MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? BY WALTER B. PITKIN NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1921 Copyright, 1921, by The Centubt Co. FEB ?l n^i S)CLA605858 FOREWORD The Japanese crisis in California is no local issue. It is one minor phase of a world problem that is already immense, intricate, and certain to grow steadily worse unless the most drastic steps are taken in the near future to solve it. The diplomatic complications it raises are mere sur- face ripples. Underneath them are stirring, fierce, hu- man forces — hunger, overcrowding, suspicions as old as Asia, racial habits of life, and the fierce pressure of un- heard-of new wealth seeking unheard-of profits on the last frontier of finance, which is China and Siberia. No ordinarj^ office-holder, no bureaucrat, no diplomat trained in the conventions of his craft, can alone cope with a problem which these factors dominate. The real Japanese crisis is properly a task to which the united intelligence of the best-informed people in America and Japan must devote itself for a long time to come. No new ''Gentlemen's Agreement" will settle anything. Neither will the new California land law nor the League of Nations nor the China Consortium. Still less will either the propaganda of the Japanese or of the Amer- ican exclusionists or of the "White Australians." And the reason for all this is quite plain. Beneath the diplomatic controversies, beneath the pulling and hauling of financial and commercial interests, the roots of the trouble lie in the elemental struggle for exist- vi FOREWORD ence, which, since the World War, has become every- where hideously evident to a degree which not even the most ardent Darwinian could hope for. The world is short of food and clothes. Too many babies are being bom in the wrong places, and too few in the right places. The rich lands of the earth have all been occu- pied, and the poorer acres are now being pressed into service. And to aggravate the whole situation, millions of men everywhere are honestly trying to solve their problems of living by the use of political notions and political machinery that are grotesquely inadequate or even false. So far as American opinion is concerned, it has been perverted and tainted by the ignorance of its chief in- formants, the newspapers, by the misrepresentations of men personally interested in some exploitation, and by the honest enthusiasms and exaggerations of patriots on both sides of the Pacific. And this poisoning has proved unusually dangerous because the American public, lack- ing first-hand information about Japan and having no direct interest in that country, has been unable to ap- praise the flood of fact and fiction about the crisis. The following study deals with the five major aspects of the situation. It surveys the events up to the clos- ing weeks of 1920 ; it analyzes the sources of misunder- standing between the Japanese and Americans; it in- quires into the genuine conflicts of interest and policy; it considers the various possibilities of future conflicts on a larger scale; and, finally, it presents suggestions for a fundamental solution based upon what seems to me to be a scientific national policy. At every point an effort has been made to avoid technicalities of law, diplo- FOREWORD vii macy, and scientific theory, in order to bring out in simple form the basic truths of the whole affair. This has compelled me to take an unduly brief and somewhat dogmatic stand with regard to a number of matters that are still decidedly controversial. In no case, however, has this course been pursued without a careful weighing of available evidence. Virtually all accessible sources of information and opinion have been inspected and in some measure util- ized. Particular attention has been given to the state- ments issued by pro-Japanese and anti-Japanese propa- gandists. Many American, British, Philippine, and Japanese officials have given me valuable facts difficult of access; and business men, banking experts, econo- mists, and export and import houses in New York and San Francisco have most courteously supplied me with significant data. More than two thousand newspaper reports have been clipped, and in some cases checked by a visit to the scene of the real or alleged news. Dur- ing the summer and autumn of 1920 I journeyed about three thousand miles in California and the adjoining dis- tricts of Mexico, interviewing employers of Japanese, a few Japanese farmers, many American ranchmen, real- estate operators, social workers, and various state and local officials whose work brought them into contact with some part of the Japanese problem. Of the several hundred Californians whom I had the good fortune to quiz, only one impressed me as seeing the issue in all its immense intricacy and at the same time having a statesmanlike solution ready. That man was Elwood Mead, chairman of the California Land Settlement Board, who has made his State famous by creating farms viii FOREWORD and farm villages at Durham and Delhi which promise to solve one of the hardest and most distressing prob- lems of American life ; namely, the upbuilding of healthy- rural communities and sound agriculture. Mr. Mead^s intimate knowledge of California farm life, and his wide experience in Australia and our own Pacific coast with the broader agrarian problems, enabled him to give me minute information that aided me greatly in finding facts and in interpreting them. Next to Mr. Mead, my most fruitful source of facts and opinion in California was the series of technical conferences held at the Scripps Institution of Biological Research at La Jolla during the first two weeks of Au- gust, 1920, when the San Diego Conference on the Prob- lems of the Pacific was being held near by. These meet- ings were planned, organized, and conducted by Dr. "William E. Ritter, director of the Scripps Institution, whose breadth of view is attested to by the variety of witnesses he saw fit to summon for discussion. Virtu- ally every scientific and practical aspect of the Japa- nese problem was represented at the conferences by one or more specialists or men of affairs. In the prolonged interchange of views by these many gentlemen, considerable information came out which has materially aided me. In the main this information was more or less scattered and incidental, though there were two outstanding exceptions to this rule ; namely, the sta- tistical material about tendencies in world population, which was brought forward by Warren S. Thompson of Cornell, and a comprehensive study of the world food suppty, present and future, presented by E. ]\I. East of the Bussey Institution of Harvard. Mr. Thompson's FOREWORD ix facts were in the main new to me and more than ordi- narily enlightening. So much so, indeed, that I have asked him to permit me to publish here most of his original presentation. Nearly all of the statistical ma- terial, as well as the inferences drawn therefrom, in the chapter entitled "Who Shall Inherit the Earth?" is Mr. Thompson's. Mr. East's general conclusions were all nearly identical with the substance of my own, inde- pendently reached through other channels ; but both his particular facts and his keen statistical analysis gave me new and much desired insight into one of the funda- mental phases of the Oriental problem. Finally, the constructive program of reciprocity advanced by Mr. E. T. W^illiams of the University of California, formerly of the Bureau of Oriental Affairs in the United States State Department and technical delegate on the same sub- ject at the Paris Peace Conference, impressed me as both just and ingenious. The final editorial revision and the handling of last- minute news could not have succeeded without the prompt and efficient assistance of Mrs. Emaine Sachs and Mr. ]\Iax Watson, both of whom have not only con- tributed material of value, but have rewritten entire chapters for me. Mr. Watson's first-hand knowledge of Japanese affairs in California, coupled with his close studies of rural problems on both the Atlantic and Pa- cific coasts, has proved particularly useful. I suspect that not a few readers will pick up this volume with a suspicious squint and say to themselves, "Well, I wonder who hired this press agent to tackle this subject?" This is the natural and correct attitude to take toward any book or article or even newspaper story X FOREWORD dealing with an important international problem in these days. The intelligent American has been stuffed with propaganda about Russia, propaganda about France, propaganda about Japan, propaganda about almost everj-thing except the multiplication table, until he has come to believe nobody and nothing. By way of star- tling him, then, and of protecting myself, let me state that I have not written this book on behalf of any gov- ernmental, political, commercial, financial, religious, or other organization; that I belong to no such organiza- tion; and that no such organization nor any person has ever suggested my writing on the subject. I became interested in the Japanese crisis late in 1919, when I read the current news items, articles, and books about Japan and California in a casual attempt to get my bearings. Being somewhat familiar with the ways and the agents of propaganda, I found in short order that nearly all of the information and opinion being doled out to the reading public came from people who had personal, political, commercial, or social connections with one or another of the many groups in the two countries whose interests were at stake. Knowing that the more intelligent classes of Americans were already nauseated with propaganda, it struck me that perhaps they would like to read a book on the subject written by somebody who had none of those particular prejudices and passions which invalidate the assertions of the pro- Japanese and the anti-Japanese. I should esteem it a favor if those persons who may criticize my findings, other than in technical details, would kindly make a similar statement as to their inter- ests and motives. It would be a waste of my time to FOREWORD xi carry on a debate with a propagandist whose connections were not made known, and it would be unfair to the read- ers of such a discussion. Walter B. Pitkin. New York, December 20, 1920. CONTENTS BOOK I THE CRISIS AND ITS COMPLICATIONS CHAPTER PAGE 1 Must We Fight Japan? 3 2 As Japan Sees Us 8 3 Forces That Make for Peace 23 4 Forces That Make for War 34 5 Illusions About Japan 46 BOOK II THE SITUATION IN JAPAN 6 Form of Government 55 7 Control of Army and Public Opinion .... 62 8 0\^rpopulation 72 9 Wages and Exploitation 85 10 Raw Materials, Russia, and "A Place in the Sun" 101 11 Class Ethics and the Scientific Bureaucracy . Ill 12 Japan's Military Impregnability 122 13 Military Advantage op Low Standard op Living . 130 14 What Would War Between Japan and the United States Involve? 137 15 The Great Deadlock 154 16 How Long Can the Deadlock Continue? . . . 167 17 What Should We Do About It? 178 BOOK III THE CRISIS IN HAWAII AND CALIFORNIA 18 Japanese in Hawaii 185 19 Japanese in California 198 20 The Psychology op the Crisis 235 CONTENTS BOOK IV HOW TO DEAL WITH THE CRISIS CHAPTER PAGE 21 Our National Policy. On What Must It Be Built? 269 22 The World's Food To-day and To-morrow . . . 289 23 Who Shall Inherit the Earth? 312 24 "The Crisis of the Ages" 341 25 A Proposed International Policy 361 26 The Greater Crisis Beneath the Japanese Issue 392 BOOK V EXPERT OPINIONS ON SOME PROBLEMS OF POLICY 27 Conflicting National Policies of Japan and United States (By E. T. Williams) . . . .423 28 Cheap Labor and Standards of Living (By Warren S. Thompson) 463 29 New Agrarian Policies in Australia and Cali- fornia (By Elwood Mead) 474 30 Shall East Wed West? Racial Intermarriage (By S. J. Holmes) 481 Appendix 511 Index 529 BOOK I THE CRISIS AND ITS COMPLICATIONS MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? CHAPTER 1 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? MUST we fight Japan? Many Americans will laugh at this question. The world has had enough of war, they say. After hav- ing watched Europe go down into ruin, most of us are now vividly aware of the folly of trying to settle any national quarrels by the caveman method, so they tell us. Furthermore, Japan and the United States are too far apart ever to be drawn into battle. But there are other Americans, and not a few of them, who insist that our query is ridiculous for the opposite reason. There is only one real problem, they tell us, and that is: How soon shall we be fighting Japan, and how shall we manage it so as to win? These people, mostly living on our Pacific Coast, argue that war has already become inevitable. And they are not at a loss when asked to advance their reasons for their belief. They point to half a hundred momentous political and commercial events, here and abroad, concerning all of which we shall have much to say later ; and, on the whole, their evidence is much more circumstantial and smacks 3 4 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? less of theories and wishes than does the evidence of those who take the view that war is impossible. The very existence of two such sharply opposed views suggests that both are wrong and that our question is an open one. And a careful examination of the facts fully confirms this supposition. War with Japan is a possibility, not a certainty to-day. Peace with Japan is a possibility, not a certainty to-day. It is a demonstra- ble fact that There are many more powerful forces making for war between Japan and the United States to-daif than there were for making war between Germany and the United States only ten years ago. And it is no less demonstrable that There are some powerful forces working to prevent such a war which were not working to prevent the war between Germany and the United States. The chances of grave trouble with Japan in the near future are immensely greater than our chances of trouble with Germany were ten years ago. This is a most conservative statement that could, if we had time for such a task, be proved in detail. Whoever doubts it is asked to contemplate the following facts : In 1910, Germany was expanding into southeastern Europe politically and economically, and this expansion was not coming into conflict with a single visible interest of the United States. In 1920, Japan is expanding in eastern Asia, Hawaii, and our own Pacific Coast. Her interests in Siberia conflict sharply with American international policies. MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 5 Her demand for control of the German cable station on the island of Yap and the granting of her wish by the League of Nations have disturbed our State Department so deeply that the delicate controversy has been laid be- fore the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate ; and it is not unlikely that grave complications may ensue. Her aggression in China conflicts with American ship- ping, commercial, and diplomatic interests, with Ameri- can moral sentiment, and with the American policy of "The Open Door." The enormous influx of Japanese into Hawaii has already made those islands oriental in every sense save the political one, and within another dec- ade they will be politically dominated by the Japanese vote. The lesser immigration into California has brought about a grave crisis, the latest development of which is the overwhelming referendum vote of that State in favor of a land law that must result, if consistently carried out, in driving thousands of Japanese farmers out of the Pa- cific Coast region. For rather obvious reasons this same discriminatory legislation has produced immense irrita- tion in Japan. In 1910, thousands of Americans admired all things German, save the kaiser, whom few took half seriously enough. The meaning of what had happened in Bosnia in 1908 had not dawned upon us and did not influence our national policies visibly. Our newspapers were full of stories about German skill in industry and social work. We were still welcoming German dignitaries to our shores. There were even intelligent men who pointed to the state socialism of Germany with admiration and envy. In 1920, all Americans who have given the matter much thought, look with forebodings upon the Government and 6 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? the ruling classes of Japan. The World War has opened our e3^es to the evils of feudalism, no matter how good the motives of its managers may be. The conviction is deep- ening that the world cannot exist half feudal and half free. Wherever this thought sinks in, there it creates profound distrust of the Japanese Government and all its policies. Americans do not like to associate with Jap- anese in the same community; and they are coming to fear the militaristic aristocracy of that race, even though it be on the other side of the earth. In 1910, the Government and the people of Germany cherished no special grudge against America. While they despised us as a nation of hucksters and mollycod- dles, it was a faint prejudice that seldom developed power enough to influence their acts. And there were thou- sands of Germans having business and personal connec- tions in the United States who emphatically liked us and our ways. In 1920, the Government and the people of Japan dis- like us. And not all the smooth evasions of professional diplomats can conceal this feeling. Too few Americana appreciate its power and extent. It has four sources: 1. The impression about Americans and their morals which is systematically created by newspapers and mo- tion pictures ; 2. The part America has played, together with the powers of Europe, in forcing itself, its business men, and its trade upon Japan. 3. The cunning and hypocritical efforts of our Govern- ment in thwarting Japan in her natural expansion on the mainland of Asia, whither her immense surplus popu- lation must overflow or perish. MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 7 4. The insulting attitude of Americans on the Pacific coast in treating Japanese as an inferior race and passing harsh laws that discriminate against them. We cannot see the Japanese crisis in its true perspec- tive until we have inspected the belief and prejudices that have been steadily flowing from these four sources. CHAPTER 2 AS JAPAN SEES US EVERY American, before he can appraise the present crisis, must put himself in the place of a Japanese and see the situation through his eyes as far as possible. Let us inquire first of all as to the sources of the ordi- nary Japanese citizen's information and impressions about us. You will doubtless think at once of the news despatches published in the Yokohama and Tokio dailies, the other news in the English-language sheets of Japan, and the letters from Japanese colonist in Hawaii and the Pacific coast. All these are important factors in deter- mining Japanese opinion. But, in truth, to-day they are little more than confirmatory of hypotheses which the Japanese derive from another source so much more widely known in the islands, so vivid, and so copious, that every other channel of knowledge has become petty in comparison. This source is the American motion- picture. The motion-picture has, from all that I can gather from both natives and Americans who have been study- ing it in Japan, China, and India, done more to blacken the reputation of the white race in general and the United States in particular than all the malice and libel of the most savage anti-American propagandists. The *' rising tide of color," which Lothrop Stoddard has recently de- 8 AS JAPAN SEES US 9 scribed so picturesquely, but inaccurately, does not flow from native irritation over politics or secret diplomacy or the aggressions of economic imperialism in any greater volume than it flows from the inevitable reactions which the ordinary run of screen-picture produces upon the or- dinary Asiatic, as he sits in the shabby theaters of the great ports and contemplates the world of the white man as reported to him by the white man himself. The pictures he sees are, as a rule, not those recently produced by our best companies. The films that are ex- ported to Asia and South America are largely of two classes. Ma,ny of them are inferior works of art which have not succeeded in our o^vn country, and have there- fore been dumped on the helpless heathen, who can pay only the lowest rentals and hence ought not to expect much. These are, on the whole, merely the cheap, silly stuff that you may see any evening when you can endure sitting for an hour in almost any fifteen or twenty cent movie-dive. The Japanese sees exactly what you see — murders, robberies, prostitutes exhibiting themselves as heroines, and supposedly sane characters saying and do- ing things which only morons or drug fiends could say or do. As all of the pictures of this class are exactly alike in their essential plots, stage settings, characters, and general imbecilities, and as the Japanese observer sees them month in and month out, he is forced into the habit of believing that all this is American realism. In this he does exactly what you do when you see a motion- picture with scenes laid in India or Japan. The second class of pictures he sees is quite different. You have never seen them, and probably you never will unless you happen to sit on a board of censors. They 10 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? are the films which the censors bar from the American screen. Most of them are old, for not many producers are to-day attempting such filth. They have learned that it pays to show a chemical trace of decency even in the movies. But they cannot refrain from cashing in on past mistakes. So they keep on circuit in Asia and South America (and, so I am told, Mexico) the hundreds of thousands of feet of tainted celluloid that five, ten, or even more years ago was adjudged too nasty for even a Barbary Coast audience in San Francisco. The mildest description of these films is unfit to print. Yet mission- aries and business men both testify that they are being shown regularly in all the larger cities of Asia, and a high official of the Government of India personally told me that the effect of these loathsome displays on the natives of that country was so evil that plans for a severe censorship were being considered, especially against what Asia knows as the American film. Now, here is no place to discuss what America ought to do by way of protecting our already tarnished name against the degenerates who write, act, and finance such pictures. Enough to know that for every one Asiatic who learns something about the United States from news- papers or letters a thousand learn everything about us from these movies. It matters little that there is a sprinkling of decent and even solidly informative pic- tures in the stream of exhibits. The significant fact is that the "run of the mill" is as above described, and it is just this that shapes men 's ideas. An American, beholding the lurid lunacy of a cheap movie, is seldom disturbed by it. He knows that there aren 't any such animals as the screen depicts in the guise AS JAPAN SEES US 11 of Yankee heroes and villains. He simply doesn't meet them on the street. But the Japanes is less fortunate. He hasn't been around America, and he has no friends here. The only way he can check up on the motion- picture is by reading about America. The two most ac- cessible sources of printed information are the Japanese newspapers and the few English-language publications in Japan. The well-to-do and highly educated Japanese is likel}^ to read more or less regularly some American newspaper also. Now, it is a well-known fact among newspaper men that only the most sensational news is cabled from any one country to any other. This is an evil state of affairs, and one of the most potent causes of international mis- understandings. Some day it will be remedied, but now it is still unaltered so far as America and Asia are con- cerned. And the result is that the run of news from America about America confirms the motion-picture im- pressions of America upon the Japanese mind. And so too, in great measure, do the head-lines of even our own more respectable newspapers. Let us glance briefly at these last. Let us see just what the Japanese are hear- ing about us now through our own best periodicals. Let us observe, in the middle of December, 1920, "all the news that 's fit to print." The New York building investigation is featured on the front page, abounding in murky revelations of graft — money taken from contractors by labor bosses, who in turn squeeze a toll from the workmen. Organized es- pionage carried on by the steel interest is mentioned, with the suggestion of spies and counterspies. At the very trial itself, men are removed from the court-room, 12 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? accused of coaching witnesses. All this leaves a general impression of moral depravity. A police lieutenant, also on the same day, was shot by burglars when he attempted to interfere with their plans. In the ball-room of the Hotel Astor on this same day a dinner of the Japan Society was taking place, with its protestations of friendship between two friendly nations. At that very hour a daring robbery was taking place only several floors above the festivities. Three bandits, with disconcerting boldness, walked into one of the rooms and attempted a hold-up. Two of the men escaped. Further reading in our press does not tend to prove our right to send missionaries into the East to bring civilization to barbarism. Detroit has a toll of twenty- four murders in one year. Gunmen in speeding auto- mobiles slay and steal there, for vengeance and profit, and go unpunished. Chicago confesses to sixty-eight un- solved homicides in this same year. A normal day in that progressive city has to its credit thirty-two rob- beries and burglaries by violence. Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, has to its credit one hundred murders in eleven months. Fifty holdups occurred in one day. Cleveland has seventy murders on its records in one year. In the New York papers for December 17, 1920, we find accounts of a bandit killing a jeweler on Fifth Ave- nue. The robber easily escaped with the jewels, and this happened at twenty minutes after two in the afternoon. All of which prompts an editor to remark soberly : "Readers of yesterday's 'Times' had the happiness of know- ing that Tuesday was a perfectly normal day, with the nor- mal amount of energy on the part of the violent annexers of AS JAPAN SEES US IS other people's property. Only five daylight robberies were reported. The returns were only normally satisfactory, some- thing more than $50,000. The normal citizen must have felt satisfied that the average of crime was not rising." But the worst is still to come. Our Japanese observer, if extremely charitable, might explain and excuse this national viciousness in a number of way^. But he would probably stop his apology when he discovered that we not only fail to suppress crimes, but, when crimes are committed, almost never run down the criminals and bring them to justice. The official figures on crimes, ar- rests, and convictions have been minutely studied by many experts, and they all demonstrate that in the United States murder has always been one of the safest of professions. A murderer runs much less risk of land- ing in the electric chair than a glass-blower runs of land- ing in a sanatorium or a leather-worker of dying of an- thrax. Pleasured alongside the police systems of Europe and Japan, ours is a ghasth^ jest. We simply do not know what scientific and efficient policing is. In this we stand imperceptibly above the Balkan States, as Ray- mond Fosdick's recent studies show. Our burglars loot eight times as many homes and shops as backward Great Britain's burglars do. Our murder- ers slay twice as many victims as Great Britain's manage to slay. Our robbers and highwa^Tnen are from three to five times as skilful and as busy. Our insurance sta- tisticians, analyzing the cold facts revealed on our po- lice blotters, declare, as the "Spectator" has of late: *' Human life was never so insecure in the United States as it is today, and our national apathy toward this insecurity is an indictment of our alleged civiliza- 14 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tion." To which we may add the all too true words of the Chicago ' ' Tribune, ' ' which remarks, ' ' There is prob- ably more undisciplined, egotistic, mischievous force in the United States to-day than in any other country of first rank in the world. ' ' Our general disregard for the law is nowhere shown more clearly than in the attitude of our foremost citizens toward prohibition. It must impress a foreigner that our main topic of conversation turns on ways to procure or manufacture liquor illegally. The boast of a New York clubman that he knows fifty places in New York where he can get anything from a cocktail to a gin-fizz is only too often heard. The most charming of well- dressed society women will give an excellent recipe for apple-jack, that most potent of intoxicants, for the asking. Unscrupulous dealers have taken dire advantage of this eagerness for forbidden fruits, and again the pa- pers come in beating the drums of tragedy: two men killed from drinking wood alcohol illegally sold in a New York hotel, a woman dying from drinking wood al- cohol. The death-toll lengthens to weariness. A paper with a weakness for statistics announces an average of seven decrees of divorce daily in Seattle. We read of suits for alienation of affections. A common-law wife sues the second Mrs. S. for a considerable sum of money, showing her willingness to parade her moral status in return for gain. We notice that a woman has been indicted by a grand jury for procuring and sell- ing two girls for immoral purposes, and the testimony reveals a shocking recital of the traffic in women. A man of sixty, respected in his community, married for many AS JAPAN SEES US 15 years, advertises for a typist; but the advertisement proves to be a trap. Every day adds to the long roll of deaths from motor accidents, most of them due to carelessness and indiffer- ence to human life. In one day five such tragedies oc- curred. An aged couple was run down by a limousine, but the automobile continued on its way. The driver did not even look back to see how badly his victims were in- jured. The old couple died, but the driver has not been apprehended. In this year of business uncertainties the charities are the first expenditures to be curtailed. Our love for our fellow-man is amply measured by the failure of hospital drives for funds, and collections for Christmas distribu- tions to the suffering poor are pitifully meager. All this is reported in the press, and one paper comments on this selfishness, in the light of the receipts of $137,000 taken from the public in one evening for admission to a prize-fight in New York City. Those who could not get into the building because of lack of space hung about the Dutside, breathless, waiting. An outsider, seeing that eager, excited crowd, could not fail but comment on our adoration of the thug. Our high standards of patriotism are unfortunately 3omputed in terms to coincide with the public revelations Df graft in the shipping board, in the air-craft commis- jion, and in government sales, all of which show a desire :o cheat and steal and profiteer for individual gain and patronage. Our professions of liberalism are not strengthened by :he publication of such papers as ' ' The Menace, ' ' which 16 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? is devoted to the declaration that all Catholics are foul conspirators against civilization. Nor are those profes- sions strengthened by Henry Ford's widely read weekly, which revels in anti-Semitic propaganda. As for the honesty of our internationalists and labor leaders who profess to be yearning for the "brotherhood of man," an able and frank Japanese has told us how their behavior impresses his countrymen. Mr. K. K. Kawakami, in his recent volume on "Japan and World Peace," remarks: "Even Westerners and Western organizations professing to advocate internationalism have been incapable of redeeming themselves from the traditional attitude of anti-liberalism to- wards the East. This is best illustrated by the attitude of Socialists and labor unionists in Europe and America. The Allied Labor Conference held at Leeds in July, 1916, adopted a program guaranteeing to the working people of all coun- tries ^freedom to work in any countiy where employment is available under equal conditions with its citizens.' To the International Labor Conference now being held in Paris, American labor has submitted a program containing the pro- vision that ^no political or economic restrictions meant to benefit some nations and to cripple or embarrass others' shall be adopted by any country. "Did the labor leaders of Europe and America, in adopting such provisions, have in mind the working classes in the Ori- ent, as well as their fellows in the Occident? If they did, their acts certainly have not conformed with their principles. When Socialists in Europe and America, forgetting that across the oceans teeming millions are crying for larger fields of ac- tivity, pledge themselves to internationalism, they are think- ing only of Europe and America. When the trade unionists of Europe and America speak of the brotherhood of workers, AS JAPAN SEES US 17 they are thinking only of their own race. They complain that Japanese working men work for low wages, ignoring that, if the teeming masses of England and America were bottled up in a small archipelago as are the Japanese, their wage scale would not have risen as rapidly as it has. The pacifists of Europe and America advocate world peace by sustaining the status quo of the relations of the East and West — by peimit- ting the West not only to continue its occupation, in all parts of the world, of more territory than it is justly entitled to possess, but also to exclude from such territories all dark- skinned races whose overcrowded home lands afford not only scant opportunity to their natives, but are themselves often subject to ruthless exploitation at the hands of the West. A Western nation may declare a Monroe Doctrine, but is reluct- ant to accord an Asiatic nation a similar privilege. The West expects the East to open its doors to the enterprises and even exploitation of the white race, but reserves the right to slam its own doors in the face of the East." It must be all but impossible for an intelligent Japa- nese to refrain from believing that our Federal Govern- ment is as bad as our city governments. He must con- elude from the day's news that the most vicious, an- tiquated economic imperialism of the Mark Hanna-Mc- Kinley brand is now dominating American policy. He reads that the current estimates for the United States Army and Navy reach the revolting figure of $1,500,000,- 300. He hears Mr. Harding tell newspaper reporters that it is a Government's highest duty to aid business md that he stands for a big navy. He observes that our War Department has lately increased its permanent gar- rison in Hawaii to twenty thousand regulars, and that )ur Navy Department now openly readjusts its distri- Dution of ships and supply bases so that the Pacific be- 18 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? comes of equal strategic importance with the Atlantic. And he smiles a knowing smile as he contemplates the suave indifference, not to say deafness, of most prominent Republicans toward the demands of the Philippine Na- tionalists that the United States fulfil its solemn promise to give their islands independence. Take the Japanese point of view as far as you can. Then you will have to agree with Viscount Ishii, when he notified Commission No. 6, on International Disarma- ment, of the League of Nations that Japan cannot con- sider reducing her military forces so long as the United States persists in her present policy. No sane Japanese could take any other position, particularly in view of the extent to which anti-Japanese agitation has spread in the United States. And we can scarcely censure him for construing our past relations with Japan as one of his noted editors does in the following staggering indictment, that appeared on November 12, 1919, in the Osaka *'Mainichi," which is one of Japan's most influential newspapers : "History shows, however, that America's attitude toward Japan has been aggressive, insulting and coercive throughout. "(1) When Commodore Perry visited Japan, we benevolently interpreted his visit as an attempt to open our door to the world. But the fact that there were no serious developments between the two countries was due to the change in adminis- tration, the policy of the new President being different from that of his predecessor. The total intention of Perry's fleet was to threaten us and to take the Okinawa Islands by force in order to coerce this country if we did not obey his orders. "(2) America assisted the independence plot in Hawaii, and used it to realize the annexation of the islands by America. It may be said that this action on the part of America em- AS JAPAN SEES US 19 bodied the spirit in which America threatened to take the Okinawa Islands. "(3) In obtaining Guam and the Philippines in the American- Spanish War, America secured another stepping-stone for de- velopment in the Pacific and also laid the foundation of her activities in China. On the other hand, this state of affairs was calculated to obstruct the southern affairs of Japan and to impair her relations with China. In other words to hinder Japan's activities on the east, west, and south. At that time, Japanese-American relations were not so strained as yet. Moreover, the Gentlemen's Agreement and the Pacific Agree- ment have served to some extent as palliatives. "(4) Since the school children's question arose in California, however, America has openly projected anti-Japanese plans. "(5) When subsequently the California Legislature proposed to undermine the foundations of Japanese development in California by enacting a new land law, the Japanese could but rise in indignation, and at that time Japanese-American di- plomacy assumed a profound significance. The spirit of friendship toward America, however, kept the Japanese from making up their minds to take drastic action. While the issue was left undecided, California actually attained her object, though the question was nominally left pending. The Amer- icans are elated, but every Japanese is indignant at a procedure which ignored the constitutions of California and of the United States, set at naught treaty obligations and trampled under foot the laws of humanity. "America took further steps to oppress Japan. America has tried (6) to alienate China from Japan in connection with the question of China's participation in the European War; (7) to oust Japan from investments in China, and to obtain cap- italistic control of China; (8) to hai^ass Japan at the Peace Conference, to prevent Japan from possessing the former Ger- man Islands in the South Pacific by proposing mandatory rules, and to violate the Sino-Japanese Agreement and Japan's 20 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? understanding with Great Britain and France regarding the disposal of Shantung; (9) to restrain Japan's movements with regard to the dispatch of troops to Siberia or to estrange the relations between Japan and Russia; (10) to threaten Japan by greatly increasing the strength of the Pacific squadron; (11) to assist the independence agitation in Korea and (12) the anti- Japanese boj^cott in China. (13) America has abused and insulted Japan in the course of debate on the Peace Treaty with Germany. (14) With regard to the International Labor Conference, Mr. Sherman made remarks exceedingly insulting to Japan. It seems as if America desires to arouse Japan^s indignation in order to make war. (15) In the meantime, a new immigration bill has often been proposed in the Fed- eral Legislature for anti- Japanese purposes, while (16) the anti-Japanese Califomians are striving fundamentally to ex- clude Japanese. "The anti- Japanese campaign of America is not confined to California or to the Republicans or Progressives alone; it seems that the movement is supported throughout the countiy and even by the Democrats. It is no wonder that some Sen- ator who opposed the Shantung amendment said, in explaining his reason for the opposition, that Japan's development in Shantung was preferable to that in America." In the early autumn of 1920, as the time approached for California to vote on the law prohibiting Japanese land leasing, the Japanese cabinet resolved to push diplo- matic negotiations against such an enactment. It was reported in Tokio that the Government intended to force the issue of race equality upon the League of Nations conference. In the last week of September, Marquis Okuma, the former premier, called a meeting of one hun- dred prominent diplomats, business men, and publicists, for the purpose of organizing a publicity campaign in AS JAPAN SEES US 21 Japan ''against the unlawful attitude of California Americans." To the Associated Press correspondent Okuma stated that the approaching world Sunday School convention at Tokio afforded a fine opportunity for a demonstration, inasmuch as it would be attended by many Americans who advocated justice and humanity in the settling of all affairs. At about the same time Repre- sentative Kodama forecast war between his nation and the United States in a meeting that the police broke up. And the former foreign minister, Viscount Takahira Kato, declared: "That America, which constantly is advocating the cause of righteousness and humanity, should dare, without giving proper reasons, to deprive Japanese of the fruits of many painstaking labors is an act which we can never overlook. That America, of all countries, should resort to an act so cruel and inhuman is really inexplicable." When intelligent and sober diplomats speak thus, it is not surprising that sensational newspapers, such as the ' ' Yorodzu, ' ' burst forth with such fury as this : "Whatever may be their object, their actions are more de- spicable than those of the Germans whose atrocities they at- tacked as worthy of the Huns. At least, these Americans are barbarians who are on a lower plane of civilization than the Japanese." Since California passed the drastic land measure in referendum last November, by a vote of more than three to one, the outbursts in Japan have naturally increased in number, though it must be said that the Government has shown much skill and tact in controlling the more vio- lent protestants. Buddhist mobs have attacked Japanese 22 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Christians here and there. Students have openly de- bated the question: "Shall We Declare War on The United States?" And the Government filed diplomatic protests with our State Department, which, at the date of this writing, claims to be engaged in drawing up a new ''Gentlemen's Agreement" to placate Tokio — a venture which, as will later appear, is doomed to abject failure or else to catastrophe in view of California's absolute re- fusal to consider granting full civic rights to Japanese already within our country. Does not all this prove that the sources of trouble be- tween Japan and ourselves to-day are vastly graver than any which existed between Germany and America ten years ago? CHAPTER 3 FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE AGAINST such disturbing influences, there are a few which happily make for peace. Unhappily, how- ever, it is human nature to exaggerate their power, and it is very difficult to prove that they are at all effective in political practice. We may name four of these forces, by way of illustration. Certainly the most conspicuous one, so far as the United States is concerned, is the wide- spread disgust and disillusionment as to the value of war as a method of getting results. Almost every American to-day realizes, sometimes bitterly, that the cost of the World War was out of all proportion to any possible or actual benefits accruing from the conflict. Two years ago this statement would have been treason ; to-day it is an axiom. A second influence is the rapidly growing sol- idarity of the intellectual classes of the world and their concerted efforts to anticipate international crises and block them by honest and open debate and publicity. In this movement the intellectuals of Japan are playing a worthy part, at times under handicaps little realized by us. A third influence is the shaky financial condition of the whole world, and of Japan in particular, which op- erates to array all international bankers solidly against every political movement that threatens, even remotely, to carry any country into war. A fourth influence is the economic dependence of Japan's new industrial sys- 23 24 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tern upon the United States for most of its raw materials and special machinery. The scope and the power of these four influences are changing rapidly, so that it is peculiarly difficult to make dogmatic assertions about them. But at the present time it seems safe to declare that the reaction against war throughout the rank and file of Americans is so tremen- dous that nothing short of a plainly vicious assault upon our own land would provoke us to give battle. How long this sentiment will continue without abatement cannot be predicted, but at the most conservative estimate we may hazard that for at least the next ten years the United States will not be dragged into anything save the most obvious defensive war, unless the public is tricked by poli- ticians or propaganda. How great the peril of such trickery may be, nobody knows. But we do know that whole nations can be all too easily hoodwinked and misled in the waj^ of war. How imminent an attack upon us is can be estimated much more readily; for the next few years, say ten at the very least, not a nation or a conceiv- able coalition of nations is going to contemplate landing forces on our shores or even appropriating our remoter territory. Our military and economic power is too over- whelming. As for the good that the intellectual classes of the world can do in forestalling war, the best of estimates here must be a wild guess in which wish and fact prob- ably mingle indistinguishably. True, the activities of the great peace organizations, which were interrupted by the World War, are now resuming vigorously. The labor unions of our own country are being followed, to some slight degree, by the Japanese workers in their or- FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 25 ganized efforts for peace. And shortly after California passed her latest anti-Japanese land law, the leaders of various religious societies joined with prominent political workers in Japan for the purpose of reaching an ami- cable understanding with our own country. So there are hopes of better times. Nevertheless we must bear in mind that the intellectual classes of Japan are still labor- ing under peculiar restraints from their own Government, very much as the professors and scientists of old Prussia were. And we must not forget that, in the shaping of national policies, both Japan and the United States are still altogether too much at the mercy of schemers and underground workers and gentlemen adventurers. And it is tlie economic pressure in the present situation which, as we shall show later, will count most in shaping the course of events. The parlous state of world finances is, at present, a tremendous insurance against war. Europe, as every- body knows but few like to say, is insolvent from Bor- deaux to the Urals. The prospect that the United States will ever collect more than ten cents on the dollar of all the billions we have advanced to the one-time Allies is as faint as the odor of sanctity. We may count our- selves lucky if we cash in on the municipal, commercial and other private loans, which now total more than three billions. It is no cheap jest to say that Europe, so far as she is living at all, is now existing on the interest of her debts. How this is undermining the whole structure of life and business is only too familiar. In the closing days of 1920 a conservative correspondent describes the crisis in these gray phrases : 26 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ^'Prom every part of Europe, from old countries and new, and even from Asia, reports arrive of unrest and disturbance, of commercial crisis, unemployment and inability to sell prod- ucts, together with the greatest need of those products. *'Food supplies are far smaller than before the war — indeed far too small for the world's needs, even though the United States may lack for nothing and though large stocks are ac- cumulating in many countries for want of buyers. Thus large manufacturers and wholesale merchants who have immense supplies produced or bought at a time when very high prices still prevailed, are being obliged to liquidate at very heavy loss. "Already failures for considerable sums are occurring, and economists and financiers acquainted with the state of Europe seem to have made up their minds to face a commercial crash, complicated in certain countries with revolution. The question now pre-occupying them is how to minimize the gravity of this crash. No one denies that a crash is inevit- able : the only question is how to lessen its seriousness." The whole world is groaning under a burden of taxes and business losses from which no man sees an early escape. When they are graybeards, babes now in arms will certainly be paying heavily for the madness of 1914. In the United States people react with particular ill feeling to such penalties, largely because most Ameri- cans, despite all attempts at popular education in inter- national affairs, still do not appreciate the benefits of the money spent in defeating Germany. The European understands what he got for his monej^ and can there- fore endure the bills with better grace than our own people. The most unpopular proposal that the mind of man could invent and present to Americans to-day would FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 27 be one calling for an increase of taxes to be spent on an army and navy. That this is no mere personal opinion of mine has been abundantly proved by the tremendous public response to the campaign which the New York '* World" has been conducting in favor of international disarmament. It is not exaggerating to say that ninety-nine out of every one hundred intelligent and influential Americans, Canadians, and Englishmen who have expressed them- selves through the columns of that newspaper have de- clared themselves unreservedly against further naval and military expenditures. As for Japan, the effect of her own bad financial and industrial condition and her crushing military expendi- tures cannot be construed as simply as Europe's or America's. The reasons for this will be considered at some length in a later chapter. Enough to say here that, while discontent seems to be growing in Japan, specially over militaristic taxes, which now make up more than half of the imperial budget, we find evidences of the same ominous tendency that swept Germany into war in 1914, namely the feeling that the Government, having invested millions in armament, would be foolish if it did not do its utmost to make the investment pay a profit. This feeling is intensified by the very one that swa^^ed a good many militarists in Germany, to wit, the suspicion that inter- national affairs may before very long shape themselves so that such profit-taking by force of arms will become im- possible. Japan, we must bear in mind, is the only large nation in the world whose rulers and common people alike have not yet learned by bitter experience that in the long 28 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? run money spent on wars of conquest is a dead loss — and worse. And we must likewise remember that in these circumstances an industrial and financial depression like the present one in Japan inevitably stirs certain groups of citizens to seek relief in foreign adventure and to win official support for such adventure. This depression is now very grave, and in the opinion of expert observers will grow much worse before it takes a turn for the better. It is worth our while to glance at some of its aspects as revealed in our own consular re- ports. The November letters to our Department of Com- merce give us a gloomy picture of stagnation throughout the empire. Postal-savings deposits have been decreasing at the rate of nearly half a million yen a day, despite strenuous official efforts to stimulate them. The railways are discharging workers, as a consequence of dwindling traffic. At the end of August eighty ships lay idle, and the number was steadily increasing at all ports. In Tokio there used to be five automobiles sold every day. Now one is being sold, and that one is usually a second- hand machine. In one month, since the depression began, ninety automobile licenses were turned in for can- cellation, and less than one half of all the cars in town are being used at all. In Kobe and Osaka wages were cut fifteen per cent, in August. Thousands of factory and shop workers are streaming back to their old homes in the country, for on November 20 all the silk mills of the country, with but a few exceptions, closed down for ninety days, because they could not afford to operate, with the prevailing wage scales and silk prices. In the hope of finding much cheaper labor some factories are now preparing to move to Korea and China, and our FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 29 trade commissioners believe that this tendency will grow and spread. Not a few distinguished economists, surveying such facts as these, assure us that war is impossible or at least, if begun in a fit of foolishness, must quickly end. We recall a number of distinguished theorists who proved this neatly in the summer of 1914. We even remember one or two who repeated their demonstrations after the Germans were intrenched before the walls of Paris. Con- fidently these experts assured us that people were too poor to pay for a modem war, and hence the war simply could not go on. But somehow the war did. To-day even some economists have learned that wars are made and won and lost more by psychology than by economics. To-day all Europe is witnessing half a dozen demonstra- tions of this truth. We see bankrupt Poland blithely fighting on and on. We observe penniless Turks and Hindus massing to shatter the British Empire up and down the Mesopotamian Valley, in a war which already has become as costly and as exhausting as the Boer War was and which, according to the London ''Times," can never yield profits in oil that will compensate for the thousands of lives destroyed and the hundreds of mil- lions of pounds ''poured into that repellent region." We look upon poor bankrupt France plotting a dozen wars all over Eastern Europe and even making the ges- ture of financing them. Would it not seem rash then to declare that Japan's recently weakened financial state will restrain her from war? Cannot poor men fight in the high hope of becoming rich? Must a man have a dollar in his pocket in order to strike a foe down with a stone ? Have not beggars been known to smash in shop 30 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? windows, to seize a loaf of bread ? Let us beware of the economists who base everything on a theory of money. Not money, but men, material, and morale will decide the coming, as well as the finish, of a war between East and West. We are now in a position to estimate the fourth influ- ence that makes for peace ; namely, Japan 's economic de- pendence upon the United States. Few Americans real- ize that, to-day and for some few years to come, this is by far the strongest deterrent to war. How far into the future it will continue nobody knows. Certainly the Japanese are doing their utmost to emancipate themselves from the thraldom, and their activities on the continent of Asia warrant the supposition that within a few dec- ades their manufacturers may be able to dispense with our raw materials and even our equipment machinery. So far as the Japanese-California crisis of 1920 is con- cerned, however, we can safely declare that the new in- dustrialists of Japan and their financial agents must and will exert themselves to prevent a breach between their Government and our own. The reasons for this appear startlingly in the trade reports. Far and away the largest and most profitable industry of Japan is the production of raw silk. In 1919 the country exported to the world at large $310,873,825 worth of it. Of this immense total the United States bought no less than $299,520,354 worth. Out of every $100 worth, we took more than $96. Add to raw silk the various forms of silk goods, and you find that in the same year we bought more than $327,000,000 worth from Japan, which exceeds eighty-seven per cent, of that em- pire's total amount exported. Naturally, Japanese silk FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 31 producers and manufacturers are not to be found among those clamoring for war with us. Japan's second largest industry is textiles. In 1919 she exported $139,735,064 of cotton tissues and around $71,000,000 of miscellaneous cotton goods, such as tow- els, underclothing, and the like. The fiber out of which she makes these she buys in almost equal amounts from India and the United States. In 1919 we sold her manu- facturers $142,627,053 worth of raw cotton, all of which was superior to the bales from India, where only a very low grade of short staple is produced in any quantity. Now, Japan buys cotton not only for her export trade, but also for her own raiment. She produces virtually no cotton or wool and is thus utterly dependent upon India and the United States to clothe the nakedness of her millions. In the event of war she would also have to draw on one or both of these same sources for cotton to be used in the manufacture of explosives. The significance of these facts begins to appear startlingly when we recall that the Philippine Islands completely dominate every sea route between India and Japan. For almost a thou- sand miles they flank the China Sea, and they are equally a most convenient base of operations for a blockading fleet that might patrol the open Pacific between Malaysia and Japan. We may grant that the United States would probably have great difficulty in holding its own against the Japanese in the Philippines, but it would still be true that even a partly successful interruption of Japan's cotton supply from India, if coupled with a total suspen- sion of cotton exports from our own country to Japan, would inevitably precipitate a tremendous crisis in the island empire — a crisis certainly more serious than that 32 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? caused in Germany by the cutting off of overseas cotton imports during the Allied blockade of the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. There would be left to the Japanese only one possible source of cotton, and that source a meager and uncertain one. It would be China. In 1919 this country sent to Japan $38,219,886 worth of raw cotton, or about eleven per cent, of the total needed by Japan. Would the Chinese cotton-growers and brokers deliver even this much, though, in case Japan were at war with us ? It can scarcely be entertained as a serious prospect, so intense is the hatred of Japan among the Chinese. The chances are that China would rather make ingenious efforts to divert every pound of fiber from her deadly foe. And there can be no doubt that Japanese textile manufacturers are painfully aware of all this. The American shipping concerns in the Pacific area know it. Indeed, some of their best -informed officials have told me that a cotton embargo and blockade could completely ruin Japan within ninety days and drive the militarists from power. This seems pretty extreme, and too good to be true ; but it is worth recording here as an opinion. At present Japan is wofully dependent upon us for her supply of semi-finished iron and steel, as well as for engines and machinery. Look again at the figures for 1919. Japan bought $78,103,811 worth of bars, rods, plates, and the like from foreign countries, of which total we furnished $66,761,099 worth. She bought $44,477,135 worth of engines and machines, of which we supplied ex- actly three quarters. And we furnished almost every dollar's worth of materials she bought for building bridges, docks, railways, and ships. All of which would indicate that her new industrial life is closely bound up FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 33 with our own. Buying from us and selling to us in vol- ume more than twice as great as their gross trade with any other country, Japanese merchants and manufactur- ers must be profoundly interested in maintaining the friendliest of relations with the United States. And, as a matter of fact, we do find this to be their attitude. The anti-American sentiment in Japan to-day does not ema- nate from these powerful groups, nor does it find even a faint echo in them; and they are steadfastly opposing the various sinister influences that make for ill feeling and war. Does all this warrant the belief that war is too remote a possibility to be seriously discussed ? Alas ! no. Over against these pacific influences we find many vicious ones, and still more which, while not vicious, are even more dangerous because they root in venerable traditions, in folk-ways, in popular ignorance, and in that fatal inca- pacity of most men to think clearly and take intelligent action concerning matters that lie beyond the routine of their everyday life. We must consider all such forces, in Japan as well as at home, for on a clear understanding of them hinges a wise solution of the present crisis. CHAPTER 4 FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR BEFORE the World War many Americans boasted of our ''magnificent isolation" and our freedom from ** entangling alliances." They felt the United States to be a world apart, an earthly paradise uncontami- nated by the ills of the Old World. From 1914 to 1917 this traditional outlook steadily changed its colors, and was finally abandoned as out-of-date and perilous. The menace of Prussian militarism stretched across the Atlantic and stirred us to take a strenuous part in shap- ing the destinies of the rest of the world, and on Armis- tice Day it looked to most of us as if our nation was about to assume that very moral leadership of the world which had been so ardently professed by Wilson and echoed by the Committee of Public Information. What has happened since that day demonstrates that Americans have not miraculously changed their folk- ways. It has proved that we are no more intelligent and no more adaptable than any of the European groups from which our hodge-podge population is derived. Both the calamitous transactions at Versailles and the tremendous anti-Wilson vote of the recent election con- stitute the most complete exhibition in all modem his- tory of the laws of social inertia and the pragmatic na- ture of human thought, about which our social psycholo- gists have been talking these many years. American pro- 34 FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 35 vincialism is the natural consequence of the working of these laws in our unique environment. We must look carefully at it, because it is one of the two gravest perils in the present crisis. Social inertia is the resistance to change in our ways of thinking and doing. It is merely another name for a vast complex of well-established habits. These habits range from such simple affairs as eating breakfast foods and using wooden toothpicks up to such highly intellec- tual processes as defending the traditional American ideals of ''life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness/* the Monroe Doctrine, the purchase of a home on the in- stalment plan, and so on. Each of these habits is the result of a long and more or less skilful adaptation to certain conditions in one's environment. And it is one of the outstanding discoveries of modern psychology that the skill a man acquires in building up one habit can be transferred to a new and different sub- ject only in proportion to the degree of resemblance be- tween the original subject and the new one. Thus you might acquire much proficiency in reading Greek, but this habit would be of no use to you m repairing umbrel- las, and it would be of very slight value in helping you to speak French. The motions you go through in mend- ing an umbrella are quite different from those you must make in conjugating a Greek verb and translating The- ocritus. And so, too, with the mental operations in- volved. To become expert in mending umbrellas, you had best mend umbrellas for a few years. If you wish to speak French well, do not waste time on Greek or Latin; the same time spent on French will yield much richer results. 36 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Now this general law of habit holds good of every sub- ject under the sun. Neither politics nor morals offers a single exception to it. Once you grasp this tremendous i fact, you will understand many events in recent Ameri- can history which may have been dark to you. For instance, the disconcerting collapse of our ideal- istic efforts at the peace conference. As a psychologist sees tiiat dismal fiasco, we Americans were in pretty much the same situation at Paris as a school-boy would be who, after having studied Greek for four years in the fond hope that it would "train his mind," finds himself on board a ship with a disabled engine and a mutinous crew, and undertakes to repair the engine and subdue the rioters with his trained mind. For three full generations we Americans had been acquiring the habit of turning our backs on Europe. We had been acquiring the habit of busying ourselves with our own domestic problems and aspirations. In such light esteem did we hold our relations with the rest of the world that we regularly appointed ex-saloon- keepers, shoddy lawyers, and third cousins of hill-billy Congressmen to represent the United States abroad in the diplomatic and consular services. And our State De- partment was, in comparison with similar European in- stitutions, a feeble joke. In all America there existed no sizable group of citizens who had habitually dealt with British colonial policies or with European railway prob- lems or with Turkish finances. And it followed inex- orably that on the day when we had to deal with such intricate issues we were utterly unable to do so. One does not pick up full understanding of Europe overnight. One does not do it even by reading "The Literary Di- FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 37 gest'' and the ''Saturday Evening Post." Habit is too strong. Reinforcing this immense social inertia, the law of in- terest stands as the second force that makes for provin- cialism always. Men give their undivided attention and their best mental effort only to things which either dis- turb their ways of comfortable living or else gratify their desires. Whenever they are led to think about any- thing else, they think lazily, at random, and in a more or less inconsequential fashion, not bothering to check up closely on either the facts or their own conclusions. When nothing is at stake, both truth and consistency cease to be virtues. This is the most natural result of the law of adaptation that runs through all life. In man's million-year strug- gle for existence it has always been his own immediate surroundings to which he has been compelled to attend or perish. It has always been the lion in the path, the mote in the eye, the thief in the night, the bird in the hand, that has commanded serious attention and in- genious action. Things long ago and far away could be overlooked, but the day's hunger and thirst and storms and plagues and quarrels had to be managed. Thus upon these latter men came to concentrate their wits. Hence it is that to-day the average citizen instinct- ively devotes more time and thought trying to find who borrowed his hammer while he was talking with the fore- man than he spends on devising a budget system for the United States. And for this same reason you can trust his judgment and his behavior in choosing a dog to hunt rabbits with, but not in deciding whether the United States ought to assume a mandate over Armenia. 38 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? If this were the proper place for such an analysis, we might show this law of interest, combining with the law of habit, shaped almost every disastrous move, as well as every wise one, since 1914. It was these two laws and nothing else that kept us out of the war until 1917. It was the law of interest that finally led us to crush Ger- many, and it was the two laws that caused our soldiers and their relatives back home to wish nothing better than to get back to the old town, forget Europe and its nastiness, and play ball again. The two most completely typical Americanisms of the last six years were the empty idealism of Wilson's Paris program and the savage reac- tion against internationalism in all its forms, culminating in the prodigious vote given to Harding last November. Here we cannot explain this statement as fully as it de- serves to be. We must hasten to show how the two great mental laws are making the Japanese crisis an unusually difficult one to present fairly and to solve. There seem to be only three habits of thinking about Japan which are present in enough Americans to make them at all influential politically. They are : 1. The missionary habit. 2. The California habit, and 3. The foreign trade habit. The missionary habit has two radically different, and even antagonistic, forms. One is the old, the other the new. There can be little doubt that to-day the old form dominates the thinking of many more Americans than the new form does. We still find it clearly expressed in the more conservative religious publications and we hear it at missionary meetings, especially where funds are FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 39 being raised for the ''poor heathen." This phrase, ' ' poor heathen, ' ' fairly characterizes the habit. The pic- ture which the average American churchman has of Japan is that which virtually all missionaries used to draw twenty years ago and earlier. Somewhat abridged and conventionalized, it contains the following scenes : Japan is a heathen country full of half-civilized or barbarous people who have never enjoyed the blessings of Christian civilization. They are terribly ignorant and scandalously immoral. The Government runs houses of ill fame. Little children are taught to worship graven images. And there are hundreds of villages without a single Methodist or Baptist church. Thieves and mur- derers abound on every hand, and the shopkeepers cheat their customers whenever they get a chance. We shall have something to say in later chapters about this conventional view of Japan. Enough here to re- mark that it is considerably less than a half-truth and wofully misleading. The new missionary view, which has become the habit- ual one in many younger Americans, gives us an almost diametrically opposed panorama of the far-away empire. It is the brotherhood-of-man doctrine applied to Japan, somewhat as follows : The Japanese are human beings like ourselves in every respect. They know the same hopes and fears, they have the same loves and hates. They work for a living, save money, try to get along with their neighbors, and go out of their way to seek trouble no more than Americans do. They have politicians and schemers, business men and priests, agitators and high-minded reformers, even as we do. The differences between them and us are all super- 40 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ficial. They dress differently, speak a strange tongue, and do various little things in manners odd to us. It is only our own ignorance that leads us to think that such customs mean anything. This view, while much more charitable than the old missionary picture, is unfortunately a half-truth. Of this more later. The California habit of thinking about Japan likewise has two forms. The better known one is the journalistic view, which has been spread abroad chiefly by the Hearst newspapers and is to-day probably the most widely dis- seminated opinion about Japan east of the Mississippi River. Millions of copies of cheap nev/spapers have been spreading it for the last ten years. The mere act of seeing it in print so often has fixed it in thousands of minds. Here is the picture it presents : Japan is the most diabolical conspiracy on earth. The mikado and a few evil old aristocrats known as the Elder Statesmen, seeing the attractions of the Philippines, Ha- waii, California, and China, are secretly planning to invade all these lands and conquer them. They are building a colossal navy and drilling a mighty army. They have flooded the United States with spies. Every Japanese valet is a spy, instructed to read his employer's private letters and report on the same to Tokio. Every Japanese working on section gangs of our Pacific-coast railways is a spy who finds good places to plant bombs to blow up railway bridges and switch towers when the mikado invades California. Millions of Japanese have already been secretly landed in Mexico and are hiding in the hills, there to await the great day when America feills under their assaults. FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 41 The reader who supposes that the above paragraph has been written in the attempt to be funny must disillusion himself. Not a line of that picture has been invented. The present writer has studied several hundred news items on Japan published in the Hearst papers during the last decade and has found not only these allegations, but scores of others so ridiculous that only children and morons could have taken them seriously. Needless to say, this journalistic picture is a jumble in which fact is sadly overlaid with fancy. There is another habit of appraising Japan and the Japanese in California which few Americans outside that State know about. It has almost wholly displaced the above journalistic habit out there. It is the new habit of those farmers, ranch-owners, and business men who have gained some degree of real understanding. It is peculiarly hard to characterize this opinion briefly. It has arisen out of many facts strange to most Americans, and it is rather bewildering unless supplemented by full explanations. So we must defer all accounts of it for the moment. Of all the mental habits worthy of men- tion, this one is at present the weakest and the least dan- gerous. Indeed, the only danger in it lies in the ease with which its real significance may be misunderstood. The foreign trade habit also is twofold. There is the habit of the American shipowner, which is also held by those manufacturers who are meeting or expect to meet with competition from the Japanese. According to this opinion, Japan is determined to master the trade of the Pacific and will stop at nothing to accomplish her pur- pose. It is a land where the Government and big busi- ness are one, hence a land whose diplomacy and interna- 42 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tional politics are invariably molded to the desires of her captains of industry. The masses do not count. It is only a matter of years when Japan will have driven American ships off the Pacific and American goods out of Asia. Her military despotism is only the tool of her economic despotism. There is a good deal of truth in this opinion, as we shall try to show ; but it omits many vital elements from the picture. And some of these omissions give rise to serious misunderstandings as to Japan's motives and methods. The other foreign trade habit is much newer and, while present in very few Americans, happens to control the thinking of a small group of immensely powerful citi- zens. It is the opinion of the international bankers. These gentlemen see in Japan a shrewd and highly useful partner in the greatest enterprise of all time; namely, the industrialization of Asia. In this colossal under- taking Japan is to furnish the labor, and America the capital. China will be allowed to contribute, of course; but the financiers of Wall Street and the industrialists of Osaka and Kobe will manage the affair. Japan and her ruling class are America's best friends. We have one interest in the Pacific area, they have another; and each is necessary to the other. By cooperation both Japan and America will reap enormous profits. This opinion is correct as far as it goes. But the nar- rowness of its economic interest prevents it from giving us a full picture of Japan; and here, as in earlier in- stances, the view is full of danger. How incomplete all these ways of appraising Japan are! To realize their short-comings, you have only to FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 43 conjure up parallel opinions about our own country such as you may find aired in the entertaining volumes of those distinguished foreign tourists who tarry a week in New York or lecture to Boston for a winter on the higher philosophies of India. The sorry fact is that the Ameri- can public has no thinking habits that are at the same time old enough, comprehensive enough, and accurate enough to form a basis for a national policy with regard to Japan. Unhappily, we have fallen into several habits that are so perversive and so old that we cannot discard, them by a mere act of will. The two most harmful of these certainly are the old missionary habit and the jour- nalistic habit. The unwillingness of Americans to treat Orientals as political equals can be partly traced to the deep, sometimes hazy, but always strong feeling that Ori- entals really are what the old-school missionary declared them to be, ''poor heathen." This feeling has been in- terminably reinforced by the shrieking and sensation- peddling of the back-stairs newspapers. Both habits are, of course, doomed to weaken and die, but they may linger long enough to cause incurable mischief. They would not linger if many Americans had any vital and clearly recognized interests in Japan. But they have not. There is less personal contact between Japanese and Americans to-day than there was between Germans and Americans before the World War, and for every one American who has something at stake in Japan, be it money or friendships or family ties, there are a thousand who are intimately concerned over somebody or something in Germany. Millions of our citizens still have parents, grandparents, or other relatives in Ger- many. Not a thousand of us have any such in Japan. 44 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? So, too, in the business field. While the volume of trade between Japan and the United States is immense, the number of Americans whose fortunes are bound up in it is very small. As has already been shown, the bulk of our buying in Japan is in silk, most of which goes to a hundred or more corporations. As for our selling, which is mostly raw cotton and semi-finished iron and steel, it is mostly consummated through a few export houses; and the world demand for these products is so vast that it makes little difference to our cotton-grower or ouP miner whether Japan buys or not. Strictly speaking, there has never been any public sentiment in the United States over foreign trade, or over any other foreign rela- tions, for that matter. And the reason is that America is economically self-sufficient and also has such an enor- mous domestic demand for all sorts of commodities that our manufacturers and distributors did not have to worry much over foreign orders save in a few lines, mostly food-stuffs and raw materials. And it is a notorious commonplace that for many years much of our foreign trade in manufactured goods was allowed to go by default to concerns who cared nothing at all for their customers after cashing the remittance checks and who violated every clause in the moral code of decent business, to the everlasting injury of our country. Of this commercial provincialism Japan has had her taste. And, as for our own mercantile and commercial classes, the habit con- tinues to-day in the milder form of indifference toward and ignorance of Japan and her affairs. It is only on the Pacific coast that provincialism with respect to Japan is not to be found. The Califomians find more than one vital interest in the affairs of that FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 45 land and have had more than one occasion to think se- riousl}' about them. American shipping interests out there are in competition with the Japanese and have to reckon with them constantly. Storekeepers in the smaller towns are rapidly coming to the same pass. Farmers are encountering these aliens in new quarters from VN^eek to week. In the banking business, in the fish- eries, and other lines, Japanese workers and Japanese money have ceased to be shadowy things concerning which juvenile newspaper scribblers may lightly dis- course. The rest of our country does not yet understand this. You hear on every hand east of Denver that the whole hullabaloo out on the coast is just another sputter of yellow journalism. Scarcely one Eastern newspaper of good repute takes the Japanese crisis seriously. And in this indifference, born of ancient habits and lack of personal interest, we find a menace to world peace. CHAPTER 5 ILLUSIONS ABOUT JAPAN LACK of contact with Japanese and ignorance of the Japanese language have been responsible for sev- eral false impressions about this far-away land. Some of these impressions have been highly favorable and therefore have been widely exploited by all lovers of Japan, including the paid propagandists. Others have been equally unfavorable and injurious, and so the enemies of Japan have heralded them abroad. In the interest, not of scientific truth, but of steering the American public along its increasingly difficult course in foreign affairs, we must give brief attention to the more consequential of these good and bad illusions. The most widely known and universally held illusion has to do with the supposedly superhuman adaptability of the Japanese. The friends of Japan harp upon it incessantly, while some foes imitate a shudder as they refer to it as a sure sign that Japan is a world menace. The picture that is held up to us is that of some sixty million idolatrous barbarians languishing in a primeval state, living in tribes, worshipping strange gods, and being generally rather Neolithic until some forty odd years ago, when some highly civilized states on the oppo- site side of the earth impinged upon their simple soli- tude. The sixty million idolatrous barbarians looked 46 ILLUSIONS ABOUT JAPAN 47 with awe upon the steamships and strange inventions. They trembled before the alien cannon. Then, deciding that intelligence was a sound investment, even if it did cost money, they sent their chieftains abroad to master the secrets of success in Big Business. Then the miracle ! In the twinkling of a nation's eye, Japan made herself over from a feudal state on the level of thirteenth- century Europe to a twentieth-century nation on a par with Great Britain and the United States. Now, any psychologist and any student of the social sciences knows, even without the slightest special infor- mation about the Japanese, that this is unadulterated non- sense. It is a commonplace among scientific observers that group habits can not be transformed at any such rate. Not even in our own country, which loves to think of itself as faster than any other in absorbing new ideas and ways, has any such miracle occurred. Let him who thinks otherwise consider a few indisputable facts, such as American behavior with respect to the negro and to- ward liquor, to cite only two from a possible list of a hundred. Nearly sixty years have gone by since our Government Preed the negro and gave him political rights. A Japa- nese student, poring over an American history in a Tokio [ibrary, would probably see in his mind's eye this whole [•ace of oppressed people casting aside its shackles, as the lews of the Emancipation Proclamation was flashed icross the land, and marching to the polls, running for )flice, and grabbing off sundry political plums. This, be it observed, is just what the American reader imagines ;o be happening when he reads that the Japanese have aid aside their ancient ways and become Westernized. 48 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Of course, what has really happened is that the old Anglo-American habit, hundreds of years old, of regard- ing the negro as black trash has not been weakened per- ceptibly by any mere pen strokes or political affirma- ; tions. So far as real political liberty or suffrage is con- cerned, the blacks as a group are scarcely a step ahead of where they were in 1860. Our same reader in a Tokio library, perusing the news of the past months in an American paper, learns that our great commonwealth decided, over night, that alcohol was an insidious evil and must be forthwith extermi- nated. He reads of breweries being closed from the Atlantic to the Pacfic. He reads about thousands of sa- loon doors being closed forever, bars being dismantled, and armies of disconsolate bartenders seeking jobs as butlers. And doubtless he exclaims with awe: "What a race of supermen these Americans are ! We Japanese could never give up sake this way. ' ' But, as he exclaims, some millions of respectable American citizens, bishops and bankers, statesmen and delicatessen dealers, white and black, rich and poor, are busily brewing beer and concocting amateur whisky in their kitchens. As every man's house is his castle, so every man's kitchen is his distillery. And it will be for many years to come, in spite of all that lawmakers may say or do. For it is much easier to make laws than to break habits. As with us, so with Japan. The Government of that country has been passing many laws, introducing many improvements, from railroads down to motion pictures, and working in the direction of a Western civilization. But the old deep habits of looking to the clan heads, of leaning on the Elder Statesmen, of feeling superior to ILLUSIONS ABOUT JAPAN 49 the foreigner still persist beneath the veneer of statute and ordinance. We see this truth from a significant angle when we study at close range the "democratic trend" in Japan. There is some truth in the view that powerful social and economic forces are tending to force the country- further and further toward something that might be called a democratic social order. But let us keep in mind that such social forces operate very much as ordi- nary physical forces do ; when they encounter resistance, they are first of all and to a considerable degree expended in overcoming the inertia of the thing to be moved. Not until a certain critical point and quantum have been at- tained does any actual motion result. So in Japan to- day. As we shall later point out in some detail, even the most recent extensions of the suffrage under Hara fall much further short of true universal suffrage than they seem to on paper. But, even if they did not, Japan would still be profoundly different from the Western democracies as a result of the almost unaltered survival of the local power of the clans and of the go-no, or village superintendent. Japanese society still roots in the clan, in spite of the many encroachments upon the political domination of this institution during recent years. The clan dialects are still spoken in most of the country districts. The special uniforms of the clans are commonly worn. And it is through the clan that the vast majority of citizens, namely those in the rural districts, get in touch with political affairs, secure Government posts, and receive instructions as to voting. Ever since feudal days, the small farmers have been held strictly under the control 50 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? and discipline of the village superintendent; and Japa- nese authorities themselves admit that the go-no's power to-day exceeds that of the harshest political boss in the lowest ward of Chicago or Boston. The illusion of democracy goes further. Most pro- Japanese writers are fond of pointing to the rise of po- litical parties in Japan as a sign that the people have suddenly become democratic. But one might as well call the United States Steel Corporation a sign of democracy in America. In the narrowest sense of the term, the Japanese party is a class, born of class interests and per- petuating class privileges and powers. The Seiyukai, of which Hara is the head, is in the main made up of the rural capitalists, or farm landowners, who live on rents collected from small tenants and gen- erally preserve the ideas and practices of the old feudal- ism. The Kenseikai, the other important party to-day, is a solid body of the urban capitalists, the manufac- turers and merchants, and the upper salaried classes em- ployed by the new industrial powers of Japan. The reader familiar with early American politics will note that they correspond somewhat to the original American Democrats and Republicans, who were respectively the rich farmers and the urban moneyed class. Like our own early political parties, they are essentially old-school bourgeoisie, with never a thought as to the interests of the masses of farm or city workers. Within these parties there is absolute one-man rule, which is the only rule the average Japanese understands. The statement has been made by Japanese students of government that a council of eight Seiyukai leaders and the chief, Hara, settle everything as to platforms, pro- ILLUSIONS ABOUT JAPAN 51 grams, and detailed procedure. There is not even the :pretense of open caucus or national convention or any- thing smacking of true party control. So too with the militarism of Japan, which has been lately explained away as an unfortunate imitation of Germany. True, the details of the military reforms in- troduced after the Ito mission returned from its famous trip of study through the Western nations are wholly Teutonic; and the military leaders of to-day were all educated in German}^. But the fact remains that for centuries Japan has been a military nation in the com- pletest sense. The life of the clans was organized around the warrior and chieftain. And the many old habits of thought and action rooting in the feudal order still live. One significant survival is that of the intense feeling of ''national honor," probably more acute in Japan than anywhere else to-day. No European country, not even in its rhetorical moment, thinks of worrying over na- tional honor any more. The war put an end to that. Men worry now over the realities — bread, a roof, trousers anti-typhus serum, work, and escape from the crushing taxes of war. But Japan is sensitive, as the whole con- troversy over immigration in California has shown. All of these illusions and many others which cannot be here discussed befog the entire debate about Japan. At almost every turn statements about the country can be attacked by the simple citation of some law that has been passed, some new organization that is running suc- cessfully, or some fine social movement that looks for all the world, at this distance, just like movements we know at home. And in many cases it is possible to discover what 's what only by going to Japan and scrutinizing the 52 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? things themselves. And even then the foreign observer operates under a grave handicap of language and the even graver one of being compelled to judge things by externals. So much for the faults and dangers on our own side. Let us now look at those very different ones on the side of the Japanese. BOOK II THE SITUATION IN JAPAN CHAPTER 6 FORM OF GOVERNMENT THE parallel between Japan to-day and Germany be- fore 1914 is one of the closest and most significant in all history. It involves many more features than we have space to present in these pages, and most of them have not yet been understood by even our more intelligent classes, let alone the rank and file of citizenship. Yet without the clearest insight into these national resem- blances we Americans will inevitably misconceive the needs and the demands and the policies of the Japanese Government, as well as the very different needs and de- mands and policies of the Japanese people. The first likeness between Japan and pre-war Germany is to be found in the antiquated form of government com- mon to both. The Japanese still allow themselves to be taught in infancy that the mikado has been placed in power by God, and that obedience to him is a religious duty. Listen to the following statement by a Japanese professor, George Uyehara, who has written important works on Japanese political history : "The divine right of the Emperor, however absurd it may seem to the theorists of individuahstic idealism, still holds a predominant place in the minds of the Japanese; and its po- litical value seems to be as important to the Japanese nation as the religious values of miracles and mythological and allegorical stories is to certain religions. . . . 55 56 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? "This divine right is the fundamental principle on which the Japanese policj^ was first established and on which it still rests. . . . "In fact, the term matsnrigoto, meaning worship, is etymo- logically in pure Japanese identical with that of govern- ment. . . . "That the Mikado reigns and governs the country abso- lutely by a right inherited from his divine ancestors, is the unconscious belief or the instinctive feeling of the Japanese people. Indeed, it may be said to be their religion — religion in the sense of the ^inner voice' as defined by Matthew Ar- nold.