gotten up through articles contributed upon matter of their respective affairs by such men amongst us as John D. Rockefeller in finance, J. P. Morgan in banking, James J. Hill and E. P. Ripley in railroads, J. Ogden Armour in meat packing, Andrew Carnegie in philan- thropy, Joseph Choate in law, Eliliu Root in statesmanship, E. H. Gary and Charles M. Schwab in steel manufactures, Seth Low in education, Mrs. J. Borden IJarriman in social science, and on this Coast such men as William H. Crocker in finance and William S. Tevis in promotion, all articles written with special reference to the information of the Japanese people, with the leading article by William J. Bryan, compiled in a bound and illustrated volume under the editorship of James Gordon Bennett, and forwarded to Japan for circulation among her leading men under the title of “America’s Message to Japan’’; suppose, I say, such a thing as this would happen, how would it strike the ordinary American mind? We should at once look for the reason for an occurrence of this sort. It is no idle effort, the sending by Japan of such greeting to us; it is full of meaning; it is an act with a purpose. And so I, having received and read this book, look for its meaning, try to see its significance, to sense the impulse that moved it forth. The purport of the book is obviously an appeal for the good will of the American people. It is a reaching out of the arms of Japan toward that people who first called her out of the night of feudalism and showed her the road to the higher light, not to forsake her, but still to point the way. This is manifest, but why such an appeal? What is there present in the situation or condition of Japan that suggests such a thing and makes the *The following appeared in Current Opinion March, 1914, p. 174: Japan in a Panic at the Growth of Russia’s Army. — Words have not been minced by Yuan Shi Kai lately in expressing that feeling of hostility to Japan with which she has always credited him. His conversations with members of the diplomatic corps on the subject of Tokyo policy are amazing the representatives of the powers in Peking. Such is the gist of all the gossip streaming into European newspaper columns from the far East. Japan, as her attitude is defined in the German press, feels that the ruler of China has gone over to her foe. To the Manchester “Guardian" Yuan seems to be temporizing with Russia in Mongolia and with the Yamamoto government in Manchuria “until he feels sure of himself.” Yuan’s grievance against Japan has to do with the many revolu- tions springing up throughout the southern territory of the “republic.” All are fomented, he thinks, from Tokyo. Yuan and Japan can agree upon one point only — the growing might of Russia. That theme fills the Paris press, receives attention, indeed, in London dailies. Unprecedented and enormous masses of cavalry, infantry and artillery have risen silently out of the Russian soil during the years that have come and gone since the war with Japan. The whole work of reconstruction and rearmament has been accom- plished, says the London “Telegraph,” within five years. The wretched armies of Kuropatkin in Manchuria, says the Paris “Matin,” have been superseded by a host equipped with guns of the best and latest pattern. Fourteen hundred thousand Russian troops can be put under arms at once with an equipment more adequate than that of Germany’s immense array. The Czar has an army reaching six millions on a war footing. These are the details which give Tokyo concern, we read. 4 suggestion of such force that it is carried into effect? Surely Japan is in seme way so circumstanced that these, her leading men, have felt that at this time an overture of this sort should be made to the American people. What is it? It is, I assert, a thing unmentioned in the book itself. It possibly has not even a name among those who wrote these articles. It is sensed, rather than seen; it is apprehended, rather than felt. Japan is today like a fowl which, crouching close to earth, is conscious of a hovering enemy,* high in the distance, which it dees not see. With the socialistic autocracies of Europe, whose internal economic administrations make peri- odic wars a neces_sity to purge themselves of population — with such powers present on Asiatic soil, interlaced in the internal affairs of China in such a way that when they pull apart the soil goes with them, with such a state of things existing, Japan feels herself surrounded by those who on the instant may become her foes; who, indeed, unless conditions change, must inevitably gravitate into such by the force of influences which she senses but does not understand. In this environment Japan, pushing her way into larger territorial domain, made necessary in order to establish somewhat an equi- librium in Asia, as well as to prevent areas falling into the hands of those who would hold them to her injury, finds herself calling for an array of arms which her resources cannot sustain. She realizes that she must possess a military and naval establishment sufficiently extensive to meet not only the war footing of the European nation in Asia, but such of its resources in Europe as may upon occasion be detached from thence for Asiatic service ; and she is not safe unless this equipment equals that of the strongest European power on Asiatic territory. As the more she extends her colonial domain the larger must be her armament, her expansion becomes a peril. If she does not expand she is defenselessly weak; if she does expand she may thereby be made still weaker. In this predicament Japan turns toward her powerful friend of the times past, her patron of old, who called her forth, and whose protege she became. She does not know why she so turns, but she senses security in American good will. She does not expect us to help her in future wars with arms and men, and yet it seems that in American sympathy there is some quality for her benefit as strong or perhaps stronger than these. She does not know what it is, but surely it is something' — an enormous resource, a great property to the nation, this brotherly, almost fatherly friendship of the Americans. And what is the more tragic, this vast attribute Japan feels and apprehends that through some influence, in no way her fault, she has lost or is threatened with losing. What is then, this thing that has in it the meaning of American friendship ? This also is not patent. Japan, these men of Japan who write this book, grope about in the condition to find it. They sense it; but who shall lay hands on it and hold it aloft — who shall point it out? Not one of these writers compass it, yet each feels it exists. What is it? It is Light ! It is that same light that has been pouring from America into Japan since the day of Perry’s arrival in Uraga Bay. It stirred Japan into a vitalized action, and increasing in volume with its forward movement, it dissolved all obstacles within Japan and brought the nation to a unit in the furtherance of its progress. Now, however, Japan feels that in some manner which she does not understand, something has gone wrong. She apprehends the wrong state of things, but dees not identify its fact or its cause. Instinct moves her, nevertheless, to reach out toward us, not really conscious that what she would get from us, were good will normally existant, would be that which she really needs, that which once moved freely and which has been impaired, namely light. But how has the inflow of this light been affected, how has it been really impaired — or is it indeed true that it is impaired; and is it true that its impairment is genuinely the thing that today makes uneasy the heart of every knowing Japanese? How? I shall tell you; and in so doing I shall mention the largest fact amongst you, and which none of your writers, who seem in your bock to regard almost every salient thing that is Japanese, have said a word on. You will remark that after you had imbibed from the west a certain modicum of light, there came upon your people a desire to go severally into the regions of this light, to get into the fullness of it, and mingle with it at its source. Your rich became tourists, your poor became emigrants. Respectively in degree as they were able to proceed, they Avent. Some Avere “travelers for curiosity or pleasure”; some were students seeking matriculations; some AA r ere merchants seeking trade; some AA'ere laborers seeking Avork; all were men and Avomen in quest of knowledge. This they acquired, in due course, and in due course they returned to Japan. The mo\ r ement AA T as, indeed, at no time large, but it began small and yearly gre\A T , and as the westward fioAv acquired strength the eastward return kept pace with the westward growth. Thin edges of the movement started up with other nations of the illuminated Avest ; Canada, Australia, and beyond. Why did they thus proceed? What was the effect of this movement? It was a stream of western knoA\dedge floA\ T ing into the life of Japan. The returned pilgrims came enriched AA'itli neAV information, new ideas, neAv plans; many bearing material wealth which their activities in the A\ T est, during all the period of their residence here, had enabled them to acquire. They returned to take up the thread of their lives in their old home, amid the scenes they loved, and among the people of whom they were a part. Possessed of Avestern knoAA'ledge, they proceeded to put this into practice amidst their erstwhile surroundings. A thousand things about them with which they have to deal manifest to them immediate need of improvement. A thousand opportunities for industry appear which before were unseen. These people set to work. Their considerable wealth which they have brought Avith them aids in their new endeavors. What does the nation gain from this? It gains uplift, development — gains it in the only Avay it can get it, viz., by increased knoAA'ledge of the people. This process going on, five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand people per year returning, in a small nation, the flow ever annually increas- 6 ing, the nation from the start felt the vigor of this new light and life permeate all her veins. Japan was rising rapidly, stupendously; the Japanese heart beat strong, her breast was buoyant; the future of Japan was big with promise.* * Had this gone on Japan would indeed have become the great nation which her far-sighted men believed were her possibilities and her destiny. How little would she have cared for the European gathering under his national colors on Asiatic soil. With her industries bristling with new and ever new enterprises, with the larger ones growing rapidly larger, her domestic exchanges vastly increasing, her foreign com- merce enormously expanding, Japan could have pushed forward her terri- torial boundaries to embrace new lands and compass new peoples with every confidence and with every hope. But suddenly, as a bolt from a clear sky, comes a mandate from the west, that this light which has been pouring in upon her through her returned migrants, is to stop ; the migrants themselves are to be no more. The several thousands gathered in the west may, of course, return as they will ; but thenceforward no new ones may come. The school of the west is shut in the face of Japan. Wisdom of the western sort is henceforth to be denied her ; she must grow wise, if she will, through whatever processes she may engender, internally and alone. Japan received the blow, not comprehending its meaning. The fiat seems to be directed only at her laborers; others may go forth as before. This seems to ease the situation somewhat. “A laborer does not amount to much, anyhow,” she thinks; “if he cannot go into the west, he can stay at home; we need him here. Formosa, Korea, Saghelien, even Manchuria, there are lots of places he may go where Japan will be benefited by his presence.” Japan forgets that her people are nearly all laborers. It is only the few of her population who are workers with the mind, the multi- tude are workers with the hands; and of her mind workers, they for the most part in their youth were hand workers. She forgets that the state of being a laborer is a mere occupation, and that of those who are laborers, the larger number are by nature capacitated to be workers, in greater or less degree, with the mind, and to become such they lack only light and oppor- tunity. So as time passes Japan finds that while the edicts of the west keeping out her people seemingly operate upon laborers only, yet in truth all classes are held from proceeding thence. The movement to the United States shrinks from thirty thousand two hundred and twenty-six* per year, to seven hundred and fifty-ninef new arrivals per year, almost half of which latter is, perhaps, comprised of her official or semi-official representa- *The growth of one port, for instance, Kobe, during the period of this migration from 1897 about when it began, to 1907 when it ended, rose from 740,851 to 5-, 497, 782 net registered tons; an increase of the astonishing percentage of 641.8. This, while coincident with, is not to be attributed altogether to freedom of migration during that period. The billion dollars indemnity which Japan received from China had much to do with this increase. But there is no doubt that this money would have been far less efficiently used, had free migration not existed. *The figures for 1907. tThe figures for 1911, the latest report of the Commissioner of Immigration which my library happens to contain, or which I have been able to find on this Coast. 