Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1920, Volume III

811.5294/57

The Governor of California (Stephens) to the Secretary of State

Sacramento, June 19, 1920.
[Received June 30.]

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.⁵

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 agricultural labor has developed to such a degree that at the present time between 80 and 90 percent 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 county 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 Japanese people and the consequential alternative of increasing a population whose very race isolation must be fraught with the gravest consequences.

California stands as an outpost on the western edge of occidental civilization. Her people are the sons or the followers of the Argonauts who wended their way westward over the plains of the middle west, the Rocky Mountains and the desert; and here they set up their homes and planted their flags; and here, without themselves recognizing it at the time, they took the farthest westward step that the white man can take. From our shores roll the waters of the Pacific. From our coast the mind’s eye takes its gaze and sees on the other shores of that great ocean the teeming millions of the Orient, with its institutions running their roots into the most venerable antiquity, its own inherited philosophy and standards of life, its own peculiar races and colors.

The Pacific, we feel, is shortly to become one of the most important highways of commerce on this earth. Amity and concord and that interchange of material goods as well as ideas, which such facilities offer, will inevitably take place to the benefit of both continents. But that our white race will readily intermix with the yellow strains of Asia, and that out of this inter-relationship shall be born a new composite human being is manifestly impossible. Singularly enough, while historical facts are not always susceptible of scientific demonstration, it is true, if our study serves us, that the blood fusion of the Occident and the Orient has nowhere ever successfully taken place. Whether the cause be but a social sense of repugnance, or whether it be insuperable scientific hindrances, is utterly beside the question.

We stand today at this point of western contact with the Orient, just as the Greeks who settled in Asia Minor three thousand years ago stood at its eastern point. And while Mesopotamia and the country to the east thereof were the highways of intercourse between the Orient of that time and the Occident of that era, and while, historically, there was much of contact and conflict between the types representing the two standards of civilization, history does not show any material fusion of either blood or idea between these peoples.

California harbors no animosity against the Japanese people or their nation. California, however, does not wish the Japanese people to settle within her borders and to develop a Japanese population within her midst. California views with alarm the rapid growth of these people within the last decade in population as well as in land control, and foresees in the not distant future the gravest menace of serious conflict if this development is not immediately and effectively checked. Without disparaging these people of just sensibilities, we cannot look for intermarriage or that social interrelationship which must exist between the citizenry of a contented community.

It may be an exquisite refinement, but we cannot feel contented at our children imbibing their first rudiments of education from the lips of the public school teacher in class-rooms crowded with other children of a different race. They do not and will not associate in that relationship prevalent elsewhere in the public schools of this country. We recognize that this attitude is too deep-seated to remove. And we recognize that with this attitude goes the necessity of Japanese isolation and that inevitable feeling which socially a proscribed race always develops.

California wants peace. But California wants to retain this commonwealth for her own peoples where they may grow up and develop their own ideals. We are confronted at this time by the problems that have arisen in the Hawaiian Islands, where the Japanese have now developed to an extent which gives them a preponderance, I am informed, in the affairs of that territory. That mistake of Hawaii must not, and California is determined shall not, be repeated here.

This communication and the report accompanying it are prompted by a situation prevailing in California today which we hope may lead to diplomatic correspondence on your part with the Empire of Japan. In 1913 the Legislature of this State passed a statute forbidding the ownership of agricultural lands by Japanese and limiting their tenure to three year leaseholds. It was the hope at that time that the enactment of this statute might put a stop to the encroachments of the Japanese agriculturist. This legislation followed some years after a proposed bill by the Legislature providing for separate schools for Japanese students.

At the time of the school legislation, however, the appeal on behalf of the United States Government to refrain from enacting such a drastic law was very urgent and was supported by an assurance on the part of the Federal Government that necessary arrangements would be made with Japan stopping the further immigration of Japanese labor. These negotiations led to the so-called “Gentlemen’s Agreement.” There can be no doubt that it was the intent of our Government, by this agreement, to prevent the further immigration of Japanese laborers. Unfortunately, however, the hoped for results have not been attained.