^' Let any reader compare this with the only too familiar chatter of the former kaiser about his intimate relations with Deity and his slogan, ' ' Gott mit Uns. ' ' Or compare it again with the awe and servility the Prussian masses manifested toward the throne for many generations. Japan to-day is the sole important survivor of that gro- tesque theocracy which was common in the days when all men were savages. The second likeness worth noting here is the peculiar relation of the ruling classes to the emperor on one hand and to the common folk on the other. The groups who dominate Japanese political life array themselves around the seven Genro, or Elder Statesmen, each of whom is the commanding figure of some political party. The members of these groups are the shrewd business men, bankers, large land owners, and manufacturers. And, of course, they embrace the military and naval leaders, whose political power is unusually well entrenched. On the fringe of each political constellation is to be found a horde of the minor bureaucrats, from post-office, secret FORM OF GOVERNMENT 57 police, customs, and railways. All these people repre- sent the brains of Japan, or perhaps it would be fairer to say the trained intelligence of the country. And this group literally owns and runs Japan. No estimate has ever been made public as to the approximate size of the ruling classes, but no student of government would be inclined to place it higher than a quarter million, and probably 125,000 would come nearer the truth. Upon this handful of patriots the seventy or more million Japanese are utterly dependent, so much so and with such willinj^ness that they have a special word in Japa-: nese to designate this national trait, namely Seifumanno^ Shugi. This oligarchy has not been imposed upon the people by brute force. It is the natural expression of their extremely low political development, just as loy- alty to the Prussian oligarchy was the expression of the political backwardness of the Prussian peasants. In asserting that this oligarchy owns and runs Japan we are indulging in no rash and ill-founded generaliza- tion. Every person who has made the slightest survey of Japanese affairs at first-hand knows this to be strictly true. Japan to-day has achieved the ideal of state social- ism at which the kaiser's bureaucracy aimed, and has done so without the restraint that is theoretically sup- posed to be imposed upon that form of government by way of forestalling despotism. The Japanese Govern- ment, which is in reality the mikado and the ruling classes just described, is not in any genuine sense respon- sible to the people. The Japanese constitution, such as it is, derives its authority from the mikado alone. It is his to give and to take away. Neither is he responsible to the cabinet nor to the Diet. And the cabinet, in turn, 58 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? is responsible not to the people, but to the mikado. On all this Article IV of the Japanese Constitution is ad- mirably clear. It reads thus : ^'The emperor is the head of the empire, combining in himself all the powers of the state.' ^ Now it is well known that the mikado himself has little to do with the labor of government. He follows with virtually no swerving the advice of the Elder Statesmen. It is a matter of record that he has never overruled these crown advisers in any important matter. We must therefore note the peculiar position of the Genro, if we would understand the actual management of Japan to-day. The strange and significant fact about this small and powerful group is that legally it is not a part of the Government. Nowhere are the Elder Statesmen men- tioned in Japanese constitutional law. Neither are they attached officially to the Imperial Family, whose affairs are governed by special laws. In short, we here behold a State actually ruled by a recognized group that, strictly speaking, has no business to be mixed up in public affairs. To understand its status, the American reader should imagine that a small coterie of our citizens having the highest social and financial influence had, by the mere force of social tradition, come to be recognized as per- petual members of the President's Cabinet. To make it quite concrete, let us suppose that Lawrence Lowell, Vin- cent Astor, John D. Rockefeller, and a few others had be- come, not through coercion nor by trickery but by the established habits of American society and politics, such fixtures in our Administration. Moreover, conceive that FORM OF GOVERNMENT 59 the President never ventured to challenge the decisions of these men ; that the American public instinctively- looked to them, rather than to the President or Congress, for sound leadership in every crisis ; and suppose, finally, that absolutely no legal machinery existed whereby these Yankee Genro could be called to account or even recog- nized as an entity. Then you will have a fair picture of the situation in Japan. For all practical purposes, the bureaucracy is as well intrenched as the Genro. It is secure against almost any attack, as well as against a ''boring from within," thanks to the skill with which it has shaped the civil service laws to protect and perpetuate itself. No government office (barring cabinet positions of course) is open to anybody save men who have passed civil service examinations and worked up through the long ranks. This ruling, intro- duced in 1885, has prevented even the leaders of the po- litical parties from holding official positions. It is as if, in our own country, the office workers in the Washington Departments of War, Agriculture, Post Office, and Inte- rior, had put through a law that made it impossible for any Republican or Democrat to hold any govern- ment job, except by going through the whole mill of service. That does not leave much room for democracy, does it ? Nor does it allow us to doubt for very long who owns and runs the country, especially after we learn that the State owns and operates the postal system, all telephones and telegraphs, the railways, most ,of the gas, water, and elec- tric plants, the tobacco monopoly, the salt monopoly, and the immense camphor industry in Formosa. And, ac- cording to Japanese economists, most of the banks, ship- 60 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? yards, and warehouses in the country are at least partly owned and managed by the Government. The connection between government and Big Business is so unusual in Japan that it must be explained briefly. In the Western world most of the great modem indus- trial enterprises were the creations of private citizens. To be sure, these citizens often sought and gained govern- mental aid in the form of subsidies, special tariffs, rail- way privileges, exemption from certain taxes, and so on ; but rarely, if ever, did the Government inaugurate and carry through to a finish the promotion and administra- tion of such concerns. In Japan, though, all this has been the rule. The Government has voted funds for these immense industries we have mentioned. It has created the or- ganizations and has turned the operation over to its own bureaucrats. After things have been set well in motion, the title to businesses of no special political importance has been transferred to private parties friendly to the Genro or the bureaucrats; while all businesses of mili- tary or diplomatic value have been jealously retained. It is as if the United States Government, during a Re- publican administration let us say, had gone into the oil business; had taken over all oil fields, wells, refineries and pipe lines; had turned the development of all these over to the clerks and bureau chiefs in the Department of the Interior, which is reputed to be one of the rarest collection of fossils in existence; had found the poorer fields of no military value and had therefore turned them over to the friends of three or four of the bureau chiefs at a bargain price; and had kept all the rest of the oil business permanently. Imagine this procedure, not FORxM OF GOVERNMENT 61 alone with oil, but with steel, telephones, copper, cotton, and half a hundred other major businesses ; then you will have some idea of the extraordinary merger of bureau- cracy and business in Japan. This, as you will at once recognize, even out-Prussias old Prussia. It is a frank imitation of Prussianism, begun when Japan was starting out to become a world power. And the accuracy of imitation is explained by the well known fact that the Japanese ruling classes, when confronted by the huge problem of organizing their state on the level of the Western powers, found in Ger- many a population and a culture and a religion and a political organization most closely related to Japan both in practice and in ideals. Thus came to pass another imi- tation, which constitutes the third point of likeness be- tween the two nations. CHAPTER 7 CONTROL OF ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION THE third likeness is the military autocracy. Japan sent her young soldiers of the upper classes to Ber- lin for their military training^. The Japanese Army was organized on the kaiser's model. The Prussian ideas of discipline were instilled into rank and file and have been enforced with much greater ease than the Prussians managed, thanks to the extreme ignorance and peculiar loyalty of the ordinary Japanese peasant. But far more important than all this is the way the control of affairs by the military caste has been fixed upon the country all but irrevocably by the Constitution. In the Constitution it is provided that a naval officer shall he alone eligible to head the Navy Department and an army officer alone eligible to head the War Department. No surer means could have been devised for retaining all the power of government in the hands of the military caste. If you wish to feel the full force of this caste-born arrangement, imagine our own War Department in 1918 to have been completely dominated, from the top downward, by gradu- ates of West Point, and our Navy Department similarly monopolized by the offspring of Annapolis. Every American business man and civilian expert who during the war had even a taste of the mental and administrative habits of our own military bureaucrats knows how jeal- 62 ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 63 ously they would have kept even the trivial places of power within their own cliques — until Germany had won the war perhaps ! And not with any malice or treachery or cheap politics, but solely through ignorance and pride. Thus it was in Germany until things began to go to pieces. Thus it is in Japan to-day, where there is no immediate prospect of a bureaucratic crisis. The fourth likeness appears in the technic of retaining power through the systematic shaping and control of public opinion. Both Germany and Japan have followed the doctrines which Plato, the Greek philosopher-poet, advocated more than two thousand years ago in his famous book, ''The Republic." Long before the World War Japan borrowed from Germany the Platonic thought that all people tend to act on the basis of what they believe to be the facts in any given case; and hence, if you loish to control people completely without friction of any sort, all you have to do is supply them with such facts or ap- parent facts as will naturally prompt them to do what you want them to do, while carefully keeping away from them all those other facts which might impel them to act contrary to your wishes. Plato, who was interested only in the philosophy of government and not at all in the defending of any bu- reaucracy, candidly admitted that the rulers would often find it expedient, if not necessary, to disseminate fictions or even downright falsehoods, to which latter Plato gives the apologetic name of ''noble lies." The Germans, as we all know, followed this policy with a vengeance in a manner that would have caused the ancient Greek to turn in his grave. They carefully selected the facts to be taught in all public and private schools of Germany. 64 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? They glorified the Pnissian state and all its deeds. They tinkered liberally with the political history of all coun- tries, so as to produce the most favorable impression of the fatherland upon the rising generation. Such caustic critics of state and crown as the brilliant Heinrich Heine were taboo not only to school-children, but even to the teachers. And the teachers were drilled mercilessly in the ways of servile adherence to every least tenet of Prus- sianism, political, military, and religious alike. Thus it happened that the whole background of knowledge and belief which shapes virtually all of men's conduct was cunningly manufactured so that it would naturally imply or suggest loyal thoughts and loyal conduct. The same policy was pursued with the current information fed to adults through newspapers and magazines. The press censorship of Germany before the war was strong and stern. While it tolerated considerable freedom of dis- cussion of some topics, notably since 1900, it was ever alert to suppress attacks upon the fundamentals of Prus- sian power. True, it frequently failed in its effort to keep the lid on public opinion, but this was through no weakness of intent on the part of the ruling classes. It was chiefly the result of the steady infiltration of bold and profane ideas from France, England, Italy, and even Russia, all of which slowly infected the sluggish political minds of the kaiser's subjects. All of this control of education and newspapers has been slavishly copied by the Japanese. Every child in the kingdom is compelled to learn edicts, poems, and fal- sified history, all of which make the mikado out to be ordained of God, and the empire to have existed since the birth of time — only to mention two absurdities. Basil ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 65 Hall Chamberlain, long a professor at the Imperial Uni- versity of Tokio, laid bare the many shams of Japanese text-books some years ago. In his brochure entitled "The Invention of a New Religion" he points out such interesting items as follows : "The first glimmer of genuine Japanese history dates from the fifth century after Christ, and even the accounts of what happened in the sixth century must be received with caution. Japanese scholars know this as well as we do ; it is one of the certain results of investigation. But the Japanese Bureau- cracy does not desire to have the light let in on this inconven- ient circumstance. ... It exacts belief in every iota of the na- tional historic legends. Woe to the native professor who strays from the path of orthodoxy! His wife and children will starve. . . . "Moral ideals which were of common knowledge derived from the teachings of the Chinese sages are now arbitrarily referred to the 'Imperial Ancestors.' ... It is officially taught that, from the earliest ages, perfect concord has always subsisted in Japan between beneficent sovereigns on the one hand and a grateful, loyal people on the other. Never, it is alleged, has Japan been soiled by the disobedience and rebellions com- mitted in other countries; while at the same time the Japanese nation, sharing to some extent in the supernatural virtues of its rulers, has been distinguished by high-minded chivalry called Bushido, unknown in inferior lands. . . . "The sober fact is that no nation pro})ably ever treated its sovereigns more cavalierly than the Japanese have done, from the beginning of authentic history down to within the memory of living man. Emperors have been deposed; Emperors have been assassinated; for centuries every succession to the throne was the signal for intrigues and sanguinary broils. . . . Em- perors have been exiled; some have been murdered in exile. . . . 66 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? "As for BusTiido, it was unknown until a decade ago (namely about 1902). The very word appears in no dictionary, native or foreign, before the year 1900." Here we have a picture of the most evil Pnissianism transplanted to the Orient, and within the brief span of twenty years foisting a colossal lie upon seventy million people — a lie, moreover, of such a character that it must profoundly influence the action of those seventy million dupes toward all other countries of the world, if ever Japan comes into controversy or conflict with the latter. The American reader must not get the idea that such antiquated doctrines as these are being taught as de- tached items. If they were, they would not survive long. The truth is that they are conveyed to the young mind in the one surest and most convincing form, namely as an integral part of a whole philosophy of life and society. Here again we see the deep influence of Germany. Japan has closely followed the excellent practice of giv- ing each rising generation of school children an orderly picture of things into which the political order of Japan fits perfectly. As is well known, Germany adopted the strange, unearthly philosophies of Kant and Hegel be- cause they lent themselves admirably to bolstering the Prussian aristocrats' idea of what a perfect State would be. And all students were compelled to study the ab- surdities of German idealism and political philosophy. How faithfully Japan has adhered to this procedure ap- pears in the following ordinance of the Department of Education : "The teaching of morals must be based on the precepts of the Imperial Rescript of Education; its object is to foster the ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 67 growth of moral ideas and sentiments, and to give the culture i and character necessary for men of middle or higher standing, and to encourage and promote the practice of virtues. The teaching should be done by explaining essential points of morals in connection with the daily life of the pupils, by means of good works or maxims or examples of good deeds; and be followed by a little more systematic exposition of the duties to self, to society, and to the State." The ideas that get into the heads of the common sol- diers are likewise carefully sorted and then injected. In a recent issue of *'Asia" we come upon one of those en- lightening ''Letters from a Japanese Patriot" which shows the educational methods of the barracks. Says this bold writer : "Only last night I met a distant relative of mine, who was just back from three weeks' drill for the Reserves. I asked him what the men were talking about in the army. 'Are they expecting a war with the United States?' I asked. "After shaking his head dubiously half a dozen times, he said: — 'Well, every time the officers give us lectures they say: "Soldiers, we have got to be prepared, for a mightier war is coming! The whole world is hating our glorious Em- pire! America hates us most of all! We cannot rely even on our once-tinisted ally, England! And why? Do any of you soldiers know? Surely, you ought to know. It is simply because we are so strong and great ! It is jealousy ! It is the same old desire of the White Race to dominate the whole world ! Now, then, soldiers, think ! What are you going to do about it?"' " 'Well,' I asked this distant relative soldier, 'what are you going to do about it?' " 'Really I don't know,' he said. 'But in the army, as you know, we've got to listen to whatever the officers say.' 68 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? "^Sof said I. ^That was exactly the way things were handled in the German army. That was exactly the way the German soldiers went blindly to the front to be fed to the cannon ! !>" In fairness to the Japanese it should be added that this is just the sort of thing that officers are saying to Ameri- can sailors and marines in all the Pacific Coast bases. A similar account might be given, with a wealth of detail, about the official propaganda of Japan and the censorship. Every magazine and newspaper in the coun-j try is licensed and regularly inspected by the censorshipl which is more stringent than the Prussians have dared to' be in recent years. And the knowledge which foreigners acquire about Japan is shaped to a remarkable degree by the skilful, ingenious, and richly financed chain of press bureaus and societies. Indeed, most journalists regard Japan's peaceful propaganda in foreign lands as the last word in that art, exceeding even the French and the Americans, who like to consider themselves the clever- est self -advertisers on earth. The bulk of news coming from Japan is collected, ed- ited, and distributed by the Kokusai, the Japanese na- tional news agency, under the management of J. Russell Kennedy, who is also the publisher of the Japan ' ' Times and Mail,'' through which the Japanese Government pre- sents news to English-speaking residents. Every ob- server agrees that the Kokusai is a skilful news-colorist and an efficient suppressor of unpleasant facts. It is not such a monumental liar as the French news-fakers, who have been busily humbugging Americans through our most respectable journals ever since the armistice. Neither is it as malicious as the Bolshevik propaganda. ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 69 Its activities seem to be more like those of our own Com- mittee of Public Information during the war; it sends out pleasant stories, hushes up gloom, and generally ad- vertises Japan and its Government as a set of jolly good fellows. In short, it follows almost the same policy as a. y publicity agent does in booming a movie star or a railroad. And we Americans, of all people on earth, have the least right to condemn it ; for the Kokusai has merely imitated our most prominent commercial adver- tisers in sincere admiration. The progressive Japanese, however, are growing more than restive under the system. They are saying things about it that are enlightening. In a recent article on ** Stumbling Blocks to the Growth of Democracy in Japan," the "Asahi," a Tokio newspaper of wide influ- ence, bursts forth as follows: "The greater the misrule of the Government, the more nu- merous are press embargoes. The last Cabinet prohibited all mention in the press of the rice riots which constituted the largest blot on the Government's escutcheon, but the down- fall of the Cabinet on that issue could not be prevented. At the time when the present Cabinet was formed, it appeared that the authorities had a more proper notion of the freedom of speech, but during the eighteen months it has continued in office many mistakes have been made, and press embargoes have greatly increased of late. The embargoes which stand good at the present time number no less than 38, of which 17 refer to Korean affairs, and these figures do not include the embargoes issued by the police and judicial authorities in con- nection with the search or exammation of criminals; they have all been issued by administrative offices. As to Korean af- fairs, almost everything is tabooed, and the Japanese are thus blindfolded as to the situation in Korea. It is no wonder that 70 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Korean rule should be growing worse. The greatest defect of the existing Press Law is that the authorities are em- powered to take severe punitive measures under the abstract and elastic phrase 'for the disturbance of peace and order/ This stipulation is due to the autocratic spirit of the bu- reaucrats, and is irrefragably at variance with the spirit of constitutionalism which respects freedom of speech. It is very dangerous that such a stipulation should be used and abused by the Government at its own convenience. It may even be said that it is these authorities who endanger peace and order. The Home Minister is nominally responsible for the control of speech, but it is petty police officials who do the actual I task." \ Largely as the result of the world's ignorance of Japan, Japan's vast distance from the Western world, and the discouraging difficulties in the way of the Euro- pean or American who seeks to learn about Japan by reading Japanese books and papers, the foreign propa- ganda of that island empire has until very recently had things pretty much its own way in creating a favorable opinion of Japan throughout the white world. It is only since the scandalous procedures of Japan and her un- scrupulous allies with regard to China at the peace con- ference that men have begun to grow uneasy as to the plans and morals of official Japan, and are now listening to such scathing critics as Thomas F. Millard, editor of *' Millard's Review" (Shanghai), who for years has been bringing to the public attention news about the Japa- nese ruling classes that has been most distasteful to these gentlemen. To intensify this suspicion, there has been added since the peace conference a profound reaction against all forms of official publicity. Even readers below the average of intelligence now understand that ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 71 their newspapers, and to a lesser degree their magazines, have been filled with lies foisted on the unhappy editors by wily press agents of foreign powers and political cliques. All of which has upset Japan 's publicity plans, along with those of many another. None the less, the parallel between Japan and pre-war Prussia still endures. And it must continue as long as Japan 's present political system does; for an institution founded on fictions can be preserved only by preserving that foundation. i» CHAPTER 8 OVEKPOPULATION THE fifth likeness between Japan and Germany is an economic and geographic one. Both of these em- pires adjoin the largest undeveloped territory on earth ; namely, Russia. The significance of this will appear after we have considered some further similarities. The sixth likeness lies in the overpopulation of both countries. Before 1914 Germany had passed the point at which it was possible for her inhabitants to raise food for themselves in sufficient quantities. As a result of the enormous influx into German cities, thanks to the tremen- dous stimulation of manufacturing by government aid, the cost of food distribution, and hence of food to the con- sumer, was rising out of proportion to the increase in wages. German}^ also had on her hands a peculiar prob- lem of overpopulation that has never yet appeared else- where; she had an immense and disquieting surplus of highly trained professional and technical men. Twenty years ago this excess began to cause worry. The huge educational system of Germany was producing more engi- neers, electrical engineers, surveyors, industrial chemists, and other experts than the nation's employers could ab- sorb. The result was that the pay of such men dropped and dropped until, in 1910, some classes of engineers holding degrees from the Charlottenburg Polytechnik, one of the finest engineering colleges in the world, were 72 OVERPOPULATION 73 getting the pay of street-ear conductors. The discontent of such an ''intellectual proletariat" was no slight factor in shaping the German program of expansion. It re- mains to be seen whether a similar ''intellectual proletariat" will arise in Japan out of her abnormal in- dustrial expansion. Already her thousands of school teachers are strug- gling on salaries beside which the $600 a year that our country schoolma'ams get is princely indeed. And un- less some revolutionary improvement in Japan's whole economic system occurs, she will soon have another army of pauper wise men on her hands. That Japan is seriously overpopulated has been ques- tioned by several recent investigators. But when we look closely into the reasons for their doubts, we see that an important fact has been omitted from their considera- tions. The Report of the California State Board of Con- trol on "California and the Oriental," the latest and most trustworthy study of the whole subject, refers to the findings of the Japanese Department of Agriculture and Commerce concerning undeveloped acreage in the island empire and draws conclusions that are not at all sound. This department, two years ago, completed a survey of Japanese farm-lands which brought to light five million acres of now unused soil which can be re- claimed without the introduction of any radically new agricultural methods. It also appeared that the Japa- nese, unlike the Chinese and the Filipino hill tribes, do not understand the development of hillsides in farming. They are valley folk, to whom the amazing technic of terracing and mountain tillage that we find among the Igorots of Luzon and the Chinese is a sealed book. The 74 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? official survey reveals that simply by reclaiming and cul- tivating the land which is inclined at an angle of less than fifteen degrees Japan could double the area of her arable land. Now, it cannot be denied that this sounds as if she could easily spread her millions over twice their present area and double their food supply. But some other facts, all well known and beyond dispute, rob this one of its supposed significance and go to prove the usual assertion that the country is grossly over-crowded and far from self-supporting. These facts are a matter of geography, climate, and racial traits. In the first place, about five sixths of all Japan is wild mountainous country, most of which is very cold and raw and forever untillable. Thus the productive area, both actual and possible combined, represents only one square mile out of every six in the empire. In the second place, the great bulk of the still unde- veloped tillable land lies in Hokkaido, the northerlj^ part of the country, lying in the same general latitude as Vladivostok. This whole region is, in comparison with the rest of Japan, still thinly populated despite the avail- able acreage it contains. But this is not by accident or oversight. It is the natural result of a racial peculiarity which has manifested itself elsewhere. The Japanese have been for thousands of years concentrated in the milder southern stretches of their archipelago, where they have by long group inbreeding and natural selection nar- rowly adapted themselves to the living conditions of that region. As a consequence, they evince a strong dislike, and something of an inability, to thrive in either very hot or very cold climates. OVERPOPULATION 75 This is not a matter of speculation. It has been clearly demonstrated on a grand scale during the last twenty years. After the opening of jManchuria, the Japanese Government exerted itself to direct its citizens into that immense territory. Although something more than a quarter million Japanese have emigrated thither up to date, the movement is generally regarded as a failure in the larger sense ; for it has developed that the more pro- gressive of these emigrants do not stay long, on account of the bitter winters, while those who do remain prove quite unable to compete with the northern Chinese there, largely because the latter can and do work well under the harsh climatic conditions of those inland continental plains. Prom a biological point of view this is precisely what one should expect. A species that has adapted it- self to a very equable oceanic climate for hundreds of generations, be this climate hot or cold, would be more or less upset if shifted suddenly to a highly variable cli- mate such as Manchuria's, where midsummer heat mounts to the nineties and midwinter nights drop to forty below zero. The experiment of transplanting the Japanese to a tropical region has likewise failed. In 1909 the Japa- nese Government began colonizing Formosa, but it has not succeeded appreciably despite the 150,000 Japanese who have taken up residence in that hot and depress- ingly humid island. It is not the climate alone, how- ever, which has hampered success here; the very large Chinese and aboriginal population has stood in the way of making the region a home for Japan 's surplus folk. In the third place, the true density of Japan's popu- lation is not generally appreciated. The usual method 76 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? of figuring density is to divide the gross population by the gross area. Thus, Japan has about 350 people to the square mile. This is only a little greater density than Italy 's and considerably less than Belgium 's. Even this superficial comparison, if properly interpreted, would point to Japan 's grave congestion ; for Italy, with 326 per square mile, has been overpopulated for a gen- eration and has sent forth immense floods of her best farmers and city toilers to North and South America, to northern Africa, and to the Near East ; and, according to most observers, will have to go on doing this indefinitely unless the Italians themselves adopt some organized form of birth control, which is highly improbable. And so with Belgium. This little land is a model of what a country should not be in matters of population and standards of living. To be sure, it has adapted itself ingeniously to its appalling crowds of overworked, under- educated, and rather sodden toilers; but, then, so have the Chinese. And, whatever we may think about the development of Belgium's agriculture in close coordina- tion with its industrial life, the fact remains that the country has more people than it can feed. And that is all that we are now considering. Now, to return to Japan's 350 people per square mile, this figure is misleading. We see its true nature when we recall that five sixths of all Japan is wild and untill- able. On this five sixths of the land few men live. So we may say roughly that Japan's total population is packed into about one sixth of her total area, so that from the point of view of density as well as of food sup- plies, the true or effective density of population is six times that indicated by the statistics. Japan is there- OVERPOPULATION 77 fore actually supporting more than two thousand human beings to the inhabited and tillable square mile. In other words, the entire country has, from the point of view of food supplies, almost reached the condition which has prevailed in Shantung, which is China's most thickly settled province. In Shantung there are many farms on which, according to the first-hand observations of such a trained student of agriculture as F. II. King, author of ' ' The Farmers of Forty Centuries, ' ' one square mile of soil is supporting 3,072 persons, 256 cows, 256 donkej's, and 512 pigs. There are about 5,500,000 families working farms in Japan, and these cultivate an average of a little less than 3 acres each. This means that, in 1920, one acre has to feed nearly four persons. In Hokkaido, where land is relatively undeveloped according to the amazing Japa- nese standards, the acreage per family is about IVo acres. More than one-half of the total 15,000,000 acres is de- voted to raising rice. Even with such huge plantings, though, there are 6,000,000 Japanese who must buy their rice from foreign countries. This has led to the present new reclamation project of the Imperial Government to make available, within the next nine years, 250,000 cho of waste land — or about 6,250,000 acres. Of this total, which is estimated to exhaust the total acreage of possible farm land, only one-half or thereabouts can ever be made fit to grow rice, regardless of the pains taken in improv- ing it. While these efforts to increase crop acreage are going on, we see no less than 18,500 acres of good land being taken away from farmers for the construction of roads, railways, irrigation ditches, houses and factories. In a 78 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? land like the United States such a tract would be negli- gible. In Japan it is a serious matter. There is another aspect of farming which must be stressed here, for it has a vital bearing upon the interna- tional crisis. According to a statement in the Japan Year Book by Dr. Sato, President of the Imperial Hok- kaido University, the tenant farmers of the country cul- tivate such small areas that even with their immense labor, they do not make enough money from their crops alone to keep themselves alive. They are obliged to carry on other work such as growing silk worms, making straw ware, charcoal burning, starch making, and so on; and in all this they have to press their wives and children into service. Thus we find agriculture and home indus- try completely interlocked and each conducted on a basis that would support nobody if handled alone. In this evil situation, be it noted in passing, lies the cause of the abnormally cheap production of the simpler products of handicraft in Japan. The parallel between this and the early stages of the '' industrial revolution" in Eng- land is obvious and significant. Plainly, then, Japan is much more congested than pre- war Germany was, or, for that matter, than any Euro- pean country was. Hence whatever force the density of population may have been in causing Germany to do what she did in 1914, that force must be operative in Japan, and probably to a much more marked degree. Before passing on to our next comparison, it may be worth while to ask when the final crisis of overpopulation is likely to come in Japan. We may set the year 1960 as a very conservative date for this crisis. We do this on the basis of two facts: (1) the present annual increase of OVERPOPULATION 79 Japan's population is between 600,000 and 700,000, and (2) the reclaimable acreage within Japan will pro- vide, at a maximum, for feeding about thirty million more people at the rate of four persons to the acre. These facts make it theoretically possible for the country to provide for its natural growth by one makeshift or another for forty more years. It is plain, of course, that during those forty years many Japanese will doubtless leave the country, but to offset this emigration we must reckon with two other facts of vast importance. There is the strong antipathy of the natives toward life in Hokkaido, where the bulk of the unused soil lies; and there is also the conspicuous and steady rise in the standards of living aU over Japan, as elsewhere in the world. Both of these facts must powerfully hasten the day when the country will no longer be able to place and feed men on new lands within her present insular boun- daries. There is another aspect of this matter that may be en- lightening, and that is the economic difficulties in the way of utilizing the undeveloped acreage of Japan. These have been left wholly out of the reckoning not only by the California State Board of Control, but also by the investigators working under the Inter-Church World Movement in Japan. And the omission completely dis- torts the picture. Japanese agriculture long ago reached the point at which the law of diminishing returns began to work with a vengeance. As in every other part of the world, so in Japan, the best land was tilled first, then the next best, and so on, as the population grew. To-day the only un- used acres are far back in all but inaccessible mountain 80 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? valleys, or they are badly drained or their soil is stub- bom ; so that in any case the amount of labor needed to bring them up to profitable cropping and to handle the products from field to market is enormous. Already in Japan the sheer volume of human effort put into many a field is appalling. Robertson Scott, the British journal- ist, who has lately completed a tour of inspection through the farming districts of Japan, gives us a vivid and de- tailed picture of the desperate and all but futile strug- gles of the Japanese farmers to wring a livelihood from the poorer lands in the northern prefectures. Writing in ''Asia" (from October to December, 1920), Mr. Scott tells of his observations in such districts as Iwate and Miyagi. What he tells us ought to be a warning to all those arm-chair statisticians and advisers who think of such intensely human and tremendously intricate ques- tions as food supply, agriculture, and population merely in terms of arithmetic. Farming conditions in most of the regions not yet densly populated and intensively developed are extremely bad, Mr. Scott finds. The east coast north of Tokio is chilled by a polar sea current and cursed with barren soil. Only one farmer in ten here ever saves any money, and in bad times sixty-five per cent, of the families are estimated to fall into debt. The wretched population exists chiefly upon buckwheat and millet, for rice will not grow well enough to warrant planting much of it. In Iwate, the most northerly part of Nippon, Mr. Scott reports that as many as forty per cent, of the people are barely making ends meet, while another forty per cent, are always dogged by poverty. Every year about seven thousand farmers get out and try their luck in Hokkaido, which, OVERPOPULATION 81 although farther north, does have some slight advan- tages, such as good timber and the opportunity for ac- quiring larger land-holdings. ]\Iore than one thousand of these emigrants return annually and report failure in the northern island. Even in more favored southerly districts, where the climate is good, the partly undeveloped hill regions and the remoter valleys show how hard it is to utilize the last twenty-five per cent, of the theoretically tillable acreage in a country. Mr. Scott was informed by an agricultural expert in Akita, which lies on the warmer northwest coast, that between fifty-five and sixty per cent, of all farmers in that district had an annual income of about $150 per family; about twenty-five per cent, had about $75, which is the very least on which bare existence is possible there ; and three per cent, or more of the farm hands earned less than $75 a year. The city reader, surveying these ghastly figures, may be tempted to say: *'Ah, yes, this is terrible; but these farmers ought to cultivate more intensively. Then they would earn more." This is the usual advice which the man who does not know the difference between a hoe and a harrow is always ready to give the farmer. The farmer fortunately knows that it is nonsense. In the first place, intensive cultivation is expensive and always means rela- tively small profits, as will be shown in a later chap- ter of this volume. In the second place, the Japanese farmer in these regions is a past master in intensive cul- tivation and has actually doubled the acre yield of rice in Akita in the last thirty years, a remarkable achieve- ment, as any farmer must perceive. And, in the third place, the amount of labor and capital required to bring 82 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? the poorer acreage under cultivation is so great that there must always be relatively less labor and capital left out of the total available for the actual cultivation itself. The history of the rice crop and rice prices in Japan clearly confirms all this. In the last twenty years the market price of this food staple has steadily moved up from forty-seven cents to seven dollars per bushel. In- deed the price of rice in Japan is higher now than it is in America. Katagiri Brothers, New York importers, on December 24, 1920, stated that rice in Japan was then retailing at 16 sen a pound, which equals about $5 a bushel. To-day the Japanese workman pays fourteen times as much for his food as he paid in 1900. During this same period his wages, on the average, have increased from $6.50 to $26 per month, or fourfold. On the most liberal basis of computation we can allow not more than two hundred of the fourteen hundred per cent, increase in the rice cost as being due to money inflation. Thus we are left with an enormous margin of increase which can be accounted for in only three ways, either by downright profiteering, by a disproportionate increase in the world demand for rice, or finally b}^ the steadily mounting cost of production as a result of more intensive cultivation of the paddies and the expensive development of new and poorer acreage. We may dismiss profiteering as being a trifling factor except during the last two years; rice is grown and dealt in by too many small farmers and dealers to make flagrant profiteering possible outside of the larger cities. As for the influence of foreign demand upon the Japanese prices, it cannot have been very great ; for, when we consult the records of Japanese exports, we find that a minimal quantity of the staple leaves the OVERPOPULATION 83 country. In 1919, for instance, with a rice crop of about 300,000,000 bushels, Japan sent abroad about 300,000 bushels, or a mere one thousandth of her yield. In the same year she imported, chiefly from French Indo-China and Siam, about 11,000,000 bushels. Thus it is clear that the domestic price of the staple is determined chiefly by domestic conditions, and of these latter it is pretty clearly the inevitable rise in production cost that has wrought the trouble. Too many farmers toiling on an acre, too many stubborn acres being coaxed to yield their crops! In many parts of Japan where the hillside acre- age is good for rice as far as the soil goes, the cost of bringing to it the enormous amount of water that this crop requires is prohibitive. To extend farming, there- fore, means to lower the standing of living for the farmer; for it involves an increase in the time spent in the mere struggle for food. "With a rising standard of tastes, is it any wonder that the Japanese look abroad for farms, or that they are fast coming to hate us Americans for what seems to them to be our hoggishness? Nobody can grasp the psychology, of the Japanese- American crisis until he has realized, the \ full force of the impression which America makes upon a Japanese peasant. The hundred thousand Japanese toil- ers in California see colossal stretches of empty land in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, most of it so rich that it requires no manure or fertilizer for years to come. They observe thousands of small farmers who are both inefficient and lazy when measured by Japanese standards. They cannot help thinking of the millions of young men and women back home in Nippon who could build up this white man's empire faster and better than 84 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? the white man is building it, but who are barred from it by the white man's fear. And they know that, at the most conservative estimate, Japan to-day holds fully five million men and youths for whom war of any kind would mean a happier existence, better food and more of it, easier hours of work, and above all the first and the only opportunity in their lives for winning a home and a de- cent livelihood by some foreign conquest. When we think of the Japanese issue, let us not leave this stagger- ing fact out of our reckoning. CHAPTER 9 WAGES AND EXPLOITATION THE seventh likeness between Japan and pre-war Germany is a direct consequence of over-population. It is the presence of enormous masses of cheap labor, and hence of abnormal industrial expansion. When we speak of cheap labor we mean relatively cheap. And by ab- normal industrial expansion we mean not necessarily un- wise or unwholesome development, but rather an ex- pansion which goes on more rapidly than the other in- terlocking economic and social processes, and which there- fore tends to throw everything out of gear, at least for a time. This disturbance, studied in retrospect, may prove to be merely ''growing pains." As for Germany, the facts about her cheap labor and colossal industrial expansion are so familiar that we need not recount them here. Enough to observe that prior to 1910 the wages of the unskilled worker in Germany ran from one third to one fifth of those in the United States, measured in terms of the buying power of money in the two countries; while the skilled German was receiving from one half to one third as much as the skilled Yankee. This is a very rough comparison, of course. The wages differed tremendously from trade to trade, according to local variations in supply and demand. None the less, they give a fair general ratio. 85 86 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? How about Japan? As this matter of wages bears upon almost all of the political and social difficulties of that country, including her relations with China and the United States, we must consider it in some detail. Since 1900 the level of wages in Japan has risen from one to four hundred per cent. The most recent com- plete statistics were compiled three years ago and show that, despite the great advance both absolutely and in buying power, the Japanese are still even further be- low the American level than the Germans were before the war. We find that in 1917 the average wages in thirty- three occupations in Japan were thirty cents per day, American money. Bricklayers received sixty-one cents, the highest wage, while farm women drew seventeen cents, the lowest wage. Skilled artisans in all lines av- eraged forty-seven cents. Textile workers received twenty-eight and one half cents if men, and nineteen cents if women; and for this wage more than a million of them were working from eleven to fourteen hours a day. To form an idea of the buying power of these pitiful wages, double them and compute what the product would purchase three years ago in an ordinary American town. The result will be accurate enough for our pres- ent purposes. A Boston bricklayer who got $1.22 for a ten-hour day in 1917 would be as well off as his esteemed contemporary in Yokohama. A mill hand in Lawrence or Lowell who drew fifty-seven cents a day for an eleven- hour day would be able to live as high as his brother operator in Nagasaki. This situation is further made clear by this budget taken from the "Letters from a Japanese Patriot" which appeared in the issue of "Asia" for May, 1920: WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 87 "For illustration, I will steal the family notebook of a school teacher who has a wife and two children. It is a typical monthly account of last winter. Yen Salary 28.00 Bonus 6.50 Total 34.50 Rice 20.70 Vegetables, fish, etc 7.22 Fuel 2.50 Newspaper 90 Club fee 15 Social expenditure, etc 1.50 Expenses for children 1.00 Total 33.97 .53 "This man lives on the school premises and pays no rent. He has about 53 sen (26 cents) left over every month, and out of these odd sen he has to buy clothes for himself and his family, and to set by something for emergencies. "Do I need to say more to explain to you why discontent is eating into the lives of my people f Let the New York City school teacher who thinks she is badly underpaid and down-trodden on a wage of from $1635 to $2160 yearly compare herself with this unfor- tunate man, who is no worse off than the 141,000 teachers in Japan with monthly earnings of $17.25, or $207 a year. What would she say and do if she had to spend $14 out of every $17 she received for food alone ? 88 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN.'' Professor Takagi of Keio University attempted an in- quiry into the living expenses of workpeople and petty salary men in 1917, taking as the basis of his estimates these figures from earlier compilations: food 5.226 yen, rent 4.472, fuel 1.712, clothing 2.090 and so on. After making due allowances for the rise of commodities, his conclusions are that the living expenses are 37.46 yen a month. The corresponding figures for July, 1914, are similarly assumed by him at 25 yen. Now in Tokio the rise of commodities from July, 1914, to December, 1916, is estimated by the Government to be about 100 per cent., but during that interval wages in Tokio increased only 43 per cent. The result of all this in the last twenty years, but most conspicuously since the World War began, was inevitable and obvious. Japanese capitalists and manufacturers saw in this cheap labor a glittering opportunity to un- derbid American and European competitors and capture the world's trade. This they proceeded to do with the same enthusiasm and the same methods which the British manufacturers displayed two generations ago, and the Germans imitated with added cunning and scientific technic after 1880. In this history of the world there has never been a shift of millions of men and money from farm to factory as swift or as vast as the shift in Japan since 1900. In 1896 there were only 434,852 fac- tory workers of all kinds in the country. In seven years this number doubled. To-day there are more than a million and a quarter. The darker devices of exploitation which not so very long ago prevailed in Germany and other Western in- dustrial states are being reproduced all over Japan. A WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 89 recent study by Ken Katayama, in the January issue of "Asia," 1920, shows that two hundred thousand girls are drawn every year from farm to factory, and of this horde eighty thousand return home sick and shattered. Girls are enticed from the country and kept prisoners, ill fed, in rough dormitories, very much as poor whites and negroes used to be only a decade ago in the turpen- tine camps of our South. The government factories employ girls under fourteen years of age in many cases, and in the match and cotton factories mere children can be found. Most of them work fourteen hours a day. All of this closely parallels a hundred instances well known in the industrial history of Germany, such as the congestioo, underpay, and overT\'ork in Treptow, the great manufacturing suburb of Berlin. There is another and even blacker side of exploitation which must be recorded here. It is the exploitation not of the worker, but of the ultimate, consumer. Japanese industrialists to-day are at the same moral level that the British manufacturers occupied half a century ago. Bent solely on profits, the latter gave no heed to the in- jury the sale of their rum and firearms worked on for- eign peoples. They used to send a shipload of rum and guns with every box of Bibles, and used a British gun- boat to compel the natives to swallow both the theology and the liquor. So now with the Japanese manufactur- ers of morphia and opium. These men are mercilessly exploiting the Chinese, and in their vicious trade they are being aided by the Japanese Government. This has been thoroughly investigated and exposed by a number of authorities. Their findings have been re- ported in detail through official channels. We give you 90 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? herewith a news summary of the matter that was pub- lished by the ''North China Daily News." The picture is as horrible as it is true : "Morphia can no longer be purchased in Europe. The seat of the industry has been transferred to Japan and morphia is now purchased by the Japanese themselves. Literally tens of millions of yen are transferred annually from China to Japan for the payment of Japanese morphia. "The chief agency in the distribution of morphia in China is the Japanese post-office. Morphia is imported by parcels post. No inspection of parcels in the Japanese post-offices in China is permitted to the Chinese Customs Service. The service is only allowed to know what the alleged contents are, as stated in the Japanese invoices. Yet morphia enters China by this channel by the ton. A conservative estimate would place the amount imported by the Japanese into China in the course of a year as high as eighteen tons, and there is evidence that the amount is steadily increasing. "In South China morphia is sold by Chinese peddlers, each of whom carries a passport certifying that he is a native of Formosa and therefore entitled to Japanese protection. Jap- anese drug stores throughout China carry large stocks of morphia. Japanese medicine vendors look to morphia for their largest profits. Wherever Japanese are predominant, tJiere the trade flourishes. Through Tairen, morphia circulates through- out Manchuria and the provinces adjoining; through Tsingtao morphia is distributed over Shantung province, Anhui and Kiangsu; while from Formosa morphia is carried with opium and other contraband by motor-driven fishing boats to some point on the mainland, from which it is distributed throughout the province of Fukien and the north of Kuangtung. Every- where it is sold by Japanese under extraterritorial protection. "While the morphia trade is large there is every reason to believe that the opium traffic, upon which the Japanese are WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 91 embarking with enthusiasm, is likely to prove even more lucrative. In the Calcutta opium sales, Japan has become one of the considerable purchasers of Indian opium. She pur- chases for Formosa where the opium trade shows a steady growth, and where opium is required for the manufacture of morphia. Sold by the government of India, this opium is ex- ported under permits applied for by the Japanese Government, is shipped to Kobe, and from Kobe is trans-shipped to Tsingtao. Large profits are being made in this trade, in which are interested some of the leading firms of Japan. "It must be emphasized that this opium is not imported into Japan. It is trans-shipped in Kobe Harbor, from which point, assisted by the Japanese controlled railway to Tsinanfu, it is smuggled through Shantung into Shanghai and the Yangtze Valley. This opium is sold in Shanghai at $500 a ball, forty balls to the chest, a total valuation of about $20,000 a chest. China's failure to sell for medical purposes her opium at $27,000 a chest, the price asked by the opium ring, is thus ex- plained. The price is undercut by the Japanese. There is reason to believe that between January' 1 and September 30, 1918, not less than 2000 chests of opium purchased in India, were imported into Tsingtao through Kobe. "Upon this amount the Japanese authorities levy a tax, which does not appear in the estimates, equivalent to Tls. 4,000 a chest, a total for the 2,000 chests at the present rate of ex- change of $10,000,000. The acquisition of the immense profit from a contraband traffic would explain the origin of those immense sums now being lavished upon the development of Tsingtao and the establishment there of Japanese commercial supremacy. "It may be asked how it is possible that at Tairen, where the morphia traffic is greatest, and at Tshintao, which is the chief center of the Japanese opium trade, the importation of this contraband continues without the knowledge of the Chinese Maritime Customs. At both Dalny and Tsingtao, their of- 92 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? fiees are wholly under the control of the Japanese and wholly manned by them. Japanese military domination would forbid in both ports any interference in a traffic which the Japanese authorities were interested in, either officially or unofficially. In Dalny the highest civic dignity has been conferred upon the chief dealer in morphia and opium." Before leaving this subject, it may be well to remove a misapprehension as to the nature of Japan 's industrial and commercial expansion. Statements have frequently been made that lead the reader to believe that all of Japan's economic expansion is part of a single well or- dered plan to engulf China and perhaps Siberia. Such a notion attributes a degree of intelligence and coopera- tion most flattering to the Japanese but happily impos- sible. The plain truth is that there are hundreds of Japanese manufacturers and business men who can find work for the nation 's millions of workers only by selling goods abroad or else by developing industries abroad which cater to the basic needs of Japan. The energy of these people, employers and laborers alike, is precisely like any physical force in Nature. It tends to follow the line of least resistance. It presses against this obsta- cle and tliat, now driving to the right and now to the left ; and wherever things give way to it, it moves on. Some Japanese have lately been buying large tracts of plantation land in Ecuador. Others have been for nearly ten years in southern Brazil, where a large Japa- nese colony seems to have met with considerable success and some failures in rice growing. Others have gone to the Philippines, notably around the Gulf of Davao, the richest region in Mindanao, and are reported to be trans- forming the country. And now we find a new and re- WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 93 markable expansion in the most densely populated regions of Asia, the Dutch East Indies, The ''Dutch East Indian Archipelago," a commercial journal in Java, reports the infiltration of Japanese capi- tal there. A Japanese company that is in the market to buy three large estates in Central Java is also negotiat- ing for the purchase of the Ngupit and Ketendan estates, and a site has been selected at Klaten for a new Japanese sugar factory. The Sumber Lawang estate of 1500 bouws (a bouw equals 1.7537 acres) on the railway line between Surakarta and Samarang, has passed into Japa- nese hands for a consideration of Fl. 600,000, after changing hands in 1918 for Fl. 70,000, while the Ga- daren sugar estate has been bought for Fl. 1,900,000. The ''Economic Review," of London, states that these constant purchases are said to be causing some uneasiness in the Dutch East Indies, and people are beginning to clamor for preventive measures. "While the Govern- ment is in a position to refuse new concessions to Japa- nese applicants it has no power to prevent their buying up existing estates, even though obviously purchased for other than commercial reasons, as is manifestly the case when the estate is worthless and incapable of being made productive. The one infallible way of keeping Japanese capital out is to secure a larger investment of European and American capital, and unless Western capital shows more enterprise it must be prepared to find its Japanese rival gradually occupying every comer in the East." The eighth likeness between Japan and the pre-war Germany grew directly out of the whole abnormal indus- trial expansion in overpopulated districts. It is the sud- 94 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? den rise of discontented workers against such exploita- tion, the consequent formation of labor-unions and a labor party, and the battle for reforms which directly or indirectly menace the feudalistic political order, and move toward a national crisis in the shaping- of which the ruling classes, by virtue of their having absolute control of army, navy, railways, and newspapers, do pretty much as they please at first. The twentj^ years preceding the World War developed this whole movement within Germany. The labor-un- ions waxed fat and strong on the grievances of the work- ers. As they organized with ever mounting s'kill, they undertook the education of their numbers in economics and politics and thereby accelerated the* groiwth of the Socialist party. The Junkers and their adherent in- dustrialists fought stubbornly to retain complete mastery of the political situation. They managed to do this at first by a great variety of devices, each of which was broken down one by one by the doughty workers. In desperation the feudalists took final refuge in their sys- tem of " rotten boroughs." Thanks to their control of the Prussian legislature, they had been able to win elec- tion after election with a minority vote'. This they ac- complished by so shaping the election districts in the in- dustrial cities where the forces of labor and Socialism were strong that a few wealthy voters outballoted thou- sands of the common people. Thus in Berlin before the war the fashionable residence district adjoining the Tiergarten, Berlin's chief park, chose one member of the Reichstag, while the most densely populated part of Treptow, the industrial suburb, did the same. In the WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 95 former district a scant hundred ballots were cast, while the Treptow district cast many tliousand. The effect of such corrupt tactics was inevitable, even in the face of immense and shrewd resistance from the reactionaries. By 1910 the Socialist vote had grown to the point where it was clear that even under the ' ' rotten borough" system it would soon be voting the feudal lords and their hangers-on out of existence. Some observers, optimistically inclined, were tempted to infer from this that the war peril that had hung over Europe ever since 1870 was passed. It looked to them as if a Socialist ma- jority, which was opposed to militarism and to war, would certainly block every move of the war party thenceforth. Other observers, though, who understood the psychology of the ruling classes and the overwhelm- ing power of centralized authority and propaganda, sus- pected that the kaiser would, if it came to preserving his holy authority and the dynasty, follow that course known of old to sovereigns and their advisers, the course laid down by Machiavelli, ''When trouble threatens at home, start a foreign war." We shall probably never know how large a part this maxim played in bringing the cataclysm of August, 1914, but it was certainly an active factor. So to-day in Japan. To be sure, the medieval forces are still in complete control of the political situation. To believe in Socialism is illegal, and to exploit the doc- trine through press or party meets tvith the reward of hanging. Only ten years ago Kotoke, his wife, and ten other followers of iCropotkin's teachings were hanged, and since that event nobody has seen fit to launch a So- 96 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? cialist party or anything faintly resembling one in Japan. None the less the pressure from the working classes, as well as from the educated classes outside of the bureau- cracy, has steadily increased. The demand for party government has become more and more insistent. It forced the resignation of Terauchi and his cabinet in the summer of 1918, and then for the first time in the history of the empire a commoner headed the cabinet. After the medieval fashion, this able man, Mr. Hara, was promptly raised to the peerage; but not even the title of viscount prevented him from greatly extending the freedom of the press and public speech. Nor did it check him in his plan to broaden the electorate, which he did in 1919. To-day any Japanese man who pays a direct tax of $1.50 or more per year can qualify as a voter. By this act the number of voters has been in- creased greatly, and many foreign observers have hailed the Hara suffrage reform as conclusive evidence that democracy is sweeping Japan. Here, unhappily, we come upon another of those easy illusions created of American ignorance of far-away affairs. The tendency among us is to think of the situa- tion in terms of our own life and land; and thinking thus, we see at once that, if every male American adult who paid $1.50 a year in direct taxes were allowed to vote, almost everybody except the inmates of poorhouses and asylums would have the franchise. The poor white of the back mountains who pays a tax on his yellow dog would be admitted to the precious circle of voters. From which we infer that to-day most Japanese, or at any rate a very large number of them, are now enfranchised. This is incorrect. Millions of Japanese earn less than WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 97 $30 a month, and millions of farm workers, most of whom are tenants, possess no property save the clothes on their backs and a few primitive farm tools. The consequence is that, prior to the Hara reform about 25 Japanese out of every 1,000 had the suffrage, while to-day, thanks to this ''democratic" advance, about 60 out of 1,000 enjoy the privilege. Nominally, even this low percentage makes a fairly good showing. It means that more than 3,000,000 men are privileged to vote. But in reality the bulk of this number is almost as negligible at the polls as our own Southern negroes are, and for similar reasons. They remain, as I have already pointed out, under the ancient and strict supervision of the go-no, or village superin- tendent, Yery much as the negroes are held in control by the small white rulers of the average Southern town. In brief, Japan now stands at the stage of political develop- ment which Germany occupied about tweniy-jive year^ ago. The dissatisfaction of the masses has forced the hand of the rulers to the extent of wringing from them a qualified suffrage. But the substance of power still re- mains entirely in the hands of the old leaders of the feudal clans, the Genro, and their coterie of manufac- turers and financiers, with whom are allied the mili- tarists. They exhibited their fear and hatred of democracy afresh on February 28, 1920, when the mikado dissolved the Diet because of the bitter disagreement between the Government and the party leaders over the issue of ex- tending manhood suffrage. Those who defended the Government in its thwarting of democratic forces did not hesitate to say that, in view 98 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? of the industrial unrest and the ticklish foreign affairs in which the Government was embroiled, a larger elec- torate would imperil the nation's policies. All of which is precisely what the German militarists and autocrats were saying between 1900 and 1914, when repeated at- tempts were made to broaden the German franchise. And, again as in Germany, this contemptuous attitude is irritating the masses more and more and provoking them to strikes and other outbreaks. How far the new laboring classes of the cities have gone in the way of breaking with the traditional Jap- anese respect for authority and law appears in the rec- ords of the many strikes during the last few years. The latest Japan Year Book reports them to have increased eightfold from 1914 to 1918. Increase of wages has been the ruling motive in these agitations. The cases aris- ing from this cause have increased from 25 with 4,105 men involved in 1914 to 340 with 59,197 participants in 1918, and the total in five years since the outbreak of the War show 778 cases and 121,147 strikers. It is typical of the Japanese attitude towards one's superiors that very little complaint has been made about the manage- ment, and no demand for the reduction of working hours has ever been recorded. There were 454 strikes involv- ing 84,120 men that were settled by compromise. In 198 controversies with 25,252 laborers, the latter carried their point. "Millard's Review" recently reports that: "Although contrary to law, labor is going into unions, and only a few weeks ago seven seamen's unions in Japan formed a general amalgamation, with membership of 20,000. The police have power and law to enable them to break up any WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 99 union, but they are not bringing it to bear except in extreme cases. Even the Imperial government sees what is here; it is about to establish a Labor Bureau under the Ministry of Ag- riculture and Industry. A law that will legalize unionism is under consideration. It would permit only the unioniza- tion of the employes of one establishment — in general unions of even a single trade. But without sanction of law, unions are growing up and there are strikes. Every day brings notices of some labor agitation. In an iron works employing 1200 men there was a 'go slow' in progress late in December, this being one way of showing respect for the letter of the law and at the same time getting results." Though the Japanese display little ill feeling toward their employers, they are beginning to show their teeth to the officers of the law. At the Ashio copper-mines, in the winter of 1919, more than seven thousand workers walked out and became so violent that, for the first time in the history of Japan, the local police called out the soldiery to help suppress disturbances. At the Hidashi mines other strikers tore the shoulder-straps from a po- liceman, an act that is, for Japan, almost as startling and significant as it would be in our country, let us say, for Mr. Gompers to slap General Pershing's face in public. These two instances are not at all unusual ; they may be paralleled all over Japan. All these labor troubles grow, in large measure, out of the country's unsound financial methods. It must amaze the American reader to learn that no less than 44 per cent, of the total income of the Japanese people is taken for taxes. This means much more than it would if we were speaking of the American public, for the Japanese live ever so much nearer to the margin of bare 100 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? subsistence than we do. Contrast the two lowest grades of workers who are important by reason of their large numbers. In Japan a farm hand earns $27 a year, with rice and sleeping quarters, or between $75 and $100 a year if he provides for himself. In the United States the poorer .farm hands earn between $600 and $800 a year, with food and lodgings; or, on a day's work basis, from $2 to $3 a day. These figures, of course, are greatly exceeded by those workers in more favored districts, such as the Great Valley of California, the trucking dis- tricts of Maryland and Virginia, and so on. I have per- sonally met many farm hands during the past years who were earning $4 and $5 a day during the planting and harvesting seasons. Observe, now, that a tax of 44 per cent., whether col- lected directly or indirectly, would leave the Japanese farm hand with the magnificent sum of $15.12 at the year's end, with which to launch upon an orgy of ex- travagance truly Oriental. The same burden, imposed upon our own horny-handed man with the hoe, leaves him with at least $336, and possibly $500, or more for buying clothes, contemplating the movies, and issuing souvenir postal cards. This comparison must not be taken too literally. It must be qualified by a number of technical matters too abstruse to mention here. The distribution of the tax burden, for instance, is by no means even over all classes of population, either in Japan or America ; so that the 44 per cent, average cannot be strictly applied to the lower working classes. Still the main feature of the parallel is essentially accurate. The burden of indirect taxation lies crushingly upon the common people of Japan. CHAPTER 10 RAW MATERIALS, RUSSIA, AND *'a PLACE IN THE sun'' THE ninth likeness between Japan and pre-war Ger- many is the lack of a domestic supply of those raw materials most used in modern manufacturing. Here, though, Japan is in a much worse plight than Germany ever was. Let us consider only the three most import- ant items, coal, iron, and cotton. Germany possessed considerable coal, but not enough to sustain her expand- ing manufacturing enterprises far into the future. Japan has to import virtually every ton of coal her fac- tories use. Germany had rich iron deposits, but again not in sufficient abundance for her growing world trade. Japan has no iron. She is seeking it in Korea and Man- churia, both of which have rich, but as yet slightly de- veloped, deposits; and she is looking toward the still richer fields in northern China. As for cotton, both countries are equally destitute. Long before the war, German manufacturers looked longingly to the Near East and the Mesopotamian Valley; if that could only be German territory, then the German textile industries might soon become self-sufficient. Japan has looked to Korea and also to Formosa, but with feeble hope. The Korean climate is unfavorable to cotton, and Formosa can grow much more profitable crops, such as sugar, to- 101 102 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? bacco, and, on the hills, the precious camphor-tree. China, on the other hand, entices the Japanese cotton- grower with many alluring potentialities. While Chinese cotton is inferior to the American crop, it is not seriously so for the bulk of the Oriental trade, and it has the im- mense advantages of being much closer to Japanese mills, hence cheaper and more speedily delivered. In petroleum, wool, timber, copper, zinc, nickel, and many other materials of the utmost importance to mod- ern industry Japan is similarly deficient. And each such deficiency figures properly in the framing of her na- tional policy. The tenth likeness between Japan and pre-war Ger- many is an outgrowth of the fifth likeness ; namely, both countries lying next to Russia and her colossal unde- veloped resources, and also of the nature of their other neighbors. Both countries adjoin, in short, two peculiar types of territory, the one being non-industrial and rich in raw materials, and the other being of a low industrial and political order and potentially a great market for manufactured goods. Thus each country finds in its environment beyond its political borders regions which can satisfy its three most urgent needs, the need of raw materials for its factories, the need of ready markets for the products of those factories, and the need of un- developed lands for its surplus population. For both Germany and Japan, Russia, including Si- beria, is the land of promise. Russia has room for count- less millions of Germans. She has room for countless millions of Japanese. Russia has coal, iron, copper, zinc, timber, cotton, wheat, and almost everything else for German mills and factories. Russia has all these good "A PLACE IN THE SUN" 103 things for Japanese mills and factories. South of Russia, on Germany 's side of the world, lie the Balkans and the Near East, a constellation of small, backward countries which before 1814 were thickly populated and moderately prosperous on a primitive agrarian level. To the people of these lands German salesmen could and did go, build- ing up an immense trade with them in numberless lines of manufactured goods none of which they themselves produced. At the same time German manufacturers be- gan opening factories and buying up forests and mines and railways and harbor concessions, all with the view of changing the regions into factory towns progressively. To-day we note the same spectacle south of Russia, on Japan's side of the world. There bulks China, vaster than twenty Balkans, but none the less a cluster of Bal- kan States in very nature and waiting for just such ex- ploitation as the Balkans were enjoying at Germany's hands down to Sarajevo. Here looms the greatest of all the eternal triangles of trade — the triangle of raw material, factory, and market. Russia the raw material, Japan the factory, and China the market! And to-day the enterprising young business men of Japan are thrust- ing dowTi into China with their wares, while the strenu- ous young pioneers of Japan are working steadily west- ward into Siberia, under the sure protection of Japa- nese soldiers, precisely as the German drummer worked down into the Balkans and Turkey, while his lusty brother off the sandy Prussian farm was heading for the black lands of Russia or the Siberian steppes. The eleventh likeness between the two countries ap- pears in their efforts to find ''a place in the sun" and in the systematic thwarting of these efforts by the great 104 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? military and naval powers of Europe. We pass no judg- ment here on the right or the wrong of Germany 's efforts to establish colonies which she might people with her own blood. Nor do we condemn or praise the parallel en- deavor of Japan. We merely report the plain historical fact of the attempt and the blocking of it. As has often been said, Germany came into the game of world politics too late. W^hen she began cast- ing about for colonies, all the good land had been taken by other powers, notably the British, French, Americans, and Russians. An early effort to turn southern Brazil into a German colonj^ by non-political assimilation came to naught. German settlers trickled into Russia and be- came an important element in many towns, but they built no colonies. All that the empire was able to get was the all but worthless Southwest Africa, where the Hereros cost them in warfare more than the whole territory will ever sell for; and also a somewhat better tract in East Africa, little of which could be inhabited by white men. As for the small Pacific islands the kaiser acquired, they were merely strategic possessions at best. Japan has fared a little better, but not enough to mar our comparison. In 1894 the island empire went to war with China and w^on easily. In the peace treaty the Japanese claimed an indemnity and the Liao- tung peninsula and littoral, among other things. Wliether this was just or unjust is not here under dis- cussion; we are concerned only to relate the historical fact again. Russia, France, and Germany protested vehemently, called these terms ''yellow imperialism," and succeeded in forcing Japan to renounce them. A little while after, Russia took Liaotung, saying nothing "A PLACE IN THE SUN" 105 about *' imperialism " as she did so. Across the water, in Shantung, Germany shortly seized Kiaochiao. And France was soon negotiating with China for exclusive privileges in her southern provinces, which she got. Most historians incline to the belief that it was these hypocritical deeds which forced Japan to meet force with force in world politics and become a mighty mili- tary power. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt whatever that Europe's dishonest intrusion upon that treaty hastened Japan's resolve to make herself mistress of her quarter of the earth, which meant first of all an- nexing Korea. This was accomplished, to all practical ends, though not technically, in 1900, and became com- plete and open at the close of the Russo-Japanese War, though it was not until 1910 that the Emperor of Korea formally recognized Japanese sovereignty. Korea, technically, is the equivalent of a fine large colony that Germany might have envied. But, as a mat- ter of fact, it has not turned out as well as Japan had hoped for. After ten years of complete domination fol- lowing a decade of partial control, Japan has managed to draw to the peninsula only three hundred thousand of her subjects. This is less than two per cent, of the popu- lation of Korea to-day. Despite heavy subsidies from the Government, the Japanese have not taken up farms there. Those who have gone stick to the towns, in pro- found and well grounded fear of the Koreans, who to this day have as much love for the Japanese as the Poles have for the Russians. So we can reckon Korea as a colony only in a very limited way. The recent encroachments of Japan upon China do not have for their purpose colonization. Shantung is 1Q6 MUST. WE FIGHT JAPAN? now the most densely- populated region in the world, and no place, for a Japanese to go except to sell goods, or be a clerk in the post-offices that Japan has thoughtfully set up there. As for the moves in Siberia, they are plainly being made" with the ulterior motive of acquiring some of that stupendous area for the human overflow. At the date of this writing the events there, as well as the at- titudes of European powers -and the United States, are so camouflaged by many propagandists and so frag- mentary that it is best not to pass judgment upon them here. The twelfth likeness is the equal determination of Germany in pre-war days and of Japan to-day to retain the allegiance of and political control over men and women of their ra-ces who have gone into foreign lands to live. In fairness it must be said that this attitude is not peculiar to these two countries. It is the general tend- ency throughout the world. Americans are especially liable to misunderstand it because our laws of citizenship run contrary to those of the rest of the world. We have a point of view on the whole matter of allegiance that can easily mislead us in judging the acts of other nations. For this reason the careful reader must survey the laws of citizenship and naturalization which Mr. E. T. Wil- liams has comprehensively summarized and interpreted in a later chapter. At this stage of our discussion, it will suffice to show how Japan always has and still does strive to hold to her flag and her culture every native and every child of a native who has gone beyond the boundaries of empire. You will see at once the com- "A PLACE IN THE SUN" 107 plete parallel to Germany's practice, which the "World War brought to light in our own land. The Civil Code of Japan, Vol. 3, article 66, states, **A child is a Japanese if his or her father is a Japanese at the time of his or her birth." Thus every boy and girl born in a Japanese workman's family in Hawaii or California is a Japanese citizen. And the boy is legally bound to render military service in the mikado's army between his seventeenth and fortieth years. There is only one way in which he can avoid this duty and that is to renounce formally his allegiance to Japan in a regular form provided by the Japanese Government, and then wait until the Japanese Government formally accepts this renunciation. Here is a remarkable state of affairs. Elsewhere it is generally held that a man may simply, by his own act, give up allegiance to his native land; his own declara- tion is enough. But Japan is a jealous god. If she chooses to accept his expatriation, she releases him. But if she chooses not to, he remains a Japanese citizen all his life, regardless of his own washes. Nor is this all. According to Mr. Charles E. Martin, of the University of California, who has made a special investigation of this matter : "If before the age of 17, a Japanese has not expatriated him- self . . . the act cannot be effected until he has satisfied the mihtary requirements. . . . Should a Japanese (in America) return to Japan, he would be held for military duty and his American citizenship (if he enjoyed such) would not be rec- ognized. . . . "Should an expatriated Japanese return to Japan and estab- 108 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? lish his residence there, repatriation would follow. Under the Japanese law, a residence of one day is sufficient to effect one's repatriation." Do you see what this means as to the status of the descendants of Japanese bom in the United States ? Our laws treat all children bom in our land as citizens. Thus we have in Hawaii and California to-day thousands of boys and girls bom of Japanese parents possessing all the rights and privileges of Americans. These children will not go to Japan in any numbers. They will remain here, grow up with the country, marry, have children of their own, and permanently establish their line here. If, however, their fathers did not render military service to Japan, or if, having rendered it, they applied for expatriation in vain, then all these hoys and girls horn 171 our land must remain Japanese citizens, siihject to military service under the mikado; and all their children and their children's children^ and thus to the end of time. You might say, of course, that all this is a mere legal technicality which in practice could not amount to much. The children of Japanese in California will grow up in an American environment and absorb our ideals and cus- toms as swiftly as any Italian or Russian Jewish young- sters do; so, if ever it once came to a pinch, we should find them as loyal as any son of the American Revolu- tion. It would be well if this might happen. But the Japanese Government sees to it that it does not. It goes much further even than the kaiser's crew did in main- taining contact with its exiled sons and in fanning the flame of culture and loyalty in their breasts. -^ Just as Germany did, Japan helps finance private schools in Hawaii and California where the Japanese "A PLACE IN THE SUN" 109 lan^age and culture are taught to the American-bom children of Nippon. And she exceeds Germany in that she requires all Japanese to join and pay dues to a native society, under the surveillance of Japanese con- suls, in every community where one hundred or more of their countrymen live. Through these organizations the closest check is kept upon every man, and incidentally a stream of information is drawn touching affairs in the United States. Officials of the Japanese Government have frequently made strenuous denial of this fact when it has been asserted in California newspapers; but there are many indisputable evidences, the best of which come from those Japanese who resent such surveillance. Sev- eral gentlemen whom I have consulted have interviewed such Japanese and have seen documentary proofs of it, and a recent case in the San Francisco police court re- vealed it. B. n. Yamagata, editor of a Japanese maga- zine in that city, there brought complaint against S. Malsuruma and M. Koike for having assaulted him in his home and threatened his life. Yamagata is also an officer in the Japanese Association of San Francisco, but apparently not friendly to the Japanese Government, for he recently attacked the Japanese consul-general, T. Ota, in his magazine and declared that ' ' we Japanese in this city do not propose to be ordered around by the rule of Tokio. We believe that the methods of the Consul Gen- eral are creating ill feeling in this country against the Japanese." Because of his opposition to surveillance, complainant alleged that he had been attacked and threatened. This out-Prussias Prussia. Germany, as we now know, did much in the way of assisting in the organiza- 110 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tion of clubs and societies and newspapers; but never, even in her boldest moment, did she hope to compel every German-bom man in our land to join an organiza- tion, support it with dues, and render himself continu- ously liable to cross-examination and inspection by a German official. CHAPTER 11 CLASS ETHICS AND THE SdENTIPIC BUREAUCRACY THE thirteenth likeness has apparently been noticed by nobody thus far, and yet it is clear and unques- tionably significant. In both Germany and Japan, down to their outburst of industrialism a few decades ago, there existed a century-old cultural system in which, true to the philosophy of Plato, though not consciously following him, scholars and riders were held in highest esteem and counted as the upper castes, while traders and shopkeep- ers were looked down upon and relegated to the lowest castes. In both Germany and Japan, under that older culture, it was thoroughly believed that the man who loved truth and sought, by teaching or by service in the state, to guide others in morality and political affairs was of a much higher type than the man who peddled fish or manufactured suspenders, even though the fish was fresh and the suspenders thoroughly suspensory. It was believed wise to rate people according to their in- telligence and their ethics rather than according to the skill they displayed in making money. Waive here the question as to whether that concep- tion of human worth is higher or lower than the economic conception of values which has been worked out chiefly by the Jews and the Anglo-Saxons. Waive also the fur- ther and still more difficult question as to whether the 111 112 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? German and Japanese grading of virtues was not inti- mately bound up with the state religions, or possibly with religiosity in general, which has become all but extinct in both Europe and America. Look only to the inevitable effect such a view produces upon the per- sonnel and the practices of the commercial classes. In the foreign trade field to-day we find the same wide- spread dishonesty among Japanese that was notorious twenty-five years ago among the Germans. The Japa- nese have shown little respect for patent rights and still less for the fulfilment of contracts and the maintenance of trade standards, even as the Germans did when first they entered upon modern industrialism and world trade. Such a sweeping indictment deserves a whole book of detail, which unfortunately cannot be written here and now\ The charge amazes those Americans who have met emd come to like Japanese students, scholars, and other upper-class types. You will hear such Americans say that the Japanese are the most honorable people in all the world. What they do not understand is that moral practices are never and nowhere a matter of a race or of a nation, but always of social or economic classes; and even within such classes they vary widely according to age, education, and personal rank. To talk of the morals of Japan is to talk unadulterated nonsense; one might as well talk of the morals of mankind. There simply isn't any such thing. There is, however, a set of cus- toms followed more or less generally by the ordinary Japanese business man and manufacturer, and it is of this we here speak. And hundreds of highly competent obser\^ers, British, American, and German, have testified as to the nature of such customs. THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 113 It is, for instance, a well-known fact that for years the Japanese strained every nerve to steal the patents of many of the most successful American inventions. Twenty years ago the present writer was the unwitting aid to three enterprising Japanese gentlemen in ex- plaining a printing machine and its processes, which these gentlemen managed within a few years to imitate passably. Even earlier than that, one of our leading sewing-machine manufacturers found himself obliged to ship all his products destined for Japan with one vital part missing in the main consignment. His reason for this was that he had found the Japanese were carrying off his machines to Tokio and trying to duplicate them in the hope of stealing his patent and his trade. Needless to say, their duplicates did not work, much to their be- wilderment. It is still a common practice for the Japa- nese customs officials to open a consignment, remove a sample therefrom, and send the latter to Tokio for ''in- spection and appraisal." To all of this the shipper can- not well object, for the law so provides. But when he has waited a week or two for the sample to be returned and sees his chances of prompt delivery to his buyer go glimmering, and he tells the custom officials that they can keep the sample if they like and charge him whatever they see fit, so long as he gets his goods moving, he is told gravely that the "Japanese Government holds itself in honor bound to forward imported goods intact pre- cisely in the condition in which it has received them." This sounds very noble, but what it means in reality is that the shipment is delayed until some Japanese agent discovers the buyer and offers to sell him similar goods at a lower price, which becomes doubly attractive to the 114 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? buyer after he has waited in vain for the promised ship- ment from abroad. A high American official, stationed for fifteen years in Japan and there engaged in government work which brought him constantly into dealings with all sorts of Japanese manufacturers, contractors, and tradesmen, told me that the dishonesty of the bulk of these people surpasses belief. Only the minutest supervision of their every move protects one against gross fraud. He made the further statement that the Japanese business crook differed from the American and European crook in one significant manner. The American or European would usually use all cunning in so phrasing a contract as to leave a number of convenient loopholes through which he might crawl out with dishonest profits. Could he not make such loopholes, he would enter into the agreement and carry it out as specified in the bond, to his own great credit. The Japanese crook, on the other hand, believes in direct action. He will sign any sort of con- tract in order to get business, but if he finds that he can make more money by breaking the contract than by fol- lowing it, he breaks it as blithely as he would break a cracker. Califomians have had their taste of such ethics. In the past season these methods have been deftly employed in the rice country around Willows and Marysville, where many expert rice paddy farmers from Nippon have been leasing large acreage and, down to this season, getting rich. Rice dropped to 31/0 cents a pound at the beginning of the last harvest, which was a fatal level when we learn that the cost of growing it was about 5 cents a pound in this particular district. Now, it is THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 115 plain enough that any farmer confronted with such a situation is amply justified in refusing to increase his losses by spending time and money in harvesting his crop and hauling it to market, where some speculator stands ready to grab it for nothing and hold it till the market rises. Our cotton farmers all through the South have been following this course, and so too have others. But the Japanese went further. They left their rice standing and moved themselves at top speed. With goods and chattels they decamped over night, whither no man knoweth. This would not have perturbed the good people of Willows and Marysville but for the fact that the departed had forgotten to pay up some thousands of dollars of loans which local bank- ers had advanced to them for the growing of rice. One of the banks that carried many such loans has recently failed, as a consequence. White Californians are now wondering whether all Japanese farmers, under the in- fluence of the American environment, are forsaking their old ways and imitating the low trader class. This crudity betrays a very primitive development of trade ethics that we might expect in a country where, as in the old Germany, the tradesman belonged to the low- est caste and was looked down upon by scholars and statesmen and the nobility. This unpleasant peculiarity was a mark of a class, not of the people as a whole. And it was almost certainly the result of the same old laws of natural selection and adaptation which we see every- where in nature, from the meanest worm up to the high- est social order. In Germany and Japan, under the old culture, men of high moral and intellectual ideals and attainments shunned a commercial career with as much 116 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? loathing as every bright American boy raised under an economic culture avoids the ministry. The young men who were not stirred by religion and morals and love of learning stuck to trade; and, by being looked down upon by the upper castes, they easily fell into the habit of accepting upper-caste judgments themselves. The better people expected traders to be lowdowTi scamps. They treated them as such. And the traders adapted themselves to this attitude by being scamps. In Japan even to-day we still find the ancient Oriental custom of charging several times as much for an article as it is worth, and expecting the customer to ''jew one down.'* The quality and origin of goods are grossly misrepre- sented. If a trader enters into an agreement to deliver goods, and later finds that he has figured too closely or that the market has changed so that he could sell else- where to greater advantage, he is quite likely to repudiate the whole transaction flatly. In justice to the older Jap- anese export firms, it must be said here that such evil practices are followed mostly by Japanese traders who have recently gone into foreign trade, and are therefore ignorant of the commercial ethics of the Western world and of the extent to which world traders have been edu- cated up to the modern Anglo-Saxon level of trade mor- ality. Japanese dealers who have had years of such ex- perience are too sensible to try the old Japanese methods anywhere in the British Empire or in the United States. Let us now observe the way this identity of social ratings works at the top of the caste system. In Ger- many the best minds were drawn into scientific research, teaching, and government service ?s a consequence of the sincere belief that love of truth, love of righteousness, THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 117 and love of the state were higher and finer than love of personal success and love of money. And with what outcome ? This brings us to the next parallel between Germany and Japan, which is one to which few Americans have paid due attention. The fourteenth likeness is in the astonishing concen- tration of scientists and all other technical experts in the service of the state. Pre-war Germany was the first case of this in all history, and her achievement was the logi- cal outcome of two forces. The old social system, with its praise of learning and statecraft, created the desire of a career of learning and politics in the. breasts of able men, while the gratifying of this desire was made both possible and easy on a large scale by the' new need of industrializing Germany and transforming her into a world power. While the sentiments of the old order still pulsed strongly, the builders of the new and harsher order utilized them to attract the intellectual classes into state service. Thus Germany became, in structure and in methods, a titanic corporation. The best brains of the land were selected and given posts of high responsi- bility. The great executives attached to themselves im- mense staffs of specialists and used their wisdom to the utmost. And the whole world to-day knows the outcome only too well. In 1914 German}^ was, past all dispute, the most powerful social organization ever fashioned in the flesh, and but for. the Germans' inability to under- stand- the workings of other men's minds, they would now be well on their way to rule the world. Now, in every detail, Japan to-day duplicates the best of that old German structure or else surpasses it. lis MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? We have shown that the entire educational system there is governmental. So all the experts in the university lab- oratories are government employees. All the railways, telephones, telegraphs, the tobacco business, the salt monopoly, the camphor industry of Formosa, and a large majority of the manufacturing and banking concerns are likewise either owned outright or decisively con- trolled by the Government. Hence all the thousands of experts in these many lines are civil servants. All this colossal organization centers around the mikado, from whom all authority derives. It is still managed by the old clans and their Elder Statesmen, whose model of ad- ministration is not the British Parliament nor the Amer- ican Congress, but the United States Steel Corporation and the Standard Oil Company. All observers, be they friendly or hostile to Japan, take off their hats to the sheer efficiency of this super-Prussian machine. Its ac- complishments in Korea alone are, from the point of view of big business, magnificent. Some of these, as shown in the Annual Report on Re- forms and Progress (1917-1918) issued by the Govern- ment-General of Korea, deserve a brief recital. In December, 1918, there were 336,872 Japanese in Korea, of whom 66,943 were in Seoul. Under their guid- ance the country and its 18,000,000 people has made remarkable strides. The forest resources had become depleted, but the Japanese have set out 473,195,976 trees there and are still continuing in the work. The output of the Korean coal mines has almost trebled since 1910. Korean foreign trade increased from 59,000,000 yen in 1910 to 131,000,000 yen in 1917. The telegraph lines have doubled in length, and the 1910 telephone lines of THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 119 320 miles have grown to more than 3,000 miles. Railway mileage in Korea has doubled under Japanese control. Banks have improved, and savings have been encouraged ; the latest reports show an increase of 177,687 depositors in a single year. Agriculture is the occupation of 80 per cent, o-f the Koreans, and therefore particular attention has been given to its improvement. Model farms, experi- mental stations, and training stations have been set up in many centers and more than a million yen is expended in this way annually. Improvement of cities has pro- gressed steadily, and Seoul is now one of the best paved cities of the Orient. The cotton acreage increased from 1,123 cho in 1910 to 48,000 cho in 1917, and the Japanese are teaching the Korean farm-ers other practically new lines such as fruit trees, sugar beets, hemp, tobacco, silk worms, sheep breeding and the like. Improvements in health conditions effected by hygienic inspection, govern- ment hospitals and new waterworks everywhere have been remarkable. A like picture could be drafwn of Japan's labors in her own islands and in Formosa. And all would go to show that a highly centralized government, which takes to itself all powers and all the highly trained minds in sight and utilizes the best information and intelligence it can get, can plan, organize, and accomplish things on a scale and with a success which no democracy, operating true to form, can hope to match. The democracies fight- ing Germany, it will be recalled, managed to win only by giving up every vestige of democracy during the war. It is to be borne in mind, while we are on our main problem, that Japan, like pre-war Germany, is planning her national policies many, many years ahead 120 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? with a skill and a detail unknown to the gentlemen who make speeches in Washington. Her rulers do not come and go with the leap years, as ours do. They own the country, furthermore, and hence are intensely interested in everything that occurs in it, whereas our Presidents and congressmen mostly possess little more than their official salaries, a few depreciated Liberty bonds, and pos- sibly a quarter-section of farm-land. Not even in the United States Senate do we find that intimate associa- tion of personal business interests and national arms that is normal in Japan. Just as Germany, immediately after defeating France in 1870, set out with full deliberation and the highest intelligence to become a world power and planned for the next war, which turned out to be half a century off, so too Japan to-day. Every move of her officials since she vanquished Russia in 1904 reveals the same far- sighted program of becoming for Asia what the United States is for the Americas, the overshadowing force ; and to-day, while our alleged statesmen are, because of our clumsy democratic forms of management, thinking ahead only as far as the next election — and thinking of a few scattered, disjointed pet reforms or pet bugbears — the Japanese aristocracy of wealth and its brother aristocracy of brains are pulling together in excellent team work, their eyes fixed on the year 1960 and afterward. What this means in our relations to Japan must be evident. It means for the future what it has meant for the past, that our Government will be unable to cope with the Japanese either by wit or by force. And we shall go on doing what President Wilson has been doing, not by choice, but THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 121 by necessity, graciously ''allowing" the Japanese to work their will in Asia. Of this more later. It can be grasped only in conjunction with the next point of re- semblance between Japan and Germany. CEAPTER 12 japan's military impregnability THE fifteenth likeness between these two feudalisms will startle all readers. It is a parallel which a few people have seen, but which none has bruited abroad. A more unpalatable fact could hardly be dished up to the average American, imbued as he is with the sweet thought that his country is the richest, the strongest, and the smartest on earth. But the sooner he accepts it and acts npon it, the faster will the chances of a ghastly and profitless collision between Japan and the United States dwindle to zero. The likeness is this: Japan to-day is impregnable against enemies from without, just as Germany was, and for similar reasons, geographical and economic. In this respect hoth coun- tries are like the United States and Russia. The reader must be warned against an easy misappre- hension here. It is well known that insular Japan is wofully lacking in natural resources, notably minerals and cotton, which are indispensable in modem warfare. And the statement has been made even by officers of the United States Navy that a brief blockade maintained between the islands of Nippon and the Asiatic mainland would precipitate panic and collapse throughout Japan. 