7 tives and their suites. And what has transpired with the United States has happened or is in like manner happening with the whole white world. Canada, Australia, Mexico, Latin America having now set in upon the policy of exclusion of the yellow man without reference to his nationality. How does this effect Japan? You men who have written this book — you feel it, yet you have not spoken it. Perhaps you do not recognize it, do not realize it, no more than do we here on this coast, and in this nation. If we did, we would wipe out these exclusion laws at the next session of Congress, opened with a message read by the President from the Speaker’s rostrum denouncing these terrible and evil-breeding laws. But we do not realize the condition, for the operation of the forces which these laws invoke is silent ; those forces are not dynamic, they are repressive ; there shall be explosions in the end, loud and supernal enough, but the processes which produce such violence are subterranean. What is it that they do and are doing? They are checking the development of Japan! They are holding Japan back in that progress so auspiciously started, and needed absolutely by her if she is to stand off the incursions of the white. Unless this light is restored to her, which can be done only by a resumption of free migration with the west, her doom is already sealed. Without this, let her spread in territory as she will, she can but make things worse. The uplift of a nation cannot be effected through the sole vehicle of home teaching. The nation must become imbued with western ideals, and this can only be attained through western contact, and western contact is western migration. Unless this is resumed, and in full, free volume, Japan must succumb to the white invader. But two nations of the Orient are now left with native rulers, if we disregard the anomalous condition of the kingdom of Siam, ready to fall within whatever European hand shall close upon it. No one here on this Coast seems to have thought of the position of the United States, should the military despotisms of Europe divide among themselves the Orient. The sympathy of the United States with Japan in her Russian war, was a sym- pathy which all shared but none understood. There was abroad an instinct- ive feeling that for some reason which we could not explain we wanted, not particularly Japan to win, but we wanted Russia to fail. It was just that same sort of feeling that moves these thirty-five Japanese to reach out toward us in this book. They want our good will, they really know not why — it would comfort them to possess it. It comforted us to know that Russia had failed. Why? Because we were silently apprehensive of what it might mean to us to have a gigantic European power, absolute in gov- ernment, military in instinct, facing us on the Pacific in the possession of millions of men for ivhose lives she did not care, able in a twelve-month to turn them into trained soldiers for our destruction. This is what made us wish well for Japan in that contest; it is the fear of this aggression that moves Japan toward us now. In the presence of a menace as terrible as it is real, we have the profoundest interest in Japan’s rise and development. It is necessary for our safety, here on this Coast, that she become strong 8 and able as a civilized state of the highest order. That her productivity be increased in all the ways that modern knowledge can aid her; that her people become skilled in handling all the appliances and methods of modern science. We have permitted ignorance, selfishness and viciousness, to inter- pose laws which have shut off the great source of her light — migration. We know not what we have done. Our thinking people — and it is thought that really rules wherever men exist — do not understand the condition. No one has ever come forward to point out their danger to them. The peril of Japan is our peril; the strengthening of Japan is our protection. We must help the native governments of Asia to maintain their sovereignties. We have nothing to fear from them; we have everything to fear should their sovereignties pass into European hands. This “war with Japan” talk of which we hear so much in the United States,* does not mean war with Japan under its native sovereignty. It means that stupendous war which shall transpire with the European power in possession of its share of the parti- tioned Orient and whom we shall offend. It is a war which every thinking man on this Coast senses even though it be half a century ahead. It will occur only if existing conditions shall continue, and Japan pass from her native hands. The inevitable cause of this to-be war is felt though it is not recognized. It will arise as all vast wars have arisen, from the pressure of population against barriers which prevent migration. During the life of a nation population may outgrow, not the land (which is synonymous with subsistence) of the nation, but the knowledge of the nation. Imbue a people with sufficient knowledge, they have always abundance of land for their subsistence. The site of the City of New York was too small an area to serve a hundred Indians ; it is far larger than is required to serve five million moderns. The difference between the modern and the Indian is knowledge. The Manhattan Indian moved out and made war on the people of the adjacent tribes. Accumulated population, pressing upon subsistence without, called for reducing the tribal numbers of population on one hand, and destroying those adjacent who preyed upon wild life — the aliment of the Indian — thereby reducing the volume of food supply. The miserable Indians did not, perhaps, recognize the cause which was driving them against their fellows across the Hudson; some trifle probably gave rise to the war. But in contemplating the true causes which move men in large actions, we must not consider as the cause the punctilio which immediately precipitates the conflict; we regard the effect when the action is over; and whatever the result is in the eyes of nature, that was the real purpose of *The Hears! News Service, in a dispatch published several years ago, dated Wash- ington January 11th, said: Official Washington is discussing with zest today a speech made by Supreme Court Justice John M. Harland last night at the annual dinner of the Navy League. The speech was received with enthusiasm by the guests, among whom were government officials, congressmen, and others prominent in official life. “I believe,” said Justice Harland, ‘‘that we will see within the next ten years an army of perhaps five million men in China, drilled and instructed by the Japanese; and when that time comes they will be in position to say to us of the white race: ‘You keep your_ country ; we will keep this country; get out.’ ‘‘I don’t say we will have war in the near future; but some time it seems certain that there will be a conflict between the yellow and the white races that will shake the earth.” 9 the war. Reading history from the standpoint of results of great move- ments of men, we see that the cause of all such vast mutations which the world has experienced, has been the violation of the natural law of inter- course amongst mankind. Where there was no intercourse between a civili- zation and a great people in darkness, the latter have invariably overthrown the former. The Mena Tekel Upharsin of this is, that the nation which holds a civilization is, for its own safety, bound to spread it. The Franks, the Scythians, the Goths, when their numbers became greater than their knowledge, pushed toward the light of the Roman Empire and submerged that civilization with their multitudes. The barbarian of central Europe when his increase exceeded his ignorance, moved toward the only light then existing, that of the East, and inundated the Holy Land with his numbers. In both instances they overthrew decadent civilizations and brought from thence into the home of the barbarian the light which had been denied him by the conquered peoples. Perhaps I can better explain what I mean by the numbers of a nation outrunning its knowledge, by a concrete example : Take the instance of the flood district o'f China, the region of the Yellow, Huai, and Ko Rivers. But for the recurrent overflows this vast tract would turn off two large crops per year; whereas it has for a long time yielded not more than two crops in five years ; hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants in consequence have starved, and are starving. Nothing is more pitiful than the tales of suffering and woe that come out of that vast territory, where Nature, with her inexorable hand, is smiting whole populations in her process of reducing aggregates to accord with the knowledge they possess. If this district and these people be let alone the latter will die off, until the number is reached that the country in the condition that nature has thrust upon it will sustain. While this is going on, however, scores of thousands of the venturesome men escape, become bandits, pillaging the peaceful people of other parts of China ; better die the quick death of the executioner, than perish amid those you love who die with you of the slow agonies of starvation. China’s governmental problems in the region become tremendously multiplied and accentuated. She must deal with lawlessness, with people who can con- tribute no taxes, who must even be sustained over long periods at public cost, if the lives of any are to he preserved. Sickness, misery and death; this is the portion of millions, the populations of entire states. I wonder if those men of San Francisco, with their stump and other speeches and their newspapers, who have caused the Congress of the United States to adopt against the Chinese people the policy of exclusion, shutting them from the light of this country and holding them in darkness, have, in any phases of their several psychologies, ever been touched for a moment with the consciousness that they hav) been the cause of these deaths! Or whether they are aware or feel t.iat somewhere in the blue ether of space there are angels who are charging against their accounts the suffering and death which has befallen these people ; for it would have followed as the 10 night the day that had exclusion of Chinese never been adopted in this country, China would, within the period of these past thirty years, have had hundreds of men, educated in the United States, enlightened in the science of flood control, who would have returned to their native lands, addressed themselves to the physical conditions in the basins of these rivers, and who would have turned the waters to fixed channels and secured the lands to the people, even converting the waters from elements of destruction to purveyors of beneficence through their distribution in irrigation. China would long since have had such men, I say, together with men skilled in finance promotion, who would have arranged the means whereby the funds to effect the improvement could have been obtained. But, shut off from western light, she had no such men. Even her rulers were unacquainted with any means to avert the doom with which it was assumed the gods had visited the people; Li Hung Chang, the most advanced of her statesmen, fell upon his face on the banks of the Yellow and implored the hand of heaven to abate the vengeance of the evil spirit whose wrath was presented in the river’s rise. The prayers of Li were futile. God does not work that way. His demand is upon men to use their intellects to evolve light, as their numbers increase, and to deal with nature through the processes of the mind. God is benign. He does not demand of men impossibilities. He does not make it imperative that light shall come forth from these darkened minds of China. If he did, provision would be made in China for such evolution. He will reveal His light where conditions for its recep- tion are most favorable, and when bestowed, it is there by Him delivered for the use of all men. And let me tell you, my brother, if you think that this universe is held and regulated by haphazard or by chance, that there is not an over ruling Power, in Whose hand lies every detail of life and action, from the whirling gases of the spiral nebula to the movement of my fingers as I drive this pen, every thought, every impulse, every deed — if you believe there is not such, I say to you, you have never delved deeply for truth. No man who thinks or tries to think profoundly in the realms of human action, but who at every stretch and at every turn stands face to face with God, and he knows it. Not through theological dogma or sectarian tenets have I reached this conclusion; for I have no church and no creed ; but I