Governor William D. Stephens of California presents The Oriental Question to Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby Washington, D. C. STATE OF CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR'S OFFICE SACRAMENTO, June 19, 1920. Hon. BAINBRIDGE COLBY, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C. SIR: I have the honor to transmit herewith the official report prepared and filed with me by the State Board of Control of California on the subject of Oriental immigration, population and land ownership. The subject is one of such transcendent importance to the people of California, and is so potential with future difficulties between the United States of America and the Oriental countries, that I deem it my duty in forwarding the report to outline in brief the history of the development of the Japanese problem in California, together with the legislation already enacted and that now pending. In doing so I trust I may be able clearly to lay before you the necessity of action. by our Federal government in the attainment of a permanent solution of this matter. While the report deals with the problem as an entire Asiatic one, the present acute situation is occasioned specifically by the increase in population and land ownership of the Japanese. Forty years ago the California race problem was essentially a Chinese problem. At that time our Japanese population was negligible. The Chinese immigrants, however, were arriving in such numbers that the people of the entire Pacific slope became alarmed at a threatened inundation of our white civilization by this Oriental influx. Popular feeling developed to such a pitch that many unfortunate incidents occurred of grave wrong done to individual Chinese as the result of mob and other illegal violence. Our country became awakened at the growing danger, and Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act providing for the exclusion of all Chinese laborers and the registration of all Chinese at that time lawfully within the country. The statute was sufficiently comprehensive effectively to exclude further Chinese immigration and to make difficult, if not impossible, the evasion of the spirit of the act. As a result of this enactment there has been a substantial reduction in the Chinese population of California. In the meantime, however, we have been developing an even more serious problem by reason of the influx to our shores of Japanese labor. Twenty years ago our Japanese population was nominal. Ten years ago the census reports of the United States government showed a Japanese population in California of 41,356. A survey and computation recently made by the Board of Control of the State of California indicates that at the present time this Japanese population has been more than doubled-it amounting now to 87,279. The best figures available indicate that our Japanese population comprises between 80 and 85 per cent of the total Japanese population of continental United States. The Japanese in our midst have indicated a strong trend to land ownership and land control, and by their unquestioned industry and application, and by standards and methods that are widely separated from our occidental standards and methods, both in connection with hours of labor and standards of living, have gradually developed to a control of many of our important agricultural industries. Indeed, at the present time they operate 458,056 acres of the very best lands in California. The increase in acreage control within the last decade, according to these official figures has been 412.9 per cent. In productive values-that is to say, in the market value of crops produced by them our figures show that as against $6,235,856 worth of produce marketed in 1909, the increase has been to $67,145,730, approximately tenfold. More significant than these figures, however, is the demonstrated fact that within the last ten years Japanese agriclutural labor has developed to such a degree that at the present time between 80 and 90 per cent of most of our vegetable and berry products are those of the Japanese farms. Approximately 80 per cent of the tomato crop of the state is produced by Japanese; from 80 to 100 per cent of the spinach crop; a greater part of our potato and asparagus crops, and so on. So that it is apparent without much more effective restrictions that in a very short time, historically speaking, the Japanese population within our midst will represent a considerable portion of our entire population, and the Japanese control over certain essential food products will be an absolute one. Aside from the economic aspect, however, and even more important than this, is the social problem inevitably developing to an acute degree. The figures contained in the report will not be understood in their true significance without the supplementary explanation that these land holdings and land products are in well-defined locations within the state and not spread broadcast. The Japanese, with his strong social race instinct, acquires his piece of land and, within an incredibly short period of time, large adjoining holdings are occupied by people of his own race. The result is that in many portions of our state we have large colonies of Japanese, the population in many places even exceeding the white population. These Japanese, by very reason of their use of economic standards impossible to our white ideals-that is to say, the employment of their wives and their very children in the arduous toil of the soil-— are proving crushing competitors to our white rural populations. The fecundity of the Japanese race far exceeds that of any other people that we have in our midst. They send their children for short periods of time to our white schools, and in many of the country schools of our state the spectacle is presented of having a few white children acquiring their education in classrooms crowded with Japanese. The deep-seated and often outspoken resentment of our white mothers at this situation can only be appreciated by those people who have struggled with similar problems. It is with great pride that I am able to state that the people of California have borne this situation and seen its developing menace with a patience and self-restraint beyond all praise. California is proud to proclaim to the nation that despite this social situation her people have been guilty of no excesses and no indignities upon the Japanese within our borders. No outrage, no violence, no insult and no ignominy have been offered to the Japanese people within California. It is also proper to state that I believe I speak the feelings of our people when I express to you a full recognition of the many admirable qualities of the Japanese people. We assume no arrogant superiority of race or culture over them. Their art, their literature, their philosophy, and, in recent years, their scientific attainments have gained for them a respect from the white peoples in which we, who know them so well, fully share. We have learned to admire the brilliancy of their art and the genius that these people display. We respect that deep philosophy which flows so placidly out of that wonderful past of theirs and which has come down through ages that antedate our Christian era. We join with the entire civilized world in our admiration of the tremendous strides which the Japanese nation itself has made in the last two generations unparalleled as its career is in the history of nations. We respect the right of the Japanese to their true development and to the attainment of their destiny. All these matters I am at pains to emphasize so as to convince you, and, through you the people of our United States, that this problem of ours is not an insignificant or temporary one. It is not factious. It has no origin in narrow race prejudice or rancor or hostility. It is, however, a solemn problem affecting our entire Occidental civilization. It has nothing to do with any pretensions of race superiority, but has vitally to do with race dissimilarity and unassimilability. But with all this the people of California are determined to repress a developing Japanese community within our midst. They are determined to exhaust every power in their keeping to maintain this state for its own people. This determination is based fundamentally upon the ethnological impossibility of assimilating the |