HC 108 S22B2 A. A! ^ i 1 ; 1 2 6 3 3 5 Bancroft Why a World Centre of Industry at San Francisco | Bay THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES A Wtttlh Ol^ntr^ nf 3nbu0trg at Bnn 3Franri0C0 lag? BY HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT The First Port of the Pacific ; its present and its future. An Exposition in Politics and Economics. NEW YORK THE BANCROFT COMPANY. PUBLISHERS 1916 COMPLETE WORKS WEST AMERICAN SERIES OF HISTORIES RESOURCES OF MEXICO CHRONICLES OF THE BUILDERS THE BOOK OF THE FAIR THE BOOK OF WEALTH THE NEW PACIFIC POPULAR HISTORY OF MEXICO RETROSPECTION MODERN FALLACIES WHY A WORLD CENTRE OF INDUSTRY AT SAN FRANCISCO BAY ? LITERARY INDUSTRIES at §an JraitriHrn lag? BY HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT NEW YORK THE BANCROFT COMPANY. PUBLISHERS 1916 c--> WHY A WORLD INDUSTRIAL CENTRE AT SAN FRANCISCO BAY? Why should there be in time to come a World In- dustrial Centre upon the shores of San Francisco Bay? Because Nature has prepared for it, Progress ordains it, and History confirms it. £? Because among states and nations California has a unique individuality which is sure to find expression as the border lands of the Pacific unfold into the higher civilized life. Because wherever is situated the Centre of Industry there will be found the Centre of Empire. Because while the nations of Europe with their Atlantic traffic decline, the ports of the Pacific will rise into prominence under the impulse of superior develop- ment. Because W^orld Supremacy may thus be placed within reach of the future occupants of the First Port of the Pacific. Because as the Orient and Occident here meet geo- graphically, they should join hands commercially as well, products from East and West standing side by side as a World Commercial Clearing House. Because if the Centre of Industry on the Pacific is not established by the people of San Francisco Bay, others elsewhere will occupy the field, and thenceforward domi- nate the great ocean, both economically and politically. 1 2601.'^0 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC Because Japan has already made distinctive advance in that direction, the United States government by its impolicy assisting. Because we prefer the white race rather than the yellow race as arbiters of our destiny. And, while appreciating beauty as an economic asset and esthetic culture as a measure of civilization, it is well to bear in mind that to develop a pretty town to play in is not industrialism. From where history begins people wandered forth, — from the banks of the Nile to Arabia, from the valley of the Euphrates to Persia and the shores of the Caspian and Mediterranean. A stream of racial siftings set in down the Persian gulf, and sweeping across to India, reached the farthest east on the western border of the Pacific. There, isolated, hidden behind a wall of exclu- siveness, preferring peace yet not thereby escaping Avar, development languished ; the people became inane, apathetic, and slumbered millenniums away, until at the present reawakening of the world let us hope that they also will awaken to a realization of their economic po- tentialities and take their proper place among nations. Meanwhile, in and around this hypothetical cradle of the race humanit}^ seethed through the centuries in the effort to rise superior to the brute creation, and suc- ceeded in so far as to establish industrial relations and build cities, as Thebes and Memphis, Babylon and Nineveh, though never yielding their brute love of blood- letting. One after another each centre of industry became a centre of empire. When factories crowded the shores of Phoenicia, Tyre and Sidon rose to prominence, in which Carthage later partook, assuming commercial supremacy. India supplied cotton, while up and down the Nile was 2 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC traffic in cattle, grain, metals, and slaves. Caravans traversed the deserts between west and east, bringing also spoils from the interior of Africa, lion and tiger skins, ostrich feathers and ivory. The cities of Greece and Italy came into the light; a busy commerce filled the Mediter- ranean ports with the varied products of all countries, while Constantinople developed as the key to Europe and Asia. Venice, rescued from the sea, what with fighting Turks JTnd assisting crusaders, held imperial sway for a thousand years, until Vasco da Gama doubled his cape. Rome took her turn as mistress of the world. The Netherlands, the Hanseatic league, and other places and influences ap- peared and disappeared as the problems of progress worked themselves out among the children of men. While the world centred around the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean was the world, with its blazing barrier at the south and its impenetrable wall of ice in the north. After that were the Atlantic and the Pacific, the mind of man expanding with the expanse of ocean. In due time came to all primitive peoples the end ; with the rest into this maelstrom of humanity came youth, manhood, old age ; it is the law.— and death. All that is born must die, men and nations, cults and cultures, worlds and systems of worlds. So died primeval Asia, her cities buried under their own debris, her once fertile plains desolated as by the destroying angel, leaving dead lands watered by a dead sea. Whereby we may know that Europe must die, and America. All will pass as Asia has passed, and the bril- liant cities of to-day become as the cities of the Shinar plains. Then will men return and recover the waste places, or wall they pass away altogether? Even now the decline of Europe may be at hand ; who can tell? Already the throes of dissolution appear. And as in kaiser kultur 3 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACH^C and blood-lust the acme of infamy has been attained, so the sunnnit of intellectual develoj^ment may have been reached, now to totter and fall over into semi-insanity, as displayed in this most insane of conflicts. For if Germany wins in the present war, Eng-land, France, and Italy will become as is Belg^ium. which stands forever as a specimen of kaiser rule and kaiser kultur. If German)- wins, peace propagandists will be relegated to the chinme}^ corner, for America then must fight or become like China. If a premature peace, then will follow a period preparatory for yet greater conflicts, which will be the beginning of the end. Europe will then fall into decay, Germany, like Rome, following her victims. We will not believe the end so near, yet death, always present, seems sudden when it comes. No more thought had Sardanapalus or Nebuchadnezzar than has Roths- child or Rockefeller to-day of being spoiled of their pos- sessions and turned out to grass. The decline of ancient culture in Asia was followed later by the lapse of Europe into the Dark Age, when men revelled in ignorance and brutism to their hearts' content for another thousand years, light finally coming in from the uncovering of a New World in the west. For while yet the dark age enveloped Europe, the leaven of progress working in men's minds presented a round moving earth, which if true oft'ered a western way to the eastern India of Mandeville and Marco Polo. And as the borders of the Mediterranean world enlarged, the hitherto timid mariners, creeping forth from the pillars of Hercides, no longer hugged the coast at either hand but struck boldly out upon the Sea of Darkness. And from that day to this, — indeed we may say from the beginning, the course of empire has ever been \Vestr ward, following the pathway of the sun, — from Asia to eastern Europe, from eastern Europe to western Europe, 4 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC from Europe to America and across the continent, metropolitan cities marking the way, — Pahnyra Alex- andria and Athens, Venice Rome Paris and London, New York Chicago San Francisco. Thus slowly through scores of centuries the stream of progress has continued its way, never deviating from its course until its ultimate and inevitable end should be attained on the shore of the Pacific at San Francisco bay, where the new west faces the old east, and where ready at hand are all the requi- sites for high achievement. Glancing thus at the incipient stages of economic de- velopment, and following the trend of civilization to its logical limit, what have we learned and where do we find ourselves? We see that death precedes new birth as night the day, the old east dying out as the new west rises to greet the sun. We find ourselves standing on the border of a great ocean, whose waters equal all the other waters of the earth combined, and cover one fourth of the earth's surface, while a canal cut through the conti- nent into this ocean makes commercially all the waters of the earth one sea. More startling still, we find ourselves gazing out upon a sea whose waters mark the limit of progressional migra- tions. Here halts the star of empire; here sets the sun of civilization, illuminating never again a new or virgin west, but rising the morrow's morn on the old, old east, with its dead sea, its blistered hills and sterile plains, its ruined cities and decayed humanity. Here then upon the shore surrounding San Francisco bay is the natural and logical place for a World Centre of Industry, where the problems of the future may be wrought out, until the sun of progress turns backward in Its course, or wakens to new life the dead nations of the ancient east. THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC And in this coming together of West and East, with only the waters between, there will be many undreamed- of developments, each as magical as any which have yet appeared upon this earth. Why is it then that San Francisco is not further ad- vanced in the accomplishment of her high destiny? Why sit we quiescent at the Golden Gate as though blind to our many advantages, blind to our geographical position, blind to the importance of our matchless climate, a climate void of the extremes of heat and cold, void of the enervating influences of the south which militates against the permanency of extensive factories, void of the floods and famines, the death-dealing sun-blights and wind- storms of midcontinent and the east? Is it that we fail to appreciate the economic value of such a climate as an industrial asset, aside from the health and comfort of living and working in it ; more especially when with it there are plentiful food products, wharf and factory sites, bay shore enough for the world's work, accessible raw material and cheap power, oil tanked in the earth, metals in the mountains, money without limit for all legitimate purposes, and the markets of the world at our feet? We have but to open our Golden Gate to show a spot singularly suitable not only for a World Centre of Industry but for a World Commercial Clearing House, such as was so long in successful operation at Venice and London, where a full supply of the world's raw material, products, and manufactures were kept always stored for sale. At