have groped my way through darkness to the Great Light and I know that this universe and all that in it is, is controlled by Law; harmonious, benevolent, just, beautiful in its nature and effects, but to disobey which, and persevere in disobedience, inevitably culminates in death. The strife of the mind is to see His laws, and seeing, to show them to men, that they may be obeyed, for in such obedience, and in that alone, there is safety as we know it on this earth. And I say to you that the laws of exclusion are in violation of the laws of God; that the light which is given in one part of the world, is there descended for the use of all. There is no greater crime than the shutting off of this light by the peoples who receive it from the peoples who need it, and who for it would migrate to 11 the place it exists if allowed, and such inhibition is the very essence of our exclusion laws. Li Hung Chang’s prayers were to reverse the order of nature, and such prayers always fail and ought to fail. The millions in the stricken district weltered in their ignorance, despaired and died. At last there came forth light. How the heart of every American man and woman should be thrilled that to us, who through the operation of our exclusion statutes have befallen the people of China with all this disaster, is given the privilege to change the condition in those valleys — to do for China that which, had we allowed her of our illumination, she could have done for herself. The American Red Cross, one of our few institutions organized to carry benevolence abroad, came upon the condition in Anhui and Kiangsu, whither it Avent in the cause of humanity to succor the afflicted. This League looked upon the region there with its intelligent American eyes, and resolved to strike at the cause of the trouble. It addressed itself to the Chinese gOA^ernment, and Charles Davis Jameson, an American engineer, studied the area and proposed a plan for flood preA r en- tion, estimating the cost at some twenty millions. A means Avas Avorked out for financing the enterprise, the lands and their products being bonded to meet the payments; China gaA r e assent to the undertaking, and J. G. White & Company, an American contracting firm, is said to have under- taken to install the improvement. In a year or two the great scheme of conservation Avill be effected, and famine in that district will be at an end. Famines are the most primitive scourges of the human family. The earliest endeavor of man at the dawn of civilization is to make assured his food supply, and as he moves upward in the civilized scale this tends ever nearer to certitude. We do not have famines in the United States; A\ T ith us the mind has almost attained mastery o\ T er the conditions which produce crops. Crop shortages occur, and there are years of abundance, but the tendency is toward uniformly plenteous yields. If insects menace crops Ave destroy the insects; if frost threatens the young fruit, Ave pipe the orchards with oil, and AA'hen the mercury strikes the danger point the pots are fired, the temperature of the orchard raised for an hour or two, and the crop is saved. If any natural condition occurs that threatens crops in any district, at once that state of things becomes the subject of govern- mental investigation and aid. Withal, if shortage of umvonted severity in any region transpires, ready transportation by railroad com r eys to the stricken inhabitants ample of sustenance from the abundance produced elseAA'here, and the resources of credit of such people is always sufficient to tide them over for a season, while other opportunities of employment abounding near about them afford them means of directing their labors into channels, returning them self-supporting remuneration AAdiile the season for new plantings is coming on. The presence of a famine means that the country so suffering has not developed a civilization high enough to repair the primitive defect of nature which occasions such, and the famine in the districts of Fukushima, Amori, Hokkaido and others in Japan, noAv prevail- 12 ing, are evidence of this no less than is the famine in Anhui and Kiangsu. With both nations light from the fountain of the west is necessary to lift the suffering populations out of the perennial slough of dearth. In the case of China we have, through the aid of the Red Cross, projected our enlightened men into the locality to install the succor ; in the case of Japan what shall be done? Has she yet developed men of her own who are able to work out her relief ? Such stresses as famines and general dearth are the conditions that breed foreign war. The male inhabitants of the famine districts would today welcome enlistment into an army, where they would receive susten- ance for themselves, and wages wherewith to sustain their families. Famine or threats of famine have often driven forth hordes of people in arms to prey upon the substance of others; and the history of our own day shows that scarcity of food supply is not always necessary to start a great move- ment of unrest. Impaired supply of mental food is just as effective. The Mexican, shut away from the United States by our contract labor exclusion laws, is stirred with unrest by the adjacency of a civilization in which he does not share ; so with the Macedonians against the Turk, so with the Quang Tung Chinese against north China. It is when wide unrest arises in the Orient, which always occurs when population has outgrown knowl- edge, that the great Oriental war which the future holds for us will occur. It will arise when the aggressive European powers have absorbed the Orient, and when conditions therein obtain, that foreign war or civil conflict becomes imperative. Then will come a hurling forth upon us of the human onslaught, directed by the highest militarism of the day, backed by the resources of a vast European nation. For that conflict the mind of the Orient is now preparing. The cry of “Asia for the Asiatics, down with the foreigners,” an echo of the San Francisco sand lot cry of “America for the Americans, the Chinese must go,” reverberates at times in both China and Japan. Our perennial California legislative assaults upon the Orientals* evokes mass meetings, eat calls and boycotts of American goods *There are those who think that Japan having taken so seriously the California Anti- Alien Land Act, there having been incident to it so much interposition of the Federal authority, so many exchanges of diplomatic notes, so much discussion in press and public, and so much resentment displayed by the Japanese populace, that the California legisla- ture will not, at its forthcoming sessions, venture again upon measures offensive to the Japanese people. Let me say to all who so think, that they are mistaken. The session of 1913 left much unfinished Anti-Japanese business, which the session of 1915 will take up, and to some extent put through, despite the existence of the Fair. The reason why this must be is not understood. All California legislatures since the early sixties have had before them anti-Asiatic bills, and rancorous discussions on these measures, whether there be legislation upon them or not, form features of every session. The reason of this is that the exclusion laws are restrictive. They impair human rights; they interfere with the free going and coming of people: they obstruct business; they are a constant source of humiliation and exasperation to all who come in contact with them, whites as well as Orientals. Those who have to deal with them — aside from the labor union immigrant agents who enforce them — for the most part regard them as outrageous, as existing through error of policy, as doing no one any good and being a general harm. It is very certain that, if let alone, these laws would soon come to be looked upon as a nuisance, and widespread demand would go up for their repeal. Accordingly they must be periodically sustamed by some order of popular demonstration. The place and time for doing this is at the California legislature. Here at every session the claques are manufactured which declaim to the country that ‘The gates are closely guarded,” and that California still holds to the policy of Asiatic exclusion. The Chinese have long since been so reduced in numbers in the state and their activities have so subsided, that they are now looked upon as negligible; the Japanese, however, are an enterprising and active people who go into business and try to build up themselves and their surroundings. Any expression of the 13 in the Orient wherever the name of Americans is mentioned. Let this hatred stew for a few decades, strengthening as its spasms recur, while we here, under the influence of those restrictive laws and doctrines which labor unionism has thrust upon us, tend toward that decadence, now so striking a phenomenon in that nation where labor unionism is in largest efflorescence, namely England.'' 5 When such a condition gathers and obtains, the coun- tries will be ripe for war. We cannot tell in this day what may occasion the outbreak. It may be that some corporal of a guard refuses to salute a flag; or even that some warship hits a sunken mine in the bay; any spark in the carburetter may cause the explosion, but the real cause will be the hatred rampant between the people of the two continents, which hatred attends and grows upon non-intercourse, and only disappears and is replaced by good will where mutual material interests arise between the people, growing out of the presence of one in the country of the other. You cannot have good will between nations, expressed by mere perfunctory salutations and professions of regard. Good will, active good will, rests upon mutual material concerns ; it does not and cannot exist while these do not obtain. For us to have a continuous interest in the Orient, the Orientals must be amongst us in considerable numbers, and be a part of our population. The quiet which abides with us for the moment on the subject of the Japanese is not necessarily an indication of the presence of good will; it is equally an indication of indifference. The test of good will between peoples is in the expressions that go forth when some harm befalls Oriental’s existence that makes him noticeable, makes him the subject of opposition; wherefore of late years, the target of the California legislature has been the Japanese. The elements in the Chambers, also, who produce the anti-Oriental disturbances, are not dismayed by the fact that their performances draw attention and cause annoyance to the President of the United States and the Department of State, let alone the uneasiness and reproofs that come from Japan. These creators of trouble are pleased with the notoriety they receive and enjoy the sunshine of the spotlight. Anti-Japanese agitations will go on in California until the' educated classes of the state acquire knowledge of the immigration question and understand that the entire policy is wrong, that we need the Japanese here, and that the more who come to us to work the better off we are, and that harm can befall no one in consequence of people coming to help us in our labors. 'When the people so understand they will squelch the anti-Japanese agitator; but he will exist flourishingly until that time, an active creator of the hatreds stored up against us, for which, unless our policy be reversed, we must answer in the future. Meanwhile no expedients can possibly help the situation. The talk in Washington at this time of an act of Congress confirming the rights of Japanese now living in the United States to own and lease land, and of a new treaty granting them naturalization, should not be discouraged. All things possible favorable to Japanese should be welcomed, provided there is not coupled with such accessions some denial of the rights of others to enter the country, or some proscrip- tion or differentation against them when they are here. Under such latter conditions the proposals should not be accepted. Any relaxation of our hard policy toward the Japanese,, however unaccompanied bv a sentiment arising through popular understanding of the problem, will merely intensify the disturbances later to be created by the phobists. The only remedy is popular education upon the subject. *There are over one million eighty-five thousand registered paupers in England, a country of about one-third the population of the United States. This widespread pauper- ization is a logical corollary of the centripetal force in England’s industry, the labor union — a principle that centralizes the industrial field with a labor aristocracy at the hub, and at the periphery sloughs off millions into enforced idleness and destitution. The ve gistcrecl pauper has not specifically appeared in the United States, in so far as I am aware- but unregistered, he is already here in considerable numbers, as witness our roving’ bands of 1. W. W. The presence of this perennially idle element, which soon bcomes physically unfit and psychologically unwilling to encounter any labor task, consti- tutes, in the minds of many, an added confusion on the immigration question; as where the labor union convention which recently met in St. Louis adopted a resolution against admitting to the country any more labor immigrants, from whatsoever nation they might come, until all out-of-work persons in the United States were employed. Such a closure would be permanent, and constitute another milestone on the high road to national dissolution; as it is the forces existing that produce the idle laborer, and the incoming of those who work, always superior in desire and fitness for labor to this unemployed mass, produce the conditions which afford the opening of jobs for the latter class. See pp. 30-31 herein. 