HW64 
 
 ^iispii^ 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 
 COLLECTION ON CHINA 
 
 AND THE CHINESE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 HN 64.B47 
 
 Our national tendency and Its goal ±ein 
 
 3 1924 023 300 910 
 
Pi Cornell University 
 fj Library 
 
 The original of tinis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023300910 
 
Our National Tendency and 
 its Goal 
 
 Being a discussion of the Political and Industrial direction 
 of the Unite! States under the influence of prevailing 
 economic forces, and statement of the causes 
 thereof, and the means to avert the con- 
 clusion to which those forces 
 are proceeding. 
 
 Together zvith 
 An Address before the Chinese 
 Students Association of Amer- 
 ica at its Convention held in San 
 Francisco in January, 1914 upon 
 
 The Student in Oriental Immigration 
 
 Considering the effect upon China and Japan of the Policy of the 
 United States in shutting off migration of the Orient with 
 the West, the real cause that moves industrial 
 migration, and the condition that con- 
 fronts Oriental Students seeking 
 education in the United 
 States, by reason of 
 these influences. 
 
 By JOHN E. BENNETT, of the San Francisco Bar 
 
3H7 
 
 Copies of this pamphlet may be had by 
 
 addressing the author, at 
 
 1310-11 Humboldt Bank Building, 
 
 San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 /d 
 
 ^5 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 SCHWABACHER-FREY STATIONERY CO., 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 1 I 
 
Our National Tendency and Its Goal 
 
 By J0?IN E. BENNETT. 
 
 In pursuing an economic subject we should bear always in mind one 
 fact, that is : that economic law, unlike municipal law, takes no account of 
 political boundaries. We may as a nation adopt laws which we conceive 
 to be to our particular interest, giving us a benefit as against the people 
 across a border ; and applying these to practice they may seem to us for a 
 time, and perhaps for a long time, to work to our advantage ; but if such 
 statutes do not square M'ith economic law, we shall, sooner or later in the life 
 of the nation, awaken to the fact that these enactments, which we created 
 to prosper ourselves to the detriment of the stranger, have really made 
 victims of ourselves, and they have done us as much injury as they imposed 
 upon those against whom they were aimed. 
 
 I use concerning such statutes the phrase "unless they square with 
 economic law;" for there may be some enactments, devised for our benefit 
 against the interests of the outlander, which may accord with economic 
 law. Take for instance the cordon sanitaire; here we have a provision 
 planned for our safety against the introduction amongst us of disease. The 
 country will better and more permanently prosper through the effective 
 interposition of such regulations. But it is the nature of all devices of 
 that character that they are temporary in duration ; if they were other than 
 expedients, if the prevalence of cordons became the settled policy of the 
 nation, it may well be doubted whether we should not attain to more of 
 safety by admitting even disease and combating it as we combat that which 
 arises amongst us, rather than suffer the withering and subsiding processes 
 of isolation. 
 
 The principle, therefore, which underlies the enactments of Chinese 
 exclusion in 1882, that "the chance to get a job is determined by the 
 condition of the 'labor market','' which has turned us in like manner 
 against the Japanese and other nations of the Orient, and now is exerting 
 itself in its ordinary and progressive course against the nations of Europe 
 and the rest of the world in the Burnett-Dillingham bills* — this principle 
 manifests itself internally amongst ourselves and against ourselves with as 
 much injury as it produces against the people from without. On this 
 Pacific Coast we are experiencing in a high degree the harm which attends 
 the exercise in two directions of this erroneous force. We are all feeling 
 what it means not to have the Oriental peoples amongst us; not to have free 
 movement of peoples back and forth between the two continents. Where 
 
 *The literary test anti-immigration measures. 
 
 3 
 
we would have great and rich cities, enormous industries, magnificent 
 enterprise of all kinds, the harbors filled with shipping and traffic bristling- 
 with energy in all directions, we now have small towns on our coast, our 
 industries are of minor importance, in many branches no industries at all ; 
 we have empty or near empty harbors, traffic weak and unsatisfactory, and 
 our people (excepting the labor unions) supplicating immigration from 
 Europe, while turning their backs upon the real, proper and natural region 
 of immigration to us, the Orient. 
 
 Most singularly the spell under which our people tolerate the main- 
 tenance of these warped conditions, when such abundance and prosperity 
 would pour in upon us by merely opening the doors to the people of the 
 Pacific, is the idea, now well nigh a fetish, that for some reasons of race 
 the Oriental peoples are obnoxious to us and "our civilization.'' That the 
 idea has not the slightest basis in truth may be recognized from the fact 
 that there is scarcely a man of those who shout it loudest, and who most 
 strongly urge it as a reason for keeping out the Orientals, who would not 
 gladly remove himself and his family to the Orient, to China, to Japan or 
 India, and there dwell in and amongst those people, if his income be 
 thereby increased somewhat above that which he experiences here — 
 increased even to that point where it would probably be through the 
 increased business and prosperity which would be visited upon this Coast 
 by the free coming and going of these people. And if it should occur that 
 there was an individual amongst us whose feelings against Japanese and 
 Chinese was so bitter that he would not accept an offer otherwise inviting 
 to take up his residence in either of their countries, we would look upon 
 such a man as a crank, a warped and narrow pervert, and even those 
 strongest in their objections to the entry to this country of Orientals, would 
 so regard hirp. We can see at a glance by this test, therefore, that there is 
 no real objection to the incoming and residence amongst us of the Orientals, 
 on the score of their individualities. A man who has no aversion to himself 
 residing amongst them in their own country can have no real ground for 
 opposing their residence in this country. If he has such it is altogether 
 imaginary, a sheer unreasoning bias, which it is disgraceful for a nation 
 to treat as the basis of law. 
 
 The people of this Coast do not realize the loss they are constantly 
 experiencing by the prevalence of the policy of exclusion of the Orientals. 
 It requires a considerable effort of the constructive imagination to become 
 aware of the state of the public under a different public condition from that 
 which prevails. "When, therefore, I say that if Chinese exclusion had never 
 been enacted the business today moving oh this Coast would be vastly 
 greater than it is, doubled, trebled, perhaps quadrupled, one might doubt 
 that the statement is true. If it were generally recognized for a moment 
 that it was true, there would be a stampede on this Coast to repeal the 
 exclusion acts, quite similar to the rushes we have experienced here in the 
 quest for gold, and having at their end a like purpose, namely, gain. 
 
But the truth of the statement may be readily seen. Upon one fact 
 all agree, viz. : that if exclusion did not exist Oriental laborers would come 
 to this Coast in considerable numbers. The very numbers with which it is 
 supposed they would come comprised one of the large grounds for refusing 
 them entry. Experience has shown us also that they are very industrious — 
 their industry, in the perverted arguments of the exclusionists. being put 
 forward as a cause for keeping them out, since by that very industry they 
 are supposed to supplant the less industrious white in competition for 
 employment. Very well : here we have numbers and here we have industry. 
 Now take the rate at which the Chinese and Japanese were coming thither 
 at the time they were shut out by exclusion, and the rate at which they , 
 were annually returning to their own countries, add to this a proportionate 
 annual increase as the industry of the coast arose to demand their presence, 
 and we may get a fair idea of what the Oriental population of the Coast 
 states would be today had exclusion never been enacted. As I compute, it 
 would certainly be in excess of two millions of people, over and above our 
 present Oriental population, which are very few. Consider now the pro- 
 ductive force of these people, devoting their energies to industry, many 
 of them with modern appliances and under American direction, and if it 
 shall be said that their contributions to society over and beyond their own 
 consumption would amount in value to an average of one dollar per day, 
 I think we shall be very moderate. Here then, we have two million people 
 yielding two million dollars daily, in a year of 360 days, yielding seven 
 hundred and twenty millions of dollars. 
 
 Who would be getting this $720,000,000 annually ? The " capitalists ' ' ? 
 What could the "capitalists" do with it, if they got it, which they would 
 not ? They could not eat it ; or at least, not more than would appease their 
 several appetites, and they would not throw it into the sea. Those who 
 would get it would be the people of this Coast, and it would pass to the 
 added prosperity and enrichment of every man, woman and child on this 
 Coast — everywhere, who was a member of society. By adding to abundance 
 it would be increasing industrial opportunity, multiplying jobs to the white 
 laborer, and calling for his services in higher orders of employment than 
 are now accessible to him. It would do harm to no one; it would do 
 immense benefit to all. 
 
 But along with this increase of 2,000,000 to the population of our 
 Coast there would have come a much larger increase to our white population 
 than has been the case. The census of California for the decades between 
 1860 and 1880, when Chinese immigration was free, shows a large white 
 influx, nearly nine times greater than that of the Chinese.* No statement 
 in that ganglion of falsehoods which passed for exclusionists' arguments 
 
 *The figures were as follows: 1860 
 
 White 323,177 
 
 Chinese 34,933 
 
 Total white increase in the three decades: 444,004. 
 Total Chinese increase in the three decades: 60,283. 
 
 1870 
 
 1880 
 
 499,424 
 49,310 
 
 767,181 
 75,218 
 
was ever more false than the statement that the incoming of the Oriental 
 prevented the white from entering the state; such never was a fact and 
 never could be a fact. Consider the condition of Hawaii, to which we are 
 constantly referred by the exelusionists as the vade mecum of awful places, 
 where the Oriental toils in the presence of the white. Turn out the 90,000 
 Orientals from those islands, and how long would the 30,000 whites remain ? 
 Why, in ninety days there would be scarcely enough left to furnish keepers 
 for the silent mills and the deserted buildings. 
 
 So that when we contemplate the $720,000,000 of added production to 
 this Coast per year, and add to it the increased production which would 
 be occasioned by the added white population, albeit they worked in higher 
 forms of industry than the Orientals, then contemplate the magnitude of 
 the shipping that would go on in our ports in the forwarding of our surplus 
 production in exchange for the products of the Orient, and the transporta- 
 tion incident to all this industry, we can then catch some faint glimpse of 
 what this Coast would be today, industrially, financially and in every other 
 way that our modern civilization knows, if the exclusion laws had never 
 been enacted. 
 