122 JAPAN'S MILITARY IMPREGNABILITY 123 Doubtless there was some truth in such a theory a few years ago, but events have moved so swiftly of late that it is no longer tenable. At this very moment Japan is a continental power greater than either Germany or France. And, so far as a purely defensive war is con- cerned, she is to-day much more powerful than any coun- try on earth, bar only the United States. Even Great Britain is, when on the defense, notably more vulnerable than Japan, because of her lack of adjoining continental territory and her perilous proximity to a potentially hos- tile or at least neutral mainland. Let us inspect this fact more closely. Korea is now as much a part and parcel of Japan as Texas is a part of our own nation. Its 82,000 square miles make it about the same size as Great Britain. Its immense coal reserves, still largely undeveloped and not of the highest quality, could be pressed into service in the event of war quite as expeditiously as were the various resources of Europe after 1914. So, too, with the latent abundance of iron and the modest supplies of copper. So too with the imperfectly exploited agricultural re- sources, which have been estimated to be capable of feed- ing about seven million more mouths than they now do. Furthermore, it would be easy for the insular Japanese to secure these precious supplies, inasmuch as Korea is completely blanketed against all attacks by sea by the myriad islands of Japan and the Korean coast, and against all attacks from the north by the immense mountain ranges and inhospitable plains of Manchuriar, which is wholly under Japan. As for Manchuria and its resources, let us first note that it is almost five times as large as Korea, very rich 124 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? in minerals, as well as in coal, and capable of growing a considerable amount of wheat, barley, millet, and similar crops. With a population of only twelve millions, this vast province might be forced to yield immense supplies for a defensive war. If it became necessary, Japan could throw a million workers into the mines, forests, fields, and fisheries of Korea and Manchuria quite as easily as Germany and Great Britain did elsewhere after 1914. Here is a continental tract adjacent to Japan and in all nearly six times the size of Great Britain, sparsely populated and naturally rich, even though cursed in large part with a climate which the Japanese dislike and do not thrive in. It may aid the American reader in grasping the true inwardness of this situation if we translate it into Amer- ican geography. Japan proper is a little larger than California. Her continental possessions, leaving Shan- tung entirely out of the reckoning, of course are more than three times the size of California and are much more easily developed, particularly in agriculture. Now, break California up into thousands of islands, scatter these from two to four hundred miles off shore, and then give her absolute dominion over our whole line of Pa- cific coast States and Arizona. Think now merely of a picture of Japan's continental power in defensive war- fare. Later we shall ask you to consider a similar pic- ture from a slightly different angle. Before the World War there was some slight excuse for doubting Japan's impregnability, although anybody who had made a careful study of the Boer War and the four-year struggle of Germany against her rebellious Hereros could have known it. Both of these lamentable JAPAN'S MILITARY IMPREGNABILITY 125 fiascos revealed the futility of even the neatest naval and military powers waging war single-handed against even a weak enemy several thousand miles overseas. Look at the Boer War again. From first to last the Boers mustered fewer than seventy-five thousand fighting men. The British matched this total at the outset, and failed miserably to make even a dent. They then doubled, and fizzled again. Next they quadrupled, and foozled worse than ever. Not until staggered and thor- oughly frightened old England had hurled the 890,000th Tommy Atkins across the veldt at Oom Paul did the old gentleman shift his quid and decide that it might be more comfortable to go back to the farm. All of this merely proves the oldest of military adages, that an army fights on its stomach, or, as the Germans put it, "The soldier's bayonet reaches no farther than the cook's skillet." No army dares wander more than two meals' distance from its cooks, and rash is the cook who gets out of sight of his ultimate pantry. The comment of Germany's military experts at the time was absolutely correct. "If the Boers," they wrote, "had been sup- ported by even a fourth-rate navy, they could have fought the whole British Empire to a standstill. An army dependent for all its supplies upon a land-and- water rear line eight thousand miles long is beaten before the first shot is fired.*' The Germans tasted the gall of this truth only a few years later. A few thousand Hereros and Hottentots resisted the Teuton brand of imperialism in their jungles, and as a result more than five thousand German soldiers died and fifty-five million dollars was spent on a cam- paign which would have called for many millions more 126 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? had not the British kindly allowed the Cape Colony police to come to the aid of the kaiser's discouraged cohorts. Americans, who at that time were babes in arms when it came to understanding military affairs, missed the point. Roosevelt, Ma^'or McClellan of New York, Colonel Webb, and many other citizens full of sincere patriotism and ignorance, often used to tell us how Japan might surreptitiously land a few hundred thousand troops in California some evening and ''have us at her mercy." They used to relate with bated breath how Germany would, some day in the not distant future, hurl her fleet into New York Harbor, follow it up with a nav>' of trans- ports, land two million Boches, and make slaves of us all, incidentally smashing the Monroe Doctrine into a mere mass of vowels and consonants. And even after the World War had been under way three years or longer, these nightmares were beautifully woven into a horrid texture of fiction by Cleveland Moffett and printed with solemn warnings from the editor in a great national magazine. Yet to any man capable of coherent reasoning the first year of the World War completely proved the ab- surdity of long-distance warfare under modern condi- tions, and the wind-up of the conflict underlined that same proof with blood. Germany, the mightiest military engine in history, was unable to drive into enemy country farther than two hundred miles from her main bases of supply. And France, England, and Russia, as they gathered force against the invader, were, with all their stupendous man power and natural resources, unable to drive even half that distance into Germany up to the very moment of Germany's collapse, which was brought about by our JAPAN'S MILITARY IMPREGNABILITY 127 flinging into the almost balanced scales four million young men and the second greatest navy in the world, all fresh and game. And down in the Mediterranean we saw the magnificent British Navy, backed by the finest green troops ever assembled, struggle desperately around Gal- lipoli, month in, month out, against a relatively small and ridiculously under-equipped Turkish force that was reasonably close to its base of supplies. And we saw four hundred thousand of those handsome and dashing Anzacs die on those hot, bare slopes, while the dread- noughts slunk away baffled. Even if the boats had stuck it out and won, as they could have done in short order, according to later reports, the moral of the lesson would still have stood unaltered. Look closely at Japan, her power, and her position. It will amaze you, unless you happen to have thor- oughly mastered the geography and economics of Asia. In the strategic potency of her lands there is only one country elsewhere on earth at all comparable with her, and that is the United States, though of course the two lands differ enormously in their economic aspects. Old Japan is a vast archipelago that completely dominates the mainland of Asia for more than twenty-five hundred miles. To grasp this one fact, imagine, if you will, New- foundland and all the islands of our West Indies, from Cuba down to the tiniest of the Bahamas, scattered up and down the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to Panama. Put them from two to four hundred miles out at sea, sprinkle fifteen or twenty thousand reefs and rocks at inconvenient spots all about them, make most of their shores sheer cliffs, then put on them sixty million brisk, seafaring folk, all as good sailors as the British 128 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Insular Japan's strategic position as represented in Atlantic geography. and Scotch and all perfectly organized under a mili- taristic autocracy. Then you will get half the idea, but only half. In fact, not quite half. Korea is a peninsula very much like Florida both in size and strategic bearings. Like Florida, it thrusts out in a southerly direction from the mainland. Like Flor- ida, it almost whoUy dominates the most important seas on its continental coast. As Florida dominates the Gulf of Mexico both at Key West and along some five hundred miles of coast, so does Korea dominate the Yellow Sea, which is the chief body of water for the commerce of northern China. Now, to complete our analogy, please JAPAN'S MILITARY IMPREGNABILITY 129 consider that these islanders off the Atlantic coast also own and have militarized all of our present Southern States east of the Mississippi. Think of this immense continental tract as being the base of supplies for the islanders and well stocked with railroads, mines, forests, and developed harbors. Then you have a fair picture of modem Japan. Japan to-day combines the military power of old Ger- many, the naval efficiency of Great Britain and the mag- nificent isolation of the United States. This combination of advantages and powers has never appeared before. Not even the wildest anti-Japanese Jingoes have sensed all its possibilities. And yet it is not all. Over and above these three factors, there are two others that reside in the life habits of the Japanese people and are a tremendous asset. One of them is the peculiar morale of feudalism, to which we have already referred in another connection. The other is the low Japanese standard of living. As to the morale of feudalism, we need dwell but briefly on its utility in war-time. The blind allegiance of the German masses, even the Socialists, through the first two years of the World War demonstrated amply the hypnotic power of a small ruling class over ignorant millions who sincerely believed that God gave the kaiser his job and backed the German nation. In Japan this same power manifested itself, to the amazement of all Europe, when the mikado fought the immense armies of Russia to a standstill from Port Arthur to Mukden. CHAPTER 13 MILITARY ADVANTAGE OF LOW STANDARD OF LIVING AS to the military advantages of the low standard of living in Japan, too few Americans realize how heavily it would count in the favor of Japan in any war with an European or American army. It is easy to fall into the error of supposing that the better a man eats and the better care he takes of himself, physically and men- tally, the tougher and stronger he is bound to be as a soldier in the field. People who think this also reason conversely that the less a man has in the way of food and comforts, the nearer he must be to weakness and to a col- lapse of morale. This double fallacy has been amusingly exhibited in the reports which virtually every American observer and newspaper correspondent has sent home from Russia, telling about the "impending collapse" of the Bolshe\dk armies. These reports all run to one pattern. The observer goes to a camp or he sees troops marching through a town. He notes that the "wretches" are eating black bread soaked in hot water that is called "soup" because fish has been boiled in it. He watches them chew kasha, or bird-seed, and wash it down with tea as pale as star- light. He sees their feet wrapped in tattered burlap that is caked black with old blood, and he shudders as he be- holds their filthy shirts. So, thinking in terms of back 130 LOW STANDARD OF LIVING 131 home, he promptly writes to his editor that ' ' the Bolshe- vik forces are on the point of dissolution as a result of famine and misery. It is impossible for Lenine and Trotzsky to hold those suffering dupes in the ranks for another month." We have been hearing just such reports now for six years, and yet the Russian wretches seem to go on more serenely than ever. They do not seem to pay the slight- est attention to our prophets. And why? Well, the trouble is that our prophets do not understand either biology or psychology. They may be clever in dashing off ''human interest" stories and getting interviews with great men; but when it comes to understanding human nature or any nature, they are lost in impenetrable dark- ness. Apparently they have never even observed the striking differences of behavior between a mongrel dog and a well-nurtured collie of the best family. They have never been struck by the difference between a ragman's nag and a thoroughbred horse that has always had all the oats and grass and currying that were good for it. And, if they have made such observations, they have not seen that the same law that works in horses and dogs also works in men. It is the general law of the relation be- tween adaptation, habit, and sensitivity. Later in this volume we shall find occasion to scrutinize this law in some detail. At present we may state it roughly, in the form that applies to the Japanese military situation. The more easily am/ creature's life habits are hroken down, the more easily is its whole set of adjustments thrown out of gear. In general, it is the higher habit adjustments that break down first, and the collapse, if any, proceeds from 132 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? the highest and most recently acquired habits down to the lowest and earliest acquired. The highest of all adjustments are quickly disturbed by any continued interference with the lowest adjust- ments. Thus, all those thoughts and ideals which are bound up with what we call ^' morals'^ and '^ loyalty" and '^patriotism" are among the first to be affected m- juriously by upsetting food habits, sleep habits, and the These statements are, be it remembered, only rough approximations. They need considerable qualification before being applied generally. But they are accurate enough to illustrate the great advantage Japan would have in any war with the United States. What the human system can do, if trained to endure hardship and under-nourishment, few Americans realize. Let them consider an old custom among the peasants of the province of Pskov, in Russia, where we find a kind of hibernating that almost rivals the well-known achieve- ments of the bear. This custom is known as lotska, or ''winter sleep." When cold weather comes, the peasant family of the poorer sort gathers around the stove, lies down, and goes to sleep. Once a day everybody wakes and eats a hunk of bread, which has been prepared in quantity for the long winter siege. The bread is washed down with a little water, then the hibemator goes back to sleep. With but little variation this semi-starving is kept up for the six bitter, dark months, and when spring breaks, these gaunt but healthy muzhiks go out of doors, stretch them- selves, and resume work and the square meal. LOW STANDARD OF LIVING 133 While this custom is not followed by the Asiatics gen- erally, it is none the less typical of the endurance which is all but universal among the Mongols and Tatars. Many observers have told us in copious detail about the fierce ruggedness of the Chinese, whose resistance to many forms of infection surpasses belief. And the meager, monotonous diet of fish, millet and rice on which most Asiatics thrive from birth to death is familiar to all of us. There can be no doubt that this represents no pe- culiar racial power, but rather the result of natural se- lection and that same high adaptability to circumstances which most men who survive the hardships of childhood possess. The food habits and the sleep habits of the Japanese are both very much more primitive than our own. The average American eats about 1900 pounds, dry weight, of food in a year ; and this in very great variety. The ordinary Japanese eats 900 pounds, and it is almost ex- clusively rice and fish. Hence, to prevent any serious disturbance arising from the reduction of the volume of food to which each human stomach is rather delicately adjusted, our War Department would have to deliver more than twice as much food as the Japanese would, man for man. Hence also the chances of our own men weakening and collapsing as a result of going hungry would be much greater than in the case of the Japanese. For going hungry and under-nourished is a hahit just as definitely as playing tenyiis is. It is a very intricate h\ody adjustment. It is established in millions of Asiatics and by the proeess of eliminating those who cannot ad- just, the surviving population of Asia has a degree of 134 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? endurance far beyond that of the high-standard Amer- ican. So, too, with sleep habits. The ordinary Japanese farmer, his wife, and his children work at a pace that no American can match, and their sleep habits are corre- spondingly harsher and lower. The whole family arises before the sun is up, toils all day, goes home, and there toils well into the night. Robertson Scott, an able Eng- lish journalist who has been in Japan studying the farm life there for the past few years, gives a vivid picture of the peasant 's day and night in a recent issue of ' ' Asia. ' ' Fourteen or even sixteen hours a day the relentless drive in the rice-fields keeps up, and at nightfall "The Japanese farmer does not escape his task-master even when he returns home. His house is his tool-shed and often his store. At his door or close to it, rice is husked by being drawn through iron teeth, and is polished by being pounded in wooden mortars with wooden mallets, sometimes worked by foot-power and a weight. Here, also, the farmer and his fam- ily may winnow their barley primitively by easting it into the air. Round about, the giant radish and other vegetables are hung to dry. Indoors there may be the drjdng of the tea to look after, silk worms to care for, the silk of late or inferior cocoons to spin, or pickling of vegetables to attend to." They go to sleep on the floor, with a block of wood or a porcelain cube for a pillow. There is no heating system of any kind in winter, but plenty of fleas and smells in summer. The brief and over-polite account Scott gives of sleeping conditions shows the gulf between the East and West. "Next to fleas, the chief trouble in hot weather is the way the pohce insist that houses be closely shut up at night to LOW STANDARD OF LIVING 135 avoid burglary. Since the sanitary arrangements are inside the house and are made in the interests of agriculture ex- clusively, the situation may be a bit trying. But an elementary acquaintance with agricultural bacteriology makes it plain that an unpleasant smell is not lethal." Now, it requires no lengthy argument to make evident that men v^ho have been thoroughly accustomed to sleep- ing on the floor in a cold room in a country vi^here the winters are raw and even bitter and where the summers are hot, smelly, and flea-bitten will be much less upset in health and in comfort and in morale than men who belong to a labor-union that forbids them to work more than eight hours a day ; who spend their evenings at the movies or, in the country, listening to the talking-ma- chine or to corner-grocery politics; who retire in winter in a room heated with a furnace and in summer screened against all insects; who sleep on a soft mattress under heavy woolen blankets and light cotton ones in season; and who shave and wash at a wash-stand equipped with running water, hot and cold. Here we have one of the main causes of the astonishing fact that the low Russian muzhiks, who have been abused more than any other of the European people since 1914, have suffered less in either health or morale. This same fact makes it certain that the Japanese peasant would outlast the average American in a prolonged contest of arms to the same degree that the Russians have outlasted the other Europeans. Here we come upon the great paradox of civilization. The very virtues and achievements of a high culture stand in the way of defending it in warfare against a low culture in so far as the war of defense becomes a war 136 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? of endurance. We cannot discuss here the many bear- ings of this strange complication, but some of them will speedily become apparent as we inquire into the probable development of war between Japan and the United States. CHAPTER XIV WHAT WOULD WAR BETWEEN JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES INVOLVE? We have just glanced at Japan's strategic and ma- terial and human assets, and have some idea of what they would mean to her in the event of war. And now for another picture, and this time one which millions of Americans will have no difficulty whatever in constructing out of recent vivid experiences. The main base of supplies for the United States — that is, the actual zone of munitions production — is the north- eastern quarter of our country, say north and east of Topeka, Kansas. It is from this region that probably three-quarters of all the freight for an overseas army would be shipped. Now, let us make a simple suppo- sition. Let us go back in imagination to the spring of 1914. Let us suppose that an archduke had been mur- dered not in Sarajevo, but in Milwaukee, and not by a Bosnian, but by a Yankee who hated the Prussians. Let us further suppose that, for reasons of high strategy, the kaiser's expert advisers thought the time ripe to trick us into war and break down the Monroe Doctrine. To this end they retaliated instantly by seizing and put- ting to death every American then whiling in Germany and confiscated all their property for the delicate pur- 137 1S8 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? "An unbroken chain of islands (the Kuriles, Japan proper, the Loochoo Archipelago, Formosa and the Pes- cadores) extending from Kamchatka to the Tropics com- pletely dominates the maritime approaches to the north- em provinces of China, to Korea, and to Asiatic Russia. The naval station of Tsuhshima commands the passage between Klusin and Korea, and cuts the communications between Port Arthur and Vladivostok. The Pescadores, which contain some very good harbors, control the For- mosa channel and the routes to Shanghai from Europe. The harbors and naval stations of Japan herself are among the finest in the world; her important seaside cities are situated on bays and fjords whose entrances can be mined and fortified ; they are so well defended by nature and design that in time of war almost the whole of the Japanese Navy could be made available for offen- sive operations abroad without serious anxiety for the safety of her homeland!" — Admiral Fletcher. pose of leading us to attack them on the home grounds. Finally, suppose that we were fools enough to do so. What, then? What if we did attack Germany, while all the other powers held their peace and watched the war, neutral in thought as well as in act ? Is there any A. E. F. private or officer, or even a Y. M. C. A. canteenist who has the slightest doubt as to the outcome of such a war? Would anybody venture to deny that, if we were mad enough to persist in such an undertaking, we would be involved in ruin so com- plete that even Germany 's plight to-day would seem com- fortable in contrast ? In an offensive war, which is much harder than a defensive one, the Germans deadlocked MANCHURIA Pekin OTonego Shima J_oocnoo Islands nBotel Tabago "Batan Islnnds ?Lu: 139 140 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? four great powers in coalition against her for three years, and then, with her submarines, might have won, but for the greatest power of all coming in against her. Sup- pose she had stayed within her own bounds and awaited our coming! Suppose we had gone against her without an ally ! Let us draw a curtain over that vision. Now, all this is no idle fantasy. It has the most real, the most solemn significance. Japan is twice as far from America 's ultimate base of supplies as Germany is. Hence, on the most conserva- tive basis of estimating such matters, Japan would be four times as difficult to attack on her own ground as Germany would be. If it took 890,000 British soldiers to conquer 75,000 Boers who had no navy at all, it would take at least as many Americans to defeat every 75,000 Japanese pro- tected on their own ground by a modern navy and the most highly organized militarism in the world. As Japan would easily put an army of 5,000,000 in the field for a defensive war, the United States would have to send against her eventually an army at least 66 times as large as the British sent against the Boers. That would mean an American expeditionary force of a mere 58,740,000 men. In one sense, of course, such arithmetic is ludicrous. But it gains sober significance when considered in the light of the facts adduced by Japanese military authori- ties in their defense of the Empire's refusal to send troops to the French front during the World War. The simple evidence as to difficulties and costs of transpor- tation was quite enough to convince any fair critic that the Japanese were wholly in the right. WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 141 From Yokohama to Marseilles is over 9,000 marine miles, by way of Suez, while from New York to Bordeaux is 3,187. The Japanese showed that from three to four times as much tonnage would be required to move their troops to the Western front as would be needed for American troops ; and that the maintenance of a line of supplies for such overseas troops would cost from five to ten times as much as the United States would be obliged to spend. Their estimates are based on the very con- servative basis of allowing" six ship tons per man to transport and continuously support an army. Had every available ship of Japan, over and above those in- dispensable to feeding her own people, been pressed into such transport service, she could not have sent and kept more than 100,000 troops in France. Now please bear in mind two things that are beyond all dispute: first, that the gross haulage from our own bases to Japanese waters is nearly as long as from Japan to France ; for we cannot take San Francisco but rather some Middle Western or Gulf Coast point as the true point of origin for both soldiers and supplies; and sec- ondly, that the American soldier eats more than twice as much as the Japanese and requires from three to ten times as much of various other supplies, such as clothing, as is shown in some detail in the Appendix. From this it follows inexorably that we should have to allow at least eighteen tons per man for the handling of any body of troops between our center of population and the Far East. On paper, we possessed on October 1, 1920, the im- mense array of 3,404 vessels of more than 750 deadweight tons, totalling 16,918,212 tons. A stupendous fleet, you 142 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? may say with pride. But suppose every ship in it could be instantly put into transport service, to move and to feed an army anywhere west of Guam, be it the Philip- pines, China, Korea, or Japan. The supposition is ridic- ulous, I know, but let it pass for ar^ment 's sake. What sort of an army could we maintain at that range 1 Precisely 939,900 men ! Not one more ! Of course, in realit}^, not more than one-half of that fleet could be diverted to such a purpose during the first year of a Far Eastern war. Not only do we lack officers and seamen and Western terminal facilities for loading and unloading such a horde of vessels ; but we could not cut off our trade with the rest of the world so abruptly, as we depend on merchantmen for many basic supplies. At the end of a year of the most strenuous and costly reorganization, coupled with much more shipbuilding, we might have the equivalent of that fleet in the Far Eastern service. And during this year, we should find ourselves confronted, so far as Japan is concerned, with a powerful navy operating in its home waters, behind a tremendous mine barrage and backed up by an army of from 3,000,- 000 to 5,000,000 soldiers, all intrenched behind excellent land fortifications. Whoever is in doubt as to what this means is once more invited to put it all in the scene of a familiar debacle, Gallipoli. Great Britain sent her finest ships to force the Dardanelles. She lost 400,000 of the finest Anglo- Saxon troops in the vain attempt. She was able to con- centrate on one point. She had her whole sea way clear from Portsmouth to the scene of battle, with never a hos- tile battleship to dispute her nor anywhere a mine bar- rage. And she was confronted with a small Turkish WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 143 force that was fairly well officered and indifferently equipped with defensive artillery. Now, put behind the trenches of Gallipoli, not a Turk- ish force of a few divisions but the whole Japanese army. Equip the forts, not with a few medium guns, but with the total output of the Japanese factories. And, instead of leaving the sea way to the Dardanelles clear, turn loose one of the three best navies in the world and a large mine laying fleet of fishing boats. And finally send our troops against such a foe, not by the millions, but in driblets of a hundred thousand or so every few months. For bear in mind what every A. E. F. corporal now knows, namely, that before an army can be managed on a foreign shore, you have to build whole towns and railroads and ware- houses to care for them and their munitions. We should have to erect somewhere in the Far East establishments not unlike those stupendous triumphs of engineering effi- ciency which we put up at Brest and Bordeaux. There is only one place where we could perform this task without the gravest peril of a surprise capture, or at least an effective blockade; and that is in the neighbor- hood of Manila. There we have to-day the nucleus of a military and naval base. No doubt, most Americans think of Manila as a most convenient point for waging war against Japan. In this they betray the same ignorance of geography which^ until very recently, has been only too familiar to all edu- cators and is the sure mark of provincialism. They do not realize that, so far as location is concerned, Manila is about as useful as a base for war against Japan as Halifax is as a base of operations against Jacksonville, Florida. And in other respects Manila suffers by com- 144 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? parison with Halifax. It is more than 2,000 miles from Japan 's main harbors and towns, as well as from Japan 's bases in Korea. And between Manila and these vulner- able spots lies Formosa, which may be called, without serious exaggeration, the Gibraltar of the China Sea ; and beyond Formosa there strings along in a general north- erly direction the Luchu Islands, all Japanese, and scores of them ideal bases for patrols, submarines, mine layers, and wireless stations. The entire west coast of Formosa is unapproachable, a sheer stretch of cliffs above a wild sea that is the very heart of the typhoon area; and the east coast has only one important harbor, that admirably fortified and supported by a sizable garrison which could be increased tenfold in less time than the swiftest Ameri- can destroyer could travel from San Diego to Manila. While nothing definite is known as to the present magni- tude of the forces Japan maintains there, various observ- ers testify that the number must run into the tens of thousands, if one judges from the detachments and en- campments visible along the shore. For a considerable fraction of the year, naval opera- tions of a sustained character, such as a blockade, are quite impossible in the typhoon belt of the Western Pa- cific; and, as the only hope of suc'cess in a war against Japan would inevitably rest -upon blockade, it would appear that climate, as well as geography, must be a faithful ally of the Mikado. And it would hamper the Americans on land, as well as on sea ; for the wet season around Manila would shatter the morale of any large body of American troops in short order, as any old Reg- ular who has seen Philippine service knows only too well. As for the possibilities of epidemic, they are so great that WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 145 it is painful to discuss them. With all our remarkable resources, physical and mental, for maintaining public health, we should be strained beyond the breaking point by the task of caring for half a million or more young men in the steam-bath temperatures of the Philippines, where all the diseases of the Orient, though well checked, still lurk in many a nook. All this is a gloomy picture for any militarist to con- template. Let us turn from it to the prosier side of such a hypothetical war. How about the cost? How deep would taxpayers have to dig into their already depleted pockets, to foot the bills of such a mad enterprise? Ob- viously such a general question has no answer. Every- thing depends upon how long the citizens would tolerate a war. They probably would not endure it ten minutes, in their present mood. But, for argument's sake, we may conceive that, at some not infinitely distant date, they might be persuaded to let matters run along their bloody grooves for a year or two, just as the blind British did with the Boers in South Africa. What would one year of such a policy cost us? Considering the immense distances involved, we are safe in saying that the expenses per man would be at least three times as heavy as those incurred recently in France. Now, our Treasury Department announced last December that the net cost of the World War to our Government (excluding all foreign loan advances and other items not exclusively military or naval) totalled $24,010,000,000. While technically the period covered by this outla}^ extended from April 6, 1917, down to June 30, 1920, it may be truly taken to represent roughly two years of actual warfare and demobilization. Thus 146 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? we may set the cost of a year of war at something like twelve billions. The fact that, if we went to war again within a few years, a good deal of the equipment and buildings bought in the late war could be used over need not be considered ; for we assume, as everybody must, that we shall have no new war of first magnitude for a good many years to come. But this is not all. In a war which we waged alone, we should have to reckon entirely upon our own ships, both war vessels and merchantmen. We should have no British armada and "lime juicers" to convoy our trans- ports and fight for us while we were getting ready. In the briefest possible time we should have to deflect the greatest possible number of our freight boats to the war service. And this would result in a tremendous reduc- tion of our highly profitable foreign trade. It is im- possible to estimate how much of this commerce would slip away from us ; but it is worth nothing that our gross overseas business for the year ending June 30, 1920, reached the dizzy peak of $13,349,661,000 ; and of this argosy American bottoms carried $5,071,905,981, — or a shade better than $-44 out of every $100 handled in and out of our ports. It would be safe, I dare say, to assume that we should lose at least one-third of this whole for- eign trade as a result of the Government's withdrawing our merchantmen from commerce and requisitioning mu- nitions for war purposes. We should then have the exact reverse of the situation precipitated by the W^orld War, namely, the heaviest of bans upon outbound shipments and a premium upon certain imports needed for war; with the result that both our farmers and our manufac- turers would suffer severely. Counting in the deprecia- WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 147 tion on our ships during a year of war and other second- ary items, we would find ourselves out of pocket to the tune of fifteen billions or more at the end of the first twelvemonth of hostilities. The military history of the Boer War, the Herero re- bellion in German Southwest Africa, the Russo-Japanese War, our own campaign in the Philippines, the Gallipoli expedition, and the World War in general all prove un- mistakably one great fact; they prove that no war car- ried on at long range can get under way in much less, than a year and requires at the very least another year or two to reach some decision. The sheer volume of organization is staggering, and the jamming and lost mo- tion involved in every immense emergency enterprise managed by hundreds of men new to the job and raw in their outlook and policies can never be forestalled appreciably. Army and Navy officers with whom I have discussed the matter are convinced, from their recent experiences, that a Far Eastern war, once seriously undertaken, would have to run on for at least three years in order to get definite military results. That would mean a new war debt of something like forty or fifty billions for us to carry. Lieutenant-General Kojiro Sato of the Japanese army has recently written for the "Hochi," a Tokio news- paper, articles in which he seriously anticipates the power that the United States could bring to bear in a possible war against Japan. "I do not think that America can summon up the courage to disregard these obstacles and think of sending an expedition to a country so far removed from her as Japan. . . . "When America's program of naval extension is com- 148 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? pleted, she will have 40 old and new battleships, 37 cruisers, 258 torpedo-destroyers, more than 300 submarines, and 5000 seaplanes. America's army will be 300,000 strong and mean- while 650,000 young men of military age are in training every year. Looking at the American preparedness as indicated, one is apt to come to the conclusion that Japan is no match for America in point of military strength. . . . "Although the Japanese navy is inferior to the American, America w^ould find it an impossibility to land her troops in any part of the Japanese territory as long as there exists the Japanese Na\y. Even if America possessed the greatest na\y in the world she would not think of conquering Japan. As long as there remains the last man in this land ready to lay down his life for his country, the American Navy, however strong, would have little chance of possessing any part of Japan." Lieutenant-General Sato has omitted many steps in his wholly sound reasoning. Let us attempt to supply them. We shall find that this high military officer and expert has politely concealed a host of harsh facts. To-day the American battle fleet is more than twice as powerful as the Japanese. We have 369 vessels of all classes now in service and 223 under construction, making a total of 592. But the Japanese have four battle cruis- ers in commission and four more under way, while we have none at all ready for service, but are building six. As these are the most potent of all modem ty^es, they must be reckoned as partly outweighing the numerical advantage of our huge fleet of destroyers and submarines, which constitute more than one third of our nSLvy. There are, however, three facts of prime importance that nullify this physical superiority of our fleet. The first is our great distance from Japan and the strategic WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 149 weakness of our line of supply between San Francisco and Manila. The second is the division of our fleet into two parts, which are more than five thousand miles re- moved from each other, one in the Pacific and the other in the Atlantic. And the third is the appalling shortage of trained personnel on all our vessels, which is so grave that, according to naval authorities who were interviewed by the Chicago ''Tribune" recently, it would consume at least a year to make the fleet fit to fight even if it were reunited in a single body and fully officered and manned. This opinion has been subscribed to by several naval of- ficers whom I consulted at San Francisco and San Diego. Some of them asserted that, in its desperate efforts to keep the boats intact, the recruiting officers were now re- fraining from too close scrutiny of the age and the origin of would-be sailors, with the result that fourteen-year-old boys in considerable numbers may now be found aboard our battleships. One very intelligent quartermaster added that it seemed fairly easy to secure recruits for the Atlantic fleet, but very hard to hold them on the Pacific side, where desertions were frequent. And a lieutenant at San Diego said that the bo^^s lately re- cruited were so green and reckless that he was afraid to turn in whenever his vessel put to sea for manoeuvers. Our experiences in the Spanish- American War revealed the peril of a fleet divided between the Atlantic and Pa- cific. And the World War showed beyond dispute the enormous advantage accruing to the fleet that fights a defensive war in its home waters, backed up by shore batteries and hidden behind its o\^^l mines. We may, in the light of all this, assert that, even if our fleet were, on paper, four times as powerful as Japan's, it probably 150 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? would not vanquish the latter in Japanese waters, which could be converted into an impassable mine-field in less time than we could man and fit and unite our vessels and build up a safe supply-line. To grasp the difficulty of naval operations in the Far East look at a map of the Western Pacific as it was re- drawn by the Peace Conference. In part payment for her services to the Allies, Japan has been put in posses- sion of Germany's islands of Micronesia, north of the equator, namely the Carolines, the Marshall and the Marian groups. The Marshall Islands have harbors that easily accommodate the largest warships. And this brute fact of Nature neutralizes the clause in the provisions laid do^Ti by the League of Nations according to which Japan, as mandatory over these islands, is forbidden to fortify them or use them as a naval base. Whenever Japan wishes to use them, all she has to do is sail in and drop anchor. Now, these islands lie between the United States and the Philippines, not in a strict geographical sense, to be sure, but strategically. An American ship plying be- tween Manila and San Francisco would, in war time, be exposed to attack for an unbroken stretch of a full thou- sand miles. To conceive what this means, let any Ameri- can soldier or sailor who crossed the North Atlantic dur- ing the World War imagine that ocean to be nearly double its present width; then let there be strung along the last thousand miles of the stretch a hundred or more islands, south of the steamers' track; and finally let a hundred or more German battleships and submarines and supply boats be lurking in the harbors of those islands. WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 151 Nor is this all. Directly north of the Philippines lies Formosa, now a part of Japan. Here is a highly devel- oped naval base from which a battleship fleet can steam to Manila in considerably less than forty-eight hours. The best approach to Manila from the United States is around the north of Luzon, over the very waters of the Formosa naval base zone. It would be the simplest thing in the world for the Japanese to mine all the north- erly approaches of our archipelago weeks before our fleet of transports arrived. The British, French, and Italian navies combined were unable to hold in check the German submarines, when Germany was driven off the high seas. What could the American navy do in overcoming the Japanese subma- rines, when the whole of Japan itself is on the high seas and its outposts scattered so widely? 7s it to he won- dered at that all naval experts who have spoken on this^ matter agree that, from the military point of view alone, the United States could not prevent Japan from conquer- ing the Philippines? Here let me cite the highest possible authorities in defense of the position I have taken. On January 15, 1920, the Submarine Defense Association published a more or less technical report on the record of subma- rines during the world war. This society, I may say, is composed chiefly of Navy officers, shipbuilders, and other men professionally engaged in naval affairs. They are all convinced that it is folly to go on building battle- ships. Here are their reasons : "The war was won on land. At sea, the submarine had proved itself potentially supreme. In the last week of hostiU- 152 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ties the Germans, who had concentrated on tankers, sank nine. If Germany had had 1,000 U-boats in August, 1914, nothing could have saved Britain and the Allies. "As it was, she had only thirty-six U-boats at first and usu- ally only eight or nine were in use at any one time. On the average, each U-boat sunk cost the Allies $100,000,000 in loss and expenditure, a total for the war of $20,000,000,000. Civ- ilization cannot stand such casualty. In years to come sub- marines will have a wider range of activity. When small, they will be hydroplanes almost able to fly. When large, improved engines will enable them to remain submerged for indefinite periods. Whatever headway was made against submarines was largely because they had to rise to the surface. If this necessity be reduced, the submarines will become to that extent more formidable. In four and one-half years of intensive ef- fort, with at least 600 destroyers besides other naval units, and 6,000 patrol and searching vessels, only 205 submarines were sunk or captured. In the Irish Sea alone 2,500 vessels were on patrol, yet they could not guarantee safety when the armistice was signed. "Building big battleships is sheer waste of money. Ten years after the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac navies were constructing obsolete ships, and so will it be with dreadnoughts. No great army can be carried across the ocean against a fleet of submarines. Against attack, Australia and New Zealand are absolutely secure. Given enough submarines, the United States is now a distinct and impregnable military unit, and so is the Old World. If war breaks out again, it will be fought on land behind a ring fence. In my judgment, the United States and Britain should face the facts and save their money. The future is serious enough without the waste of resources on useless varieties of armaments." It v^ould be idle to add a word to this tremendous demonstration of the impregnability of any and all coun- WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 153 tries which are remote and have some submarine de- fenses. It is worth while, though, to state that the facts above adduced were largely responsible for the remark- able change of policy in Great Britain with regard to the building of battleships. All this need not terrify us in this Japanese crisis. For happily, the converse of this predicament is equally true. Japan could not wage a successful war with the United States on our own ground. To attack the Cali- fornia coast with the idea of landing and holding it would require fifty times as many men and fifty times as much material as Japan would need for taking all Eastern Si- beria, which is immeasurably more valuable to her than our whole Pacific coast. Shortly after the armistice, our own War Department authorized the publication of statements by our War Col- lege experts which all drove unmistakably toward this essential conclusion. They criticized the previous esti- mates of forces needed by Japan for effecting a landing in California and there carrying on offensive warfare. Those old estimates, which had been paraded for years by jingo journalists and impish imperialists, set the figure at something like half a million men. All the technical studies of the World War, according to our mil- itary specialists, showed that that figure is far below the mark. In view of our immense military and naval ex- pansion since 1917, all thought of invasion has become imbecile. Probably the five strongest foreign powers acting in perfect accord could not successfully assault us to-day, and nobody knows this better than the Japanese military leaders. CHAPTER 15 THE GREAT DEADLOCK THE greatest piece of luck that could befall the world would be to have the militaristic clique of Japan be- come so inflated over its power and its "honor" that it declared war against the United States, seized the Philip- pines and Hawaii, and made a demonstration against our Pacific coast, some time during the next few years. Such a move could have only one outcome. It would sound the death-knell of Prussianism in Asia. It would instantly shatter the British-Japanese Alli- ance; for Great Britain could not tolerate the Japanese in the Philippines, as that would mean the ruin of the British naval base at Hongkong and the complete blan- keting of China, whose entire coast would then be abso- lutely at the mercy of her one dangerous enemy. It would also mean a most ominous southward extension of Japanese power in the direction of Australia, the land most coveted of all by the Japanese. But, worst of all, the British Empire would be confronted with the painful necessity of choosing between her Asiatic ally and the one non-British nation which speaks the English language and is destined, by geography, by climate, and by natu- ral resources, to become the permanent center of the white man's civilization. No American and no English- man doubts that the people of Great Britain would hesi- 154 THE GREAT DEADLOCK 155 tate a moment in casting their lot unreservedly with the United States, cost what it might. For similar reasons Japanese aggression would start uprisings in China which would drive every merchant, trader, and hireling of Nippon out of the land. Or, fail- ing that, they would compel the Mikado to place a huge army in China, which would require many ships for transportation and maintenance of supplies. Japan would not be able to maintain for long a war in China and a naval war against the two mightiest fleets on earth. There is the further possibility, and one not remote, that the Russians might take a hand in the contest as a matter of self-interest ; and even a slight exertion on their part would count heavily against the Japanese. The hatred of Japanese imperialism in Russia is as fierce as it is in China, perhaps even fiercer, in view of the gross seizures, illegal occupations, and repeated brutalities of the Japanese troops in Siberia, which were so bad that even our State Department uttered a few coherent and verbally powerful peeps of protest against them, while the working-men's unions of Eastern Siberia have sent appeals to the world for help against the Huns of the East. Unfortunately, however, the strategists of Tokio know all this, and much more accurately than anybody else does. This is why acute observers, notably the Chinese, have been saying openly that the diplomatic pressure of the Japanese Foreign Office for a prompt adjustment of the California crisis can lead nowhere. It is, they de- clare, merely a move to *'save the face" of the Govern- ment, just as our own State Department 's protest against the Japanese occupation of Sakhalin was. Every gov- 156 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ernment is committed to certain policies which cannot be maintained in practice. Each finds it more comfortable to go on talking- as if talk could be backed up with deeds. It saves one the trouble of working out a new policy. It is this extraordinary military deadlock that explains a number of things which have mystified editors and stu- dents of Oriental affairs. It explains the pronounced forbearance of the Japanese Government in the face of the harsh discriminatory land law just approved by the California referendum. It explains the marked restraint that same Government has maintained in the presence of local boycotts against Japanese farmers and store- keepers here and there in California and the occasional expulsion of Japanese settlers from a few rural districts, usually under the leadership of the local American Le- gion. Up to the date of this present writing (January 10, 1921) the Japanese Government has exerted itself scrupulously to hold in check the anti-American demon- strations that have been breaking out in Tokio and else- where, and it has confined its own official efforts to filing polite protestations with our State Department and ask- ing that '' something be done about it." We are still in the stage of diplomatic amenities. This is not at all after the manner of that same Japan which made ruinous demands of China only a few years ago and less than six months ago defended its ''honor" valiantly at Nikolaievsk, of w^hich more later. But even more puzzling is the Japanese Government's determina- tion to keep secret the new arrangements which it must make with us over the California crisis. In this latest situation we find the clearest proof of the almost ludi- THE GREAT DEADLOCK 157 croiis predicament of both the Japanese and the Ameri- can militarists. We must inspect it closely. Since the November elections, Baron Shidehara, Japa- nese ambassador to the United States, has been conferring with our State Department over a revision of the old ''Gentlemen's Agreement" that was drawn up by Root and Takahira. What the new agreement will be nobody is to know, unless matters reach a fresh crisis. Among diplomatic circles in Washington it is pretty generally believed that our State Department will make public little or nothing about the terms of the readjustment. As the correspondent of the New York "Times" puts it: ^'The impression prevails here (in Washington) that the terms of the gentlemen's agreement will not be disclosed unless at some time in the future this Government believes they have been violated. How this secret understanding will accord with the principle laid down in the covenant of the League of Na- tions of removing the veil of secrecy from all concluded ar- rangements between governments is not explained, but the un- derstanding is that out of a delicate sense of consideration for the sensibilities of Japan there will be no publicity." Now all this piques the curiosity of a political realist. What, to be quite precise, is the ''delicate sense of con- sideration" which our own State Department possesses? Nobody noticed it when the State Department was deal- ing with Haiti recently. Nobody noticed it in the State Department's singular callousness toward China and its recent weakness in maintaining the traditional American policy in Siberia when the Japanese took over the north- ern half of Sakhalin. Nor has anybody noticed it in the various moves of the State Department in Mexico. 158 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? How does it happen that Japan should be the only nation in the world toward which our statesmen display lady- like manners? It cannot be accident. It must be de- sign. Particularly so when we take into consideration that the great original foe of secret diplomacy and cham- pion of ''open covenants openly arrived at" happens to be the President of the United States. Particularly so, we may add, when we also take into consideration the fact, challenged by nobody, that the Japanese Govern- ment is a stem political realist and has never been known to display delicate consideration toward Korea, Siberia^ China, or anybody else save the United States. Consider, as one of a hundred equally striking instances, the Niko- laievsk affair. This illustrates both the political realism of Japan and the ''delicate sense of consideration" which the Japanese Government displayed toward our own State Department. In the obscure Russian town of Nikolaievsk ill feeling developed between the inhabitants and a Japanese garri- son which had been stationed there under the pretext of keeping order and guarding against the eastward march of the wicked, wicked Bolsheviki. Some assert that the ill feeling was deliberately nursed by the Japanese ; oth- ers deny this. But the point is of trifling importance. Rowdyism, then street fighting, began. Soldiers came in and opened fire. When it was all over, some six hundred soldiers and civilians lay dead. Whereupon Japan poured in troops, and within two months had officially announced the taking over of the northern half of Sak- halin in order to uphold the honor and prestige of the empire whose brave soldiers had been ruthlessly slain by the Nikolaievskians. THE GREAT DEADLOCK 159 Commenting upon this happy outcome, General Sato, of the Japanese General Staff, said : "But I should like them (the civil officials) to remember how precious human blood is. The blood of only two men secured the lease of Kiaoehau and the blood of only thirty-seven men was enough to give Britain the ascendency in Shanghai. We do not mean to make the most of the blood of 600 people who came to a miserable end at Nikolaievsk, but something must be done that the spirits of those victims may go to rest." This mild glossing over of imperialistic plans by a reference of piety is unworthy of a general, who should be a complete realist. Straight to the point and with complete and admirable honesty drives a great Japanese daily paper, the ''Yorodzu." It declares: "Many of our countrymen are always fearful of what other powers may say. . . . Britain is now so fully occupied with Irish and Central Eastern problems that she can scarcely turn her attention elsewhere. America is engrossed in the Presi- dential election and the Mexican problem. . . . Britain, which already owns the greater part of the world, is enlarging her territory more and more, and America is endeavoring to place under her administration Mexico. ... It is at this juncture that the great massacre at Nicolaievsk has taken place. . . . Unless Japan takes action, it is to be feared that there is no hope for economic existence. No nation has ever failed to take important action in the face of a serious massacre." How clearly the editor saw the world situation ! And how events confirmed him! Our Department of State sent a hast.y note to the Japanese Government about the occupation of Sakhalin. This move, said we officially, was contrary to our wishes. We wished Japan would re- 160 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? spect these wishes and withdraw. To which Japan re- plied, with all the graciousness of diplomacy, that it had the highest regard for our wishes and hoped to go hand in hand with us down the corridors of time, but none the less it was going to stay in Sakhalin. To this we made no official reply. But on September 16 following, our State Department said that Japan had construed our silence as consent. Of course our own Republican politicians were on hand with their own interpretation of this rebuff. It was plain, they said, that Wilson was playing into the hands of the Japanese. Listen to the burning words of George W. Hinman, a well-known Chicago newspaper man, who was editor-in-chief of the Republican campaign of 1920. On September 13, at a luncheon given by the Republican National Committee in Chicago, he said : "The Wilson administration has built up Japan to be the greatest power in the Far East. "This in the face of the fact that Jefferson pointed the way to a very different national policy as to the Pacific Ocean, which was followed consistently down through a long line of his suc- cessors until the present day. . . . "We have seen the 'gentlemen's agreement' broken and the *open door' closed. "They went overseas and gave to Japan islands in the Pa- cific which brought that empire 2,000 miles closer to the Pan- ama Canal. "They have given away to Japan the peninsula of Shantung, with its 46,000,000 of Cliinese, the most disgraceful — the only disgraceful thing in our diplomatic history. The Wilson ad- ministration has yielded everything to Japan from the day of Secretary of State Bryan down." THE GREAT DEADLOCK 161 It is quite possible that Mr. Hinman believes half of what he here says. But the editor of the "Yorodzu" believes less of it. Nor can any other human being ex- cept a politician accept more than the closing statement, which is plausible, but hardly true, for by the terms of the treaty, what is given to Japan is the Bay of Kiaochau and the town of Tsing-tao on its shores with certain eco- nomic privileges in Shantung. True enough, the Wilson administration has yielded everything to Japan; but so would any other administration. So will the next Re- publican administration in so far as Asiatic issues are concerned. And for the best of all reasons. So surely as Japan cannot back up her wishes on this side of the Pacific with force, just so surely can the United States make no similar move on the other side of the Pacific. Japan knows the futility of landing troops in California. Our War and Navy Departments know the futility of landing troops in Sakhalin, to oust the eJapanese from Russia. Here we come upon the one sim- ple explanation of the lamentable breakdown of our once glorious "open-door" policy in China; our shrewd inac- tion with regard to Japan's irresistible invasion and ab- sorption of Korea, whose last death-throes we are now hearing; our failure to back up the Chinese Delegation at the peace conference in the face of outrageous demands pushed and achieved by the astute Elder Statesmen ; and our recent pointless letter-writing about our Asiatic pol- icy, so suavely ignored and later misinterpreted by Tokio. Here, too, we have an equally complete and rational ex- planation of Japan 's headlong conquests on the mainland of Asia, her ruthless demands upon China during the 162 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? "World War, and then her genteel paper protests to Wash- ington against the California land law, followed by her efforts to keep all negotiations and the new "Gentle- men's Agreement" secret. It must now be pretty plain what that "delicate sense of consideration" is which our State Department is dis- playing toward Japan in the revision of the "Gentle- men's Agreement." The Japanese Government has for the last ten years been working day and night to gain full recognition as a world power. Its military and naval expansion has been a part of this effort. So, too, has been its insistence, sometimes almost childish, upon its own "national honor," concerning which it has plainly taken its cue from the old German militarists and their imitators in other lands. This has made an im- pression upon the Japanese people much deeper than it could upon any Western European stock. They are po- litically immature, precisely as the German people were, only more so. They lean heavily upon their ruling classes, as we have seen. They believe the mikado to be God's agent, all-wise and all-powerful. Now, the army and navy still dominate in the Government, and their backers in the newspapers are powerful and noisy. Fur- thermore there is the tremendous need of an outlet for Japan's overcrowded millions, and the most natural thing in the world is to expect the Government to find that out- let. The Government has been trying to find it, in Korea, in Formosa, in China, in Siberia, in Mexico, in California, and even in South America and Australia. And it has been quite consistent for the Government to insist strictly upon the rights of its nationals to go wherever the citizens of other countries go. Only the narrowest slave of race THE GREAT DEADLOCK 163 prejudice can find fault with this attitude ; certainly any- other attitude would be humiliating and injurious to hira who took it. Nevertheless, it cannot be maintained either by argument or by force in the case of California. This State has a perfect right constitutionally to pass any land law it sees fit to, and our State Department cannot inter- fere with power. At most it can beseech California not to put thorns in the way of diplomats, and the Japanese diplomats are well aware of this fact. They know that they cannot politely threaten war. They know that such a threat would only provoke a polite smile from our own State Department. For, although our State Department is not a marvel of intelligence, it does know that Japan has scarcely a better chance of forcing our hand with a show of troops and battle-ships than Montenegro has, and for the reasons we have set forth above. The plain truth is that the Japanese Government is in a most painful dilemma. If it stands consistently upon its avowed rights and its resolve to win the full rights of emigration and citizenship which it has repeat- edly assured its own people it would do, it will inevitably expose its own incompetence to secure those rights ; and such an exposure would certainly precipitate a grave political crisis in Japan. If, on the other hand, it ac- cepts the fact that it cannot force the hand of California, still less of the United States, not even by military ag- gression, it will then consistently acquiesce in discrimi- natory legislation against its subjects on our Pacific coast ; and this will infuriate the ardent nationalists and the jingoes of Japan and perhaps lead to the overthrow of the present Government. Its one easy way out is to conceal this dilemma from its own people. And, as luck 164 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? will have it, our own State Department can readily be persuaded to do its share in this covenant of silence ; for it finds itself in precisely the same sort of a dilemma with regard to its Asiatic policy. Our old and beloved ' * open- door" policy in China and our hazy fervor for self-de- termination (except in those cases where we want to do somebody's determining for him, as in Mexico and Haiti) have both become, so far as Asia is concerned, idle rhet- oric, and for the best of all reasons, namely, our phy- sical inability to practice what we preach. Our foreign trade interests are eager to see the "open-door" policy maintained in China, and powerful financial interests are equally anxious to have a door now closed pried open — the door to Siberia. The two greatest opportunities of fortune left in the whole world to-day are found in the industrializing of China and the exploitation of the natural resources of Siberia. Japan has a little free capital and a prodigious labor supply with which to grasp these two opportunities. The United States has a deluge 9f dollars ready to pour into both countries the minute it can feel safe in doing so. No third nation on earth ranks with either Japan or our- selves in inclination or ability to grow rich in those vast regions. The hunger of our own foreign investors has been comically exhibited of late by three more or less related events: the reorganization of the China con- sortium, under the lead of Mr, Thomas W. Lamont, of J. P. Morgan & Co., and its offer of loans to the Chinese Government before the latter had expressed any desire of borrowing; the strange adventures of one W. D. Van- derlip, representing a group of prominent California capitalists, in getting from the soviet government a THE GREAT DEADLOCK 165 sixty-year lease on no fewer than 400,000 square miles of northeastern Siberia, and an unbelievable contract to deliver American manufactured goods to Lenine and Trotzky in exchange for minerals, furs, grain and tim- ber ; and the noble fury which is being vented upon this magnificent commercial adventurer by the American ex- ploiters who have cast their lot with the French and are hoping to gain these very same leases and contracts some fine day after the Bolsheviki have been overthrown and the old reactionaries backed by France have returned to power. However hotly these various American groups may hate one another, they are of one mind when it comes to pressing our State Department to clear the path for them in Asia. And the politest way of accomplishing this would be through an appeal to the '' open-door" policy and the inviolable sovereignty of Siberia. But our un- fortunate State Department knows only too poignantly that it is powerless to force Japan out of Siberia or Shan- tung. And the Japanese know it, too. Were the United States to make even a faint gesture of force in its nego- tiations over Japan 's Asiatic program, it would instantly consolidate the entire Japanese citizenry behind the mili- tarists. It would confirm all the wildest allegations of the Japanese jingoes about our crass imperialism and our resolve to ruin Japan and starve her people for the sake of American capitalists. It would set back liberal- ism in Japan a whole generation and would speed up the expansion of the empire on the continent. The effect in America would probably be quite as disconcerting, for it is hard to doubt that the temper of our own people is fiercely set against foreign quarrels of the magnitude that 166 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? leads to more Liberty loans, more Red Cross drives, more conscription, more excess profits taxes, more Government management, and more press censorship. A statesman who entered upon a program of intimidation, be it of Japan or any other nation, which promised to lead in the direction of another war and billions more of debt, would be promptly exterminated, politically if not other- wise. Our State Department knows this, and so, too, does the Japanese Government. CHAPTER 16 HOW LONG CAN THE DEADLOCK COI'TINUE'? NOBODY who has watched international events dur- ing the past years can believe that the deadlock which we have just been describing can continue indefi- nitely. There are too many potent forces at work to break it down, and, even if there were not, the shifting of populations, business, and world finance would certainly bring about the same result by mere chance sooner or later. Some of these forces, human and physical, are already conspicuous enough, and we must consider them at once if for no other purpose than to forestall a possible misunderstanding of our previous remarks. The reader may slip into the optimistic mood as he notes the present obstacles to war. He may suppose that no war between Japan and the United States can ever develop. We should like to share this pleasant conviction, but nothing that has been said above warrants such a fine faith. It must be emphasized that the situation in the winter of 1920-21 makes war within the next few years virtually impossible between the two countries, but that the conditions which are responsible for this deadlock are decidedly volatile. Some morning we may awake to find them gone into thin air. As I have already said, events are shifting like ripples in a river, and no man can pretend to foresee more than 167 168 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? a few general tendencies in the whole situation. Who, for instance, had the remotest anticipation, in November, 1920, that Baron Hayashi might be slightly mistaken when he declared perhaps within ten or twenty years China might win a place in the Council of the League of Nations and there rank with Japan? Outwardly there was every indication that the Japanese representative at Geneva was correct. And yet, in less than thirty days after his utterance, Wellington Koo had committed the Assembly to the policy of choosing one non-permanent member of the Council from a state outside of Europe and the Americas. Within a week after this skilful manoeuvre, this young Chinese statesman had won votes enough to put his country on the Council. The signifi- cance of this victory lies in the fact that a unanimous vote is required for all measures in Council. Thus it has become impossible, at least during the next year, for Japan to commit the League to any policy which China regards as injurious to her own interests. Now, nobody knows what reactions this may set up in Japan. But we may reasonably guess that both the bu- reaucrats and the militarists are thoroughly aroused over it. They see many of their well laid plans for the peace- ful penetration of China halted, if not wrecked. And, to make matters worse, in the very same week they see the United States protesting with full force against the League of Nations turning over to Japan the German cable station on the island of Yap in the Pacific. This protest has raised squarely the issue as to whether the League or powerful outsiders are going to shape world policy hereafter. And one may well believe that, if the League loses in this dispute, the Japanese bureaucrats THE DEADLOCK 169 and militarists may strive to follow the lead of Argentine and drop out of an enterprise which offers them scant hope of profit. Episodes like these two may conceivably tempt the ruling- classes in Japan to imitate the Prussian war party and take its chances on a ''now or never" policy. In 1914 the Prussian clique saw its power slipping from it. The rising power of the Socialists at home and the eco- nomic and social advance of France and England prom- ised to end, within a few more years, the old Prussian dominance of Continental affairs. Delay meant certain ruin. The desperate stroke offered at least a fighfing chance of victory. They took the chance. And, as every close student of diplomacy and military technique knows to-day, they lost merely because of a few serious miscal- culations in social psychology. If some powerful Japa- nese militarists can convince their associates that they can avoid such blunders, it might happen that a "now or never" war might break out in Eastern Asia on a mo- ment's notice. Immense forces of money and public sentiment thwart such a mad program and reduce it to little more than a bare possibility, so- far as the next few years are con- cerned. But the aspect changes profoundly when we look further into the future. There, so far as we can now observe, the situation is reversed. Immense forces of money and public sentiment may then encourage Japan in the ways of aggressive militarism. To cite again only the two chief factors, Japan's economic de- pendence upon the United States, especially as to cotton and iron, and the anti-militaristic sentiment in the United States. Each of these restraining influences may 170 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? fade away in five or ten years. To show that this is not a mere fear, look at a few facts. Every politician and business man in Japan is painfully alive to that country's commercial and military weakness in raw materials; and public opinion, so far as there is any, backs up every official move that looks forward to making Japan self-sufficient. This is the strongest sin- gle power behind the almost feverish development of the agricultural and mineral resources of Korea and Man- churia. This is the motive dominant in Japanese capi- talists' highly successful extension into the coal and iron districts of China. Developments already under way on the continent of Asia may be expected to emancipate Japan from both the British and the American coal and iron trade within a decade, especially if the Japanese are aided by immmise hlochs of American capital in developing the natural resources and the railroads of China. So too, somewhat later, with the development of cotton in Korea and China. The former country, while poorly suited to extensive cotton-growing, can be made to help out. The agricultural experts state that native cotton, while quite poor, is none the less better than all other grades of Oriental fiber and is in good demand for the manufacture of wadding (used largely in winter cloth- ing). The experiment station at Mokpo has for years been testing out an American upland cotton and finds that it thrives fairly well in the southern extremity of the peninsula, where both the acreage planted and the yield have been increasing rapidly, the market gross value having crossed $2,000,000. As for China, she sent in 1919 no less than $38,249,886 worth of cotton to Japan, THE DEADLOCK 171 all low grade fiber, to be sure, and yet significant as a promise of what may be accomplished once railways and money spread southward in that mighty empire. It is generally held that China's potential cotton yield can vie with India's; and if this is correct, we may be sure that the Japanese textile industry will neglect nothing that speeds the day when, if need be, Japan can leave both America and India out of the reckoning in placing her cotton orders. It is not to be expected, of course, that China will ever produce high quality cotton comparable to even our' own Southern middlings ; on the other hand, such a quality is not absolutely necessary for the Oriental trade, which is geared to very inferior textiles and padded clothes. Still less is high-grade cotton needed for war purposes. In the manufacture of explosives the poorest short staple is precisely as good as the finest long staple. So far, therefore, as military eventualities are concerned, China might deliver her worst enemy from foreign cotton monopolies by increasing her own yield fivefold or sixfold. And within a decade, given the cap- ital, she can go far toward that goal. We ought not to overlook the possibility that Siberia may before long contribute not a little to the economic independence of Japan from India and America by a revival of her limitless wool business. Wool is little used in the Orient for clothing, chiefly because of its relatively high cost. But in the event of war, cost is the last of all things to be taken into account. The one thing that counts is the existence of the desired goods and the ability to deliver them where they are wanted in time. Thus viewed, Siberian wool would certainly be drawn upon heavily by Japan at a pinch. And it 172 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? would greatly reduce the amount of cotton to be im- ported. Here is not the place for an exhaustive analysis of ways and means whereby Japan may free herself from our double control of her raw materials. We can say, how- ever, that such an analysis would warrant- the statement that as soon as Chinese railroads and mines and similar enterprises are even moderately financed, Japan will no longer have to deal with us in coal, iron and cotton. She may prefer to in times of peace, but if peace ends of a sudden, she can dispense with us. And that date may prove to be as early as 1930. It is hardly conceivable that the vast financial plans of the new China consortium will be long delayed, nor that their execution will fail to benefit Japan first of all in the manner mentioned. So, speaking not at all in prophecy, but simply by way of showing the clear direction of the strongest forces now at work in the Orient, we may conclude that in ten years or thereabouts the Japanese people will have partly broken the deadlock which now makes it impossible for them to wage war upon us. And how about the change in anti-war sentiment in America during this same crucial decade? Here all speculation is idle. Public opinion is a tricky and evas- ive creature in any democracy, so many and so subtle are the forces that drive it hither and yon. The safest con- jecture is a. very timid one ; we may suppose, at the very least, that the usual aftermath of a great war will tend to recur between now and 1930 ; namely, a slow f orget- fulness of the horrors of war and their unprofitableness and a steady tendency to gild the past, to draw in mem- ory a picture of those terribly glorious days, and to thrill THE DEADLOCK 173 when the Fourth of July orator vocalizes over Chateau- Thierry. Add to this the very real prospect of stupen- dous commercial and financial expansion of American in- terests in both China and the Philippines, as well as in Siberia, before 1930, and you will doubtless be inclined to admit that the perils of a severe clash between Japan and ourselves will grow rather than dwindle. Few of us as yet comprehend the unparalleled magnitude and power of the organized capital in our country which is seeking investment in China and Si- beria. Few of us even know that since the armistice Americans have loaned no less than $8,000,000,000 to Europe, much of it on terms which, according to the best opinion, make mere '^brokers' commissions" look petty. They wish no better luck than, to make an equal loan to China and Siberia during the next few decades, for they know that the probable profits in those money- poor, earth-rich empires must be. dazzling, even as our most conservative bankers, notably Mr. Thomas W. La- mont, have declared them*to be. Now, it stands to reason that you cannot send thousands of American engineers and salesmen and bankers into the same rich region into which thousands of Japanese' engineers and salesmen and bankers are pouring, all for the same good reason, with- out multiplying the sources of conflict, friction, and open hostility. Not all the fine speeches at bankers' dinners or missionary gatherings will ever change that elemental fact of human nature, and the sooner we frankly recog- nize it and, instead of trying to shoo it away with fine words, adjust our lives to it, the better' for all mankind. We Americans may easily become pugnacious again, for- get old war debts, and allow ourselves to be led into an- 174 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? other foreign war after we have become deeply involved in the fortunes of Asia. This outcome is not inevitable. It is merely possible. To forestall it, the world must resort to methods hitherto unused by diplomats. The era during which Japan will progressively eman- cipate herself from foreign- markets, at least on the im- port side, will certainly continue for the next thirty or forty years, precisely as it did in the CEise of Germany, though with a very different outcome. Before this emancipation has been completed, a few factors will enter into the situation and modify it profoundly. It will be the real crisis of overpopulation. If we assume no* radical change either in- government or in policy dur- ing this time, Japan will have, by 1930, at least 8,000,000 more mouths to feed than to-day; by 1940, probably 17,000,000 more than now; and by 1950, fully 25,000,000. Being already incapable, of supporting her population on domestic products and being dangerously dependent upon foreign lands to pay her workers' wages by buying their manufactured articles, Japan will then be in a desperate predicament. To make matters worse, this predicament may come to a head in the same decade when the first wide-spread ef- fects of the great new health and hygiene movement in China mature. Since the war both missionary societies and public health workers have redoubled their zeal in saving Chinese babies and cleaning up Chinese towns. The records of the Red Cross workers in the treaty ports show that substantial progress is there being made in this direction and the recent action of the Rockefeller Foun- dation in appropriating no less than $20,000,000 to the same end must work an almost revolutionary change dur- THE DEADLOCK 175 ing the next thirty years. By the end of that period we may confidently expect to see Shanghai, Hongkong, Canton, Peking and Hankow transformed as whole- somely as Havana and Colon and Guayaquil have been under American auspices. All of which is, of itself, very good and much to be commended; but, when considered in conjunction wdth the growth of population in Japan and the industrializing of China, it takes on a very dif- ferent color. With China's population then beginning to increase, and with her workers growing more and more indepen- dent of the outside world for food and clothing, China will assuredly develop a stronger national spirit; and there will be less room and probably a colder welcome for Japanese workingmen wherever the Chinese are. As for Siberia, there seems to be a true dilemma there for the Japanese. If the old czarist party or any of its near relatives returns to power in the next few years, it will be powerfully bound to France and French invest- ors, who have billions invested in Siberia and have toiled relentlessly and unscrupulously for the restoration of that group to political power. It seems likely that, with such an outcome, the interests of France will be opposed to Japanese expansion in eastern Siberia ; for the French, who have suffered appalling financial losses in Russia since the downfall of Kerensky, will demand and expect all the first fruits of the "restored" Siberia. On the other hand, should the soviet regime maintain itself in- definitely, we may safely assume that it will continue as hostile to the military autocracy of Japan and its eco- nomic imperialism as it has thus far been. All of which is cited as mere probability, with a view to 176 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? bringing out the third and most ticklish stage in Amer- ica's future relations with Japan. If, and when, this stage is reached, the factor of man power will not be a deterrent in willing a war, be it on China or against Russia, be it in the United States or in the Philippines. On the contrary, the surplus man power will become of itself the one adequate cause of war. In China to-day millions are dying of starvation and the Government does little or nothing about it. But we may be sure that if the day ever comes when a few thousand Japanese are menaced by the hunger that kills, the Japanese Govern- ment will stop at nothing to better their lot. Whatever the evils of feudalism may be, it has its finer side, which shines forth in a sincere desire to secure at least the sim- pler needs of all loyal subjects. Every Western trav- eler in Japan has been impressed with the kindly and in- telligent energy of the mikado's officials in improving the lot of even the lowliest peasants. That energy, we may be sure, will not abate as the pressure of population and increased economic independence both become more pronounced. To sum up, then, there are three fairly distinct phases in the probable evolution of Japanese-American rela- tions, assuming, as we have been doing for the sake of argument, that international relations and international business are allowed to drift pretty much as they now are. We shall have, first, a brief span of five or ten years of deadlock in which neither country will be able to launch upon any war with the other. A gest- ure of war may be made, and it is even conceivable that a mere skirmish might be indulged in under ex- traordinary circumstances of diplomatic blundering, THE DEADLOCK 177 but this is too remote to be seriously entertained. The second phase will cover the latter part of the dead- lock and the ensuing decade or two, and will in all prob- ability be a time of major agreements and commercial- financial pacts, marred slightly by minor conflicts of in- terest in China and Siberia, possibly, too, in the Philip- pines. During this time Japan will be progessively at- taining economic independence and strengthening her hold upon the natural resources of China. The third phase will begin when this emancipation is virtually com- plete and the increase of population in Japan has be- come unendurable. When this last phase is reached, war will become almost certain, assuming that America steadily increases her economic interests in China and Siberia, and also assuming, as we have been doing, that Japan will pursue her present policy of using her politi- cal power to extend her economic interests and then in- cluding all new territory contributing to those interests under her political sway. CHAPTER 17 WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT? IN view of this possible course of events, what can we do? And what should we do? One thing seems pretty clear. Whatever we do to pre- vent a serious breach must be done in the next five years or so. After that time things will get out of hand. So long as war is virtually impossible, we may discuss the crisis with extreme frankness and strive for a reasonable solution, but the minute either party feels sure that a blow might be struck and a victory won, open debate grows increasingly difficult and futile, precisely as it did in Europe between the Bosnian affair of 1908 and the invasion of Belgium. When the powder is wet, nobody hesitates to touch off a match in the neighborhood of the powder-magazine. But when it is dry ! It is, of course, conceivable that we might try forcing a sane readjustment by non-militant forces. Thus we might say to Japan : * * Your course in Shantung and in northern Sakhalin is a menace to world peace. Unless you abandon it and make due amends, we, the people of the United States, will, on a certain date, place an em- bargo upon all goods consigned to your country, the same to continue as long as you hold to your present conti- nental policies." Such an act would probably bring an appalling panic, political and financial, in the island em- pire. For, remember, Japan depends upon us for half 178 WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT? 179 of her cotton and for many other manufacturing essen- tials and we buy most of her export silk. To lose at one stroke several vital raw materials and her best customer would shatter her already unstable industrial system, which is now suffering acutely from over-expansion and unemployment. But what would be accomplished by such a move on our part? It is more than doubtful whether it would force the hand of a race as proud and as full of self- justification as the Japanese. We may feel quite certain that it would only act as a threat of armed force would. It would unify the nation against us. The Government would capitalize the sufferings, real and imaginary, which our embargo promised to cause; and in the end we should find ourselves better hated and more com- pletely ignored than ever in northeastern Asia. Nor would the effects at home be pleasanter. Our manufacturers and exporters would oppose such a quix- otic venture, which deprived them of half a billion dol- lars of business for the sake of a political ideal. As for the ordinary citizen, he would have no interest in the whole affair, but he would savagely resent being dragged into another international rumpus. He is sick of rumpuses. He wants peace and quiet, no matter what happens to the babies of Armenia or the starvelings of central Europe or the muzhiks of Nikolaievsk. We may therefore conclude that, in the present state of Ameri- can opinion, neither war nor economic pressure can be brought to bear upon Japan in the interest of the "open door" or Siberian sovereignty. The same must be said of the ingenious ''ration- ing" plan recently advanced by Mr. Carlyon Bellairs, 180 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? formerly a commander in the British Navy and now a Member of Parliament. Mr. Bellairs has given much thought to the obstacles that lie in the way of universal disarmament. He realizes, as most men do after a close study of the matter, that Japan is the pivot of the whole movement. If she comes in, Great Britain and America will have no difficulty in joining. If she re- fuses, there is not the slightest hope save through some skilful coercion. Mr. Bellairs has therefore recom- mended that, in such an event. Great Britain and the United States ought to curtail their supply of steel to Japan strictly to the amount needed for peaceful indus- trial purposes. This view has been put forward by others and has met with more or less journalistic approval. It was brilliant in 1910. Today it is absurd. In 1910 the Japanese militarists probably had serious thoughts of overseas campaigns. Today they know that there is only one possible procedure, and that is to build a defensive screen for themselves from Formosa to Kamchatka, behind which they can carry on their aggressive continental policy in Siberia and China. In 1910, Japan was almost wholly dependent upon Great Britain and America for iron and steel. Today, as I show elsewhere, her mines at home, in Korea, in Manchuria, and in China, are more than enough for any defensive war against either Great Britain or the United States. As for the psychological effect of a rationing order issued by Great Britain and America against the Japa- nese Government, nothing would delight the Tokio mili- tarists more than such a move. It would enable them to cry through their newspapers that the Anglo-Saxon WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT? 181 tyranny was scheming to crush the fatherland in order to gain the mastery of the Pacific. And there is not the shadow of a doubt that nine Japanese out of ten would believe it. Nine Americans out of ten believe sillier cock-and-bull stories every time they pick up a Sunday newspaper. But what can be done? Well, there seem to be two and only two policies that offer fair prospects. One is honest recognition of the brute fact that both Japan and the United States desire and are able to manage each its own home affairs without interference from the other. The other is a no less honest recognition of the larger fact that friendly relations between the two countries must be built more and more upon popular education. The people of Japan must be informed more fully about what Americans need and wish. Americans also must learn what the troubles and the aspirations of the Japa- nese people really are. To know such things is, of course, not to avoid grave conflicts of interest. It is absurd to suppose that all such conflicts are founded solely upon ignorance or improper selfishness. The world is unfor- tunately full of men with honestly differing and incom- patible standards of living and aspirations. It is full of people whose needs cannot all be equally satisfied as things now stand. Neither a new morality nor an old religion nor a League of Nations will put an end to that tragic circumstance. But a more widely spread and more accurate public information concerning all such diffi- culties will at least incline men to arrange better work- ing compromises than they are now disposed to do. After all, life, as it now runs on, is nothing but a series of compromises; and, despite the abuse which has been 182 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? heaped upon diplomacy by many intelligent critics, the truth is that this supposedly black art is merely an at- tempt to work out just such compromises. The sins of diplomats are many, be it admitted, but in their recog- nition of the wisdom of intelligent compromise, diplo- mats evince a higher moral vision than those people pos- sess who suppose that the world can be run on some sim- ple and inflexible set of lofty principles. To achieve a sound compromise with Japan, we should encourage every effort on that country's part to dissemi- nate information about its own difficulties and unsatis- fied needs among us Americans. We should not be over- quick to denounce every such move as sinister propa- ganda simply because a good deal of it has in the past been open to such suspicion. The line between genuine popular education and propaganda is vanishingly thin, but that is no reason for refusing to listen to every statement from Japanese sources. As for our own work, we must begin with working out an intelligent national policy ; and having found one, we must make it known to the world unequivocally. We should scorn the polite equivocations and euphemisms which have been the stock in trade of old-school politics. They will only perpetuate evil misunderstandings. So far as Japan is concerned, we have not yet analyzed either our difficulties with her or our own national policy. The studies that follow in this volume are an attempt to throw some light on both. We shall first survey the Jap- anese settlements and their activities in our own terri- tories, after which we shall look at certain outstanding forces in American life which either do or ought to fig- ure prominently in shaping our national policy. BOOK III THE CRISIS IN HAWAII AND CALIFORNIA CHAPTER 18 JAPANESE IN HAWAH HAWAII means nothing at all in the political think- ing of the average American. The exotic name vaguely suggests surf-boards, savages, tourist circulars, and active volcanoes. When a Presidential campaign comes along, you may always be sure that Reno, Nevada, stands a better chance than Honolulu does of figuring in the politicians' stump speeches. Our politi- cal ideas are still of the small-town caliber. Our voters listen with statesmen-like intentness to the gossips who allege that the candidate occasionally beats his wife ; but when somebody mentions Hawaii and its relations to the problem of the Pacific, the audience yawns and begins to filter out of the hall. In this respect we seem to be very much like our Brit- ish cousins. They, you will recall^ used to own a tiny island named Heligoland close to the coast of Germany. It was scarcely more than a knob of rock some fifty miles from the Kiel Canal and from the mouth of the Elbe River. But the rock was quite large enough to be re- modeled into a fortress of the first magnitude. Only thirty years ago, Heligoland was the Hawaii of the Brit- ish Empire. It was an insignificant dot in a sea that frothed between England and England's chief competi- tor in foreign trade and world politics. The average Englishman knew and cared as much about Heligoland 185 186 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? as our average American cares about Maui. He had no cousins or aunts on the island, and the business openings there did not lure him. As for its political value, well, the empire was too big and too busy to bother much over a square mile of waste rock and sand. So he raised no cry when, in 1890, the Germans wheedled Lord Salisbury to trade Heligoland for a slice of German Africa. There were some Englishmen, to be sure, who protested and talked about strategic points and such strange things; but the rank and file of Great Britain was quite content to let the deal be put through. So the German flag was raised over this dot of rock, and from that hour forth the history of the world was written with a new hand, and with a pen of iron dipped in blood. To-day every schoolboy in England knows that it was the British indifference to Heligoland and the sale of the island to Germany that made the German Navy possible. It was the sale of Heligoland that made possible the German invasion of Belgium and the establishment of submarine bases on the Belgian coast and in Ireland. And it was these bases that prolonged the war at least a year and brought the United States into the fray and cost billions of money and perhaps a million lives. Now, the Hawaiian Islands are so many Heligolands of the Pacific. In comparison with the rest of the United States, they are mere dots, smaller than the run of coun- ties in our Western States. Their natural wealth, while considerable in proportion to their size, is nothing but small change in the coffers of Uncle Sam. Not one American in twenty thousand has ever the slightest busi- ness relations with anybody in the Islands. Not one JAPANESE IN HAWAII 187 American in five thousand ever makes even a pleasure trip thither. It takes too much time and money to get there and back. Thus it comes about that we ignore or belittle Hawaii precisely as our Anglo-Saxon relatives beyond the Atlantic used to ignore or belittle Heligoland. At the same time Hawaii has all of the importance of Heligoland and even more. Heligoland was valuable to Great Britain only as a naval base, as a defensive out- post against possible German aggression. It possessed absolutely no value in the upbuilding of world commerce. It did not lie on a great trade route where merchant ships must put in for coal or for repairs. Hawaii, how- ever, is not only one of the world's most strategic naval bases ; it is a very rich sugar and pineapple country and also the best located coaling-station on the great steamer tracks of the Pacific. Vessels plying between America and Australia or between America and Asia must put in at Honolulu, or else burden themselves unduly with extra stocks of coal that eat up cargo space and profits. HAWAU HAS BECOME JAPANESE Great Britain sold Heligoland to Germany for a piece of Africa, and thereby lost billions in money and a million lives. The United States is selling Hawaii, not to the mikado, but to thousands of his subjects; we are getting in paj^ment not other land, but the labor and services of the buyers. Will the outcome be another Heligoland ? That question is a hard one and must wait. Let us first look at things as they are to-day in Hawaii. What do we see ? We see that more than six out of every ten people in the islands are Asiatics. 