14 the subjects of their concern. An opportunity was presented to Japan to display the degree of this solicitude when the earthquake calamity overcame San Francisco in 1906. In that day thousands of Japanese were amongst us, and our immigration of Japanese that year had been over 15,000. Japan sent for our relief on that occasion the munificent sum of $250,000 and we accepted it, and forwarded to them the official expressions of our thanks. When the eruption of the volcano Kagoshima and the incident earthquakes with attendant loss of life and property on the island of Hyusliu happened recently, simultaneous with the prevalence of the vast famine in the north of Japan, San Francisco manifested the same silence toward Japan that usually obtains when Mr. Tvietmoe is engaged in court business in Indianap- olis, and the California legislature is adjourned. The Japanese here had become very few, and Japan and the Japanese had ceased to stand as any factor in our affairs. The .leading gentlemen of this city who a year ago sat at the board of Mr. Juichi Soyeda on the eve of his departure for Japan, and told of the current good will hereabouts for that nation, did not come forward with proposals of public subscription for relief of the distressed in the stricken districts, for the reason, without doubt, that they were severally apprehensive of inconvenience which might attend them through their advocacy of benefit for an unpopular people. In so far as San Francisco went, one here would never have known that widespread suffering through natitral causes prevailed amongst thousands of our fellows in Japan. The President of the United States took action, however, made an appeal to the country for funds, and appointed the Red Cross League to receive and forward them. I do not know the amount which the country sent, but of whatever it sent San Francisco contributed eighty-three dollars and fifty cents.* Good will, in any effective degree, cannot exist between the people of closed nations. The very existence of closure is a state of passive war. Just as soon as intercourse ceases, trouble begins to arise. No one in the United States ever heard any war talk about ourselves versus Japan, until the Japanese were excluded in 1907. Talk of war thereupon instantly arose, the first to remark it being President Roosevelt. At the time of Commodore Perry’s visit to Japan in 1853 Japan was a hermit nation in that she had no intercourse with the west. Japan has always hailed this visit of Perry’s as one of the greatest events in her national career, regarding it as the opening of the country to the world, starting her upon a course of real progress. It would be interesting to contemplate in what particulars as regards this opening Japan differs today from her condition prior to Perry’s *At a later date a group of members of the Japan Society of America interested themselves to procure contributions of San Francisco, and several hundred dollars more was raised; but the effort bears out my statements, that mutual material concerns move sympathy. Various of those on the committee had interests in some way related to the Japanese; some were in sympathy with them because of their art, or through past associations; some had business relations with them. There were none who were doing their work merely through altruistic concern because human beings somewhere were suffering. To the contrary, in the case of each committeeman there was a special reason, based upon contact with Japanese and its incident sympathy, why he should interest himself to succor their afflicted. 15 visit. In one ease slie was closed from within, and now she is closed from without. For if her people may not go forth to take part in the affairs and interests of the west, it would surely seem that her “opening” by Perry would be a mere phraseology. True, she may send forward certain cargoes of the few chief articles she produces, and exchange them for effects of the western nations; but trade under such conditions will not greatly increase, and it exists in constant peril of being shut off almost entirely. When western science has produced synthetic silk there will be little use for Japan’s cocoons; and when the next high tariff wave overcomes the Amer- ican Congress, the South Carolina tea ranch will loom larger on the horizon than it did in 189-1 when in its interest a protective tariff was imposed upon tea, and the American people were required, to a large extent, through incident high prices, to abandon the use of that article, which in turn compelled the Japanese tea farmer to uproot his trees, and the Japanese people to forego a product with which they "had been purchasing such American goods as they desired; when this incident again arises, I say, Hon. Kahei Otani will find that the President of the United States will not extend to him that cordial greeting which he received in 1898 from Presi- dent McKinley, on the occasion of his visit to induce the American govern-, ment to remove the duty on Japanese tea; for a President who would harken to the voice of the commerce of Japan in the presence of the hatreds since manufactured in the nation against the Japanese people, would be instantly the target of a whirlwind of Pacific Coast legislative and other indignation and assault. Nor, indeed, would Japan’s sense of dignity permit her under such circumstances to ask the concession. Requests between friends may be freely made, which in the presence of strained relations, neither side would venture. What Japan needs and absolutely must have, if she is to hold herself in place, is not only great surpluses, but great variety of productions. Don C. Seitz, managing editor of the New York “World,” in his article on the “Japanese Overload,”* says Japan is a country without surpluses of anything save raw silk and tea. He says : “The village toothpick-cutter splits his tiny splints with micrometrical accuracy, and regulates his output with equal exactness, so that he shall not have one more than may be required to provide for the next day ’s need in rice and pickles.” We have no such toothpick maker in the United States. Why? Because we make toothpicks by the million with machines. Our village toothpick maker has had the faculty of his hand multiplied a hundred thousand fold by the thought of some genius who has devised a mechanism which released him from a frivolous toil, and dignified him with the power of a producer in large measures. What is true of the toothpick maker is not less a fact with all other crafts and callings. The naked slave no longer threads the clay with straw to fashion sun-dried brick, but restless ratchets tear away the earth and stack the bricks by millions scarcely touched by human hands. Japan must supplant the hand with the machine, the empiric with the *Nprth American Review, June 1913 16 scientist. To have great armies and navies and to be able to conduct wars in her national defense, she must possess vast industrial power; must multiply the industrial potentiality of the individual through use of the modern effects of the mind,* so that she can not only spare men from industry, but can abundantly sustain them, their ships and munitions when they are so tolled off. This it is entirely possible for her to do. There is a vast field of possible and varied yield and manufacture in Japan’s zone of human action, through the development of which she may become rich, great and powerful; but to develop this requires thought, and thought is not the progeny of an arbitrary aggregate, of a specialized few. It arises among the people through general diffusion of knowledge ; not theoretical, book knowledge, but knowledge fraught of experience in practical, human contact, such as only intercourse supplies. There is no oligarchy of the mind. The parvenus of genius will arise in the cotter’s household more often, indeed, than they come forth from the loins of belted knights. The condition that generates the master minds is freedom, equality of oppor- tunity, unimpaired access to knowledge, the untrammeled right to venture forth and go any place where incentive calls. Shut off from migration with the west, Japan is closed to the stimulus that stirs thought; is shut away from the region where ideas abound in largest volume. Japan at present does not recognize this. A nation which within the business lives of living men was so tightly sealed to foreign intercourse that to have in one’s *Western civilization may be said to express itself through its methods and devices, These are the foundations of its industries, the creators of its greatness. Let me illustrate by taking two industries resting upon inventions, neither of which are more than fifteen years old — the automobile and the moving picture. The auto car, while an invention long anticipated by various contrivances for the utilization of steam in traction upon common highways, came into general use through the invention by Daimler in 1884 of the internal combustion engine. This, applied to a carriage, was worked upon by inventors in France, England and the United States, until last year, in this country, the output of the industry was valued at approximately $.250,000,000, and $27,000,000 of the product was exported. The business now engages hundreds of thousands of hands in its various branches, not the least of which comprises many thousands of chauffeurs. The moving picture device has established an industry in which $200,000,000 is said to be invested in the manufacture of films alone, giving employment to 200,000 persons, and exports of these products amount to over $6,000,000 annually. Aside from this, thousands in all parts of the country are employed in conducting shows through the use of these reproductions. Two other conspicuous inventions now entering into large industry are the aeroplane and wireless telegraphy. But consider the million others; to what marvelous uses is paper applied; car wheels, cog wheels, containers of all kinds, cooking utensils, wood in carpentry, pipes, clothing — a seemingly endless variety of objects. Consider the metal, aluminum, extracted from clay, and brought into practical effect but a few years ago, what thousands of uses it now supplies and how extensive the industries it supports. Take such a substance as bog peat and consider the wealth of articles reduced from it; carbon pencils for electric lights, artificial wool, preservatives, sheep dip, paper, naptha, paraffin wax, tar, sulphate of ammonia — the performances of science seem almost endless. The United States is replete with these effects, but in Japan they are practically absent. These works are not the achievements of one, but of many men, all inspired by the impulse and stimulated by the prospects of reward for doing something of human benefit never effected before. In a country in which practically the entire population is made up of labor immigrants or their descendants, hundreds of thousands of these men are of humblest origin. The chief amongst them, Thomas A. Edison, was a newsboy. The essential condition of this vast realm of inventions has been free atmosphere, free movement of the individual anywhere he may be pleased to go. This spirit of evolution is not essentially western. It is as inherent in the Japanese mind as in the American. Where Japanese have been placed in an environment of invention their researches produce results which distinguish them. Take the instance of Prof. Hideyo Noguchi and Prof. Jokichi Takamine, one celebrated in bacteriology, the other in chemistry. Japanese have attained eminence in many other departments of science, but unexceptionally where they have been brought into contact with the knowledge and life of the west. Japan can only develop a population amongst whom arises that order of inventions that create industries and so furnish higher kinds of occupation for her people, by having the freest opportunity of contact by her people with those of the west, a condition which necessarily entails entire freedom of migration. 