 But I spoke of the effect of economic law exerting itself against us 
 where we have directed enactments contrary to this law, against the for- 
 eigner. Economic law is, indeed, a form of natural law; and statute law 
 to be justifiable must be in accord with economic law, or with moral law. 
 Consider the decalogue. It is a code of economic and moral law. Does it 
 bear upon anybody to obey these laws? Who wishes to disobey them? 
 "Thou shalt not steal;" this is an economic law. Who desires to steal? 
 ' ' Thou shalt not covet ; ' ' this is a moral law. Do we not recognize it a vice 
 to covet? When, therefore, our legislatures enact these provisions into 
 codes, they do no violence to what we conceive to be our liberties; we feel 
 no restrictions placed upon us ; but when the legislature says that one man 
 shall not cross a border and reside with his fellow man because he is of 
 another race than ourselves, that idea shocks us ; we recognize in it at once 
 a high-handed assault of some kind upon human liberty and individual 
 freedom, and it requires a long time of hammering upon our consciences 
 and our susceptibilities with this and that assertion, which we do not 
 examine as to truth, before our minds are so molded as to allow that perhaps 
 there does exist some kind of condition amongst the white people, that 
 nobody else can live in the country with them. 
 
 But when we violate economic law, as we have done in enacting the 
 exclusion statutes, we do so because of an erroneous economic precept ; and 
 this works as much within the nation as without; works, as I have said, as 
 much against us as against the foreigner; for we cannot have conditions 
 based upon economic truth within the nation, and statutes built upon 
 economic error operating against those without. When, therefore, we 
 passed the exclusion laws upon the hypothesis that the incoming Chinese 
 would take the job away from the white man, had that legislation been the 
 
 6 
 
product of reason and not of "politics," Congress would have analyzed this 
 doctrine and applied and traced its operation and effects amongst ourselves 
 within our nation and considered how it worked here. Had this been done 
 the doctrine never would have been set up against the stranger. 
 
 The law of competition, as it is applied in the realm of commodities, 
 does not obtain in the region of human service. The most widespread harm 
 attends and follows the conducting of affairs upon the theory that it does. 
 The inevitable result of the operation of industry upon the assumption that 
 the same rule applies in both spheres is to create monopolies, and monopoly 
 becoming intolerable, and moving still along the same line, to bring about 
 socialism; and socialism, were it once in existence, would soon pass into 
 military autocracy, and we should then be back again into the pale of 
 ancient despotisms and tyrannies. So that by successive processes, advanc- 
 ing in a diametrically straight line, we can premise the decline of modern 
 civilization. Not only is it not improbable that modern civilization will 
 decline, but it is definitely certain to do so through the direction of the 
 movement upon which it is new proceeding. It is only if we are wise enough 
 to perceive the direction, and to know the cause of that trend, and knowing, 
 have the courage to correct it, that this calamity to our children can be 
 averted. Civilization has repeatedly risen and fallen in the world; and 
 while that which succeeded has each time been greater and grander than its 
 predecessor, yet the fact is that each civilization preceding the present did 
 fall; and there were long years of subsidence and quiescence, when the 
 state of the highest man was barbaric, before the forces of uplift gathered 
 strength to push man again forward into a higher goal. Man's curve of 
 progress from the beast to the highest modern mind has been upward, but 
 the line is not continuously so ; it is extremely serrated, abounding in peaks 
 and depressions, the troughs marking long periods when war and raven 
 raged, when public order was swept aside, when property existed in but 
 slight degree because its possession was insecure, and when man was far 
 more safe in solitude than he was in the presence of his fellows. 
 
 A little meditation will convince anyone that the idea of competition 
 in the sale of commodities and competition in the "sale of labor" is not 
 the same, as they are generally thought to be, and as the whole industrial 
 realm of the world believes, and acts upon. In fact the principle governing 
 the two zones is, in a sense, opposite in each. Let" us see : I want a 
 thousand barrels of sugar. I specify its grade, its polarization, the place 
 where it must be delivered. As between the sugars that are tendered the 
 only ground of conflict can be the price ; I accept the lowest bid and that 
 ends the transaction. The sugar passes into my possession and is consvimed ; 
 there are a thousand barrels less sugar in the world. The bidders for this 
 sale were competitors. But assume that there are a thousand men working 
 in my candy factory; and another thousand men from without, say from 
 Vermont or Georgia, come along and apply for the jobs of the thousand 
 whom I employ; they are all of a grade of laborers equal to those in the 
 
factory, and they offer to labor, to perform the same service as the men in 
 the works at a less wage than I pay the others. I accept this offer, discharge 
 the men I have and take on the new set at the lesser wage. Is that compe- 
 tition 1 The whole world today says it is. It is not. "What is the difference ? 
 The difference is this : that whereas, when I took the sugar there were with- 
 drawn a thousand barrels- from the realm of sugar, when I take on the new 
 men and let off the old, there are no men withdrawn from the realm of 
 labor. The sugar is consumed and converted into something else; but the 
 men are not consumed, neither those I took on nor those I let out. What 
 becomes of the men I let out ? Do they starve and die ? They would have 
 to do so to parallel the instance of the sugar ; for in the ease of the sugar 
 there was obliteration, and there would also have to be obliteration of the 
 men to make the two operations balance or parallel. The men go off into 
 other lines of work. 
 
 * Let us follow these men thus let out of the candy factory. Do they 
 work at their new occupations at less wages than they worked at the factory ? 
 Some do, perhaps; some receive equal wages, and some receive higher wages 
 through finding higher phases of employment. It is the process of nature, 
 operating in the lower orders of employment, that the tenure of the lowest 
 jobs is insecure; that men working therein are frequently shifted out of 
 them, and compelled to look for something else, and something better because 
 something higher. You cannot do a young and healthy man more harm 
 than place him in a low order of employment and make his wages steady 
 and his job secure — the very thing that the labor union regards as most 
 necessary to the man to have, and which it is organized most certainly 
 to attain. 
 
 But what determined the wages to be paid the men when they went to 
 another place and applied for a job? Was it not supply of men, and 
 number of men of the same grade each bidding against the other for the 
 new job, that determined the price of the wages that should be received by 
 the successful bidder 1 Assuredly it was. Well, then ; why is not the oppor- 
 tunity to labor fixed and determined by supply and demand of laborers ? — 
 and here we come to the crux of the whole question, viz. : — what determined 
 demand and supply of laborers ? What is it that draws off the competitors 
 from the doors of that shop and leaves the applicant standing there alone ? 
 The union says thei'e is no such thing as "drawing off;" that the only 
 thing that determines the chance to get a job at that shop is the demand 
 that has come upon the shop from without for its products ; if this demand 
 is large they will take on more men ; if it be small, it will need fewer men, 
 or none at all. If the product of that shop be all used up by the public, 
 there is a call on the shop for more goods and they take on more men; if 
 a fire or flood sweeps away the stocks in the stores in town, such stores will 
 have to have more goods, and the factory gets more orders,, and rush orders, 
 and it takes on more men ; and this is the only way the men can get a job, 
 and the cheapest man would get it — were it not for the labor union which 
 
fixes the scale of wages, and will not let those men bid against each other, 
 will not even let two men go to the factory, if there be a job for but one, 
 for each man must take his turn. 
 
 This has the appearance of truth ; and men — the unlearned men who 
 comprise the unions — are not to be blamed for being deceived thereby, nor 
 for regarding the union, under such a condition, as being a benefit to them- 
 selves, and for hanging their hopes and their lives upon it. 
 
 Yet we have seen that when the men left the candy factory, the product 
 of the factory followed them. If when they left the factory the product of 
 the factory had ceased, then, indeed, would they have been injured by 
 being discharged. If all factories should so shut down, what would be the 
 resource of the men discharged? They would turn to the soil, the great 
 factory which nature has prepared for the employment and sustenance of 
 all men. But the continuous output of the factory prepared and provided 
 for the men new jobs. Whereas before this product was merely transported 
 and distributed, it now has a thousand added hands working upon it, 
 putting it into more marketable shape. It is taken from its wooden barrels 
 and repacked in fancy paper boxes, which packing has given rise to a 
 paper box factory; this in turn to a pulp mill; this further back to a 
 timber industry, cutting the wood to make pulp. Some of the boys went 
 off and started a chemical works to bleach the pulp ; others remelted and 
 worked over parts of the output of my factory and made it into forms 
 entailing more art and refinement than I employed ; some opened a printing 
 office to print fancy wrappers; and the stock which left my factory was 
 sold under different conditions, and brought much more money than I sold 
 it for, since between my yield and the consumer there grew up a dozen 
 new industries created by those thousand men, the upshot of which was 
 that the public received my product in a more acceptable way, packed in a 
 manner to effect a vastly wider reach of distribution. 
 
 The result of the change of the men was that whereas my factory had 
 been turning out a large annual tonnage with the labor of a thousand men 
 drawn from that community, now the same tonnage goes forth without tht 
 labor of those men, and their energies are saved to be applied in the direc- 
 tions named. In so far as the community goes, there is the product of the 
 factory going forth without labor. It meets in the community these dis- 
 charged hands, with the result as stated. 
 
 Let us take the matter in another aspect: Suppose that instead of 
 my taking on the thousand Georgians, I had taken on none at all, but had 
 put into the factory a number of automatic machines, and these produced 
 all the product similar to that of my output with the men, and I required no 
 labor whatever, only machines. Are the thousand men whom I let out 
 harmed, or is the country harmed by that circumstance? Here we have 
 product going forth into the community without any labor at all. Is 
 anybody hurt thereby that goods can come forth without human energy? 
 If so, then let us assail the heavens when they yield copious rains, for 
 
these are producers of abundance without human energy. Yet in some 
 way we seem to delight at generous rains and regard their absence as a 
 blight. Surely in seasons of drouth far more of human energy must be 
 applied to the soil to get from it paying yields, which even fall far short 
 of the crops afforded by favoring rains ; but according to the doctrine that 
 the letting out of the men was a harm, we must bemoan when rain shall 
 fall, for such brings forth a yield without labor, just as the product of the 
 machines were a yield without labor, and just as the yield of the Georgians 
 was without labor, in so far as the town and county of Candyville was 
 concerned. 
 
 Indeed, if we examine the sum total of civilization itself we shall find 
 that it means, in its ultimate goal, just that thing, viz. : the mastery of man 
 over matter — a mastery so complete in its ascendancy that the needs, the 
 comforts, even the material luxuries and delights of men all are supplied 
 with the application to matter of a modicum of human energy. When that 
 is attained the life of man will cease to be chiefly material, but will become 
 mostly spiritual; the concerns of the mind and of the soul will engage him; 
 and it is to this that civilization in its free course is tending, and which it 
 will attain in infinite realms of human happiness that no terrestrial concept 
 can now approximate, if it be permitted to pursue its way, clear of the clogs 
 which now beset it and threaten it. 
 