present New York harbor is the greatest of seaports as the Atlantic is commercially the greatest of oceans, but as the far greater natural wealth of the far greater ocean is utilized the First Port of the Pacific should attain an eminence surpassing all others. Here is this matchless bay, which with its tidal rivers tributary ofifers dockage space practically 6 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC unlimited, over five hundred miles of water frontage being already available for pier construction, which may be further increased by dredging sloughs and reclaiming tule lands. Or is it that the choicest gift of the gods has fallen to our lot, contentment? Is it that with the purple hazy sunshine and delicious air, with health according" to our wisdom and wealth sufficient for our needs, is it that we lack industrial energy if indeed we do not lack industrial intelligence? No, not that. On every side are marks of laudable ambition, of a keen desire for civic betterment and economic advancement, all efforts tending thereunto save the one and only essential. What is it then that we lack? What is it that bars our progress? AAHiy idle we time away and see others sweeping our ships and sailors from the sea, our factories from the land, using the ver}^ canal which we have made to thrust us still further aside and bring upon us the contempt of all progressive peoples? Let us diagnose the situation a bit. The first step toward civic betterment is to see and acknowledge civic errors. Watching the play of royalty in Europe we can but conclude that the best king is he who is least a king. Watching the play of representative democracy in the United States of America we can but note the political propaganda that turns our ablest men into sharpers, our purest men into paths of indirection, into self-seeking- demagogues and panders to party; we can but view with concern those phases of liberty which lead to liber- tinism, and that growth of power and population which tends toward the degeneration rather than the elevation of the body politic. It is a question not yet settled whether a too free democracy, irresponsible and loosely 7 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC administered, can endure before an autocratic government with a constant tendency toward absolute despotism. We have examples in Mexico under Porfirio Diaz, in Germany under kaiser kultur, and in the predilections of Japan. When our forefathers, of blessed memory, found them- selves independent of England, with lands unlimited, they said, Go to, now ; let others come, the priest-ridden and prince-ridden, let all come who will ; we will give them liberty, homes, free schools and free religion. The cause is the cause of humanity, the cause of the poor ; we will be to them Providence and make money by it. Which was all well enough provided they were so inclined, and provided they had kept to themselves that inalienable gift of God, self-government, and had not flung it away to strangers, as witness the ofifice-holders in the United States this day. The good work was begun b}^ killing Indians and enslaving Africans, and concluded by the expulsion of the Chinese. The irony of it our fathers never sus- pected. The redemption of the world being thus so satis- factorily provided for, the New Englanders came in their migrations to the Ohio valley, their eyes still turned westward. California, and half way back to the Atlantic, all save a seaboard strip of Franciscan missions was primeval wilderness ; where San Francisco now stands were dunes and chaparral where rabbits burrowed and grizzly bears were lassoed. The far-away United States was composed of a good class of people from England, Holland, and Germany, or their descendants. They were for the most part thought- ful men of probity who had come hither for a purpose. At that time our government was nearer pure repub- licanism than it will probably ever be again. It was more 8 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC ably and honestly administered, if we except the admin- istrations of Lincoln and Roosevelt, than it has been at any time since. If the truth must be told, it is the old, old story, — with the increase of wealth and power mor- ality and integrity took a seat below the salt,, Then and thenceforward our history might be written. The Land of Errors and Lost Opportunities. For among the many measures then opportune were the establishing of a government and the breeding of a race such as never before had inhabited this earth. Then too might have been accomplished the differentiation of rascality and republicanism ; the return of our Africans to the homes of their ancestors ; the conservation of our natural re- sources to the abolition of all taxes and imposts for all time; — all this, and more, as citizens, not as socialists, whose radicalism is an abomination. We can scarcely be called a government by the people for the people, but rather a government by cliques and cabals for the benefit of their leaders, a government by office-mongers the essence of whose polity is bribery and the end coroded selfishness. Bribery, the moving spirit in our organizations, the essential oil of our elections, — not bribery of the vulgar sort by money payment, but all the same bribery pure and palpable. I do not give my man a check for stealing a convention, or wrecking a party, or making me presi- dent, but I buy him just the same. If he prefers office, or political influence, something as he naively asserts that money cannot buy, I have a stock in trade of that sort of goods after election. And so on all down the line, the ballot-box and not the cash-box for bribery of high degree. And as human nature is constructed it is difficult to get away from it. It is considered no part of wisdom among practical men to expect something for nothing, 9 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC even in the manipulation of pure patriotism. Yet there must be honesty somewhere, even in party politics. All the same one escapes many rascalities declining office under a republic. The standard of United States citizenship was low-ered by the civil war, which carried off thousands of the flower of American patriotism, — not immigrants nor hyphenates, but Americans, sons of the makers of the republic, — rendering other thousands unfit for anything but to hold office and draw pensions, and all because of the worthless African, worthless for any purpose but to adorn cotton plantations and sell their votes to the highest bidder. Grafting as a fine art also came in with the civil war, and fitted in well with government by railroads, by trusts, by monopolies, and combination of capital. This on the seamy side, signifying money; but worst of all and of most sinister influence is the graft on industry, which came on apace, at the hand of the exploiter of the workingman, who also aspires to run the government. And as during the first half of the nineteenth century the loftier ideals of future benefits were thrown aside by our predecessors for the accumulation of wealth and for proximate enjoyment, so now during this first half of the twentieth century, we of the city of San Francisco, when duty beckons with still greater insistence turn away, making no adequate effort to take our proper place of power and influence among the great cities of the world for our own glory and the good of mankind. Is it not somewhat late in the day, the caviler may ask, to begin with your eugenics and race betterment after diluting your population from the byways of Europe for half a century? And this in the futile attempt to manu- facture high grade citizens from base material, imtil you can no longer claim to be a race or nation at all, but rather a concretion of heterogeneous humanity where 10 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC dissimilar elements are loosely united by weak amalgam for citizenship, each still acting for himself with little love of countr}' or true patriotism, — an incongruous mix- ture without too much consistency or conscience. It was once a proud boast, that of American citizen- ship; a proud boast in the early fifties to be of California; now, politically, we are one with the Polish Jew. the Italian fishwife, and the wooly negro from the jungles of Africa. And herein is hidden a fetish. For the en- couragement of faddists, however, we might say that a thousand years of intelligent effort may possibly bring back American citizenship to where it was a hundred years ago. The truth is we run our good things to extremes, to fads and fetishism. We make a fetish of money, of education, of la1)or, of the negro, of immigration and assimilation ; the exercise of our prostituted suffrage is a solemn rite. Commercial honesty is regulated by the cash register, and political integrity by the size and quality of the bril:)e. The negro fetish incarnates a false spirit, so proved by attempts at social equalization. The labor fetish is equally fallacious in attempting the im- possible in politics and economics. The education fetish out-swells all the others, even to bursting, the inevitable tendency of all measures where one class of voters orders the goods which another class is to pay for. We also love our little fictions, even going so far in one instance as to stamp the lie upon our coin. In God We Trust, whereas do we not know that it is in the dollar we trust? We support newspapers with their too palpable hypocrisies, their distorted statements, and their interminable braggadocio and vulgar self-praise. Conscienceless sheets, bribed by German influence, show the fact plainly enough on their face, and carry not the conviction they imagine, but excite only disgust. 