17 possession a foreign book was a crime; where an attempt to leave the country was punished with death ; where sea-going ships were not permitted to be built ; where foreign trade was interdicted, and where the only western people allowed in the country were a few Dutch, who were confined to an island 80 by 200 feet in area — to the people of such a country, it is not at all remarkable that they should not view the shutting off by the west of their migration as a matter of significance or concern. Japan for two hundred and fifty years sent no migrants abroad ; what difference can it make that they be now kept at home ? Aside from this, the number of the people who went out during the period when the west suffered them to come were so few, how could they possibly have any influence upon Japan’s develop- ment? Perhaps in all the period of the Meiji era, not over 400,000 of Japanese went from Japan into the Avest. How could such a relatively small number make any impression upon the nation as effecting its rise, even assuming that many returned and brought with them western knowl- edge ? I reply, the processes of thought are extremely insidious ; we do not realize in many cases that it is transpiring at all, and know of its existence mainly by comparing the present with the past. A very few people returning from abroad may affect the entire nation. Japan has a handful of students studying at colleges in the west ; these lads are constantly returning to Japan, where they immediately take part in affairs, and exert a powerful influence upon the life and development of the country. The roster of returned students would not be large, yet the influence of their work upon Japanese progress has been immense. And what is true of students, is true in degree of every man and woman of Japan who has returned to the country. A single returned emigrant will move to a wider development his entire family and a score of his neighbors; while the money he sends home during his absence, amounting to $100 per year per man, leavens his household, and lifts the nation. Equally as great as these influences is the fact that a member of a family abroad moves the interest of those at home with sympathy with the nation wherein he abides. The minds of those people are turned toward America Avhere the son or daughter are living, and are thereby receptive to every influence that proceeds from thence. Interest and curiosity are turned toward the country; letters describing the youth’s surroundings and life are eagerly read; geography and history, often the very language is studied, and the offspring of that family remaining at home acquires new ideals and aspira- tions, so drawn from the country Avhere the brother is temporarily staying. Through the influence of the few annually returning students (which may continue until the exclusionists of the west prohibit their entry as they have already threatened to do), added to the literature of the Avest, which she is free to receive, Japan might meet her earthquakes, eruptions, torna- does, pestilences, famines and else, that tend to destroy civilization, and move sloAA T ly upward; but she is not at liberty to proceed slowly; she is hooked on to the world movement, and she must keep its pace. She must 18 develop, and that rapidly, if she wishes to hold her own in this movement, else she will inevitably succumb. If Japan should now attempt to close her doors to the world as she did in 1641, how long would her native sover- eignty last? How many years will it last with her doors closed, as is now the case? Japan did not willingly open herself to the world in 1854. She would gladly have remained a terra clausum. It was Perry’s squadrons, the later bombardment by the British fleet of the capital of the Satsuma daimyo at Kagoshima, and the subsequent destruction of the Choshu bat- teries at the sea of Shimonoseki, that destroyed the exclusion party in Japan and convinced the common sense of that country that the day had come when isolation could no longer be maintained; that unless the science and methods of the west were admitted the country would be helpless in the presence of the white invader, and would be consequently overrun by him. As there are men now living who knew the days of the former closure, so there are men how living, I assert, who, unless exclusion by the west be withdrawn, will live in the days when the domain of Europe will extend to the shores of the Asian Pacific. Nor is this closure of which I speak one-sided. We who have closed the Orient are in like manner closed against the Orient. As I have often elsewhere remarked, it is the nature of error to proceed along its course until its effects become intolerable, when the error will either be corrected, or its effects being so involved as to conceal the error, there is destruction through war of those who practice it. It is only truth that is static and unchangeable. That the closing of this nation against the world which will be secured when all migration is shut off, will produce war, there can be no possible doubt. That to shut off migration with half the human race will in like manner produce war, there can also be no question. No nation can close herself to the world or to half the world, and not bring upon herself the war that isolation induces. The resistless demand of mankind for inter- course with mankind will overcome all barriers, and press human relations upon peoples desirous of dwelling beyond the pale of such. It was so with Japan and with China and must likewise be so with us. Japan’s closure was never more perfect than that to which the United States is now rapidly tending. We have shut out the Chinese by statutory enactment; the Japanese are inhibited by a convention note through which Japan withholds her laborers, which, experience shows, makes practically everyone else un- willing to come. The Hindus are refused admission upon a mere adminis- trative rescript without the need of any law. In effect, all Asiatics are excluded. Now, as for Europe ; the advocates of exclusion have approached the European warily; they do not stab his government with a paper billet and demand its signature as we did with China, or ride rough shod over a defenceless people as we did with exhausted Japan at the close of the Russian war. They propose measures of stealth. “Objectionable immigra- tion” is to be curtailed. This immigration is such as “will not assimilate with our civilization”; that “lower our standards of living”; that “expose 19 our working people to unsafe and unsanitary working conditions”; that “interfere with the maintenance by the labor unions of the American standard of wages”; and so on ad libitum. The particular races against whom this endeavor is now aimed are the inhabitants of Southern Europe — the Romans of Caesar, the Greeks of Pericles; these are the men at whom the exclusionist orator in Congress, at the behest of his labor union con- stituents, now points the finger of scorn and says they are unfit to dwell upon the soil of the United States. Exclusionists devise certain expedients of circumvention for resisting the entry of these people. Several of these are “increase of head tax”; “a differential increase on single as against married men”; “exacting of an immigrant the qualification of an applicant for enlistment into the United States army”; “arbitrarily limiting the number admitted to a fixed percentage based upon the number of such nation already within the country”; “the literacy test,’’ etc.. It will be remarked that the above are only proposals. They are like the seven varieties of bills brought forward in the last California legislature foi disabling Japanese and Chinese by restricting the occupations in which they may engage in this state. Of these, however, the alien land bill passed— sufficient indeed for one turn of the legislative calabash, prepar- atory, as freely stated in that body during debate, for the next session. So among those proposed in Congress; the literacy test scheme passed. By this latter it was planned that any immigrant who could not read a slip handed him by an inspector containing forty words in his own language, should be excluded from entry. The physical strength, the moral character, the intellectual stamina of the immigrant was not to be taken into account; he was to be subjected to trial of book learning; a reversion to the old principle of benefit of clergy. If the man had been raised amidst surroundings which denied him the opportunity of acquiring schooling, his misfortune was now to be used against him by the country whose institu- tions were assumed to be based on freedom, and whose boast it was in time past that men are equal. The exclusionists who brought forward this project of oppression in fact cared nothing about education of the immi- grant. Forty words of printing could not make a man better or worse, and while the subterfuge of literacy was much talked upon during the debates, it was nevertheless understood. that the real purpose of the proposed legislation was to keep people out of the country. It was estimated that 30 per cent of those who came would not qualify upon the test arranged, whereby some 400,000 persons who yearly now come would be denied entry — a greater number than comprised the total immigration of Chinese and Japanese to the United States in the forty years of their immigra- tion freedom. In the medley of nations swept by this universal dragnet, however, was the Jew. Yiddish was one of the languages in which the fateful forty words were to be propounded. The Jew, therefore, like “the Chinaman and the Jap,” was to become the victim of a new degradation. And if was 20 the Jew who saved the situation. The measure passed both House and Senate and went to President Taft for his signature. The Secretary of Commerce stoutly opposed it, pointed out the flimsiness of the pretence upon which it had been moved through Congress, that it was aimed to secure to the United States a superior class of immigrants; he denounced the absurdity of the hypothesis that the coming hither of men to work could be a harm to workmen here, and declared that the country needed all the workmen it could get. The assertions of the secretary Avere wise, noble and patriotic, but they drew upon his head the active wrath of the labor unions. Upon receiving the vieAvs of the Secretary, President Taft vetoed the act, and it was returned to the Senate, which passed it over the veto by a two-thirds vote Avith eighteen votes to spare, and it Avent to the House. Here it failed of re-passage by five votes. Julius Kahn, a Je\A r , Congressman from the Fourth District of California, had killed the measure. A survivor of centuries of oppression of his race by dominant peoples, amidst- whom the Semitics were situated quite like the Orientals are and have been situated on the Pacific Coast, this California Congressman had behind him a long record of speeches against the Chinese and Japanese, in AA r hich he used the same arguments opposing these people that the JeAV baiters of Europe have time out of mind employed against the Hebrew. Now these arguments, having overcome the Asiatic, were again being recited to the House to do service against the Jew, from Kussia, from Austria, Germany, from everywhere; and Julius Kahn stood before the body to resist, in defense of his own blood, the treatment Avhich he had so often urged upon Congress against the Asiatic. I can conceive of no more pathetic figure than this magnificent Jew, a perfect specimen, physically, mentally, morally of the best of his race, moved in the past by what he deemed the exigencies of Pacific Coast politics, to denounce with proscript- ive laws a defenseless and necessary people — the Chinese and Japanese — noAv facing this same House, suppliant for his own race, about to become the victims of those same laws, and of the same malignant policy which he had so long promoted and sustained. Here he was using against the pro- posed legislation the assertions and logic which the antagonists of exclusion had used against the enactments of 1882, 1832, and 1907 and which he had flouted as being without merit. As against the Burnett-Dillingham bill, he said : “This matter of restriction of immigration is not a new subject, and the present agitation is but a recrudescence of anti foreign agitation that has occurred periodically from the very beginning of our government. Benjamin Franklin deprecated, in 1753, the great influx of Germans into Pennsylvania. Immigrants from France, from Scandinavia, the Swedes, the Danes, have all in their turn been opposed. The outcry against the Irish and Germans grew loud. The churches of the Irish were desecrated. Their children were subject to petty persecution in the public schools. The Germans were publicly denounced. Their neAvspapers Avere mobbed, their Turner halls were Avrecked. In 1853 this feeling against foreign immigrants had grown so acute that the Know-Nothing party Avas organized. It Avas 21 directed expressly against foreign immigrants. In tlie elections of 1854 it was very successful and elected a large number of members of Congress. In 1856 it had grown strong enough to put up a candidate for the Presi- dency, Millard Fillmore, but he carried the electoral vote of only one state — Maryland. Let me call the attention of the members of the House to the mural decoration on the extreme right of this Chamber. It presents a scene in Washington’s headquarters at Yorktown in 1781. It is interesting to note that the artist, Brumidi, incensed at the attacks that were being made upon foreigners during the exciting period while he was at work on