 The principle is that any factor of production that increases abundance 
 of the things we desire, whether such be a new laborer or a new machine, 
 an improved system, a more recent chemical or mechanical discovery, is a 
 benefit to every one in the community. Because abundance means further 
 employment. Once wealth is wrested from nature it inures to the benefit 
 of all men within its reach. It is wealth, abundance, plenty, that gives 
 employment; this, coupled with human initiative, is the real factor which 
 produces the jobs; just as the movements of both are unclogged and free, 
 so are the opportunities to labor frequent or few. 
 
 Tlie contrary doctrine, however, which I shall call the "labor market" 
 theory, treats scarcity as necessary to give employment to labor. It there- 
 fore limits output, upon the supposition that if there be almndanoe there 
 will be more than consumption can consume, and men must thereby be laid 
 off until supply needs replenishment. Consequently any factor tending to 
 scarcity is a benefit to the laborer. Short hours, high wages, limit of output, 
 waste, sabotage, strikes, destruction by the elements, any engine that will 
 increase cost and decrease supply is assumed to be a benefit to the laborer. 
 The edict of Knight of Labor I'owderly to break all empty bottles that the 
 bottle makers might have employment making new ones, and the blowing up 
 of the non-union structures by McNamara, were all in line with this 
 principle. 
 
 A doctrine that demands scarcity and produces it, also places an inor- 
 dinate estimate upon the job. If scarcity must persist in order to furnish 
 opportunity to labor to those who are employed, what priceless boon must 
 
 10 
 
such opportunity be to those who have it ! Hence this possession must be 
 guarded and protected against not only those who would menace it from 
 without, but from those who would enter it from within. To effect this 
 protection the holders of the jobs organize, and we have the labor union— 
 an institution which treats itself as in possession of a vested right to all the 
 jobs that a given occupation provides ; which regards it as a crime akin to 
 treason that one shall work in such service without its permission, and 
 which is equipped to wage war alike upon employer and applicant who 
 shall disregard this assertion of its right. It is an institution to whom 
 immigrants are no less hateful than the children of the unionists them- 
 selves; who oppose the entry into the state alike of Orientals and Europeans, 
 provided they come to work;* who conduct constantly a widespread cam- 
 paign throughout the country telling people to keep away; who limit the 
 apprentices who may enter the crafts to a number barely equal to supply 
 the places of the unionists who pass away, and who, in constant fear of 
 "overstocking the labor market," curb even their own reproduction of 
 children. 
 
 It is the nature of such a principle to wall up the world, each nation 
 against the other. Under the operation of this influence we have walled up 
 the Orient, but we are in like manner walling up ourselves. The shutting 
 out of the European follows naturally the shutting out of the Asi- 
 atic; and as we isolate ourselves, and escape from the system be- 
 comes more and more restricted through absorption of all the free 
 arable land of the continent, the centripetal process of the doctrine 
 becomes apparent. It is the quality of civilization to cheapen cost 
 and prevent waste, thereby reducing prices while increasing quality, 
 making commodities better and more accessible to all. All processes of the 
 mind expressed in discovery, invention, adaptation and systemization tend 
 in this direction. We can in a manner measure the status of civilization by 
 watching, over the whole nation, this tendency. When the counter forces 
 of civilization, therefore, overcome this tendency, we see prices rise and 
 quality reduced. As prices risef consumption is lessened, and the call for 
 labor thereupon declines. The doors of opportunity to labor being barred 
 by the union, women are thrown into the street and boys into idleness and 
 immorality. A stupendous aggregate of idle labor ensues and this stirs 
 
 *We hear many opinions upon the cause of high prices, an evil now generally recog- 
 nized. One writer assigns an insufficient supply of monetary gold as the cause; another 
 the lack of practice of domestic economies among the people, etc. ; hut the real cause is 
 very simple, though never mentioned that I have seen, viz. : scarcity of the article priced. 
 The only reason why any commodity exists at all is that it shall be consumed. Industry 
 forcing it into the hands of the consumer is no less eager in its efforts than the industry 
 which brought it into existence. If it exists in abundance it will find consumers at 
 prices which they can pay. This price, of course, must be such as makes profitable both 
 production and distribution, or abundance will cease and scarcity supervene. 
 
 tin an address made before the American Federation of Labor at its recent convention 
 held in the State of Washington, the secretary of that organization strongly opposed the 
 immigration to the United States of Europeans on the ground that thereby they prevented 
 the laborers of this country from working out their problems here, and also interfered 
 with the laboring people of the countries from 'which they came in working out their 
 problems in such countries. At a convention of the Building Trades Council lately held in 
 San Jose, the secretary of that body denounced the Panama Canal as amounting to a 
 scheme to bring laborers into the state to take the jobs from the workmen here. 
 
 11 
 
action in two directions, viz. : facilities for finding employment for laborers, 
 and schemes for forcing employment for laborers where none economically 
 exists. Specimens of the latter are the full crew schedules, like the bills 
 affecting railroads so common in our state legislatures and the shipping biU 
 now before Congress. In the former effort, that of facilitating employment, 
 the labor unions of England supplement the work of the various public 
 bodies, all unconscious, perhaps, that they themselves are the chief causes 
 • of the very conditions which they thus ineffectually seek to allay. In this 
 state of things all dependents suffer; women, children, youths, old age. 
 The latter, whom it is our duty and, under natural conditions, our pleasure 
 to care for in their decline of life, become a burden. It is the history of 
 barbarous tribes, particularly the Germanic, that the aged, being no longer 
 productive, were slain, and the son was obliged to kill his father. This rite 
 does not obtain in modern civilization, but there arises in our midst enor- 
 mous edifices of public charity for the aged, and, as in England where labor 
 unions are highest developed, these work houses and their attendant aids 
 shelter sixty per cent, of the population of the country above the age of 
 sixty years. 
 
 Amidst such a condition there are widespread calls for legislative relief 
 in the form of old age pensions, maternity awards, minimum wages, work- 
 ingmen's compensation, unemployed insurance, eight-hour and six-hour 
 labor laws, and various kindred devices all aimed to meet a tendency and 
 alleviate extensive poverty and distress which that tendency creates. The 
 real effect of these expedients is to burden industry, discourage incentive 
 through making perilous and difficult the conducting of business, while the 
 so-called relief itself is such as would not be welcomed, indeed in many 
 instances, would be indignantly spurned as gifts of public contribution, if 
 men were free to provide for themselves.* 
 
 Increasing cost of production tends to isolation of the situs of produc- 
 tion. The only reason for the shipment of goods from a distance is that 
 they can be laid down at the end of such shipment cheaper than they can be 
 produced at home. As the cost of their creation at the place of their 
 production increases, the zone of distribution decreases. It is possible that 
 
 *One of the most remarkable exhibits of the condition I am describing, is the amazing 
 mass of literature that exists upon the subject in England. The theme seems to be more 
 written upon than any other that engages the English mind. Books and pamphlets, 
 literally by thousands, exist and are constantly appearing. Yet no less remarkable Is 
 the fact that none of these publications, that I have seen, reach into the true cause of 
 the trouble. Occasionally we find a writer catching a glimpse of the cause, as W. H. 
 Beveridge in his book on the Unemployed, in which he says: 
 
 "The popular concept is of industry rigidly limited — a sphere of cast iron in which 
 men struggle for living room; in which the greater the room taken by any one man the 
 less there must be for others; in which the greater the number of men the "worse must 
 be the case of all." 
 
 The author in another part of his hook unconsciously asserts a refutation of this 
 idea. He says: 
 
 "As the population of the United Kingdom increases so do the wealth and pro- 
 ductivity per head of population. In 1867 the national income was put at £814,000,000 for 
 30,000.000 of population, or £27 per head; in 1901 it was £1,700,000,000, or £40 per head." 
 
 The simile to which I have referred in Beveridge's book Is not followed out with 
 reasoning to show the effect which the application of this idea — which he recognizes as 
 erroneous — has upon industry. Aside from this observation, all the rest of the labor 
 literature of England to which I have had access deals with the question of what to do 
 with the idle laborers. 
 
 12 
 
the conditions under which shoes are made in the factories of Massachusetts 
 may become such that it would be cheaper to make the same grade of shoe 
 by hand in San Francisco, rather than ship them hence from the Eastern 
 centres of such production. Indeed, the difference in factory cost may be 
 very slight when it would be no longer profitable to ship them to San 
 Francisco in competition with shoe factories of the latter city producing at 
 a much higher cost. It is in large part upon these variations in cost that 
 traffic of transportation companies, railroad and other, depends ; and as the 
 forces of isolation increase the cost, slacken the market, decrease the area 
 of profitable shipment, the railroad, steamship and steamboat lines begin to 
 suffer from the malady of decreasing gross earnings, while the pressure of 
 ever increasing high prices forces upon them ever higher demands for wages 
 and greater costs of operating. In turn they of necessity must raise the 
 rates for their service ; but these increased rates contribute to increase costs 
 of production, which further limits the field of shipment, and this reacting 
 tends further to lower the volume of traffic, while the original forces which 
 increased costs and made the raise of rates necessary, continue in their 
 further operations toward still higher costs. 
 
