Part 11 (2/2)

We see its evil effects on the State, but seem unable to shake off the grip of Commercialism which is responsible for it. We will never shake off that grip until we can rise to the higher level of patriotism which will subordinate Commerce and Industry to the welfare of Humanity.

Unless we are willing to accept, as the inevitable end of our civilization, the fate of all the Ancient Civilizations, we must remember that no nation can endure in which one cla.s.s is exploited for the benefit of another. The same rule applies inexorably to any attempt by the people of one country to exploit the people of another and live on their labor.

If an armed conflict should be precipitated in the near future between this country and j.a.pan it will grow out of racial controversies resulting from an effort to exploit the j.a.panese in the United States in the same way that we are exploiting the immigrants from European countries. The difficulty that now faces the people of the United States with reference to the j.a.panese problem arises from the fact that we can neither exploit, nor exclude, nor a.s.similate the j.a.panese, nor can we, under present conditions, survive their economic compet.i.tion within our own territory.

Let the question of exploitation be first considered. There is a strong contingent of Americans on the Pacific Coast who openly advocate j.a.panese immigration. They argue that our proud and superior race will not condescend to do the ”_squat labor_,” as they term it, that is necessary to get the gold from the gardens of California--and from her vast plantations of potatoes, vegetables, and other food products that are grown on the marvelously fertile soil of that State. So they want the j.a.panese to come and do the ”squat labor” while the Aristocratic Anglo-Saxon reaps the lion's share of the profits as the owner of the land.

_They tried that once with the Chinese, with what result?_

That the docile and subservient Chinese were the best field laborers that were ever found by any body of plantation-owners, and for a time the Caucasian owners of the orchards and vineyards and lordly demesnes of California prospered mightily from the profits earned for them by the labor of the lowly Chinese.

_But what happened?_

The Chinese were not only faithful and industrious, they were frugal as well. They saved their money. Soon they were not only laborers, but also capitalists, in a small way. Then they began to buy land and work in their own fields, gardens, and orchards. The industries that produced food from land as the result of intensive cultivation with human labor were rapidly pa.s.sing into the hands of the Chinese. They were rapidly buying the lands which were the basis of those industries. They were ceasing to work for the benefit of another race. They worked for themselves and their own benefit.

And that was not all. One after another every manufacturing industry in California in which human labor was a large element of production was being absorbed by the Chinese. First they worked for American Manufacturers. Then they became their own employers and the American Manufacturer was forced out of business by the economic compet.i.tion of a stronger race. In the end, it came to be seen of all men that the Caucasian Manufacturer, the Caucasian Wageworker, and the Caucasian Landowner, and food producer, were gradually surrendering to and being eliminated by the economic compet.i.tion of the Chinese.

So we excluded the Chinese.

If we had not done so, in less than a generation the Pacific Coast would have been a Chinese Country, and no oppression or mistreatment to which they could have been subjected would have prevented it, if they had been allowed to continue the process of commercial and agricultural absorption that had progressed so far before we finally excluded them.

Now the j.a.panese are repeating the same process of absorption. We cannot exclude them, and if we undertook to do so, it would only be postponing the evil day, when such a policy would breed an armed conflict. The j.a.panese regard the law that prohibits their acquisition of land as a violation of our treaty with them. They look to our own Courts to finally decide it to be unconst.i.tutional. It may be a long time coming, but the final result of the law preventing them from acquiring land in California will be war with j.a.pan _unless other measures are adopted to supplement one that will ultimately prove so futile_.

The exclusion of the j.a.panese from the right to acquire land, but still permitting them to lease land, makes the situation more dangerous than it was before. It adds to all the dangers of the purely economic struggle which resulted from Chinese Compet.i.tion, the additional danger of all the bad blood that a tenantry system inevitably develops. Every lease-hold will develop into a breeding place for friction and conflict between individual landlords and tenants, as well as conflicts between them as opposing cla.s.ses, and will result finally in the same racial controversies that led up to the pa.s.sage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Already the j.a.panese tenantry in the Delta of the San Joaquin River have formed a protective a.s.sociation to enable them to oppose the organized power of the ma.s.s against any objectionable conditions imposed by their landlords, as well as to fix the rental they are willing to pay. Does anyone doubt that such a tenantry system will in time breed as much controversy as the Nonresident Landlord System has caused in Ireland?

The j.a.panese Tenantry System in California must in the very nature of things be a Nonresident Landlord System. It can be nothing else. The community will be j.a.panese. The landlord will seek a home elsewhere, in a Caucasian community. His only thought will be to get all he can from those whose labor produces his income. Their only thought will be to make that amount as small as possible. We have created another ”Irrepressible Conflict.” Whether we will adjust it without a resort to arms is a very grave question.

One of the most dangerous elements in this complicated problem is the self-complacent ignorance and refusal to face facts which characterizes the att.i.tude of the people not only of the western half, but more particularly those of the eastern half of the United States. Not long ago a paroxysm of protest resulted from a rumor that a few hundred j.a.panese were about to settle in Michigan. But not the slightest heed is paid to the fact that a sister State has this problem already within her body politic eating like a cancer at her very vitals; that she is powerless to effectively settle the question by herself alone; and that no national disposition exists to settle it in the only way it can possibly be settled. The way to settle it is not by building more battles.h.i.+ps, or enlarging our standing army, or in any way increasing our naval or military burdens, or doing anything that will now or hereafter tend to put the neck of the American people under the heel of militarism. There can be no settlement of this question other than the one urged in this book. The question is economic, and the settlement must be economic.

j.a.pan wants no war with us now. Of that we may rest a.s.sured. But any such treatment of the j.a.panese as we extended to the Chinese would bring war instantly. Whether the racial animosity that j.a.panese compet.i.tion within our own territory will inevitably create can be controlled, and conflict caused by it averted, may well be doubted, unless the people of the entire United States will recognize the problem as vital and national, and forthwith apply the only possible practicable solution.

We must recognize both the necessity and the right of j.a.panese expansion into new territories. That expansion means the upbuilding of enormous populations of j.a.panese in those countries. If ten millions of the most vigorous of j.a.pan's teeming population could be transplanted from their native country to garden homes in other countries bordering the Pacific, where their allegiance to j.a.pan would be unaffected, and colonies developed that would bear the same relation to the mother country that Canada bears to Great Britain, it would vastly benefit those who remained in j.a.pan as well as those who emigrated. There must be such an emigration. It cannot be prevented. The United States should not oppose it.

But where shall they go?

_To the Philippines?_

There you project a controversy even by discussion. Of course j.a.pan will not colonize the Philippines while we control them. Aside from that, the climate is undesirable. The j.a.panese want to colonize where they can reproduce their racial strength. The climate of the Philippines would destroy it. Generations will elapse before the j.a.panese will covet the Philippines in order to colonize them, though she might want them for other reasons.

_Shall they go to Manchuria?_

Yes, to some extent, but the great body of the overflowing population of j.a.pan will not go to Manchuria.

It is a bleak, cold, dreary, and inhospitable country, already to a large extent cultivated and populated.

The j.a.panese will not go to Manchuria for another reason.

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