that picture, signed the painting ‘C. Brumidi, Citizen of the U. S., ’ so as to emphasize his citizenship and patriotism. I merely cite this incident to show how bitterly the patriotic foreigners of the Know-Nothing period resented the petty, narrow, unpatriotic, un-American attacks that were made upon them at that time.” “The cry against the immigrant,” he says, “has made itself heard in nearly every period of the existence of the Republic.” Yes, but the common sense of the nation and of Congress w r as strong enough to resist it, steadily, until 1882 when reason broke away before the cry from the Pacific Coast against the only immigrants who were entering the country from that side, and concerning a people whom it was peculiarly fitting and necessary should have a large population on our coast in order that business in magnitude might be carried on between ourselves and their countries; a people who were, indeed, our people, from the fact that they were our neighbors, facing us upon our ocean. If the Chinese had been entering upon the Atlantic seaboard, instead of upon the Pacific, it is quite certain that no Asiatic exclusion laws would ever have been passed. The police of the states of the eastern coast, who had so often clubbed down the mobs who assailed the Irish, would have been quite competent to have dealt with the roughnecks who should attack the Chinese or Japanese, and they had a summary way of handling a soap box orator who harangued a crowd against a race of immigrants. On this coast, however, these elements of disorder, being not properly resisted, got the upper hand. The politician, seeking popular favor, gave ready ear to them. Many sincere men in high position became infected with race antipathy, and saw in the Asiatics the same offensive personalities that the English saw in the Irish when Thomas De Quincy and Thomas Carlyle were writing their tirades against the latter migrating from Ireland into England. The California Know-Nothings were able to get through Congress against the Chinese the exclusion measures which the Maryland “Plug ugly,” with all his Members of Congress, and his five governors of states, was unable to secure against the “Pope’s Irish,” the “poverty stricken English,” the “dirty Dutchman” and the various epithetic-al assortment of Scandinavians and other outlanders who were commonly categoried as the “offscourings of Europe.” These are the people who have built this nation, out of whom the nation is •made. They were not the well-to-do, nor the aristocrats of Europe, they were the poor. But they were not lame nor halt, they were virile and strong. Again we see the wisdom of Nature in the action of man; the 22 country did not want the class who did not emigrate; there was little use for the wealthy or the luxurious. What was needed was men to work ; men with hard hands and active limbs; men dissatisfied with their European environment, and who aspired to better their material conditions and were therefore men of aspirations and ideals. Voluntary emigration is one of the strongest reliances of both the nation that sends and that which receives. It shows that the moving people are filled with desire for progress. It is the deed of a strong man to emigrate. It requires resolution, courage. It is the pulling of a man by the roots out of his home emplantment, and the flinging of him far abroad into a strange region, amidst conditions, peoples and languages 'which he does not understand ; without means, with all retreat hack to his home and the resources of his friends cut off, with no asset but his sinews, no staff but his hope — it is not the deed of a craven or a weakling, this migrating abroad; and when a nation has arisen in the scale of civilization sufficiently far to possess large numbers of people eager to emigrate, it means that such nation contains within it enormous poten- tialities. Peoples in darkness do not emigrate. Their minds are not stimu- lated with those processes which stir them to proceed abroad. Before such a wish can arise the man must be filled with desire for a higher social plane than that on which he dwells ; and this awakened desire is the van of progress of the soul — the real purpose and the real meaning of God’s placing the human upon earth; for progress is the order of the universe. Not unattended by obstacles was man placed here upon the mundane. He is environed by obstacles, beset with difficulties. They are the riffles in the sluice box of life, which interpose the current and draw forth from the mass the gold ; but man is given strength to breast and overcome them, the effort and success at which increases his strength and moves him to a higher status. Let us bear this in mind when we discuss exclusion, realizing that it is an obstruction and an. evil into which it was in order that society should fall; out of which we struggle our way through seizing the rope of Right, from which once extricated, the pitfall being known, it may never engulf us again. The reason why exclusion of immigration exists and has existed is the common belief that the price of wages is determined by demand and supply of laborers. I have shown the fallacy of this theory in my paper “Our National Tendency and Its Goal,” to which the reader is referred, and I will not discuss it in extenso here, as I have there. Assuming the doctrine is correct, the coming of a workman into the country from any source, from immigration, or through the door of birth, is a misfortune to those who are at work, or who are seeking employment; hence “in order to protect our working people,” immigration exclusion is a necessity; and existing against Asiatics, it should properly he extended against Europeans and the people of the entire world; this is the argument and purpose behind the literacy test bills in Congress to which I have referred. The “labor market” theory has the acceptance of what is regarded as the “highest authority.” I may 23 remark that it is generally taught in the colleges and acted upon the world over, and forms the ground structure on which labor unionism is based. It is stated by Prof. Henry W. Farnam of the Chair of Political Economy of Yale University in the “American Year Book 1910,” where it is asserted as economic law : “In . . . industrial freedom wages are determined by the ‘hig- gling’ of the market or by demand and supply. If many laborers are seeking employment, the demand being equal, wages tend to fall; if few, wages tend to rise.” Hence, as I have said above, it becomes to the interest of the laborer already in the country that scarcity of laborers should be maintained— to keep others out, and to suppress apprentices and births among the working class. It also becomes to their interest to suppress production of commod- ities by whatever means are possible, so there might not arise over-supply through which workmen would be laid off ; scarcity, therefore, must always exist and be maintained, and whatever practicable means may secure this end must be employed; waste, strikes, the preventing of asylums, jails and penitentiaries where people are supported partially at public cost, and where their operations may hence be controlled by political action, from turning products on the common market; also by keeping imports from entering the country; hence the assumed desirability of high protective tariffs ; for products from all such sources, it is believed, tend to supply the market and reduce the demand for the working man ’s services, thus increas- ing the number seeking employment. It also goes along with the popular opinion that high prices and high wages go together, for it is generally considered that if the price of a thing is low, its cost of production being low, a large share of this cost being wages, wages also must necessarily be low; so that the popular mind associates high prices with high wages, and this, it is assumed, means good times; while low prices must necessarily mean low wages and these are the conditions in hard times — all of which assumptions and reasoning are completely erroneous. Prof. Farnam favors us with a further exposition of some of the doctrines of wages. He says : “Economists have not, however, confined themselves to studying the mechanism by which wages are determined. They have demanded a theory in order to explain the causes which lie back of this mechanism, and to show us why, at certain times and in certain places, wages tend to be high, at other times to be low. For many years the wage-fund theory was commonly accepted by the classical economists. According to this view, the capital set aside for wages constitutes a fund which limits the demand for labor. General wages can, therefore, not rise’ unless either through an increase in the fund or a diminution of the number of laborers. According to Ricardo higher wages tend to increase the population, and thus the tendency of wages is to relapse after every advance to the standard of living held by the laborers. This somewhat pessimistic view was exaggerated by Lassalle; according to his ‘iron-wage law,’ wages always tend to fall to the amount needed for bare subsistence. If this is the case, it is clear that any perma- nent betterment of the laboring classes is impossible under the wage system, and this has been for many years the popular argument in favor of socialism. 24 “In sharp contrast to both of these theories, stands the so-called residual theory of Gen. Francis A. Walker. According to him, wages are really paid not out of capital but out of the product of labor. Any increase in this product tends in the long run to benefit the laboring classes, who receive all that is left after interest, rent and profits have been taken out.” The wage fund theory, or the idea that wages are drawn directly from capital and not from the product of labor, is erroneous. It assumes the source of wages to be an hypothetical fund set aside in the community for the payment of wages, comprising all the money which would ultimately be used for that purpose, such as might obtain in a family having an income of $10,000 per year, of which $1,000 was set aside for the wages of servants. If this fund be lessened, the number of laborers being the same, wages must be lowered ; as where the family falls into straits and is obliged to trench on the $1,000 ; there is a lessened sum left with which to pay the servants, and their wages must be reduced. Under this theory it is import- ant that the number of laborers in a country he not increased, for in such case there would be more to draw upon the fund and wages would fall. It was John Stuart Mill’s contention that population must be rigidly restrained in order that the average rate of wages may be kept up. This idea made Mill an immigration exclusionist and he strenuously opposed the entry of Irish into England. Of course the doctrine was wrong and the Ricardo and Lassalle theories are just as impossible. Prof. Farnam seems to make a qualified condemnation of these false theories.* They are helpful to us here, however, as showing that economic thought has come through just as charlatanic a career as has thought in other fields; in religion, in law, in medicine; for the false gods before whose idols the Aztec prophet lifted the beating heart of the human sacrifice, or the jurisprudence that determined legal contests in trial by gauge of battel, or the treatment of disease by drawing off the patient ’s blood, all of these fictions which men but lately treated as truths and acted upon, were but counterparts of the wage theories which Prof. Farnam quotes, and also of the one in which he himself believes, which is as false as any. The true doctrine is that which Prof. Farnam states accredited to Gen. Francis A. Walker. That this doctrine is correct is very apparent ; the industrial captain finds the yield of his entire capital and energy with that of his laborers represented by a given product. This he sells, and from its proceeds pays his laborers a part of that value which they have bestowed upon it. He does not pay them all of this value, for he must make a profit even upon their employment or he will not do business; but he passes them the share they should properly receive; surely there is nothing complex about this! Yet we see, from what Prof. Farnam says of Gen. Walker’s view, that it runs into the whole scheme of wages, for it is true that “any increase in this product tends in the long run to ♦No false doctrine was ever more strongly intrenched in the belief of economists of thirty years ago than this same wage fund theory. Writing in 1879 Henry George said of it: “I am aware that the theorem that wages are drawn from capital is one of the most fundamental and apparently best settled of current political economy, and that it has been accepted as axiomatic by all the great thinkers who have devoted their powers to the elucidation of the science.” Mr. George then proceeds to demolish the theory, and his reasoning has since been accepted by many, perhaps most, thinkers upon economics. (Progress and Poverty, p. 20.) 