 With a considerable and ever increasing proportion of the industrial 
 population of the nation deteriorating in confirmed idleness, with even 
 members of the union squeezed out of employment by the severe contracting 
 and constricting process which ever tightly draws toward the centre, with 
 the Government striving always to relieve "the poor" and the "working 
 people" by ever greater schemes of taxation; with industry hampered, 
 incentive impaired, initiative held back by the status of things and by the 
 general legislative attitude that any man who by extraordinary manifesta- 
 tion of ability or energy accumulates large property is wrongfully extracting 
 an inordinate share of the proceeds of society, which necessarily must be 
 acquired to the deprivation of large numbers of people who have so little 
 and who find what they moderately need so hard to get — with this state of 
 things prevailing over the nation, the eyes of the million naturally turn to 
 what they come to look upon as the one haven of refuge from the general 
 oppression — the Government. Industry, organized strictly in groups on 
 reciprocally defensive lines, engages every means it can assemble to preserve 
 its existence. Monopoly in all forms everywhere obtains. The centripetal 
 action, whirling in the real of labor, is sought to be counterpoised by every 
 phase of industry spinning in its own orbit. Men turn to the Government 
 as the only power that can merge all the monopolies into one great monop- 
 oly — that of the State. The mind, so long tormented by the stress of things, 
 turns to the Government with a feeling of comfort and relief at the idea of 
 bringing about a condition in which the status of all will be in some manner 
 liorizontalized, and everyone will be secure in a Government job at good 
 wages. Government, not suddenly or convulsively, but by rapidly succeed- 
 ing steps, is forced from its position of protector of the individual rights of 
 men, of one man against another, and the aider of industry by the distribu- 
 
 13 
 
tion of facilities of information, to the active factor in control of industry — 
 the producer, transporter, distributor, the banker of industry; in a word, 
 the provider of jobs for its citizens. Moving upon the nucleus of the 
 operator of the monopoly of the postal service, it adds the express service ; 
 then the telephone and telegraph services; then the railroads; then the 
 steamship and steamboat lines. Exhausting the field of interstate public 
 utilities, it enters those of the state and municipalities. It supplies electric 
 light and power; street and suburban car service. From the building of 
 ships for the navy in its own yards, it builds ships for commerce; it mines 
 coal and oil for their fuel, and for the fuel of all industry. It makes 
 clothing and shoes and materials and subsistence for its soldiers and sailors, 
 and for the public generally ; and in whatever domain of industry it enters 
 it promptly installs conditions which make private competition therein 
 impossible. The army of employees of the Government becomes a vast 
 aggregate. The change from the constitutional system upon which the 
 Government was founded has been profound. Constitutional restraints and 
 representative legislation has been swept aside by the spread of official 
 distrust which under the general tightening economic status of the masses 
 has infected the public mind. Now no statesman dares stand for the truth 
 if such be opposed to the ideas which demagoguery has infused into the 
 popular mind, unless he be indifferent to public office, for his summary 
 dismissal and disgrace through recall would be assured. Legislative enact- 
 ments are now determined not by the wisdom of representation and debate, 
 but by direct action of a minority of the people. They vote into law 
 measures which they believe for their welfare. This they invariably regard 
 as served by some presumed advantage planned to be had against the 
 foreigner, against the minority, or against races within the country. In 
 like manner they prevent from becoming laws acts of the legislature which 
 disagree with either the sense of interest of the majority, or with their bias ; 
 and even for this cause dismiss judges from their positions, and vitiate 
 their decrees. 
 
 Great standing armies and stupendous armament, ever annually 
 increasing, themselves immensely adding to the cost of industry, has for 
 years been a fixed attribute of Government, deemed indispensable to defend 
 the nation from the people across the sea or border; while those people, 
 suffering from the same economic infirmity as ourselves, and in a like 
 disturbed state of mind against us, have been similarly exhausting their 
 strength upon great armaments and munitions, which they deemed needful 
 to defend their country against us. The condition of national migrative 
 isolation,* with its long fostered popular hatreds of the foreigner, has 
 
 •The character of United States immigration exclusion which has prevented the rise 
 of Mexico has been contract labor exclusion, through which inhibition Mexicans could not 
 emigrate across the border if they had been previously employed to work in the United 
 States. Only through advance assurance ot employment at the end of their journey. Is it 
 possible for Mexican people to leave their homes and migrate to the United States. Such 
 is in tact, the condition under which all industrial peoples migrate, though in the case of 
 many nationalities, the newcomers are received by resident friends who care for them 
 until they are settled in employment in the country, such friends having previously 
 
 14 
 
incessantly called for a foreign war. Such a war, hysterically promoted 
 by the "yellow" press, has come to be looked upon by the "conservative 
 business man" as not at all undesirable from the standpoint of the domestic 
 interests of the country. It is regarded as necessary to relieve the nation 
 of much of its "surplus population,'' comprising so many persons in almost 
 continuous idleness. Besides, it is regarded as a means of bringing internal 
 peace through deflecting all antagonisms and directing them against the 
 foreigner, instead of exerting them in constant rioting and insurrection 
 from place to place throughout the country, as has been for years going on, 
 the fruitful cause thereof being "labor disputes," and "race differences." 
 Further, a foreign war, it is felt by many, is needful to bring good times ; 
 as necessary to break the crust of things and make business active, as it 
 certainly would in some lines, just as the hospitals and druggists become 
 active because of an epidemic, a simile I used in my recent lecture. 
 
 This desired and highly popular war occurs. It brings forward a 
 successful general — the strong and unscrupulous man of history. He has 
 always come forth on the stage of the world, when the hour called, after a 
 period of national travail. He possesses the peculiar characteristic quality, 
 always displayed wherever and whenever he has appeared, of — 
 Wielding, bending, fettering, kneading, molding 
 The minds of millions till they move as one. 
 He knows how to extinguish internal opposition to his plans, to cement the 
 nation in the direction of his course. The temper of the country has become 
 military and anti-foreign. He is elected to the presidency practically by 
 popular acclaim. His ambition is that of his predeceroors Alexander, Cyrus, 
 Mahomet, Atilla, Caesar, Napoleon — to establish himself ^ibsolute in world 
 rule, in universal empire. The time is ripe. Millions are in the service of 
 
 advised them by correspondence that employment would be practically ready for them 
 upon their arrival. This method has not been the case with Mexicans to any appreciable 
 extent; but if they were permitted to do so they would come to the country in gangs, 
 upon the call of contractors and others, to do given work in the United States; and this 
 migration, starting closest to the border, would gradually extend throughout Mexico, until 
 the movement became of a more individualistic order. Such form of migration is, how- 
 ever, prohibited by law made in behalf of labor unions. The result has been failure of 
 the rise of the Mexican people, absence of American influence in Mexico, and failure of 
 normal development of our Mexican border states. Mexico itself, by reason of this 
 blight, is now disintegrating through internecine war; quite the same as China has 
 started in to disintegrate, and as Japan will presently disintegrate, and from the same 
 cause — with this difference in the latter countries, of the dissolution of native sovereignty 
 passing through foreign incursions, a condition which would quickly supervene in Mexico, 
 Tvere it not for the Monroe doctrine. 
 
 Mexico might well serve as a lesson to Japan, in that Japan thinks her people can 
 rise through development of her internal resources by her own citizens educated abroad 
 or at home, and by the presence of a few enterprising foreigners. Mexico was the theatre 
 of thousands of large enterprises conducted by Americans and Europeans, yet her people, 
 shut off from migrating with the United States, did not rise in any appreciable degree, 
 or if at all, only to the extent of becoming dissatisfied; as is the case with southern China 
 and with the Japanese about Tokio. It will be observed that the revolution in Mexico is 
 chiefly in that part nearest the influence of the United States, namely, the northern 
 "border states, and the hinter tier of states, just as the revolution in China was in the 
 Ouang Tung province, the district whose people, through returning migrants from the 
 United States, had been most influenced by our civilization. That the people of Mexico 
 -would have risen vastly had they been free to migrate to and from the United States is 
 shown by the fact that the tropical African, resident in the United States, has developed 
 "hundreds of thousands of his race to high levels of civilized efBciency. Did the Africans 
 possess a nation in Africa, as Mexico, China and Japan are nations, and intercourse 
 between Africa and the United States were free, the Africans passing to and from our 
 country and their own, there is no doubt that the African nation would have become 
 ■vastly uplifted from its original state through the influence of the United States upon its 
 migrants and their returning to their own country. 
 
 15 
 
the Government, men and women, whose votes he owns, and to whom he if= 
 an idol. Through the polls they set up and tear down any and all he wishes 
 By perfectly lawful means, and apparently in the highest patriotic interests, 
 he has enacted and repealed this and that constitutional and other pro- 
 vision, overturned this and that court decision, hitherto regarded, as the 
 constitution itself, a bulwark of American liberties, until he has things in 
 the shape he wants them. Foreign war now becomes war for foreign 
 conquest. The hour has come. L'homme mounts the saddle; and from that 
 on the nation converges to the rider on the white horse. 
 
 Thus we see by what processes individual freedom is overcome and 
 supplanted, first by state socialism, this quickly passing into military des- 
 potism, under which, and the influence of war and ruin, civilization again 
 subsides to the verge of the barbaric. As all war is primitive, the state of 
 society that subsists beside long drawn periods of war, a thirty years war, 
 or a hundred years war,* will be alike barbaric ; and the more directions in 
 which the war may be simultaneously waged, the more rapid will be the 
 disintegration of the civilized state. 
 
 The question is : how can we avert this impending doom? Is it, indeed, 
 avoidable ? I reply that it is, and easily so. We have but to employ, as I 
 have said, the wisdom to understand the condition and the courage to 
 correct it. The question is : will we do it ? Can we do it ? Is it possible 
 for me, for instance, to get spread abroad this message, that men may have 
 their thoughts introverted to contemplate the condition, and be awakened 
 to follow the reasoning to reach the end? "What is the remedy? It is 
 exceedingly simple, so simple that you will smile when you hear it : it is 
 HUMAN LIBERTY. 
 
 It is the liberty that was seen by our fathers of the constitution. The 
 liberty that inspired the framer of the Declaration of Independence when 
 he wrote: 
 
 "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created 
 equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
 rights; among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness; to secure 
 which governments are established among men, deriving their just powers 
 from the consent of the governed. ' ' 
 
 The enemy of liberty is monopoly. It is only the destruction of monop- 
 oly in all its forms that is needed to secure to man liberty, to readjust 
 conditions to bring abundance, happiness and security. Monopoly exists 
 by virtue of law. It is special privilege, granting to some and denying to 
 others that to which all are equally entitled. What things are monopolies 
 and what are not, is a subject into which I cannot go at this time, in this 
 
 ♦It is a mistake to assume that by reason of ttie expression o( modern science in 
 warfare, tlie latter has become, or will become, impracticable, and will cease to be waged; 
 or that the effect of modern military instrumentalities will be to make wars short in 
 duration. Without doubt their use greatly increases human slaughter, and requires war 
 to be conducted upon a larger scale than was usual in the past. But the tendency of 
 hostilities, as soon as they are installed, is to get rid of these refinements and bring 
 battles down to hand-to-hand fighting. War, under existing civilization, continued for 
 some time, soon becomes primitive. 
 