11 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC Xor should we expect profound wisdom from the pacificists who fancy they can stop the jug^^ernaut car of war with windy words. Xo harm to pose for effect. good friends, or to advertise your inefficiency, if such be your purpose ; but unless you are prepared to grant each belligerent his own terms, your efforts are wasted, how- ever supported they may be by a shoal of learned cranks, or however successful you may have been making cheap automobiles or running a sensational church or a super- fluous university. As a rule an efficient man of affairs makes a better executive officer than a college professor trained within restrictive lines ; for under the former, while obtaining the highest political advantage, economic supremacy is secured as well. Pedagogv'. ideality, and practical politics do not assimilate. Luck takes place before discernment. though often less lasting. The higher we are carried by good fortune the greater is sure to be the fall. For learned verbiage commend me to the German doctors and professors in their impotent attempts to reconcile the teachings of Christ with the doings of the devil. Education is a good thing in reason, but like all good things is subject to abuse. Carried to excess it becomes a fad or a fetish, doing in many cases more harm than good. If continued on present lines of demagogism. wherein loud-mouthed extremists pay nothing for its support, we shall presently see any lazy lout taken up and fed and clothed while old saws are pumped into him. afterward to be set up in business and a dwelling and wife provided. From the intellectually over-fed girl comes the super-woman spoiling something better, while boys are taken from work they are fitted for and con- signed to failure. Education with us is too cheap, and embellished with too many useless accessories. What costs nothing is seldom highly prized. Our foremost 12 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC men are usually among those unspoiled by superfluous education. Furthermore, it stands out plainly enough to those who would see it that men and women have each their sphere of usefulness, and in which they excel, for so was made man, male and female ; it is as much out of place for women to attempt the more -virile duties of men as for men to usurp the domestic functions of women. Half of our higher educating is worse than wasted in spoiling inferior material for the more useful occupations in life. Injudicious education narrows the intellect, paralyzes originality, and destro3"S the initiative. Still more senseless is giving Japanese free education with which to destroy us whenever the opportunity offers. And worst of all is to permit German professors in the pay of American universities to poison the minds of our youths with the doctrine of Prussian brutism. militarism. and kaiser kultur. Do we want America Germanized? Do we want to eliminate from our curriculum every senti- ment of right and wrong and teach only the morality of murder ? The sham and charlatanry attending our elections, with the pretence of patriotism, and the duty of every citizen to deposit his vote — cash value by the thousand fifty cents each ; eligibility determined by skin-tint ; white or black, male or female, admissible, but nothing yel- low; — while partly true is none the less diverting. Nor is it good polity to permit the jitney nuisance to menace the safety of a city full of people and ruin legiti- mate transportation, the only means of reaching the suburbs or of extending the city limits. A sum equal to the waste of the present congress and the public funds spent in measures to secure the reelection of its members would give us a merchant marine and army and navy, men and implements, worthy of the honor 13 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC and dignity of a great nation, and at the same time furnish profitable employment for all workers. The United States is quite in demand just now. Labor wants it, socialists want it. women want it, the Catholics want it, while the Jew, the Irishman, and the notable cheap automoljjle maker each thinks he has it already. Mother England would regulate our commerce, while Germany is interested in watching the effects of bomb- play on neutrality. The administration at Washington would like to retain office for another term, for a dozen other terms, and so undertakes to straddle several fences at one time, at which effort it cuts a sorrowful figure. We must admit that the prospect for immediate im- provement in San h>ancisco is not flattering. However it may be with our friends at the east, however benefited they may be by the war in Europe, the Panama canal, and the now some- what obsolete cry of peace at any price, however guarded and protected shipping interests on the Atlantic may be, we in California are not growing stronger, but weaker, both politically and economically. ^\ e cannot have true and permanent prosperity with an administration at Washing- ton whose primary purpose is to secure its continuance in office, whose injudicious measures while increasing tax- ation destroy industries, and sweep commerce from the ocean while pandering to laborism for votes, thus throw- ing thousands of American seamen out of employment, and giving the carrying trade of the Pacific to the Jap- anese, who hold high carnival over our idiocy, we mean- while maintaining the Panama canal more for their benefit than for our own. Placing in high office rabid labor leaders for the labor vote is not the best way to establish equital^le relations between labor and capital, and few will deny that a more injudicious measure than the so-called seamen's bill was 14 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PAaFIC never before passed by a legislative body.— a bill at once fatal to the merchant marine while seriously crippling the navy. By this one act of a self-serving, partisan con- gress industrial development at San Francisco bay has been set back for many years. Boomers point to midcontinent and Atlantic coast prosperity, and quote railroads, food products, and war munitions, which is all very well, but where does Cali- fornia come in? What are the people of the Pacific coast doing to secure some of the advantages from the wonder- ful canal, and the so-helpful war? Nothing; there will be the overflow from the east, optimists say, which will make us rich, — tourists, retired capitalists with enter- prise all sucked out of them making homes here, and always lovers of pleasure in plenty; so may we content ourselves with the crumbs that fall from the tables of progressive industry over the way. and henceforth write ourselves The happy land of Eastern Overflows. What can we do? Do ! Any thing, everything. Abolish labor intrigue; drive laborism out of politics as Hiram Johnson drove railroads out of politics: relegate the old- time commercial traveller back to the people that sent him, and peace propagandists to the sewing-circle and sunday-school ; then make things and sell them. Let our very best men organize for establishing and promoting manufactures on the broadest conceivable basis, yet always along practical and commonsense lines; establish a world commercial clearing house, and invite all nations and all industries to keep a stock of their goods here for sale ; establish also a commercial training-school for clerks and business men to study the ways of foreign peoples of whom they would make customers, their wants and necessities, their manners and methods, their weak- nesses and their strength, their proclivities and their languages ; then send out, not a boy with a carpet-bag of 15 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC samples, but ship-loads of the best men obtainable for the purpose. Seems chimerical, does it? But it is not, nor half so difficult to accomplish as the magic feat of your so superb and successful fair which to-day is and tomorrow is cast into the oven. Following the age of gold and the age of grain, came to California fruit, which however welcome as a luxury does not meet the war-time necessity as a staple food product, and with land at $500. an acre and a limited market does not pay the producer. To restore to fertility worn-out grain lands, after a half-century of non- rotated crops, is troublesome and expens'ive ; hence for the present at least it is with us manufacturing or a dulce far niente existence. With manufacturing, commerce will follow^ but w^here we have but little to send away there can be but little commerce. Yet further, San Francisco can attain the full measure of her high privileges only by such commerce and manu- factures as can successfully compete with the rest of the world, while the builders of the canal can derive benefit and not actual loss from building it only by a merchant marine which can successfully compete with other nations in the carrying trade of the world. To bar cheap foreign goods by high duties, as some would have it, as a remedy for the exclusion of cheap labor is as illogical and absurd as to drive American ships from the ocean in order to benefit American seamen. The bald facts remain that we have built a canal for the use of all nations, and all nations are profiting by the use of it, largely to the detriment of the builders. In the main traffic between the Asiatic shore of the Pacific and the shores of the Atlantic California is left out, while Japan derives the ben-efit from it. Some in California saw 16 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC how matters were tending from the start ; some will not see them as they are even now. England and Japan should be grateful, but they are not. They smile at our government as pedagogic, and at our men of afifairs as tamely submissive ; in the meantime taking all that they can get and giving for it as little as possible. Many feared a slump after the fair, but that was im- possible because there was nothing to collapse, neither agriculture commerce nor manufactures. The fair was magnificent, and accomplished a great work in making better known our country and climate. All honor to the men who conceived it and carried it forward to a success- ful issue. Though many houses in the city remained empty during the nine months of its continuance, and business was dull, the hotels, apartment houses, and certain stores reaped a rich harvest. But these were neither natural wealth nor economic industry. The boasts about building and bank clearances were misleading, and intended to mislead, as they were largely incident to the exposition, and not belonging to the business proper of the city. We should hardly consider the issuance of dis- torted statements good policy under any circumstances. Frolic, festivals, and fairs are not business but play, though play sometimes is good business. But if all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, all play and no work makes a travesty of business and a fool of the community. There are good business men who believe in booming, who like to look upon the bright side, who will even stretch the truth a little to make the bad appear better; there are others who prefer looking facts squarely in the face, and meeting the situation as become strong, sensible men. Nothing is gained, either in business or journal- ism, by hollow buncombe. 