25 benefit the laboring classes, who receive all that is left after interest, rent and profits have been taken cut.” The way the laborer receives “all that is left” is by the drawing off of laborers into other occupations through the door of opportunity, as I shall explain later, leaving the industry bidding the highest possible Avage for his services; this “highest possible wage” being limited by the sale price of the commodity, rent determined by the price of access cf equally useful land, and profits being such sum as the employer is whiling to treat as justifying his remaining in business. It is therefore a fact that labor immigration, by increasing the product, cannot hurt, but necessarily must help, the laborers already within the country. Mr. George says : “If each laborer in performing the labor really created the fund from which his wages are drawn, then wages cannot be diminished by the increase of laborers ; hut, on the contrary, as the efficiency of labor manifestly increases with the number of laborers, the more laborers, other things being equal, the higher \A T ages should be.” (“Progress and Poverty,” p. 75.) The increase of the product occurring through increase in the number of laborers, increases the distributee share of the laborers, for they must consume nearly all of the product. The immigrant Avorkmen, in common Avith all laborers, produce far more than they consume; the surplus, and it is large, passes into the common volume of commodities. Wherefore prices fall. The effect of this is to increase real wages, or the quantity of things for which the coin is exchanged ; for if there be abundance of commodities in existence, prices Avill be low, and the purchasing power of money will be increased. This is noAV recognized by the ablest economic writers. See Encyclopedia Britannica 11th Ed. Bk. XVIII p. 232, Avhere it is stated : “But as several American economists have pointed out, in new countries especially, every increase in the number of laborers may be accompanied by a more than proportionate increase in the produce, and thus in the Avages of labor.” There is no magic about “new countries” that this phenomenon should especially occur therein; it happens every place where labor immigration moves. What gives the writers the idea of “neAV countries” in this behalf is, that it is to new countries that labor immigration most frequently pro- ceeds. But it will happen in old countries just* as readily, when they arise through industrial development to call on the lesser enlightened nations for their migrants, as is now the case in Europe with Germany, and has to some extent been the case with England, though impaired through ascend- ancy of labor unionism and its attendant slough of inefficient and idle laborers. It is economic law that labor immigration cannot reduce Avages, but it increases Avages. Experience with the Chinese on this coast shoAved that it could not even reduce nominal, or coin, Avages. An examination of the Avages paid in San' Francisco between 1870-82, in those industries in which the Chinese Avere most generally employed, namely woollen mills, cigar making, slipper manufacturing and sewing industries, showed that the Avages of all operatives were higher than those paid in the east in similar 26 departments of the several industries. The assertions of the exclusionists that Orintal immigration reduces wages was always false ; it cannot occur. The contrary is the fact, it raises wages. That real wages in California today are lower than they were during the days of free Chinese immigra- tion, all will recognize upon a little reflection. The prevailing wages of common labor, for instance, at present is from $2 to $2.50 per day. Henry George, writing in 1879, while Oriental immigration was free, for the first exclusion act was passed in 1882, says (lb. p. 17) “now common ivages are $2 or $2.50 a day.” It is true that in the trades, under the influence of the unions, wages are higher today than they were in 1879, in some trades perhaps twace as high. But prices of commodities and rent are today from 100% to 150% higher than they were at that time, so that even the labor union laborers receive no more today than they received while Oriental immigration was free, whereas upon the common labor has fallen the heavy hand of the condition of high prices for which the unions are chiefly responsible. This condition affects us all, for times are very much harder now than then during the days of free Oriental immigration ; those were the days of plenty and general prosperity in California.* The truth as shoAvn by Gen. Walker, Mr. George and the encyclopedists, however, is rejected by our collegiate political economists generally. It is very remarkable that so large a number of these gentlemen who teach our youth, seem unable either to reason themselves into the truth, or to recog- nize it when it is shown to them. This is most unfortunate ; did they dis- seminate truth instead of fallacy the mind of the country would soon be set right on these great economic problems, and- immigration exclusion \A r ould be the first error cured. The public regards them as sitting on the dais of economic thought and the publishing houses and press, both daily and periodical, are always open to print their utterances. To others they are closed ; and when a man of the latter order conies forward he must, to get a hearing, appeal directly to the people by speech and pamphlet. The attitude of the labor unions is precisely that of the college professors. They adhere to and practice the same doctrines, which have become orthodox, and they are not open to any reasoning upon the correctness of their economic attitude. Between this upper and nether millstone of erroneous economics the public suffers as in a vise, and it is those men who have no relation either to schools or interests, but who are free to folloAv truth wherever she may lead, who hew the way. These, like Adam Smith the private tutor and Henry George the printer, always struggle under difficulties, in the presence of doubt, indifference and obstruction, their work being appreciated in about the third generation after their deaths. *See “Chinese Immigration,” p. 375, by Mary Roberts Coolidge. Also article of Ho Yow, Chinese Consul General at San Francisco, North American Review, Sept. 1901, in which he states that “the gala days of San Francisco’s life and happiness were during the years that proceeded 1882.” Also that when he came to the Consulate-general several years prior to the date of his article, the most conspicuous feature of the city was the number of “to let” signs in the windows of vacant stores and residences about the city. That the exclusion law acted on the business of San Francisco “like a cone over a lighted candle” and that business activities of the city did not revive from the blow given it by the exclusion statutes, until Dewey’s victory. 27 Prof. Farnam himself rejects this truth as presented by General Walker. He says, continuing his statement: “Few economists at the present day accept any one of these theories as completely explaining wages. Most agree in thinking that, while under a condition of freedom of contract, wages are determined by the interaction of supply and demand, the causes which influence and limit these are very complicated. They also realize that even when the general causes deter- mining the demand for and supply of labor are constant, they do not operate with absolute precision, but that there is room for an appreciable margin between the minimum which the laborer is willing to take and the maximum which the employer is willing to pay. Within this margin, wages may he moved up or down in accordance with the superior bargaining power of the parties concerned. In other words, it is quite conceivable that general economic conditions might justify higher wages than are paid, and yet that through ignorance of these conditions, or inability to assert their demands, the wage workers may fail to get what circumstances warrant. On the other hand it is also possible that wages may temporarily remain on a higher level than business conditions justify.” The statement is in effect that the labor union is necessary in industry. That “collective bargaining” is the essential principle of the relations between employer and employee ; that neither the individual employer or the workman are any longer free. Outside the zone of the “higglers” with their fluctuating margin between them, both are crushed as an eggshell, as though the atmosphere had been displaced by a vacuum. That the weapons of the union — the strike and the boycott— and their counterpart the lock- out, are necessary adjuncts to industry, whose natural condition is one of warfare ; that this can never be otherwise, because the condition rests upon the truths of economic law. In accentuation of this Prof. Farnam proceeds : “It is often difficult for the individual to influence these conditions, because it is generally easy to fill a single place. The demands of the workers are more effective if many act in common. Hence the strike, or simultaneous cessation of work, has become a common feature of labor movements during the past century; they have been numerous and unusually significant in 1910. Trade unions have also arisen in order to give a great effectiveness to united action by making organization perma- nent, and putting it under competent leaders.” In reply to what Prof. Farnam says in approbation of the unions and their principle, I refer the reader to my paper already noticed.* The Professor thinks he is not in favor of socialism, yet he is in truth a socialist, for labor unionism is socialism, and cannot be otherwise. It is needless to say that Prof. Farnam is altogether wrong. The error lies at the very root of the doctrine which he and so many of his colleagues believe, and whose belief is impressed upon the country; wages are not determined by demand and supply of laborers. Wages are determined by opportunity to labor; “opportunity to labor” is very different from “demand and supply.” The latter is an effect of “opportunity to labor,” and does not rank with it. “Demand and supply of laborers” means simply the “higgle” between the employer and the applicant; “opportunity to labor” may abound in as *“Our National Tendency and Its Goal.” 28 many regions as there are lines of direction. If opportunity to labor be abundant there will be no “higgle” at the door of the employer over wages; there will be no “room for an appreciable margin between the minimum which the laborer is willing to take and the maximum which the employer is willing to pay” as Prof. Farnam states, and which, accordingly, the laborer must have the backing of a union for him to get. No such “margin” exists. If the “higgle,” or rather the force, firmed or other, of the union succeeds in driving up wages, the price of commodity will he raised and raised proportionately higher, for more wages means more money to conduct business, more interest to be paid, and increased cost in divers directions. Industry adjusts itself to given wages, and competition in price of the commodity on the market determines a reasonable profit to the employer, which if he does not receive, he will not continue business. The necessary concomitant to the labor union is combination among the pro- ducers and monopoly of the product. Only by such solidarity can either the union be resisted, or higher than economic wages be paid.* Under free conditions the laborer will be offered the highest wages which, with other elements of cost and profit deducted, the product on the market will allow; and when he receives this, wages will not go higher. When the gold deposits of the Yukon were discovered, sailors left vessels moored at the wharves in Vancouver and trains in Seattle were left standing without crews in the general rush for the diggings. There were opportunities with higher rewards for labor than those paid by the industries forsaken. The railroads and vessels had to offer the very highest possible wages to get men, there was no “higgle” whatever, it was simply an offer. Here Prof. Farnam and his confreres would say there was labor scarcity in Seattle, and because of that scarcity higher wages were offered, hence the condition was one of demand and supply; but it can be seen that the scarcity was only a result of the opening of an opportunity to labor. *The union compelling the producer to pay a higher rate of wages than the market of the commodity will allow, forces an increase of price of the latter; and as the higher prices go the less is the consumption, the more acute becomes the struggle to make sales, which results in individual producers being forced to forego their profits upon occasion, and “cutting under" the current market in price; there hence arises among the producers a tendency to combination in order that this demoralization of business may be prevented. This combination has for its purpose the fixing of prices of the commodity within the zone of its operations; and this combination quickly becomes a monopoly or a trust, and employs part of its energies in fighting off the entry of newcomers into the field, or driving out of business those within the field who refuse to enter, or who are not admitted to, the combine. Having control of prices, it is a matter somewhat of indiffer- ence to the combine as to what higher figure the union moves wages, for the combine can meet the raise by automatically shoving up the price of the commodity. Without this combination, many would be forced out of business through the ruinous price cutting. The result of the combination is lessened consumption of the commodity, but this means simply the laying off of laborers by the producer. Here we see the strong centralizing force of the union, its creation of an aristocracy of labor, and the slough of idle laborers thrown off by the constricting process who in turn become I. W. W.’s, tramps, socialists, anarchists and other disturbers of society. Did the union not affect wages, nominal wages would be lower, products would be cheaper, demand therefor would increase and with it general business, while real wages would not be disturbed. The pressing need of combination to fix prices would in the presence of active business not appear. A producer having “all he can attend to,’’ in a normal state of business, is not disposed to cut prices, but will stand for a fair return. Price cutting below a line of reasonable profit is a condition of market stress arising through slackened demand, and the efforts of the producer to tide things over and keep in business in hopes for better times. Slackened demand follows higher-than-economic nominal or coin wages, increasing cost. The producer offsets this condition by combining and fixing prices, the most rational way in which the state of things can be met. This dual condition is of course highly harmful to the public. 