 16 
 
article, now far too much prolonged. Very certain it is that many things 
 now often spoken of as monopolies are not monopolies at all, but entirely 
 legitimate and proper functions of individuals; while some possessions not 
 now commonly regarded as monopolies are in the highest degree such, so 
 radically so in their nature that no change for the better could ever be 
 effected without their eradication. But whatever the sacrifice of those in 
 possession of monopoly, it is necessary that such be foregone if mankind is 
 to go forward, and civilization as we now know it is to endure. We have 
 got to return to the principle upon which this government was founded, 
 namely : that the rights of man embrace all rights up to where their exercise 
 trenches upon like rights of his neighbor. As to the region where they so 
 trench, that is the true field of statesmanship — the proper zone for the 
 functions of the legislature. Beyond this it has no business to go. How 
 absurd it is that men shall be stigmatized and persecuted because their 
 operations in business are large ! Who would quell these great minds of 
 business who have made the civilization of this nation so noble and so grand, 
 or withhold from them the lure which impelled them on. Who would stifle 
 such energies as those of Rockefeller or curb the constructive genius of 
 Harriman? That restless soul pushed railroads through mountains and 
 over plains, across desert sands and desert seas, and wore out his frail body 
 in the endless quest of his laborers. What was his reward? Some sixty 
 millions or more, it is said: what folly to think of it! He received what 
 he ate and what he wore and the place that sheltered him. For the rest 
 he had some printed paper, a ton or more, stacked up in a vault, worth in 
 pulp some few dollars or a few cents. The railroads with their trains 
 rushing hither and yon were not for Harriman, for they carried neither 
 Harriman nor his goods. They carried the people of the United States and 
 their effects, and they are the beneficiaries of his laborers. If these men 
 have employed monopoly in their operations, it was because monopoly was 
 a part of the business field. It was not necessary to them in their work, 
 they could have performed their tasks without it if it had not existed; but 
 existing as it did, it was indispensable that they should use it. The way 
 to remedy these conditions is not to suppress the men as socialism would 
 do, compressing the potentialities of all to a common dead labor union 
 level; but destroy the monopoly. Permit the men to go on. Let the prizes 
 be.great and grand, as it is necessary they should be to bring out the highest 
 energies of great souls; how insubstantial, in truth, are all such prizes. 
 The millionaire builds the tall business block, or the vast hotel. He calls 
 it the "Smith Block" or the "Jonesmont," and a stately edifice it is. To 
 him what is it? What else does he acquire of or through it than a sense 
 of esteem in which he deems himself held by his fellow men, and a feeling 
 of some kind of power in connection with them? 
 
 "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith the preacher." How can he use 
 such power save for their benefit? He acquires a million a year in rents 
 and he reinvests it — ^in what? In other buildings and other industrial 
 
 17 
 
undertakings. Nature has so schemed it: desiring to better self, it is 
 needful that he first better his neighbor. Nature too, in her wise arrange- 
 ment of things that runs through the affairs of men, just as it runs through 
 all growth, has selected this man, elected him administrator of funds for 
 the use of others, and he holds this position through proving his efficiency. 
 The real beneficiaries of his work are the people who occupy the building, 
 those who use the ultimate product of his enterprises. He gets, as I have 
 said, what he eats, wears and uses — that is all. At the end of his career, 
 if he has not left a progeny to carry on his work, there falls upon others 
 the task of distributing his estate. How is it applied ? Some Sage Founda- 
 tion is organized and the yield of his properties no longer pass into industry, 
 but are devoted to benevolent objects of public weal which are outside the 
 scope of government, and properly so, to provide. The unfortunate are 
 sought out and aided; comforts are brought to the needy; "for the poor 
 always ye have with you" — not necessarily the impoverished, but the poor; 
 and no socialism or any other ism can ever eradicate them; the reasons 
 wherefor I cannot now pause to recite. Learning, art, science, are patron- 
 ized, and their benefits are distributed to the uplift of the masses of the 
 people. The post mortem career of the millionaire has taken on a new form 
 of activity, appealing to the spirit of man, as his life was an engine appeas- 
 ing their material desires. What folly, how hurtful to themselves for the 
 people of any nation to hamper, to harass and derogate their master minds 
 of business! 
 
 I think all men, awake to affairs within the nation, and conscious of 
 the trend of western civilization, will realize that the fruition of that civili- 
 zation, in the course of the evolution upon which it has been proceeding, is 
 at its apex, if indeed, it is not far past it. The condition has long been 
 foreseen. Ten years ago Benjamin Kidd, writing on this subject in his 
 book ' ' Social Evolution, ' ' said : 
 
 "We seem to have reached a time in which there is abroad in men's 
 minds an instinctive feeling that a definite stage in the evolution of western 
 civilization is drawing to a close, and that we are entering on a new era. 
 Yet one of the most curious features of the time is the almost complete 
 absence of any clear indication from those who speak in the name of science 
 and authority, as to the direction in which the path of future progress 
 lies. . . . Judged by the utterances of her spokesmen, science, whose great 
 triumph in the nineteenth century has been the tracing of steps in the 
 evolution of life up to human society, now stands dumb before the problems 
 presented by society as it exists around us. As regards its evolution she 
 appears to have no clear message. . . . (The public) who have to determine 
 the issue (between capital and labor) are without knowledge of the first 
 principles of the struggle. They look in vain for any authoritative defini- 
 tion of the laws or principles which underlie it ; for any clear indication as 
 to which side is right and which is wrong, or for any definite teaching as 
 to whither our western civilization as a whole is tending. ' ' 
 
 18 
 
Since Kidd wrote, the condition which he deplored has become accentu- 
 ated ; the trend, then for a long time apparent, has since become acute, so 
 that it is now manifest to any perceiving mind. But in the decade, as prior, 
 no voice has come forth to reveal the cause or point the way of relief and 
 remedy. This, in the paper herewith presented, is, if not explained, at least 
 indicated. To expound the reasoning with the completeness of proof, so 
 that it may be entirely convincing to any rational mind, is a task which it 
 has long been my desire to engage, but which fortune has never permitted 
 me to attempt. Its exposition would require a book of about 500 pages, 
 and to an attorney, employed in active practice, which his exigencies 
 demand that he industriously pursue, the setting aside of time for such a 
 labor is impossible. I can only hope that the lines I have here defined 
 may be taken up by some mind having the leisure and the inclination to 
 elucidate the trend, and to demonstrate the solution of the problem which 
 the trend presents. Let me accentuate that the trend is socialism, absolut- 
 ism and decline and ultimate perishing of our modern civilization — a move- 
 ment now proceeding with a speed akin to the velocity of a celestial sphere 
 about its orbit. The cause is the traversing of human liberty, of the natural 
 rights of man, through the instrumentality of law, as so generally exists in 
 various domains of business and property rights, or through sheer force of 
 arms, as in the ease of labor unions. Society must first understand, and 
 then eradicate each and all of these. It must recognize that the day of 
 special privilege is done; that such must pass, either merged into socialism 
 as it is now proceeding, or eliminated in favor of individual rights. In 
 either event men must cease curbing the proper activities of others, in order 
 that they themselves may prosper. Those business men who now think they 
 need be intrenched in monopoly in order to succeed, are mistaken. They 
 would unquestionably make more money in a state of freedom, where human 
 desire had free scope in its call for the service of men, than in the state of 
 society which now exists. Prosperity of the sort mentioned is not real, but 
 false, feverish and artificial. True prosperity can exist only when all men 
 possess like opportunities before nature and under law, limited only by 
 their own mental and physical capacities, or in other words, under a society 
 in which men are free. 
 
 19 
 
The Student in Oriental Immigration 
 
 By JOHN E. BENNETT. 
 
 The following address was delivered by Mr. Bennett before the Chinese 
 Students' Association of America, at its convention held in San Fran- 
 cisco, in Y. M. C. A. hall, in January, 1914. Upon being introduced, 
 Mr. Bennett said: 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 
 
 Why did you come to the United States 1 To go to school 1 You could 
 have gone to school in China, and could have gotten some measure of a 
 so-called western education in the lately built colleges of your native 
 country. You came here, if you will think of it, primarily to be in the 
 presence of western civilization. Your going to college here, important as 
 that is, is the least part of your education in this western land. The greater 
 part of it is the fact that by being here you are brought into immediate 
 contact with the multitude of objects, effects, productions and systems of 
 western science and life. You are here in the midst of the highest civiliza- 
 tion which mankind has ever developed, and you are seeing things, coming 
 in contact with things, daily and hourly in your out-of-school experiences, 
 that are making you a part of that life and of that civilization. With this, 
 as well as with your diplomas, you will return to China, and your lives will 
 then be devoted to the upbuilding of your own nation after the manner of 
 what you have learned here. 
 
 Did it ever occur to you that every man of China who leaves your 
 country for the west moves thither with exactly the same idea that has 
 impelled you to come? You think perhaps that only the upper classes of 
 China are the people who become educated, to whom schooling in the 
 western world would be appropriate. You are disposed to regard the 
 Chinese laborer as an extremely unimportant personage, whose province 
 and function it is to work, and that he does not become educated ; that the 
 fact that he cannot come to the United States, is of no consequence, for he 
 would not come here to study but to work; and if he be kept away from 
 working here he will simply work in China, and it is no odds where he 
 works. You speak of him lightly as a " coolie, ' ' and you do not think much 
 about him. Let me say to you that the coolie is the real Chinaman. Eighty 
 per cent, of your people are laborers, and it is so in all countries which have 
 developed along the lines of civilization in the true sense, which is the 
 western sense, no farther than has China. In the mountains of the Philip- 
 
 20 
 
pines the population is one hundred per cent, laborers. You in China have 
 a far less number of lawyers, doctors, teachers, financiers, bankers, pro- 
 moters, inventors, merchants, manufacturers, scientists, office men, than 
 have we. Even our laborers, compared with your laborers are not laborers 
 at all. The skilled man who operates a delicate and highly sensitive machine 
 that draws a great train of cars over a vast steel highway cannot be com- 
 pared in his status of laborer, though among us he is classed as such, to the 
 coolie who jumps along roads worn deep by naked feet, under his burden 
 of hundreds of pounds swinging at two ends of a pole. 
 
 The coolie is the real man of China ; the real Chinese nation. And why 
 did he come to the United States? He came for exactly the same reason 
 that you come. He came to go to school; not to go to school in a building 
 with books under his arm ; ah, no. Such are not the real schools. They are 
 specifically educational seminaries. The real school is the United States — 
 the nation itself. The coolie comes here to work. You come here to work. 
 Tou work indoors, he works either indoors or out of doors. Tou are taught 
 how to run machines in colleges, he was taught how to run machines in 
 factories. What is the difference between the education that you get in 
 the agricultural or horticultural colleges at Berkeley, and the education 
 which he got on the great ranch in the San Joaquin, run by American men, 
 equipped with modern appliances and conducted upon the effective systems 
 which American thought has brought to bear in that field of productivity? 
 The difference is only in degree. Both are lighting your lamps from the 
 vast flame of western light, and with this illumination in degree as your 
 xespective capacities enable you to absorb it, you both return to China — to 
 •do what ? To apply your knowledge there in the uplift of your people and 
 your country. 
 
