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eventually protect them and render them justice and peace. deal of anxiety has, in the meantime, been experienced by them. is but natural, and this unrest has been reflected across the ocean. Some of us who feel that we are better acquainted with the situation, have taken the position that our best course must come from education and we have been doing our utmost in what we characterize as an "Americanization campaign." We point out to our fellow-countrymen the better elements in American civilization, urging them to strive for their own improvement and better fit themselves for American life, hoping thereby to be relieved of the anxiety created and reenforced by the constant agitation against them. Our Americanization campaign will prove fruitless unless backed by true sympathy on the part of Americans. We regret to say that even to these efforts on our part there has been given but little response or sympathy.

May we not then appeal to you, Mr. President, and ask your powerful aid in so adjusting our condition on this coast that we may engage in legitimate pursuits and live in peace?

A census of the Japanese in California, taken in September, 1918, shows the following facts: The total Japanese population is 68,983, composed of 41,842 male adults, 12,232 female adults, 7877 male children and 7031 female children. Of these the farmers and their families number 19,044, while farm laborers and their families count 18,968. In other words, more than 50 per cent of the Japanese in the state are engaged in agriculture and horticulture. The remainder are engaged in commerce, in domestic service, transportation, factories, canneries, etc.

The Japanese in agriculture constitute the most important element in number as well as in other respects. And thus it happens that whatever hostility now exists is generally directed against this particular clement. The status of this element may be briefly stated. The most recent investigations show the number and acreage of farms cultivated by Japanese under various methods as follows:

Again, the following table shows the crops raised by the Japanese farmers, as well as their values:

To illustrate more concretely how the Japanese farmers have achieved their present position the following illustration may be given. In 1918 Japanese farmers in the Sacramento Valley contributed more than 1,000,000 sacks of rice to the food supply of the United States and its allies. They planted 25,000 acres to rice in the five counties of Sutter, Yuba, Colusa, Glenn and Butte. This year the total acreage devoted to the same industry has increased to 140,000, of which 33,000 acres are cultivated by Japanese. They expect to harvest 9,400,000 bushels. Of these the Japanese share is expected to reach 2,400,000 bushels.

This immensely prosperous industry, which in eight years has assumed a commanding position in the Sacramento Valley, was first put on a safe commercial basis and proved a success by Japanese. Japanese were not the first to try rice in California, but they were the first to make it a commercial proposition. They were the first to apply with practical success the experimental results of the government rice station at Biggs. And they were the ones who stuck to rice through all the years before the industry emerged from its uncertainties and became firmly established.

The Japanese demonstrated success and the American farmers who have since been getting rich out of the industry and who now greatly outnumber the Japanese rice planters, must admit that their prosperity is founded on the structure built by the daring and persistence of the Japanese.

There is something more. This pioneering developed a huge food production on land that in most cases will not grow anything else. It is admitted that the rice industry has been created out of nothing.

Certainly the lands on which it has been built up were next to nothing before the persistent industry of the pioneers demonstrated that rice would grow on them. It is a curious fact that rice can not be grown successfully in California except on the poorest lands. The very conditions that spoil the land for other crops are the ones necessary to the success of rice. On good soils rice grows so rankly that the heads do not mature until too late, bringing the harvest past the beginning of the rainy season. Hardpan close to the surface, the bane of land where it occurs, is essential to rice growing. Rice fields must be kept flooded through the growing season. Consequently hardpan must be present to hold the water. Most of the lands now devoted to rice are so impregnated with alkali that only salt grass grew on them before.

The growers had everything to learn. Americans were at a loss because the varieties they were familiar with in the South were not successful. And though a Japanese rice, the Wataribune variety, finally became the commonest one grown, even Japanese farmers familiar with rice growing in their own country were no better off. In Japan rice is cultivated intensively. The young plants are germinated in seed beds to be transplanted in small paddies, where they are cultivated by hand. Such methods are impossible in rice growing on a large scale as it is practiced in California.

Consequently the early rice growers, Japanese and American, lost money. Most of them quit. But one Japanese stuck to it and thereby earned the title of pioneer in California rice growing. That was K. Ikuta, who never quit, but is still growing and successfully. And ten years ago the land now devoted to rice growing was worth no more than ten dollars an acre. No one will now sell the same land for less than one hundred dollars. The rental on these lands varies from thirty-five to forty-five dollars. Is not this a substantial creation of wealth for the state?

Again, vast acres along the lower Sacramento and the San Joaquin reclaimed from an original condition of swamp and tule beds, long reaches of orchard and vineyard on the east side of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys developed from a semidesert, where at the best only crops of hay or grain were produced before, great areas of garden and orchard in the Santa Clara Valley which, in like fashion, have sprung up on former hay fields, and many other improvements in various parts of the state testify to the pioneering of the Japanese. An American writer says:

"The most striking feature of Japanese farming in California has been this development of successful orchards, vineyards or gardens on land that was either completely out of use or else employed for far less. profitable purposes. Ignorant of the facts of the case, we have been inclined to believe in California that Japanese farmers have merely taken over lands and farms of American farmers and continued the business as they found it. The slightest study, however, shows this conclusion to be a complete error.