17 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACH'TC We have become wealthy and great, not because of our government but in spite of it ; we have become lax in morals, in integrity, and in patriotism, not because of our wealth and greatness, but because of civic degeneration, because of our flinging away our most precious inherit- ance, American citizenship of the quality bequeathed to us by the founders of the republic. Looking nearer home for the cause of our industrial doldrums, we can but observe that when a body of in- telligent and efficient men, prominent citizens of no mean city, meet, not once or twice but several times, for the sole purpose of organizing and acting for the promotion of manufactures ; when in all their free and thorough dis- cussions, which are always along lines of experience and discretion, advantages brought forward and obstacles removed, and never a word spoken as to the primary essential in all economic achievement, and never anything accomplished, we may safely conclude that there is some- thing rotten in Denmark. For these are of our city's best, equal to the best of any city; men accustomed to meet and overcome diffi- culties, not to give way before them ; who could watch the flames devour their city without a whimper, and re- build it in proportions of beauty and utility such as were never dreamed of before ; who could raise for a world exposition five million dollars at the first sitting, to be supplemented by twenty-five millions more, and carry forward the enterprise with such wisdom and discretion, and with such successful results as to command the admiration of all nations ; and this in the face of Mexico's madness and Europe's suicide; who could subscribe ofif hand a million dollars of their own money for an opera house to cover a city block, even though the project be defeated by a puerile mayor for labor votes, leaving in 18 THE FIRST PORT (3F THE PAQFIC the civic centre a ghastly seal), there long to remain as a memento of official charlatanry and imbecility. They will stand np before the scowling Ni])ponese, scowling- because after we have given them so much we do not give them more, while the administration at Washington is shaking in its shoes from fear— fear of damage to party, to the high ideals of pedagogic purity, and flinging away to them our dearest possession, our chief dependence for a brilliant future, the supremacy of the Pacific. Nor are they indifferent to the destiny of our superb bay, or unappreciative as to its glorious potentialities, or blind to the absolute necessity of general manufacturing- as the chief factor of permanent growth and prosperity. They know, as history tells them, that a centre of industry — not a centre of art, or of education, or of wealth science or religion, but a centre of industry is a centre of empire, and that of all great monuments to industrialism which have ever arisen by the hand of man there has never been one whh conditions and opportunities at the beginning superior to those of their own city and bay. Sir Gilbert Parker can see from London more than some of us can see here on the ground. He says that the Panama canal will soon make the western ocean alive with shipping like the Atlantic, our world exposition meanwhile foreshadowing the magnificence of the central port of San Francisco, where all this human activity is ordained by geography to foregather and concentrate its energy, while with her wonderful situation California may soberly aspire to the queenship of the Pacific in its noonday maturity. They know too, these our first citizens, as every one knows, of their city's embarrassment; they know the cause of it, and feel the humiliation and disgrace attend- mg it, and notice how few are inclined to speak of it, 19 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC that a strange reticence in this respect i)ervades the community. They know this yet will not see, or seeing will not touch, or touching", it is with fingers so softly applied as to soothe rather than to eradicate. They know very well that without free labor, without operatives at a moderate wage, such as will enable us successfully to compete with others we can have no factories; in a word that without reasonably cheap labor we cannot engage in general manufacturing, which is an essential of our progress and prosperity. They fathom fully the bugaboo made of cheap labor, and the arrant nonsense current concerning it. They understand perfectly that more than half the work of the world is low grade, and must be done by humble workers or not at all, the higher-up toilers being too dainty for it ; that reasonably low pay to inferior laborers is as great a boon as high pay to skilled workmen, as to the low grade worker it is that or nothing, and all that stands between him and starvation ; and that without cheap labor and cheap laborers millions must sufifer, while farm and factory work, domestic service and scores of useful and beneficial industries must to a certain extent be given up. They are neither fools nor sentimentalists, who would run their business as benevolent institutions. They give to all charities liberally, but they find it better to make the money first by practical and legitimate ways, and then give it than to ruin their business attempting impracticable methods. Sentimentalism as applied to industrial development is out of place, and the fallacies attending American citizen- ship, assimilation, and cheap labor, must be dismissed if anything of importance is to be accomplished. Even were industrialism to be conducted as a charity there were more to be said in favor of the humble worker, whose low wage means to him bread, than of the as- 20 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC sertive artisan who pays his exploiter to secure for him a high wage and short days which give him more time and money for political agitation and the drinking saloons. And yet these, our best men, seem content to see their highest interests sacrificed, and themselves relegated to lives of tame respectability. Writing truthfully and plainly to a friend as to the situation here at present they would say, "The greatest opportunity for great things ever before offered ; but first the place needs cleaning up, politically, morally, and industrially. True, we can give our customers now, under hall-mark 'Made in San Francisco', a guaranteed article produced all by white labor at the highest wage and shortest hours, under labor lords who take their accustomed toll, and supply the goods at a price but little higher than Germany and Japan ask for a better article. No poor white trash paying nothing to the labor leaders, and nothing yellow per- mitted to work at any price, no matter how advantageous to the producer or to the commonwealth. Government loose; justice facile; morals easy; and politics, mostly of the Irish and Catholic persuasion, as usual, rotten." Some good citizens are less ambitious, less enterpris- ing than others, or have the city's interest less at heart. These may say in all sincerity, \A^hy should we bother? we are rich, we are inferior to none, we have everything that money can buy, — ah ! there is the rub. There is a nobler life that is not satisfied with what money can buy. In truth, the greater the present wealth, the less satisfied the intelligent possessor is inclined to be with what it will buy. Romulus and Remus, suckled by the wolf, glad for the nourishment were content. The half-naked Venetians, paddling in Adriatic mud, had all that money could buy, and were content, but not so the dominating doges of the imperial city that uprose from that mud. London, a 21 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC city of cities, as our city should be including all the bay shore, was content as a Thames embankment, but not so her destiny, and not so our destiny. Paris was gay Paris as Julius Caesar found it, a collection of mud huts on the banks of the Seine, and it will always be gay Paris as our city will always be gay San Francisco, but Clovis and Flugh Capet were not satisfied with the mud huts however happy their former occupants had been in their possession. It was evident from the beginning that unless some special effort was made to secure practical benefits from the Panama canal and the war in Europe those occur- rences would prove to California loss rather than profit. It is not the mill that makes the water run. In the absence of extensive staple agricultural products and cor- responding commerce, and comparatively little accomp- lished toward starting up general manufacturing, the dis- advantages have proved greater even than was antici- pated. We have every facility for making anything that can be made elsewhere, that is to sa}^ cheap raw material, cheap power, cheap transportation, moderate living ex- penses, — every thing but labor at a fair and reasonable wage, and on this score the citv is held up by the pirates of industry. Germany did not become strong and great cringing for votes or through subserviency to labor leaders. WHiile the labor leaders hea.p curses upon capitalists for having capital, they call upon capitalists to provide for them. Capital signifies not only stored labor, but labor and economy. Were there no capitalists and no government within reach, upon whom would they then issue their demands for support? Already two-thirds of the profits of industry go to labor, but the lal)i)rites would like the other third also. 22 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC The main inipedinient to progress on the shores of San l^'rancisco bay, and the only impediment, it is safe to say, is the labor sitnation, the capture and control of labor and the coercion of both employer and employed by exploiters of the workingnian, who thus hold a mon- opoly of labor and manipulate it to their own advantage. Because of these industrial parasites preying upon the vital interests of the country enterprise is crushed, and scores of great industries are driven from our city every year. The laborites assume that employers can pay any wage they choose, and that it is their duty, and the duty of government, to give labor employment on its own terms. They teach their proteges that it is right and proper to base wages on the needs of the worker instead of following the laws of economics, which demand that the product shall not cost more than it will sell for. Another fallacy is that the man with a family is entitled to more consideration than the man without one, when in reality the former should be punished for bringing children into the world without any provision for their support. For the past fifty years we have been breeding downward instead of upward, and we are just now beginning to see the lamentable result and take tardy action. Thoughtful persons view with concern the rapid drift- ing of the governmient into the hands of labor leaders. Present at every state and national legislature are the exploiters of the workingmen active in the defeat of every measure that does not give them some unfair advantage. They also employ every possible method to warp the judgment of courts and defeat the ends of justice. Opportunities for successful manufacturing are as open now as ever they were but for the pirates of industry, opportunities likewise for the imipecunious to labor dili- gently, if they so desire, uniting frugality with ability, and become capitalists, as thousands have done before them. 23 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC No laborer ever became rich or great serving a labor leader, whose teachings are based on imposition and fraud, that is in giving the least possible return for the most possible pay, — lessons in enforced inefficiency and thriftlessness. Organized industry under the regime of the laborites is organized crime. Threats and intimidation are the argu- ments employed, coercion the law, and dynamite the ulti- mate appeal. Crime is the atmosphere in which it lives and moves ; strikes are a crime, boycotts are a crime, maiming and miurder are crimes. The many trickeries and Jesuitic intrigues for fraudulent purposes, for obtain- ing from society something for nptliiilg", — well, call jt laborism, the crime of the vile and vulgar. To tolerate in our midst a labor monopoly is a disgrace to our government. It is a crime to put to inconvenience and injury an entire community that a coterie may indulge in coercion and revenge. It is infamous to ruin by means of the boycott a respectable and law-abiding tradesman, offi- cers and law courts abetting, because he refuses to obey the mandates of rapacious labor leaders. It is a reflection upon the honesty and integrity of any government that permits a clique to assume its functions and dominate at will. And if any workingman cannot work here without a keeper to stir up strife and keep industries in a ferment, let him migrate to some land which suits him better. Capital imposes upon labor as opportunity offers. It has always been so and always will be so until man's nature changes. So labor gets the better of capital whenever it can, by fair means or foul, and will continue to do so if left to the devices of the workingman's exploiter. It is right for labor to defend itself, fairly and legitimately, and organize for that purpose ; but it is not right to retaliate in kind upon the general public, or resort to illegal means for the enforcement of its rules and policies. 