188 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? We see that four out of every ten people there are Japanese. We see that fewer than one out of every ten people there are Americans of some European stock in the United States. Out of a total of 263,666 population in Hawaii to-day, we find 159,900 Asiatics. The new United States census shows that of these, 109,269 are Japanese. Now, when you figure what this means, bear in mind that Hawaii is a territory, like Alaska. It is not like Porto Rico or the Philippines, a dependency, neither in nor out of the United States, and hanging upon the good- will of Washington for the power to do things and have things done to it. Native Hawaiians are American citi- zens. Their rights are guaranteed them under the Con- stitution. Children born in Hawaii are American citi- zens without further ceremony, be their parents of any origin whatsoever. Do you see what this leads to so far as the Japanese are concerned ? Suppose we merely allow those already here to remain. How about their increase in numbers and power 1 The survey made by the United States Commissioner of Education in 1919 shows plainly that in ten more years, twenty-eight out of every hundred voters in Ha- waii will be Japanese. And in twenty years from now about fortj^-seven out of every hundred will be. After twenty years the number of Japanese voters will double every twenty years as the grandchildren of the present voters grow up. By 1930, then, it seems probable that the Japanese may comprise about twenty-eight per cent of the electo- JAPANESE IN HAWAII 189 rate, a sufficiently large proportion to constitute a force that must be reckoned with if it acts as a unit. By 1940, about forty-seven per cent of the electorate may be ex- pected to be composed of voters of this race. From that time on, their numerical superiority will grow rapidly, the voters doubling every twenty years as children of children enter the electorate. You may well make the observation that the Japa- nese population of Hawaii cannot go on increasing by leaps and bounds very much longer, for the islands are tiny. True enough. And in this fact lies the prospect of a steadily rising tide of yellow travelers from Hono- lulu to San Francisco and later perhaps to New Orleans. The children of Japan-born parents, being themselves American citizens, will be free to shift to the mainland of our country as soon as the opportunity for easy living in Hawaii fades away. Should we allow Japanese laborers to continue coming to Hawaii, as they have been in the past, we should thus establish a permanent source of Japanese immigration into the United States ; and if we allowed these laborers to bring in native wives, that immigration would increase still faster, and set up in the United States a great Japa- nese colony with high birth rate and ever declining death rate. All this is, of course, nothing against the Japanese. It is a mere statement of fact. Before we can judge it for good or for evil, we must observe carefully what the Japanese in Hawaii are doing. On this subject we fortunately have a wealth of detail collected and dispassionately reported by the United States Commissioner of Education in the same educa- 1^ MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tional survey from which we have already quoted. The four members of the commission making this survey are : Frank F. Bunker, Bureau of Education, director of the survey. W. W. Kemp, chairman of education department, Uni- versity of California. Parke R. Kolbe, president Municipal University, Ak- ron, Ohio. George R. Twiss, professor of secondary education and state high-school inspector, Ohio State University. While these gentlemen were officially interested pri- marily in the schools of Hawaii and their unusual prob- lems, they found it necessary to study the population of the islands and their condition and tendencies. In doing this they came upon some highly significant facts. They found, for instance, that the Japanese workers are morally and mentally superior to all other groups, and hence are outstripping these in competition. They say: "Furthermore, it should be said in fairness that there are few Japanese children in the juvenile courts and in the institu- tions for delinquents. And there are proportionally very few Japanese among the convict labor gangs and in the jails. Few, if any, are supported by public charity; nor are any begging on the street. Their per capita savings bank deposits rank third among those of the island races, being exceeded by the Americans and Portuguese only. All of which activity, laud- able in itself, can be explained adequately on the basis of racial qualities inherent in the Japanese, of patience, persistence, thrift, initiative, endurance, ambition, group solidarity, coupled with acumen and astuteness which give them the ability to get on where other races have failed. Indeed, so weU have the Japanese adjusted themselves to island condi- JAPANESE IN HAWAII 191 tions and so rapidly are they increasing in the number of Hawaiian bom eliildren, that this group will soon have a majority of the voters of the island." As we. shall see later, this verdict agrees completely with that of all distinterested observers of the situation in California. These little yellow men are not drunk- ards, as many Irish, German, and English are. They are not loafers, as many negroes and back-country Americans are. They are not spendthrifts, as nearly all Americans are to some degree. They are not criminal, as many people of all European stocks are. They are, in brief, more nearly model laborers than any other type with which we Americans have as yet come in contact. The survey commissioners make the further observa- tion that just as the Japanese stand out above and apart from all the other groups mentally and morally, so do they hold aloof from these other groups. They do not intermarry, and they strive to preserve their language and culture intact. "Upon comparison with Chinese marriages and intermar- riages, it is noted that there is little tendency on the part of the Japanese to amalgamate with the Hawaiians, whereas the Chinese have contributed largely to the formation of the Chi- nese-Caucasian-Hawaiian mixture. Neither do the Japanese marry as freely with the Portuguese as the Chinese have done. "The Japanese and Koreans contrast strongly with the Chi- nese in race mixture; former groups evincing strong clannish- ness in marital selections; the latter groups freely breeding 'out.' "In general, Japanese marry only Japanese; they show re- markable racial allegiance, more so, as a race, than any other in Hawaii. A few Japanese men have married Hawaiian, 192 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? part-Hawaiian, and Portuguese women; only one has married an American woman. There are surprisingly few marriages between the Japanese and the other Asiatic peoples in Hawaii." In this respect the Japanese are much like the British. When England was building up her empire, she sent millions of her sons into India, Egypt, South Africa, the China coast, Australia, Malaysia, the West Indies, Canada, and the South Seas. These men settled down in the midst of many different races, but seldom did they marry native women and adopt local customs and lan- guage. The Englishman felt himself superior to these peoples whose lands he invaded. He loathed the thought of demeaning himself to their cultural level. He was in blunt fact altogether self-satisfied. And so is the Japa- nese. He sees no reason why he or his children should for- sake his ways, for his ways seem good. And the proof that they are good is that they enable him to succeed in competition with these other races. So it is that the Japanese in Hawaii have established their own schools, in which the Japanese language and Japanese ideas are taught. Listen to the American commissioners on this point. They will surprise you : "Another handicap of serious character under which the pub- lic schools of the Territory are laboring and with which there is nothing comparable in the States, is the system of foreign language schools which has grown to formidable proportions, particularly among the Japanese. Among the island settle- ments, however isolated or remote, wherever there is a group of Japanese laborers and their families, there is, alongside the public school or very near to it, a school set apart for the JAPANESE IN HAWAII 19S Japanese children who attend the public school. One year ago there were 163 of these schools in the Hawaiian Islands, manned by 449 teachers and having an aggregate enrollment of about 20,000 pupils. A number of new schools have been organized since, and in instances, considerable sums, reaching $7,000 in one case, have been expended for the purchase of ad- ditional sites. In addition to the Japanese, the Koreans and Chinese have established language schools, some 22 in number with about 40 teachers and approximately 2,000 pupils. "Almost all of these schools are of elementary grade, though there are a few kindergartens ; and in 11 schools the work par- allels the Territorial high schools, in part at least. In all in- stances the teachers of the Japanese schools are brought direct from, Japan for the purpose. T4iey are certified teachers in their home country and, in a number of cases, are recom- mended by their local Japanese authorities and the educational department of Japan. None of the teachers were bom or educated in Hawaii." Why should the teachers of these twenty thousand children all be brought from Japan? Why do the schools not choose young Japanese from California, let us say, who speak both Japanese and English fluently and know something about American ways and institu- tions? Would it not seem reasonable to teach these chil- dren about their new fatherland as well as about their old one? On this point the commissioners quote from an eminent Japanese educator: "While, doubtless, many teachers are brought from Japan rather than procured from among Hawaiian-bom Japanese because it is sincerely believed that they speak a purer Japa- nese, nevertheless some, at least, share the opinion frankly ex- pressed recently before the Japanese Educational Association 194 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? of Maui by Mr. Obata Shusan, formerly head priest of the Mitsuki Girls' School. In characterizing the type of in- structor which he thought the language schools needed, he said : '^ ^Any man who is to teach in Japanese language schools should not he a man with democratic ideas. The language school is not a place for a m^n with strong democratic ideas, A man of strong Japanese ideas should be its teacher/ " School-teachers in Hawaii interviewed by the commis- sioners testified in the main as did the one who made the following remarks: "It is pretty hard to teach American ideals to a child who does his thinking in Japanese. . . . "As one who speaks Japanese and has had long experience in teaching Orientals, I wish to say that if the Japanese schools are continued, we shall have a mongrel citizenship, both in language and customs. "The Japanese schools under cover of religious instruction, teach the children loyalty to their Emperor and country. The Japanese language schools must go, if we are to teach the young Japanese to become Americans." Here again we see how very much like the English- man, the Frenchman, and the German, our Japanese neighbors are. When the Englishman went to India, he took his school-teachers with him, and the school-teacher took his ideas with him, in his head as well as in his school-books. When the devout but very low French peasant emigrated to Canada two centuries ago, he did the very same thing. And in the province of Quebec to-day you find the religion and the politics and the fam- ily morals of the eighteenth century still being taught in the French language. The people of France have long since outgrown these ideas and customs, because France JAPANESE IN HAWAII 195 has continually adjusted herself to the times, has learned new things, has faced new problems, and has modified her own life to fit the environment. But the French of Quebec cling to the shadow of a dead past with fanati- cal sentimentalism. The Japanese in Hawaii are com- mitted to this fatal policy, which is the most un- American of all things. They are perpetuating not only the Japanese language, but also political ideas and Bud- dhism. The power of Buddhism in Hawaii is great. The com- missioners find that "The Nishi Hongwanji is by far the strongest Buddhist sect in the islands, as in Japan, embracing about 75,000 members of the island population. This sect in Japan is controlled by a cabinet formed of high priests at whose head stands the Hoss or cliief priest. The Hoss is held in very high es- teem by members of the sect, who honor him as they would a living Buddha. The Hoss is represented in the Islands by a 'Kantoku' (Bishop Imamura), who has absolute authority over the priests and teachers of the sect as well as over its members, controlling the whole body, according to a Japanese authority, 'as easily as he moves his fingers.' " Now, no American worthy of the name would wish to suppress Buddhism or any other religion so long as its practices were not obviously working an injury to other people who did not believe in its tenets. If the Japa- nese wish to be Buddhists, all well and good; but in dealing with Buddhism, we must take into account the part it may be playing in establishing an alien culture in our society which may cause great trouble. It is an almost universal tendency of transplanted religions and cults to struggle to reinforce themselves by playing poli- 196 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tics. We have seen, for example, the Roman Catholics in America fight for years to maintain their own reli- gious schools, and to this end either seeking an exemption from public-school taxes or else gaining public support for their own schools. This struggle, as you know, has been the source of much friction in many parts of our country. And no good ever comes of it. It would not be accurate to close this survey without citing the testimony of the American teachers in the islands who are convinced that the tendency toward the creation of a narrow Japanese culture there is weakening. Here are two very strong statements from them : "The majority of the parents who migrated there from Japan were also subject and susceptible to this influence. Therefore, it is an undisputed fact that the influence of the Japanese language schools up to three years ago was a menace. "But fortunately, our entrance into the Great War, our gigantic resources operating during the same, the unity and patriotism of the American people, the enormous over-subscrip- tion of the Liberty Loans, to say nothing of the fighting quali- ties of our boys, demonstrated in the trenches of Europe, and the respect shown us by the whole world, have all tended to ex- plode the unfounded pro-Japanese influence of the Japanese language schools. "Evidently, when the test arose, the teachings and influence of the American schools predominated and the American citi- zens of Japanese parents were as anxious to prove their Amer- ican patriotism as any others. Hundreds joined the Army and thousands of dollars were invested in War Savings and Lib- erty Bonds. The school curriculum was changed considerably along American lines. The American-born children demanded and exercised their birthright. The parents underwent a very perceptible mental change to such an extent that, within four JAPANESE IN HAWAII 197 or 'five years hence, the Japanese language schools will become obsolete. "In conclusion, I state with confidence that the present in- fluence of the Japanese schools is more favorable toward America than Japan." The second teacher pins her faith in the rising genera- tion. She says : "The schools retard the teaching of English. However, the English of the Japanese pupils is better than that of the Hawaiian and Portuguese in elementary schools, although I ad- mit that out of school it may be less and more limited. These schools are not as unpatriotic toward America as some would have us believe. Love for Japan comes from the mother and father, particularly from the mother if she be a picture bride from Japan, knowing nothing of Americanism. She trains the child for six years before the schools have the child. The Japanese child believes that he can love both countries as he does his father and mother and will tell you that. This status of double allegiance would be pujt to a test if the countries be- came unfriendly. The younger generation of Japanese edu- cated in public schools would favor America, I honestly be- lieve." This is most encouraging, but one is tempted to wonder what may happen in the years before the older genera- tion of Japanese has passed. We suspect that the greater Oriental crisis, of which our own is but a faint premo- nition, will come to a head long before then. CHAPTER 19 JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA ALL the other grievances which Americans harbor against the Japanese nation and her people are as nothing beside those arising from the so-called *' in- vasion ' ' of California. Few Americans east of the Rocky- Mountains understand the intense feeling which this situ- ation is causing on the Pacific coast. The general opin- ion on the Atlantic seaboard is probably summed up fairly well by "The Nation," which we have already quoted: "A State which imagines that a Japanese popu- lation of 87,279 in a total population of 3,200,000 threat- ens the destruction of its social order ... is suffering from a bad case of 'nerves.' " Superficially, this seems to be a fair comment; but when we plunge into details, we find it is a complete mis- apprehension. Although the remark was made in con- nection with an editorial about the recent report of the California State Board of Control on the Japanese situ- ation, it is clear that the editors did not read this report closely ; for the report proves at least one thing ; it proves that, whether the Californians who display agitation over the Japanese "invasion" are right or wrong in their demands for exclusion, they certainly are not suffering from "a bad case of 'nerves.' " They are suffering from a bad case of facts. Let us look at some of these facts, all of which have 198 JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 199 been sought out, carefully analyzed, and reported in the fairest manner conceivable by the State Board of Con- trol, in a book of 231 pages packed with well-compiled statistics, maps, and special investigations. In the first place as to the number of Japanese in Cali- fornia, the official State figure of 87,279 is certainly far below the mark. And the more recent returns of the Federal Census, namely, 70,196, is still further off. And for this there are three causes. In the first place, because of the difficulty of finding Americans who could speak Japanese well enough to take the census in the Japanese districts of California, Japanese census takers were ap- pointed. Soon after the census reports began coming in from these regions, people were struck by the poor show- ing the Japanese made. Offhand estimates place their numbers in various neighborhoods far above those given by the officials. According to newspaper reports, on which we dare not place much reliance, of course, some volunteer census-takers have checked over certain of the suspected districts and have found the correct number of Japanese to be greater than reported totals. This need not surprise us. For few Japanese census takers would be over-zealous in making the number of their countrymen out to be as large as possible. In the second place, thousands of Japanese live in the interior valleys, many parts of which are very remote and extremely difficult to canvass thoroughly. It is well known that even the best census takers seldom catch all the people in such regions. And nothing is easier for the Japanese who doesn't care to be quizzed than to lock up his shack and go wandering off when the rumor flies that a government fellow is coming. 200 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? In the tliird place, Japanese are stealing into the State over the Mexican line, and as that border is very long and impossible to patrol with any degree of rigor, nobody knows how many men are coming across. Once over the line, these Japanese have plenty of room to hide in ; for California is a sizable State, full of remote moun- tain valleys, in which thousands of settlers might fairly lose themselves and no outsider be the wiser. The State Board of Control sums up the whole matter as follows : "Smuggling across the border, especially the Mexican bor- der, has proven exceedingly difficult for the United States Immigration Service to prevent. The federal immigration patrol upon the Mexican border is entirely inadequate; the California-Mexican frontier is 180 miles in length and the physical character of the country is such that it is possible to cross the border at almost any point; and the big fishing fleet, manned principally by Japanese with large power boats, which is constantly going back and forth from American waters into Mexican waters, provides exceedingly convenient means of un- lawful entry for Japanese in particular. Furthermore there are many Japanese engaged in agricultural pursuits in the Imperial Valley on both sides of the border, and the Japanese so engaged are passing to and fro across the line constantly. Such conditions render most difficult the checking of those who cross and reeross the border. The United States Commis- sioner General of Immigration in his report of January 30th, 1919, declares that smuggling of Japanese across the Mexican border is carried on successfully and to a large extent, his lan- guage being as follows: 'Confidential information of unques- tionable authenticity shows very conclusively that Japanese smuggling across the Mexican border is carried on successfully and doubtless to a very large extent. Southern California pos- sesses a peculiar attraction to the Japanese and it seems in- JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 201 evitable that if some effective means are not found to curb fur- ther growth, the Japanese colonies in that section will expand in time into such proportions as to create a serious problem. " 'Once safely across the line, the contrabands find conceal- ment at conveniently located ranches conducted by fellow countrymen, where they work for small wages until a smat- tering of English and an air of sophistication are acquired, when they proceed toward their respective ultimate destina- tions. When any of such contrabands are arrested, the resi- dent Japanese who have given them asylum, rush to their de- fense and if necessary, do not hesitate to perjure themselves as to the period of residence in the United States of the ar- rested alien. Vigorous measures and unremitting zeal on the part of the immigration officers, resulting in the arrest and de- portation of large numbers of contrabands of this class and the prosecution of such of the ringleaders and co-conspirators of lesser importance as could be found in the United States, have served, temporarily at least, to check the influx. The participation in this illegal traffic of domiciled aliens, without whose assistance it could not survive, has been discouraged to no inconsiderable degree by the prosecution instituted during the past year. It should be understood, however, that the same situation has confronted the district on previous oc- casions and will again arise if there is any relaxation of rig- orous vigilance. In order to keep the problem in hand, a suf- ficient force of alert, resourceful officers must at all times be maintained.^ " A casual inspection of some sixty miles of this border stretch leads me to believe that the above remarl^ under- state the difficulties of the patrol. And three members of the latter v^ith whom I talked more than confirmed this impression. Indeed, I should regard it as a triumph of efficiency if these men, working under the present 202 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? system, caught one Japanese out of every five who stole over the line. Nothing short of a barbed wire entangle- ment, search lights, and twenty-four-hour patrolling from San Diego to the Gulf of California would control the situation. So far, then, as mere numbers go, the Califomians have not developed * ' a bad case of nerves ' ' over a paltry 87,279 Japanese. They have, if you please, become wor- ried over the possibility that these 87,279 persons are really about 125,000 persons. Certainly 125,000 Japa- nese are more than twice as likely to disturb American civilization as 87,279 are; for it is well recognized by sociologists that the cohesiveness of such cultural groups increases in almost geometrical proportion to its num- bers. In other words, if you double the number of peo- ple in any self -centered community, you multiply the self-sufficiency of that group something like four times, and for reasons into which we cannot go here. If such a group tends to be exclusive and to perpetuate its lan- guage, religion, and social customs, it can and will do all this about four times as easily when doubled. Thus there are reasons for suspecting that the power of the Japanese cultural group in California may be much greater than the official census might lead us to be- lieve. Now, as to the extent to which the Japanese have ** in- vaded" the farming districts on the coast, the report sums up as follows : "The Japanese in our midst have indicated a strong trend to land ownership and land control, and by their unquestioned industry and application, and by standards and methods, that are widely separated from our occidental standards and meth- JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 203 ods both in connection with hours of labor and standards of living", have gradually developed to a control of many of our important agricultural industries. Indeed, at the present time they operate 458,456 acres of the very best lands in California. The increase in acreage control within the last decade, accord- ing to these official figures, has been 412.9 per cent. In pro- ductive values — that is to say, in the market value of crops pro- duced by them — our figures show that as against $6,235,856 worth of produce marketed in 1909, the increase has been to $67,145,730, approximately tenfold. "More significant than these figures, however, is the demon- strated fact that within the last ten years the Japanese agri- cultural labor has developed to such a degree that at the pres- ent time between 80 and 90 per cent of most of our vegetable and berry products are those of Japanese farms. Approxi- mately 80 per cent of the tomato crop of the State is pro- duced by the Japanese ; from 80 to 100 per cent of the spinach crop; a greater part of the potato and asparagus crops and sozon. So that it is apparent that without much more ef- fective restrictions in a very short time, historically speaking, the Japanese population within our midst will represent a con- siderable portion of our entire population, and the Japanese control over certain essential food products will be an abso- lute one." It is most important to grasp the meaning of this. The average man east of the Rockies supposes that the Japa- nese is like the Chinaman who came to California in the old days. The Chinaman was a coolie, hailing as a rule from Canton, in southern China. He was the lowest grade of large-town worker, generally unskilled, and ready to turn his hand to any sort of rough labor that turned up. He corresponded to the dock-walloper of our own sea- ports and the roustabouts of the Mississippi levees. Not 204 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? so the Japanese who have poured into California. These men are skilled farmers and small business men. Strange as it will sound to most of you, they are much more like our Pilgrim Fathers than they are like the Chinamen of San Francisco 's early days. They have left their native land to carve their for- tunes where opportunity beckons. They are eager to get a solid footing in their new home. They seek to become landowners and business men. They do not come to work for the Americans any more than the Pilgrim Fathers came to work for the Indians. They come as the Pilgrim Fathers did, to take possession of the coun- try. Listen to George Shima, the Potato King, said to be the richest Japanese in America. "I am a farmer. I have devoted my life to the development of the delta district of the Sacramento valley and I know little about politics or diplomacy or international questions. "We Japanese live here. We have cast our lot with Cali- fornia. We are drifting farther away from traditions and ideas of our native country. Our sons and daughters do not know them at all. They do not care to know them. They regard America as their home. "We have little that binds us to Japan. Our interest is here and our fortune is wedded to this state. What is more important, we have unconsciously adapted ourselves to the ideals and manners and customs of our adopted country, and we no longer entertain the slightest desire to return to our native country." Mr. Shima speaks the heart of thousands of his immi- grant countrymen. And the Easterner, accustomed to seeing all kinds of aliens becoming Americans, not only JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 205 believes the Japanese but sympathizes with his aspira- tion. Not so the small California farmer. To him this very love of our country and the determination to merge one's identity in it threaten him with a competition he has already proved himself unable to withstand. Many Americans east of the Rockies have said : ' ' How foolish to oppose the Japanese when this country needs so many farm laborers. The California farmer is biting off his nose to spite his face when he advocates exclusion. If he shuts out the Japanese he will never find farm la- borers. ' ' To which we must reply that if the California farmer does not shut out the Japanese, he will not need farm la- borers much longer. For the Japanese come not as his laborers, but as his competitors. The State board report says: "The Oriental is of no appreciable value as a farm laborer to the American farmer. Very few of them ... are in the employ of American farmers as purely farm help. . . . The Oriental farm-laboring class is valuable principally to land speculators or developers who do not farm their own lands, but lease them upon some crop basis to Orientals. As a mat- ter of fact there are probably more white laborers working for Oriental farmers than there are Oriental laborers working for American farmers." Here we come to the very storm-center. The Ameri- can who feels the ''Yellow Peril" acutely is the inde- pendent small farmer, — the man with one or two hundred acres off which he seeks to get a living and small compe- tence for himself and his children. He has, let us say, been growing berries or sugar beets or grapes or vege- tables on his place for many years, all of which he has 206 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? been selling in competition with other Americans whose standard of work and living has been the same as his own or nearly so. His farming neighbors work ten or twelve hours a day at the most. They send their boys and girls to school for the greater part of the year (and please re- member that here in California the greater part of the year is work-time on the farm, thanks to the unusual climate). Their wives work around the house and per- haps attend to a few chickens, but rarely toil in the fields save when there is a shortage of help at harvest time. And the whole family takes Sunday off whenever it can. Into a community of such people there comes a keen and thrifty Japanese. For a year or two he may work around as a farm hand, partly for the sake of making money, but chiefly in order to discover the quality and promise of the soil in the district. Finally he rents a piece of ground, and then appear wife and children, and often, too, a small army of friends, all of his same race. All of these fall to, working at a pace which bewilders and horrifies the Americans thereabouts. Fourteen, six- teen, and even eighteen hours in the fields a day are schedules frequently observed in Japanese communities. And the Japanese are not visibl^^ injured by it. They seem to be a stock that has been selected through cen- turies of stern competition for their ability to stand such a strain. Now it is evident that anybody who works sixteen hours a day over a crop is going to reap a much larger harvest than the man who, with no more skill than the sixteen-hour man, toils only ten hours. The Japanese new-comer does this, and often more ; for he is, in many JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 207 instances, much more deeply versed in agriculture than his American neighbor. Furthermore, the yellow stran- ger is a better business man than nine out of ten of the small farmers of American stock. He understands the art of cooperation, which we are only beginning to learn. He knows how to force his rivals out by underselling for a while and then, after the rivals have quit in disgust, working his prices up until he has more than reimbursed himself for all the temporary losses incurred in squeezing these hapless victims out. Elwood Mead has found striking cases of this very- procedure in the San Joaquin Valley in connection with the manipulation of land rents as well as of commodity prices. And there is every reason to believe that this technic, which is our own large business corporations' cherished method, is a matter of common knowledge among the Japanese. The results of such competition can be clearly read all over California. For the statistics we need not go to American observers, who may be suspected of prejudice. We have luckily at hand a comprehensive study of the expansion of Japanese farmers which has been made by one of their own countrymen, one Yamato Ichihashi, in- structor in Japanese history and economics at Leland Stanford University. In 1915 Mr. Ichihashi published a volume on "Japanese Immigration," in which he pre- sented detailed charts that brought out the following re- markable facts: Out of every 100 people growing berries in California, 88 are Japanese. Out of every 100 who raise sugar beets, 67 are Japanese. Out of every 100 who grow grapes, 52 are Japanese. Out of every 100 who raise vegetables 208 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? (for market, of course), 46 are Japanese. Out of every 100 who grow citrous fruits, 39 are Japanese. Out of every 100 who grow deciduous fruits, 36 are Japanese. The State board, in commenting upon these findings, holds that the percentages would run considerably higher to-day. Rather a remarkable showing for the paltry 87,279 Japanese over whom California is said to have a ''bad case of nerves, " is it not ? Particularly when you pause to consider that California's fame in the farming lines rests upon her berries, her lemons, oranges, and grapes. We must, in the light of all the evidence, admit the proud claims of Toyoji Chiba, managing director of the Japanese Agricultural Association in California, that his countrymen are, from the point of view of sheer efficiency and endurance and cunning, superior to many, if not of most, of the ordinary white farmers. Certainly anybody who has inspected Japanese farms will agree with the general position, if not of the detail, of Mr. Chiba 's fol- lowing remarks : "For three thousand years, the Japanese in the narrow con- fines of their native land have cultivated the soil and have made it produce food for 60,000,000 people, a surprising fact of deep significance. On the other hand^ it enables one to imagine what trouble and distress they have undergone in order to preserve the productivity of the soil, while too, the fact that to the Japanese farmer the habit of valuing and taking care of the land has become second nature must not be over- looked. We believe that in all the world the Japanese people have no superiors in the matter of producing large crops from small areas, and in the habituul skill with which they are able to restore the productive energy of the soil. We JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 209 do not think that even the Danes, who have world-wide fame for their intensive farming, surpass the Japanese in this re- spect. Look, for example, at the illustrations of this in Cali- fornia. The Japanese, who were late comers, when they took up farming land, had to settle on the poorest lands in Cali- fornia, as can be easily imagined by the poorness of the soil in the vicinity of Florin, Livingston, and Bowles near Fresno, where Japanese farmers are peacefully settled. But the Jap- anese with their inherited three thousand years' experience in restoring the energy of the soil, had no sooner settled there than, like King Midas, they converted these regions into the best farming districts of California. We think this fact proves the above statements regarding the skill of Japanese in the treatment of land. "Examples of the way in which the Japanese farmei-s are converting abandoned farms into excellent ones have already been written up frequently by American investigators, but we wish to add another instance. Eleven years ago, a Japa- nese farmer at Livingston bought from an Italian or Portu- guese farmer who had become weary of country life and aban- doned it, a fifteen acre field of desolate land planted with old almond and fig trees which had almost ceased to bear. The Japanese purchaser had become fond of farming and desired to establish a permanent home there. This industrious settler bought up manure from a nearby town and spaded it into the old field. While others irrigated once, he irrigated two or three times. He cultivated the fields deeply and painstakingly over and over again, and while taking measures to restore the soil, he also pruned the old fruit trees, grafting in branches of improved varieties, spraying to drive out injurious insects three or four times, where others were spraying but once, and as the result of this improved culture, there is probably no fruit farm to be seen in California which compares with this one." 210 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Some competent observers, while admitting that the Japanese farmers do get results, attribute their high suc- cess to their immense effort and stick-to-itiveness rather than to their agricultural wisdom. Thus the Westfall- Lane Company, one of the largest melon-distributors in the State. In a letter to the State Board of Control on the Japanese in the Turlock district, where this company has large holdings and has been leasing acreage to them and financing them, Mr. David F. Lane, general manager, says: "From an agricultural standpoint, it is necessary for us to keep a man in the field to see that these Japanese farm their land right. This may seem to you a strange statement, con- sidering that it is generally assumed that the Japs are such wonderful farmers. They are not wonderful farmers, but hard workers, and the success that they have made, in my estimation, is principally charged up or credited to their per- sistent plugging and consistent attention to their lands.'' Even if this opinion is nearer the truth, it does not alter the fact that Japanese do grow more crops per acre and make more money than the run of white farmers with whom they compete. The State Board of Control itself asserts that ''any sudden removal of the Japanese from their present agricultural pursuits in California would affect our food supply very seriously. The annual output of agricultural products by Japanese in 1919, ap- proximating $67,000,000, consists of food products prac- tically indispensable to the state's daily supply. The Japanese, being a race of short people, seem willing to engage in those lines of agricultural work which call for so-called ''squat labor" or the class of "stoop and pick labor." JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 211 The defenders of the Japanese immigrants have cor- rectly maintained that these newcomers have, in large measure, gone to districts where living and working con- ditions were such that few or no whites would settle. We find hundreds of Japanese in the Imperial Valley and around the Delta country engaged in truck gardening. These are the two richest spots in all California and the two least attractive to the ordinary American of North European stock. To make matters worse, the most prof- itable farming there is just that sort of gardening which requires much "squat labor." Cantaloupe raising is a good specimen of this, and so is tomato growing. The Eastern backyard amateur who reads the seductive seed catalogues may have difficulty in imagining why any white man should object to planting, weeding, spraying and harvesting cantaloupes or tomatoes. Let him know, though, that in the middle of the day the marvelously rich top soil of these highly favored regions commonly attains a temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit and occasionally becomes as hot as a desert rock, which can scarcely be touched by the human hand. Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley have told me that similar heat often occurs there too. Naturally, field workers knock off during these mid-day hours, whenever possible. But even the early and late hours are very hot, for in these shut-in valleys there is little cooling off^ over night. The wonder is that even the Japanese, who are not well adapted to tropical life, have managed to endure gardening work there. It is not at all surpris- ing to hear reports from land owners in the Imperial Valley indicating that many Japanese have lately been 212 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? leaving the region, giving way to the all-enduring Mexi- can peon. THE JAPANESE FISHERIES The same process of "benevolent assimilation" is going on in another of California's major industries, namely, that of deep-sea fishing. Here is what the State Board of Control finds, and here too are some of the questions which those findings provoke : "It is very significant to note that the increase in Japanese fishermen as shown above from the license year 1915-1916 to the license year 1919-1920 was 168% or 825 persons, while all of the other nationalities combined increased but 2.07%, or 88 persons. This increase in the number of Japanese fisher- men is confined largely to southern California waters. "For the fishing fleet, operating off our coast, to be manned bj^ an alien people involves several factors vital to the best in- terests of this country, amounting, in fact, to potential dan- gers. "(a) Is it good public policy at any time, whether in peace or in war, to have so important a food as the fish industry monopolized by peoples of an alien race? The growth of the fish industry has made it one of the principal sources of food supply for the State. "(b) The fishing boats in their daily and constant travels in and out and up and down the coast acquire an intimate knowl- edge of coast line, harbors and defenses wliich is not only ex- ceedingly valuable if used for the benefit of the countrj^, but would be extremely dangerous to us and serviceable to an enemy if made available to such enemy during a period of war. "(c) The experience of the British, in particular, during the late World War demonstrated the value of the fishing fleet for patrol duty along the coast line. During the war. the fish- ing fleet with its small boats scattered along the entire coast JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 213 proved exceedingly valuable in reporting the approach of enemy boats and submarines. In the case of California, with a fishing fleet manned by aliens, especially if circumstances made them enemy aliens, we would not only lose the valuable services of these boats for patrol duty during a time of war, but these same boats might become a powerful aid to the enemy. "(d) This fishing fleet provides a convenient means for illegal entry into the State. The following language appears on page 409 of the 1919 report of the United States Commis- sioner of Immigration: 'Numbers of Japanese fishing boats on the Pacific Coast, operating in Mexican waters, are em- ployed to facilitate the illegal entry of Japanese laborers.' " Here is not the place to discuss the wider significance of these facts. But it should be stated emphatically that when all the factors in the American -Japanese situation have been weighed, the menace of this Japanese fishing fleet proves to be a mere bogey. We have already seen that the Japanese do not and cannot seriously entertain the thought of attacking our Pacific Coast. JAPANESE SEGREGATION AND CLANNISHNESS It need hardly be said that, as a consequence of the great differences in language and culture between our people and the Japanese immigrants, the latter could not scatter among our white population even if they chose to. It would be poor business for them, just as it would be for a thousand Americans who knew no Russian and were bent on making their living to scatter themselves through Siberia. In union there is strength, and comfort as well. Over and above this natural impulse to stick together, 214 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? there is another force at work in the case of the Japa- nese. Our laws deny them the privilege of citizenship, and yet allow them to come to work here under the ' ' Gen- tlemen 's Agreement ' ' now in force. The laws of Japan, to which they owe allegiance, not by choice so much as San Francisco The dotted line in the above outline map indicates the valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. The area enclosed is approximately the total of agricultural California, less than one- ienth of which falls outside of this valley district. 215 216 JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 217 hy necessity, require them to form associations which are under the surveillance of Japanese consuls or other offi- cials; and it is of course to Japan that they must look for protection and aid. Obviously, then, they have every good reason to concentrate in communities of their own. And this they are doing all over California. The recent exhaustive surveys by the State Board of Control bring this tendency out with great clearness. We here reproduce three maps prepared by the board, the first designating the five chief Oriental districts of the State, the second presenting in full detail the land- holdings of the Japanese in the richest part of the Great Valley, and the third showing similar holdings in the wonderfully fertile Imperial Valley, on the Mexican bor- der. In studying these maps, you must keep in mind the several primary facts about the geography and agri- culture of California. Note particularly the following: 1. It is generally conceded that the Japanese farmer, by his long training in intensive agriculture, especially in truck gardening and the growing of small fruits, can surpass and hence drive out the white farmer. 2. In other branches of agriculture, however, the Jap- anese has no marked superiority. It is only in lines of farming where the yield and profit per acre depend largely on the amount of hand labor and the length of the day's work that he vanquishes all competitors. 3. California is composed chiefly of mountains, high mountain valleys, and minor plateaus. Roughly speak- ing, not more than one-sixth of the State can ever be developed intensively, and much of this one-sixth can- not profitably be so handled until the population there becomes very dense, which will not happen for many 218 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? generations to come. Of the other five-sixths of the State, much more than half is forever uninhabitable. Lofty mountains, blazing deserts, interior valleys which must remain forever waterless; and in the north other mountains thick with giant timber. This is the greater part of California. When we are thinking about the human problems such as those involved in the Japanese issue, we must imagine California to be about one-sixth of her actual size. 4. Of this rich one-sixth, the great bulk lies in one unbroken level plain which extends down from the upper reaches of the Sacramento River, in the north, to the head waters of the San Joaquin River, roughly a hun- dred miles north of Los Angeles. A relatively small tract lies in the Imperial Valley, in the extreme south- east, adjoining Mexico. The remaining potential garden- land is scattered throughout most of the State except the extreme north and the eastern half. While some of these areas would be regarded as large in our Eastern States, they are mere dots on the map of California. 5. It is in the fertile one-sixth of the State that the Japanese have concentrated. 6. Less than one-third of the white population of the State lives in this same fertile region. Thus, from the point of view of community life and economic develop- ment, the effective proportion of Japanese to whites is much greater than the general statistics for the State at large would indicate. 7. In the entire State to-day there are 3,893,500 acres under irrigation, and irrigation is indispensable every- where in California. These irrigated tracts are, of course, the richest, and of them the Orientals have col- JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 219 onized and now occupy 623,752 acres, of which 458,056 are occupied by Japanese. The situation is still further aggravated by the un- usually bad distribution of population throughout the State. With a total of 3,426,536 inhabitants, a very small number for the size of the State, fully two-thirds of these live in the metropolitan areas of the three chief cities. The new census shows a full million people in San Francisco and its suburbs, nearly a million in and around Los Angeles, and close to 125,000 in and around San Diego. Were it possible to check off the miners, the lumbermen of the North, the transient Mexican laborers, and the very large leisure class of well-to-do retired East- erners who live outside of the three urban zones just named, and who do not count in either the economic or social development of rural California, the total of those whose lives and fortunes are bound up in the wholesome upbuilding of rural life in California would turn out to be considerably smaller, probably much less than one million. We must begin to see that on the economic and social side of the issue the Californians themselves have not made out as strong a case against the Japanese ''in- vasion" as the facts warrant. They have been loath to admit what they and everybody else knows to be a fact ; namely, that the real California is essentially not a seaside playground, but a farming State, and always must be; and that an abnormally large part of its people do not live in the farming regions and have no genuine in- terest in its development and hence will not influence or be influenced by what happens in the Great Valley, Im- perial, and other agrarian districts. 220 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? The motion-picture stars and camera-men of the South do not plow the ground. The army of ex-farm hands and ex-villagers from Iowa and Illinois w^ho haunt the cafeterias of Los Angeles have put agriculture forever out of their minds. The people from Boston and Phila- delphia who inhabit the beautiful shore homes from Monterey to San Diego cannot be expected to worrj^ over the troubles of the rice-grower of the Sacramento Valley and the melon-farmer of Turlock. Most of them come to California late in life to enjoy their last years in the sun and flowers and scenery of this wonderful region. No Japanese distress them by their presence or competition ; so, human nature being what it is, their interest in the local social and business issues of farmers one or two hun- dred miles away must be decidedly academic. Thus we see that the social and economic struggle is really between some 800,000 whites thinly scattered over a region smaller than New York State and compact groups of Japanese officially numbering 87,279, but sureh^ more in reality. The whites, while they practise cooperation much more extensively than most American farmers do, in fact, still lag far behind the Japanese. We have heard of no case in which groups of California whites do more than cooperate in buying farm supplies and farm products. But the Japanese do much more. Their clannishness is a very real business force. It pays dividends. Listen to Mr. David R. Lane, the Turlock melon-grower, on this : "The Japanese are cooperative. They usually practice this cooperativeness in what we term at this time as a 'clan.' These clans are made up of from five to twenty people. "These clans pool their interests. For example ; if one man JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 221 loses, the others help him out; they go so far as endorsing each other's notes on advances made or for leases to be paid. "During the attention that I have given to these people, I find that these clans are transported clans from Japan. That is to say, Japanese living and operating in provinces in Japan clique together in the nited States and cooperate in their agricultural ventures. They go so far that a leader of a clan, or his heirs in Japan, inherits the same right when the mem- bers are transported in this country. "This is usually what 'he' means when he refers to 'my friend.' When a Jap succeeds in a venture, he stakes his friend to lease a piece of the property and he becomes the next unit to their cooperative system. This friend is picked from their working classes, that is, a laboring man. He has worked with him in the cantaloupe field or has some agricul- tural exj^erience. They also cooperate in helping one another to plow and to do all kinds of agricultural work. Especially is this true if one of their number is behind with his work. '"All this sounds very lovable and brotherly, but these people have their difficulties. If a Jap attempts to lease more land than he is able to handle, he is notified by them to cut some of the land out of his holdmgs and get down to a basis where he can handle it economically. If he neglects the land, jeop- ardizing the financial responsibilities of the others, he is cor- rected, but, let me say at this time, very diplomatically. If he does not take care of his land, the others go in on the prop- erty, combining their efforts to get the land up to the proper condition as speedily as possible." This is a degree of shrewdness and team work which we Americans have yet to learn. AVith us it must come as a matter of slow progress. With the Japanese, it is not progress; it is merely the survival of the old clan customs that grew up untold centuries ago in Japan. It happens to be a most useful survival when trans- 222 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ferred to a land where even yet every white man has to shift for himself, and ''the devil take the hindmost." What, we may wonder, would happen if a few million men and women dominated by this most effective clan spirit were to settle in the midst of us Americans? To visualize the trend, take a particular group of young people such as the pupils of the grammar school at Florin, Sacramento County, divided into two nearly equal race groups, Americans and Japanese. Count heads, weigh the minds, then look into the future ! Trained in the idea of ''personal liberty" and resent- ing authority, these American boys and girls will grow up with free spirits, and go their various ways in life. Some will attend the Methodist Church and join the car- penters' union. Others will become Mormons and drift off to the San Francisco Bay ship-yards. Still others will go into politics and eventually get jobs in Washing- ton, perhaps. Twenty years from now they will have forgotten one another, and will be scattered in half a hundred trades and towns. But how about the Japanese children ? Before or after the day's work at this public school, most of them have to attend a Japanese school. Here they are taught the Japanese language and the history and ideals of Japan. They learn the edicts, in which the mikado is exalted as God's local manager. During vacation these children work in the fields with their parents, sometimes from ten to fourteen hours a day. And when they grow up, they are taken into the clan, given an interest in the business, whatever that may hap- pen to be, and from thenceforth their lives are effectively JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 223 regulated by the group. They will do what the group deems best. If they lose, the group will make up the losses. If they make much money, the whole group bene- fits thereby. So, twenty years hence, all the Japanese survivors of this group of eighty children of Florin will be prosperous members of a clan, and happ}^ to be such. But of the American group, most will be struggling along ' ' on their own," while some will certainly be poor, and a few rich. The struggling and the poor will be discouraged and per- haps disgruntled. And it would not be at all strange if some of them were to wish they had been bom in Japa- nese families. In this prospect, not at all an improbable one, by the way, we see the possibilities of shattered morale and social disturbances much graver than those brought about by the differences between whites and blacks. The negro at his best is still mentally and morally weaker than the white. He cannot present a solid front against white critics and white attackers, and, above all, he is totally lacking in cunning. The white who chooses to do so can out -bully him and outmanoeuver him with contemptuous ease. But not so with the Japanese. It is quite possible that, if matters came to a head, these people would, with their age-old instincts and habits of perfect team work and utter fearlessness, stagger white humanity precisely as they staggered the Russians around Mukden and Port Arthur when first their blood brothers proved themselves the military equals of Europe and burst into the arena of world power. 224 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? THE JAPANESE BIRTH-RATE It is a well-established fact that any group, shifting from a densely populated region where living conditions are hard to a new and sparsely peopled land where they find it much easier to win bread, brings many children into the world. This fact, which will be discussed at length in a later chapter, has been richly confirmed in California. The Japanese there to-day are outbreeding the Amer- icans at the startling rate of three to one. In 1910 there were in the State 313,280 married white women, who in the same year gave birth to 30,893 children. This is a birth-rate of 9.9 per cent, or virtually one child to every ten married women. In 1919 there were 15,211 Japanese women there, nineteen years of age or older; and this group gave birth to 4,378 children in the year. This is a birth-rate of 28.8 per cent, not far from being one child to every three women. An even more striking comparison has been brought out by the State Board of Control. In 1910 there was only one Japanese child to every forty-three white chil- dren born in California, but in 1919 there was one to every twelve. In the eighteen farming counties where the Japanese have been concentrating, the number of Japanese births has multiplied almost exactly four times during the last decade; and in the most densely settled Japanese districts, such as the rural regions of Sacra- mento County, 49.7 per cent, or virtually one half of all births were Japanese in the year 1919. Some Califomians have exao:orerated the significance JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 225 of this. They have assumed that this high birth-rate will continue indefinitely. All evidence from other migra- tions, however, points to the conclusion that the rate will slowly decline as the group prospers and grows. It must be admitted, though, that just a^ in the case of the European Catholics^ such as the Irish, the Italians, and the Poles, so with the Japanese: the influence of the priests and the religious faith work powerfully to keep up the hirth-rate. Many students of Japanese culture have commented upon the sincere belief of the ordinary Japanese that it is his religious duty to maintain and in- crease the splendor and power of the mikado and his people by bringing as many children into being as pos- sible. Where this idea is active, the decline of the birth- rate through material prosperity must be considerably checked. We may, therefore, expect from the Japanese some slight drop in births over a fairly long period, but not a decline equal to that which we find in the profoundly ir- religious stocks, who, like the Anglo-Saxon and the French, order their family life according to their personal wishes. It is certain that, in any event, the Japanese popula- tion here will double every thirty years or thereabouts so long as the Japanese villages preserve their social in- tegrity and their religious views. Thus by 1950, Cali- fornia will have about 200,000 Japanese and, by 1980, about 400,000 if nothing is done to change the present situation beyond checking further Japanese immigration altogether. This, too, without our reckoning on the 110,000 Japanese in Hawaii, whose American-born chil- 226 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? dren long before 1950 will be streaming into the Pacific coast country in search of opportunities that the tmy islands of their birth cannot offer. Mr. Warren S. Thompson has computed for us the probable growth of Japanese colonies in California for the next 40 years. He proceeds on three different as- sumptions. If Japanese immigration be excluded hence- forth, in 1960 the population will have grown to 228,279. If, secondly, the number of Japanese immigrants enter- ing California remains the same for each decade as it was during the decade from 1910-1920, in 1960 there will be 372,647 Japanese in California. Lastly, if the number of immigrants entering California during each of these decades bears the same ratio to the total Japanese popu- lation in California at the beginning of each decade as it did during the decade 1910-1920, by 1960 there will be 1,116,279 Japanese in California. The details of Mr. Thompson's estimates will be found in the Appendix. Before letting this affect our final judgment, we must note that if the white population of California continues to grow at the same rate that it has for the last sixty years, it will touch ten million in 1950 and thirty million in 1980. Such an increase is quite impossible, however. Many forces tend to reduce it greatly. One of them is the tremendous set-back American agriculture has received during the past year, as a result of incompetent agrarian legislation and the failure to establish foreign credits which might sustain the export market for farm products. Another force is the cer- tainty that, after the present depression, industrialism will revive much more promptly than agriculture, by JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 227 virtue of its superior organization, its more intelligent leadership, and its power over the banks ; and hence that the movement of farm workers toward the cities, which has been steadily increasing for a full generation, will continue unabated. A third influence is the probable reduction of European immigration at least for a few years to come. And a fourth is the natural operation of the law of diminishing returns in farming, which must before long be accelerated by the peculiar difficulties in getting water for irrigation throughout the richest sec- tions of California. The first three of these forces are more or less familiar to every reader who follows the news of the day. The last is not generally understood and calls for comment. The ordinary American thinks of water in terms of household use. On this basis of measurement, California has plenty of water for millions of kitchens and bath- rooms. But in a region of very low rainfall, we must first think of water for irrigation. And it requires little imagination to realize that a hundred-acre field of pota- toes or carrots must drink up a thousand gallons of water for every one which the farmer and his folks use in cups and wash basins. Now, with her supply of irrigation water, California is already living much closer to the margin of existence than the natives like to admit. It is doubtful whether the territory south of Los Angeles can maintain much more than double its present population, with its very low rainfall, and total lack of rivers and lakes. Already the water shortage in central California is so grave that, as a result of three years of subnormal rainfall, the authorities have been compelled to forbid the use of electricity for advertising display through the 228 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? summer and autumn of 1920, and San Francisco and other cities have greatly curtailed their street lighting. And many rice growers in the Sacramento Valley have been in trouble. Were the bulk of the next 2,000,000 new-comers in California to enter the farming districts and hence use immense quantities of water for irrigating, the ingenuity of the state engineers would be taxed to find the requisite flow. Beyond all doubt, then, the law of diminishing re- turns in agriculture will be accelerated considerably in its application all over the State. And this cannot fail to react adversely upon the growth of population at no distant date. California land boomers, to be sure, will tell you that the State can support sixty or seventy million people in comfort. But all such amateur statistics are preposter- ous. And even the optimistic agricultural experts on the Coast laugh at them. Add only two or three more mil- lions to the farming sections, and the cost of water will rise to a point where it makes serious inroads on the profits from all crops save the few that show the largest net returns, such as fancy oranges, fancy prunes, and the like. Thereafter the only way in which most farming can be made to pay will be by lengthening the farmer's day and trimming his workers' wages. And that has- tens the land downward toward the Asiatic standard of living, against which it is now up in arms. Now, this tendency would work to the advantage of the Japanese or any other race with a low standard of living. For it will be the white farmer who will drop out of the game first, as profits and comforts dwindle as a result of water shortage and" its attendant hardships. The Asi- JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 229 atic, accustomed to harder work, longer hours, and a smaller return per unit of labor, would therefore outlive the American under such conditions. Here is the paradox then : The more white people in California, the easier it will be for the Japanese to win in competition. Many Americans will laugh at this, but some day they will change their tune ; for the paradox is an inexorable result of a fundamental law of economics working in a region where a high and a low standard of living come into conflict. Its beginnings are already visible. JAPANESE VIRTUES AND DEFECTS Many Americans east of the Rockies suppose that the . Californian feels toward the Japanese pretty much as his fathers did toward the Chinese who came in on the tail of the gold rush. They suppose that he regards the new- comer as dirty, knavish, superstitious, and altogether in- ferior to the noble white man. This view, which has recently been accepted by "The Nation" and some other I papers, has not the slightest foundation in fact. Inter- , views with farmers and business men from the Japanese : districts of California reveal the very opposite opinion, and so wide-spread is this opposite opinion that nearly all newspapers of the State have repeatedly expressed it in the clearest language. It is no suave diplomatic camouflage which Governor Stephens indulges in when he says, in a letter to Secretary of State Colby: "It is also proper to state that I believe I speak the feelings of our people wlien I express to you a full recognition of the many admirable qualities of the Japanese people. We assume no arrogant superiority or race or culture over them. Their 230 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? art, their literature, their philosophy, and in recent years, their scientific attainments have gained for them a respect from the white peoples in which we, who know them so well, fully share. We have learned to admire the brilliancy of their art and the genius that these people display. We respect their deep philosophy which flows so placidly out of that wonder- ful past of theirs and which has come down through ages that antedate our Christian era. We join with the entire civilized world in our admiration of the tremendous strides which the Japanese nation has made in the last two generations, unpar- alleled as its careers is in the history of nations. We respect the right of the Japanese to their true development and to the attainment of their destiny." This truly represents the sentiment of everybody in California except the blatherskites, who, while unpleas- antly numerous in San Francisco and Sacramento, are still a negligible fraction of the citizenry. The truth is that for the first time in American his- tory we find here the virtues of immigrants being largely responsible for the feeling against their presence in our land. Here are a few facts of common knowledge in California that contribute to this anomalous situa- tion. The Japanese is not ''cheap labor." The Chinese coolie used to work for anything he could get, from fifty cents a day up. But does the Japanese follow suit? Far from it. He is too shrewd and too progressive. He exacts "all the traffic will bear" in the most thoroughly Yankee fashion. The prevailing rate of wages which the common Japanese farm hand was getting last year was $4.50 per day. In the cities Japanese cooks, waiters, valets, barbers and other similar workers ask as much as or even more than their white competitors. The valets JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 231 notably can command considerably more than most whites, thanks to their gentle manners, their thorough- ness, and their lack of resentment toward long and ir- regular hours. In matters of personal cleanliness the Japanese is im- measurably superior to the Chinese coolie and consider- ably above the Russian Jews, Italians, Slovaks, Irish and other European stocks. This is one of the first things to strike the Eastern observer who is familiar with the for- eign settlements in New York, Philadelphia, and other Atlantic centers. But, like these aliens, the Japanese finds himself, as a poor and unestablished new-comer, compelled to inhabit dwellings and neighborhoods of the lowest types until he can save money enough to seek more congenial quarters. This appears clearly in the report made to the State Board of Control by Edward A. Brown, chief sanitary engineer of the California State Commission on Immi- gration and Housing. Speaking first of the farm labor camps out in the country districts, he says : "One very noticeable feature in a Japanese labor camp where both American and Japanese laborers are employed is that the quarters provided for Japanese are generally much better than those provided for Americans. "At every camp where Japanese are employed, a bath is pro- vided (Japanese type). The Japanese are very clean about their persons, not so much about the living quarters; open toilets, open drains from the kitchen sink, unscreened dining and cooking quarters and living quarters generally littered with boxes, bags, etc. Their sleeping quarters are, as a rule, a platform built the length of the structure and the bunks closed in by boards or burlap, a small opening being left in the wall, which has a sliding board. Camp inspectors order the re- 232 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? moval of all such enclosures and insist that light and fresh air be admitted into the sleeping quarters. "In the cities, the Japanese select some district to live in. Frequently it is a district where the former residents have been outlawed. From the first, they start to move into the better parts of the cities. A Japanese quarter in any city of California will show the same conditions — houses crowded, ill smelling, cluttered up with various foodstuffs, a store in front and living quarters in the rear. Near Santa Monica in Los Angeles County, is a Japanese fishing village which I had occasion to investigate. Shack houses, each a fish drying place, open toilets, open sewers, and a stench that made the salt air from the ocean negligible, was the condition that I found. I merely use this as an example of what the usual conditions are where Japanese live. "The Japanese hotels and boarding houses in Sacramento are, for the most part, poor. They are old buildings, usually with- out heat in the rooms and occasionally with no bathroom in the building. There usually is a toilet to each floor. There are poor accommodations for visiting Japanese, there being no first-class hotel. "In the rural districts, conditions are crowded, but they at least have bathing facilities where the Japanese bathe almost daily when they have the opportunity. In the rice growing districts, I notice that the Japanese provide good accommoda- tions for their own people, putting up more or less permanent houses with bathing facilities, etc. In the fruit growing dis- tricts along the Sacramento River and elsewhere, as well as in the vegetable growing districts on the islands, conditions are not so good. They usually have some old cabin or cabins w^hich have been on the place for years and which are veiy often in a filthy condition. The Japanese farmer usually feeds bis help at his own table and during the busy season their eat- ing quarters are exceedingly crowded. As the Secretary of the Japanese Association of the Sacramento Valley put it, 'On JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 233 account of short leases the Japanese are able to obtain, they do not feel justified in putting up good accommodations. It is true the tenants eat well, wear good clothes and wear dia- monds, but do not build good houses/ " Everywhere in California it is quite plain that, as fast as a Japanese family gets on its feet financially, it seeks cleaner and pleasanter quarters, goes to the movies, con- sumes ice-cream soda, buys an auto and in every other way adopts American tastes and little indulgences. At the same time it appears to save money more rapidly than the ordinary American family on the same economic level, and thus advances more rapidly. In this there is no mystery. What happens is that all members of the Japanese family work except the babies, while in the American family only the father and the adult children earn money. I The Japanese exhibits higher personal morality than ' any other immigrant type in all matters of conforming to the law. Both in Hawaii and California, it is a matter I of record that Japanese are rarely arrested for any cause, iand few actions are brought against them. Doubtless this is due in some measure to their realization of the i feeling against them and the consequent need of keeping out of trouble. But it is probably in the main an ancient habit. We find it noted by many travelers in Japan. I In another connection we have pointed out that commer- cial dishonesty in Japan is common and tolerated as a matter of caste ethics. Of this we see little in California, for the simple reason that the great bulk of the Japanese there are farmers, artisans, and students, among whom that low moral standard does not prevail in the father- land. 234 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Among Californians to-day there is little disagreement as to these characteristics of their unwelcome invaders. Why, then, should there be such opposition to the yellow influx? To answer this question, we must report some facts about Californians which, though fairly well known, have not been cited as having a vital bearing on the Oriental issue. And again we must plunge into the psy- chology of peoples, for here lies the nub of the whole business. CHAPTER 20 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS BOSTON, according to an ancient jest, is not a place but a state of mind, and this remark fits California. The wag who first perpetrated the line probably did not realize what a wealth of wisdom lay buried in the words. Unwittingly, he came amazingly close to defining true culture. For true culture is an organized set of clearly recognized desires the attaining of which has been worked out in a number of fairly definite group habits. People are cultivated when they have reflected upon their own natural impulses, wishes, ideals, and aspiration, have har- monized these to some degree, and have then worked out methods of satisfying them. The first requisite of estab- lishing any culture is to ''know your own mind," in the every-day sense of this phrase. The second requisite is to ascertain which of your many desires are reconcilable and which are irreconcilable, and to give up the latter in order that you may better achieve the former. The final requisite is to devise ways and means of achieving these. By long trying and testing, these ways and means eventually become clear and fixed habits. A culture may be horribly crude, as is that of the Hindu, or it may be refined, like that of old Boston. Its quality depends, of course, upon the intelligence, the in- genuity, and the will power of him who sets out to or- 235 236 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ganize liis wishes and life habits. But of all cultures high and low, one thing is equally true: Eaeli is a fairly complete system of life habits so closely interlocked and adjusted to one another that, once they are estab- lished in an adult, they can be broken do\vn only with great A^olence and injury. Every psychologist is familiar with this fact. It is no longer open to doubt. We know how hard it is to try to make over even one or two old habits in a man of thirty. If he is normal, his behavior has become so fixed that of his own volition he cannot drop an old manner and take up a new one. To make him do this, we must exert pressure upon him from without. We must curse him, exhort him, threaten to discharge him, drop him from good society, or deprive him of things which he needs in carrying on the old habit. There is only one instance in which the habit change can be effected hy the man himself, and this is not an exception to our general rule, but only an obscure case of it. If the habit gets him into trouble and he comes to recognize that it is the cause of his trouble, then he may set about to discard it. Bid he will do this only when the disturbance the habit causes is worse than the disturbance that surrendering it causes. For example, he may have fallen into alcoholism to such a degree that he is habitually late and dull in his business, slovenly in dress, and sociall}^ undesirable. He may be dropped from a club, he may lose a good job, and boys on the street may deride him. All of which comes into conflict with other habits and strong desires such as playing bridge with neighbor Smith, going to the theater with his wife and son, aspiring to become a di- rector of the company he works for, and so on. If these THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 237 are strong, they may move him to cut out the drinking. But, as is well known, they usually have to be very strong if they are to have that result. We may put it in another manner to bring out its bear- ing on the Japanese issue in California. An established habit may be broken down only hy pressure, not by mere argument or any other play of ideas. The pressure may come from without, as in the case of the Allies compelling the Germans to give up their kaiser habit and affect the outer habits of democracy; or the pressure may come from within, as in the case of the Russians giving up their czar habit after the horrible catastrophes of the Carpathian campaigns revealed to the dullest muzhik that his czar habit was even worse than his vodka habit. Unless there is a severe and sustained irritation, discom- fort, or costly inefficiency which men recognize as the consequences of a habit, they are physically unable to break the latter. The loftiest moral philosophy will not shatter it. The most convincing logic will rebound from it like a rubber ball. How clearly this has appeared in the history of many noble campaigns to better humanity! Look at the rec- ord of alcoholism. For many years thousands of ear- nest men and women strained every nerve to persuade drinkers that their habit was immoral. They quoted the Scriptures. They appealed to the so-called ''better judg- ment" and the Christian conscience. But nothing hap- pened. The first great drive against the habit failed ut- terly, to the bewilderment of every original teetotaler. Some years afterward the appeal to reason and religion was dropped. A new appeal was made, this time to obvious and evil facts. The actual harm done by the 238 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ordinary saloons was simply pointed out in statistics, in news stories, in pictures. The physiological effects of alcohol were published luridly and often, and, be it said, mendaciously. Hospitals and insane asylums and jails were ransacked for horrible examples, all of which were held up to public gaze. And finally the presidents and directors of our great industries were persuaded to make scientific tests, the outcome of which demonstrated that every employee of theirs who drank regularly was a poor investment. In conjunction with all this long campaign of proving that liquor was a real disturbance in life there ran the education of the rising generation. Boys and girls were shown the evils of alcoholism before they built up drink habits, and thus they fell into ways of abstinence naturally. Thus, by bringing immense eco- nomic and educational pressure to bear, and pointing out in minute detail where and how the habit was caus- ing harm in daily life and thwarting many high desires, the drive won, at least so far as legislation brings victory. If we had time, we might similarly recount the history of the whole Christian missionary movement in Asia and show how the same thing has occurred there. The well- meaning efforts to break down Asiatic life habits by passing around Bibles and teaching the Ten Command- ments and coaxing natives to church went on for many years with results so meager that finally the more intel- ligent missionaries themselves admitted that there was something profoundly wrong with their system. Not knowing modem psychology, they could not analyze it completely, but their common sense guided them in the right direction. They did not understand that the re- ligious and moral ideas they were talking at the Asiatics THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 239 were in reality the mere verbal expression of a highly intricate set of life habits which grew up under peculiar conditions in the Mediterranean countries, and have been slowly and slightly changed in the course of many generations of European life. They did not realize that the written words of ethics and piety never were the cause of those habits, but only the subsequent expression of them. Neither did they know that the waj^s of the Asiatic were as deep as life itself, and that those colossal systems of personal and social habits could no more be altered by sermons and prayers than the tides of the Pa- cific can be altered by Christian Science. They could not see that the cultures of the Hindus, the Chinamen, and the Japanese were each an organization of hundreds of established nervous reactions as stable as your habit of hand-writing and your neighbor's habit of reading his morning newspaper. And they did not know that such habit systems break down only under enormous pressure from within or without, just as the habit of chewing to- bacco or going to church does. Thus misinformed, the entire first movement in foreign mission work was not only a total failure, it was a blunder that permanently injured Western culture in the eyes of the Orientals, as everybody now admits. Not until the workers took up social service and practical education did they begin to make a worthwhile impression upon Asia. And even then it is more than doubtful that they would have made the slightest headway had it not been for the tremendous and often outrageous pressure from without which the European powers exerted upon Asiatics to buy European goods and adopt European ways. Now what has all this to do with the crisis in Califor- 240 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? nia? "Well, it brings us to the very heart of the whole matter. The crisis has not grown out of race prejudice in the ordinary sense of the term, and it is not merely economic, although economic factors are prominent in it. It is a conflict of two highly organized adult habits. Neither culture can merge into the other during the lifetime of the present adult whites and adult Japanese unless there is some tremendous pressure from within the members of one group or else some similar pressure brought to bear from without. There is no indication that pressure of either sort exists or is likely to arise. The Japanese are satisfied with their group and personal habits, and the Califomians are satis- fied with theirs. The Japanese cannot compel the Cali- fomians by external pressure to adopt the Japanese hab- its, nor can the Californians force the Japanese to adopt theirs. It would require a sizable book to describe the hun- dreds of habits involved in these two cultures, but there are some which must be pointed out. Only a trained psychologist will appreciate the depths to which some of these folk-ways sink in the nature of man. Californians, especially in the farming regions where the Japanese have appeared, are the most homogeneous group of the older American stocks in all the United States to-day. They are the descendants of the Argo- nauts and the other men of New England and the North Atlantic States who came in the great gold rush of 1849. These men were of the old hardy, adventuring type, the sort that England, and, to a lesser degree, Germany and France, sent forth in wave after wave ever since the days THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 241 of Columbus. They were rough and ready, quick on the trigger, on the make, and as hard as nails, not always very ''nice folks" or agreeable in an argument, but ad- mirably adapted to the job of conquering the wilderness. Never were there more complete individualists than these pioneers. If they hadn't been constitutionally fond of going it alone, they never would have climbed aboard their prairie-schooners and trailed the setting sun. Nat- ural selection, therefore, filled California with the most ''unsocial" inhabitants ever gathered in an isolated re- gion. Only in Australia do we find their like, and even there we find a marked difference in that early Austra- lians were convicts, and hence largely anti-social rather than merely unsocial. The individualism of the fathers has descended upon the sons. To-day California is the last stronghold of that elder American complex of habits. To be sure, the more primitive manifestations of it have disappeared. Men no longer pack their kits and strike off back coun- try in disgust whenever the railroad comes within twenty miles of their ranch. But they do resent routine labor in shops and factories, the time clock, efficiency experts, and personnel managers. This, at least, is the testimony of some observers in the San Francisco Bay industrial district. And to this dislike of discipline they trace some of the intensity of the many labor troubles that have scourged the Pacific coast for a full decade. We see the same rank individualism on the side of the property-owners and employers, too. Until the World War and the tremendous external pressure from the Fed- eral Government struck California, it is notorious that men in control of lumber-camps, mines, large ranches, 242 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? and many industrial concerns ignored both the rights and the creature comforts of their employees to a scan- dalous degree. Filthy bunk-houses were provided for harvest hands. Bedding that swarmed with lice was the best the lumberjack got. Workers who came from a dis- tance were left to find transportation as best they could except when crops were in danger of spoiling through lack of quick harvesters. The notion of medical super- vision for rural and back-country laborers had not yet been born. All of this, and more, has been extensively proved by special investigators, both state and federal, and was published in official bulletins during the war. It does not prove any special depravity in the California employer. It merely demonstrates what every social psy- chologist knows is a universal law of human nature; namely, that the old habits which such men acquired thirty or forty years ago continue as long as some great force from within or without does not develop to shatter them. These men were doing what nearly all employers were doing fifty years ago, and the pressure to change struck California long after it had largely succeeded in Europe and in our own East. This same crude individualism in the old days led to land grabbing and the wholesale piracy of water rights. The evil effects produced by these abuses are continuing to poison political and rural life all over California. Three interests, the Miller & Lux Company, the Kern County Land Company, and the Southern Pacific Rail- road, still own more acres in the State than there are in the German Empire. Not many years ago a man on horseback starting from the northern boundary of the State, or even well over in Oregon, could ride to Mexico THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 243 through the entire length of the State without getting off land owned by the Miller & Lux Company, which had as many men on horseback guarding its fourteen million acres from hunters, squatters and tramps as there were in the United States cavalry before the present war. Not even these figures, however, convey the true meaning of landlordism in California. It must be added that the early land grabbers naturally pounced upon the well watered tracts first of all, with the result that to- day more than one-half of all the land in California which has water sufficient for farming is in the hands of a dozen or two men and companies. Farm experts as- sure me that Henry Miller, of the Miller & Lux Com- pany, alone owns between one-fifth and one-sixth of all the irrigated acreage in the State. The Natomas Com- pany holds about 60,000 acres. The Kern County Land Company possesses not far from 125,000 acres. All of which is, to be sure, a mere trifle as compared either with the size of California or with the total holdings of these and other large landlords; but an ominous thing when we bear in mind that the real California, the place where men can make homes and develop the country permanently, is just these few thousand square miles where water flows. The history of land grabbing corruptions in California shows that in many of the best rural districts to-day the small farmer is still laboring under severe handicaps, thanks largely to grossly unjust laws regulating the dis- tribution of water for irrigation. Tax assessments are manipulated by the big land owners so that often land which, it is declared, could not be bought for $200 an acre is assessed at $13.90. In Kern County, which is 244^ MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? owned almost entirely by the Kern County Land Com- pany, much land assessed at about $2 an acre sells for $200. The State Commission on Land Colonization says: "California has an immense area of fertile and unpeo- pled land . . . comparatively few settlers are coming here, and many who came in recent years have left. Costly advertising and still more costly personal solici- tations have not served to attract colonists. We have not found a single settler who, bringing with him only lim- ited capital, has been able to pay for his land in the time agreed upon in his contract." Is it to be wondered at that the big land holders are anxious to fill their estates with Chinese and Japanese? The plain truth is not pleasant but must be spoken. California — and I mean the real California, not the over- boomed vacationist Los Angeles nor busy, commercial San Francisco — is still a generation behind the rest of the country in its landlordism. These royal estates and a hundred others of princely extent and richness still are California. The Great Valley, which is the only possible center of large rural population, is filled with the horizon- wide holdings that were annexed, sometimes honestly but more often by murder and fraud, by the old pioneers and the sharpers who came slinking in behind them. The descendants of these adventurers and buccaneers domi- nate politics in many regions and naturally use their power to retain power. They retain the old pre-civilized contempt for the common laborer and the small farmer. Their outlook on life is admirably exhibited by one of their own spokesmen, the Los Angeles ''Times," which is owned by a family whose record of land dealings in THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 245 California and Mexico and whose attitude toward the working classes make the Junkers of East Prussia seem more or less benign philanthropists. These people have strongly advocated the importation of Chinese coolies, for the blessed purpose of operating their estates. To quote the ''Times": "If a machine were to be invented which could do all the arduous work now performed by hand on the farms, it would be welcomed as a Godsend. That machine would mean in- creased production and a lowered cost of living. Then why the protest against emplojdng a human machine to do the work? Who would be injured if 1,000,000 Chinamen were brought to this country to work on the farms or where needed, and if 100,000 of them were to be emploj^ed in California? They would replace none of the white workers in California in- dustries. The only ones to be affected would be the Japanese farmers. This influx of Chinese workmen would break the Japanese corner on the food market. The workers would be able to live for less. The grocery and vegetable bill of the average Los Angeles housewife would be cut in half in a year; and not a single white person in Los Angeles would be thrown out of employment. Why are we shrinking from a solution of the labor problem which would be of such general benefits What the hypothetical reduction of food prices would do to the small American farmer, deponent sayeth not. And for the excellent reason that he does not care. The California Junker loses no sleep over the woes of the white man with fifty or a hundred acres. All he wants is to make California into an old Mexico, a place of stu- pendous haciendas managed by an expert or two and tilled by thousands of peons and coolies at a dollar a day — or less, if the scoundrels can be persuaded to take 246 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? it. As he owns whole towns and even counties, he is a law unto himself, exactly like the petty Oriental poten- tate. And the American who ventures to criticize or amend his enactments must expect a traitor 's fate. The history of California, even down to the present, is smeared crimson with the blood of decent, freedom-loving Americans shot down in ambush by cow punchers and greasers in the hire of some land-rich thug who disliked being sued in his own hired court before his own hired judge and jury and there exposed as a crook. How strongly this has colored the small farmer's out- look is revealed in the remark made to me by a Kern County farmer last summer. "If we fellow^s could only hang about three hundred hand-picked land crooks," said he soberly, ''and then make Elwood Mead dictator for life and give him all the hemp he needed and a firing squad, California would be fit to join the United States in a few years. Right now it 's a rich man's heaven and a poor man's hell." I do not venture an opinion on this genial program. I pass it on as evidence showing up the psychology of the crisis. The small farmer of the Great Valley, so far as I have seen him and listened to him, certainly regards the influx of Japanese as a powerful aid in enabling the old Junkers to get cheap labor with which to work their estates, thereby underselling the hundred-acre American and later selling off tracts to the Japanese as fast as they save enough to buy. At the end of the process, the small farmer foresees himself and all his kind squeezed be- tween a horde of small Oriental farmers and the old estates, all manned with a constantly replenished stream THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 247 of Japanese who, for their first two or three years in our country, will work hard in order to get ahead. This prospect makes the small farmer inclined to pack up and get out the minute he sees powerfully organized groups of Japanese settling around his ranch. His ex- perience with powerful groups has taught him that they bring bad luck to the money in his jeans. He expects them to be crooks. He expects them to play politics against him. And he does not expect much help from the Government or from his neighbors in holding his own against such intruders. This habit of mind and action, while unquestionably weakening fast in more progressive districts, still lingers in its old, purity and power in the Great Valley. The same pioneer habit which led men to take the law into their own hands and to form vigilance committees has lately reappeared in the anti-Japanese movement. During 1920, in many localities of California, citizens who disliked the Japanese imitated the men of '49 and "served notice" on the intruders. The case of the Se- bastopol farmers is fairly typical. A rancher by the name of Holm received a flattering offer for his twenty- acre apple-orchard from one JJyeda, a Japanese. He ac- cepted the offer, engaged an attorney to draw up the papers, then went to the local bank president with regard to the deed. At this stage of the game some of the Amer- ican Legion members heard of it and took the matter in hand. They told Holm and his attorney that the deal could not go through. And it did not. Anybody who knows California realizes that the would-be buyer acted wisely in not appealing to the law, for the rougher ele- 248 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ments of the population are coming to show the same su- periority to the law which we have seen for many years all over the South in the Southerners' dealings wdth the negro. Contrast with all this the Japanese habits of submerg- ing oneself utterly in the group and relying on the Gov- ernment for everything. The yellow man is as utterly a socialist as the native son is an individualist. We have pointed out elsewhere the grip these social habits have upon the ordinary man in Japan. The Japanese them- selves regard it as a national trait and have a common name for it, Seifumanno-Shugi. It rests on the ancient rule of the family and the clan which prevailed for thou- sands of years. We have shown how the Japanese Gov- ernment owns and manages railways, steamship lines, postal and telegraph and telephone systems, gas, water, and electric-light plants, the tobacco business, the salt monopoly, the camphor industry, and how it even domi- nates the management of the banks and many large man- ufacturing concerns. And we have told how the Japa- nese farmers in California come from certain rural clans, bring their clan customs with them, and pool their for- tunes and their services under the rule of the clan lead- ers. Now, this profound difference in going at tasks has already led to much friction in California. Look at the way Japanese districts have built up. Easterners do not realize the team play the Japanese use in this enterprise, and still less the psychological effect upon the whites in the region ''invaded." Elwood Mead has investigated many of these developments, and finds that what happens is something like this: a few Japanese come to work in THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 249 the neighborhood for a year or two, during which time they study the soils and crops and learn which tracts are the best. Next, backed by members of their clan who have not yet appeared, they lease some of the desirable acreage, paying, if necessary, a rental far far above the sums a white man would pay. All over the State they have thus forced up the rental value abnormally. Almost invariably, the white owner of the land is de- lighted to make so much profit, so he signs the lease con- tract. From that time on, the Japanese begin bobbing up, and in a short time they have picked up all the good rentable land about a village. They create their own co- operative buying and selling organization. They fill the public schools with their children. They set up native schools. They practise Buddhism. As soon as possible, they begin bu^^ing farm land either in the names of their American-born babies or else through corporations which easily evade the intent of the law prohibiting aliens from acquiring title to real estate. Once they possess such land in quantity, they begin to force down the rents they have been paying for leased farms ; and as many Amer- ican farmers have, by this stage of the game, left the dis- trict in disgust, they find this fairly easy. In some neighborhoods, rents have first been driven up to three or four times the prevailing scale, only to be driven down later, after foothold had been secured, well below the earlier level. And by reason of the presence of a Japa- nese colony, the market value of such acreage drops sharply, for no whites will ever move into a Japanese dis- trict. Thus the Japanese manage to buy up all they wish at a bargain. In these methods no consistent American can find a 250 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? moral wrong. They are not nearly so questionable as scores of business practices favored by our own commer- cial classes. They are shrewd : that is the worst one can say of them. But the essential fact is that they anger the whites who have been the victims of the habit. No man likes to see the value of his farm dwindle as the result of alien neighbors. No man likes to see his chil- dren in school with a crowd of foreign children who speak their own language and herd apart from his own. No man likes to see his old friends move away one by one, leaving him alone in the midst of people whose tongue he does not speak and with whom he can have no social intercourse, even if he tries to. And no farmer ^s wife likes to be left without women to gossip with. These hundred and one daily little habits are life. I know that many Easterners and some Califomians will say that, underneath all this dislike, there certainly runs a strain of vicious race prejudice. This, however, cannot well be defended. For Californians themselves have unwittingly supplied pretty conclusive evidence that race feeling has little or nothing to do with the whole matter. Let me tell the story of the Fresno Armenians. It is enlightening. THE CASE OF THE ARMENIANS Climb aboard an auto anywhere in the upper San Joaquin Valley and, working northward slowly, keep an eye on the waj^side signs. Before you reach the mile- post that tells you Fresno is fifty miles away, you will begin to encounter the following legend: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 251 NO JAPS OR ARMENIANS WANTED! You will see it in conspicuous letters in front of ranch, houses and sometimes at the ends of side roads that lead far back to the rims of the great flats. If you are a stranger, you will wonder why the authors of these brusque warnings have coupled the Japanese and the long-suffering Armenians thus. And if you are an in- quisitive wayfarer and hobnob with the natives, you will soon come upon the answer to your question. When you do, you will see the signs in a new light. You will see in them an abridged treatise on economics and social psy- chology. You will understand many things about the Japanese crisis which have been dark — or else darkened. The facts behind the signs prove conclusively that the agitation against the Japanese people in California is not founded measurably upon a genuine race prejudice comparable to the feeling which has prompted many Texas villagers to post notices at the ends of their main street commanding: "Nigger! Move on!" The Ar- menian is a white man. Why should he be coupled with the Japanese in the hostile thoughts of the San Joaquin Valley farmers? Let me give you the farmers' own an- swers to this question, as I got it from a number of them. In the Fresno district there are, so the farmers state, about 16,000 Armenians. (This figure I have not been able to check up in census reports, but it is certain that the number is high in any event.) Coming from a land where fig culture has been practised for centuries, these aliens brought with them an unusual degree of skill in handling tree, fruit, and the merchandising thereof. 