The Japanese farmer in California has always been a great developer and improver. Where he has taken over lands that were in use before his time he has almost always, if not always, put them to a far higher use and made them far more valuable than they were before. But with a great proportion of the lands he now farms he has developed them out of nothing, or next to nothing.

He is the skillful agriculturist who has done so much to bring out the riches of the vast delta of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento. He is the vine planter who has transformed the poor clay lands of Florin, Acampo and Lodi into rich vineyards. He is the horticulturist who dared to settle on the shifting sands of Livingston, in Merced County, and Bowles, in Fresno County, and turned those wastes into valuable orchard and vineyard. He is the adventurer who had the nerve to level the formidable 'hog wallow' lands along the thermal belt in Tulare County and plant on them the oranges and vines, the proved success of which has changed these spring sheep pastures into another prosperous extension of the citrus region, of California. He is the persistent experimenter who hung on in rice growing until it became a success.

In all this and in much more the Japanese farmer was the pioneer. It must not be thought that he struck out these successes for himself alone. He does not enjoy alone the wealth he created and the prosperity he produced. In all these places his daring and industry immensely increased the value not only of the lands he had bought or leased, but as well of those of the American landholders in the vicinity. His success as a pioneer was the example that brought many times his number of American farmers to these localities to engage with profit in the industries which he had demonstrated for their benefit.

Prosperous as the Japanese farmers in California are, it is just to say that they have produced for American farmers many times the wealth they have gained for themselves. In the enhancement of land values alone Japanese farmers have added millions to the total wealth of the state. This means not only the enlarged value of the lands they have farmed and improved, but also the increased value of the neighboring lands. In all the once hopeless districts in which Japanese farmers have made a success the American farmers who came after have them to thank."

Of course, these achievements are not without sacrifices. In many other places in California besides the river regions the Japanese farmers have met, fought with and overcome unhealthful conditions. They have not overcome them without fearful losses. In Fresno County alone, in the earlier days of development, when water and sanitary conditions were bad, the Japanese lost 3000 lives. It is not too much to say that the lives of these Japanese boys were expended in the service of the state and the United States.

Furthermore, the Japanese farmer has never been content to do merely as well as the American farmer under whom he learned farming in California. When he has not been pioneering new land he has always found a way to make the soil produce a better and more profitable crop than it did before.

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Perhaps the most brilliant example of Japanese agricultural pioneering in California is the colony at Livingston. That unique colony in Merced County, where Japanese and American live and work in friendly cooperation, animated by common purposes of good citizenship, still remains the highest example of Japanese settlement in California.. The Japanese of Livingston, where 85 per cent of their numbers are Christians, have in the past year organized a church and called a pastor. The new church, which is nondenominational, was organized, the Livingston Japanese explain, because the older people of the colony can not understand services in English. The idea is that eventually all, Japanese and Americans, shall go to the same church, but at present the elders who do not speak much English, and the little children, go to the Japanese church and Sunday school while the older children attend the American church.

The Colony Association owns ten acres which has been set aside for the church buildings and a public park. The Association meeting hall, in the park, has been enlarged and now serves for church services as well as for public meetings. American citizens of the community have presented the Japanese meeting hall with a large American flag and a portrait of President Wilson.

Let one of the colonists speak.

"The following points are, in my opinion, the most conspicuous reasons, among others, why the Japanese colonists in this place are able to keep their social order comparatively systematically:

In the first place, the pioneer Japanese settlers here bought their lands and cultivated them with their own hands.

In the second place, I must not forget to point out the kindness of our American neighbors to us.

The third point is the fact that most of the Japanese residents in this place are followers of Christianity.

Lastly, there is one thing that I want to call to the attention of thoughtful Americans and Japanese in California. It is the question of the Japanese farmers in California. I do not mean to discuss the immigration problem, which has been discussed by many able persons. But we must admit the fact that, because of the Alien Land Law, prohibiting the ownership of land by Japanese and prohibiting land leases for more than three years, most of the Japanese in the state, with their families, are forced to wander about from one place to another without any definite aim of settling down.

Under such circumstances must they not only earn their living, but support their families and give their children education. Most of their children, being native born citizens of this country, naturally look on this country as their own fatherland, and consequently it is needless to say that it is the duty of their parents as well as of society itself to give them a sound education and to make them good and able citizens of the United States. Education does not always give a man personality. Building up of manhood and noble personality depends largely on the conditions of the home and outside influences in childhood and boyhood. I believe, therefore, that with a strong conviction of our responsibility