 But, my friends, this laborer of China is shut away from the United 
 States. Not only from here, but other countries, believing our judgment 
 ■against him to be correct, have copied our decree, and have shut him away 
 from their nations. In no country where the light of western knowledge 
 beams, and where he has thus far appeared in such numbers as to draw 
 notice, can he enter. From the countries of that most advanced of the 
 human race, those of the tongue who have in dominion spread themselves 
 farther over the surface of the earth than any other — the English speaking 
 people, he is shut away, save in England itself, and the regions of the 
 English flag in Asia. That branch of them comprising the American 
 nation has even shut him away from the parts of Asia where they are 
 .ascendant, so that he cannot go to the islands of the continent which he 
 inhabits, and which, prior to our advent, had been his right since the dawn 
 of history. From Canada, from Australia, from South Africa, from the 
 isles of the Atlantic as well as those of the Paciflc, from Alaska to the 
 ..antipodes he is regarded as an object which must be kept away. He is 
 ■excluded from Panama, he is massacred in Mexico as a warning that he 
 must not further come there, and the countries of Latin- America, one after 
 
 21 
 
another, are copying into law the exclusion enactments of the United States. 
 What does this mean to China? Have you ever thought of that? If 
 you have it is more than your statesmen have ever done. It means that 
 China is shut off from the light of the western world, from the lamp of 
 western knowledge. It means that China is doomed to continue in barbar- 
 ism and weakness, and that she can never rise. You have heard read here 
 tonight by Professor Treat of the Oriental section of Stanford University a 
 letter of Alexander Hamilton expressing the conditions afflicting the new 
 nation of a few hundred thousand souls then gathered upon the eastern 
 seaboard of the United States ; and the Professor thinks he finds In that 
 letter descriptions that parallel the conditions now in China which beset the 
 statesmen administering the new republic. That they are in truth only 
 difficulties and they will presently disappear, as disappeared those which 
 called forth the letter of Hamilton. I assure him that the conditions of 
 America at that time and those of China at present are wholly different. 
 Here we had a vast territory lacking only settlement through immigration, 
 with the door open to such from the nations of highest enlightenment then 
 existing in the world — the civilization of Europe. China has vast territory ; 
 it is not sparsely settled, as ours was in the time of Hamilton, but it is well 
 settled. It presents no offer to immigration — it is lacking in light. And 
 that light is denied her through the attitude toward her of the western 
 world. This country, presenting the conditions which Alexander Hamilton 
 deplored, would have paralleled the present state of China had an exclusion 
 law against the immigration of Europe existed on the American Atlantic 
 seaboard which would have shut away the immigration of Europe, as was 
 at that time, as early as 1789, strenuously demanded by various misguided 
 persons, the progenitors of those who came after and enacted the exclusion 
 law of 1882. But the door of immigration was kept open and in poured the 
 men of Europe, who produced in this country the conditions that favored 
 light, and there followed an inpouring of the light of Europe, and light 
 acted upon light, and there arose in a hundred years this vast illumination 
 which we now realize as the apex of modern civilization. What would the 
 United States ever have attained in civilization if those people of Europe 
 had been prevented from coming here in 1789 and thence on, as the exclu- 
 sionists of that day would have effected, had they been given their way? 
 The few who in that day were in the country would scarcely have advanced 
 at all. We would have had now on the Atlantic seaboard small settlements 
 of unenterprising and stolid people, and the balance of the country would 
 still be the hunting ground of Indians. The reason for this would be that 
 the light of Europe had been shut away from the new land by the exclusion 
 of immigration. In respect of China today, the conditions differ chiefly in 
 the fact that we stand to her in the position that the Europe of 1789 stood 
 to us, and her continent, instead of being sparsely settled as then was ours, 
 is for a large part well settled. The conditions differ also in this — that with 
 America of 1789 the immigration moved from the center of higher civiliza- 
 
 22 
 
tion to the country of lesser development, whereas with China of 1913 the 
 immigration would (if allowed) move from the country of lesser develop- 
 ment (China) to that of the higher civilization (America). Why in one 
 case the immigration moved from a higher to a lesser civilization, and in the 
 other case it would, were it free, move from a lesser to a higher civilization, 
 is an interesting subject for inciuiry. The answer is that migration always 
 moves to fields of larger economic or industrial opportunity. The civiliza- 
 tion of Europe in 1789 was vastly higher than that of the United States, but 
 it was very unequally distributed amongst its peoples. There was a great 
 under stratum in the society of the European countries of higher enlighten- 
 ment to whom the benefits of their civilization was largely denied. These 
 people emigrated to America, where they found, even amongst the wilds of 
 the new country, larger opportunity, a far more untrammeled scope for the 
 exercise of their intellects and energies, hence a wider school, than was 
 presented to them in the lands they had left. The civilization built here 
 hy these immigrants was reared upon the structure of the old civilization of 
 Europe, the best of which came to be drawn upon and incorporated in that 
 rising here. This latter came ultimately to assist the upbuilding of the 
 civilization of Europe in its own habitat. The discoveries in science, the 
 elaboration of systems, the methods in industry and trade, even the economic 
 principles and laws brought forward in America reacted upon Europe and 
 were adopted there, in whole or in part, and such adoptions bred within 
 those countries further thought which evolving into achievements we in 
 turn acquired those. So by action and reaction of the thought of the two 
 ■continents, what we call western civilization has been developed as we know 
 it today. With this process the Orient has had practically nothing to do. 
 We built up our civilization with little or no aid from them, for the simple 
 reason that there was no interchange of people between the two continents, 
 as was always the case between this continent and that of Europe. Articles 
 of trade do not furnish the thought incentive that enables one country to 
 huild upon the thought of another. Such requires human contact, in other 
 words migration. We could have gone on using the teas, the silks and gums 
 of the Orient indefinitely and have been wholly unaffected by Chinese and 
 .Japanese thought in consequence thereof. One of the gratest tea drinking 
 nations of the world, England, has acquired nothing of Chinese thought 
 through its large consumption of her tea. De Quincey, addicted to the 
 Chinese vice of opium, was so shocked on seeing a Chinese whom he met in 
 England, that for months his aberrations were filled with what were to him 
 horrifying visions of the Orient. The trouble with China today is not the 
 growing pains that affect the healthy youth of a republic, but it is due to the 
 fact that a little of western light has shot into the nation through returning 
 immigrants from the United States, and the possessors of that light are 
 trying to diffuse it amidst the surrounding darkness. Such light as it is, is 
 very imperfect, and its possessors do not know how to handle it. More of 
 the same light is required, even to them, to enable them to know how to use 
 
 23 
 
it to their advantage. But it is the character of that quality — the light of 
 civilization — that whoever possesses it will hold it as a lamp and will try- 
 to carry it forward. Where it meets darkness on every hand, as in China, 
 it will naturally turn into a torch, and as such will become extinguished. 
 The circumambient barbarianism will snuff it out. To sustain itself against 
 the great walls of darkness, the light must be constantly reinforced from 
 the sources of that light — in other words, more and ever more returned 
 immigrants from the United States must pass into China to hold up the 
 hands of those there bearing the lamp, and in such manner the illumination 
 must ever grow, if it is to be sustained — otherwise it will expire and dark- 
 ness will again pervade. This is what is the matter with China. Where 
 did the revolution against the Manchus break out, and where was it most 
 obstinately sustained ? In the Quang Tung province, the region from which 
 the immigrants went to the United States, during the thirty years we 
 admitted them here, and to which they returned. These people wanted 
 China to be a republic like the United States, where they or their fathers 
 had acquired their knowledge. They thought if China were a republic, like 
 the United States, it would soon become enlightened like the United States, 
 and life in China would then be on a plane with life here. They did not 
 realize that by changing the form of government they did not change the 
 knowledge of the people, and that they cannot increase this in the varied 
 and widespread manner necessary for the upbuilding of the nation after the 
 manner of the civilized west, unless they have full and free that which the 
 west possesses, namely, migration with the west. Let one nation of the west 
 bottle up itself, or be bottled up, against all other nations, as is the case 
 with China and Japan, so that the people cannot go out of the country 
 anywhere into the west, and what would happen? Why, the proscribed 
 nation would not only not advance, but it would rapidly deteriorate. That 
 such must be the fate of China and of Japan, no thinking men can doubt. 
 Do you realize what danger you are severally encountering by carrying 
 western educations into a country where you will stand isolated spots of 
 light surrounded by dense ignorance which is not in sympathy with your 
 knowledge and views of life? How many men similar to yourselves have 
 been murdered in China during the past year, for no other reason than that 
 they were in possession of this western knowledge and were trying to graft 
 it upon the darkness of China and to build out of that condition a higher 
 order of affairs for the Chinese people ! Look at that Chinese parliament, 
 with its hands locked, unable to put pen to paper! Not locked by Yuan 
 Shi Kai, who was groping amidst the gloom to find the things best to do, 
 but by each other. Did you ever hear of a congress of the United States, 
 a parliament of England, a Chamber of Prance, that would stand still for 
 months, in the face of a great national crisis, and be unable to bring forward 
 the wisdom to act ? But you would find just that condition of things where 
 one body of the men were possessed of western light and ideals, and the rest 
 were not. The less enlightened elements would simply not act at all, not 
 
 24 
 
knowing how to act in such a matter, hence fearful of all action. I tell you, 
 my friends, you are entering upon a hazardous career to attempt to carry 
 western light amongst a people shut off from the sources of that light, as 
 China is today through its exclusion by the western world of her emi- 
 grating people. 
 