252 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Now the fig is a peculiarly difficult proposition, for a number of purely technical reasons into which we need not go here, beyond saying that the fruit is easily dam- aged, both on the tree and in the picking, does not keep at all well, and involves much delicate hand labor. Some years ago there was a fig boom in various parts of Cali- fornia, during which many Americans who had pleasant boyhood memories about one's ''vine and fig tree," and also wanted to make the enormous profits which the land boomers assured them were as easy as eating figs, set out thousands of trees. The Armenians began coming in and, so allege a few citizens, sat back and watched the proceedings with obvious interest. Presently some of the new fig enthusiasts became dis- couraged. Figs seemed to show evil inclinations to de- velop sundry diseases, to drop off from their appointed branches prematurely, and to spoil over night. Also labor was harder and harder to get when wanted. And, so I am informed, only five or six years ago, you might have bought figs around Fresno at about a fifth of their present price, and fig acreage was being offered at all sorts of prices from $250 to $500 an acre. Then the onlooking Armenians began buying in. Of course, they already had developed considerable holdings of their own and had been prospering mightily ; thus they were finan- cially well fixed for annexing ever more acres. The Americans went back to alfalfa, hens, or the movies. The Armenians nursed figs. And the figs grew lustily. The Armenians multiplied in numbers and in wealth. They bought vast limousines and racing cars. They wore fine silks and smoked heavy cigars. And with prosperity they seem, so it is alleged, to have developed a THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 253 feeling of superiority and aloofness toward the Ameri- cans which the Americans do not enjoy. As two men put it to me, ' ' whenever you see an auto breaking all the speed laws around Fresno and running over babies, you may bank on it that there 's an Armenian at the wheel. ' ' Furthermore, it must be added sorrowfully but in the interest of history, most of the men I chanced to speak to on the whole subject declared that the business meth- ods of the Armenians fully justified the Turks in their treatment of those people for the past century or two. From school teachers down to farm hands came the same verdict : the Armenian is altogether too sharp in his buy- ing and selling, and he works with others of his own kind to outwit or even to defraud the native. There is no need of going into unpleasant details on this point. Everybody who has collected facts about the Armenians is only too familiar with this indictment, which has be- come a part of the folklore of the entire Mediterranean countrj^ where for untold generations the saying has been current, in a number of variants: ''It takes two Italians to outwit a Greek, two Greeks to outwit a Jew, and two Jews to outwit an Armenian." The fact is clear. San Joaquin Valley farmers dislike the Armenian because he has been shrewder than they — often unscrupulously so — and because he has organized his own kind in economic competition against the older peoples of the land and because their losses have in many cases been his gain, as in the instance of the fig lands which, in the past few years, have risen to as high as $2,000 an acre in value — the very same acres which Americans sold in disgust a few years earlier for $250 to $500. 254 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Against the Armenian it is impossible to raise the cry of the hostile race. He is as much a white man as any of the mingled bloods of the Near East and probably more white than many of the Sicilians we welcome to our shores. So in the criticisms of him we get the simple truth more readily than in the case of the Japanese. As we have elsewhere shown, the main tide of feeling against the yellow man is not his yellowness; it is his business energy, skill, persistence, and team work, along with which goes his evident sense of pride, or even superiority. The race cry is, in nine out of ten cases, a simple camou- flage that saves the face of the complainant. It is un- pleasant to admit that any stranger from overseas is smarter than you are. So, when you want to drive him out of his victorious competition with you, it is more satisfactory to say that East is East and West is West, and the twain can never meet. Once more we are brought back to the same old things — the deep conflict between group habits of work and living. It is not a mere local issue. The California crisis is only one of a thousand aspects of a world-wide struggle that will go on as long as human progress is possible. California's easy-going habits Turn, now, to another point of contrast. The outward and visible behavior of men is, and must be, the basis of all mutual understanding and approachment, and in this respect Californians and Japanese are miles apart. The Californian is a highly expressive person. He is frank and outspoken in the commoner exchange of ideas and feelings. In the higher forms he exhibits a wealth THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 255 and variety of artistic expression conspicuously above that of his countrymen over the mountains. California notoriously produces more poets, more artists, more sing- ers, more actors, and more authors to the square inch than any other part of North America. As a result of this, she has attracted many such from the East, thereby increasing the natural selection, the number, and influ- ence of this mental type. Art has come to play an aston- ishing part in the daily life of the people. It receives more attention in the public schools and the universities than anywhere in the East, and its many forms are cul- tivated with assiduity in half a hundred towns and art colonies. California is to America what Italy used to be to Europe, in aspiration at least, if not always in fact. This trait, like any other, sometimes develops in a use- less or even injurious form. In California it frequently plays havoc with the newspapers. Nowhere else in our country do editors and reporters allow their personal emo- tions and prejudices to disturb their thinking and cor- rupt the news so grossly and so often as in the Golden State. Outbursts of extravagant enthusiasm, red hate, and lyric political oratory are as common here as they are rare in New York and Chicago, outside of the Hearst papers, which are a California product in every respect. Journalists are familiar with the undue attention given in the Los Angeles and San Francisco papers to domestic and other petty happenings that have only an emotional value, and also with their amazing distortion of the sim- plest, most straightforward events. A notable instance of this latter was the absurd and infantile twisting and lying about the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco by the newspapers of that town. The passions 256 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? of cheap politics and personal spites corrupted the news columns of all save one paper so disgracefully that the National Committee felt constrained to publish a protest. To the psychologist this inability to control one's emo- tions and passions in such a simple matter as reporting a convention is partly a phase of that same artistic expres- siveness which we have pointed out. This weakness of the artistic temperament has, oddly enough, been a great hindrance in the way of solving the Japanese question. It has caused American readers east of the Rockies to laugh at the hysterical Calif ornians and their fantastic charges against the Japanese. What most of us have been reading in California newspapers for the last fifteen years about the Japanese has largely war- ranted the conclusion, now generally held, that Califor- nians are, as '*The Nation" has said, ** suffering from a bad case of nerves." The editor of this volume has inspected several hun- dred California newspaper reports and editorials about the Japanese over the last ten-year period, and finds a painfully high percentage of nonsense, malice, and hys- teria in them. One recent instance may be cited to show the total lack of intelligence on the part of the editors and reporters alike in dealing with a difficult and delicate po- litical problem. In Jul}^, 1920, several deaths occurred in and around San Francisco, which, according to some physicians, might have been caused by the eating of unclean vege- tables. A bright editor sent a bright reporter out to cover the story. The reporter, if we may judge from subsequent journalistic events, did not interview the phy- sicians minutely, if at all; he hastened with that uner- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 257 ring instinct for news which is the glory of his craft, straight to the places where vegetables come from and investigated them. Naturally, the vegetables were under the tutelage of some Japanese, as nearly all vegetables are in that State. The reporter looked into the methods of these sons of the soil in bringing up the vegetables. He found a shocking state of affairs. It appeared that the detestable Oriental was encouraging the vegetables by applying to them liquid sewage and manure. This scandal got into the front pages of the newspapers the very next day. Later it was elaborated, and edi- torials were woven around it, showing that the Japanese and their filthy habits are a menace to the white race and must be driven out. Shall Californians die of typhoid that Japanese may got rich selling lettuce and onions? This was no light matter. It was soon taken up and seriously discussed by editors, and even a scientific dis- sertation was written by a young man who was toiling for a Ph.D. degree at the Universit^^ of California. For ten days after the event I carefully watched the development of this topic in the California papers. Nowhere did there appear the obvious and crushing reply to this vicious nonsense. Not an editor, so far as could be seen, had enough interest in the truth to call attention to the fact that all intensive farmers in Italy, Germany, France, England, and the United States have been applying all the liquid sewage and manure they could get to their vegetables ever since the inven- tion of carrots. Not an editor mentioned that the high- est agricultural experts recommended the practice. Not an editor mentioned that what the unfortunate deaths really meant was, not that the Japanese gardeners are a 258 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? menace, but simply that some San Francisco kitchen help- ers are slovens. They should have washed the vegetables properly, and didn't. Probably they were reading the thrilling newspaper tales of murder and adultery while rinsing the lettuce. You may say that this case is trivial. Taken by itself, it is ; but it is only one of a million everyday acts which make up the habitual behavior of men. And this habit- ual behavior is the stuff that culture and standards of morality are made of. How far the Japanese is from such emotional habits! A more impassive and imperturbable human being never lived than the average man from Nippon, unless it be the Chinese coolie. Unlike the upper-class Japanese, who loves laughter and wit, the peasant is as stolid as the German countryman. Insulted, he does not rage; amused, he seldom smiles; exalted, he does not toss his hat into the air and whoop; conversed with, he says no more than is needful to convey his opinion on the mat- ter in hand. Now this can create but one impression on the white man ; to him it means that the Japanese is con- cealing his feelings and thoughts for some purpose. For the white man cannot imagine his doing it unless there were some special reason to do so. The Westerner does not hide his feelings and impulses except when he is playing poker. No wonder that the Califomian feels uneasy and suspicious in his dealings with the Japanese ! That is how anybody with an expressive temperament must feel in the presence of a man whose face is a mask and whose words are always few, polite, and precise. The next contrast is one which^ derives from the eco- nomic peculiarities of California. Without checking up THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 259 the statistics of the matter, we may hazard the statement that California is the richest region in the world, both in potential resources per capita and in the goods avail- able and enjoyed by her citizens. To get a faint idea of her high standard of living, imagine that everybody now living on the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Florida and for one hundred miles inland were driven out, and the entire stretch presented to the inhabitants of New York City. The happy profit-sharing that would ensue would resemble life in California on its material side, at least. An even year-round climate, rich farms, immense grazing-lands for sheep and cattle, vast forests, an ocean of fish, lakes of petroleum, and many mines, all combine to make life easy. The cost of living in California is still relatively low, despite wars and inflations of the once honest dollar. Both the necessities and the luxuries are easy to win as compared with the East. The fortunes made by California miners, farmers, cattlemen, and ship- builders since 1914 are colossal, and this wealth has been spread over more or less the entire white population. Now, such prosperity and easy living begets liberality and free spending. It also encourages an easy-going disposition. These very traits stood out prominent in Californians long before the war. They doubtless began in the days of long ago, when the Argonauts washed their first buckets of gold out of the river sands. To-day they are an integral part of local culture. Outside of Los Angeles, which is not the old California at all, but simply Des Moines plus Charlie Chaplin, Californians are gen- erous and life-loving to a fault. The ''treating habit," which has all but disappeared in the East, still prevails. Everybody is always dining out or going somewhere on 260 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? a "hike" or a picnic or an automobile tour. On almost any highway you can come upon a family in an ancient fliv^'Cr that is working for a week or two picking grapes, then loafing for a spell, and jogging along the road 'to Elsewhere. On the trains, everybody talks to everybody else, swaps pickles and chocolate cake out of their lunch boxes, and talks politics with the conductor. They are all of one big family. They take life fairly easy, and money, too. While I was visiting a small interior town to inspect a Japanese settlement, the hotel-keeper casually requested of me the loan of a hundred dol- lars for three days. He was buying a piece of prop- erty, and unexpectedly found himself short of the re- quired cash to that amount, so he struck the first guest in sight. When he paid back the loan, which he did pre- cisely when he agreed to, his thanks were quite as casual as the original request, though freely expressed. All of which indicated that he looked upon it as natural and proper for transient guests to be thus free and easy with their funds. What 's a hundred dollars between Califor- nians 1 Thrift simply does not exist ; or if it does, people con- ceal it as though it were a detestable vice. In fact, working classes look down upon it as disgraceful. Around San Francisco you will hear the scathing phrase, **You 're as tight as an Easterner." This well estab- lished expression speaks volumes, and it throws light upon the Calif ornian 's dislike of his Japanese visitors. For the Japanese is a Scotchman when it comes to thrift, and he is not a shade more easy-going than the Russian Jew. He is "on the make." He works from eleven to sixteen hours a day. He eats plain food and THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 261 little of it, at least until he has made his pile. And, in the words of the old saw, he *' saves his money and buys a farm. ' ^ In all of this, of course, he is doing what most of our immigrants from Europe do during their first ten years in America. Like them, the Japanese does it for the wholly laudable purpose of improving his lot in life and providing for his children. Were he to work in the East, nobody would pay the slightest attention to these habits, for the East is familiar with them, is forced to practise them, and is moreover cosmopolitan in its judg- ments. But with the Californian it is different, and un- avoidably so. These tight habits, which develop properly in a highly undesirable habitat where people must slave for the necessities of life, are not called for by his en- vironment. Hence they are to the Californian unnatu- ral, incongruous, and undesirable. We must look, last of all, at a potent influence which neither the Californians nor the Japanese, so far as I know, have ever recognized. It is the climate. My own observations convince me that it plays an important part in creating opportunities for the Japanese and also in causing friction. Every Californian knows, of course, that there is no such thing as- a California climate. Every mile east and west or up and down lands one in a different weather zone. California weather is like California soil — "spotted" to a degree that the Easterner cannot real- ize. There are, however, certain large districts in which fairly uniform conditions prevail, and by far the largest of these is the Great Valley, which embraces the immense alluvial plains of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers. As you proceed from south to north here, you 262 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? pass from extreme heat and dryness to considerable heat and drj^ness. The winters are delightful, the summers long and relentless; and the real estate boomer's familiar assurance that ''you don't feel the heat, because the air 's so dry, you know," never seems very consoling after the fourth or fifth day. Now, the bulk of Japanese farmers will be found in the central and southern parts of the Valley. And most of the others are either around Los Angeles or else in the Imperial Valley, where the climate is either as hot as in the Great Valley or considerably hotter. There they thrive and are happy. There they encounter the angri- est opposition from the small American farmers. As we have already seen, the trouble grows largely out of the Japanese willingness, if not desire, to work from twelve to sixteen hours a day when employed as a farm hand, and to make wife and children do likewise, as soon as the immigrant gets hold of a place of his own. The Ameri- can farm hand resents being driven at any such pace, and the American farm owner feels pretty much the same way about working his own acres. They cling to a more leisurely standard of living. And one cause of their clinging is the peculiar effect of the climate. Those who have, like Mr. Ellsworth Huntington, stud- ied carefully the ways various temperatures and humidi- ties influence the human body and its behavior, have often remarked upon the swift enervation induced by excessive dryness and heat. They have also called atten- tion to the slowing down of both mental and physical activity in climates of great equability. It is surpris- ingly easy to confirm these statements in any of the re- gions where the Japanese have settled thickly. I have THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 263 talked with physicians, newspaper men, farmers, school teachers, clergymen, and social workers in San Bernar- dino, Riverside, Los Angeles, Fresno, Stockton, and Sac- ramento, as well as in smaller places; and, with the rather obvious exception of the few professional boomers who would honestly swear that every square inch of the grand old State was just perfect, nearly everybody testi- fied in one manner or another to the sweet indolence which California air and sun breed. Indeed, many per- sons insisted that this was one of the chief attractions of the State ; and there can be no doubt that this is cor- rect, for certain types of people who come to enjoy life or to recover their health. ' ' The first two years, I was full of energy, " is a typi- cal confession. "But after that I wanted to take things easy, and I did." Or, as a Fresno farmer puts it: "I can stand just about so many months of it on my ranch. Then I have to light out for San Francisco, to smell the fog and get a little ginger back into my blood." This last, by the way, is the regular practice of the well-to-do ranchers of the Great Valley. And a botanist engaged in agricultural research for many years, off and on, states that his journal always shows a marked decline in the amount of work accomplished after a few months in cloudless days of sun and even, warm nights. All this suggests strongly that the interior valleys of California, great and small alike, can never be, in the fullest sense, a white man's country. They come closer to being it than the tropics, of course; and I incline to believe that they are measurably more hospitable to the race than the Gulf Coast is. But, if the white man can- not do an honest day's work in the fields, be the season 264 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? what it may, he labors under a handicap that in the long run of generations will surety deliver his rich, hot plains into the hands of a sun-loving folk, it may be the negro, the negroid Sicilian, the Mexican Indian, or the South American. The one tremendous fact in his favor is the nearness of relief from the heat ; an automobile run of a few hours lands him either in the high mountains or on the chill seashore. Yet it is not the laborer who may thus fly a hundred miles whenever he feels languid. This is the privilege of the rich land owner. Those who till the soil will ever be bound closely to it, unless some now inconceivable invention makes travel as cheap as sitting still. Now, the Japanese have not been in the interior val- leys long enough to warrant sweeping conclusions as to their fitness there. But we can say that, as they them- selves have boasted, they have gone into regions of greai heat, such as the Imperial Valley and the Delta country, and have for ten years or longer worked as they used to work in cool Japan. We can also say that presumably a small-bodied stock like these men and women would endure heat more readily than the large-boned, full- fleshed American type. Furthermore, the Japanese tend to be high-strung and given to driving themselves hard. It might then fairly be supposed that a certain degree of enervation would be beneficial to them. All of which, while proving nothing, does strongly point toward the view that the Japanese are somewhat better fitted to inland California than we Americans are. Whether this is demonstrable or not, there can be no doubt that the Japanese like the country and have as yet given no indi- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 265 cation of an unfavorable reaction, except in the abnormal tropic heat of Imperial. And the effect this has upon their competition with the white is conspicuous. We might go on and show like contrasts of habits in matters of domestic life, such as the treatment of women and children, in matters of politics and religion, and so on ; but we have presented enough to make clear our con- tention that it is at many points in the whole system of established habits of work and play and social intercourse that the Oriental and the Californian diverge with such sharpness as to make mutual understanding exceedingly hard. Here the highest standard of living in the world and one of the lowest meet and compete in a region which is abundantly able to maintain the former. And here the most highly inbred Anglo-Saxon culture encounters the most inbred Mongolian culture, with resulting divergen- cies of habit and judgment at almost every point. We cannot deal with such a conflict by asking which culture is the better, and then recommending the one we choose. Men's habits remain unperturbed in the face of such juggling of ideas. Nor can we get ahead by relying upon any old doc- trines of politics and diplomacy. That method has proved the ruin of Europe, and it will bring disaster upon America if we do not stamp it out in short order. Social policies of the future must be shaped more and more for the direct advantage of the people in the region to which the policies apply. In the face of tangible and desired advantages, such catch-phrases as '^race- equality," ''impartial justice," and even "personal lib- 266 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? erty" must not prevail. What men need and the world in which they must work out their salvation are both too intricate and too subtle to be thought of, and still less to be managed, by the vague ideas of political philosophers and conventional moralists. How, then, shall we proceed? BOOK IV HOW TO DEAL WITH THE CRISIS CHAPTER 21 OUR NATIONAL POLICY ON WHAT MUST IT BE BUILT? DIFFICULTIES as vast as those involved in the Ori- ental crisis cannot be overcome until the United States has worked out a clear and sound national policy. Now, we are not here concerned with the bewildering task of computing such a policy. That is work for a generation of statesmen, and we haven't the statesmen as yet. What can and must be done at once, however, is to bring together the more obvious fundamental facts on which a national policy must eventually be based, if it is to be intelligent and fair. We shall speak here only of such facts as would shape our policy in the Japanese questions. These facts, as we have indicated, are of two sorts : 1. — Facts about the world as we find it to-day and must expect to find it to-morrow, and 2. — Facts about the needs and the desires of mankind. Could all the important facts in these two fields be col- lected and clearly understood, a group of business men and experts in law, administration, and social affairs could, in the course of a few years, work out a pretty com- plete outline of a national policy. This policy would be nothing more nor less than the technic of attaining through governmental channels and by moral ways and 269 270 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? means, everything that the American people want and can get best through such channels. Let us see first what the American people need and what they desire over and above strict needs. Having settled this much, we shall proceed through the rest of this volume to inspect some of the outstanding conditions and tendencies in the world in which those needs and desires must somehow find their gratification. It may not be out of place to state emphatically here that the study we shall make of American needs is purely realistic. We look upon the appetites and desires of the typical city-dweller whose budget we are going to investigate in precisely the same manner as a biologist watches and records the appetites of a rabbit and the im- pulses of a dog to prefer a hunk of fresh meat to a dry crust of bread. We mal^e, for the time being, the scien- tific assumption that the surest way of discovering the nature of man is to watch minutely man's actual behavior under the actual conditions of ordinary life, for man as an organism has developed his peculiarities in active relation to this complex environment as a whole. While we may learn something through a study of some of his traits isolated and manipulated under control conditions, we learn most in the other way. This scientific assumption carries with it another one which is frequently overlooked, especially by those who incline for one reason or another to exalt the higher and nobler traits of mankind. We assume, at least as a mat- ter of sound procedure and first hypothesis, that the rela- tive 'power and consequence of man^s many appetites desires, and aspirations is roughly, hut most reliably, measured hy the degree to which each of them shapes OUR NATIONAL POLICY 271 his actual 'behavior from moment to moment in everyday affairs. This is the rule of common sense. And it is the rule of all seientLfic approach, just because it is the simplest of all conceivable hypotheses. In holding it, we do not deny that it may be subject to many subsequent corrections as a result of discoveries. But we do hold that, until such corrections are forced upon it by clear scientific evidences and arguments, it would be highly illogical to qualify it. From this it follows that, until positive evidence to the contrary has been adduced, we hold that what any American really wants can be discovered approximately from what he tries to get, from how he spends his time, and from the way he spends his money. If there are such things as American ideals that are genuine and not mere talk, they will make themselves manifest in the family budget and in the work and play of father, mother and children. If such a family is found to spend all of its income and all of its free time joy-riding in an ex- pensive automobile, we shall not take very seriously its protestations that it is sincerely interested in helping the starving Armenians and would like to do something for the downtrodden Mexican peons if it only could. Such alleged ideals we shall measure by their actual efficiency in getting results. This method, I know, has seldom been followed by our political philosophers. Only our ward politicians have had the common sense to adopt it. When they hand around free turkeys on Christmas and give the boys of the neighborhood jobs, they disclose a correct under- standing of what people expect of the Government and its laws. They want results. They want them, first of 272 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? all, in the form of food and jobs that pay well. And in this they are wholly right. Our political philosophers have been telling us for many years that men are passionately devoted to liberty. The whole record of the war proves that they are not. They will cling to any despot or scoundrel who gives them plenty of food and a warm suit of clothes ; and, as every observer in Central Europe to-day testifies, the masses would gladly go on living off the bounty of the American relief societies indefinitely and allow us to do as we pleased with their shadowy political rights, so long as the daily dole was forthcoming. They are all like the English sailor I met aboard a freighter docking at Mon- treal. To the officer who asked him his nationality, he said: '' I 'm from Lunnon, mate. But my country is the one that gives me the best berth. ' ' Whoever dares look the facts unabashed in the face finds a similar state of affairs in every other classic po- litical ideal from democracy down to religious freedom. In real life, men use democratic forms only as a means to attain or to retain some simple desired set of daily habits; and they tolerate a degree of religious freedom only in so far as the practice of it does not interfere with their own elemental ways of life, as our suppression of Mormon polygamy and Christian Science treatment of contagious diseases has proved. Endless confusion has grown out of the pleasant and courteous habit of believing that people mean what they say. The man of intellectual inclinations always falls victim to this error. To him words and ideas are impor- tant. Out of them he erects glittering systems and theories. The statesman, however, must regard ihe utter- OUR NATIONAL POLICY 273 ances of mankind precisely as the biologist and psycholo- gist do, namely, as partial symptoms of a physical and mental condition which is fully revealed — if ever — only through the human behavior of him who speaks. AMERICAN NEEDS It is an established fact that what any man needs is determined within a wide range by where he lives, by the kind of work he is doing, and by the number of social influences that operate to compel him to maintain certain standards of conduct. The true needs of a negro farmer in Georgia differ widely from those of a shipyard worker in San Francisco ; so it would be hard to strike an aver- age, and harder yet to assert that such an average rep- resented anything real. There is one thing that we can do, however, and that is to choose the needs of the largest American class that has been carefully studied and to let this stand as more or less typical. Fortunately, we have at hand excellent material of this sort in the many analyses of workingmen's budgets which have been made by various investigators. In the Appendix you will find a number of these brought together and contrasted with one another, as well as with Japanese budgets; and of these we shall choose one of the most recent, namely, a study of ''the cost of maintaining a family at a level of health and reasonable comfort" which was prepared by W. Jett Lauck and presented before the United States Railway Labor Board in 1920. This investigation was carried out in the interests of the railway workeis' unions as a part of their effort to gain an increase of wages. It is a careful piece of work and throws light upon that vague thing called the ''American standard of living." 274 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Doubtless it will seem strange to many readers that we should drag into the Japanese question the number and the cost of a woman's stockings and hats, but as a matter of history and human psychology it can be dem- onstrated that stockings and hats play an important part in the settling of such international problems. We may say more. These are the things that have made the United States what it is. The whole trend of immigration proves that America i means to the masses of mankind nothing more than a standard of living. We find it is the chance of improv- ing their food, clothing, shelter, and leisure that draws men to our gates. In almost exact proportion to the superiority of American jobs and basic commodities over the jobs and commodities available in other lands does the volume of immigration flow. The exceptions to this rule are too slight to be considered here. Why did America before the war no longer attract the British and Scotch and Germans? Because living con- ditions had steadily improved in those countries, on the whole, until the advantages to be gained by a worker in shifting to America were more than offset by the expense and difficulties of moving thousands of miles to a strange land and probably having to take up work at first in a line in which he had not been trained. Why did the Sicilian, the Greek, the Euthenian, and the further Slavs pour in faster and faster ? Because the immense differ- ence between the amount of bread and meat and wages within their reach at home and the amount obtainable in our mines and mills made the migration worth while, in spite of its cost and hazards. Why to-day do the Irish, British, Germans, and even French aerain clamor for ad- OUR NATIONAL POLICY 275 mission? Does any sane man think it is because they believe that we stand for some higher political, ethical, or cultural ideal ? Certainly not. It it nothing but the primitive appetite for a full stomach and short working hours and a chance to have some pleasure that sets the hordes in motion. Some political exhorters and after-dinner speakers may talk glowingly of the lure of Liberty. But the immi- grant himself knows better. During the past years I have sent more than one hundred young reporters to Ellis Island from time to time, to talk with the incoming multitude; and, among other things, they have asked about motives. Aside from those immigrants who come ostensibly to join their near and dear relatives, nearly all say the same thing : it is big pay and better food that draws them. Personally I have yet to hear of a man or woman who confessed coming hither because of our po- litical or other standards and practices. No doubt there may be a few such, as there were in the old days when the German '48-ers fled hither. But they get lost in the torrent of perfectly simple and natural humans moving under the spur of hunger. These elemental needs are the things which, as much as any other single factor, have made Americans indifferent to the League of Nations, to the Japanese crisis, to the woes of China, and almost ever^i;hing else in the field of international relations. Every experienced political ob- server from Maine to California who listened to folks talk during the recent Presidential campaign knows that they have precious little interest in most of the sonorous sub- jects dwelt upon by either Harding or Cox. They have only one overshadowing interest, and that is in cutting 276 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? the high cost of living, and cutting it in a hurry. They all want to get back to the "good old days" of 1910 as fast as the hands of the clock can be turned back. They are absorbed in the problem of the family budget. Give them a politician who can cope with the family budget, and they will follow him through fire and flood. Let a President get into the White House who fails to make at least a respectable try at getting a strangle-hold on the monster, and he will stir up a wave of discontent that will overwhelm him and his party. If you wish proof that the politicians themselves under- stand this, read the "Congressional Record" for Decem- ber, 1920. A month after Mr. Harding was elected by the largest vote ever cast for a President, what is it that our statesmen are concerning themselves with? Three subjects. Taxes, immigration, and relief for the farm- ers ! W^hat 's wrong with taxes ? They keep the cost of production up and hence the cost of living. What's wrong with immigration ? The workingmen know that a great influx of raw alien laborers will force their own wages down much faster than the cost of living will drop ; while the small farmers know that, if this incoming horde is diverted to farms, as some well meaning but ill in- formed citizens wish, the American tiller of the soil will be driven out on a grand scale by cheap competition, pre- cisely as to-day he is being driven out by the thousands in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and California. And why relief for the farmers? Because, according to the best estimates by financial experts, the value of farm crops has declined between six and eight billion dollars in the past season, the major crops have this year been grown at a heavy loss to the farmers, who still represent OUR NATIONAL POLICY 277 nearly half of our total population; and this is serious in view of the fact — which city folk seem unable to grasp — that seven farmers out of ten are still earning less than a second-rate union laborer in a small town. In short, Congress is giving its best attention to the real problem of Americanism, which is a standard of living. Whatever the intelligence of our Congressmen may be, their instincts are fairly sure in scenting out the real issues of life. They know, what so many philoso- phizers do not, that there is nothing of greater impor- tance in our understanding and framing a national policy than the hats and stockings and meat and potatoes which all of us want and most of us get. Now for a glance at what we Americans actually need. Mr. Lauck has brought together the budgets of 280 fam- ilies in Washington. The heads of these families are all employed in some clerical capacity in Government de- partments. The average family size is five — husband, wife, and three children. As you glance over the items of expenditure in the Appendix, you will find that only a few small ones go for anything that is not at most uni- versally regarded by city dwellers to-day as necessities or semi-necessities. Simple food, plain clothing, the rent of the most modest house or apartment, laundry, doctor's bill, and insurance — these constitute fully nine-tenths of the annual outlay. And this total outlay amounts to $2,533.97. So far as money cost goes, this is one of the highest of workers' budgets; but the good things it provides are essentially the same as those enjoyed, more or less abun- dantly, by the millions of union laborers and clerical workers all over the United States. We shall not go far 278 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? wrong if we take it as t^T^ifyinf^ the present-day Ameri- can eit}^ dweller's standard of living and hence the ideal toward which all less fortunate workers, rural and urban, are aspiring. What, we must next ask, are the effects of the struggle upward toward this level of existence? DIFFUSION OF LIVING HABITS Two things happen when those Americans who are living on a level below that of the ordinary city worker find the opportunities and habits of the latter attractive and strive toward them. 1. — Rural Americans who are able to afford such hab- its in their own country districts bring the means of en- joyment thither. Thus we see to-day in all our more prosperous farming communities, automobiles, motion- picture shows, ''New York stores," parks, band concerts, etc. And on the prosperous isolated farms we see all manner of city improvements, from electric lights up to parlor movies. 2. — Rural Americans unable to bring such means of enjoyment to their own homes become dissatisfied and tend to drift to the cities. How huge this drift has become nobody realized until the reports of the last census began appearing ; and then even those who had been making high estimates discov- ered that they had been too conservative with figures. In the ten years from 1910 to 1920 the country districts of the United States grew in population only one third as rapidly as in the previous decade. During the same period of rural decline, our cities grew 25.2 per cent, or eight times as fast as our farming regions, and nearly I OUR NATIONAL POLICY 279 six times as fast as our villages. In these ten years we have added about 14,000,000 people to our numbers, and virtually all of this horde have been absorbed by the large towns. No other two countries in the world have so many cities as we now have. Every student of farm life knows that this present co- lossal migration from country to town is not economic in the narrow sense of the word. It is, as Elwood Mead accurately points out, largely a psychological impulse. It is the very human desire to enjoy all the good things of life that the other fellow enjoys, to be where one can talk with people, see new things every day, drop into the movies at odd times, play pool, see a ball game, and so on. Many a young man has given up a five-dollar-a-day job as farm-hand to take a four-dollar- a-day job in a town where board-bills and car-fares eat up more of his wages in a week than he used to spend in a fortnight, and all because of this tremendous urge to be civilized. To be civilized means to be ''citified" to- day no less than when the Romans invented the word, and those who condemn the rush to the cities often over- look the fact that, despite many undesirable aspects of large-town life, on the whole it comes closer to realizing the ideals of civilization than does any other way of life that is to-day within reach of the masses. This last qualification is most important. It forces upon us the conclusion that if for any good reason this townward rush must be checked, there can be only one way to check it; and that is to make it possible for the rural masses to enjoy the urban standard of living in the country. To-day at least eight out of every ten American rural dwellers are financially unable to do this. 280 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Plainly, then, we are here confronted with a fact and a problem that must fi^ire heavily in our national policy. Had we the space here, we might point out several mo- mentous tendencies in American life which are forcing up the living habits of thousands of people far beyond the level of the Lauck budget. We might, for example, show what the automobile and good roads are doing in the way of creating new habits of daily work, of business, and of recreation which can never be broken down with- out a grave crisis. Or we might dwell on the rapidly ris- ing standards of public health and personal hygiene, all immensely stimulated by the war and setting up new habits of cleanliness, sanitation, and exercise that strike deep into our common life. Or again we might report the amazing new appetite for higher education that has sprung up, seemingly overnight, as a consequence of the war and our post-war prosperit3^ Tens of thousands of young men and women discovered during the war that it was the trained men who rose fastest from the ranks and won responsibilities and honors. The cash value of a sound schooling was suddenly made apparent ; and at the same time our industrial boom brought to innumerable homes ample funds to send the boys and girls to college. To-day our universities and technical schools are literally turning away students for lack of teachers and lack of room to handle them. It requires no prophetic vision to state that the effect of this new diffusion of higher learning will within twenty-five years drive our American standards of living still higher. But all of these influences must be left out of account for the present, immense though they are. Without them we OUR NATIONAL POLICY 281 have more than enough facts on which to base a national policy. MAINTAINING AN ACCEPTED STANDARD OF LIVING IS THE ONLY MORAL BASIS OF A NATIONAL POLICY Men may talk about all sorts of fine ideals, such as up- lifting Asia or running the League of Nations as being ** America's first duty." But such talk is either loose rhetoric or else gross ignorance. The thing we loosely call "American life," which is in reality a complex of several hundred habits, most of which are bred into us before we are twenty years old, is as stable a thing as Chinese life or the Hindu's ways. It resists changes in the way of deprivations with a stubbornness that is un- believable. Its demands take precedence over all else. Once grasp this, and you will realize that it is the ulti- mate fact on which all politics and statecraft must build. In this we are not a whit different from anybody else. A glance at the food habits of other people reveals the same inflexibility of elemental appetite. Thus the tan- gible evidences prove that the European loves wheat even more than peace, and white bread more passionately than democracy. Wheat affords a startling demonstration of the white man's rising standard of living and the extent to which his desire for maintaining that standard shapes his per- sonal and political conduct. As far back as 1898, the growing appetite of Europeans for this grain had be- come evident and disquieting. In that year Sir William Crookes, the eminent British scientist, reported to the British Association for the Advancement of Science that 282 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? "Of late years the individual consumption of wheat has al- most universally increased. In Scandinavia it has risen 100% in 25 years; in Austria-Hungary 80%; in France 20%; while in Belgium it has increased 50%. Only in Russia and Italy, and possibly Turkey, has it declined. "In 1871 the bread-eaters of the world numbered 371,000,000. In 1881 the numbers rose to 416,000,000; in 1891 to 472,600,- 000, and at the present time (1898) they number 516,500,000." This same authority, in the same report, ventured the prediction that by 1921 on the basis of a per capita con- sumption for food and for seed of four and a half bush- els a year, the world crop would be 3,033,000,000 bushels. How conservative this estimate was appears from the fact that the wheat crop crossed four billion bushels as early as 1913 ! And the demand is still insatiable. As is well known, it was this clamor for wheat in Eu- i-ope that was chiefly responsible for our own Food Ad- ministration's polic}^ toward that staple during the war. Impartial observers testified pretty generally that the peoples of western Europe had become so addicted to wheat bread that, if deprived of it suddenly, even under the stress of war, both their digestion and their morale would suft'er dangerously. Accordingly, Mr. Hoover concentrated largely upon the task of supplying the Allies with wheat. It would have been much easier to have sent corn or even rye; but twenty-five years of efforts on the part of American cereal manufacturers have failed to cultivate in Europeans a taste for Johnny cake and mush, while, as for rye, western Europe has been steadily turning away from that form of food for a generation. So we denied ourselves a little and sent our wheat. OUR NATIONAL POLICY 283 Proof of the very same fierce conservatism of Ameri- can life has been set forth by Raj^mond Pearl. Mr. Pearl was in charge of the statistical department of the United States Food Administration. He made an ex- haustive study of the way Americans responded to the slogan, * ' Food will win the war, save it ! " Now, if there is any one thing that would be certain, it is that millions of American families had an intense personal interest in winning the war, and that in the shortest time possible. Four million of the finest young men went from these homes to France. Victory was a matter of life and death to them, and joy or misery to their parents and relatives. Never in our national history was there a mightier incentive to strive and to sacrifice and to en- dure. Now, what happened ? The Food Administration's own figures show that the American people did not change their eating habits to any appreciable extent during the war. They reduced some items of food, but for every such reduction they in- creased others, so that the peace-time quantity was con- sumed. In short, men's eating habits cannot be sup- pressed even by the desire to win a war except in so far as some pressure from without forces them. The whole history of the progressive strictness and drastic control of the Food Administration confirms this psychological law. That administration began its work with simple exhortations. Men listened, applauded, and went on eating. The administration regulated the gro- cers. Both customers and grocers evaded the rules with a thousand pretexts. The administration finally found it necessary to regulate the sources of supply and impose penalties. Then, of course, the habits cf eating certain 284 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? kinds of food-stuffs, such as sugar and wheat flour, were effectively controlled in the cities, though never in the country districts any more than they were in Germany. But the checking of sugar and flour habits did not reduce the total food quantities consumed at all, as Pearl shows. From a detailed analysis of the food consumed in all America from 1911 to 1918, he finds that we get more than half of our protein from animal sources (not in- cluding fish) and "in spite of propaganda from dietary cranks and from commercial interests it is clear that the American people depend to an overwhelming degree upon animal sources for their fat intake, rather than upon vegetable oils, nuts, and the like." Millions of dollars have been spent in advertising vegetarianism and patent foods heralded as substitutes for animal fats ; yet no noteworthy impression has been made upon the pub- lic. Pearl further observes that *'the price of meat may rise relatively much more than that of fruits or fish without leading to any reduction in consumption, owing to the general belief that meat is a more necessary article of diet than the other two sorts of food mentioned." In passing, I would suggest that the persistence of meat eating is not due so much to false notions about its im- portance as it is to simple hankering and habit. Many people know perfectly well that meat is not essential to health but go on eating it because it tastes so much better than most substitutes. We cannot exaggerate the importance of all this. It proves, as was said before, that we are just as set in our ways as the Chinaman is; and that, taking peoples by the millions, nothing short of a catastrophe will cause them to abandon a simple life habit ; and that, when they OUR NATIONAL POLICY 285 do abandon one under pressure, grave disturbances are sure to follow. Such disturbances would not necessarily be fatal, nor would they continue indefinitely; but they would spread over the entire country, and infect every- day life at a thousand points. Plainly, then, it must be a part of our national policy to prevent changes in such group habits which are not injurious in themselves except when the advantages to be gained by such a change offset the irritations, confu- sions, and loss of time, money, and morale which the change must cause. i ' HOV^ FAR AHEAD SHOULD WE PLAN FOR SUPPLYING THE NEEDS OF OUR LIFE HABITS? When an intelligent American working-man marries, he begins to provide in one manner or another for his future. First, he takes out life insurance to protect his wife ; then he saves money to buy a home. When chil- dren come, he makes further efforts to lay aside funds against the day, many years off, when his Ned is ready and eager to go to college and become an engineer, and his Mary wants to study nursing. Father and mother husband their resources and exert themselves to increase the family income to this end, and it is not at all un- common for them to plan twenty years ahead. Now, would it not seem that the State should do at least as much for its citizens in the way of foresight and planning as a pair of normally thrifty parents would for their children ? Would not the very crudest type of na- tional policy provide for the future needs of all the people who are alive when that policy is formed and adopted? In comparison with the scope of the national 286 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? policies which many eminent politicians, international bankers, and idealists have lately been urging ns to em- brace, this one seems pitifully meager and narrow. Sup- pose, though, that we were to pursue it consistently. Whither would it lead us? The answer is startling. On the day that these lines are being written, December 31, 1920, thousands of babies are being born in American homes, and of this multitude several thousand will live to the age of eighty years. They will celebrate New Year's Day, in the year of our Lord 2000. Let us be sufficiently interested in the upbringing and the happi- ness of these, our youngest fellow-citizens, to begin plan- ning to-day that they may have, their lives through, at least as many of the necessities and good things as a Government clerk in Washington enjoys to-day. At the very outset of our planning, we must ask the following questions : 1. What are the prospects that those Americans will have at least as good food and as much of it as the Wash- ington clerk to-day has ? 2. What steps must be taken now to make it reason- ably sure that he will have such food in the year 2000? 3. What are the prospects that those Americans will be earning wages that will buy in the markets of that day the meat, fish, milk, eggs, fruits, sugar, house furni- ture, fuel, laundry, soap, doctor's sersdces, and all the other hundred and one items which the Washington clerk of to-day enjoys? 4. What steps must be taken to make it reasonably cer- tain that they will be able to earn such wages ? 5. What are the prospects that those Americans will have clubs, societies, churches, theaters, and, above all, OUR NATIONAL POLICY 287 neighbors at least as agreeable and satisfactory as those now enjoyed by the Washington clerk ? 6. What steps must be taken now to make it reason- ably sure that he will have these? 7. What are the prospects that those Americans will enjoy at least the same degree of health and happiness in 2000 as the Washington clerk now does ? 8. What steps must be taken now to make it reason- ably sure that they will enjoy that much? These are the real and the deep problems under- neath every intelligent national policy. The nation that asks such questions of its own citizens and does its best to solve them has a sound statecraft, and, other things being equal, will succeed where other less far-sighted na- tions perish. These questions it is which the statesmen of Japan are facing and working over night and day. We may disapprove of the feudalism of the Elder Statesmen in fine democratic phrases, we may condemn the Prussianized militarists of Tokio, we may despise the Japanese peasant's low standard of living and his simple life habits; but we cannot refrain from admir- ing the intelligent persistence with which Japan is or- ganizing all her forces to find work and agreeable homes for her seventy millions and their children. Her rulers clearly recognize that the first law of life is to go on liv- ing, and the second law of life is to live better in the future than in the past, if that can be managed. We shall do well to give it a trial. In the following chapters answers will be sought for the questions we have asked. We shall look into the fu- ture of the world's food supply and the xVmerican farmer. We shall study the tendency of races and populations to 288 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? fill the earth. Having done which in brief form, we shall then apply our findings to the shaping of a na- tional policy which plays fair to all the infants now cry- ing in American cradles and fair to the hungry millions of the Orient. Obviously, a national policy has not been completed as soon as we have found ways and means of supplying all our citizens, present and future, with food, clothes, shelter, and the simple pleasures and luxuries indicated in the "Washington clerk's family budget. All these are the indispensable beginning of a sound national policy, but they are not the last word. For one thing, there are some habits now present and active in American life which must be broken down if we are to advance and prosper. They are too numerous and too difficult to con- sider in a study like the present one; but there are two among them which are so intimately connected with the Japanese crisis that we must give them some considera- tion, albeit cursory. One of these is the old habit of racial segregation. The other is the habit of letting all sorts and conditions of human beings come here to live without regard to the ease or obstinacy with which they fit into our social and political life. There is little sense in talking about a national policy until we have become a nation, and in some important respects we still fall short of being that. This deficiency underlies many of our political troubles and figures broadly in our relations to Japan. So, after a survey of the more immediate fac- tors in our Oriental crisis, we shall look briefly at the problems of Americanization and immigration. CHAPTER 22 THE world's food TO-DAY AND TO-MOEROW WE have just been looking at a serious effort to compute the details and the cost of a standard of living which is believed by thousands of people to be the lowest mode of existence in which they can be moderately contented. This computation of Mr. Lauck'a ceases to be a dull piece of statistics the instant we ask what it means and implies precisely in terms of world production and consumption. Suppose we were to pass laws to-morrow which guaranteed to every American the many items in Mr. Lauck's list. Wliat would happen? It can be told in a word. In the first place, the produc- tion of food and basic supplies would have to be more than doubled at once ; and in the second place, this could not be accomplished, even if the total wealth now pro- duced annually in the United States were all invested in this Utopian project. And this in the richest country on earth! Does this excite or distress the average American? Not at all ! He smiles at it with his usual optimism of youth and immaturity. He has inherited two precious gifts which keep him in everlasting good humor ; one is the better half of North America, the other is the British habit of ''muddling through." He refuses to shudder at the warnings and prophecies of Raymond Pearl, who 289 290 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? has just stated in his Lowell Institute lecture, that some time around the year 2100 the United States \nll have a population of about 197,000,000 and will then have reached its limit and must import almost one-half of its food. The average American, whose level of mentality seems to be somewhere around fourteen to sixteen years accord- ing to the Army intelligence tests, will faithfully echo the verdict of his favorite editorial writer, Arthur Brisbane, regarding such dire forebodings. This clever journalist, who knows his audience through and through, comments scathingly on the "mere guesswork" of "another college professor." In the New York "American" of Decem- ber 21, Mr. Brisbane exposes the foolishness of Pearl. He assures his own vast public that the United States is ten times the size of Japan. (It happens to be more than twenty times the size, but what matters a mere error of one hundred per cent?) And if Japan, says he, can support sixty million people on her tiny islands, these mighty United States can feed and shelter more than seven hundred millions. Why ! It has been proved that the State of Texas alone could, if cultivated intensively, take care of a billion and a half hungry stomachs. Thus, with no weapon save the multiplication table, Mr. Brisbane slays the giant. Despair. And jou may be sure that ten million red-blooded Americans are cheering the victor at the top of their lungs. And if am^body insists upon asking Mr. Brisbane whether he approves of cultivating Texas and the rest of our raw acres inten- sively, thereby making our farmers and their children work as the Japanese do, the crowd will throw pop bottles at the impertinent querist. THE WORLD'S FOOD 291 Unfortunately, the mere college professor knows what he is talking about in his ''guesswork," and Mr. Brisbane does not. As chief statistician of the Food Administra- tion and a biologist of unusual experience, Mr, Pearl has a few thousand facts on hand, many of which a journalist would have considerable difficulty in imderstanding. A few of these must now be related, more or less simplified. It would be absurd to deny that the world at large, and our o\vn land in particular, will greatly increase the yield of food and other crops, as the need arises. Mil- lions of fertile acres still lie untouched. Hundreds of vegetables and fruits have never yet been experimented with properly with a view to finding how cheaply and how easily they can be raised and utilized as food. These undeveloped possibilities have been extensively studied and reported upon by Mr. J. Kussell Smith in his inter- esting volume on ' ' The World 's Food Resources, ' ' where he says : "With nearly every article of diet except meat we can easily and greatly increase the supply in the Western World. In the United States alone, so little is farm land utilized and sought that in large areas east of the AUeghanies it is a fact that when a man sells a farm he gives away either the value of the building or the value of the land, for the price obtained is often less than would be required to rejjlaee the buildings. Very little land in the United States is intensively cultivated: moreover the Untied States enjoys an advantage unique in the Western World — a vast area on which to cultivate the great gift of corn. Over one million square miles of the country can produce this king of forage crops, one of the most pro- ductive and easily grown of all the grains. . . . "Moreover the American cotton-belt with its summer rain, with an area six times the size of Italy, and now supporting 292 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? only from twenty to fifty people per square mile, has easily twice the ability of Italy to produce food, raiment, and timber, per square mile and is many fold richer in minerals and water power. . . . ''There are in the West sixty thousand square miles which irrigation can make almost or quite as productive as the re- claimed marshlands which are twice as productive as uplands, and at the present time almost untouched." So much for the possibilities of increasing our yields. As for future economies, Mr. Smith makes a point that commands our serious attention. It will surprise most city readers and perhaps help them to correct their badly distorted perspective of life to-day as it really is organ- ized. Mr. Smith shows that the United States is chiefly engaged in feeding animals, rather than men, and that, when the pinch comes, we shall follow the ancient prece- dent of Asia and stop being, as it were, mere valets to the horse, pig, and cow. He points out, quite correctly, that our farmers are raising something more than five billion bushels of grain every year, of which about 900,000,000 bushels are eaten by Americans or else by foreign consumers. Allowing for annual reserves for seeding purposes, we find that fully four billion bushels of this prodigious yearly har- vest are fed to our domestic animals. Smith then quotes the great expert on animal nutrition, Armsby, and his famous proof that man 's chief competitor for high-grade foods, such as wheat and corn, is the hog ; and that the worst thing that can happen to America is a marked increase in the number of hogs and steers, especially the former. America, as her population increases, must cut down her herds to the point at which they consume only THE WORLD'S FOOD 293 such foods as man cannot eat, such as hay from low grade soils and roughage. This means a gradual reduc- tion of meat and animals products and perhaps some day an all but universal vegetarianism, such as we now see all over Asia. If we move in this direction, it is obvious that the world will continue to feed even a growing popu- lation for much longer than two centuries. There is no challenging either these statistics or the conclusion Smith draws. The only difficulty lies in his last ''If." If people will consent to reduce their meat diet, and if farmers will virtually do away with all draught animals save those absolutely indispensable, no doubt things will proceed as indicated. But will they? This brings us the root of tbe whole matter. And we find that Mr. Smith, together with most other inves- tigators who have concentrated too narrowly upon the abstract statistical side of the food and population prob- lems, have left entirely out of their calculations the two strongest forces in human nature. They think exclu- sively in terms of theoretical land areas and theoretical yields. They ignore the man with the hoe and the man with the tractor. They look away from the investor's lamentable weakness for wishing to earn dividends on capital sunk in farm lands. And they pass by on the other side when the toiler of the fields shows peevishness at being expected to work fourteen hours a day. And yet, when all is said and done, the whole future of agri- culture will be shaped by these two fundamental human interests. The investor will always be asking: *'Can this field show a profit, if I have it tilled?" And the farm laborer will be demanding certain hours of work, certain amounts of food, a certain kind of a house to live 294 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? in, and all the rest that enters into a set of life habits. It is useless to speculate about the world's future supply of food unless we begin with a stud}^ of these two limiting factors. Let us first look at the problem of living standards, which is sharply rai.jcJ by Mr. Smith's interesting state- ment about the possibility of our progressively becoming vegetarian and living on the grains the quadrupeds now take from us. His entire argument hinges upon an im- mense improbability, the improbability that people who have accustomed themselves to a rich diet and a rela- tively easy method of procuring it, namely, through ex- tensive agriculture, are going to give up two such lux- uries until every method of preserving them has been tested and has failed. We have tried to show, earlier in this volume, how tenacious all life habits are. We pointed out the amazing stubbornness of food habits. We may be sure tliat human ingenuity will exert itself to the utmost to find some way of going on eating and drinking as of yore. Now men have already discovered ways of guarantee- ing this blessed privilege. All the United States needs to do in order to maintain its present, or even a higher, level of dietarj^ is to regulate the growth of population and the net volume of food exports. The population growth can be regulated in two manners, first through birth control and secondly through immigration control. The Government of Holland has already adopted the former • measure with unqualified success, and we shall probably follow suit as soon as the political influence of the more backward religious groups in our population can be overcome through education, which is now being THE WORLD'S FOOD 295 carried on by our relatively small but energetic intel- lectual class. As for immigration control, it is on the point of being exercised to a degree far beyond anything yet attempted since the old days when China and Japan barred their gates against all foreigners. Our farmers and our city workers have, for the first time, joined hands in their determination to reduce the influx of aliens. Already the American farmer realizes that his ways of life will be jeopardized, if the plans of some well mean- ing city folk are carried out and millions of immigrants are scattered through the farming districts of our coun- try, there to form low-standard colonies clinging to their old folkways and speech and working fourteen hours a day, as the Italian, Jewish, Greek, Polish, and other farm colonies all over the North Atlantic States and New Eng- land now do. And the American of the old sod is now debating whether he shall give way before this driving horde or shall take steps to preserve the high level of living on the farm which the more prosperous farmers here have been enjoying for many years. If the stir- ring of human forces now visible through American so- ciety, notably among farmers, can be taken as a sign and symptom, we must conclude that America is going to reject Smith's Asiatic policy and will soon be moving in earnest to check our population growth and to main- tain our high food production per hour's work, which, when all is said and done, is the basic measure of a high civilization, so far as its agrarian aspect is concerned. It may be, of course, that we shall see in the future something of a decline in the number of meat animals raised in our own land ; but this will not be coupled with a reduction of meat consumption to the point of vege- 296 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tarianism. We shall see the animal industries trans- ferred more and more to those immense stretches in South America, Australia, and Siberia where cheaper lands and cheaper labor make the business more profitable. American farmers will probably increase, rather than de- crease, their herds of high-grade beef cattle and hogs, handling them in closer conjunction with scientific crop- ping systems on farms of medium acreage. Both the very large ranch and the very small intensively culti- vated farm (below fifty acres) may be expected to dis- appear, not many decades after an intelligent national policy has been pursued. The large ranch is primitive and wasteful of soil power. The tiny intensively culti- vated farm is Asiatic and cruelly wasteful of man power. Neither has any plaee in a complete civilization. The more closely one analyzes Smith's entire inter- pretation of ci\alization and its relation to agriculture, the more evident does it become that he has, probably without clear consciousness, accepted the Asiatic stand- ard of living as worthy of emulation. Thus we hear him say that ''draft animals seem necessary to the ascent of a people toward civilization, although in parts of Japan and China it has been shown that need of them can ulti- mately be reduced to a minimum." This statement im- plies that the farmers of Japan and China who have dis- pensed largely with draft animals have ascended to civilization; if they have not, then the whole remark is meaningless. But any white man who has observed the day's work of an Oriental who farms with few or none of the beasts of burden cannot honestly say that the Orien- tal is civilized. He has dispensed with the beasts only by making himself, his wife, and his children beasts. He THE WORLD'S FOOD 297 slaves from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, with his whole family ; and he wears himself and them out prema- turely, with almost nothing to show for their crushing toil save a scanty food supply and the other bare neces- sities of life. The blunt fact of the matter is that the lack of draft animals in Japan and China is one of the best proofs of the low civilization of those lands. The United States is not giving up draft animals. Many agricultural experts believed that, with the intro- duction of the all but revolutionary farm tractor, we should see a swift decline in the number of horses used on our farms. But no such change is taking place. Oddly enough, as farmers prosper more and more through the use of tractors and other labor-saving ma- chinery, they increase the number of high-grade horses and mules. The reasons for this are too technical to be set forth here. Enough to say that it is now pretty generally believed that the tractor is going to be the horse's best friend in the long run, leading to a higher specialization in heavy farm work that will enable the farmer to get more out of both the machine and the animal, and on a mor'e economical basis. So much for the standard of living as an obstacle to Mr. Smith's hopes. Now let us see about the investment returns. And at the outset let us clearly understand that what is to be said on this point holds equally good, whether it is a private capitalist of the State which con- templates agrarian investments. The notion is abroad that, while a private capitalist cannot afford to sink money in losing ventures, somehow the public can. This is absurd. If it will not pay me, an individual, to de- velop ten thousand acres of Montana bone-dry soil, it will 298 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? not pay the State of Montana to do it, unless there is some other advantage besides immediate profits to be cer- tainlj^ derived from the operation. And if there is such an advantage, then the two cases are not truly com- parable. Now, the whole question of return on investment is bound up w»ith two others, namely, the precise character of available raw acreage and the rate at which the world's population is increasing and laying fresh demands upon the farmer. How accessible is the unworked land? What climate does it have? Can men work it without being stricken with fevers or pestilence? Can steam- ships reach it? How far is it from railroads? How many people will consume the products it can best grow ? These and a hundred similar matters are involved; and the mere naming of them conve^^s a painful impression of the true intricacy of the real problem. In another chapter of this book, Mr. Warren S. Thomp- son shows us how fast the world population is growing. Taking his conservative estimate and the more liberal one of Knibbs, Avho is indubitably the greatest authority in the world on population, you may strike a safe average between them and find that the net increase per year is somewhere around 17,000,000 or 18,000,000 souls. Bear in mind that this is not the birth rate. It is the excess of births over deaths. What does this appalling figure mean? It means that adout every six months a new Belgmm is added to the worJd^s horde and about every tioo years a neiv France! And how about the three square meals a day which these millions express a yearning for? Well, an Ameri- can eats, in the course of one year, about 1,900 pounds of THE WORLD'S FOOD 299 food, dry weight. A Japanese eats as little as 900 pounds. We may roughly take therefore 1,000 pounds of flour, cereals, smoked fish, sugar, and other dry food stuffs as the amount which the average world inhabitants devour as soon as they attain full growth. This estimate is, in all likelihood, too low ; but let it pass. Every year the farmers of the world must provide some twenty -three billion pounds of food more than they ever provided before simply to keep pace with the rap- idly expanding population and the ever increasing de- mands for seed. Or look at this staggering fact from the point of view of the land to be tilled. In many of the countries least highly developed agriculturally it takes from ten to twenty acres to support one man. In our own country it takes between three and four acres. Japan, by inten- sive culture of the richest lands only, provides for three men on every acre. By and large the average for the world is somewhat less than two men to three acres. Taking that as our basis, for the sake of argument, let us see what must be happening. Every season the farmers of the world must plow and plant, cultivate, and harvest from twenty to thirty mil- lion more acres than they did the previous year. True, there will be more gnarled hands to grasp the plow- handle, more backs to bend over the furrow; but the new land, the reserve supply for expansion, diminishes year by year. And every new plot of virgin soil wrested from the wild is just a little worse than that which went before. What this means is shown in the accompanying map of New York State. The immense black L extend- ins: from the Hudson River almost to Lake Erie and 300 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? from Poughkeepsie to Lake Champlain represents the extra area that the peasants of the world must add to their tillage every year, if the increase of world popu- lation is to be fed as well as the average man is fed to- The solid black block in the above map of New York State rep- resents the area of new land which must be tilled every year in order to feed the extra millions who are added amually to the world's population. day in Japan, China, Europe, and America. To me this black L is the most staggering fact in all life to-day. Do 3^ou not begin to see the whole phenomenon of world-wide living costs in a new light? At no time in the past century, while population has been growing at this terrific rate, have the farmers of the world increased their acreage and their crops proportionately. Had they 301 302 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tried it, they would liave found it an impossible task. The railroads and the merchant marine of the whole world could not have stood the strain of carrying such a mounting output, had it been dumped at their ter- minals. Nor could the farm machinery manufacturers have delivered the necessary equipment. Thus it has happened that, every year throughout the past genera- tion, the food supply has been lagging further and fur- ther behind the hungry hordes. And this alone would suffice to send the price of all foodstuffs steadily upward, the world over, even if no other forces had been at work to the same end, such as money inflation and a rising standard of living. "With ea,ch fresh season, therefore, the question becomes more and more acute : Where are we going to find this acreage, and where find men to work it? Of the 33,000 million acres of the land area of the world, not more than 40 per cent, or 13,000 million acres, are available for food production. With a permanent system of agriculture, this land can support one indi- vidual per acre if standards of living do not rise any higher. To be sure, Japan supports more than three people per acre, but she does this only because she has taken her best land, only 18.7 per cent of the total, and cultivates it intensively by slave methods repugnant to us. It is very much to be doubted whether the world as a whole can ever reach and maintain a population per acre of cultivated land as great as Germany and France, which, just before the war, used 1.15 acres and 1.5 acres per capita respectively. We may safely say that the earth can support not more than 13,000 THE WORLD'S FOOD 303 million people, even on a pretty low standard of living. At the present rate of increase this population ivill 'be reached in just 200 years. So much for the world at large. Now let us look more I narrowly at our own land. What have we been doing with our soil? What remains to be done? What will i happen to the babies born to-day if our present tend- encies in farming continue until the year 2000? These I questions bring us sharply back to the problem of our own national policy. In our own new and supposedly inexhaustible America, we have expanded from a floor space of 200 million acres ' and a population of four million to one of 1903 million \ acres inhabited by 110 million people. Forty-seven per cent of our 1903 million acres is now in farms, though it has thus far been profitable to improve and farm only about one-half the area. There remains a reserv'e of over a billion acres, it is true ; but nearly half of this is arid land having a precipitation of less than 15 inches, and less than 10 per cent will become available after the com- pletion of all irrigation projects possible under the pres- ent system of construction. In addition, making allow- ance for permanent forests, for unusable swamps and for cities, roads, and railroads, there are something like three- quarters of a billion acres which must be forever with- held from agricultural use. There is left 300 million acres, roughly 35 per cent of our present farm lands, which may be incorporated with them. Moreover this 35 per cent is the poor expanse of waste passed by as worthless by the farmers. Now how can this poor land be used ? There are just three methods. One is to dose it heavily with fertilizers. 