24 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC It is no part of the laborer's business, as a laborer, to regulate society or run the government, any more than it is the business of railroads or trusts to do so. These functions belong to the people at large, and not to any one class. Laborism in America is fast becoming like mili- tarism in Germany ; we may be very sure that neither will prove pleasant nor profitable. What are the labor leaders doing for workingmen? They begin by weakening the intellect in playing provi- dence, making of them first children and then fools. They give to those who pay them for it all the work at a high rate, to the destruction of enterprise, leaving those who do not pay without work, they and their families to starve. They dominate industry, permitting no boy to learn a trade unless they are first paid for it. They mollycoddle the poor toilers, as they call them, into puerility, until they have no more manliness or independence than a Mexican peon. Organized industry is gradually undermining society and subverting government. It is a pernicious system, injurious most of all to the workingman, before whose mind is constantly kept by his exploiters the false idea that his is an injured class. It is right and proper for those who do the work of the world to possess the world, but the daily-wage man is not the only one that works. It is not that we need fear a permanent reign of labor, and this for two reasons. First, through ignorance and incompetency the policies promoted by the labor leaders are largely suicidal, such as in the end will bring destruc- tion upon themselves ; and secondly, the wonderful rapidity with which machinery is invented to take the place of men will limit more and more the sphere of the workingman and destroy the occupation of his overseer. Delay, however, at the present time in our great industrial development is disastrous. 25 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC We will give to the earlier champions of labor their full meed of praise ; we will give to the present exploiters of the workingman our just condemnation; we will give to any community which for any reason or excuse will submit to the continued impositions of any coterie or class our unequivocal disapproval. It was a grand thing to do, a righteous thing, to emanci- pate down-trodden labor from the tyranny of capital, from the impositions of nuercenary and evil-minded men, never again to be so enslaved. It is not grand or righteous for liberated labor to turn on its benefactors and well-wishers, and in a spirit of hate and revenge put to the sword the comfort, peace, and progress of whole communities of which they are a part, and on which they are still dependent for all the blessings of life. Nine tenths of the rich men in America today, they or their fathers, were workingmen, as their sons may be after them, and they were neither ruled nor exploited by any labor leaders, but were free, self-respecting American citizens, who elected good men to office, and managed their afifairs in their own way. Nine tenths of the whiskey shops, hot-beds of debauch- ery and demagogism, are directly or indirectly kept running by laborism, labor leaders, their satellites and supporters. The term cheap labor as applied to the Chinese, is a bogey which has fooled the United States up to the limit for a half century, and all at the instigation of a blatant Irishman with his dinner pail and dray on the drifting sands of San Francisco. With cheap labor much good can be accomplished which otherwise must remain undone. With cheap labor a forest can be cleared, a swamp drained, arid lands watered, fac- tories and mills put in operation, and thousands of bene- ficient enterprises carried on, giving food and raiment to starving millions who seek not luxuries but a livelihood ; at 26 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACTFJC the same time solving many problems, such as high cost of living, unemployment, pauperism, and the rest. The policy of our latter-day labor leaders is the meanest and most selfish of any thing ever before invented, and totally opposed to their own interests as well as to the interests of the commonwealth, and to the purposes of the founders of the republic, which was the greatest good to the greatest number the world over. Labor imagines it gets the better of its employer by securing the same pay for fewer hours, but the fancied advantage only reacts upon the laborer, limiting his effi- ciency to his own loss in the end. For as water finds its level, so the price of labor finds itself regulated, not by the necessities of the laborer but by the potential price of the product. Further than this the workingman should know that money obtained by indirect methods at the hand of fraudulent overseers, howsoever much food for the mind and generous living it will buy, will never make for im- proved citizenship. More than half the work of the world is low grade, as has been said, and is and ought to be done by cheap labor. More than half the farm and factory work is unskilled labor, which more than half the world would be glad to get at a moderate wage, yet the laborites forbid them, preferring to see them starve. Let cheap labor be given to the cheap laborers among us until all are em- ployed; then as more are required bring in the best obtain- able regardless of color or creed. We need the Chinese as servants, not as masters; as subjects, not as rulers ; as humble workers at humble work, not as arrogant labor lords to corner industry, whip capital, and ruin all honest tradesmen who dare to manage their business in their own way. We do not want Asiatics to come in unlimited numbers, or to own land or settle themselves here. We do not want 27 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC their children born here to become citizens, any more than we want apes born here to become citizens. Let those come only for whom we have work, which, when finished, let them be returned to their homes. Europe is fast killing off her surplus, and it is no time for America to shackle in- dustry or permit exploiters to manacle cheap labor. By cheap labor I do not mean a starvation wage, but a wage such as is paid elsewhere, and such as will enable us to compete with mianufactures elsewhere. To fix a mini- mum wage is to deprive thousands of laborers of any wage at all, that others who pay the exploiter may have what work there is at a higher wage, and at the same time stop the wheels of industry. The inexorable law of supply and demand cannot be conventionally ignored. Manufact- urers cannot be compelled by law to employ operatives at a higher wage than the value of the product will justify, or in other words to do business at a loss. They can decline business when it does not pay, which only increases the evil, adding distress to the workers. Unemployment is worse than a low wage. Successful business cannot be conducted as a charity ; even were it so, it is oftener charity to give the low grade worker his low wage than the high grade worker his high wage. The laborer needs protection from the labor leader far more than from his employer. Unemployment exists mainly because of the method of laborism, which gives all the work to half of the workers at an e:^orbitant wage, forbidding a low wage altogether. The first step toward solving the problem of the unemployed is to give them their fair share of the work. Labor monopoly is worse than cooperative or coriX)rate monopoly, as the former is manipulated by irresponsible and unscrupulous persons, with nothing to lose and every- thing to gain, while the latter has at least soutc money or property responsibility and therefore runs the risk of loss. 28 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC Cheap labor is as essential to general industry as water is to health. To deride cheap labor and moderate though healthful living is the most senseless and suicidal of policies. As well deride mule or machine labor, cheap power, cheap food, cheap raw material ; as well denounce at once all the requirements of competitive industry and give up all attempts at general manufacturing. And yet more absurd is it to set up the inoffensive, plodding Chinaman as a menace to American interests while harboring Irish agitators, Italian anarchists, Russian nihilists, and German dynamiters and bomb-planters. Some laborers are worth twice as much as others, but all who pay the exploiter must be paid alike by the employer. Some laborers are too self-respecting to submit to the com- mands of a keeper; these must be punished and not per- mitted to work at all. Some mechanics can work twice as fast as others, but the fast brick-layers must not lay a brick more than the slowest is able to do. The whole organ- ization and arrangement is placing a premium on incom- petency and fraud. Can we not have cheap labor without abusing it? And because heartless employers have abused it must we be thereby forever deprived of this primary essential to our progress? We cannot have true and permanent prosperity so long as our prominent business men permit the exploiters of labor to run their business, rule the courts, and fill the public offices with their tools. Labor leaders are bad enough any where, but they are worse in_ San Franrisro than in most other places, far worse than at San Diego, Los Angeles, or Seattle. Tbere was no cause, there is no excuse for the expul- sion of the Chinese. Of all the aliens that ever came to America they are the least objectionable and the most use- ful. Their good qualities are imputed to them as faults; 29 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC their industry is slavishness ; their thrift, niggardhness ; their economy, parsimony. They were timid, our ways