29 Scarcity was a secondary, not the primary incident; it was an effect only. The real influence, the cause which produced the scarcity, was the oppor- tunity presented by free access to productive land. The railroads were not bargaining, they were bidding against a labor opportunity. The difference between the “demand and supply” idea and “oppor- tunity” is radical. They are at opposite ends of the pole. If the difference were recognized if would be seen that the interest of the laborer lies not in combining with his fellows, so that he can strengthen his side at the “higgle” with the armed force of a union, the latter to create scarcity of labor keeping others than its members out of industry, thereby holding down products while increasing prices thereof, hence decreasing real wages, hut it would lie in opening and extending opportunity to labor. In so doing it would vigorously oppose exclusion of laborers, for every laborer who enters the country is a factor for plenty, in that he produces, as I have said, far more than he consumes, and, as stated, the part of his production which he does not consume goes to increase the common supply of com- modities, hence increasing real wages through allowing a larger distributive share to every worker. But the labor immigrant does more ; through increasing supply he increases labor opportunity; for most materials pro- duced must be further manipulated from their first form by added labor before they are ready for the consumer. If I produce bricks, some one must build houses with the bricks; and if houses be so built others must make furniture and carpets to put into them; furniture requires the cutting of wood, carpets the growing of sheep, and so on ad infinitum; one commodity created is simply a factor calling upon labor to produce other commodities to unite with it. The Japanese, growing strawberries at Florin, were calling upon the labor of white box makers, white canners, white makers of tin and all who operate in the tin industry; the printers of labels and all who work in the label phase of the paper industry; the whites who operate the railroads ; those who do draying ; the millers who make the flour from the grain that the farmer grows; the bakers who bake the canned berries into pies; the people in the sugar industry; and finally upon the storekeepers who distribute the pies to the consumers who are now able to eat strawberry pies which, but for the labors of the Florin Japanese, they would not have gotten at all. So we see that it is abundance that gives opportunity to labor, which decreases prices of commodities by increasing supply and thereby increases real wages. With this matter of opportunity to labor the union refuses to have absolutely anything to do. The reason is simply that if the union worked on this side of the wage problem, there would soon be no use for the union, and the “competent leaders,” of whom Prof. Farnam so approvingly speaks, would find themselves out of jobs in “making organization permanent.” We have seen in the instances of the gold diggings of the Yukon, what an intimate bearing free access to productive land has upon wages; and the agitation has grown over the country for laws to force idle lands into use 30 by increasing the taxes upon tlieir value, a method which now obtains in greater or less degree in most of the colonies of Great Britain, to some extent in England itself through the recent allotment acts, in the German empire through the taxation of increase in land values, introduced in 1909-10,* and is at present the salient demand in the program of Chancellor Lloyd-George for land reform in England. In a state of low industrial activity in a country, such as now obtains on this Coast, land is held out of use because its value is small and the taxes upon it are correspondingly low, and not above the abilities of the speculators who hold the land, hoping for higher prices, to pay. But large labor immigration, through producing great industrial activity, increases the value of land, and correspondingly increases the taxes upon it. Land is thereby forced into use, for the land owner stands between a push and a pull, moving him to dispose of his lands to users ; he has behind him the high taxes which he cannot afford to pay on idle lands, and before him the lure of high priced offers; the two condi- tions combine to compel him to sell or lease, in whichever case land is put to use. This is the influence under which the land areas of California have been divided up as they stand today, and the great ranches which at the treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo embraced nearly all the state, have been parceled and distributed. The “gringo” came, and with his industrial activities, increased the value of land ; this increased taxes on the lands to a greater extent than their owners were able to pay, and they were forced to sell, and in most cases were glad to sell, at the high prices which were offered. Experience shows that under these influences lands will be sold rather than leased. Lands used under lease have a bearing on wages, in that nominal wages are measured by what one may make off of land to which he has access; what the tenant receives for his labor on the land will be determined by the share of his product which he pays as rent; a man will not accept a job at my ranch at $35 per month, if across the way he can get a lease on a fifty-acre tract at $5 per acre, on which he can grow a crop of corn which he can sell at the rate of $50 per acre. In order that he shall accept my offer, the rent of the land would have to be fixed at a price which 'would make it “a toss up” whether he shall go on the land or work for me. The entire exclusion policy shows itself to us, therefore, as a huge mistake; doing the highest harm to the very people whom it is intended to benefit, and making us all suffer in corresponding degree. I have said nothing herein concerning the race prejudice which in part sustains exclu- sion on our statutes. Such antipathies do afflict some, it is true, but hatreds would soon disappear when people come to understand that the Orientals are beneficial, profitable and necessary to be amongst us, and that in no sense are they a harm. There is no substance in the talk about non-assimi- *The increase in land values in the German empire in 1912 amounted to about $60,000,000, the tax' thereon being about $9,000,000. This innovation is characterized as “a limited application of the single tax.” See “Monarchial Socialism in Germany,” by Elmer Roberts. Chap. VIII. 31 lation. No peoples in tlie world are objectionable to us on this ground. If the objection be analyzed it will be found to rest altogether on race hatred, a fact that is not known to the American people, which, as soon as they discover, and realizing that there is no truth in the assertion that the coming of the Oriental laborer does a harm to workmen here, would cause them to move repeal of the exclusion laws. These facts being understood, with a federal law in existence placing aliens under the protection of the United Stats, and making it a crime punishable by the same authority to abuse by words people on account of race, would soon procure quiet and tolerance of Orientals on this coast, and they have never been disturbed elsewhere. In a little while the business revival, which would be manifest upon their renewed coming to the country, would overwhelmingly strengthen sentiment in their favor. We should again have large and general prosperity, this time with enduring peace. Thirty years of exclusion legislation has shown us on this coast its ruinous nature. The stagnation in business, the slow growth of the populations of the cities — building from the country behind the towns instead of from the empires in front, the practical absence of shipping and manufacturing, the insignificance of San Francisco as a port, when it should be one of the great ports of the Avorld ; the high cost at which all things are produced, which narrows the zone of their transportation and exchange, making ocean-going commerce originating in the state confined to few articles of first produc- tion ; the ascendancy of labor union and socialistic dogma and legislation ; the bewilderment of the people over the course upon which things are drifting, with the ominous day of reckoning, which from our headlands and with eyes across our ocean, all thinking men, with clear lenses, may now plainly see — this condition calls loudly for correction, for knowledge to be imparted to the people that they may be made to realize the errors of their policy and moved to repeal exclusion, abandon isolation and again place this quarter of the continent in the way of the vast development which is her right, which can only be done hand in hand with the Oriental peoples, and through those agencies which contribute to a mutual progress. The question before the people of either and both coasts is: shall the exposition and presentation to all and sundry of ourselves be undertaken? We have reached a stage in our affairs where, in order to go forward, we must first comprehend the principles which govern the relations of the several peoples, and the economic laws in respect thereto. The same condi- tion is presented here as obtains in the Huai River district ; there people are perishing because Knowledge has been withheld from them ; here, similarly through lack of Knowledge, we are suffering the strains of international hatreds and the stress of economic adversity, as a prelude to the destruction which shall be our mete in the fullness of time. The query is : have we the initiative or the energy to study the question and the common sense to understand the condition, or is indisposition to continue and dereliction to ensue on part of those who have both the means and knowledge to spread 32 the gospel that will bring the change ? If I should take this case to a band of Indians residing somewhere on a reservation, and state it to them, I should get stolid indifference for my labors. The Indians are not quickened in thought to grasp the meaning of the conditions pointed out. Did the matter rest with them they must, animal like, suffer the present, await the denouement and take the consequences. But are we thus to stand as sheep to the slaughter ! There are times and conditions when indifference to public concerns is not alone a crime but it is suicidal. He who is in trust and active charge of the concerns of others on this coast, who carries the confidence of his wards and whose duty it is to defend their affairs, who shall nonchalantly toss behind his shoulder the call which these conditions make upon his thought — what crime is his? And what scores among us there are of such ! Every business man on this coast has a charge therewith connected in this case. Granted he has not been heretofore advised, he knows now. He has hitherto swung along without reasoning at all on the matters moving before him, suffering the ignorant, the passionate, the selfish, the unthinking to control in views and political action these great affairs; accepting assertions without examination; wrapped in meditation upon his private interests, apathetic, unconcerned. Such is the “primrose path of dalliance” over which one gees rollicking along in a sociological region, which terminates at the sky-vaulting cliff, and ends with unrecognizable shapes and debris, in a common abyss. 33 ' \