 I do not, however, feel that such admonitions as I am giving to you 
 will long be in point to be given by anybody in the United States. In my 
 judgment, not many bodies of intelligent Chinese, such as I see here tonight, 
 will for long go forward from this country to China. You have read in the 
 newspapers, but a week or more ago, the declaration by the head of the 
 Immigration Department on the Coast, himself a labor union politician, 
 that too many Chinese, pretending to be students, are entering this country 
 under the exempt clause. That means that the Immigration Department is 
 opposed to the entry of you students, and will employ the powers of the 
 government in their hands to keep further contingents of you out of the 
 country. Tou must know that the administration of the immigration laws 
 of this country are in the hands of those who are strongly opposed to all 
 immigrants entering the country, who wish to keep out every one who does 
 not come here simply to spend money. They believe that any man who 
 comes here to work takes the bread out of the mouth of some workman 
 already here; that any country which by further enlightenment increases 
 its powers of production, thereby lessens the opportunity of productions of 
 the United States; and the element or class of our population whom the 
 believers in these errors represent, are those who deem themselves injured 
 by such immigration — I refer to our labor unionists. These people, admin- 
 istering the immigration laws, have full and absolute control over them. 
 They have succeeded in eliminating the Courts of the country from dealing 
 vnth such matters, so that justice through law is not possible, and appeals 
 are taken merely from one labor unionist to another labor unionist. There 
 is nothing, therefore, to prevent them from excluding whatever Chinese 
 students they may desire, and as they regard the Chinese exclusion laws 
 as racial, as in fact they are, they view it desirable that all Chinese, all 
 Japanese and all Hindus should be kept out of the country without regard 
 to their occupations. You noticed just last week that the Chinese Six 
 Companies issued a statement that they would urge the Chinese government 
 not to exhibit at the Panama Pacific Exposition on the ground that it is the 
 policy of the United States and the State of California to discriminate 
 against all Chinese resident within the country; and you have noted the 
 many recent acts of the California legislature, among them the so-called 
 Alien-Land Acts, preventing Chinese and Japanese from owning lands 
 within the state, which have for their purpose the rooting out and expelling 
 Chinese and Japanese residents from the state, just as similar discrimina- 
 tory acts in South Africa have for their purpose the driving out of that 
 country the Chinese and Hindu people. For these reasons, therefore, you 
 may expect fewer Chinese students educated in the United States in future 
 
 25 
 
than heretofore. I do not regard this as harmful to such proposed students ; 
 rather it is for their benefit; for I gravely doubt the success or the safety 
 to themselves of a few young men carrying western educations into China, 
 shut off, as China is by exclusion laws of the West, from the enlightening- 
 and uplifting influence of migration thence of her people generally; for 
 if you are to use in China your western educations to the best advantage 
 and in the fullest scope, you will be apt to incur the enmity of the reac- 
 tionary elements about you. 
 
 The real reason Chinese and Japanese immigration is opposed in the 
 United States is a prevalent mistaken belief that opportunity to labor is 
 created and controlled by demand and supply of laborers. This opinion 
 pervades all classes of people, and the error finds no refutation from the 
 colleges or the learned. It is a great and terrible mistake. Assuming the 
 idea to be true, it becomes the concern of the laboring element of the 
 country, the part of it which is organized and politically active, to create 
 conditions which maintain a scarcity of laborers on one hand, and a 'scarcity 
 of products of labor on the other. If things be scarce there will be a 
 demand for laborers to supply things, and if at the same time laborers be 
 scarce those who are employed will receive higher wages for their work, for 
 of course scarcity means high prices and high prices means high wages. 
 This is the condition which is now inflicting itself upon the United States 
 as upon Europe. The idea also extends to keeping out of the country all 
 imports, for if products of labor come into the country, there must be less 
 demand for labor here to make such things in this country. The laborers 
 therefore back the protectionist view that foreign commerce is only bene- 
 ficial to the country when it consists of goods going out of the country in 
 exchange for gold coming in. I cannot go into the deeps of the economic 
 idea here tonight, except to tell you that the doctrine is all wrong. It is not 
 the law that either a scarcity of laborers or a scarcity of products benefits 
 the laborer or the country of which he is a part ; save for a few individuals 
 who are the pampered beneficiaries of a false principle, it is ruinous to 
 both. God did not so create the world and mankind that the presence of 
 one man in lawful work should be a harm to his fellow ; or that the exchange 
 of the products of the labors of two men, whether they be respectively 
 across the street or across an ocean, should be a harm to either; a laborer 
 is not harm but a benefit to his fellow wherever he is, and to his country 
 and to their country, and the larger the number of men at work the greater 
 the benefit to all. Demand for labor does not arise through scarcity of 
 things, but through abundance of things, which no sooner are created than 
 they must be transported and distributed for consumption, or they are 
 converted into other forms for such consumption ; hence the more you have 
 of things, the greater is the call upon industry and upon men to operate 
 upon things, and this comprises labor and the opportunity to labor, or, as 
 we call it, employment. 
 
 The condition brought about by the error produces many matters which 
 
 26 
 
seem to have no relation to the error. The California land question, for 
 instance, and all the anti-oriental legislation ever enacted in the United 
 States or in any state thereof, have been produced through this error. But 
 the most remarkable of all its effects is the growth of race hatred. Every- 
 where the presence of Orientals is looked upon as being inimical to the 
 peoples amongst whom they appear. In the United States, Canada, Aus- 
 tralia they "will not assimilate with the white race," hence cannot be 
 permitted amongst them. In Mexico amongst the copper colored peons, 
 you are ' ' leeches, ' ' as General Carranza calls you,* and you will not assim- 
 ilate with the Mexicans. In the Philippines amongst the bronze Filipino, 
 you are utterly intolerable and "cannot assimliate with the natives." In 
 the Hawaiias where the dusky, good-natured and indolent Kanakas pervade, 
 jo'r are utterly unassimilable and will "drive the native out" if you are 
 permitted entry. So in Africa, so everywhere, in fact even in one part of 
 Asia against another, the going thence of yourselves or the Japanese has 
 come or is coming to be treated as an assault upon everybody upon any 
 shore where you land. This feeling and this view, I say, is merely due to 
 the primary mistake, the economic error, I have mentioned. With that 
 corrected in the minds of men — and it could with a few years of real effort 
 toe corrected the world over — with that corrected, all this race hatred would 
 disappear. Men would no longer feel or express antipathy toward you, 
 when they understood and realized that they were vastly benefited, and 
 not harmed, by your presence. They would welcome you amongst them 
 with glad hearts just as we here in California welcome the men from the 
 Eastern States (all of us except the labor unions, who hate those immi- 
 grants just as they hate you), and just as we Californians welcomed you 
 here in this land when you first came to us in the early fifties, at a time 
 when it was generally believed that your presence here was a benefit to us. 
 The evil, therefore, that lies at the bottom of this whole immigration 
 question, and all that fiows from it and will flow, is this one point, that 
 opportunity to labor is not created, controlled or even affected by demand 
 and supply of laborers. The economic condition that we stand in the pres- 
 «nce of is akin to those conditions we find in pathology. We have a disease, 
 men are appalled by its epidemic ; people are out of work and are destroyed 
 
 * Since this address was delivered, the edict of the insurgent government of Mexico 
 lias gone forth against the Japanese as well as the Chinese, and both are prohibited 
 from landing on those shores of Mexico under revolutionary control. In 1901 I saw in 
 Mexico many evidences which convinced me that the Chinese there would be subject to 
 znassacre at the first revolution fomented on behalf of "the people." This has since 
 occurred on a considerable scale, and the hatred is now extended to the Japanese. The 
 latter In large numbers have recently been migrating to Brazil as laborers and agricul- 
 turists. A few days ago reports came of serious revolutions, and sieges of towns in 
 -central Brazil, the disturbances being due to "race differences;" the meagre reports in the 
 press dispatches failing in the information as to what race or races were involved in the 
 •difficulty. The fact, however, that revolution has arisen in three districts of Brazil, and 
 that the troubles are over race, points inevitably to the fact that if the Japanese are not 
 implicated in the present disturbances they certainly will be so involved later on. The 
 Tnoving of people out of Japan to reside in any part of the Western world, with the mind 
 of the West filled with the economic error upon immigration which now besets it, is 
 simply sending forth people to either certain destruction, or to the stirring up with the 
 Tiations in which they settle of political difficulties to perplex the home government and 
 to provoke riots in Japan. If Japan continues indifferent to this economic problem in the 
 "west, she must at least content herself with realizing that she is bottled up in Asia. 
 
 27 
 
by thousands ; a few, doctors, nurses, hospitals, druggists, even profit by the 
 condition; but the mass and the country suffers, the government is per- 
 plexed and confounded. Some investigator comes forward with a statement 
 that the disease is due to a germ. He is scoffed at by doctors and druggists, 
 and government considers him unworthy of notice. Presently the investi- 
 gator isolates his germ, and tells how he did it ; he tests it, introduces it into 
 healthy bodies and produces the disease ; then having the germ, he supplies 
 a serum with which he cures the disease. Doctors still scoff, and govern- 
 ment is still heedless. "Why should this fellow way off yonder in the 
 woods have anything worth noticing ? If anything like that were possible, 
 some college professor would have found it and brought it forth; instead, 
 the professors are all against it, say it is not so ; let us have done with this 
 man. ' ' I am the fellow with the germ and the serum. My reading of years 
 on this subject has not shown me that in this great immigration and labor 
 question, anyone but myself has ever come forward with error upon demand 
 and supply of laborers, as the reason for the wrong conditions. The serum 
 is publicity, education of the public. I carry it to doctors, to government, 
 those able to recognize it, to see and measure the germ plainly through the 
 micrometer of the mind, and they refuse to look and see; their fathers 
 refused to look into the telescope of Gallileo and thereby wreck their own 
 erroneous notions of the celestial universe, notions arrived at without a 
 telescope. "How can it be so when no professor says it is so, and what 
 business has this fellow yonder in San Francisco got with mixing up in 
 questions of this sort? How can he be right or worthy of notice?'' Mean- 
 while the multitudes perish, the seeds of war sown thick over the world 
 sprout their crops of spears and bayonets, and ripen toward the harvest 
 of widespread human slaughter. 
 
 If any one ever comes forward possessed of the understanding and 
 sufficiently equipped to explode this error, the immigration question will 
 be solved, the labor question will be solved; the opposition to immigration, 
 Chinese, Japanese, Hindus, Italians, Bulgarians, Slavs and the rest — ^will 
 end, and the Chinese exclusion law and Japanese "gentlemen's agreement" 
 will crumble into dust, and our people will invite again the immigration of 
 China and Japan, as we did before. Only a campaign of education upon 
 the subject can effect the change; and considering the tremendous issues at 
 stake with the nations of the Orient in a continuance of this condition in 
 the United States, I have for years been striving with the people and states- 
 men of China and Japan to get them to understand the problem, to the end 
 that they would bring about such a campaign amongst the American people. 
 