being strange to them ; they were inoffensive, unretahative before insult and injury, therefore mean and cowardly. It is true that they herded in places apart, as did the sewage of American citizenship, the Russians. Austrians, Scandinavians. Portuguese, Turks, Greeks, Finns, and others from the slums of Europe, where filth and vice were far greater than in the unique Chinatowns of California. And better far thus to herd than to scatter themselves throughout white residence districts, as the Japanese delight in doing, to the disgust of the inhabitants and the ruination of their property and homes. We will work with the Asiatics, but we will not eat with them, nor sleep with them. It is true that they did not assimilate, did not try to proselyte or win disciples for Buddha, did not trouble our wives and daughters, did not love to agitate, did not demand alleged rights under treaties, did not care to meddle in our politics, or run the government ; better for us had there been more like them in these respects. It is true that in the early mining days some of them smoked opium, though never to the extent alleged, but for which idiosyncrasy all the same we damned them daily. Then of their own accord they gave it up almost entirely, seeing the ill effects of it as their rulers had seen long- before, fighting its introduction into their country; so that in the chief cities of Christendom more of the stuff was used by Europeans than by Asiatics, while in California with the Cliinese element eliminated the im])ortation of the divine drug was greater than ever. Few Asiatics at present are enslaved by its use, far less, with all our Keeley cures, than there are white men wrecked by rum. It was in 1840 that Great P)ritain perpetrated that in- famous act of forcing opium upon the Chinese, notwith- 30 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC standing the emperor's edict of 1796 prohibiting its imix)rta- tion, and the long and strenuous efforts of the imperial government to keep away the poison which they feared and so heartily detested. As for intemperance, with its loathsome exhibitions, I have lived an eye-witness of their habits in California for over half a century, and I have never seen a Chinaman drunk on the street, or in any way disorderly, or standing at the bar of a drinking saloon, where hundreds of thousands of Americanized toilers congre- gate daily for intellectual improvement and generous living. I have never seen a Chinaman begging, any where or in any way. while one constantly encounters on the street lusty white men asking for money with which to buy food, thus in these and other ways falling below in man- liness and decency the despised Asiatic of the cheaper wage. It is not true that the Chinese are filthy in their habits, inefficient in their work, or untrustworthy. As cooks, domestic servants, launderers, and for orchard and vege- table garden work, they have no superior. They are dili- g;eiit, respectful J honest , and reliable, which can be tr uth- fully said of but fe w oth ers. It is not true that the Chinese take work from better men ; there are no better men for their work. The assump- tion of the Irish that in the United States scheme of redemp- tion they should take precedence is somewhat ludicrous ; the Chinese were a cultured nation while yet the inhabitants of the emerald isle were anthropophagi. Nor was this republic founded especially for the Celts, to make places for them as policemen, labor leaders, and drinking-shop politicians. If by better men the average mechanic was meant, still the assertion is not true, for the average mechanic would not attempt the humbler work of the Asiatic at any price. 31 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC We cannot reasonably say that this man is more worthy of our consideration than the other, as we declare that all are born free and equal. There are four hundred millions who prefer Chinese paganism to German Christianity ; examine the record and you will find that the former live nearer the teaching-s of Christ than the latter. The Irishman would doubtless claim superiority over the Chinaman, but it would be difficult for him to prove it. He is a better agitator, dissensionist, and demagogue, but far inferior as house servant, fruit-grower, or factory oper- ative, and as between the two I prefer in my family a good cook to an agitator. As for government under Irish regime, nothing could be worse, unless it were militaristic rule under the Germans. It is not true that there was danger at any time that the Chinese would swarm over and fill this country like locusts, as was said. The Japanese might do this but not the Chinese. First, it is against their nature and tradi- tions ; second, the trip was too expensive, frequently in- volving the sale or mortgage of wife and children ; third, they perforce must return ; even if dead the little body must be wrapped in a well-spiced bundle and sent back to China ; fourth, the thing was tried and proved that when wages fell below a certain mark the tide turned and there were more returning than coming. Long before the Turanian founding of the Chinese nation in the Yellow River valley, and while western Europe was inhabited only by half-naked savages, Cathay cradled a sleepy civilization but little inferior to that of Egypt. The people were rooted to their homes in this life, and their souls guarded by their gods in the life to come. Joss has them ever in his safe keeping. There was never any danger of the Chinese leaving China, they or their remains, never to return. 32 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC They came hither upon the formal invitation of promi- nent San Francisco citizens made in 1849 through a dele- gation from China, assured of a friendly reception and fair treatment. They were met with derision and treated with contumely. In the mines their camps were raided ; in the legislature they were illegally taxed ; in the towns they were stoned by the boys, who pulled them about by their queue, their elders smiling approval. Their entire sojourn in this land of liberty and equality would show a con- tinuous record of injustice and cruelty on the part of the American people and government. Treaties made in 1844 and subsequently were faith- fully kept by them but were broken at pleasure by the United .States. It is so easy to undo the philanthropic with a weaker nation! When in 1784 the Empress of China, the first American vessel to visit the celestial shore, entered the port of Canton, captain and supercargo were received in the most friendly manner, as were the many American ships that followed, though not long before this strangers had been driven ruthlessly away. They called the Ameri- cans "the new people", as distinguished from the English from whom the United States had so lately become inde- pendent. Foreigners at that time were not allowed to penetrate the interior; they were called barbarians, and regarded by the Chinese as far less civilized than them- selves. During our civil war, at the request of Mr. Bur- lingame, China closed her ports to the confederate cruiser Alabama, or any other war vessel of the rebels, thus greatly aiding our cause. Choosing Burlingame as their envoy abroad shows how ready they were to Amer- icanize their country. Commodore Dewey did not disdain Chinese service at Manila bay, but when he reached New York the heathen were not allowed to land. They might fight our battles 33 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC but must not place foot upon our soil without some celestial Perry at hand to force them entrance. Thus it will be seen that from first to last China has treated us with courtesy and fairness, which we have re- turned with injustice and insult. The origin and agency of Chinese expulsion show in true however unfavorable light the quality of our some- what demoralized republicanism, of the intelligence, honesty, integrity, humanity, and justice of which we make boast, as administered by politicians, newspapers, and office-holders all along the line u]) to the highest positions. Obsessed by evil inspiration, an Irish drayman in the San Francisco dunes mounted a box and shouted "The Chinese must go !" Seeing spoils in it, demagogues, supported by the public press, took up the cry, which reverberated through the city, through the state, until crossing the continent it reached congress, where it was safely preserved in the spoils-box of electioneering assets. Wherefore at the instigation of the worst element in our country we adopt the pagan policy which we so lately shouted down at the door of pagan Asia. All honor to Dennis! the grandest Irishman since St. Patrick ; Dennis with his dinner pail and dray upon the classic sands of Market street ; he shook with his voice the foundations of the republic, so firmly established by Hamilton, and Jefferson, and Washington, stirring to frenzy the politicians, from policeman to president, be- cause of pap and patronage ! The Chinaman had no cham])ion ; his wrongs were never recited ; the lies that were told of him fell on list- less ears and were never refuted. So that now it is the vague but general iiupression throughout the land that the Chinese are an undesirable factor in the economic interests of the country. 34 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC Of course the solons at the capital knew, the president knew, all their henchmen and whippers-in knew well enough the true and only cause of his ofYending; this celestial had no vote. Though respectal)le and responsible, his was an ofif color. For so discriminating had become our perceptions in passing upon material fit for citizenship that we could determine it by the tint of the skin ; anything white or black would do, but yellow was taboo. Yet there was a distinction even in the yellow ; the Japanese, a far worse element than the Chinese, were per- mitted to enter freely long after the latter had been pro- hibited. There was, alas! no Dennis on the sand-hills then to raise the cry, The Japanese nmst go! Here is another of those lost opportunities which fate held out to the makers of this republic, an opportunity to employ our young wisdom in resuscitating and redeeming for progressive humanity the oldest and largest of earth's nations, an opportunity that any European power would have most effectually embraced. If the chance had been Germany's, for example, there would now be no war in Europe, however doleful the consequences might be to China. Lost through our lovers of votes, the greatest oppor- tunity of all for doing good, for doing the greatest good to ourselves and to others, to an unwieldy mass of par- alyzed humanity four times the present population of the United States crowded into an area two thirds as large, — one-fourth of all the people in the world, and of a nature so apathetic that all the proddings of little Japan have thus far failed to prick them into manliness. We had simply to remember our precept that these were men, not apes, equal to us in creation, equal to anv in regard to our