304 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? The second is to labor over soil and crops much more minutely than on rich soils. And the third is to improve plant breeds. Now we have already shown the futility of the first two ways of salvation : fertilizers cost money and, when applied to poor land, bring its yield only up to that of fair land, but at a very high cost per acre, thus increasing the production cost and diminishing the margin of profit; and excess of labor works in just the same way, besides causing discontent in the toiler. So there remains only the third. As to its infinite possibilities, the city dweller who reads the amateur optimists is warmly convinced. He has read all about Luther Burbank in the Sunday Sup- plements. And wasn't there a boy down in Georgia who grew a hundred bushels of corn on one acre with some special fancy seed? Just get a scientist busy in- venting new plants, and there will be no food short- age. Once more, however, we must apply the cold water treatment to this Polly anna vision. Mr. E. M. East can tell us a few facts that hurt. Doubtless somebody will retort to the facts by calling Mr. East a college professor. But in addition to the ignominy of being one, Mr. East happens to have had some years of experience as a prac- tical farmer and has done as much in the way of scien- tific plant breeding as anybody in the country. In fact, his achievements in improving breeds of com are so sen- sational that, if a Sunday Supplement writer were able to understand them, he would give them a full page with two-color pictures. At the La Jolla Conference, speaking of such possi- bilities, Mr. East adduced facts, too technical to report THE WORLD'S FOOD 305 here, showing that the popular impression is totally wrong. To be sure, he remarked, some noteworthy ad- vances have been made, and others will be. But when all is said and done, no new processes are involved, and the few time-saving devices now used, or in the prospect of being used, for the evolution of new forms of plant and of animal life are not going to increase our resources by leaps and bounds. The prospective increase is relatively small. The development of plants and ani- mals under domestication has been going on for thou- sands of years by these same methods, and the type of labor-saving device we have described will hasten matters only a little. There will be no revolution. Furthermore, let us suppose that the maximum prediction shall be real- ized. In Mr. East's opinion, hy the expenditure of time and money for breeding projects on a scale at present he'i^ond the dream of the most enthusiastic propagandist, current production will have been increased hy twenty per cent. Is this a consummation devoutly to be wished or not ? Perhaps it is merely a vehicle for exploiting a limited store of soil fertility at a greater rate, a means of dissipating capital more rapidly. During the seventies and eighties in the United States there was a great expansion of farming. The rich lands of the West were cultivated extensively. Because of these methods there were low yields per acre, but the number of new acres utilized was so great that over- production and extremely low prices prevailed. More recently there has been a trend toward intensive farm- ing, hence an increased yield per acre and a lowering of the production per man. The average yield of all crops between 1903 and 1918 was about 15 per cent greater 306 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? than that between 1860 and 1890, but it took a consider- ably greater expenditure of man power per acre to get this yield. Those who point out that we have not reached the yield per acre of the best farmers of Europe would do well to remember this point. The most intensive farmers of Europe, the Belgians, cultivate about five acres per man. The American farmer handles 26 acres. Now, when we forget about the war and go back over the production figures per capita from 1870 to 1916, we find that meat has decreased markedly and total food production slightly. We are still getting plenty to eat, but overproduction and cheap food have stopped. The population of the United States is now increasing somewhat more rapidly than the acreage of cropped land, as is shown by the census report of the years 1880-90 fixing the amount of improved land at 5.7 acres per capita and the report of 1910 revealing the fact that the acreage of improved land had decreased to 5.2 per capita. And all this in face of the fact that 18,000,000 more people, mostly whites, were demanding food with each oncoming year ! And yet this tendency is not only inevitable but funda- mentally sound. This is as it should be. The time for easy food production from virgin lands has vanished. Fertilizer consumption has increased by leaps and bounds. Some farms have been abandoned through de- pletion to the point of exhaustion. New lands less pro- ductive in nature are gradually being put under the plow because prices are such that they yield a fair return. Intensive farming is increasing. In all this there is every evidence of diminishing returns in agriculture, yet few take any thought of what it means. THE WORLD'S FOOD 307 Herbert Hoover knows what it means, though, and he recently made it plain to the American Association of the Baking Industry, in an address which had to do with wheat and wheat prices. His words are worth quoting here at some length, for they amply confirm my main contention. After stating that the general level of commodity prices would steadily decline, Mr. Hoover went on to declare that wheat should not and could not drop pro- portionately. Here is his argument. Your attention is particularly called to the last of it : "In other words, if something like pre-war prices should again prevail, I do not believe we will,- over any considerable term, see the old 90-cent wheat, or anji^hing like it. During the war the price of wheat was successfully held at a higher ratio than other commodities — an index of about 243 for wheat, against 186 for other commodities in 1917, in order to induce larger production. If we take the year 1913 average price of wholesale wheat and other commodities as 100, at the present time the prices are approximately 300 for wheat and about 270 for other commodities. Wheat has been losing greater advantage, and a reduced acreage has been the conse- quence. It is my belief that wheat must hold at least fifty index points advance over comparative commodity prices if we are to assure supplies for our increasing population. That is, if other commodities should return to 100, wheat must hold 150 or some considerable excess. "There are many reasons for this. One of them is that expansion of the possible wheat area in the United States is now comparatively limited unless we retrench on other essen- tial production. In fact, there is even, indeed, serious shrink- age of wheat area in prospect, due to the unconquered inva- sion of rust in our spring wheat areas of the Northwest. This 308 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? threatened deficiency must be maintained by an inducement to expand wheat production in the Southwest, Furthermore, our average yield of wheat per acre must have a steady in- crease if we are to meet the necessities of an advancing popula- tion. An increase from our average of less than sixteen bushels toward the average of western European production of over twenty-five bushels per acre is in the main the possible source of supply in the long run. This can only be obtained by more intensive cultivation and the larger use of fertilizers, and those extra costs do not show a profitable return ratio in prices. The American farmer naturally can only engage in extra expense for extra return. It is sometimes said that our breadstuff needs will outgrow our capacity for the produc- tion of wheat. This is not necessarily the case within our century, for it is always possible to contemplate an increase per acre that would keep pace with our increase in population, but this cannot be accomplished on the basis of the prewar ratio prices of wheat to other commodities." In short, land is wearing out; acres still virgin are poor ; larger yields mean costly fertilizer and unpleasant labor. And so up must go the cost of food. Deflating the currency may produce the illusion of cheaper food. But in the permanent readjustment of values that must follow deflation, food costs are bound to be higher than ever. All of which is the price our children must pay for the recklessness of our grandfathers and fathers, who, in the midst of their broad acres, used to laugh at Malthus and his gloomy prognostications of an overcrowded world and universal hunger. The farmers of the past century re- ceived in trust the agricultural capital of the country. The people gave it to them with the same careless liber- ality that we always hand over to poor relatives the THE WORLD'S FOOD 309 things around the house which we cannot use. Not one man in a million ever thought of those endless prairies as capital which must be made to show profits or else eventually thrown into the hands of a receiver. They were mere dirt and dirt cheap. What if nine pioneers out of ten did rob the soil, taking out 24 cents' worth of fertility every time they grew a bushel of wheat? Could anybody be so foolish as to suppose that folks might ever use up the world's supply of black earth? As well think of drinking up the Pacfic Ocean ! The few who have given the subject serious thought frequently defend their optimism by pointing to Europe. Europe proves that soils do not wear out, and that there is no limit to the number of people this little old world can support. ''After thousands of years of cropping, her soils are supporting more people than ever," is the familiar remark. Unfortunately, though, this opinion is about as sound as Mr. Brisbane's wonderful vision of Texas supporting the world. As Mr. East has shown by a careful study of population and agricultural statistics, Europe has never been cropped to capacity until the present generation. And it is an ominous fact that, in the very same decades when her nations were reaching their limit of intensive cultivation and dense population, the whole continent exploded in a war of economic expansion that involved almost every country and finally flung two-thirds of the continent back into starvation, pestilence, and barbarism. He would be a dull historian indeed who failed to mark some inner connection between these two phenomena. Here a word about another outburst of optimism which has lately been advertised and has doubtless solaced not 310 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? a few. Many casual observers have supposed that the immense losses of life in Europe between 1914 and 1918 by battle, pestilence and famine, must have removed, for many years to come, the danger of overpopulation. This is far from the truth. About 18,000,000 Europeans died as a result of the war. But in about twelve months the increase of population throughout the world completely offsets this war loss. Nor is this all. The dangers of overpopulation are relative, not only to the gross food supply available, but also to the facilities for distribution, which are both geo- graphical and artificial. That is, China may theoreti- cally be able to feed 600,000,000 mouths or even more, as Mr. Paul Reinsch believes ; and yet as a matter of fact, China is to-day horribly overpopulated. The reason for this is that she has few railroads, no good highways worth mentioning, no great storage warehouses, and none of the Western farm credit and cooperative systems. Now, Europe to-day is in almost the same predicament as China. Her transportation S3^stem and her distribu- tion have collapsed and cannot be rehabilitated for some years, with the best of effort. In 1910 Europe contained 442,000,000 people and probably a round 450,000,000 on the fatal day when the World War broke out. Her transportation and distribution sj^stem was, in 1914, fairly adjusted to the colossal task of feeding and cloth- ing her hordes. To-day the railroads of Central and Eastern Europe are in such a state of decay that they cannot properly care for the elemental needs of more than a quarter of the beings who are now starving be- side those rusted rails and decrepit locomotives. Some 432,000,000 Europeans have survived the war and the THE WORLD'S FOOD 311 influenza and typhus epidemics ; but the food production and distribution systems can take care of only 125,000,- 000 well or 250,000,000 poorly. The other 182,000,000 or more wretches are either undernourished or starving to-day, in spite of all relief work, and they must continue to starve until the reconstruction of the railways has been finished. The implications of this horror confirm our whole argument and add a fresh lesson all their own. They show the peril of permitting populations to become so dense that they are dependent upon the perfect and regular functioning of an intricate system of long-range food production and food distribution. Such a system may operate smoothly in fair weather ; but when trouble comes, the price that the dumb crowd pays for its crowd- ing is hideous. To conclude then, if people are willing to live like the beasts of the fields, always searching food and facing horrible hazards of famine, there is room for many more millions on earth. If they care to enjoy leisure and the simple comforts which our Washington clerk now revels in, and if they insist upon getting even modest returns from capital and labor invested in farms, it is clear that, measured in terms of the long, long ages which mark man's career on this planet, the dead line will soon be reached. CHAPTER 23 WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? WE have just seen that the world's population is in- creasing at the incredible rate of 18,000,000 a year, and if this keeps up the last tillable acre of soil will be plowed in the spring of 2120, or thereabouts. We have also seen — what most of us already knew — that the 105,000,000 whites and blacks that are citizens of the continental United States have set their faces determin- edly in the direction of a higher and ever higher stand- ard of living, which means more and better food, better clothes, finer homes, easier travel, and fewer hours of daily toil. On the face of it, here is a tragic dilemma. If the herds of humans go on growing, food will give out, and so too will almost everything else; and then where is the much loved American standard of living ? On the other hand, what can we Americans do to check that fatal increase of population? Is it not inevitable that we shall soon be swamped by this sickening irrational breeding that resembles nothing so much as that of the little fish which spawn in some tiny stream and there grow so fast that they crowd thousands of their kind out of the water ? The easiest and gloomiest answer to this has lately been repeated in vigorous journalistic language by Mr. Lothrop Stoddard, who tells us, in his ''Rising Tide of Color": 312 WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 313 "The colored races outnumber the whites more than two to one. . . . That is a formidable ratio, and its significance is heightened by the fact that this ratio seems destined to shift still further in favor of color. There can be no doubt that at present the colored races are increasing very much faster than the white. Treating the primary race-stocks as units, it would appear that whites tend to double in eighty years, yellows and browns in sixty years, blacks in forty years. . . . "Now what must be the inevitable result of all this? It can mean only one thing : a tremendous and steadily augmenting outward thrust of surplus colored men from overcrowded colored homelands . . . into those emptier regions of the earth under white political control. . . . "Thus the colored world ... is being welded by the most fundamental of instincts, the instinct of self-preservation, into a common solidarity of feeling against the dominant white man." What can be said of this forecast ? Is the evidence in its favor sound? Will it endure severe analysis? For- tunately it will not. It is based on estimates and sta- tistical methods not unlike those which we found Mr. Arthur Brisbane using when he told us the United States could feed 700,000,000 people. As Mr. Stoddard's entire argument is erected upon such figures and inferences, it will be enlightening to cite one clear and significant case of his method before we take up the voider problem of anticipating the future of world population. How does Mr. Stoddard arrive at his conclusion that the yellows and browns are increasing so rapidly, as compared with the whites? He begins by stating that Japan is increasing at the rate of about 800,000 per year. Now this is incorrect. The most carefully checked estimates reduce this number to anywhere be- S14 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tween 600,000 and 700,000, and the first Japanese census, now being announced, confirms them. But this error is slight in comparison with the manner in which Mr. Stoddard uses the Japanese figure as a basis for esti- mating the growth of Chinese population. He admits, of course, that China has no vital statistics, but goes on to say that her annual increase, at the Japanese rate, would be 6,000,000. And he leaves his reader with this statement unqualified and unsupplemented. The reader who is not fond of analyzing statistics has to take it at face value and build his thoughts around it. Now, without plunging into any technicalities, we can point out many facts which even Mr. Stoddard should have known and sensed as extremely significant. To begin with, Japan is wholly a temperate-zone country in which the natural hazards of infancy are very much slighter than those in all of South China and a good part of North China. Even if both countries were equal with respect to the care of infants, the probabilities are that more Japanese babies would survive and grow up. But the countries are far from equal in the care of children. As Mr. Stoddard should know, the Japanese Government is a highly organized power devoted to the well being of its people ; it has introduced Western sanitation and hy- giene, local hospitals and nurses, and other improvements making for public health. This certainly increases the survival rate of i;^fants far above that of China, where there is virtually no organized health work outside of six or seven large cities. Another fact that Mr. Stoddard ought to know is that the Japanese, like most maritime people, are scrupulously clean and neat in all personal and household habits, whereas nine Chinese out of every WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? S15 ten are unspeakably filthy. The children born in a Japa- nese home would, on this score alone, have a tremendous advantag-e over Chinese babies in the hard struggle for existence. Mr. Stoddard might have been expected to know also that in China girl babies are unwelcome and given little attention or even neglected altogether, while thousands are still strangled and thrown into the rivers. In Japan no such custom generally prevails. This ruins what little wreckage is left of Mr. Stoddard's figure. And we still have to add that in Japan climatic condi- tions affecting agriculture are very stable. Abnormal rainfall and excessive drought scarcely enter into the farmers' reckoning over the greater part of the islands. In China, on the other hand, torrential summers are fol- lowed by one or two years of total drought. One season the crops are washed out by the roots. The next season they wither in the first sprout. And then men, women, and children clutter the roads with their corpses, as they are doing at this very hour in five of the northern prov- inces, where, according to the American consular and Red Cross reports, 20,000,000 wretches are doomed to starv^e, no matter what efforts may be made on their behalf. Horrors like this happen on a smaller scale every few j^ears somewhere in China. To be blunt, it is absurd to draw any parallel between Japan and China in matters of population growth. Such misuse of statistics only adds to the burden of guilt which the careless journalism of both Japan and America must carry. The handling of population statistics is an extremely delicate task, requiring intimate knowledge of a great many geographical, social, and historical facts which 316 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? affect not only the population itself but also the estimat- ing of it. It is prudent then to lean on the judgment of an expert rather than on the impressions of a jour- nalist. I have therefore asked Mr. Warren S. Thomp- son to give us his answer to the question as to who shall inherit the earth. This he has done in the next section of this chapter. Mr. Thompson's studies of population have been thoroughly scientific, and the conclusions he has reached have attracted wide attention among the few men who are competent to pass technical judgment on them. It seems to me that they deserve the fullest publicity, for they must alter profoundly a number of ideas and policies that have found vogue in America. MR. THOMPSON ON WORLD POPULATION Since a considerable proportion of the population of the world has never been counted, there is more or less uncertainty regarding the number of people in the world to-day. Despite this fact, it will be instructive to survey the growth of population during the last two centuries in those parts of the world for which we have data worthy of consideration. The best estimates of Europe's population near the beginning of the eighteenth century are those of Levas- seur. Using these as a basis, we find that the people of European origin numbered from about ninety to a hundred millions, distributed about as follows : France 19,000,000 German Empire and Prussia 23,000,000 England 9,000,000 Austria 12,000,000 European Russia 10,000,000 WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 317 Other parts of Europe and European col- onies from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 In 1910 Europe had a population of about 442 mil- lions, and in addition to this had sent forth colonists to new lands, who, with their descendants, numbered about 140 millions, as follows: United States 81,000,000 Canada 7,250,000 Australia and New Zealand 5,500,000 South Africa 1,250,000 Latin America 15,000,000 Siberia T 25,000,000 Other 5,000,000 Thus the population of European stock grew from about ninety to a hundred millions at the beginning of the eighteenth century to about 580 millions in the early years of the twentieth century. It is probably not over- estimating its increase to say that it was six times as great in 1910 as it was in 1710. During the eighteenth century its growth was not very rapid. Levasseur esti- mates that Europe's population was 175 millions in 1800; and, if we add to this the population of the European colonies, we should have a population of about 180 mil- lions. Speaking in round terms, the peoples of Euro- pean stock only doubled in numbers during the eight- eenth century, but more than tripled their numbers dur- ing the nineteenth century. A comparison of the growth of the peoples of European stock with that of other peoples is baffling. Some of the so-called "censuses" of China taken about 1700 show that it had a population of somewhat less than 30 mil- S18 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? lions, while those taken about a century later show that it had over 360 millions; more than a twelvefold in- crease in a century. A rate of growth which is only exceeded in modem times, as far as I have been able to ascertain, by the United States between 1800 and 1900. Theoretically, it is by no mean impossible for China to have had the increase shown by the ** censuses " ; but from the known facts regarding the character of the Chinese and the nature of their industrial sj^stem, it appears ex- tremely improbable that any such increase in their num- bers took place during the eighteenth century. It seems much more likely that the unsettled condition of the country and the failure to enumerate the families in large areas will account for a small number of people returned in their early '^ censuses." In recent years there has been an almost universal agreement among those who should know most about the Chinese that their numbers have generally been exaggerated in the past. The date which seems most worthy of credence places the present population of China at from 330 to 340 mil- lions. This is about twenty-five millions less than were returned by the ''census" of 1812. In the face of such uncertainty it seems improbable that the population in the territory now embraced by China and her depend- encies has had any unusually rapid growth in the last two centuries. It may have doubled in that period. But remembering that there has been no fundamental change in the basis of agriculture or manufacture in China during this period such as has taken place in the Western world, even this seems unlikely. The figures which are accepted by the Japanese Gov- ernment show that Japan's population increased slowly WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 319 during the greater part of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its rate being approximately two per cent per annum. Of course these figures are only estimates, but they accord well with what we should expect, knowing, as we do, the conditions which in general favor or hinder population growth. Recent censuses in India show that many of the earlier estimates of its population were too small and that its rate of growth in recent years has been exaggerated as a consequence. Indeed, it does not seem likely that the population of India has grown much during the eight- eenth and nineteenth centuries in comparison with that of most European countries. As in China and Japan, life has not become appre- ciably easier in India during the last two centuries, and it is inherently unlikely that any very large increase in its population has taken place. What is true of the population of China, Japan, and India is without doubt true of the native populations of the rest of Asia, all of Africa, and most of the islands of the South Seas. There has been no great change in the methods of securing a livelihood in these parts of the world within the period of historical record, nor have the sanitarj^ conditions of life much improved. It is not reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the numbers of peopje living in these areas has greatly changed. In recent years, under the tutelage of the whites, certain countries, as Java, have shown a very rapid increase, but these are exceptions. We shall never approach greater accuracy in compar- ing the population of European stock in the past with that of other stocks than to accept the statement, com- S20 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? monly made, that from ninety to one hundred millions of Europeans in 1700 constituted about ten per cent of the total population of the world. In 1910 the 580 mil- lions of people of European stock constituted about thirty-five or thirty-six per cent of the world's popula- tion. If the people of European stock had continued to increase between 1910 and 1920 at the same rate that they increased between 1900 and 1910, they would have numbered about 665 millions at the present time. Of this 665 millions, from 495 to 500 millions would have been in Europe, and the remainder, from 165 to 170 millions, in the lands which Europeans have colonized. The war checked the growth of the peoples of Europe so that its total population at present probably does not exceed from 470 to 480 millions. If we reckon it at about 470 millions, then the peoples of European stock number from about 635 to 640 millions and constitute slightly over thirty-seven per cent of the world's popu- lation, reckoning the world's population at 1700 millions in 1920. Figures 1 and 2 present in graphic form the conclu- sions arrived at from a study of the available data. They are not as accurate as we should like them to be, but they will help us to visualize the most important changes in population growth during the last two cen- turies. Let us now turn our attention to the probable future growth of the world 's population. Since the work of Malthus first directed the serious attention of students to the problem of population growth, sufficient progress has been made in understand- ing the forces at work to permit of certain predictions of a general nature of whose accuracy we may feel as- WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 321 YLLLOW 39.0 WHITE NON-CUeOPCAN 4.0 WHITL 10.0 BLACK 12.0 35.0 PROPORTION OF WORLD^vS POPULATION COMPRISED BY DIFFERENT RACE5 1700 Fig. 1 sured. Malthus was the first economist to point out that the limits of population growth are very definitely deter- mined by our ability to increase the means of subsist- ence. This may seem so obviously true that it needs no 322 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? proof. Its significance was not realized, however, until Malthus went on to prove that population tended to increase more rapidly than man could produce the neces- WHITE 3.5 NC)N-euROPE>«N YELLOW 27.1 CHiMuc,jMnMcac oePCi«CNCtt& WHITE Z7:d eUROfXAM BLACK 74 BKOWN 24.7 «NOtA & MALAY PtNIN5UUk OVLTVt FROPOHTION or WOflLD^S POPULATION C0MPfek5£D BY DirrEHENT RACE5 1920 Fig. 2 sities of life. It followed from this that if man were to avoid the hardships of famine, war, disease, etc., he must take measures to keep the increase of population commensurate with the increase of his capacity to pro- WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 323 duce food and other necessities of his life. The fact that Mai thus was thinking of a social order in which the means of obtaining a livelihood remained relatively fixed does not in the least vitiate his argument. The Ioajo of diminishing returns comes into operation Sooner or later under any given system of industry, and the difficidty of making a living increases with the growth of popida- tion. That Malthus seemed to make no allowance for the in- crease in man's productive power due to the settlement of new lands, the development of steam and electric transportation, and the rise of machine industry led many thoughtful people to disbelieve in his whole doc- trine of population growth. For more than a century after the appearance of the first edition of Malthus 's *' Essay on Population" few people took his doctrine se- riously. What was obvious to every one was that man, especially the man of Europe, had tapped new resources and had discovered new ways of making use of his re- sources. It seemed to many that there was no limit to the num- ber which the earth might support. In the flush of these discoveries even the economists of Europe gave little attention to what was perfectly clear to Malthus ; namely, that, no matter how easy life might be for a time, it would be a relatively short period until man multiplied beyond his power to support himself in reasonable comfort if he did not learn to make use of *' preventive " checks. He was fully convinced that if man did not voluntarily limit his numbers by later marriages, personal restraint, in- creased bachelorhood, etc., nature would limit them in a much harsher manner by the application of the **posi- 324 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tive" checks — famine, disease, pestilence, war, and other forces which make for a high death-rate. More and more we are coming to see that Malthus's position is essentially correct. Man must control the hirth-rate and keep his numh&rs ivithin reasonable limits^ or he must suffer from the hardships of a continumis and severe struggle with nature to get a scanty livelihood. There may be periods of comparative plenty for a fav- ored few, such as the last half or three quarters of a century for the people of the Western world, but sooner or later nature will refuse to yield abundantly to all, and the ''positive" checks will begin to operate with in- creased severity. There is very good evidence to show that we have about passed through our period of abun- dance, and that now we must take more thought for our future and that of our descendants. On Map I, showing birth rates, you will find indicated those parts of the world in which the practice of "pre- ventive" checks is coming to be an important factor in the control of population growth, and also those other parts in which the "positive" cheeks still hold undis- puted sway. I realize that no sharp distinction between such localities is accurate ; but this map will serve to im- press upon you how small a fraction of the world's popu- lation makes use of the "preventive" checks. It is not more than fifteen per cent at the outside, when we class the whole nations together; actually, the proportion of people who make use of them in any of these nations is probably not over from twenty-five to fifty per cent, so that it will not be far amiss to say that only from about five to eight per cent of the world's population makes use of ^'preventive" checks. Throughout from ninety -two 325 326 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? to ninety-five per cent of the human race, the ' ' positive ' ' checks alone control the growth in numbers. When the ''positive" checks alone control population growth, its rate of increase depends directly upon the abundance or scarcity of the necessities of life. If there is abundance, population can easily double in twenty- five years, while if there is great scarcity, it may remain stationary or even decrease. Digby in "Prosperous British India" has estimated that not fewer than thirty- two millions of people died directly of the result of famines in India during the nineteenth century. If this estimate of deaths directly due to famines is even ap- proximately correct, the total number of deaths due to them must have reached the staggering figures of from fifty to sixty millions, for disease and pestilence find easy prey among hunger-weakened people. In the books de- scribing life in China one finds constant reference to famines and fioods as causes of the death of vast num- bers of people. In a number of books there is reference to a great famine in the year 1877 which is supposed to have been the direct cause of the death of not fewer than ten millions in two of the smaller provinces. Again the Tai-ping Rebellion is said to have cost at least ten mil- lions of people their lives, while some authorities place the number at twenty millions. And the famine in North China to-day promises to destroy fully as many. Such disasters attract a great deal of attention because they descend upon man suddenly and kill great num- bers in a short space, but they probably cause the death! of only a few as compared with the numbers dying year by year in these same countries because the necessities of life are always hard to get. Had Malthus lived a century! 327 328 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? later, he could have mai^shaled an even more imposing array of facts than he did to show nature puts a limit to man's increase if man will not forestall it. It is quite impossible to tell what the birth-rates and death-rates are in those countries not having good sys- tems for the reporting of births and deaths, but it is probably not overestimating their birth-rates to sup- pose that throughout that part of the world in which the ''positive" checks prevail, the birth-rate ranges be- tween forty and fifty per one thousand living persons per annum. The death-rate probably ranges from thirtj^ to fifty in normal times, and in times of stress may mount higher. On this point, see Map II. The best authorities estimate the infant mortality in China at about fifty per cent; that is, one half of the children bom die before they are a year old. It is but little less in Russia (about forty per cent in normal times), and is probably fully as high in India, the Ma- lay Archipelago, Africa, and most of South and Central America. The data in the Japan Year-Book, 1919, show that 396 out of every thousand children under five years of age died in the year 1914. This figure is not altogether accurate, but whatever error it contains is probably on the side of under-statement rather than over-state- ment. Thus we see that a very large proportion of the chil- dren of the world are born only to die in early infancy. Of those who survive infancy a great many die before they reach maturity; so that in most of the countries of the world certainly not over one third and probably not over one fourth of the children live to the age at which 329 330 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? they might reproduce themselves. With such high death- rates, population increases but slowly, if at all. On Map III are shown the rates of natural increase in the different countries of the world. It is clear from an examination of this map that the areas of high birth- rates and high death-rates are the areas of low natural increase. At the present time the countries with rela- tively low birth-rates and death-rates are contributing most largely to the world's population. Will this continue to be the case, or will the people with high birth-rates increase more rapidly in the future, and in time swamp the Europeans who are coming to use the preventive checks? There is little doubt that the black, brown, and yellow races will increase more rapidly in the century before us than they have in the one just past. For one thing, they are slowly adopting Western methods of industry, which means that they can greatly increase their productive capacity and thus secure the necessities of life for a larger population. In the second place, they are beginning to reach out for new lands in which they may plant colonies. In these two ways they hope to secure the sustenance for a much larger popula- tion than their native land will now support. The growth of the population in Japan during the last thirty or fifty years seems typical of what we may expect to take place in other Eastern countries as they adopt Western industrial methods and ideas of sanita- tion. In the century and a quarter preceding 1872, Japan's population is supposed to have increased at the rate of about 0.2 per cent, or twenty-seven per cent dur- ing the entire period. In the half century since 1872, its population has increased at the rate of about 1.0 per WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 331 cent and 1.5 per cent per annum, and the population has increased about sixty-six per cent. These data are not as accurate as we could wish, for Japan has never taken a real census until 1920, but they give a fairly accurate notion of the changes in population growth during the last century and three quarters. The official data on birth-rates and death-rates for Japan show that the birth-rate has been increasing slowly of late years, while the death-rate has remained stationary. It seems reasonable to say that Japan really has a stationary birth-rate, and a death-rate that is gradually falling, in- asmuch as greater accuracy in the registration of births and deaths is being gradually attained. This is the natural course of events in a country like Japan, where industry is increasing its productivity, modem methods of sanitation are beginning to be adopted, and the social forces governing the birth-rate have been but a little affected by these changes. A more productive system of industry and an improve- ment in sanitary practices mean a temporary removal of some of the ''positive'^ checks, and population immedi- ately increases until a new equilibrium between people and means of subsistence is established. Always and everywhere the death-rate is a more or less direct result of the pressure of population on the means of subsistence. Where the pressure is light, the death-rate is low; and where the pressure is severe, the death-rate is high. The hirth-rate, on the other hand, is not determined by any such simple set of causes. It is the result of the complicated interaction of biological, social, and economic forces and does not vary greatly from year to year as the death-rate does. The biological forces represented by the SS2 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? sex instincts have not changed from time immemorial and are undoubtedly as strong in the French, who have a very low birth-rate, as they are in the Chinese, having a birth-rate of fifty or more. The social customs and traditions governing marriage and family ideas and standards of living, etc., change very slowly, and do not seem to have any immediate connection with the changes which may occur in an industrial system. Religious ideals, customary family standards, and the great inertia of the customs in private life will explain the slow re- sponse of the birth-rate to changes in the economic sys- tem. If it is the custom for every boy and girl to marry at from sixteen to twenty years of age and if the pri- mary object of marriage is to raise sons to look after the ancestral worship, and keep the family alive, then we may not expect to find any rapid fall in the birth-rate. Man seems naturally conservative regarding changes in the mode of his private life. It usually takes some great crisis to work sudden changes. Even to-day, as pointed out above, only a small portion of the people of western Europe and America practise the use of pre- ventive checks to population growth. And this change has only taken place slowly as the individual man, eman- cipated from the strict control of family, came to de- velop in comparative freedom his own modes of conduct and standards of living. There is no apparent reason to believe that the pre- ventive checks will come into operation more rapidly among the peoples of the Eastern world and the Indians of America than among the peoples of European stock. Indeed, it seems likely that the customs which encourage early marriage, a high birth-rate, and close, almost com- WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 333 munal family life will succumb even more slowly in the East than they have in the West. These customs appear to be more solidified in the East than they ever were in the West. The ''cake" of custom is thicker and tougher in Asia than it was in Europe. It will, therefore, be harder to break through. The emancipation of the in- dividual person from the thralldom of the family will take place very slowly in the East, and we cannot expect to see any considerable decline in the birth-rate until the individual man has at least a moderate degree of freedom in determining his own course of conduct. All this means that the positive checks to population growth will he the only effective checks in operation in a non- European world during the next century and a half or two centuries. In order to realize the full significance of this, we must remember that almost two thirds of the world's popula- tion is non-European. Its birth-rate is very high. What its growth will actually be will depend chiefly on two factors: (1) the amount of new lands opened up for colonization; (2) the rate at which its present system of hand production is changed over into that of machine production. The opening up of large areas of new land in Siberia, Africa, America, and the Malay Archipelago to the peoples of Japan, India, and China might very easily result in a doubling of their numbers during each quarter of the next century. In taking pos- session of new lands, these people would not materially change their standards of living and customs of daily life, and consequently an expansion of their productive powers wbuld be used almost exclusively to support a greater number of human beings on their present plane 834 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? of living rather than for an improvement in their mode of life. The development of machine industry, even though adding greatly to their productive power, would not cause as rapid an increase of population as the settlement of new lands would. There seems to be a strong tend- ency in industrial work to breed the desire for better living, probably due to the example set by the entre- preneur and professional classes who direct industry. Furthermore, industry inevitably breaks up the older social and economic dominance of the family and thus frees the individual members. Hence modem industry tends to develop the use of preventive checks much more rapidly than does agriculture. There seems to be no doubt that some portion of the inhabitants of China, India, and Japan, the Asiatic coun- tries which might send forth colonists in large numbers, is well adapted to every climate in which man now lives in any considerable numbers. Therefore they could com- pete with the European not only in the temperate zone, but could people the tropics of Africa, America, and the Malay Archipelago, where the European cannot live and work. At a glance on Map IV giving the density of population in various parts of the world, one sees that the territory available for settlement by these people is much greater than that in which the white man can thrive. If no obstacles were put in the way of Asiatic colonists, it would not be surprising to see the greatest migration of history take place during the century ahead of us. The 750 millions of people living in India, China, and Japan might easily number 6,000 millions in the year a. d. 2020. 335 BELGIUM NETHERLANDS UNITED KINGDOM JAPAN ITALY GERMANY AUSTRIA CHINA FRANCE I INDIA I HUNGARY SPAIN RUSSIA-EUROPEAN UNITED STATES RELATIVE DENSITY OF POPULATION PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES 1910-20 336 WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 337 It is quite clear, however, that there are many ob- stacles to the extensive migration of these peoples. Cus- toms and traditions bind them to their home lands. It would take some time — perhaps four or five generations under favoring conditions — for these social restrictions on colonization to break down in the case of the Chinese. In the case of the Japanese these restrictions are not very strong and are already passing away. Among the Hindus they still have great influence, but are still being rapidly dissipated. Again, the white man has already taken vigorous ac- tion to prevent the colonization by these peoples in coun- tries in which he can work. How consistently he will pursue the policy of keeping the temperate climates of Europe and America, Africa, Australia, and northern Asia for himself, no one can say, but it seems likely that his efforts along this line will increase rather than dimin- ish. There is no good reason to suppose that he could not be successful in his efforts ; but his attempts to dominate the tropics may be less fortunate. In the third place, the growth of the nationalistic spirit among these Eastern peoples may lead their governments to encourage them to stay within the boundaries of their respective countries or to push into the adjacent territory of their neighbors. Such a policy might conceivably lead to armed conflicts that would keep the Asiatic powers from pursuing any aggressive colonization projects out- side of Asia for several generations. In the fourth place, there is the possibility of a com- bination of the more self-conscious of the yellow, brown, and black races against the domination of the white race. It seems, however, that such an event is in the dim future 338 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? and that we need give it no consideration at present. Perhaps by the time that it would be possible for such a grouping of peoples to be effected, we should have learned how to get along better together than we do at present. There will probably be no great change in the rate of population growth among the non-European peoples in the next three or four generations. As mentioned above, they will probably reduce their death-rates, thus raising the rate of natural increase, but this will take place slowly and need not occasion us alarm. The immediate future holds no promise of such sudden easing of the positive checks. The whites will not allow their lands to be colonized by other races, and the process of taking possession of the tropics and new continents will prove exceedingly costly in human lives even when done by Chinese, Hindus, and Japanese. The future growth of the black race is even more un- certain than that of the yellow and brown races. The black man has shown no inclination to increase the pro- ductivity of his land either by more steady industry or by the adoption of the white man's inventions. Within historical times he has never ventured abroad except un- der compulsion. In contact with the white man he con- tracts vices that threaten to destroy him. It would not be surprising if the black race were to die out or be ab- sorbed into other races. The brown and yellow races do not manifest the objection to intermarriage with the black race that the white man does. It does not seem unlikely, in any event, that the black race will increase very rapidly. Except in the Southern States, the negro WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 339 has probably not increased during the last few centuries. The future growth of the peoples of European stock is less uncertain than that of the non-European peoples. There is little reason to doubt that the birth-rate among the European will continue to fall, although the decline will probably be slower than it was during the last cen- tury. On the other hand, the death-rate will probably fall almost as rapidly as the birth-rate for the next three or four decades, so that once Europe begins to recover from her present chaos, its population will increase al- most as rapidly as in the last three or four decades. From some time in the third quarter of this century it is likely that the rate of increase of European stock will decline appreciably. It may not be more than half its present rate by the end of the century. But even if this should be the case, the people of European stock will be increasing more rapidly than those of other stocks. There is a very good reason to believe that Europeans will constitute a larger proportion of the world's popula- tion a century hence than they do at present. Thus we need not fear for the position of the white race in the world. There has been much ill-considered talk about race suicide in this country. The alleged dan- ger of the white race being swamped by the other races is largely illusory. // ive allow ourselves to hecome the remnant of a dying race, it will he because we are sa short-sighted as to enter into competition with races hav- ing lower standards of living. We are able to protect our natural resources and our standards of living from exploitation by other races, but we must set about the matter systematically and work out intelligent policies. 340 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? We must think about the future of the race and less about the immediate profits to be made by exploiting our re- sources with the aid of cheap labor. The white race as a whole is increasing in numbers as rapidly as it can take care of them and preserve its stand- ards of living. What is needed is not more babies, but a better distribution of babies among the different classes of the population. This is the surest way to progress and to the maintenance of leadership among the world's peoples. The welfare of our race demands that we study popula- tion in all its manifold phases. Much of the misery of mankind in all ages has been due to the fact that there were too many mouths to feed. If we are to ameliorate life on a large scale, we must learn how to preserve a balance between the number of people and their ability to produce the necessities of life. CHAPTER 24 **THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" MR. LOTHROP STODDARD, foUowing his own methods of analysis, declares that the white man to-day faces * ' the crisis of the ages. ' ' The so-called ' ' Nordic type, ' ' which certain writers have fancied to be the supreme triumph of evolution, must either seize the mastery of the world or else be overwhelmed by the ''ris- ing tide of color." But IMr. Thompson's sober survey in the preceding chapter exposes this tide as a myth. There remains only the task of showing that the "crisis of the ages'* is even more completely fictitious than Mr. Thompson has made it out to be. Mr. Stoddard seems to regard the whole ' ' crisis " as a matter of growing population and a steadily unifying hatred of the white man's domination. Mr. Thompson realizes that there is much more to the matter than these two factors, but he has confined his observations chiefly to problems of population, about which he is particularly informed. To round the discussion off properly, we must now look at other potent influences, by far the greatest of which is climate. First of all, let us consider the possibilities of economic and military competition in the yellow-brown world. These divide sharply into two groups: the first have to do with competition within the territories of the Far 341 342 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? East and the second with competition carried by the Asiatics into regions now occupied by men of European stock. It is clear that we have here two radically differ- ent problems to solve. And it is no less clear that writers like Mr. Stoddard have ignored these profound differ- ences, thereby confusing the entire discussion. Now, our earlier study of the military and naval dead- lock between Japan and the United States gives us the general answer to the question : ' ' Can the Asiatics drive Europe from the Eastern markets and from political control of yellow-brown peoples?'* Every lesson of the World War seems to point in the same direction: no Western nation can retain economic or political power in the Far East any longer than the people of the Far East themselves choose to let them. To take a hypo- thetical case: were Great Britain challenged to-morrow by the natives of India, or even by a large minority of the upper commercial and political classes, the British flag would come down everywhere in India within six months. But when is such a revolt likely to happen ? Again our question divides. It is plain that discontent over politi- cal domination by the white man is now spreading much faster than is any hostility to the white man's cotton mills and railroads and huge investments. The British are alive to this fact, and some of their clearest thinkers in Indian affairs have told me that they are prepared inwardly to step out almost any time after the new Parliament of India settles down to business. Such a graceful withdrawal, however, would serve to strengthen their commercial position in the country; for the busi- ness men of India know how much their land needs from "THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 343 the factories of Europe. They understand how casual and how thin is the new industrialism of Asia. In com- parison With that of the West, it is still as nothing. Of this, more a little later. There is no reason for supposing that the political withdrawal of Great Britain from India and the treaty ports of China, the evacuation of the East Indies by the Dutch, or the turning over of the Philippines to their inhabitants by our own Government would either weaken the white man's position in the world or materially strengthen that of the Oriental. On the contrary, scores of business men, diplomatic officials, and Americans who have lived long in the Far East come close to agreeing that, outside of Japan and North China, such an immense political retreat would surely throw the Asiatics back into demoralization and civil wars of the worst sort. This indeed is one of the strongest arguments advanced by our own American business interests against granting full independence to the Philippines. And, whether it happens to be true respecting those islands or not, it is partly so of India and Malaysia and, in a somewhat different manner, of equatorial Africa. All white observers in China testify that the chief obstacle in the way of developing a modern industrial and commercial civilization there is the extraordinary corruption of the local politicians and office-holders. These people interfere with legitimate business for the sake of ''squeeze." Factories are packed with relatives of the powerful bureaucrat. Payrolls are padded worse than a Chinaman's overcoat. Natives force themselves into positions of authority, through ''pull," and then bungle everything, while the European technical ad- 344 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? viser twiddles his thumbs in helpless rage and watches tke huge investments of the white men being frittered away. Even the Japanese themselves, who should have known better, have lost millions of dollars in China in this very manner. Now, political habits like ''squeeze" and nepotism are very hard to break down, especially in a country where everybody lives so close to starvation that the fight for food is waged with animal cunning. Forty years of American prosperity have not yet sufficed to eradicate this same habit complex from the low pauper Irish who came here from a famine country and wormed their way into American municipal politics, to the everlasting con- tamination of our city life. So we may be sure that sev- eral generations must pass before the Chinese ward heelers and Tammany bosses will be driven out of their present strategic position and cease to be parasites on private business. If the European drops his present po- litical control, business will slip further and further into the meshes of corruption, and hence industrialism will lag, from Shanghai to Singapore, from Singapore to Suez. If industrialism lags, so too must militarism of the modern sort. The two are inseparable. We come therefore to the conclusion that, if the peoples of Asia resume full control of their political affairs in the near future, they will tend to fall much further behind the white race in both economic and military power. This, be it repeated, is not true of the Japanese and the north- em Chinese, at least in anything like the same measure as it holds for the rest of Asia. We may now look at the other problem of competition. What if the white man goes on building factories, schools. "THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 345 hospitals, and railroads in the Far East, as he has been for the past half -century ? How soon will he uplift the Asiatics to the point of making them thoroughly discon- tented with their lot and starting them on a tremendous migration into the vast empty spaces now held by Russia, Austria, and the Americas? Is this ''crisis of the ages" already at hand? Frankly, I am unable to see this peril as Mr. Stoddard and others see it. I cannot see it even on the wild as- sumption that the entire white race were to devote all its money and energy to industrializing Asia and giving all Asiatics the ideas and tastes of the West. The more narrowlj^ I inspect even the new civilization of Japan, which is immeasurably superior to that of every other Asiatic nation, the clearer it becomes that it has barely grazed the surface of things. The life of Asia is still of the Middle Ages and will take as long reaching the twen- tieth century as thirteenth-century Europe required. Civilization is altogether too vast and too intricate a web of intimate, nicely adjusted group habits ever to be made to order by the most enterprising political hustler. And like all other late products of human evolution, it is as easy to destroy as it is hard to create. This has been tragically demonstrated in Europe since 1914. And I do not see how any student can fail to see what it implies with regard to the future of Asia. It is pretty consen^ative to state that in Europe, in 1914, not more than five or six per cent of the total popu- lation were moderately civilized, in the sense in which we Americans understand civilization. We measure civi- lization by the total standard of living and the efficiency of the social and industrial mechanisms which maintain 846 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? that standard. Perhaps this is not the highest and best method of measurement, but it is certainly more reliable than any other method that has been suggested. Using it, we find that Europe as a whole stood far below us in most of the essentials, such as food supply, standards of hygiene, care of infants, honesty and efficiency in politics and diplomacy, the political intelligence of the masses, community of interests, ease of intellectual intercourse through one language and one press, weakness of class lines, and so on. A few small parts of the continent were superior to us in some respects, but that advantage was more than offset by the appalling degradation of most of Eastern Europe and many Mediterranean lands. When Europe was five or six per cent civilized, we were possibly ten to fifteen per cent civilized. Now, even in her present demoralization and misery, Europe as a whole is immeasurably better off and more completely civilized than Asia; and probably even superior to Japan, though this is debatable. Her railroads are in ruin, but even so she has better transportation than Asia. Three million children are starving in the Central Em- pires, but in North China alone twenty millions will die of hunger this winter ; and India has just gone through a hideous famine whose toll has not yet been measured. Machines are worn out and factories in dilapidation, but still there are a hundred good ones for every one in all Asia. Men and women are still underfed in many dis- tricts where there is no true famine ; but all of Asia has always been undernourished, and there are tens of mil- lions who, from the day of their birth, have never eaten what we should call a square meal. Now, even the optimists who have studied the present "THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 347 European crisis declare that the continent will not be able to reach the level of prosperity and social order of 1914 in much less than fifty years. The pessimists set the period at a century or longer. Let us side with the optimists for argument's sweet sake. What does their testimony imply as to Asia ? It implies that // the inhabitants of Asia were to begin to-morrow reconstructing their continent with the same energy and the same intelligence now being used by Europeans, they could not hope to attadn even the level of power amS civilization of devastated Europe in less than two or three generations. And to equal the present development of North America, they woxdd require several centuries. My assumption here is absurd, of course. Asiatics cannot apply the same energy and intelligence to such a hypothetical task as the Europeans can, for the excellent reason that nine out of ten of them do not possess such, while those few who do are scattered over a dozen coun- tries covering areas as vast as North and South America combined, and have no community of interests and no basis of effective cooperation. They speak languages that differ from one another even more than English differs from Russian. They follow political practices that differ nearly as much as Bolshevism differs from French republicanism. They have correspondingly dif- ferent wants and needs. And, above all, as I shall point out fully in a moment, they divide into the two most widely differing of all human groups, the temperate-zone peoples and the tropical. Geographically, mentally, eco- nomically, and socially, the peoples of the great continent are held apart much more than the old feudists of the Balkan States. And we might as well expect the Balkans 348 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? to rise up and outstrip Western Europe as to expect Asia to. Personally, I am convinced that the Balkans will be as far advanced as New England at least two cen- turies earlier than China reaches the present low level of Italy. When we reckon fairly with the political corruption, the inevitable losses of immense investments through bad management, the difficulties of language, and the absence of unified planning and control in all Asia except Japan and the Dutch East Indies, it is impossible to believe that things will move ahead any faster hereafter than they have been in the past quarter-century. And although the progress made in that time in Japan and North China has been startling, nevertheless it is as nothing when compared to what remains to be accomplished. And the prospect that it will eventually spread over all Asia fades into an emptj^ dream, as soon as we take into consideration the greatest of all factors in the situation, namely, climate. The most cursory study of it must con- vince anybody save a professional " yellow-perilist " that the sun will take care of the ''crisis of the ages" and evaporate ''the rising tide of color." Few observers fail to note a very close and far-reaching connection between man's behavior and the climate he works and thinks in. Many of us would go almost as far as Ellsworth Huntington in maintaining that tempera- ture and humidity set hard and fast limits to physical and intellectual activity, determining even the kind of civilization that may arise in various parts of the world. In his fascinating study, "Civilization and Climate," Mr. Huntington sums up an extraordinary array of minute observations covering all parts of the world ; and, what- "THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 349 ever exception may be taken to some of his detailed interpretations, the central thesis is here overwhelmingly established that all extremes of either temperature or humidity retard or otherwise disturb the minds and mus- cles of men. Great heat, intense cold, desert dryness, and extreme moisture all prevent us from carrying on active, constructive work at the high level attained by people who live in regions where there is a moderate humid temperature coupled with a daily variation that suffices to act as a stimulant. When we apply these gen- eral findings to the question at hand, the results are sur- prising — and yet precisely in line with the common- sense verdicts of thousands of white men who have tried to operate mills and plantations in the tropics or in a good part of sub-tropical China and India. And we see how nature conspires with the white man to leave the mastery of the world in his hands, for better or for worse. Where it is hot, day and night, for a large part of the year, and where the air is heavj^, there even the few men of high natural energy cannot hold a pace equal to the average inhabitant of a cooler climate. The farmers in the fields move slowly and accomplish little. The fac- tory hand dawdles over his machine. Various white em- ployers of labor in the tropics estimate the efficiency of people there at from one-third to one-fifth that of the ordinary temperate zone worker. And students of tropi- cal medicine find reasons for believing that the indolence and sluggishness in the hot belt is a form of chronic neu- rasthenia. In his study of what happens to white men who go to the tropics to live, Huntington records three further forms of physical and mental disintegration be- sides laziness. They are loss of will power, drunkenness. 350 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? and sexual laxity. As a matter of fact, these last two are merely special consequences of the first, in the main. Of them all, Huntington remarks : "The Englisli officer who returns from India is commonly described as 'choleric* Every traveler in tropical countries knows that he sometimes bursts into anger in a way that makes, him utterly ashamed. . . . "The drunkenness of the tropical white man arises in part from the constant heat which makes people want to drink at all times, partly from the monotony of life, and still more from the absence of social restraints. . . ." To which last should be added that the abominable^ and often infected drinking water in most parts of the tropics figures as a convenient excuse for endless alco- holism. And then both the heat and the alcoholism drive • the victim on to sexual degradation, of which Hunting- - ton says, "Its importance can scarcely be overestimated.. It leads to the ruin of thousands of northerners, even though they do not yield to drink, anger, or to laziness. . . . The condition of the native races is still worse. Everywhere within the tropics missionaries say that their converts can be taught honesty, industry, and many other virtues, but that even the strongest find it almost impossible to resist the temptations of sex. . . . Gouldsbury and Sheane, for example, say of the Zulus in northern Rhodesia that one of the greatest reasons why these people remain so backward is that their thought and energy are largely swallowed up in matters of sex. During the years when the young men ought to be getting new ideas and thinking out the many little projects and the few great ones which combine to cause progress, the vast majority are thinking of women, and planning to get possession of some new woman or "THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 351 girl. Under such circumstances no race can rise to any high position." This startlingly confirms all the evidence about the negroes of our own far South. And the very same words might be written about the Spanish and Portuguese in- habitants of tropical South America, where a depth of sexual laxity has been reached that staggers the visitor from cooler climes. It is this effect of the humid heat which is directly responsible for the complete breakdown of class and color lines from Cuba to Bolivia. Some innocent intellectuals writing for northern publications have occasionally hailed this racial-social promiscuity as evidence of a fine democratic instinct and have held it up as worthy of emulation ; all of which shows how easy it is for educated people to make fools of themselves. If they had known, for instance, that the illegitimate chil- dren in Cuba outnumber the legitimate five to one, they might have paused a moment and studied the facts. Latin America is a cesspool, nothing less ; and thousands of whites there have had all their original stamina burned out of them. It is only in the extreme south of Brazil, in Uruguay, and in Argentine that the white man has held his own ; and those regions are temperate, not tropic. Parallel with this runs a curious tendency in the tropic and sub-tropic races to ''talk big and do little." I have this statement from more than a score of men who have lived and managed workers in India, South America, South China, and the Philippines. Such a habit is not to be construed as ordinary braggadocio. It is not moral weakness. It is simply the psychological result of pos- sessing a healthy nervous system and an active mind in a place where heat makes sustained physical or mental 352 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? exertion virtually impossible. There is always the inner impulse to do things. This impulse is, when elaborated, a series of bright ideas. ' ' I will buy a farm. We must build a boat. It would be fine if we had a new town hall." And so on. When the bright ideas have all been developed, it is time for action. The work of the central nervous system is largely over, and the toil of the muscles begins. But here, alas, the bright ideas encounter a thermometer that insists upon registering ninety in the shade, week in, week out. The limp body refuses to carry out the orders of the mind. And the bright ideas go glimmering. This is the tragedy of the tropics. It is also the white man's salvation. In the accompanying map I have indicated roughly the way the whole world divides into regions of high initia- tive and regions of low initiative. I have further indi- cated those sections of the regions of high initiative which are now inhabited by the whites, and those now filled by the brown-yellows. The thinly settled deserts and mountain chains have been disregarded. The most casual inspection of the distribution brings out some re- markable facts. All of the hlack race amd nearly all of the yellow and brown races dwell in the torrid belt of low initiative. The only members of the yellow race living in regions of high initiative are the Northern Chinese and the Japanese. Do you not begin to see how it has come to pass, as Mr. Thompson has so clearly demonstrated, that so many millions of babies are brought into the Asiatic world, only to die in infancy, while among the white races the birth- rate is, on the whole, considerably lower and the survival 354 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? rate immensely higher ? Is it not forced home upon yon that the peoples of Asia are, in their complex life habits, overwhelmingly influenced by the air, sun, and water of their environment ? And that this influence is a terrible one that must retard them and their descendants cruelly in the long, hard struggle toward life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Asia, south of the thirtieth parallel, is at a standstill, so far as social and political life is concerned. If you draw a line across the continent from Shanghai due west to any point well beyond India, the bulk of the yellow- brown races will lie south of the line, in lands where the heat burns the will out of almost every man, and where nobody expects anybody else to bother very much over anything. Life is cheap. Time is cheap. Thoughts are little flies that buzz brightly and die at sundown. Morals simply aren't. And not all the poetrj^ of Kip- ling nor the prose of Conrad can gloss over the dirt, lazi- ness, evil, and superstition that besmear southern Asia. In all the ivorld there live about 950,000,000 yellows and browns. Of this horde fully 700,000,000 inhabit the hot-humid and the hot-arid zones of low initiative. Only 250,000,000 dwell in the temperate zones of high initiative. Until that far-off day arrives, when science and com- mercial enterprise shall have devised ways and means of keeping the tropical laborer cool and invigorated, we may totally disregard the 700,000,000 southern Asiatics and Malaysians in our political reckoning. It is simply inconceivable that any organized invasion of white lands can initiate in this weather-stricken mass ; and it is only a fantastic possibility that they might join some leader "THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 355 from the yellow north in such a mad enterprise. Such prospects can be seriously entertained only by people who have not minutely studied the geography of Asia and the psychology and physiology of tropical life. Arrayed, now, against the 250,000,000 yellow-brown group of high initiative we find, as Mr. Thompson has shown, something like 635,000,000 whites, of whom fully 610,000,000 live in temperate climes and display pretty much the same energy and political sense a^ the North Atlantic peoples. To make the contrast a degree more accurate, we must note that the yellow-brown group is to-day split into two classes bitterly hostile toward each other from time immemorial. Some 60,000,000 Japanese are opposed to 18,000,000 Koreans, all eager to slay any Japanese if no officer is looking, and more than 170,000,- 000 northern Chinese, who hate the spry islanders as whole-heartedly as the Sinn Feiner hates England. Having dismissed the thought of a military advance into lands now occupied by whites as too wild to be de- bated, we have left on our hands only the possibility of a slow infiltration, year by year, generation by genera- tion, into Australia, Russia, and the Americas. May it I not happen that the Chinese, for instance, who are now j overflowing at the rate of about a million a year into Mongolia and several hundred thousands a year into the Malay Peninsula and the Malaysian islands, may even- Itually reach Siberia and perhaps, in five or six genera- itions, fill that immense territory? Mr. Thompson has already answered this question. ; Certainly, such an overflow might happen, if we choose to allow it. It lies entirely within the power of our governments. If blocked by adequate immigration laws, S56 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? backed up by sound administration, the southern Asi- atics will either spread into Africa — which, in my opin- ion, would be the salvation of that now hopeless conti- nent — or else they will very slowly learn to adjust their life habits to home conditions so as to keep their own numbers down and make life more nearly worth living. Meanwhile, the white races will inevitably act under the spur of their climate and their ancient commercial and political habits, as well as their immense opportunities, And with only a little increase of intelligent control over themselves and over nature, they will become in fact what they are now in promise and intent, lords of the world — whether they deserve it or not. In this calculation, Russia is obviously the obscure and dangerous factor. Will she block the Asiatic? Let us consider the worst possibility. Even if Russia were to throw down the bars to Asiatics, the migrations that would ensue would be very different from those which Mr. Stoddard depicts. There are two general facts about the movements of people that all history uniformly confirms. And neither seems to have entered into Mr. Stoddard's calculations. One is that, when under no compulsion (political or physical), migrants tend to fol- low their native isotherms with no wide variation. The other is that movements out of such isotherms have, so far as records show, been always from the cool toward the hot, never from the hot to the cool. The Scandina vians emigrate to Canada, our own Northwest, or Russia. Although the Italians are near good undeveloped lands in North Africa, very few go thither; the masses move in three directions, all following the Italian isotherms quite closely : to Argentine, to the central and southern zones "THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 357 of the United States, and to the coast of Asia Minor. Tropical South America holds stupendous tracts of fer- tile soil and even passably inhabitable plateaus; but few are the temperate-zoners who have n-one thither. The entire continent is still predominantly Indian. As to- day, so ever in the past. Had we the space, we might rci'un here the gi^eat folk-movements from the earliest days in the Mesopotamian Valley down to the last drives of the old Turks into eastern Europe; and in each instance we should see either a shift from one place to another of the same general climatic type or else, less frequently, as in the great Teutonic invasions of the Mediterranean countries, a shift from cool to warm places. And we should find no case of a wholesale mi- gration from cool to tropic nor from tropic to cool. All Df which is no accident but rather an obvious consequence Df two things; first, the geographic difficulties, in both Asia and Europe, of passing from temperate to torrid districts ; and, secondly, that same stability of elemental life habits which I have mentioned so frequently. The bodily adjustments to food intake, food assimilation, ileep, work, thinking, and so on are profoundly different in cool and in hot regions. And man instinctively re- jents and resists anything that forces him to change them jven when the change does not seriously affect his health, IS it often does. This is why we need never fear that India and South I!hina will ever send their millions of superfluous humans nto Russia and Europe. These hordes will move around he torrid belt. The Hindu started out for Africa only i few years ago and would now be there in masses but 'or the outcry of the whites in Cape Colony, who saw 358 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? themselves being drowned out and forthwith raised the bars against the wanderer. Some day those bars must come down ; and when they do, the Dark Continent will begin changing from black to brown, to its own great gain. Eventually thf^ south Chinese will probably filter into tropical South America, as they are now moving again into Cuba. And they may even crowd into Mex- ico and there greatly improve the country by their amaz- ing perseverance and thrift. Whether Hindu and Chinaman ever succeed in breaking into the terrible trop- ics of northern Australia remains to be seen. Certain it is, though, that no white Australians will ever thrive there. These same general principles of migration lead to the conclusion that the temperate-zone yellow peoples of Japan and North China will certainly follow the path of least resistance westward into Mongolia and Siberia just as long and just as far as they can push 'on by hook or by crook. This is as sure as to-morrow's sunrise. And we ought to accept it as one of the fundamental facts on which we must build our national policy with respect to these alert, energetic, and brilliant cool-weather Asiatics. Whatever we may believe as to racial differences, we have to admit that the environment of these northern groups has brought out in them all of those traits which we profess to admire most in ourselves; and these traits are bound to sweep them westward along the cool-weather belt of Asia, no matter what moves our diplomats and our generals make. In an earlier chapter I have pointed out the cool contempt with which the Japanese Govern- ment countered the protest of our State Department over the recent occupation of northern Sakhalin. And "THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 359 I do not hesitate to predict that the Japanese will pay less and less heed to foreign complaints as time goes on. In the face of the hunger of masses and the urge to seek a decent li\dng, all man-written law is but- a scrap of paper. The most you can do with it is to light a fire that bums up whole civilizations. It would be futile to conjecture what obstacles Russia may place in the way of Japanese and Chinese infiltra- tion. Nobody in America knows much about the present state of public opinion in that strange land. In so far as we can judge from the past, however, we may hazard the very vague guess that the Russians are friendly to the Chinese and welcome them in Siberia, while disliking the trickier Japanese, who has made himself twice hated by the monstrous blunders his militarists committed in seizing the whole of Siberia east of Lake Baikal during the war and running up the flag of the mikado, just as if annexation were completed. For some years to come, then, it may happen that the Chinese will trickle west- ward unhindered, while every political obstacle will be laid athwart the path of the Japanese. In sixty years from now the temperate-zone yellow peoples will, with freer expansion into Siberia than seems reasonable to anticipate, have doubled their numbers. There will be something like 500,000,000 of them, making no deductions for special limiting factors. And what of the whites then ? Will the ' ' crisis of the ages ' ' have exterminated them? Mr. Thompson's calculations do not suggest it. Neither do those of any other well informed statistician. In 1980 the white race will probably be running very close to the billion-and-a-quarter mark. And, if Russia gets on her feet in another twenty years, this mark will 360 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? almost certainly be passed. For the splendid educa- tional pro<^ram now being carried out under grave han- dicaps all aver Russia cannot fail to reduce the death- rate pronouncedly ; but the })irth-rate, as Mr. Thompson ha« sliown, vv^ill remain virtually fixed for at least a generation or two. One fairly certain element in this anticipation remains to be stressed. It is the difficulty the Japanese find in adapting to the continental winters. I have already al- luded to this fact, which has been noted by many Ameri- can observers and has been dwelt upon openly by the Japanese themselves. The prolonged zero weather and the frightful winds shatter their morale very much as the same general weather conditions upset many whites, espe- cially the women, in the plains of Montana, Wyoming, and the Canadian Northwest. It may be taken as certain that no Japanese will migrate into Siberia of their own accord, except as traders or professional men attached to large enterprises, such as mines, railroads, fisheries, and so on. None will go as farmers, trappers, or unskilled laborers in outdoor work. And this will tend powerfully to hold down the total of yellow emigrants. For all these many reasons, then, we cannot advise anybody to lose much sleep over the "crisis of the ages." There are many other crises much nearer at hand iind considerably more perilous. One of them is the '\yellow peril" on our American farms. CHAPTER 25 A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY WE have now reached the end of a survey which must have discouraged the reader more than once, with its many digressions into technical matters. And the question confronts us : What can we, what ought we, do about it all ? This may be approached and answered in two ways. One is the way of the opportunistic diplomat. The other is the way of the scientific statesman. The opportunistic diplomat is a very real character. There are many of him. And they are in charge of the whole Japanese crisis, in spite of the fact that the business men and ex- perts of Europe and America are pretty well agreed, as a result of the World War, that such officials are inca- pable of managing large affairs. The scientific states- man is still an imaginary creature. But there are hopes that by dint of hard wishing some country will, before long, call him into fiesh-and-blood existence. Now, the opportunistic diplomat is solving the Japa- nese crisis at this very moment by a new ''gentlemen's agreement" which dodges the deeper issues, glosses over the present estrangements and menaces, and puts off a trouble which, if handled to-day in a scientific manner, might easily be solved, but, if deferred for many years, will get out of hand, precisely as our negro problem is 361 362 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? now out of hand forever. It wall not satisfy the white Californians. It will not please the Japanese either here or in Japan. It betrays the Filipinos, if, as is reported from Washington in these last days, the program calls for the admission of Japanese laborers into the Philip- pines. And it can end only by making those islands, Hawaii, and our Pacific Coast yellow, thereby adding a second unmanageable race issue to a first unmanageable one. But how might a statesman attack the problem? What method might he hit upon which was no mere ** gentlemen 's agreement" but rather a scientist's ver- dict? I think the facts we have been reviewing give at least a partial answer to this large question ; and if they do not map the program, at least they point out the gen- eral direction that must be taken. A scientific analysis of the whole Japanese crisis re- veals that it is the consequence of three other crises, each world-wide and extraordinarily complex both in its causes and its possible remedies. They are : 1. A dangerous increase of population in the white race and the north-temperate yellow group ; 2. A dangerously unbalanced system of world food production and food distribution, in relation to both the distribution and the gro-v\i;h of world population ; and 3. A dangerously rapid shift in standards of living, chiefly in America and Japan. Now, no ''gentlemen's agreement" will take care of the 600,000 or 700,000 extra Japanese v/ho are annually added to the world's population, and still less will it pro^dde for the extra 1,000,000 Americans. The scien- tific statesman squarely faces the fact that every twelve A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 363 months Japan and the United States combined present him with a new city as large as Philadelphia, to be fed and cared for in a himdred ways. He cannot long con- template this appalling problem without coming to real- ize that uncontrolled population growth leads to war and famine, intensification of racial antagonisms, the propa- gation of many unfit types, and the elimination of many of the most fit. He will find that the mere piling up of numbers is not the highest end of human endeavor. Progress and achievement are dependent upon making the most complete possible use of the spiritual resources of men rather than upon filling the earth with unlimited numbers who will eke out a precarious and miserable existence. The leaders of thought and opinion in Japan must be brought to realize that they cannot hope to gain relief from their present acute over-population merely by imi- tating the earlier colonial policies of the great European powers. That is, they cannot relieve the pressure at home by sending their surplus millions to far lands. All the evidence as to movements of population in both Europe and Asia points to one conclusion ; namely, that, as fast as men leave a country that is congested, the re- lief there caused by their departure stimulates either the birth-rate or the survival rate (or both) in a variety of ways ; so that in a short time the old maximum of popu- lation is attained, congestion sets in again, and the whole process is repeated. China, as well known, has been pouring forth men by the millions for many years. They are now moving into Mongolia at the rate of about a million a year. Many more millions have streamed south- ward into Malaysia, where they are dominant in business 364 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? and have usurped many of the choicest districts. And yet China's population is as large as it was generations ago. So, too, with England. For two hundred years her sons left her in shiploads and built up the United States, Canada, and Australia ; and yet to-day the mother country has millions more than before this colossal emi- gration began. And now, even after the terrible losses of war and influenza. Great Britain is planning officially to send a million of her sons and daughters overseas to the Dominions, where life will be easier. The same can be shown of Germany, Italy, and Rus- sia. And the same will happen to Japan if no other more scientific steps are taken to wrestle with the prob- lem. For this reason the United States ought not to admit as a valid argument in favor of our accepting a swarm of Japanese immigrants, Japan's pressing need to be rid of these people. We should rather request Japan to take prompt steps to control the size of her population through birth restrictions such as the upper economic classes of Europe and America practise. Certainly the Japanese Government, if it saw fit to do so, could advance much more rapidly in the direction of scientific eugenics than our own country can. The «Tap- anese people lean upon their rulers more completely, trust them more, and take orders from them with better grace than do the present inhabitants of the United States, whose lawlessness and almost savage individual- ism have grown rather than declined of late. Social habits, especially such intimate ones as those which are connected with birth-rate and survival rate, suffer a change with extreme slowness at best ; and it is doubtful if they would change at any perceptible rate, were no A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 365 laro^e organized educational campaign or no official pres- sure brought into action. This has been only too abun- dantly demonstrated in the enormous difficulties which eugenists of the United States have encountered whenever they have endeavored to abolish our medieval laws for- bidding the dissemination of scientific information about birth-control through the mails. With the almost des- potic power of the Japanese Government and its free re- liance upon the army of scientists in its employ, most obstacles of that sort might be swept away in a surpris- ingly short time. In continental Asia, Mexico and South America there is still room for surplus Japanese now alive. Thither they might go, and before many new generations of unwanted babies grow up, the Government might have this whole vexed problem well in hand. Such a move would be at once a triumph of scientific statesmanship and a blessing to all mankind. As for ourselves, first of all we must recognize the impossibility of Japan's reducing her birth-rate rapidly. That is contrary to everything we know about human nature. We face the fact then that, in the next thirty or forty years, we must do our part in making it easy for at least 20,000,000 Japanese to find homes abroad. The rational attitude is to put no obstacle in their way save such as may be necessary for the protecting of our own children. This implies that we should look favorably upon extensive migrations of Japanese into Siberia, Mexico, and South America. In none of these lands will they come into conflict with either a dense population or a highly .organized and virile civilization. With their unusual energy and ability, they cannot fail to improve 366 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? all of these vast waste places and better their own lot as well. Morally, physically, and intellectually, the Japa- nese are superior to nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Latin America; and it is certain that they would do more in the way of uplifting the countries between the Rio Grande and Chile than any of the natives of those backward places will ever be able to do. Our own population problem must next be considered. It differs from Japan's in both of its fundamental as- pects. Japan is a genuine nation. We are not. Japan has a homogeneous people speaking one language (save for a few minor dialects) and having one set of folkways. We have a hundred jumbled races, speeches, folkways, and ideals, all jarring and as yet but little reconciled. We are, to be plain, the super-Balkans. In the second place, Japan 's population has already outgrown its domes- tic food supply and will soon reach the point of an ethnic explosion. We, on the other hand, are far from famine. True, the law of diminishing returns is sending food prices up and warning us that a day of reckoning must come. None the less, as Raymond Pearl's computations show, we still have more than a century of normal, natu- ral gro'^1:h ahead of us before we shall have reached the dead line. We have room for about 92,000,000 more peo- ple in our present domain. Thus our population problem becomes twofold: first, how shall we handle population in the future so as to Americanize the United States? — and secondly, who shall the last 92,000,000 extra Ameri- cans be, our own children or those of a hundred alien strains ? You must see at once that these two problems inter- A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 367 lock at every point. And probably both must be han- dled together. They will eventually involve three dis- tinct procedures: 1. Forcing up the standard of living of the lower eco- nomic classes; 2. Putting a stop to immigration, or greatly reducing it ; and 3. Scientific birth control. The first method is being followed by our more progres- sive labor unions and by many social welfare organiza- tions. Every move in the direction of cleaner streets, better school teachers, stricter medical inspection of school children and factory^ workers, good roads, and so on carries us further toward a better living standard, which, as I have said, is the one solid reality of Ameri- canism. It would be well if such Americanism might be formally recognized as the basis on which all law and social order ought to be erected. The checking of immigration has been agitated strongly of late ; but, as this volume goes to press, there are indi- cations that the next Congress may fail to handle this large and difficult matter courageously and with intelli- gence, so great is the pressure for the Open Door, both from the large employers of low-grade labor and from the relatives of suffering Europeans who wish to bring the latter over here. A scientific statesman would listen to both these groups dispassionately and then point out to them certain fundamental facts which must be faced if we are to avoid disaster. These may be reduced to the form of a dilemma. 368 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? THE GREAT DILEMMA OF IMMIGRATION No advocate of free immigration and no disciple of Americanism seems to have sensed the deeper dilemma involved in these two programs. It is as follows: 1. If we admit large numbers of aliens to the United States, these immigrants will settle almost entirely in the cities. All the employment agencies serving our mines, mills, factories, and stores will bend their energies to keep such newcomers in cities; and all the deepest psy- chological forces in each immigrant will tend to keep him in the foreign quarter of some town, where he can meet men from ''Back Home," read papers in his native lan- guage, and eat food to which his palate is adjusted. Now, if these influences predominate — as they must un- less checked by some comprehensive and energetic legis- lation and private social reform — the result is bound to react injuriously upon a — American labor unions and b — The entire American standard of living which has been most aggressively maintained by those labor unions. The immigrant, as has been abundantly proved by our past experience with him, will work for less than the native American. A stranger in a strange land, he is often ignorant of his rights and his opportunities; and the fact that he instinctively tends to live with his own kind curtails his chances gravely. Social segregation nearly always means economic servitude, at least for some years. He always has been the stubbornest competitor of the American laborer just because he is strategically at a disadvantage in bargaining with prospective em- ployers. A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 369 It is this fact which makes the large employer of un- skilled and semi-skilled labor the most ardent advocate of a wide-open immigration policy to-day. For five years he has been groaning under a steadily mounting wage scale and a steadily declining quality of work done. There can be no doubt that American workers are largely to blame for the intense reaction against unionism which is now apparent all over our country ; they have, beyond all doubt, been ''soldiering" scandalously and in all too many instances have shown themselves to be as shameless profiteers as their esteemed contemporaries who fattened off the Shipping Board. Be this as it may, though, the simple fact is that, if the employers succeed in forcing through a ''liberal" immigration bill in the winter of 1920, industrial wages will promptly decline and unem- ployment among native workers will increase; at the same time, as the inevitable result of a huge influx into our cities, food prices and rents will either mount or at least hold their old high levels, for it is well known that city laborers out of work do not straightway rush back to the farms and grow foodstuffs, nor do real estate operators instantly build new tenements for each fresh shipload of Greeks landing at Ellis Island. Thus the whole present abnormal unbalance between industrial- ism and agriculture will be aggravated ; and so too will be the parallel unbalance of town and country. And it will become more difficult to maintain, and quite impos- sible to extend, the American standard of living. But this standard of living is the very backbone of Ameri- canism, as we have elsewhere shown. Remove th's stand- a,rd of living, and all the rest of what we call American- ism vanishes in thin air. It has no solid foundation and 370 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? no nourishment. Subtract "the full dinner pail" and the wife's Sunday-go-to-meeting dress, and the motion picture show around the comer; and you have left only the Fourth of July, My Country, 'T is of Thee, a few War Savings Stamps, and the Constitution, for which no truckman or carpenter cares a hang and wliich we are all busily nullifying — from the Supreme Court down to the youngest moonshiner. 