Without imputing to the Japanese Government any direct knowledge on the subject, the statistics clearly show a decided increase in Japanese population since the execution of the so-called “Gentlemen’s Agreement”. Skillful evasions have been resorted to in various manners. “Picture brides” have been brought in and upon their arrival set to work on the farm lands; relatives of those already here were brought in under the guise of dependents; large numbers have come illegally across the Mexican border. As to the latter, of course, it is in the nature of things impossible to give official statistics, as those who came in this manner came illicitly. The realization of this lack of entire good faith on the part of the Japanese led the California Legislature in 1913 to pass the existing law, despite the expostulation of a distinguished predecessor of yours in your present office, who made an official visit to the Capitol of this State at that time.

Again, I deplore the necessity of stating that the spirit of the Anti-Alien Land Legislation passed in 1913 has been evaded and broken through the resort to certain legal subterfuges which have almost frustrated the very purpose of the enactment. These evasions have been accomplished through the medium of corporations, trustee stock ownership, trustee land ownership, and the device of having native infant children of Japanese parentage made grantees of agricultural lands controlled and operated exclusively by their non-eligible parents.

At the last session of the Legislature, held in the Spring of 1919, further legislation against the Japanese was proposed. At that time action was deferred mainly upon the advice of Secretary of State Lansing, who cabled from Versailles explaining to our Legislature that in view of the Peace Conference, then in session, at which Japan was a participant, any Japanese legislation would be unfortunate and strongly implying that it might seriously affect the result of the Peace Conference. Again, California patriotically acceded for the good of the whole country.

I took occasion at the same time to urge the Legislature of California to defer drastic action until the State had acquired reliable information on the subject through the medium of one of its important commissions, the State Board of Control. My views, as expressed then, and from which I have had no occasion to recede, were that the grave problem could not be effectually dealt with except through the medium of the Federal Government, and action by the Federal Government could only be secured by the presentation of reliable information.

I told the people of this State that upon the compilation of the necessary information I should deem it my duty to urge such action both by the State and Federal Government as the situation might require and the facts warrant. The accompanying report is the result of a painstaking search for the facts. In its cold, statistical way, it tells graphically our story. The human side is untouched. With this information officially presented to the people of our State, we must seek relief.

In dealing with this problem, we cannot very well take precedent out of the experience of the nation with the previous race question which so bitterly aroused all the sectional feelings of our people and led to the Civil War. There is one vital difference. The Japanese, be it said to their credit, are not of servile or docile stock. Proud of their traditions and history, exultant as they justly are at the extraordinary career of their country, they brook no suggestion of any dominant or superior race. Virile, progressive and aggressive, they have all the race consciousness which is inseparable from race quality.

And it is just because they possess these attributes in such marked degree and feel more keenly the social and race barriers which our people instinctively raise against them that they are driven to that race isolation and, I fear ultimately will reach that race resentment, which portend danger to the peace of our State in the future. In extending to them the just credit which is theirs, the thought does not occur to our people that because the Japanese come from a puissant nation, whose achievements on the field have brought it renown, that therefore our attitude should be moulded by pusillanimity or temporary expediency. We have faith in the willingness and power of our common country to protect its every part from foreign danger.

We also have faith, however, in the intelligence of the Japanese Empire itself to understand our attitude and recognize that it is prompted solely by that inherent desire of every race and type of people to preserve itself. We wish to impress most earnestly upon them the entire absence of every feeling that can betoken ill-will or be in the slightest degree disparaging. But with the same earnestness we insist, after this careful survey which we have caused to be made, that California is now amply justified in taking every step that will properly reduce this problem, and where the powers of the State shall fall short must appeal to the United States Government for that additional action necessary finally to solve this vexing problem.

At the present time an initiative measure is being circulated which in all probability will find a place upon our ballot at this coming election. The initiative measure is a land law even more stringent than the present one in that it not only forbids ownership, but the leasing of lands by the Japanese. It also makes more drastic the provisions against corporate ownership of land for the purpose of evading the Act. The measure, if adopted, will exhaust the State’s power in dealing with this great race problem. The bill, however, does not and will not, because the State legally cannot prevent Japanese control of our soil nor can it stop further immigration.

If the measure is adopted, inasmuch as it prohibits only the acquisition of interests in real estate, it will not I fear forestall the ingenuity of legal counsel in enabling the Japanese to remain in control of their agricultural holdings under various forms of personal employment contracts. And in this respect I am advised that it is impossible for the State to enact constitutional legislation prohibiting personal employment contracts with Japanese on account of various provisions in our Federal constitution, recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court, and also certain provisions of the treaty between Japan and the United States.