obligations ; or if to our diluted citizen- ship this sentiment had lost force, one can but consider 35 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC how easily our sphere of influence might have been extended over all China, and what that influence would be worth to us, at present in money, and later in power, — when the strength of the nation becomes centralized, and disciplined under competent leadership to meet the great issues and conflicts of the world. Assimilation, amalgamation, as a scheme at once be- neficent and profitable has not proved always and alto- gether befitting. In a new country with vast areas of untenanted lands, a good quality of incomers to form partnership with the original stock, under well considered restrictions, might have proved propitious ; but as a dump- ing-ground for the refuse of eft'ete nations the inter- mixture is fatal to the welfare of a progressive people. In our own case the custom as applied during the last half-century has destroyed representative democracy as originally existing, and blotted out any possibility of a pure Anglo-American race in the states united by the founders of the republic. The doctrine of assimilation sounded pleasantly in Puritan ears. It was beautiful in theory, but theories and ideals are not everlasting in practice. Up to a certain point the free admission of aliens was profitable, but with the incoming age of graft they only added to the general corruption. A factory for turning out ready- made citizens, where native land and love of country are lacking, does not show the best results. Of every thousand inhabitants in the United States, 351 — they or their parents — are foreign born; 107 are negroes; while less than half of the remainder are descendants of the four million colonists of 1790. In Massachusetts, the keystone of Yankeedom, there were in 1910, 117,000 Russians, 89,000 Italians, 48,000 Scandi- navians, 35,000 Austrians, 30,000 Germans. 26,000 Portu- guese, 16,000 Turks, 11,000 Greeks, 10,000 Finns, with 36 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC 100,000 aliens still coming in every year. Of whites of native parentage in New York city there are only 19.3 per cent, and in Chicago 20.4 per cent. Of the 13,000,000 aliens arriving since 1900, over half of them were Catholics. And now that every able bodied man in Europe is required for the butcher, future immigration from that quarter is not likely to improve in quality. There are communities in the south where three fourths of the population are negroes, and there are midcontinent communities of alien dolts, many of whom cannot speak the English language, and who have as proper conception of American institutions and ideals as so many mules, yet all fit and proper for American citizenship. Obviously another of our lost opportunities ; for, as before intimated, had we economized our lands and limited our citizenship we might now present in place of this unhappy hybridism the finest race on earth, with public wealth enough to pay all the expenses of govern- ment to the end of time. Of a truth we ought not to curse the Chinaman for declining American citizenship but rather to bless him, to bless his coppery skin, his eyes aslant and his worshipful pigtail ; his clattering feet, and swinging market basket, and his sanctimonious Joss before whom he prays to his thirty thousand devils. Let us thank him that he does not envy our Irish rulers, does not want to be congress- man, or run labor unions, or bribe supervisors, or hold nihilistic seances, but just to do faithful, humble work and take his small earnings back to China to make happy the diminutive slave-wife and little demijohns forever after ; or should fateful death overtake him to have his little bundle of aromatic bones returned over-sea to their original dust, carefully guarded for the Stygian journey, 37 2601:^0 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC lest peradventure there should set in amalgamation with those of the Christian devils. In the early gold-diggings days, with the criminal element from every nation v/e absorbed England's Aus- tralian convicts, with such of Russia's Siberian population as could make their escape, amalgamating these with the rest, all of them who were not hanged or driven away by the vigilance committee. And never a voice from Ireland on the classic sand-hills, "The S3'dney ducks must go!" Assimilation ! Something of a fiasco after all is it not? We begin by assimilating and end by being assimilated. We begin by absorbing low-grade people from Europe and end in being absorbed by them. We pass out freely our naturalization papers until we bring upon ourselves denationalization. There is no longer an Anglo-American republic; the race of the founders is fast disappearing, and we have only to make the best of the heterogeneous humanity that has taken its place. Assimilation, how glorious! Imported citizens, patriots, lovers of country, plentiful and cheap. Before the present inhuman conflict brought out in bloody relief the true mind and character of the Teutonic race we regarded German immigrants as among the best material for American citizenship, and we must still differentiate between the loyal Americanized Germans who, they or their ancestors, were among the builders of the nation, and some of the later hyphenates who are false to their sworn allegiance, traitors to the land of their adoption, bomb-planters and incendiaries, worthy disciples of the kaiser. We may further note the similarity in the methods of the murderous German sympathizers and the murder- ous labor leaders in attaining their ends. 38 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC There are Germans who would fight for the land of their adoption, just as Anglo-Americans would fight England again if necessary ; there are many Germans among the later hyphenated who would not. As to the Germans who have developed under militarism and kaiser kultur, they are of a different order of humanity from anything elsewhere existing. This they themselves claim, and we willingly concede it. The kaiser is their god, and a very bad god too; as unscrupulous as a medieval rol)ber baron, and as blood-thirsty as a pirate of the Spanish main; their ideals are hellish, their acts the worst con- ceivable by man. They love murder for murder's sake, cruelty is a pastime and pleasure, and terrorism the first principle of their war tactics. And yet Berlin journalists wonder why Germans are not loved ! The question itself shows a dementia, shows a total absence of any moral sense. The Germans are a race apart, just as hyenas are a class by themselves, and might as well wonder why they are not loved. To tell the Germans why they are not loved, why they are hated and abhorred by all nations is not a difficult task. Does civilized humanit}'^ love savage beasts or poisonous rep- tiles, whether in the form of divine kaiser or unified professor? Do men of honor love lies and trickery, fore- sworn faith and broken promises? Do men of morals love the ethics of brute force, void of conscience, void of humanity, void of any sense of right and wrong? Look at Belgium, Oh tearful Teutons ! and consider the Lusitania; consider your butcheries of defenceless men women and children, your rapes and robberies, your wanton cruelty and injustice at every hand, then a.sk not why all nations hate Germany ! And how about entering a neutral nation, and through a contemptible system of espionage, lx)ml)-planting. and assassination yield up your last scrap of tattered honor? 39 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC Learned doctors and professors, whom we have hitherto accredited with deep thought and sound logic, are apparently as enslaved by their Teutonic supersti- tions as the ignorant soldier in the trenches fighting for he knows not what. Or is it that they must hold with their kaiser or cease to be Germans and quit the country? At all events, whatever it is, whether stupidity or hypoc- risy, it is not a proper element of progress, nor yet a fertile soil in which to plant the true beautiful and good. It is not alone the cruelty, brutality, and injustice of the Germans that shock the civilized world, but that the learning and refinement of thi^ great nation should be given up. to defend, or even to praise such fiendishness shows an astounding depravity such as the. world never could have imagined and can never forget. Germany, these wiseacres are wont to say, has of late contributed more than any other nation to the progress and enlightenment of the world. Whether this be true or not they might correctly add that she has also con- tributed more to the villainies and brutalities of the world than were ever dreamed of as possible since Christ was here preaching peace. We can well spare Germany from the family of nations, with all the good she has done, if she will take with her the wrongs she has committed against the souls as well as the bodies of men. The truth is that a large percentage of the hyphenated in America, Germans and others, never have really amal- gamated and never will, the amalgam adhering only dur- ing fair weather or when profitable. Time will test further the loyalty of Americanized aliens. As to the dependence which may be placed upon union lalior, and the devotion of its members to the country they live in and from which they derive sup])ort, we have an example in England, where they not only refuse to fight, but resort to strikes. for less work and 40 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC more pay, thus crippling British arms in the nation's dire extremity. Again, to avoid conscription necessary to save their own dear native isle from the destroyer. Irishmen are fleeing to America, though the kaiser promises them independence to spite England as soon as he has made their country like Belgium. When conscription comes to America will they and their brothers hyphenate fly back to their potato patch, or hasten farther west to China? Other good qualities attend the Chinese worker in California. It was not the lowest grade of laborers that came hither; the infamous coolie system never obtained in the United States. John is no time-server, this little fellow from the celestial hills, nor pauper. He does not demand like the children of Nippon by virtue of, their high heathenism the best of everything and all for nothing. He does not crowd out the white residents from the better streets nor force himself into public schools ; he requires but little hospital service, as he has his own doctor and appliances. He is of less expense to the gov- ernment than any other alien. Even in court short work is made of his case, as he is either quickly hanged or sent to prison to work his way through. Even to-day, after sixty years of bad treatment on our part, China still holds open her door and invites us to enter and take possession industrially. "Others will do so if you do not," says Minister Chow Tzu Chi, "liut .we prefer Americans." How can we refuse? Yet how can we accept while driving these worthy people