2. If, on the other hand, a determined effort is made to prevent this dangerous congestion of aliens in our in- dustrial centers; and if this is coupled with sincere endeavors to maintain wages at a level which will per- mit American workingmen to go on living in their accustomed manner, the new immigrants will be sent to our rural districts and thereby be aided in leasing or buying farms and in getting employment as farm hands. Such a program carried out on a scale grandiose enough to prevent wholesale concentration of aliens in the cities would place millions of foreigners annually on our farms. This horde would have to be settled in racial groups, for inescapable psychological reasons. No Italian will go to a back county of Illinois where the farmers all speak English only and where the corner grocer carries neither garlic nor spaghetti. No Slav will tarry long in the hills of North Carolina, surrounded by a mountain folk who have nothing to do with him and his family, not because they dislike him but merely because they cannot talk with him and have no common interests with him. All recent surveys of our foreign population disclose the same two facts about it: the alien who goes to the country alone, endures a year or two of solitude and homesickness and then wanders back A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 371 to the town where men of his own kind dwell ; and the alien who goes to the countr>^ and sticks there always goes along with a group of his own people and there creates a foreign colony precisely like the greater one from which they all came in New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. The present writer has observed such un- American communities all over — pure Russian villages in Central Florida, pure Italian settlements in New Jersey, Utah, and California; pure Polish farm towns in IMichigan, pure Galician Jewish patches in the rich tobacco belt of the Connecticut Valley, and pure Japa- nese worlds all over the Pacific Coast. And he is con- vinced that those critics are correct who declare that these thousands of alien spots are so many sources of confusion and cross-purposes in American social and political life. They are one of the two or three factors which have thus far prevented the United States from becoming a nation in the strict sense in which Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan are nations. They have been largely responsible for our inability to work out a clean-cut national policy. Our 105,000,000 people are still — all oratory and buncombe aside — a collection of widely differing racial and national groups; and the solidarity, as well as the segregation, of these groups is becoming more and more pronounced since the war. The hope of the patriots that the war would unify America was a vain one. The outcome is the precise opposite. And all those patriotic organizations which were most zealous in unifying public sentiment and loy- alty have been the first to perceive and to admit their failure. It would be a waste of the reader's time here to 372 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? enumerate the extensive evidences of this fact. Every morning's newspaper is crammed with them. The fierce group lo^^alty of the Irish in America has already made the political issues of Ireland a menacing factor in American politics, just as the tremendous group loyalty of German Americans was a mighty force in shaping our war policy for three years. The Russian Jews are one of the chief obstacles in the way of a sound restrictive immigration policy. The Jews and Italians of New York City have largely displaced the old Irish as a power in municipal politics and are refining upon the crude scoundrelism of ancient Tammany, quite after the fashion of Italian politics, which are probably the most contemptible on earth, and with the commercial cunning of the old Ghetto than which there is none shrewder in keeping within the law and still '^ getting away with the goods. ' ' One does not have to go so far as Henry Ford, in his ignorant and silly attacks upon the Jewish race, nor so far as Hearst in his vicious assaults upon the Japa- nese, nor so far as various Southern politicians who have lately vented their hatred upon Italians and all, other ardent Catholics from Europe: one may shun such ex- cesses, I say, and still see in all such survivals of alien race groups, customs, and language so man}^ sources of domestic antagonisms and misunderstandings, all of which make impossible a truly national program touching world affairs. It was just these racial forces in our population which, more than anything else, kept us out of the League of Nations. And, even when the League has purged itself of some obvious defects on whose pres- ence those racial forces relied to camouflage their real A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 373 reasons for protest, we shall find ourselves in endless turmoil, whether we join the League or stay out. It is not at all a grotesque fear that moves some Americans — notably ex-Senator Beveridge — to say that we may expect those alien forces to break down our national unity in time. It would be grotesque, of course, to im- agine that they would do this as a part of some anti- American conspiracy ; and still more grotesque to fancy that they might be dissuaded from working for the interests of their fatherlands here by being lectured to, in school or out, on Americanism and the great need of their acquiring it. The efforts to "Americanize" them by bellowing the Declaration of Independence at them, forcing them to learn and use English, and making them stand up in the motion picture theater when the Star Spangled Banner is played all do more harm than good. These people have cultures of their own, and these cul- tures have become fixed life habits in all of them save the children. These life habits cannot be broken down, except by some catastrophe of the first magnitude. You might as well expect a New England Yankee who had gone to live in Japan as agent of some Boston manufac- turers to become a mikado worshiper and a Japanese jingo, as to hope to change an adult European into a New England Yankee. Now, it is bad enough to turn the United States into super-Balkans by dotting the countryside with villages that speak a hundred tongues and follow a hundred folkways. But there is a consequence that is infinitely worse than that. It is the one which Mr. Thompson and Mr. Mead have pointed out and which I have per- sonally verified by observation in several States, East, 374 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? South, and West. The presence of such low-standard settlements in an American rural district regularly tends to drive the less prosperous small farmers out, under the stress of competition. Especially the young men and young women become dissatisfied to remain in a neighborhood where ''queer" newcomers speaking strange tongues and doing odd things reside. All the tremendous instincts which are blended in that complex which Franklin Giddings calls "the consciousness of kind" impel the rising generation to get out. The re- sults are such as Mr. Thompson has observed in New York State and I have seen in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Japanese regions of California. The Americans pack up and go to the cities or — less often to other farm- ing regions. And the countryside becomes wholly alien. What the end of such a movement must be, is only too clear. The solid earth of America will become the possession of negroes, Japanes, Slovaks, Italians, and Kussians, all broken up into self-preserving communi- ties exactly as in the Balkans, or more so. The old Americans will become unattached mill-hands, clerks, drummers, and wanderers on the face of the earth, which is theirs no more. Is this a grim fantasy ? Let him who thinks so study the history of Central and Eastern Europe, There it has been enacted over and over again on more than one stage. And there is nothing visible in the American situation to change the program. Let us sum up then: adult immigrants cannot be made into Americans and they are, through no fault of their own and through no conspiracy, a peculiar menace to the development of a coherent American life. If A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 375 they stay in the cities, they menace American life by lowering our standard of living through cheap compe- tition. If they go to the rural districts, they menace American life through acute segregation and the per- petuation of their alien tongues and institutions and interests. So long as the United States managed to hold aloof from international affairs, these alien groups did not interfere with our larger politics; they only inter- fered with our standard of living. But to-day all this has changed. If, then, we feel that national unity is of supreme importance, as a result of the new inter- national situation, then we must check immigration for some years to come. We must do the same if we feel that the further abnormal growth of our cities is a social and political menace. We must do the same if we wish to Americanize the farm by making the country attractive economically and socially to Americans. The intelligent Japanese, learning these facts, will look upon the anti-Japanese sentiment in California as a very insignificant ripple on a tidal wave of na- tional reaction against all alien groups. He will find less race feeling directed specifically against the Japa- nese than there is in New York City against the Russian Jew, or in the San Joaquin Valley against the Armenian. He will come to realize that almost every part of the United States has its race problem and its polygot prob- lem and its agrarian problem; and that, sooner or later, our country will have to solve the whole lot of them in a large way and more or less consistently. In that solution he may be pretty sure to find that his fellow countrymen will be excluded from the United States, or at the very least so restricted in their opportunities of 376 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? entrance and of business here that most of them will seek other fields. What he has the right to expect is that our treatment of the Japanese shall not be discriminatory. He will be amply justified in complaining, were we to go on ad- mitting streams of Ruthenians, Slovaks, Chechs, and Italians, while barring his kind. Such a procedure would be inconsistent not only with our alleged ideal of fair play but even more so with sound national policy. Universal exclusion in the interests of Americanizing America can offend nobody. Selective exclusion will cause widespread irritation, as well as either or both of the social ills we have been describing. THE FOOD AND FARM PROBLEM Japan's food and farm problem is much simpler than our own, though much more urgent. She must send millions of peasants in short order to rich farming regions, firstly to relieve pressure of population at home and, secondly, to create her own adequate food resources overseas, as England and France have done. Our task is much harder, but we may in time solve it. We must make farming sufficiently profitable as an investment and sufficiently attractive as a way of Hf e to keep young men of the older American stocks in the country. We must make the country agreeable to American women whose living standards are high. We must make it a place where American children can grow up well edu- cated and well trained. Almost every tendency at present is away from these ideals, in spite of the sud- den prosperity of thousands of farmers. The city- ward drift grows. The shift of aliens to the aban- A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 377 doned farm increases. The negro buys more and more fields every day. And tens of thousands of old home- steads all over East and Middle West may be bought for half value or even less. No sane American to-day would buy a farm to live on it and work it as a busi- ness. What can we do about it? There is only one sure answer. The States must take hold of the situation and follow the lead of the California Land Settlement Board. They must begin the building of rural towns complete, as Elwood Mead is now building them in the San Joaquin Valley. They must bring to the country all the solid advantages of town life, which are, as al- ready shown, the lure that draws men from the farms. Nothing can be plainer than the impossibility of any individual farmer's citifying the country. He can- not bring in neighbors of his own sort. He cannot pause in the midst of his own hea\y toil and organize com- munity centers, cooperatives, good roads societies, and the hundred other things that enter into civilization. Nor can this complex undertaking be handled by private corporations, for the excellent reason that the profits are too low to attract capital in quantity. Moreover, the moral responsibility for the agrarian crisis and the moral obligation to solve it rests squarely upon the Federal Government and the people of the United States. For it is these who have, with open eyes, brought things rural to their present state of demoralization. From the beginning, when we began giving away home- steads, down to the latest legislation. Congress has al- lowed itself to be dominated in its major policies by the interests of the large cities, which have been weU 378 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? organized, well financed, and in the clear as to what they want. The railroads and the industries and the banks have managed to sway legislation, not in a corrupt man- ner so much as shortsightedh^ The abnormal econom- ics of a huge undeveloped continent has persistently blinded city business men to the elemental fact that all society rests on food supph^ all food supply comes from farms, all farms must be operated by human be- ings, and all human beings save fools want to live as well as other folks — and, if they don't or can't on the farms, the smarter ones get out, leaving the dullards behind and thus undermining the whole pyramid of civilization. A scientific statesman would have fore- seen this situation and planned a policy in which the basic interests of both town and country were equally active. He would not have squandered millions in the silly reclamation and irrigation schemes that are a joke in so many parts of the West. He would not have sent free seeds to farmers. And he would not have relegated the Department of Agriculture to its present degraded position of a mere scientific and census bureau in which many men of extraordinary ability are kept at work studying plant diseases and soil analysis and are not allowed, under the etiquette of bureaucracy, either to propose or to carry out any general agrarian policy that restores the balance of civilization. To- day, reviewing the errors of the past, our scientific states- man perceives that the evils wrought by Federal mis- management are so far-reaching that only Federal man- agement can correct them promptly enough to forestall disaster. Just what can be done toward reform will be suggested in a moment. A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 379 THE STANDAED OF LIVING PROBLEM Japan's rising standard of living is much more seri- ous than our own, as a consequence of her dense popula- tion and the extreme slowness with which customs affect- ing the birth-rate change. It seems entirely within the bounds of possibility that the country may literally blow up within a decade or two in a tremendous social revolution, unless despotic measures are resorted to, either for the checking of the desire for better things or 3lse for the emigration of millions. Now, it is incon- 3eivable that the Japanese Government would seriously 3onsider any attempt to hold down the living standard; in the first place, the average standard, as I have shown, is perilously low now; and, in the second place, the ;vhole new industrial development of the country brings nen and women into the towns and factories, where :he social environment inevitably forces up the living standard. To interfere with industrialism and to force :he people back to peasantry is wildly impossible. There remains then only one course — quick and vast imigration. As for the United States, our rising standard of liv- ing is, at bottom, the predominant cause of the drift :o the cities; of the silly extravagance of the semi- skilled and unskilled working classes, whose mania for jilk stockings and player pianos has been gratified of iate and will be checked only with the greatest difficulty ; md finally of the discontent and moral collapse that are ill but universal to-day. Now, it is very easy to say :hat the remedy for these three interlocking evils is a return to the good old simplicity and puritanism of 380 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? former days. This is now being energetically recom- mended by many clergymen and other professional moralists and reformers. But it is based on crass ig- norance of human nature and can never succeed. It also betrays unfamiliarity with the whole technique of progress, and hence ought not succeed. If there is any clearly proved fact about economic and social progress, it is that such progress is closely corre- lated with a rising standard of living. Not with such a standard measured merely in terms of gross quantity of consumption, to be sure; but rather with a standard whose whole pattern and structure are nicely calculated and scientifically tested. The fool who earns six dollars a day and spends half of it on fancy clothes is not contributing to progress. He is hampering it, of course. But he would be contributing to it were he to spend half of his wages on the most nutritious and well pre- pared foods, decent clothes, well aired and lighted lodg- ings, medical inspection, and so on, and divide the other half between wholesome diversions and the sav- ings bank. Taking the country at large, the normal tendency is to spend chiefly for true utilities; and the whole trend of welfare and labor legislation is in the direction of establishing rational patterns of life. And the re- sult is that American workers actually accomplish in eight hours of daily labor nearly twice as much as their British cousins do in ten hours, while their physique and health are incomparably superior to the poorly fed and abominably housed urban worker of England, as many Englishmen have testified. This high efiiciency has been raised notably of late by the American prohibition law, A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 381 which has worried British manufacturers much more than our navy and our tariff have. They see our work- ers achieving through sobriety a level of output and quality that none of the drunkard races of Europe can bope to rival; and they fear that they will lose out in world trade because the moral level of Europe is still much too low to make possible such scientific restraints and hygienic improvements of entire peoples. This, together with many other matters too numerous to dwell upon here, convinces me that, just as ''the only cure for civilization is more civilization," so the only remedy for the evils of a rising standard of living is a still higher standard. The remedy is not any standard that costs more per year. But some accurately com- puted and tested standard. Furthermore, this standard must be wisely distributed, so that the difference be- tween town and country life is reduced to a minimum. In this manner, America will become self-sufficient and isocially sound in her agrarian foundations, and at the ;.same time the dominant power in world trade through sheer individual efficiency, which comes through a skil- ful blending of health, comfort, leisure, and education. A PROPOSED PROGRAM The Japanese crisis can, I think, be permanently solved if we attack the underlying causes of it in the follow- ing manner: ! 1. Dispel the belief, now current in Asia and a good ipart of Europe and South America, that we are secretly and hypocritically committed to economic imperialism. To this end, grant immediate independence to the Philip- 382 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? pines on condition that the new island nation join the League of Nations at once. This move will protect the Philippines against a possi- ble invasion by the Japanese militarists, if the League of Nations amounts to anything. If, on the other hand, the League should prove unwilling or incompetent to protect one of its smaller members against aggression from a powerful one, the United States would then have adequate evidence as to the futility of the League and could keep out of it. Quite apart from our moral obligation to keep our promise to the Filipinos, such a move would serve two important purposes. 2. Further to dispel the evil reputation we have as militarists, let us enter into a drastic disarmament agree- ment with Japan and Great Britain. The obstacles in the way of such a move are immense, and I am the last to belittle them. But, at a pinch, we have the power in our hands to force the issue. If the militarists of Eng- land and Japan, who are still powerful, block a dis- armament, we can say to them quite bluntly : ' ' Gentle- men, we give you your own choice between two courses. Either disarm with us at once, or else continue with your programs, and we shall proceed to build two ships for every one that you construct. If it is to be militarism, then let it be to a finish. But we warn you that, in such a race, you will be the first to go down in revolution. Your peoples cannot pay the bills. Ours can, though they do not wish to. When jou are overwhelmed, we shall then be the one unshattered power in the whole world. And, as you will have proved by your policy your own incapacity to manage civilization, we shall be disinclined to consult you when we take over the polic- A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 383 ing of the world. We have neither the ability nor the desire to conquer the world, but we are willing to go as far as we can in supporting civilization and orderly development with ship and gun, if you force us to it." If we drop the silly amenities of professional diplom- acy and speak our minds bluntly, we shall say all this. And I am inclined to believe that it will carry the day. Let us assume for the moment that it does. What then? 3. Thoroughgoing disarmament would save our coun- try something like a billion a year, allowing for a quarter- billion or more of continued military and naval expendi- ture for a restricted coast defense program and train- ing program. It would save Japan fully a quarter- billion. The British economies must be left out of our calculations here, as they could not figure in the read- justment of American-Japanese relations. Now, what might be done with this sum? Let me give you the roughest sketch of its possibilities, a sketch from which I deliberately omit a good many minor complications of financing, each of which would doubt- less modify the program I suggest, but would not vitiate its underlying policy. 4. Japan must force up her rural standard of living by draining off her excess population. Were she to set aside an annual revolving fund of $100,000,000 to be used as a basis for extending credits to colonization companies which took Japanese to various parts of Si- beria, IMexico and South America and there built up rural settlements on land that had been properly in- spected, this would surely finance about $250,000,000 of new emigrant enterprises every year ; and conceivably even more. 384 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? The history of successful colonization projects, if viewed in the light of the very low Japanese standard of living and the relatively simple requirements of the Japanese emigrants, indicates that an allowance of $1,000 per colonist would be very liberal, possibly too much so. On this basis, no fewer than 250,000 emi- grants could be taken care of with each year's appro- priation. In five years, there would be a gross revolv- ing fund of half a billion dollars, which could finance the emigration of half a million people a year. Doubt- less Japan would not wish to send so many beyond her boundaries; so part of this immense fund would be diverted to domestic asjrarian colonies, the chief aim of which ought to be the breal^down of the evil Asiatic system of intensive farming, which makes slaves of the workers, and the consolidation of Japan's millions of tiny back-yard farms (of two or three acres each) into regional or community farms which can be worked by modern machinery. The faster Japan can exterminate her tiny farms, the faster will she approach civilization. 5. At the same time Japan must force up her urban standard of living. To do this, she must simultaneously raise industrial wages, reduce working hours, better the external conditions of labor, and provide technical education on a large scale. All this costs money. It means that production costs will rise and that hence Japan's present advantage in certain world markets will melt away. How prevent industrial disaster then? Let the Japanese set aside annually another hundred million from the sum she shall have saved through dis- armament. Let her use this as a revolving fund pre- cisely as American manufacturers and exporters are A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 385 about to employ one of the Yery same amount for the financing of sales to the stricken European countries. The American revolving fund of a hundred million will suffice to handle about ten times that amount of sales. A Japanese fund could do the same. And just as Europe is the obvious customer of America in such a credit transaction, so is Russia the logical buyer in the Japanese markets, at least for as much as Japan is able to furnish. True, at present, the Russians fear and hate the Japa- nese savagely because of their conduct in Siberia. But, as we assume disarmament, it would follow that such hostility would disappear at least to the point of making commercial relations possible. Out of Russia Japan can draw endless raw materials for her industrial develop- ment, and into Russia she can pour endless manufactured goods. What is most important, she can name a price which will enable her to raise her urban standard of living, and at the same time make good profits. The faintest suggestion that Japan resume trade with the Russians on a vast scale will, of course, infuriate the French investors in the old czarist government bonds and the French militarists who have been championing these investors. But into a controversy with these peo- ple we cannot now be dragged. There is but one thing to be said : no matter what has happened in the past, the brute fact of to-day is that the moral rights of Japan's seventy million toilers to find food and comfort are in- disputably higher and more insistent than the rights of any bondholders to cash their coupons. Whoever challenges this statement confesses himself to be a moral incompetent. 386 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 6. The United States must make a similar division of its billion saved through disarmament, but the funds will have to be invested quite differently. We must aim to raise our rural standard of living to the point at which agriculture again becomes both profitable and at- tractive to people who maintain the best American standard of living; and at the same time we must keep the urban standard up and work slowly toward still higher levels. How can we couple these aims? First of all, we must put an abrupt end to virtually all immigration. On this there can be no compromise. We can convince both Europe and Japan that such a move implies no race prejudice and no narrow selfishness. We can make them see that we have more social prob- lems on our hands than we can solve, with the best of will, in another fifty years. We can demonstrate that every newcomer speaking a strange tongue and bring- ing alien folkways simply adds to our difficulties in Americanizing the United States. And I think it could even be demonstrated that, in the long run, the best thing that can happen to the Old World is to force it to keep its j^oung and energetic natives home, to aid in reconstruction. With the immigrant stream turned back upon itself, the underbidding of American labor by unorganized aliens is forever done away with. And the spreading of self-centered alien communities in our farming dis- tricts will rapidly be checked. We may then proceed undisturbed with the positive program of improving country life. This program must follow two main lines : a — Our Federal Farm Loan Board should receive fully $200,000,000 a year extra for a ten-year period, A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 387 for the granting of loans to established farmers of good standing. Not counting the present funds of the Board, this would give it gross two billion b}^ 1930, all of which would be invested in first mortgages on the best farm soil of America. These mortgages would be netting the Treasury Department at least 5% — a very decent return. The policy of the Farm Loan Board, in making loans, should aim much more directly than it now does at improving the efficiency of farms and hence their earn- ing power. This involves the refusal of loans to men running small farms, say those of eighty acres or less, except where the specialized character of the crops clearly indicates a normal high profit per acre, as com- pared with the returns from ordinary farming. It also involves the granting of more loans for the purchase of adjacent good acreage by farmers who have proved that they can make money at the business and want to expand up to a thousand acres or more. At pres- ent more than one-half of all the 6,361,502 farms enum- erated in the 1910 census are too small to support an average family of five on the level of the average city worker. This is the chief explanation of the fact, so mystifying to city readers, that, in spite of the recent boom in farm products, the average income of the American farmer is still below that of the street car conductor and the clerk. There is little advantage in getting high prices for crops unless one grows enough of them to feed and clothe self, wife, and children. Wheat might go to six dollars a bushel, but what of the farmer who grew only five acres of it and nothing else but ''garden sass"? Now, helping the successful farmers expand would 388 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tend to drive out the undercapitalized and incompe- tent farmers, whose number is legion. Thousands of such persons are now struggling to make ends meet. They ought to give up and go to town or else take employment on some well managed large farm. The faster they can be bought out at a fair price, the better for all of us. b — Farm loans are not enough to raise the rural standard of living. We need to extend all over the country the general program of the California Land Set- tlement Board, modified perhaps to suit varying condi- tions and needs. To this end the Federal Government should create an annual appropriation of around a quarter-billion which is to be used in two ways : i — for the reconstruction of existing farm villages into model rural community centers; and ii — for building new farm villages similar to the California plan at Delhi. In a ten-year period this fund would amount to two and a half billion dollars. To it must be added not less than a quarter billion supplied by the States, counties, or villages in which the Federal fund is invested; this by way of preventing the whole project from degenerat- ing into a rivers-and-harbors scandal. The United States must hold a first mortgage on the entire block of improved property until the loans have been paid off by the beneficiaries. After considering the costs of creating the village of Delhi, where the outlay for an irrigation system is exceptionally high, I believe that, taking the country at large and assuming that existing villages could be A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 389 remodelled for about one-half the cost of building new towns, I estimate that $200,000 would adequately finance the necessary good roads, auditorium, storage warehouse or grain elevator, and other construction for any village on a railroad and in a good farming district where the natural water supply and drainage are satisfactory. In other words, if we spent only one sixth of our present proposed military appropriation on this rural reform, we could in ten years create 13,750 model farm villages. These villages would he the center of social and business life for between fifteen and twenty -five million Americans. And the American public would be earning five per cent on their total investment. Were the Federal Farm Loan Board to concentrate its loans in the neighborhood of these same 13,750 com- munities, the cumulative effect would be extraordinary. Properly finance the able farmers within the four-mile zone around a model community, and you have an ideal rural life. And you would hear no more outcries against the Japanese. 7. How about maintaining and further exalting the standard of living in our cities? We are now hearing ominous prophecies of an industrial crisis. Europe cannot buy from our factories as we had hoped she would. She is too poor. We must extend heavy credit to her manufacturers, to prevent complete dissolution and anarchy over there. But with our loans those manufacturers will turn around and make shiploads of goods, which they will dump on the American markets and undersell our own producers. Factory after fac- tory will have to reduce its forces or even close down in 390 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? the face of such competition. Hence up with, the tariffs ! Higher and ever higher ! This is the reasoning of single-track minds, most of which are monorails. Putting up special tariffs defeats the whole program of reconstruction in Europe. Eu- rope must pa}^ us with goods or else not at all. Every student of international affairs agrees on that point. It would therefore appear that the one rational proce- dure is to accept those goods and then create new markets for those of our own manufacturers who cannot meet European competition, it being understood that no manufacturer of luxuries is entitled to the slightest con- sideration in such a program. Now Avhere could there be a vaster and a surer market than the richest, most energetic fifteen to twenty-five million American farm dwellers who, under the plan just outlined, would have, over and above their normal ex- penditures, between two and four billion dollars extra in ten years, all of which must be spent on basic commodi- ties, such as lumber, cement, iron and steel, farm im- plements, hardward, automobiles, tractors, glass, elec- trical equipment, fertilizers, and a thousand other items? On the most conservative calculation, the consumption power of this group would greatly exceed in money terms the total exports of manufactured goods over a normal ten-year period. Mark the term, manufactured goods. It is in the interest of these alone that some politicians are urging a high tariff. The clamor for a tariff on farm products is so misguided that I can- not consider it seriously here. It can be proved in detail by any one who has the time to check through the items that the surest way A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 391 to maintain the high standard of living in our cities, during the long and distressing period of world re- construction, is to put the urban industrial workers at the great task of civilizing rural America. 8. Lastly, a procedure too complex to discuss here at any length, namely the diversion of a round quarter- billion of our military appropriation to the scientific development of trade and industry in the entire Pacific area. For reason which I cannot here go into, it seems to me that the situation in Japan, China, Mexico, and our own Pacific Coast calls for a Pan-Pacific Con- sortium which will do, on a much vaster and less nar- rowly capitalistic scale, what the new China Consor- tium seems to be aiming at in one country. Men who understand the problems of the Pacific ap- parently agree that there is only one way to attack the political and economic affairs of that colossal region, and that is by concerted international action. The re- cent Pan-Pacific Congress at Honolulu came to this con- clusion, and so have many individual experts. Were the United States to join with Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, the Philippines, Mexico, Chile, and Can- ada in a program of supervising and aiding the shifting of populations and the development of backward dis- tricts, we should be going far on the road toward the unmistakable goal of human effort,, the goal that still lies centuries away, namely the intelligent con- trol of the world by men who have learned to control themselves. CHAPTER 26 THE GREATER CRISIS BENEATH THE JAPANESE ISSUE THE city man, reading the preceding survey and program, will probably be puzzled at the close con- nection there drawn between the Japanese crisis and the American farm problem. It may even strike him as a trifle absurd. For this reason I must bring together, in the next few pages, an array of fairly well known facts about our agrarian difficulties, all of which go to show that these latter constitute the deeper crisis beneath the conflict which we find in Hawaii and California. To the American farmer, most of these facts have become com- monplaces ; and he may well pass them over, realizing, as he does so, that they have not yet been discovered, much less acted upon, by his brother of the town, in whose hands rests to-day the power of shaping our political, commercial and diplomatic policies. That America is confronted with an agrarian crisis which threatens the very foundation of her political structure is beyond dispute. Our rural population is abandoning the farm for the city; the present economic readjustment, with its sweeping reduction in the price of all raw foodstuffs and agricultural products, has made it impossible for thousands of our farmers to sell for even the cost of production. Everywhere we turn to-day we find evidence of this agrarian crisis. It is not altogether new and it is not the result of a single condition. Furthermore, it cannot 392 THE GREATER CRISIS 39$ be separated from the world crisis. What the outcome will be can only be surmised. Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas says, ' ' The farm in- dustry is going to pot. To-day cotton and wheat are sell- ing below the cost of production, bringing hardships and suffering to thousands of producers. Jobbers are afraid to buy flour, and mills are afraid to grind it." Amer- ica's foundation is in her farms. In 1820, 87.1 per cent of our population was engaged in agriculture. To-day forces are at work which lead Elwood Mead of Cali- fornia to say: ''On its human and social side, agricul- ture in America is breaking down. Farmers are discour- aged. The laborer of Anglo-Saxon ancestry is disappear- ing or becoming a hobo. Farm-bred boys and girls are going to the city." It is this last sentence which must first be analyzed — "farm-bred boys and girls are going to the city." The percentage of our population engaged in agriculture for 1920 was about 30 per cent as against the 87.1 per cent in 1820. A recent survey made in Ohio for the Bureau of Crop Estimates states that there was a net decrease of 60,000 in the number of men and boys working on Ohio farms for the year ending in June, 1920, and for every man who returned to farm life dur- ing the year seven left the farm for other employment. There are 19,000 untilled farms in Michigan and 10,000 empty farm houses. In New York State there are 24,- 000 vacant farm houses while last year 35,000 men and boys left New York farms for the city. Turning to the annual report of the Secretary of Agri- culture submitted to the President on December 10, we find this statement, "When American agriculture begins to lose ground, the political stability of the nation 394 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? is endangered. ' ' Writing further, Secretary Meredith states : "The history of agriculture seems to show that farming is in periodic danger of losing its grip on both capital and work- men and of allowing them to slip away into city industries. Statesmen have always viewed with alarm the tip of the scales from farming to industry and from country life to urban life. When the farm loses its balance to the city, the Nation is threatened with a food shortage or with dependence upon for- eign countries for essential foodstuffs." There is no doubt that the war was the greatest single factor in causing the movement of our rural population to the cities within the last four years. Hundreds of thousands of farm boys who were called to the war found a place in our urban centers upon their return. High wages paid by industry outbid the farmer for labor. Government activities gave employment to thousands of country-born bo\^s and girls. The farmer ascribes the main reason for his labor shortage to these causes, but he must remember that even before the war this movement to the city was increasing at an alarming rate. It may be well for the sake of discussion to consider the farm-owner and the farm-hand separately, although both the farm-hand and the farm-owner are abandoning country life. In any discussion the following fact must be kept clearly in mind : Every person who moves from the country to the city does so for individual reasons. It is a personal act due to causes which affect him per- sonally. There is no mass movement; there is no con- certed action; in no two cases are the causes exactly alike. It is therefore impossible to point out any single cause or, still more important, any single remedy. In THE GREATER CRISIS 895 most cases these individual reasons may seem very trivial and not in any way related to great economic forces. *' People" are composed of a number of individual per- sons, and any action of people is an action of individual men. The reason why thousands are leaving" the farm for the city are human reasons, and can be analyzed and only discussed from the human and personal side. If the question, ''Why did j^ou leave the country for the cit}^?" is asked, each of the following would be typical answers. ''Because I could get more money.'* *' Because I had a chance to work up in a good business." *' Because I had gone to college and made friends in the city and did not want to go back to the country." "Be- cause I could not see anything ahead in the country." "Because I did not like the people I had to work with." ' ' Because I did not like the long hours on a farm. " " Be- cause it was too lonesome. " " Because there was no place to go at night," and so on without end. In each case the reason is personal, and the answer must be one that reaches the personal side. Any movement or plan for getting people back to the land or stopping the trend toward the cities which has not back of it the human element must fail. Nothing ever solves all of anything, and no single reason explains why people move to the city, and no single remedy will stop it. Because we are dealing with human beings, we must look for conditions which effect human happiness and contentment. If a man leave a farm because he hates to break the ice from the bucket to wash his face, that is a good reason ; and if a woman goes to town because she wishes to gossip with neighbors or attend the movies, that is also a good reason for the simple fact that it is the 396 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? reason; and to find the remedy, we must first find the reason whatever it may be. It is necessarj^ in analyzing- the problem of farm labor and the tendency of the farm-laborer to leave the farm for industry to take the point of view of the farm-hand. It is necessary also to recognize that there are certain fundamental human traits which exist in every person. One of the most important of these is personal ambition as expressed in the desire to accumulate wealth, and another is the desire to do as little physical work as possible for the amount of income secured. A man in entering any field of labor considers what the possibilities are in the future and whether or not he can ultimately secure a position which will bring him a greater income and at the same time demand less physical labor. It is significant, therefore, to recognize that the po- sition of the farm-hand offers little chance of promotion. Continued service or experience does not gain him any material advancement in income or lessen the physical difficulties of his task. It is true that in industry a large percentage of unskilled laborers or semi-skilled laborers are not able to reach a position which pays more than a mere existence wage or eliminates the hard physical labor. However, there is always the possibility of promotion and advancement, and there are always a few who succeed in getting better positions. The industrial laborer also re- ceives credit for his acquired ability, and even though his promotion may not be rapid in one organization, that experience will very often make it possible for him to receive credit for previous experience in another similar industry. With the farm-hand, however, it must be recognized that the prospect of promotion or the possi- THE GREATER CRISIS 397 bility of accumulating sufficient capital to be anjrthing but a farm-hand is very remote, and certainly cannot be considered an incentive to a man seeking this field of laoor. Data collected during a farm-labor survey in New Jer- sey showing earning capacity by various ages are signifi- cant in bearing out this point. The average age as shown is between twenty-four and twenty-five years. All the cases were divided into five-year groups, and the aver- age cash wage estimated for each group. The group from twenty-six to thirty inclusive received the most pay, and from this age on the pay decreased. This means that men from the age of twenty-five to thirty are the best paid as farm-hands. This is borne out by the opin- ion of the farmers as to the age of men who are best able to do farm-work. The work is active and can be best performed by a younger man. This being true, it means that the farm-hand begins going downhill in earning ca- pacity after thirty years of age precisely as the Chinese coolie does. His added experience is of no advantage to securing higher wages. Such conditions cannot be attractive to an ambitious young man who hopes eventu- ally to attain a position which may afford some of the luxuries of life and easier work. If the farm is to hold the ambitious young man, it must make it possible for him to see a line of promotion which will lead to more than what he can now find on the farm as a la- borer. What ultimately becomes of steady farm-hands, who grow old without being able to accumulate anjrthing for their last years, is a serious problem. Certainly a life of service should carry with it some possible assurance of the future. S98 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? A farmer who employs a man with a large family and expects to keep him certainly should see that the man and his family are comfortably housed and that their living conditions are so that he may expect efficient work from the farm-hand. A man living in a house which is full of vermin, poorly protected from the weather, or poorly heated cannot be expected to furnish a good day's work. Neither is it possible for a man who finds it neces- sary for his children to sleep on the floor or to go without proper nourishment to maintain a frame of mind which can make him efficient. The farmer should know what the living conditions of his hired men are and do every- thing within his power and sound business reason to see that they are made comfortable. This need not be in any way a social obligation, but purely one of efficient busi- ness management. A farmer who is willing to move a farm-hand and his family into a house which he knows to be unfit for decent folks is overlooking one of the prin- ciples now recognized in modern industry to be as im- portant as good equipment and tools. This point brings up the type of tenant-houses found on most farms. The tenant-house must be considered from the point of view of the man and also from the point of view of the woman. The average tenant-house on the Atlantic Coast can be described as a two-story, five or six room frame-building, heated by a stove in the kitchen and a stove in the living-room, the bedrooms be- ing entirely unheated. The water-supply is usually a pump located in a shed by the kitchen-door or inside the kitchen. The lighting is furnished by kerosene lamps. The toilet is an outhouse located from seventy-five to a hundred feet from the house. This means that the aver- THE GREATER CRISIS 399 age farm-laborer's house has none of the modern improve- ments of the last fifty years. Generally speaking, no at- tempt is made in constructing a house to give it any archi- tectural beautj^ The design is severe and ugly in the extreme, and there is nothing about its appearance which could be considered attractive. Its function is quite evidently to furnish a roof and rooms in which to eat and sleep. When it is considered that the house in which a family lives is the most concrete evidence of their social status, and especially in the mind of the child and mother forms the greatest part of their immediate world, its importance cannot be over-estimated. One child forms its opinion of another child very largely from the kind of house in which the child lives. One of the strongest social in- stincts is to have an attractive place in which to live. An ugly room or an ugly house will create an ugly dis- position and a dissatisfied state of mind. Every farmer will admit that fifty per cent of the un-- rest of farm-labor is due to the women. Many good farm-hands are lost through the woman becoming dissatis- fied and discontented with her lot. Unless the woman can have a house in which she can take a certain amount of pride and which she can feel is a suitable dwelling in which to live and rear her children, it is impossible for her to be satisfied. A farmer often expresses an idea that his farm-help would not keep up a good house if they had one. This argument is fallacious from two points of view. First of all, there is small incentive in trying to keep up a poor house; and, secondly, if better houses were furnished, it would be possible to secure the type of farm-hands who would take sufficient interest to take 400 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? proper care of the house. This better type of farm-hand will refuse to live in the average tenant-houses. A striking example of the sound business policy of bet- ter houses for farm-hands was encountered in central New Jersey. One was in connection with the biggest ** millionaire farmer" in Chester County. Complaints were heard from many farmers against this particular ** millionaire farmer," saying that he was paying such high wages that it was impossible for the farmer to com- pete with him, and he was therefore taking the best farm- labor away from the regular farmer. This was carefully investigated. It was found that this particular man was paying but little more than the regular farmers of the district, demanding the same number of hours and the same character of work. The difference in wage was of no particular significance, but the type of houses fur- nished was of very great importance. The manager of this farm stated that he was finding no difficulty in secur- ing high-class farm-hands, and that in his opinion he was receiving more work per dollar than the general farmer of that community. A visit to a typical house bore out the statement. There was no question but that he had secured a much more intelligent and potentially valuable type of farm- hand than the neighboring farmers. The houses were being rented to the farm-hand at a figure which would cover only interest and depreciation, since the house was considered a part of the necessary farm equipment. These houses were furnished with all modern conven- iences. The women, all of whom had previously lived in the usual type of farm-laborer's house, were emphatic in the statement that they would never return to one which THE GREATER CRISIS 401 had no modern improvements. The homes were all neatly kept, and there was striking evidence of pride in their appearance. From the point of view of efficient labor, contented employees, and a sense of contributing to the happiness of the farm-hands, it is doubtful if any better investment could have been made by this "mil- lionaire farmer." Many farmers seemed to feel it necessary to scatter tenant-houses in the far corners of their farm in order to prevent disturbances among the various families. This point was investigated thoroughly during the survey men- tioned above, and found to be without foundation. It is against the natural instinct of people to live in an islolated locality and away from other people. A per- son does not like to live in a house which stands by itself out in an open field any more than he would choose the middle of an open field as a place to sleep when it would be possible for him to get near trees or buildings. One large New Jersey operator expressed the opinion that the whole problem of employment was one of money, and if the farmer was willing to pay enough money he could get all the men he wanted. There is no doubt but that this is true. At the same time there is no doubt that there are other considerations besides money. If a man were paid enough money, he would be willing to live in a hole in the ground, but it is an assured fact that it would be more economical to pay him less money and offer him a better place to live. The farmer who is the most successful is the farmer who recognizes that he must have farm-hands if he would make any money himself and who is willing to furnish conditions which will secure his labor even in competition 402 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? with industry. It must be remembered that working- people to-day are demanding better conditions as ex- pressed both in wage and living conditions than they were five years ago. It might be well here to quote from a speech delivered by Ambassador Geddes, who says: "So far only the swell of the storm centered in Europe laps your coasts, yet your daily press is already filled with news of strikes and what is vaguely called industrial unrest. ... In Europe we know that an age is dying. Here it would be easy to miss the signs of coming change, but I have little doubt that it will come. A realization of the aimlessness of life lived to labor and to die, having achieved nothing but avoidance of starvation, and the birth of children also doomed to the weary treadmill, has seized the minds of millions." There is nothing constructive in the argument of the farmer that city industries and government are taking away his labor. This conditions exists, and cannot be changed by the farmer. Neither is it of advantage to the farmer to allow his land to remain idle. The policy of not farming land simply because farm-labor cannot be secured at a figure which the farmer may consider suffi- cient is decidedly short-sighted. Not only does the value of the farm depreciate much more than the difference in the cost of securing labor would be through not being cultivated, but the profit of farming is also lost. It is true that there is an actual shortage of labor on the farms. This is primarily due to a culmination of cir- cumstances resulting in the present crisis. For years the farm has been backward in the opportunities and conditions given to its labor. It has offered no induce- ment to the ambitions, industrious young man who wishes to accumulate wealth and has no capital to THE GREATER CRISIS 40S start. As a result the best of the boys from the coun- try have gone to the city; not so much because the city pulled them as because the country and the farm have pushed them. There is no constructive value in condemning hu- man traits which may seem to be selfish. People are going to get all they can for the least possible effort. The farmer is prone to condemn the farm-hand for leaving conditions which did not offer him any pos- sible outlet for his ambition. He also often condemns the wife of the farm-hand because she is not willing to earn a little extra for the family by outside work. This point is entirely negative and can in no way bet- ter the labor conditions on the farm. Other than the question of wage, the farm-hand is most concerned with the long hours which are de- manded of him. On most farms the minimum for field work is ten hours per day. This does not in- clude approximately one hour for chores and barn- work. When compared with the eight-hour day of in- dustry, it is easy to see why the farm-hand objects to the long hours of the country. On dairy farms the hours outside of chores are usually from six to six, with one hour for noon. There is no reason why the experience of industry with shorter hours should not be duplicated to a large degree in farm-labor. It is hard to imagine any work on a farm except the operation of a tractor, where it would not be possible to accomplish as much in nine hours as in ten if the farm-hand had the incentive to do so. On some farms there is no work on Saturday afternoon during the greater part of the year. If the farm-hand is sup- 404. MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? posed to work on Sunday, he should receive half a day at least twice a month except during the busiest season. This allows an opportunity to go to town and make necessary purchases and enjoy a change of sur- roundings. Fifty per cent of the men who remain on the farm to-day are worth only the minimum wage. Very often the damage which they may cause by lack of intelli- gence or indifferent work makes them a poor invest- ment at any figure. The farmer complains because he cannot get more intelligent labor, but he cannot expect to as long as special intelligence and ability is given no recognition. A man of superior ability and intelli- gence will not work with an inferior man for the same wage. Certain farms have arbitrarily paid their best men from fifteen to twenty-five per cent more than their basic pay. Contrary to general opinion, it has not caused any difficulty. The life of the large percentage of farm-hands is a sordid monotony of existence which allows for no op- portunity of expression and seems to have no outlet. It is hard to imagine what could be more deadening than an existence where every cent of money is spent week by week with no recreational opportunity and no prospect of future conditions which will make any- thing else possible. Unfortunately, the attitude of the farmer is very often antagonistic to the welfare of the farm-hands. This may be typified by an expression of a certain farmer in regard to the survey in New Jersey, who remarked that ''he would rather not have any one talk to the farm-hands, as it might start them to thinking." THE GREATER CRISIS 405 Should a thousand young men who had left the farm be questioned and their answers tabulated, it would be possible to select certain reasons which would include a large proportion of the answers received. Those which would stand out most strikingly would be wages, hours, recreation, opportunity, housing, sanita- tion, association, education, or a combination of many of these. Some of these may seem purely economic, but most of them are social and touch the purely so- cial instincts which are related directly to individual happiness and contentment. Every social influence is directly related to standard of living, for by standard of living we refer to those things which make for com- fort and enjoyment. We are safe in saying, there- fore, that the difference in the ''standard of living" between the city and the country would include many of the individual reasons given for preferring city to country life. The social development of a country is measured by the standard of living of its people. America stands first in the world in maintaining a high standard. It is in this direction that almost our entire industrial de- velopment has striven for the last generation. The part this aspiration plays in the thinking and the deeds of the native American is powerfully described by Elwood Mead, who has written this little autobiography and criticism for us: "It is desirable that many young people should go from the country to the city. A movement in both directions is desir- able. The flow from the country is needed to renew the vigor of city life. The seriousness of the present movement comes from its magnitude and its causes. Landowners, tenants and 406 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? the young people are leaving the land to such an extent that in agTicultural states like Missouri and Iowa, less people are on farms than ten years ago. The loss of the population does not tell the whole story. In many cases the old American stock is leaving the farms, and its place is being taken by im- migrants from southern and eastern people. If he has to choose between becoming a member of a highly organized and adequately paid union in a city and competing with the coolies in the country, he will go to the city. Bringing in the negro made poor white trash out of the landless Anglo-Saxon in the South. Bringing into this country as farm workers the back- ward people of the Old World has created conditions which are driving Anglo-Saxons, German-Americans, Danish-Ameri- cans and Irish-Americans off the land. "To find the origin of this, we have to go back more than half a century to the time when we had a broad agricultural foundation in our great areas of unpeopled public land. Agriculture needed railroads and factories. Because of these needs, this nation wisely entered on a policy of fostering city industries. We gave land grants and mone3'^ subsidies to rail- roads, money bonuses to factories. The tariff helped build up the city and made the farmer pay part of the bill. We passed laws which gave privileges to corporations so that they could form great industrial combinations. Our policy of massed production drew the small town factory into the city, lessened the farmer's local market and made him dependent more and more on distant ones. In time, corporations be- came trusts; the farmer lost control of the prices of what he has to sell and of the things he has to buy. "So long as there was free land, there was a balance between the growth of city and country even if the wages and returns from farming were not equal to those of the store and factory. The rise in land values made up for low prices in crops, but when the free land disappeared and privately owned land be- gan to rise rapidly in pric«, the city began to make its ap- THE GREATER CRISIS 407 peal to intelligent and aspiring boys and girls, the very class that the country could not afford to lose. "The present generation of farm boys has been lost, and we ought now to begin thinking about how we are to save tlie next crop. If we are to make this attempt, then a part of the thinking must be given to whether bringing in a million Chinese coolies will help keep Americans on the land. Per- sonally, I do not have to speculate about what would happen. "I am the son of a farmer and grew up on a farm in a part of the countiy where most of the hired labor was negroes. As a boy I plowed corn and dug potatoes alongside of a black man who had been a slave. He was paid 50 cents a day and out of that he boarded himself. That was the measure of my earning power on a farm. It made me furious every time I thought of it, though I love farm life and believe that I would have been a good farmer; but the social conditions created by ignorant, poorly paid farm workers drove me to the city. "My boyhood on a farm made me realize also the evils of tenantry. My father's farm was almost surrounded by a great estate owned by a non-resident. It was farmed by ten- ants who were Civil War refugees from the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky. They were not good farmers. They had no interests in community affairs. The children did not care to go to school, had no interest in games or books. When they met together their talk was mainly of hunting, fighting or sex exploits. On rainy days nothing could be more dreary. There was no place to go and no one to see. When I went to college, I went because it was the surest road away from the farm. "Last year I saw 40 people stretched out in a row, thinning a California beet field. About one fourth of them were women ; five wore Indian turbans, fifteen the peaked hat of the Mexican, several had the whiskered face of the Russian and there was one negro. I pictured myself as an American boy 408 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? working in that crowd. I knew I would feel like a hobo and if I stayed with them long enough, I would be a hobo, not because of the work but because of my associates. If those workers had been Americans, I could have talked to the man next to me about my plans for buying a farm or about who ought to be governor, but I could not talk to the Hindoo, the peon, the women or the negro because their habits, their thoughts and their ambitions were so different from mine that there was a blank wall between us. All the time I would re- alize that I was working with a crowd who were there be- cause they worked for small pay, were willing to live in bunk houses and did not resent the absence of any social status. ^'The Hindoos are industrious. I have no doubt they are good citizens in India. The Mexican peon has many fine quali- ties but he has been oppressed for centuries and lacks educa- tion and ambition. The objection to the bringing in of these backward people to form a part of rural communities is that they do not fit into the picture if we are to have social and economic democracy on the land. ''The time has come when we must give more attention to the contribution which rural life makes to human society. We breed magnificent hogs, but we are permitting the fine Ameri- can stock which settled and developed this nation to be dis- placed by human mongrels. "On Cape Cod half-breed negroes are displacing the pilgrims' descendants. The pioneers of California were among the finest examples of the Anglo-Saxon race, yet in the irrigrated area of this State, their children and grandchildren are being dis- placed by colonies of Asiatics who are clannish, who seek to live the life of the country they left, who every year form new centers and extend the old one. "The culture of Greece was in the city. Slaves tilled the land, and the nation died. The end of Rome began when sol- diers ceased to be farmers. "I do not believe that we can have a great civilization based THE GREATER CRISIS 409 on a high standard of living in the city and a low standard of living in the country. I do not believe that we can maintain economic democracy unless our rural life is founded on a com- munity of blood. That does not mean that all our people must have skin of the same tint or that their ancestors must come from the same country, but it does mean that they must have an ancestry holding the same ideals and a desire to adopt the standard of life that prevails here." The whole question of farm-labor turns around the standard of living. Any cause, whether it be poor housing, lack of recreation, or the importation of an inferior race of people, which makes the standard of living in the country inferior to that of the city will have but one result. The American people will do what they have been doing — find their place in our urban communities where it is possible to at least strive for a standard of living which would be impossible in the country. The California farmer complains because he was not able to hire white labor. The Japanese were first able to gain a foothold in California as laborer on farms be- cause they were more reliable than white men. The white California farm-laborer of fifteen years ago was a very inferior type of workman not because he was not intelligent and could not work, hut because he would not 'have teen a farm-hand unless he was ab- normal in some phase of his conduct. Ninety per cent of them were periodical drunkards. The other ten per cent were only temporarily in that field. Let us consider the life of the California farm- laborer and the conditions under which he worked and see if it is possible to find a reason for the Japanese 410 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? invasion and perhaps apply that same reason to the displacement of the American farm-hand by inferior European races in other regions. California is made up of large ranch holdings and smaller fruit-farms. During the harvest season men .are employed for only a short period at one place, and then move on to another job. On the large grain- ranches and fruit-farms the hands are usually paid a certain amount a day and board. Until the State Com- mission of Immigration and Housing took the matter in charge, the men slept almost anywhere. There is one story which, although exaggerated, expresses the whole scheme. A man was hired in a city for work on a ranch. When he arrived he asked the owner where he would sleep. The owner answered, "There are 640 acres here; you can take your choice." Men slept in barns, on hay-stacks, or out of doors. All men carried their own blankets. Often only men would be hired who had blankets, as no provision was made for hous- ing them. At times they were furnished a cot to sleep on, but generally nothing at all. They ate in the *' cook-house, " surrounded by thousands of flies from scattered manure-piles. Their working day was usu- ally ten hours, and if they drove a team they had to feed and curry before breakfast and feed at night. In 1911 the wage was from $1.10 to $1.25 a day and food. Very often some of the men were Mexicans, but colored help was seldom employed. No attempt was made to give them comfortable con- ditions. These men usually went to the nearest town about once a month purposely to get drunk and spend all their money. After a day or so the money was THE GREATER CRISIS 411 gone, and they returned to the same job or to another like it. Not ten per cent of their total earnings went for any purpose but drink and sex exploits. I was in- formed by one man that he had not bought a new suit of clothes for twenty years. Another man who owned a little shack near the coast told me that he had been trying for two years to get past Bakersfield, but that each time he went to to^vn with his earnings, intending to buy a ticket and get home, some one asked him to take a drink, and he could not refuse. One drink settled it. Volumes could be written about the conditions on California ranches and farms as they were ten years ago. The Wheatfield Riots of California were directly due to housing conditions. It took most drastic laws and the police authority of the State to correct them. No self-respecting man who could have earned a living at any other form of work would have followed the California ranches. The conditions in the San Joa- quin and Sacramento valleys were the worst, and it may be of interest to note that it was in these regions that the Japanese first got their foothold because it was impossible to get reliable white help. In Kern County there was a string of ranches known to the "bindler stiff" (a worker who carried a blanket) as the ''dirty-plate route" because any man who stopped to ask for a meal at the cook-house had to wait until the regular men were finished, and then the cook would give him something to eat on a dirty plate. Most of these men worked on ranches because they could not keep sober long enough to work in a city and 412 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? not from a natural choice for country work. Any young man who worked on these ranches during the summer was either demoralized by the influence and became one of the army or sought other work as soon as he had saved a little money. Nothing could have been more destructive than this life, and it is to the credit of the vast majority of American workers that labor was difficult to secure. During the last few years since California has been without saloons, this travelling worker has largely dis- appeared from the ranches, and would no doubt be found at present in the cities. White farm -labor has consequently been very difficult to obtain, making even a greater demand for the Hindu, Japanese, and Mexi- can, who do not demand a standard of living that the American strives for. Yet we learn that even dur- ing the last three years, which have been abnormal as far as a shortage of labor in all lines of work are con- cerned, the Valley Fruit Growers' Association of Fresno, with a membership of three thousand, has dem- onstrated beyond question that sufficient American farm-labor can be readily secured provided comfort- able housing, substantial food, properly served, and some recreation is provided upon the farms. In July, 1920, the writer spoke with the agricultural secretary of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce concerning labor problems in California with special reference to the Japanese invasion. He said in sub- stance : "The Japanese are able to lease land largely because the farmers cannot get help. Americans will not work on the farms because tbey will not stand for the hours and living con- THE GREATER CRISIS 41S ditions. The hardest man we have to deal with in trying to im- prove working conditions on our farms is the Middle-western farmer who comes out here and buys a ranch and just because he has been raised to believe that life should be all hard work and no pleasure he expects to get men to work twelve hours a day with no opportunity for recreation. People in California think there is something to life besides hard work, so you find that the lad who should be in the country is in the city, where he can find shorter hours and some form of pleasure." If the Middle-western fanner practises this method in California, he evidently learned it in Iowa or Ne- braska, which may account somewhat for the labor shortage in those States. Many people have advocated that the best form of ending the labor shortage would be to bring in a million Chinese coolies. The result of bringing in any class of inferior labor into farming districts can only have the effect of driving out the American laborer and American farmer as well, for as soon as this cheap labor is able to lease or purchase land themselves, the American farmer cannot possible compete with them. When the Japanese first came into California no one considered them as land-owners or producers; they were simply cheap labor who would put up with in- ferior living standards, and as such were welcomed by the farmer. But when they became land-owners it was the farmer who protested most loudly. There are a number of organizations in existence whose purpose it is to turn the flow of our European immigration to the farm. Without close scrutiny this would seem the ideal solution of our immigrant prob- lem. There is a shortage of farm-labor, and many of 414 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? these immigrants were farmers in Europe. But most of our present immigrants are from southern Europe and vastly different in their customs and standards of living from the German, Norwegian, Danish, or Irish immigrants who supplied the stock of our present American farmer. More immigrants of this same stock could be easily assimilated, but a general influx of southern Europeans to our farms can only result in the displacement of our American farmers, who are not willing to accept the standard of living of these people. Unless they can accept this standard they cannot meet the competition of these new immigrants. Any one investigating the living conditions of Italians, who furnish a large proportion of the short- time harvest help in the East, must realize that our American farm boy cannot and does not wish to com- pete with these people. I have one case in mind where 150 Italian men, women, and children occupied a building all during one summer which was 40 feet wide, 110 feet long, 10 feet high at the center, and 5 feet at the sides, with only a single door 2V2 hy 5 feet at each end and not one window. The shacks and sanitary conditions in the cranberry-picking camps of New Jersey are impossible, not even the Mexican or negro being willing to live under such conditions. However, they seem at least tolerable to the Italian. This influx of our present type of immigrant to the farm is one of the direct causes of our American farm youth turning to the city. If America can afford to have our old rural Anglo-Saxon stock supplanted by the Latin, we are doing no harm in placing these people on the farm; but if we wish to maintain or re- THE GREATER CRISIS 415 gain the American as a farmer, we must not force him to meet competition by lowering his standard of liv- ing. During the debate on the bill restricting immigra- tion Representative Rainey of Illinois offered an amendment to exempt from the provision of the bill immigrants who wished to enter agricultural pursuits. He is quoted as saying: ''But organized labor has re- fused to enter the field of farm-labor. Unless the farmers can get cheaper labor you still find that they will only be able to till a part of their farms with their wives and children and produce little more than enough for themselves." Does his suggestion mean that organized labor should be willing to work as cheap farm-labor and accept the standard of living which cheap farm-labor must accept? Cheap farm-labor means a mere exist- ence wage, as shown by the comparison of farm-labor budgets with estimated cost of living. To return to the farm as cheap-labor means losing all that has been gained toward reaching a better standard of living such as Americans endeavor to maintain. No self-respecting American will work on a farm as cheap labor, and if it is cheaper labor that the farmer must have, then it cannot be American labor. The price of farm-land, the competition with races who do not have the American standard, the failure of the country to keep pace with the city in education, recre- ation, and sanitary conditions, all tend to keep the American away from the farm. Our immigration policy can not be influenced by the demand for a type of laborer who will be willinoj to work at such low 416 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? wages that they will force what Americans yet re- main on the farms to the city. Such a policy must be based upon issues which will have a fundamental and permanent effect upon our political structure. If we decide that the farm is the place to which we must send these Italians, Checho-Slavs, Greeks, Armenians, Poles, and Spaniards, it can be done only at the price of further displacement of American farmers by in- ferior races from Europe. If it were only the farm-laborers who were leaving the country for the city, the causes could be readily brought to light; but we find that farmers and sons of farmers are abandoning their land for city life. Again, however, we can say that the farmer who rents or abandons his farm does so for one of two general reasons. Either he does not like farm life or is not making enough money; or, again, it may be a combi- nation of the two, and he will say that he is not mak- ing enough money to offset the hardships of farm life. Unless he is a prosperous farmer who has a modern farm-house, with all conveniences and an automobile, the social reasons of both himself and his family for wishing to leave the farm will be much the same as for the farm-hand — the inferior standard of living in the country as compared with our cities. If it is a question of financial return, we come to the second phase of the agrarian crisis; namely, the inability of the farmer to secure an adequate and just price for his product. We need only to glance at the head-lines of our daily papers to realize the seriousness of the present economic readjustment to the farmer. For the first time in the history of THE GREATER CRISIS 417 America he and his kind have been aroused to the need of concerted action. From Kansas City comes the report of the plan pre- sented at the International Farm Congress to organize every agricultural community in the nation on an im- mense scale to fight the farmers' battles and obtain ''economic justice" for producers of foodstuffs and gain relief from an ''intolerable economic situation." Such an organization seems inevitable. Only through combination will it be possible for them to force prices up to a fair-profit scale. The use of cheap labor in an effort to reduce the cost of production can only drive more of our American farmers to the city, and still further weaken the soundness of our social structure. At best such action would only postpone the present crisis a few years, when its solution will be hopeless. The predicament which faces the farmers is exem- plified by a survey made by the University of Ne- braska relative to the cost of feeding beef cattle. The report reads in part: "The fact thus far brought out by the investigation would in- dicate that during the past two years, in the district covered by the survey, cattle feeding was a precarious venture, more likely to be unprofitable than not. There was an average loss per head of $3.17 on the cattle for which records were ob- tained in 1918-19, and of $10.69 and $14.57 on two groups for which records w^ere obtained in 1919-20." A news despatch from Washington on December 18 tells of the steps to revive the War Finance Corpora- tion. Also a bill known as the Fordney Emergency Tariff was passed by the committee in shape for final 418 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? action. This bill is designed as a measure to shield agriculturists from further price decline. The pro- ducts to be covered by this new bill are wheat, wool, mutton, cattle, flour, corn, sheep, onions, peanuts, rice, potatoes, long-staple cotton, cotton-seed, cocoanut, peanut, and soy-bean oils. An attempt was made to include many other products as well as manufactured articles in this bill. Dr. S. W. McClure of the National Wool Growers' Association made this statement to the Senate com- mittee: ''We are being ruined by the import of wool and meats. Something must be done or else it means universal bankruptcy in the West. There is now in storage 996,000,000 pounds of wool, enough for two years' supply." He pointed out that Argentine wool was selling here for nine cents a pound, while it cost the American grower six cents a pound to market his product. He gave an estimate that ninety-five per cent of the 1920 clip in the United States was still unsold. There is hardly a single agricultural product that was not selling below its cost of production on Janu- ary 1, 1921. Calf-skin which sold as high as $1.25 a pound could not be sold for fifteen cents a pound. What effect is this crisis going to have on the agra- rian situation in America? Perhaps the action of the Southern cotton-growers may be significant. They have decided to reduce the acreage of cotton for the season of 1921, so that the prices will be forced high enough to assure them a fair margin of profit. By controlling the fertilizer market, they have agreed to refuse fertilizer to any cotton-grower who will not THE GREATER CRISIS 419 abide by their decision stipulating the acreage he can plant. This is a drastic step and economically un- sound from the point of view of world needs, for it is safe to assume that the world needs more cotton to- day than ever in its history. Whether the farmers aa a whole will retaliate by similar combines is not yet decided, but in any even it is certain that the present crisis is too severe for the farmer not to take steps to- ward organizations which will protect his interests. The American farmer must have a reasonable return on his labor and capital or he will refuse to produce more than he needs for his own consumption, or he may leave the farm. If he leaves, his place will be taken by people who can meet the prevailing prices on account of their lower standard of living. Unless the American farmer can be assured of a profit which will allow him to improve his living standards correspond- ingly with the betterment of city standards, we can expect nothing but to have our farms turned over to Japanese, Hindus, and Armenians, whose living de- mands cannot be compared with those of Americans. If it is necessary for the farmers to combine and force up their prices so as to allow them the profit to induce our American boys to remain on the farm, then such combines are needed. The people of the city must realize that the farmers are entitled to and must have this profit if our agrarian crisis is to be safely passed. There is sufficient margin between the wheat price paid to the farmer and the price of a loaf of bread to allow the farmer his needed increase if the problem of mark- ets is properly handled. The conference of the National Board of Farm Or- 420 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ganizations held in St. Louis during September com- pleted arrangements for a national system of coopera- tive and financial institutions designed to rehabilitate the great industry by establishing grain handling centers in nine large cities, thereby eliminating the middleman and unnecessary speculation. The plan is to finance these centers through a national union of farm loan associations. It is only through such or- ganizations as these that the farmer can hope to fortify his position against marketing conditions over which at present he has no control. BOOK V EXPERT OPINIONS ON SOME PROBLEMS OF POLICY CHAPTER 27 THE CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES OF JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES As the whole Japanese crisis will be handled through diplomatic channels, in the first instance, it is important to survey the national policies to which the representa- tives of Japan and the United States are more or less committed. Behind these policies stand various laws, which must also be inspected. Few men have been in closer touch with all these mat- ters than Mr. E. T. Williams, now Agassiz Professor of Oriental Languages and Literature at the University of California. He has spent many years in China and Japan. He knows the languages and customs of those countries intimately and has a wide personal acquaint- ance there. His familiarity with the treaty relations of Japan, China, and the United States is long and thorough. He was for many years in charge of Oriental Affairs at the State Department and was sent by our Government to the Paris Peace Conference as technical adviser on this subject. The following report was submitted by Mr. Williams to the San Diego Conference on the Problems of the Pa- cific, August, 1920. His suggested reciprocity treaty on immigration impresses me as the best solution next to universal exclusion. EVERY man's relation to his social group, such as the clan or the state, is a reciprocal one. The group owes him certain duties, for it exists because it can con- 423 424 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? fer certain benefits upon him; and he likewise is under obligation to the group for the benefits received. The tie which binds one to a group, and the service rendered by the group will naturally influence our theories as to the allegiance to be required of the in- dividual man and our opinion as to the possibility of terminating the allegiance of the man to the group. Happily, most of us do not care to be released from our obligations to the family. In some lands, as in southwestern China, for instance, where the clan or- ganization still persists, the tie that binds one to his clan is regarded as no less sacred and enduring than that which unites him to his family. In some countries, too, the relation of the person to the state is held to be of a similar nature. In modern times, however, during which there have been large movements of population from one land to another and in which new states have been created out of heterogeneous elements, coming from a variety of races and nationalities, the theory of allegiance has been greatly modified, and the possibility of expatriation has been generally, though not universally, recognized. The doctrine of sovereignty prevailing in any state will indicate the character of the allegiance which that state will require from its citizens or subjects. Anciently, as Sir Henry Sumner Maine has taught us, sovereignty was regarded as personal and had nothing to do with geographical boundaries. The people of a tribe were theoretically of one blood, and no matter where one might travel, even to the ends of the earth, his allegiance was still due to the tribe and its chieftain. He could no more render allegiance to a tribe among whom he might be CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 425 sojourning than he could worship the ancestors of that tribe. In fact, religion and patriotism were closely in- terwoven. Only by being adopted into the alien tribe could he give allegiance to its chief or worship to its gods. To-day we call this adoption ''naturalization." This primitive conception of sovereignty as personal and having nothing to do with territorial boundaries continued to influence political practice both in the Ro- man Empire in the Western world and in its counter- part, the Chinese Empire, in the Far East, when these great empires extended their dominion over distant lands and varying races and creeds. The emperor in each case was the sovereign lord, but, this being once acknowledged, the subject peoples were allowed to ob- serve their ancient customs, practise their ancestral re- ligions, and enforce their inherited code of laws. So it happened that Jews, even though living in Egypt or in Greece, were permitted to form self-governing colonies, subject, of course, to the supervision of the Roman au- thorities, but within these limits to compel their fellow nationals to observe the Mosaic code of the Jews and to punish those who violated it. So, too, in China up to the beginning of the present century the Manchus were gov- erned by one code and the Chinese by another, while the Mohammedan people of the northwest and the semi- civilized tribes of the southwest had their head men who ruled them according to their own laws. The modem practice of extraterritoriality, that is to say, the exercise by one government of jurisdiction over its nationals resident in the territory of another govern- ment, is generally regarded as dating from the capit- ulations granted by Mohammed II in the fifteenth cen- 426 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tury, but while this may be the first recorded formal rec- ognition of the practice, the practice itself is of course much older. It is one that strikes its roots into a far distant past. When Mohammed signed the capitulations, he was probably not aware of surrendering any portion of his sovereignty. Christian Europe at that time was not in a position to make any demands upon the vic- torious Turks before whose arms the walls of Constanti- nople had just fallen. Bearing in mind the primitive conception of sovereignty as personal and not territorial, there was nothing surprising in the willingness of Mo- hammed to allow the Christians of his empire to observe their ancestral laws. Even before the fall of Constan- tinople^ European states had been accustomed to appoint consuls to reside in certain ports of the Turkish Empire, and those consuls appear to have exercised jurisdiction over their nationals engaged in commerce with the Turks. The conception of territorial sovereignty, in fact, is a very modern one ; it had its origin, so far as Europe is concerned, in the downfall of the Roman Empire and the rise of feudalism. The Emperor of Rome claimed a universal sovereignty ; the kings, princes, and nobles who held their dominions from him had their jurisdiction limited to the territories assigned to them, and not made to embrace the whole of a particular people. When the empire fell, these kings and princes continued to exercise their jurisdiction as before, within the boundaries of their provinces and idependent of any over-lord. Thus, as Maine has shown, men became accustomed to the con- ception of sovereignty as limited by geographical boun- daries. These two conceptions of sovereignty have continued CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 427 to exist side by side. The practice of territorial sov- eignty is only slowly crowding out the older custom. When the British Parliament in 1773 empowered the King to erect a supreme court at Calcutta, the British Crown had not yet obtained the sovereignty of the soil. And this court was set up without any agreement to that effect with the titular sovereign at Delhi. In 1788 the United States, a new nation, untrammeled by precedent, nevertheless asked and received from France in the treaty of that year an agreement providing that ' ' all dif- ferences and suits between citizens of the United States in France should be determined by the consuls and vice- consuls either by reference to arbitrators or by summary judgment without costs." Hall, in his ''Foreign Jurisdiction of the British Crown," says that ''to the oriental mind a personal law is much more familiar than a territorial law," but it is doubtful if it was ever more familiar to the Oriental than in early days it was to the European. Hall had refer- ence to the Hindu; had he been acquainted with the Chinese mind, he might not have made so sweeping a generalization. The probabilities are that the Chinese arrived at the conception of territorial sovereignty he- fore the people of the West did, and they reached it through a very similar experience, the weakening of im- perial control and the rise to independence of states that had once been held by their rulers on feudal tenure. These rulers had always had their authority limited by territorial boundaries, and in their relations one with an- other after attaining independence made no effort to exercise jurisdiction over their subjects after such sub- jects passed within the boundaries of another state. 428 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? When therefore in modern times the European made his appearance in China, the Chinese Government insisted upon the exercise of jurisdiction over him while in Chi- nese territory, and it was not until they were compelled by defeat in war that they consented to permit Western powers to exercise extraterritoriality in China. At that time Europeans themselves had no fixed and definite theories of sovereignty as territorial. Their practice, as in the case of the British court in India and in that of American consular jurisdiction in France, was decidedly inconsistent with the acceptance of such a theory. They had of course the conception of territorial sovereignty, but it was undeveloped, and was confused with the older notion of sovereignty as personal or national. A oompromise of these two principles prevails in the world to-day. We have only to read the laws of various European and American governments in regard to na- tionality to see that this is so. In so far as extraterritoriality is concerned there is general agreement. It cannot be exercised except by formal provision in a treaty with the power in whose territories such jurisdiction is to be held. In fact, ex- traterritoriality, except that form of it included in dip- plomatic privilege, has been abandoned by the powers in all countries where formerly exercised except in China and Siam. Turkey at the beginning of the World War abrogated the capitulations, but the Allied powers and the United States have never agreed to that action, and the treaty of peace will no doubt reestablish extraterri- toriality there for the Allies, and the American Govern- ment will no doubt claim the same privilege. But while the formal exercise of judicial functions in CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 429 the territory of another state by officers of the favored power has been abandoned with the exceptions noted, the powers of the world still endeavor to retain a moiety of their sovereignty over their citizens or subjects resi- dent in a foreign country, in some cases even over per- sons born in the foreign country, both against the will of the persons concerned and in opposition to the claims of the foreign power involved. And this they do even while claiming jurisdiction over all persons born or natural- ized in their own territories. T have said that expatriation has been generally, al- though not universally, acknowledged. There were be- fore the World War only two states that refused to ac- knowledge it. These were Russia and Turkey. Both held to the old theory of sovereignty as personal, and re- garded allegiance as perpetual. They considered re- nunciation of allegiance liable to severe punishment. These were both backward states, but one of the most modern of states, Switzerland, also holds that the citizen of a Swiss canton cannot be deprived of his citizenship even though he should become naturalized abroad unless he makes an express request of the Swiss Government in writing, and first fulfils all his obligations as a Swiss citizen. A curious case occurred in 1897, when an American citizen, born in the United States of Swiss ancestry, paid a visit to Switzerland, and was held by the Swiss govern- ment to be liable to military service. After considerable diplomatic correspondence, Schneider, the man con- cerned, relieved himself of further annoyance by paying a fine and making a formal renunciation of all claims against the canton of his forefathers. The reason given 430 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? by the Swiss authorities for the claim made was that the Swiss Constitution provides that no citizen may be de- prived of his rights in his canton or commune. It ap- pears that every such citizen in his old age or in dis- tress may claim aid from his commune, and those who go abroad, even though naturalized, are unwilling to sur- render this right. But this does not at all explain the claim against a man born in the United States. The law of France, also, in its original form was based upon the doctrine of jus sanguinis and still retains that for the most part. But as modified in 1889, it embodies a practice which is based upon the doctrine of jus soli. It claims as French citizens all sons of Frenchmen no matter where born, and also as French all born in France if the father was born there, and if the non-French father was not born in France, the son is still claimed as French ; if born in France, he is resident there on coming of age unless he then disclaims French nationality and proves by certificate that he has the nationality of his father. Moreover, the French law refuses to recognize as valid the naturalization of a Frenchman in another state until he shall have fulfilled his military duties in France or been released from such obligation. The law of the United States holds that all persons born in the United States are American citizens, but also holds that children of citizens, although bom abroad, are also American citizens even when continuing to reside abroad with their parents. This at once leads to con- flict, since the country of their birth and the United States both claim their allegiance. This conflict arises not only over foreign-born children of American paren- tage, but also over American-born children of foreign or CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES iSl naturalized parents, if the parents have come from coun- tries that claim the allegiance of such children. In the case of the foreign-born child of American parents, how- ever, the courts have recognized the right of such a child on coming of age to elect his citizenship, either that of his father or that of the country of his birth. Conflict has more often arisen over naturalized citi- zens of the United States whose allegiance is still claimed by the country of their birth. In many cases this con- flict has been avoided by treaties of naturalization, in which it is provided that residence of naturalized citizens in the United States continuously for five years estab- lished American citizenship, but with the reservation that, if military duty has not been performed before emigration or if crime has been committed before emi- gration, the person guilty of such offenses remains liable to trial and punishment in the country of his birth un- less protected by a statute of limitation effective in that country. Thus we see that the conflict is not peculiar to our relations with the Orient; but the fact that Orientals are ineligible to naturalization makes the problem of our relations with the Far East more difficult. The Chinese law of citizenship adopted in 1912 is very similar to our own. It is indeed based upon the doctrine prevalent in the West, and is an entirely new departure for China. It provides for the naturalization of for- eigners and defines the conditions under which a Chinese citizen may expatriate himself. Just as the American law claims the foreign-born children of American parents as American citizens, so the Chinese law claims as Chi- nese citizens the foreign-born children of Chinese par- 432 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ents the Chinese law will permit such a child to choose American citizenship, but he must first free himself from any obligations to serve in the army or navy of China. This provision is copied from the laws of Japan, France, and various other countries. It should be noted, how- ever, that China has not yet established universal mili- tary service, and has thus far avoided any attempt to compel American-born Chinese to serve in the Chinese Army or Navy. The Chinese law permits Americans to he naturalized in China. But our courts have decided that no for- eigners other than whites and blacks are eligible to citi- zenship by naturalization in the United States. This provision of our laws is the source of much ill feeling in China and Japan toward the United States. It has re- sulted, too, in the formation within the body of the American people of a considerable element which cannot be assimilated and which must ever remain subject to a foreign power and owing allegiance abroad. Formerly the Chinese Government took little or no interest in its subjects living abroad, but this attitude has changed since the establishment of the republic. The Manchu code maintained strict provisions regarding the move- ments of the members of the Manchu, Mongol, and Chi- nese banner corps, because these were all bound to ren- der military service. They could not change their resi- dence, much less go abroad without special permission, but the ordinary Chinese subjects traveled far and wide without question. For two or three hundred years the Government made no effort to protect them, but after the Burlingame mission went abroad, ministers and consuls were appointed. CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 433 Now, since China has become a republic, and the Chi- nese people instead of the Manchus control the Govern- ment, the interest in the Chinese resident abroad is so great that they are permitted to send representatives to sit in the parliament in Peking. This treatment nat- urally increases the loyalty of the Chinese in the United States to the Republic of China, and since they are not permitted, unless born here, to become American citizens, this feeling is quite justified. The strength of the family tie in China also tends to bind the wandering members of the race back to their ancestral community. In China the family, not the per- son, is the social unit. The father is an autocrat ; under the old regime he had power of life and death over his family. Ancestor worship strengthened the reverence of the young for their seniors, and bound related families closely together in the membership of the clan. The clan exercises authority over its members through the clan council, in which each head of a family has a voice. The clan thus brings to trial any member disloyal to its in- terests, and settles questions of property and other dis- putes among its members. It has even been known to disinherit members who fall under its condemnation and even to put them to death. The clan loyalty, however, has never been a source of international trouble. The Chinese in America have never intrigued against the American Government. Wherever they have gone, as a rule they have been law- abiding and loyal to the Government whose protection they have enjoyed. One thing that has aided in this has been the fact that most of the Chinese in the United States have come from southern China, where the former 434 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? rulers of China were cordially disliked. The only po- litical offenses of which they have been ^ilty have been connected with plots for the overthrow of the Manchu monarchy, and now that this has been accomplished and a republic established, their sympathy with American in- stitutions is pronounced. This does not mean that the Chinese in the United States approve of American policy in the exclusion of their fellow-countrymen nor of the decision of our courts denying Chinese the right of naturalization. We must not forget that the Chinese came here at the request of Americans and at a time when their labor was greatly needed and highly appreciated. Neither should we forget that the early Chinese who desired naturalization were granted it. At that time nobody thought of any other course as desirable or pos- sible. It was only after Chinese immigration had in- creased so greatly as to create race feeling and threaten economic difficulties that the courts decided that the American Constitution applied only to whites and blacks, and could not be appealed to in behalf of men of the yel- low race. The method adopted by our Government to exclude Chinese immigration is, however, open to criticism. Af- ter inducing the Chinese Government to agree to the re- striction of Chinese immigration upon condition that it should never be absolutely prohibited, it does seem un- worthy of us that we did absolutely prohibit such immi- gration arbitrarily before we had denounced or amended the treaty. This act, however, was subsequently regu- larized by the treaty of 1896. Moreover, we might to- day be in a better position as regards undesirable im- CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 435 migration had we enacted a law less specific. Thus we might have avoided offense to Chinese feelings given by mentioning them by name. And we might have based the legislation upon some general principle by which it could be seen that we were aiming at the protection of our own people and standards. A law properly drawn at that time would have made impossible the conditions which to-day give much oc- casion for alarms. But the past cannot be undone, and we are no longer disturbed by Chinese immigration; it has been effectually stopped. In so far as the American-born Chinese are concerned, we have no cause for complaint. They are as thoroughly Americanized as the American-horn children of any for- eigners that have come to our shores. They speak purer English than most children of immigrants; they accept enthusiastically American social and political ideals; they take high rank in our educational institutions ; they take instinctively to American sports, and they are thor- oughly loyal to the flag and among the foremost to enlist in its defense. Their right to citizenship can not be de- nied ; the courts have passed upon that question repeat- edly, and have uniformly decided in favor of the American citizenship of such Chinese. The greatest number of Chinese at any one time in the United States was 107,488. The restrictions upon Chinese immigra- tion have reduced that number to 71,531. This is the number in the recent census. Of these one third, per- haps, are American born, and are therefore American citizens. There ought not to be any difficulty in the assimilation of such a small group. As for the Japanese, there is no reason whether on 436 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? racial or economic grounds why they should not receive exactly the same treatment as the Chinese. True, they are not racially identical with the Chinese, but they are not white and they are not black, and therefore they are not eligible to naturalization under the decisions of our courts. Economically they fall within the same cate- gory as the Chinese. Their standard of living is about the same as that of the Chinese. If there is any differ- ence in the wage scale, it is so slight that when compari- son is made with that of the white laborer it is not worth considering. Yet Japanese laws exclude the Chinese la- borer from Japan. That being so, we certainly ought to be permitted to exclude Japanese laborers from our coun- try without meriting serious criticism from Japan. The Japanese Government understands this perfectly, and therefore has undertaken voluntarily to refuse passports to laborers seeking to come to the United States. But they do not class farmers and gardeners as laborers, and we are therefore receiving a great many immigrants of this sort who are cultivating much of the agricultural land of this State. The Japanese law of citizenship is substantially like our own. A child is Japanese if its father at the time of conception was a Japanese subject. This is held no mat- ter where the child may be born. As for expatriation, the law of Japan is that ''if a child who is a Japanese subject acquires by acknowledgment a foreign nation- ality, he loses his Japanese nationality.'