 I have at last reluctantly concluded, however, that the Oriental peoples 
 cannot be moved in this matter, that they will not install the desired cam- 
 paign, and that whatever calamities must befall the nations in consequence 
 of the maintenance of exclusion, must come to pass. Not without strenuous 
 endeavor to awaken the Orient to its danger, and complete non-success 
 attendant thereupon, have I reached this conclusion. I have for six years 
 
 28 
 
importunated every Japanese ofSeial with whom I came in contact to see 
 the danger to his country of the existing condition, but without success. 
 I have written to Japanese statesmen, philosophers and business men in 
 Japan, scores of letters elucidating the subject, and the feeling that I now 
 have is that my expositions have not been useful or even welcome. Two 
 years ago I wrote a series of twenty-five articles upon the subject which I 
 caused to be printed weekly in the leading daily newspaper of Hongkong; 
 but no attention whatever was paid in the Orient to these articles that I 
 have learned. If my experience had been that of myself alone I should 
 perhaps feel that my proposals were but folly and my warnings were but 
 the manifestations of a disturbed mental state. But my experience has 
 been the experience of others. Some two years ago, Mr. T. S. Sutton, an 
 American gentleman of learning and wide general experience, living in Los 
 Angeles, came across my articles then appearing through the newspaper in 
 Hongkong. Pie came to San Francisco to call upon me, and remaining 
 here a week, he became imbued with the doctrines of truth as I laid them 
 before him. Keturning to Los Angeles, and being known among the 
 Chinese of that city, he directed a movement for arousing China upon this 
 subject to the end that a campaign of education amongst the people of the 
 United States be installed. During a whole year he did no other work than 
 writing letters upon this subject which he caused to be circulated by thou- 
 sands to newspapers and public men of China. He did not even, so far as I 
 know, receive so much as a reply to any missive he sent, and at the end 
 of a year he ceased his efforts, realizing that he had accomplished nothing 
 whatever. In the meantime, he had, however, converted five or six educated 
 Chinese in Los Angeles, and these men joined him in the effort to arouse 
 their countrymen. I have never in my life read such letters as were written 
 by these Chinese men. Learned, wise and able as they were, they teemed 
 with the energy of indignation at the oppressions of the Americans and the 
 world upon their countrymen, and assailed the ignorance that permitted 
 it with a vehemence that I felt must move the very stones of the Chinese 
 wall, much less the minds of the Chinese statesmen as stolid, indeed, it has 
 seemed to me, as the stones of that wall. It was all of no use, against the 
 density of that ignorance the impingement of no warning, however force- 
 fully driven, could make a breach; and they, Dr. Chan Kiu Sing at their 
 head, like Mr. Sutton, were compelled to give over their thankless task. 
 
 Generally speaking both the Chinese and Japanese in the United States 
 do not wish free entry herein of their countrymen.* They are extremely 
 
 *It will be remembered that the Chinese Six Companies very strongly favored the 
 appointment of Senator A. Caminetti as Immigration Commissioner of the United States 
 at San Francisco, notwithstanding he had for years been one of the most active antag- 
 onists of Chinese immigration on this coast. And Dr. Sidney L. Gulick of Tokio, said to 
 be in charge of a campaign of education of the Japanese in the United States to effect 
 non-discrimination of the resident Japanese, securing to them equal rights and naturali- 
 zation, proposed to the State Department in Washington a scheme of immigration restric- 
 tion applicable to all immigrants to the United States, which would have permanently 
 fixed the Immigration from Japan at about 220 per year. What Dr. Gulick and those 
 behind him were looking to was not the effect which suspended migration with the West 
 was having or would have on Japan, but the privilege and comfort of the resident 
 Japanese, which had he attained all he sought, either at Washington or through his 
 campaign, would have benefited Japan, or the people in Japan, not even the slightest. 
 See "A New Immigration Policy" (pamphlet), by Prof. Sidney L. Gulick. 
 
 29 
 
anxious to prevent discriminatory legislation against Chinese and Japanese, 
 for such are themselves, and to possess equal rights and privileges with those 
 of all other peoples in the country. They refuse to believe that the feeling 
 of hatred against them, and the discriminatory legislation, and the various 
 though non-ofScial persecutions to which they are subjected as a race, has 
 anything whatever to do with immigration, and they have no ear for any- 
 one seeking to point out to them the relation between the two. Their idea 
 of removing this offensive legislation, and of securing equal rights, citizen- 
 ship among the number, is to lead good and useful lives as individuals, do 
 nothing to oppose the views of any persons within the country, and try to 
 cultivate the good will of Americans. They think thereby they can "live 
 down" the feeling that everywhere exists against them. They are very 
 much mistaken. They can never "live down" race hatred. They can never 
 find favor in the eyes of people who believe that their presence in the coun- 
 try is hurtful to the American people. Where would you find more useful 
 and less offensive persons than those Japanese farmers about Lodi who pur- 
 chased desert areas of shallow soil there and converted them into a vast gar- 
 den blooming with berry blossoms. None could deny that every interest in 
 California with whom they had any dealings was richer, and every white man 
 within those interests was better and happier for the existence of those Jap- 
 anese, and yet the race-hating Governor of California conducted the Secre- 
 tary of State of the United States through that district and invited him to see 
 in these smiling farms the reason why the California legislature should deny 
 to Japanese the right to own land in this State. The causes of this hatred 
 I shall refer to later on, for the present let me remark that Orientals do not 
 want free entry thither of their own people. In this they are entirely self- 
 ish. "What you propose," said a Japanese official to me once, "would be 
 unfair to the Japanese who are here." In other words, they regard them- 
 selves in relation to their countrymen not within this country just as our 
 labor unionists regard them. They consider that if Japanese came freely 
 into the country competition would be presented to them in their jobs, and 
 their rate of wages would go down. I cannot enter into discussion of this phase 
 of our Pacific Coast wage question at this time, I can only say that wages 
 have never been so reduced on the Atlantic seaboard wherein yearly pours a 
 million emigrants, not one whit better people than those we received here 
 from the Orient. Undoubtedly, through the influence of labor unionism in 
 San Francisco, and in a lesser degree all over the United States, wages are 
 keyed up too high, being fixed as they are at the breaking point, often indeed 
 far above the breaking point, as they were a while ago, when parades of men 
 for whom there was no employment marched through the streets of San 
 Francisco, the line bannered with the legend "We are starving! $3 for a 
 day of eight hours, or we won't work!" The fact is that in the days when 
 Chinese and Japanese immigration was free on this Coast we had high 
 wages; not so high as the wages ruling at present, it is true, though our 
 most prosperous period was in those days. What would he lowered is the 
 
 30 
 
cost of living, now so absurdly high that in many cases those who are re- 
 ceiving these high wages must subsist on the coarsest and often the scantiest 
 food. It is of not the slightest benefit that laborers receive high wages, in a 
 condition of high prices for everything they consume. What the laborer 
 really receives for his labor is not money but things— the things he buys 
 with his money; if things be abundant he will get much for his wages; if 
 they be scarce and high, he will receive little wage, through the metal he 
 gets as his pay be too heavy to carry home. There is no doubt that with free 
 immigration with Asia on this Coast there would be a vastly greater abund- 
 ance of everything that exists than at present and real wages in consequence, 
 would be greatly increased. 
 
 The whole white race, in all the nations of the continents, of Europe, of 
 America, of Africa, are now moving to wall up the people of Asia within 
 the boundaries of their several nations, to prevent them from having inter- 
 course with the western world. You have recently seen that the Mexican 
 chiefs are preventing you from entering their country, and are arranging 
 legislation to drive out those of you who are there, just as the California 
 legislature is driving you, both Chinese and Japanese, out of California. 
 They are keeping you out driving you out everywhere. What effect is this 
 bottling up going to have on your respective contries? What effect did it 
 have on you during the centuries you remained in isolation ? Why, you did 
 not progress at all, notwithstanding you had some intercourse with the small 
 nations about you, Siam, Annan, Chosen, even with India and the islands of 
 Asia ; you did not progress, you are at a simmering standstill. Now you are 
 to be thrown back into that condition of darkness and weakness, just when 
 you are trying to move out of it, and while you are surrounded by the 
 powerful white nations of Europe, on Asiatic territory, who are menacing 
 your national integrity. Do not think you can stand these nations off from 
 their aggressions and incursions, if you remain weak? No, you have got to 
 become strong, strong along the lines of modern civilization if you wish to 
 hold your countries in Chinese and Japanese hands, otherwise the Euro- 
 peans will overrun you and take your governments away from you ; and you 
 cannot become strong and developed, unless you have the benefits of West- 
 ern intercourse, which is migration. Suppose one of their countries were 
 walled up by China and Japan against their immigrant peoples going out 
 anywhere into the world, do you think they would stand that sort of thing 
 any longer than they could get their warships cleared for battle? Where 
 would Germany's South American trade be today for instance, were it not 
 for German immigration to those countries? Tou must remember that 
 while the white race is bottling up your countries so you cannot go to any 
 country of the white race, cannot go in some instances even, from one coun- 
 try to another in Asia, they have the whole white world free and open 
 amongst themselves, and may freely imbibe by processes of migration the 
 light of one nation by another. Have you ever tried to balance in your 
 minds from the standpoint of progress in civilization a nation shut off from 
 
 31 
 
migration with a nation to whom migration with the whole world is free and 
 open? 
 
 Someone has asked me here tonight to express my views upon the fu- 
 ture of Japan under this isolated condition. My answer is if Japan will 
 not come forward and move this campaign in the United States which will 
 wipe out those laws, she should forthwith abandon her idea of being a na- 
 tion standing between Asia and the West, treating herself as a nation apart 
 from the rest of Asia, regarding herself as a sort of half Western nation, a 
 vehicle or avenue for the introduction of Western civilization into the con- 
 tinent of Asia. She must get rid of that notion at once, and realize that she 
 is altogether Asiatic, that her interests lie wholly with Asia. She must turn 
 to China and earnestly try to fan into activity and uplift there what of 
 modern civilization she has imbibed from the West, and prepare for the 
 wars which Asia must wage to drive the white out of Asia. This task she 
 must set for herself and she can move upon it none too speedily; if she does 
 not, the white will have her government as he will have that of China and 
 this within the next half century. Japan has stood off the white in one war, 
 but for her success in which she would have now hovering over her an 
 enemy who would be threatening her existence as a sovereign entity. She 
 must be brought to feel that the war with Eussia was but the beginning of 
 a series of wars, and she cannot meet these without the aid of China. It will 
 be a war of "Asia for the Asiatics" against the white. It will be a gigantic 
 reign and realm of bloodshed, but none the less necessary if her sovereignty 
 is to be maintained. Such would not be necessary, and the rule of peace 
 would pervade the eastern world as the people moved upward with those of 
 the West in a common civilization, if she should set about removing exclu- 
 sion of immigration in the West ; but so far, no Oriental nation has shown 
 either the statesmanship to study the subject, or the disposition to under- 
 take the task. I thank you. 
 
 32