from our shores, thus adopting the barbarism which we forced' them to discard half a century ago. The Japanese are quite a difl^erent aft'air. Germany and Japan are predatory nations ; one the world's ex- emplar in blood-lust, the other an apt imitator; one old in sin and civilization,. the other still instinctively wild and 41 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC immature. In the absence of any ethical conception the morals of both, or what stands for morals, are founded on force, brute force the only measure of right and wrong, of which militarism is the essence and exponent. Under such tutelage, and with the skill therefrom acquired, Japan can well afford to reiterate expressions of friend- ship for the United States, as no nation ever before played so completely as ours into the hands of a relentless com- petitor and natural and miscrupulous rival. Then why is it, or rather why was it in the first in- stance, before the concocting of an obstructive treaty, that after excluding the Chinese, the Japanese, the more disturbing and unwelcome element were admitted? Be- cause, first, there was no exile of Erin on the San Fran- cisco sand-lot to sound the tocsin of the demagogues so successful as applied to th-e Chinese? Then we were amused and pleased to see how ready the little pagans were to throw off the outlandish toggeries of Buddha and put on the paraphernalia of our civilization. And they were so polite and plausible withal, so sublime in their pretentions, so artful in their impudence, which after all was but the impudence of ignorance, permitting us to profit a little by them while they profited much more by us. Moreover, their arrogance and adaptability were fortified with guns, which they learned to shoot, never the while being concerned about death, a matter they left to the gods. Add to this our indifference, the inattention of the disciples of Dennis, and the alertness of the Japanese, and we have the situation pretty fairly before us. Surrounded by the influences into which young Japan is unfolding, where as Kipling says "there is no crime, no cruelty, no abomination that the mind of man can con- ceive which the German has not perpetrated," to what 42 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC heights of greatness may the Nipponese not attain in another half century? The hopes and expectations of the Germans are vested in a Christian kaiser, those of the Japanese in a pagan mikado, the one a necessarian the other a fatalist, with little to choose between them ; both are special envoys of the Creator, and endowed with his wisdom and goodness. The arrogance and impudence of the pagan is exceeded only by the stupendous pretentions of the Chris- tian. The individual subject is as potter's clay in the hands of these rulers. Thus may be seen at a glance the prostitution of Christian ideals and the paganism of kaiser kultur. Predatory peoples are pirates ; their ethics the ethics of pirates, their pledges the pledges of pirates, their re- ligion the religion of pirates and of pagans, their con- science the conscience of the Apache, merit in murder. Germany's one excuse for broken faith, "it was neces- sary." It was necessary to kill, it was necessary to steal. Never a promise with Korea did Japan keep, never a treaty with China. Germany breaks her word and dis- regards treaties ; Nippon does the same. Germany loots Europe ; Nippon loots China. Germany is Christian, — God save the mark ; Nippon is pagan. Both are alike bar- baric ; each sees in its chief ruler the divine essence in- carnate ; he is invincible and can do no wrong. And as intimidation is the primary principle of predatory warfare, best to intimidate cruelty, intrigue, treachery, and every possible phase of infamy is employed without restriction. The art is the same as that employed by savages of the woods, war paint, feathers, and bluster attended by butcheries and burnings, outrages exceeding if possible those of the Torquemada torture chamber. Just now emerging from barbarism with predatory in- stincts in full force, pillage and plunder still comes as 43 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC natural to Japanese as ever. They have no sense of obli- gation. They fight for plunder and because they love to dominate. China would be justified in sweeping from the turtle's back its little men, and some dav may do so when she fully awakens. Militarism is the proper system for a predatory people, — every man a soldier and every soldier a serf, success in murder and robbery being' the chief mark of merit. Their majesties of Berlin and Plades have much in common, with little Nippon a close third in the running. Mean- while Satan sleeps, well satisfied with the faithfulness and efficiency of his servants. Either Japan, with Germany, must abolish militarism or the United States must adopt more drastic methods, not for aggression but for defense. There is no other way unless we would become as Belgium is, or as China. The Japanese are ambitious, restless, unscrupulous. Since their enforced emancipation from barbarism before the guns of Commodore Perry in 1853 they have made giant strides in the amenities and trickeries of European civilization. They are dangerous rivals, doul)ly danger- ous to California, since an astute congress, while fearing them, has turned over to them the domination of the Pacific. Their demands however impudent, we must hear and consider, for they do things. With their cheap labor and ship subsidies they are not only fast controlling commerce, but their merchant marine is training sailors which will give them naval supremacy as well. It is only by a superior navy and the strongest coast defense that we can escape ultimate conflict. Already Japan has' her Bernhardi and book for the capture of the United States and the disposition of the spoils. Germany keeps secret the subtleties of her strength ; America opens her doors, and even sends professors abroad to teach paganism how best to despoil her, and 44 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC to this insane propaganda they give names as world enlig-htenment and brotherly love. Japan declares openly for aggressive militarism, the most infamous doctrine ever advanced by any savage or so-called civilized people. Germany's moral law is briitism, with power, pretence and treachery the watchwords of her advancement. When we receive from a nation void of gratitude only abuse for favors granted ; when for delivering them from the depths of ignorance we are charged with having sent that "rough barbarian Perry to our beautiful and peaceful shores, to our sweet-smelling land of cherry blossoms and scented forests ;" when for the gifts of free schools, free universities, free hospitals, free court service and prisons — for the labor leaders have had removed for the benefit of their proteges even so small a support of the government as the poll-tax ; when with all we have given them we do not give them more — all we have would scarcely satisfy them — we are denounced as "a nation of thieves with hearts of rabbits," with the rallying cry, "let us take to our arms, both by sea and land, and punish these devils," it would seem that university or any other extension for the benefit of the Japanese at the cost of our tax-payers is somewhat superfluous. Wherefore might we suggest to these thrice blessed pagans of Nippon, that if they would remain within their beautiful and peaceful shores, and smell of their cherry blossoms and scented forests, attending only to their own affairs, and not go sniffing abroad for blood and plunder, picking up and pilfering hither and yon, it is all we would ask or demand of them. Encouraged by success in conflicts with weaker powers Japan regards herself invincible, and bides her time to strike ; when she does strike it will be the be- ginning of the end either with Japan or with us. 45 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC Of one thing we may rest assured, if not indeed of two, — first the Japanese will never be satisfied until they have fought America ; and secondly they will win, as they always win in China, unless we are fully prepared to meet them. Already the}^ are regarding California with the same invidious eye so constantly cast on China, and the more placating we appear the greater will be their presumption. Would we teach Asia further the tricks of our western civilization, let China be the beneficiary, while we go to school to Nippon and there learn some things which we have never taught. And as for Germany, missing the contemplated theft and assassination of Paris, and the immediate conquest of Europe, for which let all the world forever thank Belgium, may it not be possible that the kaiser now finds himself with the proverbial bull by the tail, fearing to relinquish his hold until terms of peace are settled? He would retain Belgium, which cannot be until England France and Italy are wiped out, for to retain Belgium would be wiping out England France and Italy. Summary : We cannot have a World Centre of In- dustry arotmd San Francisco bay without manufactures ; we cannot have manufactures without cheap labor; we cannot have cheap labor of the best quality without the admission of the Chinese ; we cannot have the Chinese or other cheap labor without an administration at Wash- ington which after due consideration as to its own per- jietuity, can find time for a little honest and common sense legislation in the interests of the people, — legisla- tion possibly tinctured with patriotism; this, and the extermination at San Francisco of labor monopolists and exploiters of the workingman. 46 THE FIRST PORT OF THE PACIFIC In this great work San Francisco bay and California are one; city and harbor, slate ocean and shore are a unit ; San Francisco bay signifies California, and Cali- fornia means San Francisco, all one and indivisible ; each in its sphere doing its Avork and sharing in the pleasure and profit of it. while the glory of magnificent achievement shall fall on all alike. All this those who lay the foundations for San Fran- cisco's future, whether near or remote will have for their serious consideration. The development is sure to come, and along these lines; it can come by none other. And when the people of San Francisco bay are ready to unite and purge themselves of prejudice and their several cities of industrial and political demagogism ; when with energy and fearlessness they are ready to take their destiny into their own hands, determined on securing for themselves the supremacy of Avhat rightly belongs to them, whether on sea or shore, with "Made at San Francisco" a hall- mark of merit the world over, there will be such an indus- trial development in this last great Centre of Industry as has never yet appeared in any age or nation. 47 1 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 1 Form L9-Series 444 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY PAMPHLET BINDER Stockton, Calif. 3 1158 01175 6169 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001 126 335 7