This being as far as the State can go, however, it will and should, in my opinion, by an overwhelming majority of the voters, enact the proposed initiative legislation. And, in my opinion, as an expression of protest by Californians, as a declaration of the purpose of this present population of ours to maintain its own standards and ideals, as a plea to the citizens of all the States in the Union, many of whom, because they have no contact with the problem might seem to look upon it as an unsubstantial one at this time, every voter in this State will and should cast his ballot for the measure. And for these reasons, expressing both my personal views and, I believe, the views of the overwhelming majority of the people of the State of California, I hope for a vote at the November election that will emphasize to the rest of the Nation the seriousness of the situation here today.

So far I have dealt with the subject only within the limits of state power. But as Governor of this State, I should feel myself recreant in my duty to its people if I did not with the present evidence before me and which I transmit to you, make this solemn appeal to you as the spokesman of our country in its international relationship to use your good offices with the Empire of Japan that stricter provisions be immediately agreed upon, making impossible any further evasion or violation of the spirit of the existing arrangement. How these negotiations should be initiated does not lie within my province to suggest. Indeed, I am confident that with these facts thus officially laid before you, your own good judgment will dictate the next step to be taken towards the desired agreement or treaty.

Let me also add that in addition to this appeal which I make to you for further diplomatic action, I feel impelled by a sense of duty to lay before you the cause of the State of California at this time. The initiative legislation may possibly lead to diplomatic inquiries and correspondence between yourself and the Empire of Japan. Anticipating such a contingency, I am desirous of submitting to you in an official manner this question from the Californian and the American standpoint.

Inasmuch as I am seeking on behalf of the people of California to deal with this problem in a broad and final way, I deem it proper to advise you further that we feel the full solution of this question cannot be had short of an exclusion act passed by Congress. It is my purpose, after transmitting this report to you, to communicate the information to our various Representatives and Senators in Congress that they may then be equipped to take up the cause of California and urge the passage of an exclusion act effectively disposing of this difficulty.

The exclusion act should, in my opinion, provide for the full exclusion of all Japanese, saving certain selected classes; it should further provide for the registration of all Japanese lawfully within the United States at the time that the act is passed; and further provide that the burden should be upon every Japanese within this country of proving his right to be here by the production of a certificate of registration. In this manner only do I believe that completely effective remedies can be found.

Japan should not take umbrage at us for adopting these measures. The like strict exclusion is today effective in every one of the British Colonies fronting on the Pacific Ocean and having contact with the Japanese. Nor has Japan’s valiant service in the late war, which she entered originally as an ally of Great Britain, obtained for her people the slightest amelioration of these drastic British Colonial laws. The British white races on the Pacific will not tolerate a situation from which we are now suffering. Why then should we? Or why should our action seem so much more aggravated than that of Japan’s ally, Great Britain?

Let me repeat that in submitting this report and transmitting this letter with its recommendations, the people of California only desire to retain the commonwealth of California for its own people; they recognize the impossibility of that peace-producing assimilability which comes only when races are so closely akin that intermarriage within a generation or two obliterates original lines. The thought of such a relationship is impossible to the people of California, just as the thought of intermarriage of whites and blacks would be impossible to the minds of the leaders of both races in the southern states; just as the intermarriage of any immigrant African would not be considered by the people of the Eastern States.

California is making this appeal primarily, of course, for herself, but in doing so she feels that the problem is hers solely because of her geographical position on the Pacific slope. She stands as one of the gateways for Oriental immigration into this country. Her people are the first affected, and unless the race ideals and standards are preserved here at the national gateway the conditions that will follow must soon affect the rest of the continent.

I trust that I have clearly presented the California point of view, and that in any correspondence or negotiations with Japan which may ensue as the result of the accompanying report, or any action which the people of the State of California may take thereon, you will understand that it is based entirely on the principle of race self-preservation and the ethnological impossibility of successfully assimilating this constantly increasing flow of Oriental blood.

I have [etc.]

Wm. D. Stephens

5. California and the Oriental, by State Board of Control of California (California State Printing Office, Sacramento, 1920); enclosure not printed.