^ Until the re- cent revision of this law, the next paragraph qualified the statement by adding: ''notwithstanding the provi- sions of the preceding five articles, a male person of the age of seventeen years or upwards loses his Japanese CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 437 nationality only if he has already performed his service in the army or navy or is not bound to perform such service." Military service in Japan is universal, but a child who is the only son of a parent over sixty years of age who is dependent upon such son for support is ex- empt from the requirement to serve in the army or navy. The recent revision of the law provides that, if the par- ents or guardians of a Japanese child living abroad shall before the child reaches the age of fifteen years declare that such child is to be a citizen of the state in which he was born, that child, upon application made, may be ex- empted from the obligation to perform military service. This is a great improvement over the law as it has ex- isted and been enforced until recently. Still, it leaves every child born in the United States of Japanese parents involved in the obligations of a dual citizenship until the election is made and exemption granted. And if the choice of American citizenship is not made before the age of fifteen years is reached, the boy on reaching the age of seventeen is liable to service in the Japanese army or navy and is expected to begin such service at the age of twenty years. There are said to be five thousand American-born Japanese now in Japan, presumably be- ing educated and performing their military duty. Very few applications for exemptions from the obligations to give military service appear to have been made on the ground that the applicant was to become an American citizen. Every male subject of Japan is liable to military serv- ice from seventeen to thirty-seven years of age. If a boy enters the infantry, he is bound to serve in the active army for two years ; in any other branch of the service for 438 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? three years. He is then placed in the reserve for four years and four months, and following that period is en- rolled in the depot service, or second reserve, for ten years, and subsequently in the home defence for two years and eight months. A Japanese living abroad may obtain temporary exemption from service, but this must be renewed from year to year, and does not confer the privilege of expatriation. Thus it will be seen that it is the militaristic policy of the nation, the demand for men to fill the army and navy, that makes the conflicting claims as to citizenship a mutter of so much importance to Japan, just as it is to France, Switzerland, and various European countries. American-born Japanese, then, whose parents or guardians have not asked exemption for them from military service on the ground of their American citizenship remain all their lives, if they pre- serve their domicile in the United States, possessed of a dual nationalty. The American Government may call upon them for service in the American army, and Japan may summon them to the Japanese colors, so long as they are imder thirty-seven years of age. This question of a dual allegiance becomes of consid- erable importance when viewed in connection with the provisions of the land laws of California. These laws forbid the ownership of land to aliens who are not eligible to naturalization. Yet here are children owning land as American citizens by birth who may nevertheless be by the claim of Japan and by their own choice Japanese sub- jects. The Japanese Government, moreover, through the Japanese Association, apparently organized for this pur- pose, is doing all that it can to retain the allegiance of these children by so educating them in Japanese schools CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 439 as to cause them to prefer Japanese nationality. Here is a grave error of policy to which too little attention has been paid. It does not seem consistent for the Japanese Government to insist upon the right of Japanese to hold land in the name of an American-born child and at the same time to attempt to retain the allegiance of that child as a Japanese subject. We must reach a clear understanding in regard to these questions. The American Government ought to re- quire such children of alien parentage to make choice at a proper age of the nationality which they mean to bear, and the two governments might enter into a convention to determine the conditions under which the choice shall be made and agree together to respect the choice. The State of California might very well, too, so modify the present law as to forbid the holding of agricultural land in the names of children of aliens ineligible to citizenship until choice of American citizenship for such children shall have been made and assent to that choice given by the Government of Japan. Even such a modification of the law would not be entirely satisfactory so long as the present method of educating Japanese children in the United States continues. Furthermore, we must not for- get that even after the American citizenship of a Japa- nese child is acknowledged, he becomes a Japanese sub- ject at once without formality upon his acquiring a domi- cile in Japan. That is the Japanese law. The strength of the family tie greatly aids the Japanese Government in its efforts to hold the allegiance of for- eign-born Japanese children. Prior to the revolution of 1868, by which the mikado was nominally restored to di- rect control of the empire, the civilization of Japan was 440 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? almost wholly derived from China. The solidarity of the family, therefore, was almost as marked in Japan as in China. The stren^h of the family tie is still striking. Individualistic teachings appear to have found less ready acceptance in Japan than in China. But the au- thority of the family has never taken precedence of that of the state, as is often the case in China, where the clans sometimes oppose and triumph over the local representa- tives of the Central Government. The loyalty of the Japanese to his Government stands above all else. That is his religion. This is due in part perhaps to the spirit of feudalism, which survived in Japan until 1871. In China it was overthrown 221 b. c. The samurai of Japan were profes- sional soldiers. In their courage and their loyalty to their feudal lords they resembled the knights of the Mid- dle Ages in Europe. When the daimyos, or feudal lords, voluntarily surrendered their lands and powers into the hands of the emperor, the samurai became subject to but one authority, that of the emperor, whom they had al- ways worshiped. The loyalty to the emperor is just as marked as that which formerly they gave to their daim- yos. The Japanese, moreover, are a small, compact na- tion of one language and possessing common ideals. The masses of the people prior to the restoration were serfs and slaves. Since the restoration they still show to- ward their rulers the same submissiveness as before. All this tends to preserve the solidarity of the Japanese not only at home, but even when they go abroad. There are exceptions, of course. Democratic ideas are making slow progress even in Japan, but for the most part the Japa- nese are not only loyal to the Imperial Government, CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 441 which is to be expected, but they respond promptly to the guidance of the official representatives of their Govern- ment in matters where they are free to act for themselves, and show equal readiness to submit to the authority of parents and family councils, which, touching matters which the Government interests itself in, is likely to rein- force the official policy. We ought not then to expect American-born Japanese who grow up in a Japanese environment, and who have their lives shaped by official and parental influences, to be anything else than Japa- nese in feeling and conduct. The natural tendency to cling to the nationality of their ancestors is reinforced, moreover, by the attitude of their American neighbors, so often hostile to them. When the parents are denied American citizenship, the children cannot be expected to be enthusiastically American. When the Imperial Japanese Government claims them as Japanese subjects despite their birth in the United States, they are apt to accept that status and give a ready allegiance to the Japanese Government. The Japanese Government follows its emigrating sub- jects with paternal care and jealously guards their in- terests. This is natural and within certain limits it is right; but it ought not to go any further than insistence upon the fulfilment of treaty obligations. Unfortu- nately, the emigration program of the Japanese Govern- ment in some countries has been closely associated with its program for economic and political control of those countries, and this has caused dislike of the immigrants in those countries and created suspicion elsewhere. In Korea, IManchuria, and Siberia we have seen the effects of this unhappy combination. Military occupation is 442 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? used to further commercial exploitation. Advantages thus gained are secured by discriminatory legislation, and the immigrant becomes an excuse for gradual en- croachment upon the sovereignty of the ruling power. Somewhat similar methods are being employed in Shan- tung. It is quite true that none of these things have been done in American territory, but the spirit w^liich prompts the use of such methods in one place creates distrust elsewhere, and the knowledge that such an ag- gressive spirit and policy exists ser\'es to aggravate the growing feeling that it is undesirable to have located on the Pacific coast of the United States a colony of aliens, most of whom are denied the privilege of becoming citi- zens and all of whom are ardently loyal to a foreign power, ruled by an ambitious oligarchy, inspired with the spirit of aggression which has already manifested itself in the Far East. In vain do the paid propagandists of Japan deny the existence of a militaristic spirit in that empire. Their own liberal-minded countrymen affirm it. A few days ago in the Imperial Diet at Tokio the following statement was made by Mr. Ozald, formerly mayor of Tokio, and later minister of justice in the Okuma cabinet : "It is only by the overthrow of militarism that the good repute of Japan can be restored in the world to its former lustre." Again he asserted: **The introduction of a budget of which one third is devoted to a bloated in- crease of armaments is the height of absurdity." Fur- thermore he said: "Japan will never win her rightful place among the nations until she throws off the tyranny of the military clique. World suspicion has turned CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 443 against us because the world sees in Japan an aggressive and militaristic country." The ''Osaka Asahi," one of the most influential jour- nals in Japan, recently published a leader which was translated and published in the ''Japan Advertiser" of June 6th last. (Mr. J. 0. P. Bland had made certain statements regarding Japan to which the article refers.) *' Bland is right in saying that the reason why Japan can not obtain a perfect understanding with foreign coun- tries is that decision on diplomatic policy rests not with a responsible government hut with certain irresponsible influences, i. e., the militarists. . . . We agree that unless the irresponsible forces are superseded by a responsible government no satisfactory renewal of the alliance (Anglo-Japanese) can be hoped for." The "Asahi" continues: "There are two or three foreign offices in Tokio," that is, these matters are not left as they should be to the ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The Diplomatic Advisory Council of Terauchi," he asserts, "still con- tinues to function, notwithstanding that Hara, a sup- posed liberal, is Premier." By which Mr. Bland means that the militarists are still in control. In January last the "Yomiura" published an article saying that the militarists in Japan were disturbing and disjointing the Government's policy in China. About the same time the Tokio "Asahi," discussing the denial of General Tanaka that the military were interfering with diplomatic affairs, said: "What of our diplomacy with China? Has it never happened that while the For- eign Office was making arrangements in accordance with a definite policy, the Japanese military officers in China 444. MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? were taking a different course and showing much ac- tivity behind the scenes?'^ This paper also charged that such interference had been going on in the United States and in European capitals, the military and naval at- taches working at cross purposes with the embassies. Such evidence can be greatly multiplied, but it is not necessary to present more. All students of Far-Eastern affairs know that the Government of Japan is an oli- garchy. Ever since the restoration of the mikado a small group of statesmen have been in control. The Toku- gawa Clan lost its power when the Shogunate was over- thrown, but the so-called restoration was more properly speaking the substitution of the rule of four clans for that of one. And these four clans have been controlled by two, Choshu and Satsuma. Choshu since that time has had control of the army, and Satsuma of the navy. And when the constitution was pwmulgated in 1889 it was found to contain a clause which makes it obligatory that an officer of the army shall he minister of war, and an officer of the navy minister of marine. In this way it has remained possible through more than thirty years for the two clans, Choshu and Satsuma, to prevent the formation of a cabinet of which they did not approve. And they still wield that power, no matter what the name of the party may be to which the premier may belong. Militarists thus shape the policies of the Government. The aggressive policy of these militarists is not recent. It is as old as the restoration, conceived and advocated at that time by the leaders of the restoration. It was that remarkable man, Yoshida Shoin, the teacher of Ito, Kido, Inouye, Shinagawa, and others who rose to great CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 445 prominence in after years — it was this man who gave ut- terance in 1854 to the program of foreign conquest which has been steadily followed by Japan ever since. Mr. Tokutomi, the editor of the ''Kobumin Shimbun," who wrote the life of Hoshida, says that he was not the first to propose such a program, but he was undoubtedly the man who gave it currency and who implanted the ambi- tion to realize it in the hearts of the young men who af- terward shaped the destinies of Japan. While he was in prison for a political offense he wrote his book, ''Ryu- kon Roku, ' ' in which he said : "Our great obligation to-day is to readjust the administration of the country and by diplomacy to develop friendly relations with some of the most important foreign countries; therefore we must know the conditions existing in foreign countries. According to the tendency of the times I believe there should be in the future an alliance between the five great continents and in this way avoid great conflicts. The chief of this gTeat con- federation will naturally be England or Russia, but I beUeve it should be Russia, as England is too avaricious. Russia is strong and strict and therefore Russia will probably make the best reputation. Japan, in order to maintain her independence, must have Korea and part of Manchuria and also should have territories in South America and India. This will be very dif- ficult, however, as we are not strong enough and for this reason we should make an alliance with Russia, because she is our neighbor. If Ave depend upon Russia she will feel friendly toward us. Until this is accomplished it would be well to seek the sympathy of America and get her help in resisting the aggression of England. In carrying out this imperial policy we must look upon America as our eastern ally and Russia as our brother and Europe as our territory. And the first im- portant thing is to take some territory in the nearest countries." 446 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? It is significant that his pupil Ito also preferred a Rus- sian to a British alliance. Yoshida also advocated the annexation of the Loochoos and the Kurile Islands and the taking of Kamchatka. Mr. Tokutomi calls attention to the fact that in a little more than sixty years this program had been nearly completed. It was the policy of the restoration leaders to put an end to internecine strife, to the civil war so continuously waged between the clans, by giving the warlike samurai plenty of occupation in wars of foreign conquest. An at- tempt was made to begin the program while Ito was abroad with his commission trying to get a revision of the treaties which had unjustly bound Japan to a low tariff on foreign imports. He failed in this, but he still had enough influence to stop a movement which at that time (1873) would have been foolish in the extreme. He pointed out that Japan had no modern army or mod- ern equipment and would be unable to meet Western foes if they should take a hand in the game. He advocated a period of preparation. He drew up a constitution modeled upon that of Prussia, which gives the form, but not the substance, of legislative power to the representa- tives of the people. He replaced French officers with German for the instruction of the army, and had that force built up and drilled on the German plan. Then in 1894, when the liberals of Japan began to clamor for a really representative government, he silenced all opposi- tion to the rule of the oligarchy by picking a quarrel with China and phmging the country into a foreign war. From that time to this Japan has gone from strength to strength, and because of her victories has won a place among the five great powers of the world. CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 447 Drunk with success, these militarists are now planning for the hegemony of Asia. This ambition has given birth to the Pan- Asian movement, whose watchword is '^Asia for the Asiatics, with Japan in the lead." The former secretary of the Japanese legation at Peking, who tried to convince the Chinese officials there that the Twenty- one Demands of 1915 were really made in the interest of the Chinese, explained that they were a part of the Pan- Asian movement, the first step in a great plan to unite Japanese and Chinese interests with ''a view to the ulti- mate amalgamation of all Asiatic interests, so that from Japan to Egypt there should be built up a great Asiatic confederation for the purpose of ousting the white man." The movement is well-known and finds much favor in Japan and also in China to some extent. The ''Japan Magazine, ' ' shortly after the making of the proposal just quoted, published an article showing that the white man is unsuited to life in the tropics. It closed with this statement : * ' The Japanese is a yellow man ; he has the warm blood of the South ; his temperature is normally be- low that of the European, and the cry of Southward Ho ! is most natural to him. Japan not Europe or America is to be supreme in Asia." The Japanese secretary men- tioned though that the Asiatic confederation might be brought about in seven years; that is, by 1922. He pointed to a map and said that Australia also was a ter- ritory that ''Asiatics should dominate." The Japanese Government does not of course openly avow any such ambition, but several prominent states- men and publicists have indorsed such a program. A writer in the "Chuo Koron" advocated war to expand the empire and relieve the pressure of population. "It 448 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? is all very well," he said, ''for countries like England and America to talk about peace, but what Japan most needs is to break the bonds that restrict her expansion and make the Pacific the centre of her activities and es- tablish her own colonies as vents for emigration." The ''Yomiuri" refused to blame German ambitions, saying, *'A nation should always look to its own interests and, if possible, should ever cultivate a determination to con- quer the world." Here we see the German influence, ''the will to victory." A former minister of agriculture and commerce, Mr. Nakashoji, is quoted by the "Japan Chronicle" as urg- ing Japan to develop her army and navy until her ' ' heav- enly gift of militarism" should render her more formid- able than ever. Mr. Arai Teijiro surpassed him by say- ing that Japan should become the ruler of all the powers of the world, promoting the welfare and freedom of all nations of the globe. Mr. Takekoshi, formerly a member of Parliament and author of "Japanese Rule in For- mosa," in 1916 published an article advocating the seiz- ure of the Dutch East Indies by Japan. He said: "It is easy to be peaceful when you have all you want, but it was not by peaceful methods that the British Empire became so vastly extended. If the Japanese wish to be- come as powerful as western nations they will have to adopt the same policy of expansion as western nations followed until they obtained enough and began to talk of peace." The same project of the conquest of the Dutch Indies was urged also by a retired captain of the Jap- anese Nav^^, Hosaka Hikotare. Professor Niita of the Imperial University in 1916 expressed sympathj^ with the revolutionary party in India, saying: "The independ- CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 449 ence of India cannot be expected in a short time. After Japan's power has increased a great deal she may think of extending her protecting hand to India." Just a year ago, in the summer of 1919^ Count Okuma 's organ, the *'Hochi," of Tokio, said: "That age in which the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was the pivot and American-Japanese cooperation an essential factor of Japanese diplomacy, is gone. In future we must look not east- ward for friendship, but westward. Let the Bolsheviki of Rus- sia be put down and the more peaceful party estabHshed in power. In them Japan will find a strong ally. By marching westward to the Balkans, to Germany, to France and Italy the greater part of the world may be brought under our sway. The tyranny of the Anglo-Saxons at the Peace Conference is such that it has angered both gods and men. Some may ab- jectly follow them in consideration of their petty interests but things will ultimately settle down as has just been indicated." Some time ago Okuma himself made the following statement : "Being oppressed by the Europeans, the 300 millions of India are looking for Japanese protection. They have com- menced to boycott European merchandise. If, therefore, the Japanese let the chance slip by and do not go to India, the Indians will be disappointed. From old times India has been a land of treasure. Alexander the Great obtained there treas- ure sufficient to load a hundred camels and Mahmoud and Attila also obtained riches from India. Why should not the Japanese stretch out their hands to that eountrj^, now that the people are looking to the Japanese? The Japanese ought to go to India, to the South Seas and other parts of the world." Such quotations might easily be multiplied; I cite these to show that this aggressive policy is not the wild 450 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? raving of irresponsible people, but is urged by people of standing and influence. Let us admit at once that the white man's conduct in Asia has given abundant grounds for criticism ; that his conquest and annexation of territories rightfully belong- ing to the yellow race has furnished plenty of precedents for such a program as is entertained by Japan. All that I am concerned with now is the evidence of a militarist spirit in Japan. Perhaps the ambition to be the deliverer of Asia from white domination is natural and justifiable. Perhaps the solution of the color question may some day be found in such a program. Only let us not deceive ourselves as to the conditions. I should be unjust, however, if I should neglect to say that this aggressive program is not approved by all Japa- nese. There are jingoes in all lands, and Japan unfor- tunately finds them in her Government and in other in- fluential circles. But there are liberal-minded people in Japan who are opposed to this warlike policy. They have been trying for years to get rid of the oligarchy that has imbibed the Prussian spirit and adopted Prussian methods. They have indeed succeeded in enlarging the electorate to some extent, but they have just failed in their attempt to obtain universal suffrage. The number of the voters in Japan is still not more than two millions. Mr. Ozaki, whom I have already quoted, said in an ad- dress delivered last January, ''The political and social structure of Japan at present may be likened to putting the peerless Fuji upside down." That is perhaps an adaptation of Andrew Carnegie's simile, in which he represented a monarchy as a pyramid on its apex and a republic as a pyramid on its base. In the address to CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 451 which I refer Mr. Ozaki advocated a thorough social and political reconstruction. ''To accomplish this," he said, ''nothing can be more urgent and important than the adoption of universal suffrage so that the monopoly of political power by certain classes of people may be pre- vented." But universal suffrage will be insufficient without amendment of the Constitution, and this can be done only upon the initiative of the emperor. Our sympathies are of course with these liberals who are working under a great handicap. We hope that they may soon accomplish the reform at which they are aim- ing. Meantime we have to do with things as they exist. We have to do with a government which is aggressively militaristic and which through all changes of cabinet never loses sight of its goal and never misses an oppor- tunity to increase the prestige of the empire. It is this spirit that prompts it to retain a hold upon its emigrants wherever they may go, to organize them and use them to further its aims. Such emigrants from Japan when they become immi- grants into the United States are kept under the close supervision of the Japanese consular authorities. More- over, by direction of the Japanese Foreign Office they are organized into societies. I am told by Japanese in the United States that wherever one hundred or more Japa- nese are found in one community they are required to organize a local society, and this society virtually governs the Japanese community. The society is empowered hy the Japanese Government to levy a tax upon its members. From twenty-five cents to $1.50 a month is paid by each family or single adult male. With this money a Japa- nese propaganda is maintained throughout the State and 452 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? nation. The society in California raises from $40,000 to $70,000 a year for this purpose. There are paid propa- gandists who are Japanese, and there are others who are Americans. A part of the money, too, is used to pay the salaries or part of the salaries of certain professors and instructors in some American colleges and universities where Japanese history is taught and interest created in Far-Eastern affairs. In addition to this important piece of work the so- cieties also organize school boards which have charge of the education of Japanese children. The children in Japanese families, even though they are born in the United States and are recognized by us as American citizens, are required to attend those Japanese schools. After the American school hours are over the little Jap- anese child must go to his Japanese teacher, where he is taught the Japanese language. If that were all, it would not be so very objectionable, but it is not all. The Japa- nese schools are a nursery of loyalty to Japan. The Japanese Emperor^s portrait is usually placed in each school in Japa^i, and the pupils do it reverence, for the divinity of the emperor is a part of the Japanese creed. The imperial edict of the late Meiji emperor is taught in all the schools as the foundation of morals. This edict, which must be learned by heart, is as fol- lows: "Know ye Our subjects: Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad and everlasting and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue. Our subjects ever united in loyalty and filial piety have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the glory of tlie funda- mental character of Our Empire and herein also lies the source CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 453 of Our education. Ye, Our subjects, be filial to your parents, affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands and wives be harmonious; as friends be true; bear yourselves in modesty and moderation ; extend your benevolence to all ; pursue learn- ing and cultivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual facul- ties and perfect moral powers; furthermore advance public good and j^romote common interests; Always respect the Con- stitution and observe the laws; should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State and thus guard and main- tain the propriety of Our Imperial Throne, coeval with Heaven and Earth. So shall ye be not only Our good and faithful sub- jects, but render illustrious the best traditions of your fore- fathers. The way here set forth is indeed the teaching be- queathed by Our Imperial Ancestors to be observed alike by Their Descendants and the subjects, infallible for all ages and true in all places. It is Our wish to lay it to heart in all rev- erence, in common with you, Our subjects, that we may all thus attain to the same virtue. 'Tmperiai. Sig Manual." "Privy Seal." "10th Moon, 30th day, Meiji, 1890." I have not been able to learn how far these practices are followed in Japanese schools in the United States. Of course the society is unable to collect the taxes im- posed if any are unwilling to pay, but few will face the scorn of their countrymen that will be theirs if they refuse to pay. Moreover, if any refuse, it becomes pos- sible sooner or later to punish them. Should such a man require a passport or other service from the consul, he is referred to the society, which will report whether or not he is in arrears in the payment of dues. If in ar- rears, he must pay up in full before he can secure the services of the consulate. 454 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? In the establishment of Buddhist temples in the United States the Japanese citizen is of course within his rights. There are, it is said, seventy-eight such temples in Cali- fornia. But when we take into consideration the sur- roundings of the Japanese child, the atmosphere of the home where loyalty to a foreign emperor is a religious duty, where the authority of the father is submissively acknowledged, when we remember the powers of the Japanese society and the compelling force of Japanese opinion, the teaching of the Japanese school, and the bu- reaucratic supervision of the Japanese consulate, the ad- dition of the Japanese temple and its services must be allowed to augment the strength of the ties that bind that child to Japan and tend to make his profession of allegiance to the United States merely a convenient form which must be observed for the sake of privileges other- wise unobtainable. The Japanese Government not only retains a hold upon its subjects in the United States, but is ever watchful to obstruct any legislation that seems to threaten their rights as residents in the United States. It was not until the Chinese exclusion law was passed by Congress that there began to be any considerable number of Japanese immigrants into the United States; in 1880 there were only 148 here; in 1890 there were 2,039 ; in 1909 there were in round numbers 100,000 ; to- day the official estimate of the Japanese population of this State alone is 87,000, and there are no doubt many ' more. When this rapid increase began to attract atten- " tion, as it did after 1909, the commercial treaty between our country and Japan came up for revision in 1911. The Japanese are a proud people and could not submit to CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 455 any mention in the treaty of a restriction upon immigra- tion. The first article of the treaty therefore provides reciprocally that "The citizens and subjects of each of the High Contracting Parties shall have liberty to enter, travel and reside in the territories of the other to carry on trade, wholesale and retail, to own or lease and occupy houses, manufactories, warehouses and shops, to employ agents of their choice, to lease land for residential and commercial purposes, and generally to do any- thing incident to or necessary for trade upon the same terms as native citizens or subjects, submitting themselves to the laws and regulations there established." This provision gives the Japanese in this country and Americans in Japan the right to reside in such places for the purpose of trade. There is no comma after the phrase ''reside in the territories of the other," so that the following words, ''to carry on trade," define the ob- ject of their residence there. This undoubtedly was intentional. Americans, of course, are not likely to want to carry on agriculture in Japan, but if they should so desire they cannot claim the right under this treaty. The Japanese do carry on agriculture in the United States, and the treaty does not forbid it, but there can be no claim of a right to do so under the provisions of the treaty. The article also gives the right to own houses, but does not give the right to own land. It gives the right to lease land for residential purposes and for commercial purposes, but not agricultural purposes. An American cannot own land in Japan under the pro- visions of the treaty ; that is to say, no affirmative right is given, but in this case the silence of the treaty is sup- plemented by Japanese law which forbids the ownership 456 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? of land by aliens. It is true that the Japanese Diet some years ago passed a new law granting ownership to aliens, but it was never put into force. It must not be forgotten that the Diet has no right to legislate over the veto of the Government, and, even when the Govern- ment has approved, the law does not become operative until an imperial edict to that effect is issued. This first article of the treaty was very carefully drawn, and what is omitted is just as intentionally omit- ted as the inclusions are intentionally^ included. Under the treaty, therefore, Japanese have no affirmative right to own land in the United States and no right to lease land except for residential and commercial purposes. The same is true of Americans in Japan. The provision is strictly reciprocal. Another important provision of the treaty is that of Article VII, which reads : "Limited-liability and other companies and associations, com- mercial, industrial and financial, already or hereafter to be organized in accordance with the laws of either High Contract- ing Party and domiciled in the territories of the other, to exer- cise their rights and appear in the courts either as plaintiffs or defendants, subject to the laws of the country. - The fore- going stipulation has no bearing upon the question whether a company or association organized in one of the two countries, will or will not be permitted to transact business or industry in the other, this permission remaining always subject to the laws and regulations enacted or established in the respective country or in any part thereof." This expressly resen^es to each country the right to say upon what terms or under what conditions, if any, a foreign corporation may do business in that country. CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 457 It grants nothing more than the right to appear in court to prosecute or to defend. After this treaty had been signed, the Japanese Am- bassador, Baron, now Viscount, Uchida, made this decla- ration : "In proceeding this day to the signature of the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Japan and the United States, the undersigned, Japanese Ambassador in Washing- ton, duly authorized by his Government has the honor to declare that the Imperial Japanese Government are fully prepared to maintain with equal effectiveness the limitation and control whieli they have for the past three years exercised in regulation of the emigration of laborers to the United States. "Y. Uchida." "February 21, 1911." This refers to the so-called ''Gentlemen's Agreement,'* entered into in 1908 by Secretary Root and Ambassador Takahira, in accordance with which the Japanese Gov- ernment would itself withhold passports from all labor- ers who might desire to go to the United States. In other words, the only restriction upon Japanese immigration is a voluntary one on the part of Japan, which of course can be terminated at any time by that Government. At first it was an oral agreement, but later was embodied in a memorandum, and then in 1911 supported by the writ- ten pledge which I have just given. The Japanese are naturally very sensitive in regard to this matter and have been unwilling that any refer- ence should be made in our legislation to this arrange- ment as in any way binding the Japanese Government. It must be accepted, as it is, a voluntary restriction of emigration of laborers from Japan. But the increase 458 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? of Japanese holdings of land in California led, as we all know, to the legislation of 1913, forbidding to aliens not eligible to naturalization the ownership of land in Cali- fornia. The situation has grown more and more critical along the Pacific coast, and when a new bill restricting immigration was introduced into the national House of Representatives in 1916, a clause was inserted which made some indirect reference to the voluntary restriction by Japan of the emigration of laborers to the United States, which was intended to exempt from operation of the law any country that voluntarily refused passports to laborers, but only so long as the restriction was en- forced. At first the Japanese made no objection, but at the next session of Congress in 1917 they made decided objection to the phraseology. Various attempts to re- vise it were made, but finally it was abandoned, and a clause was substituted which excluded all laborers coming from within certain meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude. The clause is a very cumbersome one, and is designed to shut out undesirable immigration from India and neighboring countries, but drawn in such a way as to admit certain elements from northern Turkey and Persia. During the year 1917 several States in our Northwest had bills introduced to restrict the ownership of land, all modeled upon the legislation of California. As we were at war with Germany, the D'epartment of State felt that it would be most unwise to stir up an agitation of this question, and at its request the several legislatures aban- doned the matter. So also in 1919. But we are no longer conducting military operations in Europe, and CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 459 the question of Oriental labor confronts us again. What ought to be the answer ? There can he but one principle to guide us in attempt- ing a sohition of the problem. That principle is justice. We must be just to Japan and to the Japanese people; we must in particular avoid anything like injustice to those Japanese who are now in the United States, most of whom are here lawfully. This is no time for an ap- peal to unreasoning prejudice. Race prejudice unfor- tunately exists, but our pride of race and our desire to keep the blood unmixed ought not to make us blind to the good qualities of other races or indifferent to their rights. On the other hand, we must be just to our own people, who have built up this great commonwealth and who de- sire to preserve it as a heritage for their children. The most highly cultivated plants must be carefully protected against competition with other plants. Otherwise they fail to hold their ground, and either degenerate or dis- appear. Our civilization is a delicate plant which can not enter into unprotected competition luith certain other hardy varieties. That competition must he reduced hy such restriction as will give the needed protection. Japan, too, must be just, just to her own people and just to us. It is unjust to her own people in the United States and to us to endeavor as she has done in past years to retain control over them ; to organize them into so-called societies which are really local governments, making here in our midst an imperium in imperio, and ruling them even while they are within the jurisdiction of the American Government. It is particularly unjust 460 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? to the Japanese children born as American citizens that she should train them from infancy to make loyalty to Japan a part of their religion, and yet permit them for the sake of certain economic advantages here to become American citizens in name, assuring them, as present Japanese laws do, that immediately upon their return to Japan, if they establish a domicile there, they become at once without ceremony Japanese subjects. I do not forget the improvement made by recent modi- fication of the law of military service, exempting from its operation those children whose guardians will declare before the child reaches fifteen years of age that he is to become an American citizen and who will apply for such exemption. This, however, will not relieve from the conflicting claims of a dual citizenship those children whose parents or guardians neglect to make the required declaration before the child reaches the age of fifteen years. But it is a step in the right direction. Now let the Japanese Government take a second step; withdraw from the direction and control of the Japanese in Amer- ica and advise its subjects here to dissolve that organiza- tion. Let it furthermore give up its attempts to control the education of Japanese children in the United States. Lastly let it abandon its semi-official propaganda and leave the Japanese residents of the United States free to adopt American ideals and become Americanized. But such action upon the part of Japan would call for reciprocal action upon our part. It is had policy on the part of the American Government to admit large num- bers of any, race to become permanent residents of the country and yet deny them the privilege of being nat- uralized. By that denial we force them to segregate CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 461 themselves and organize for self -protection. We compel them to retain their allegiance to a foreign state, and yet blame them for training their children to that same al- legiance. We ought either to limit such immigration very strictly or to grant the privilege of naturalization. And whatever we do should be done by a convention whose terms will be reciprocal, denying to Americans in Japan all that we deny to Japanese here. We must not forget that our present treaty with Japan — that of 1911 — permits Japanese immigration. Until we relieve our- selves of our obligations under that treaty we cannot honorably enact restrictive legislation. The treaty is due for revision in 1923, but may be terminated at any time by giving six months* notice of such intention. But, if we should decide to terminate that treaty and ar- range for a restriction of Japanese immigration, we are still left with a very serious problem — ^that of dealing justly with the Japanese already lawfully in the coun- try. And of the same sort is the problem of dealing justly with the Chinese and other Asiatics who also are lawfully here. I suggest that, if we admit as immigrants hereafter only those Orientals who belong to the favored classes and entirely exclude all laborers and agriculturists, as is already done with the Chinese and certain other Asi- atics, we can well afford to grant American citizenship to those already here who are willing to he naturalized. The total number of Japanese now in the United States is very small when compared with the whole population ; the number of Chinese is still smaller, and, in fact, neg- ligible. Grant them all American citizenship and let their children grow up as Americans. Within two gen- 462 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? erations thereafter, it is safe to say, they would be lost in the great body of the American people. There need be no difficulty in making the naturaliza- tion of Orientals entirely legal. The Constitution of the United States provides that Congress shall have power to "establish an uniform rule of naturalization." The first national Congress passed an act for naturaliza- tion of aliens who should be free white persons. After the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Con- stitution additional legislation was had to provide for the grant of citizenship to the negroes. There can be no doubt, therefore, as to the power of Congress to amend the law still further so that those aliens of the yellow race who are lawfully in the United States or who may hereafter come lawfully to have a domicile here, may be naturalized. If such legislation were had, the great majority of the Asiatics of foreign birth would ask for naturalization. Such action would be encouraged and hastened by an amendment of the California Alien Land Law so as to forbid the holding of land for agricultural purposes by minor children of Orientals who are not naturalized. If a provision for the naturalization of Orientals now in this country can not be inserted in the conventions that are to stipulate the exclusion hereafter of laborers and agriculturists, then California will be justified in barring the transfer of land to the minor children of Orientals who are not citizens. CHAPTER 28 CHEAP LABOR AND STANDARDS OF LP^ING For the benefit of those who have not followed eco- nomics closely the following brief statement as to the connection between cheap labor and living standards will prove useful, especially in conjunction with the reading of Books III and IV. It has been prepared by Mr. War- ren S. Thompson. THE term ''cheap labor" here refers to any type of workmen who, because of their relatively low stand- ards of living, are able and willing to accept a lower wage or price for a given amount of labor or goods than workmen having higher standards of living. It is ob- vious that workmen who are accustomed to living on a very monotonous diet, who are contented to crowd to- gether in shanties and vile tenements, who put their chil- dren to work at the youngest possible age, who encourage their wives to go to work outside the home, and who ex- pect nothing in return from their labor but the creature necessities of life, can accept a lower wage than workmen who are accustomed to living in better surroundings, who want their wives to be able to remain at home and care for their children, and who want their children to get a fair education as a start in the struggle of life. It is but natural that we should find employers and 463 464 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? employees looking at the problem of cheap labor from entirely different points of view, and therefore arriving at opposite conclusions, regarding the necessity and de- sirability of doing all in our power to keep up the supply of such labor. The employer, as never before, is becom- ing involved in a competition for world markets with the employers of other lands, and often feels that, if he is to stay in the game, he must have a supply of cheap and docile labor. He believes that his competitors have an abundance of such labor, and in order to meet them on equal terms in the world's markets he, too, must have cheap labor. The laborer, on the other hand, looks at the problem as one of maintaining his standard of living in competition with workmen who are not accustomed to living as well as he, and feels that the best way to deal with the matter is to prevent competition. He would like to prevent the cheap laborers of foreign lands from coming here in such numbers as to endanger his position, and he would like to undertake the education of those now here so that they would demand conditions of em- ployment and wages equal to his own. From the point of view of the student interested in our national population movements, the problem of cheap labor is one of vital importance. It is a universal rule of population growth that people with low standards of living have a higher birth-rate th-an those with higher standards of living. A large number of births are not felt to be a burden among people with low standards of living. They expect quite a large percentage of their children to die in infancy, and they expect those who grow up to go to work at a very tender age, and thus partly or wholly support themselves. Whether people CHEAP LABOR 465 with low standards of living increase in numbers depends upon their being able to secure food and shelter suf- ficient to raise more than enough children to replace the parents. Those who know China best believe that al- though its birth-rate is very high, its population is virtu- ally stationary, because of the difficulty of increasing the food supply. When, however, people with low stand- ards of living come into competition with people having higher standards of living, the former increase generally more rapidly than the latter because their death-rate is lowered by the greater ease of securing the scanty means of sustenance to which they have been accustomed. Con- sequently, people of low standards of living tend to sup- plant those with higher standards when the two come into close competition. There are many places in the world where this process is going on to-day. In Transylvania the Rumanians and Magyars come into keen competition. The Rumanian peasants, with their lower standards of living, are increasing more rap- idly than the ^Magyar peasants and are slowly, but stead- ily, pushing them back. The Rumanian peasants have been a mountain people having hard work to make a bare living. As they creep down from the mountains, they find living easier and have but little trouble in dis- placing the people of the plains, who have developed higher standards of living. They can pay a higher ren- tal for land or a higher price when they buy, because they use a smaller proportion of the total product to sus- tain themselves. Not only are the Rumanians supplant- ing the Magyars, but they are Rumanizing those who re- main behind. The Magyars who stay to compete with the Rumanians are comine: to live as the Rumanians and 4^6 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? to speak their language. A friend of mine told me of instances he had personally observed when Magyars in blood even denied that they were Magyars and claimed to be Rumanians, so dominant had everything Rumanian become in many localities. On other frontiers of Hungary the same process has been going on. The Slovaks and the Ruthenians are supplanting the Magyars on the northeast frontier. When we realize how this process of infiltration of peoples having lower standards of living threatened the dominance of the Magyars not only in the outlying provinces of Hungary, but even in the central plain, where they have been settled for a thousand years or more, we shall better understand why they resorted to questionable methods to make good Magyars out of Ru- manians, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croatians, and other of the Slavic groups by which they are surrounded. The Magyars felt that they must either Magyarize the peoples who surrounded them or see themselves slowly perish as a dominant race, and finally be entirely supplanted by these peoples who could live more cheaply than they. There is not the least doubt that they were correct in diagnosing the situation. They laid themselves open to severe condemnation because of the methods they adopted to effect the Magyarizing of the foreign elements within their boundaries. In Prussia, where Pole and German come into compe- tition, the story is the same. Prussia did everything that Prussian minds could devise to Prussianize the Poles in her portion of the old kingdom of Poland. All her conscious efforts were in vain. The Prussian authorities complained that the Poles multiplied so much more rap- CHEAP LABOR 46T idly than the Germans that every year saw the real Polish frontier a little closer to Berlin. Even when German colonies, aided by the Government, were planted as a breakwater to the Polish tide and as centers from which a German culture should radiate to the Poles, they were swamped by the Poles because of their pa- triotism and their greater rate of natural increase.. The colonists were unable to compete with the Poles in the renting and purchase of land. The Prus- sians, as the Magyars, went at the whole matter of as- similation in a way to arouse antagonism and make it a point of national honor on the part of their subjects not to yield to their rulers in any respect; but one funda- mental reason for the failure of their carefully laid plans is to be found in the fact that they were dealing with peoples having lower standards of living and therefore greater power of reproduction. They could not com- pete economically with the Poles ; consequently they were being displaced. Both the Prussians and the Magyars might have been able to assimilate their foreign elements if different methods had been adopted, but nothing they could do would have prevented the peoples with lower standards of living from becoming a constantly increase ing proportion of their total populations. It was the consciousness of this fact that made them over-zealous in their efforts at assimilation. In our own country we have many examples of this principle of population growth. In many industries we have had a constant succession of employees of different nationalities succeeding one another because the latest arrivals had lower standards of living and could under- bid those who had acquired slightly better standards^ 468 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? In every case the new-comers had also the higher birth- rate. In the packing houses of Chicago the Irish and Ger- mans were supplanted by the Slavs of various nationali- ties, and recently the Slavs have been yielding to the negroes. This process has been obvious, and no one would deny for a moment that cheap labor can supplant more expensive labor in a highly mechanized industry like meat-packing. What is not s,o generally recognized, is that the latest arrivals, having the lowest standards of living {with the possible exception of the negroes) also produce a larger proportion of the children of the next generation than the people whose jobs they take. In the iron and steel industry the competition between people with different standards of living has been even more marked than in the meat-packing industry. The English, Scotch, and Welsh gave way to the Irish and Germans. After the Homestead strike most of these north Europeans were supplanted by Slavs and Italians. Recently negroes have become numerous in the industry. Somewhat the same series of changes has taken place in coal-mining. In all such cases the most obvious fact is that people with little skill and low standards of living have been taking the places of workmen having higher standards of living. W^hat has not become so clear, al- though it is just as certain, is that all these groups of new-comers have contributed more than their due pro- portion to the numbers of the next generation. Thus the process of supplanting has gone on ; but since it has been much more difficult to S'^e than the process of individual displacement, most people have not realized that it was going on. CHEAP LABOR 469 In this country it has not been possible to measure the extent of the supplanting of the people with higher stand- ards by those having lower standards of living as could be done in Europe. New-comers have been employed in manufacturing and mining rather than engaged in ag- riculture, and consequently have not been fixed in a defi- nite location, where their expansion could be easily seen. Our Federal Census Bureau has data in its files which would throw much light upon the relative rates of in- crease of people recently arrived here and those of older stock, but has never tabulated and published them. From a great variety of sources, however, we get bits of information which show clearly that the process of supplanting is going steadily forward in our urban com- munities. As long ago as 1850 it was observed in New England that the families of the old stock were not as large as those of the recently arrived Irish. Now it is the French Canadians, Jews, and Italians who are sup- planting not only the older natives, but the Irish, Eng- lish, Germans, and Scandinavians who came to us in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Not long ago I had occasion to visit some of the more hilly regions of central New York in the region of aban- doned farms. The old American stock, chiefly Connecti- cut farmer Yankees, which settled in this region about 125 or 150 years ago, is still the dominant stock in most settlements. A few years ago several families of Finns settled in one of the neighborhoods. Other families soon joined them, and to-day they are gradually displacing the Americans. In several neighborhoods they consti- tute a majority of the population. There is no doubt that they will continue to supplant the Americans in this 470 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? part of the country until it becomes wholly a Finnish settlement. They have low standards of living, permit- ting of putting children to work at an early age, of work- ing the women and girls in the fields, of going barefoot during the warm weather, of keeping house in a rather primitive manner, etc., which enables them to raise large families without feeling any deprivation or hardship. The Americans cannot compete with them, and are selling out as rapidly as they can find purchasers, just as their fellow-countrymen are doing in the rich California val- leys which the Japanese have invaded. Again let me state the principle of population growth I have illustrated above: when peoples having different standards of living come into direct competition, the people having the lower standards will increase in num- bers more rapidly than the people having the higher standards, and will, in the natural course of events, supplant the latter. The rate at which the process of supplanting will go on will depend upon the degree of difference in the standards of living of the compet- ing groups. If there is but little difference in their standards, the process will go forward slowly, perhaps imperceptibly ; if the difference is great, the process will be rapid and will be easy to observe. The explanation of this situation is simple. Always and everywhere that complex group of social and eco- nomic customs, called the standard of living, has great inertia. People do not like to change their habits of life, and it usually takes several generations of them to make any large change, even in a society so accustomed to change as that of western Europe and America. .Changes in the standard of living in an upward direction, CHEAP LABOR 471 although slow, take place with greater ease and rapidity than changes tending to lower the standard of living, be- cause they are not accompanied by any new physical hardship. Changes tending to lower the standard of liv- ing are resisted with great tenacity and will not be en- dured if it is possible to prevent them. One of the simplest and most certain ways of preserving one 's stand- ards in the face of competition tending to reduce them is to limit the number of persons dependent on a given income to that which it will support in the customary manner. Consequently, as the death-rate falls among a people acquiring a higher standard of living, the birth- rate falls. When people have acquired the habits that go with a high standard of living and find themselves forced into competition with people having a lower stand- ard, they again reduce their birth-rate by putting off marriage to a later date, by remaining single, and by limiting the number of births. In the very nature of the case a people of lower stand- ards introduced among a people of higher standards has a lower death-rate than it has been accustomed to, be- cause of better sanitation, better medical care, more abun- dant and wholesome food, and more adequate shelter. It is inevitable, therefore, that it should increase in numbers very rapidly and that its children should take the places of those who would have been born to the people of higher standards if they had been able to support larger fami- lies in their accustomed manner. From the point of view ^of population growth, there- fore, a constantly replenished supply of *' cheap labor' ^ means a constantly larger proportion of our population coming from the races and nationalities furnishing this 472 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? cheap labor and, ohversely, a constantly smaller propor- tion fram the groups with higher standards of living. This is as certain as it is that the sun will rise to-morrow. In the long run this aspect of the problem of cheap labor is the most important, and it is greatly to be regretted that it is often overlooked by those discussing this ques- tion. In my judgment a large proportion of the easy optimism so characteristic of most talk about immigra- tion and cheap labor is due, not to a careful considera- tion of the problems involved and a well-grounded faith in our ability to solve them satisfactorily, but rather to the failure to study the situation in all its manifold aspects and, therefore, to think it much simpler than it really is. I believe that up to the present time the older Amer- ican stock from northern and western Europe has held its own in competition with the newer stocks from south- ern and eastern Europe. The explanation is that a large majorit}^ of our people, those living in the open country and in small cities and villages, have not come into com- petition with people having lower standards of living. As a consequence, they have not been forced to reduce their birth-rate as rapidly as that part of the older stock living in the cities, where the competition has been keen. The rural population has been able not only to hold its own, but to increase faster than the newer immigrants, because of the relatively low death-rate. When, how- ever, the newer immigrants begin to settle in the open country in considerahle numbers, we shall find the people of the older stock reducing their birth-rate rapidly and yielding up the land to the new-comers. It is to be hoped CHEAP LABOR 473 that we shall not wait until we are confronted by this actual condition to take measures to insure the protec- tion of American stock from a competition in which it has no chance of survival. CHAPTER 29 NEW AGRAKIAN POLICIES IN AUSTRALIA AND CALIFORNIA By Elwood Mead THE doctrine that people have a moral right to go to any country they elect is not recognized by other en- lightened countries. Australia and Canada exclude all Orientals. Japan herself will not permit aliens to own land. It will not permit Chinese or Korean coolies to settle in Japan as farm laborers, the reason being that it would lower the wages of the Japanese. And in this the Japanese Government displays sound statesmanship. Our country stands at the parting of the ways. It must either protect its white civilization by excluding the brown, or it must be prepared for continued rural conflicts, which will grow more bitter in time. ''A house divided against itself cannot stand" is as true of this situation as it was of slavery. East is East and West is West. Our soil and our flag cannot sustain and pro- tect both. If California's rural life becames a patch- work of black, white, and brown communities, nothing but unending strife can result. The political bulwark of this nation to-day is the 55,000,000 people of English or north European ancestry that created our free institutions. They are the leaders of our social and political life. They have shown such. 474 NEW AGRARIAN POLICIES 475 exceptional capacity for government, such regard for lib- erty, law, and order, that we should be careful how we dilute or submerge this blood by a large influx of peo- ples whose respect for free instiutions and capacity for democratic growth is unknown. Our enduring welfare will be promoted not so much in increase in population as by maintenance of high standards of human life. Before we people our unused land with aliens we should try to make it a home for American boys and girls. There is need for a substitute for the Homestead Act and for rural planning which will restore to farm life the social and recreative activities it has lost. If we make it possible for young men and women to buy farms large enough to give them employment and a com- fortable living, if we recognize the value of the farm la- borer as man and citizen, we shall have done much to oifset the present lure of the city. If the farm laborer and the farmer can call the house ihey live in, the trees they plant, the grass and flowers they care for, their own because they are part of the soil which is theirs, young, ambitious, and inspiring people will have some- thing to work for and strive for that the city cannot furnish. We have reached a time when we should begin to plan rural life. Rural development has been migratory and speculative in the past. In the foremost countries of Europe people on the farms have an attachment to par- ticular farms and to the interests of their particular neighborhoods that is not felt in America. The nations of western Europe have found that they must in some way enable farm laborers to own their homes, and ten- ant farmers to become farm-owners if they are to check '476 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? rural migration and rural discontent. To achieve this result, Germany spent over four hundred million dollars between 1906 and 1914. The British Government spent over five hundred million dollars between 1903 and 1914 to put an end to the political and social unrest of the Irish peasant. State aid has been actively extended in France to enable the people of the country to own their farms. Perhaps the most striking example of the value of land-ownership and the influence it exerts in creating independence, industry, and contentment is to be seen in Denmark, which Mty years ago faced the same situ- ation that faces us to-day. Copenhagen was then a great industrial city partly surrounded by sand-dunes. The tenant farmer and the farm laborer were discour- aged. They were leaving the land, flocking to the fac- tories, or going to other countries. The nation faced bankruptcy. To avert this disaster, Denmark bought large estates, sold them in small tracts to the tenants and farm laborers, helped struggling people to establish schools and cooperative institutions, and thus gave them that sense of security, pride, and independence that goes with the ownership of farms and which is a great agent in building up character, patriotism, and a strong na- tional life. Thirty years ago ninety per cent of Den- mark was farmed by tenants. To-day ninety per cent is farmed by owners, and Denmark, in certain features of rural life, is a school for the rest of the world. Australia is the eastern frontier of the white man's world, and California is the western. Only a fringe of the coast country is settled. Cheap labor would bring to Australian farm owners immense and sudden wealth. But people of the Commonwealth have had the fortitude NEW AGRARIAN POLICIES 477 and self-denial to ignore the temptation, to put aside immediate gain, in order to protect the rights and op- portunities of the unborn. They have chosen slower material progress with a higher human standard. Their aim is not rapid material progress, but a white civiliza- tion worthy of the best traditions of the mother country. This policy was not adopted to protect union labor in cities, as some have assumed, though the labor party has always supported it. The central idea has been to cre- ate a real economic democracy on the land. Cheap Asi- atic labor on the sugar plantations was done away with when political leaders realized that white people would not stay if they had to compete with it. The caste feel- ing created by Chinese labor existed in Australia long after the coolie had disappeared. It was shown by the intense hatred against the small farm. Young men said, ''You are trying to make Chinese out of us." Later, when these young men found the small farm the road to landed independence, this prejudice vanished. The people of California to-day are eating Australian jam grown in orchards planted by white settlers who were helped by the Government to get started on the land. To provide these farms, in the last ten years the Government has spent six hundred million dollars buy- ing privately owned estates. These have been cut up into blocks of suitable size, and thrown open to settlement on easy terms and conditions. The Australian states have provided for cooperative communities and homes for farm workers. Between 1901 and 1918, 3,471,795 acres of land were bought, subdivided, and settled. Australia has shown that white people of English an- cestry will do the squat labor which we are told no one 478 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? but Orientals will do. The 1918 Commonwealth Year Book shows that more than half the irrigated farms were granted to discharged soldiers. These farms averaged fifty-two acres each. In the Sheapparter district of Victoria there are 255 families where originally there had been twenty. At Cohuna the settlers have made such progress that many paid in full for their land in seven years, although they had thirty-one and one-half years in which to complete payments. In Koyuga there are fifty settlers with good houses, fine orchards, and fine crops of lucerne and vegetables, where in November, 1910, there was not a house, a family, or an acre of cul- tivated land. These impartial records show that not only are white people with the same blood and traditions as ourselves doing all the work of farm and gardens, but that they are meeting their payments, living in better houses, owning better stock, and creating a better rural civilization than existed before the Australian land policy went into effect — vastly better than would exist if they had looked to Asia for men to do the hard and disagree- able work. The time has come for us to show whether we have the same high regard for free institutions and the same pride and respect for the ideal of our forefathers that Aus- tralia has shown. If we have, we must help white people live on the land on farms and in homes they own. California is the only American State that has made a beginning at doing this. Three years ago the legislature appropriated $260,000 to test what could be done by carefully-thought-out plans to help landless poor men own farms and to help farm laborers secure homes of their own. The money was advanced not as a gift, but NEW AGRARIAN POLICIES 479 as a loan, to be repaid in fifty years with four per cent interest. Settlers have been helped by long-time pay- ments and by a low rate of interest by having in each settlement a friendly capable adviser who gives to all the people the benefit of good business brains, help, and advice in cooperation in buying and selling, in provid- ing for the education of the children, and in social ac- tivities. The settlers have had the benefit of a compe- tent architect in planning their homes, and as a result they have a comfort, convenience, and beauty not found in an unplanned settlement. The homes of the twenty- six farm laborers win the enthusiastic praise of every visitor to Durham. The children of these laborers have the same pride in their homes that the children of farm- owners have in theirs. There are no caste distinctions. The farm worker and the farm-owner belong to the same social layer. All of these settlers are Americans. They are doing every kind of work that is to be done by any one on a farm or garden. They weed onions, milk cows, pitch hay, and gather in the community center for the weekly dance. They are all working long hours, living anxious, self-denying lives in order to make and save the money needed to meet their obligation to the State ; but they are doing this cheerfully with a pride and satisfaction which show that they are real successors of the pioneering homesteader. Durham is making Americans out of people who, be- fore they came to the settlement, were strangers to our institutions and to one another. The ancestors of these settlers came from thirteen different countries, but there is no separation on racial lines. They work together in 4.80 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? the cooperative stock-breeders', milk-sellers', and irriga- tion associations. Pedro, the Spaniard, had been natu- ralized many years before he came to Durham, but he had lived the life of an alien. He had worked on farms, lived in a bunk-house, and when the job was over had gone to town and spent his money. He had had no part in the social life of any community. Now he owns two acres of land. He does not, as he expresses it, "work around." He is a fixture, a permanent part of the neighborhood which he is helping to build up. He is saving money, and his savings go to pay for his house, to plant trees, to paint his fence, and to help build the pavilion in the community center. He no longer wastes his life or his money because he now feels that, like St. Paul, '^he is a citizen of no mean country." Is such a life not worth striving for? Must it not make for peace and happiness? Must it not strengthen the very foundations of democracy by making men who to-day are, through no fault of their own, propertyless drifters, stockholders in the greatest of all corporations, the United States of America? "Would it not be the shrewdest of investments if the country were to plant a thousand Durhams from coast to coast? Such an undertaking cannot be approached with a small purse. We must understand that world happiness must be financed on the scale of world wars. In the eight years before the year 1914 Germany did not hesi- tate to spend four hundred million dollars on a plan like this. During the same period Great Britain ad- vanced half a billion dollars to the peasants of Ireland for similar purposes. It requires statesmanship to go at it in this large way. Have we the statesmen? CHAPTER 30 SHALL EAST WED WEST? RACIAL INTERMARRIAGE The whole difficult and technical problem of racial inteiTnarriage must eventually figure in a general solu- tion of the Oriental question. For the present it seems to be relegated to the background; but it cannot well be kept there indefinitely. It is therefore important to present a scientific study of the subject. No better one is available than that made by Mr. S. J. Holmes of the University of California. Mr. Holmes is one of the few American biologists who has given particular at- tention to the new science of eugenics. He is specially qualified to deliver an opinion on the effects of race mix- ture and our national policy toward it. His following study was presented at the San Diego Conference on Problems of the Pacific. RACE intermingling is a subject whose importance in relation to the welfare of future generations can scarcely be overestimated. It is a subject upon which there is no unanimity even among those whose knowledge and training would qualify them to speak with high as- surance. One encounters in the treatment of race amal- gamation a considerable mass of prejudice and opinion that rests largely on an emotional basis. Owing to the peculiar nature of the problem dealt with, this prejudice 481 482 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? is not merely an obstacle, as it always is, to the discov- ery of truth; it is an actual factor in the problem itself. Race mingling has two kinds of effects, the biological and the social. It wnll be expedient to treat these sepa- rately, although they have important interrelations. As for the biological effects, we find two extreme views prevailing among laymen, and especially among those journalists who have read widely in the popular liter- ature and in the older scientific records about races and race mingling. These two extreme views are: 1. That favored by one school of anthropologists and accepted eagerly by most radical internationalists as a basis for their political beliefs; namely, that the differ- ences of mentality and behavior which we see in races are mainly the result of environment, not of heredity. From this it follows that no evil results ensue from race intermingling. A baby taken from the meanest peasant woman in the interior of China can be brought to Cleve- land, Ohio, raised side by side with American children there, and develop just as they do; and if he marries an American woman when he grows up, the children will be, in that environment, good American children. 2. The view favored by a large number of students and by many men who have personally lived in contact with some alien race; namely, that racial differences are hereditary and profound, and not to be broken down by intermarriage without fearful penalty in the form of mongrel offspring that will turn out to be inferior. The first view is held to-day by thousands of Christian thinkers and by the American liberals. It has been con- sistently applied to the Japanese question in California by such publications as "The Nation," which stands SHALL EAST WED WEST? 483 frankly for the ''entire abolition of race discrimination" and "the union of all peoples in a world league in which the nations shall be equal. ' ' The second view has been widely championed in many popular books, such as ''The Passing of the Great Race," by Madison Grant, and "The Rising Tide of Color," by Lothrop Stoddard. It has recently been applied to the Japanese problem by Chester W. Rowell, editor of the Fresno "Republican." Mr. Rowell, writing in "The New Republic," says: "It is not a question entirely of economies or of civilization. Economies can be temporary, and we have already assimilated civilizations quite as alien as the Japanese. It is a question of physical race, and race is hereditary. It lasts forever. "The only real safety is in separation. Nature erected a barrier which man will overpass only at his peril." Or, as the editor of the San Francisco "Bulletin" puts it with pious touch : "They [the Japanese] are a racial danger, and our aversion^ to assimilating them is not a question for argument; it is a providentially implanted instinct making for the preservation of the wliite race." Both of these views, when carefully checked up in the light of modern biological research, turn out to be the products of imperfect observations and inaccurate an- alysis of complex facts. Those who advance either opin- ion have not grasped the extraordinary difficulty of de- ciding in any given case whether a characteristic which we call racial is "in the blood" or is a matter of up- bringing. The solution of the biological problems of race mixture 484 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? is rendered peculiarly difficult by lying outside the sphere of feasible experimental attack, and by our fre- quent inability to distinguish the effects of heredity from those of environment. It is not to be wondered at that we find the opinions of many writers on the subject based more on the effects of inbreeding and cross-breeding in lower forms, where it is possible to come to definite con- clusions by controlled experimentation, than by the ac- tual investigation of the problem in the human species. Research is making it more and more evident that the laws of heredity which obtain among plants and animals are followed also in the transmission of human traits, and the biologist therefore turns to the lower organisms for light upon the problem of race mixture in man. When we study inbreeding and cross-breeding in lower forms, however, we meet with quite varied results. Al- though progress in their interpretation has been made since the rediscovery of Mendel's law, several questions of prime importance still remain obscure. The mass of observational and experimental data collected by Darwin in his work on the *' Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication," seemed to demonstrate overwhelmingly that the crossing of distinct, but closely related, varieties of plants and animals produced as a rule progeny of enhanced vigor. He says : "When we consider the various facts now given which plainly show that good follows from crossing, ancT less plainly that evil follows from close interbreeding, and when we bear in mind that throughout the organic world elaborate provision has been made for the occasional union of distinct individuals, the evidence of a great law of nature is, if not proved, at least rendered in the highest degree probable; namely that the cioss- SHALL EAST WED WEST? 485 ing: of animals and plants which are not closely related to each other is highly beneficial or even necessary, and that inter- breeding prolonged during many generations is highly injuri- ous." Since the publication of Darwin's work this general conclusion has been confirmed by a large amount of addi- tional data. To take but a single illustration from the breeding of corn. The work of Shull and that of East and Hays has shown that varieties of corn kept from the access of foreign pollen produced in general a marked decrease of yield in successive generations. However, when two such inbred strains were crossed, there followed an increase of yield in striking excess of the produce of either parental stock. Thus two inbred varieties of Leaming dent, each yielding about two bushels per acre, produced, when crossed, a variety yielding about 24.5 bushels per acre. The first, or Fl, generation of such crosses was found to be more productive than the second, or F2, generation, as one would naturally expect. The heterozygous, or mixed, state in corn is apparently, there- fore, a condition of maximum productivity. It is well known that crosses between types which are distantly related often give rise, when they produce any offspring at all, to sterile or partially sterile progeny; but it is not rare also for quite closely related races to produce inferior or relatively infertile strains. And it must be remembered that many plants which are normally self- fertilizing, such as our common garden peas and beans, may reproduce without deterioration for an indefinite period. Breeders of animals have long been persuaded that close inbreeding, although advantageous for the perpetu- 486 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? ation or enhancement of desired qualities, brings about in course of time a deterioration which must be checked by an occasional infusion of foreign blood. But recent experimental work in animal breeding has placed the matter in a light quite different from that in which it was formerly regarded. It is true that inbreeding is sometimes productive of undesirable results, but it is also true that in some animals it may be carried on with impunity for a large number of generations. In the recently carefully controlled investigations of Miss King on albino rats, to take but one example, it was proved that the closest inbreeding — namely brother and sister matings — carried for twenty-five generations failed to cause any deterioration in growth, vigor or fertility. The results of inbreeding in animals, as in plants, are sometimes bad, sometimes good, and often indifferent, and the influence of cross-breeding is good, bad, or in- different, depending upon the particular strains be- tween which crosses are made. When we inquire con- cerning the causes of these diverse results, we may derive some very probable explanations from Mendel's law of inheritance. Most Mendelians would now concede, as several writers contended before Mendel's law became generally known, that inbreeding per se is in no wise injurious, but that it may become so if both parents are bearers of latent or recessive characteristics of an un- desirable kind. In other words, inbreeding does not cre- ate defects, hut it affords a condition hy wJiich latent defects may he hrought to light. Heterozygosis covers a multitude of imperfections; an unusually heterozygous species, like Indian corn, may keep up appearance by vir- tue of its mixed state and fail to reveal its recessive SHALL EAST WED WEST? 487 weaknesses. But as continued inbreeding makes a stock more and more homozygous, or uniform in its germinal constitution, it may come to manifest more and more re- cessive traits that are productive of deterioration. Viewed in this manner, the varied effects of inbreed- ing and cross-breeding may be regarded as having their basis in the varied segregations and combinations of Mendelian factors. This conclusion, if valid, marks a distinct gain in our insight into the problem under dis- cussion. Knowledge of the hereditary constitution of parent stocks will enable us to predict with considerable probability the outcome of a given mating. With sound stock, the results of inbreeding are usually sound. And unth a stock carrying recessive defects, the process of inbreeding is very apt t^o result in deterioration. The effects of inbreeding in man are in accord with this conclusion. We find imbecility, deafness, insanity, and various other defects arising in families which result from consanguineous matings. The kind of traits brought out through inbreeding are found to vary greatly in different stocks, as we would expect according to the interpretation just mentioned. Davenport, in speaking of different inbred communities, says : "Consanguinity on Martha's Vineyard results in 11 per cent, deaf mutes and a number of hermaphrodites; in Point Judith in 13 per cent, idiocy and 7 per cent, insanity; in an island off the Maine Coast the consequence is intellectual dullness; in Block Island loss of fecundity; in some of the 'Banks' off the coast of North Carolina, suspiciousness and an inability to pass beyond the third or fourth year of school; in a peninsula on the east coast of Chesapeake Bay the defect is dwarfness (G. A. Penrose, 1905). There is no one trait that results from 488 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? the marriage of kin; the result is determined by the specific defect in the germ plasm of the common ancestor." In contrast to such effects as these we have numerous cases in which consanguineous matings have resulted in no noticeable deterioration, and several instances in which they have been followed by very desirable results. A well-known illustration is furnished by the family of Charles Darwin. Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgewood, and of his four sons three became fellows of the Royal Society, while the other, Leonard Darwin, has won a noteworthy position as a writer on economies and eugenics. Consanguineous marriages tend to con- serve valuable combinations of hereditary traits, and if wisely made, they would lead to the perpetuation of the most valuable types of humanity. The marriages most important to society are those of the best with the best. Where the best mates with the worst there is a dissipa- tion and waste of good inheritance, and where the worst mates with worst, the progeny, other things equal, are in every way undesirable and tend to become eliminated through the process of natural selection. Inbreeding, therefore, should not be indiscriminately condemned on account of the ill effects which occasion- ally follow from it. Combinations of germ plasms which are bad enough to lead to the elimination of individu- alisms which arise from them are by no means an un- mixed evil. They tend to purge the race of hereditary factors which, if disseminated in the general population, would give rise to a general lowering of our racial in- heritance. WTien we pass on to consider the complementary sub- jects of cross-breeding in man, we should bear in mind SHALL EAST WED WEST? 489 the dangers of basing conclusions upon what occurs among lower forms. There, as we have seen, the results are exceedingly varied, some crosses being superior in vigor to either parent stock, while others are but puny runts, which perpetuate themselves with difficulty, if at all. The opponents as well as the proponents of racial amalgamation find abundant support for their conten- tion by an appeal to analogy. But whatever side of the question is most strongly supported by such arguments, the only evidence upon which much reliance can be placed must be yielded by a comparison of the products of race mixture Avith the pure-bred stocks from which they arose. When one goes over the literature on this subject and endeavors to select what is not rendered entirely worth- less by defective observation or race prejudice, he finds a bewildering variety of judgments. Consider the frequently quoted opinion of Louis Agas- siz on the Brazilian cross-breeds : "Let any one who doubts the evil of this mixture of races and is inclined from mistaken philanthropy to break down all barriers between them, come to Brazil. He cannot deny the deterioration consequent upon the amalgamation of races, more widespread here than in other country in the world and which is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the negro, and the Indian, leaving a mongrel nondescript type, deficient in physical and mental energy." Mr. Schultze, in his book, ''Race or Mongrel?" speak- ing of the race mixture in Peru, tells us : "The degeneration there is even greater and has been more rapid than in the other South American countries and the cause is the infusion of Chinese blood into the veins of the white-negro-Indian compound. There are scarcely any Indo- 490 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? Europeans of pure blood in Peru, for with the exception of pure Indians in the interior, the population consists of mesti- zos, Mulattoes, Zambos, terceroons, quadroons, cbolos, musties, fustics and yellows; crosses between Spaniards and Indians, Spaniards and negroes, Spaniards and yellows ; crosses between mongrels of one kind and mongrels of other kinds. All kinds of crossbreeds infest the land. The result is incredible rotten- Similar conditions, according to the author, prevail in South America, in general, as well as in Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. Schultze, in this book, which is a tirade against race mixture the world over, attributed the downfall of most great civilizations of the past to racial hybridization: "Promiscuous crossings destroyed the Hindoos, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Lombards,'' he declares, and according to him, it is only the pure races that have been leaders in civilization. More recently, Mr. Madison Grant has expressed the opinion that the product of race mixture is usually on the same level as the inferior race, and that race-crossing therefore can bring about only dete- rioration. It would be easy to fill pages with vituperations which have been poured out upon the mixed races. It is equally easy to fill pages with accounts of the alleged racial benefits of amalgamation. The sociologist Novi- cow sings the praises of miscegenation as loudly as others have condemned it. He tells us : "It is recognized that a race deteriorates by consanguineous union and that it is improved by crossings. Crossings are in- dispensable to sustain and augment the vigor of a race. They are of a utility so incontestable that they should be augmented SHALL EAST WED WEST? 491 as much as possible. In our time, many societies, civilized aa well as barbarous, seek to avoid a mixture with other groups. But they bring upon themselves the worst of evils, the degra- dation of the race." It is vi^ell known that most cultivated peoples repre- sent a mixture of several ethnic stocks, and an inquiry into the ancestry of men eminent for intellectual achieve- ments shows that they are very frequently of mixed ethnic origin. Few indeed have resulted from combin- ing such diverse races as the black, yellow, and white, but it is common to find in their ancestry combinations of such groups as the Celts, Scandinavians, Anglo-Sax- ons, and various Nordic and Alpine and Mediterranean stocks. Within the limits of the better subdivisions of the white race there is no evidence that crossing is pro- ductive of the least deterioration. On the other hand, it has never been proved that such crosses tend to be superior to the relatively pure products of either com- ponent stock. But what can be said of the combination of such races as the Caucasian and negro, the negro and the Mongolian, or the Polynesians and the American In- dians ? It must be admitted that so far as physical vigor and fecundity are concerned, many of such extreme crosses have shown no evidence of falling below the average of either parental stock. The Rehboter hybrids between the Boers and Hottentots in South Africa are described by Fisher, who has made a careful and thorough study of these people, as a healthy, vigorous, and prolific stock. Boas says that observation of half-breed Indians shows that a type taller than either parental race develops in the mixed blood, that the fertility of the mixed blood 492 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? is unexcelled, and that he cannot find any evidence that would corrohorate the view so often expressed that the hybrid tends to degenerate. The Anglo-Poljaiesian inhabitants of Pitcairn and Nor- folk Islands, who sprang originally from a group of nine Englishmen, six Tahitian men, and fifteen Tahitian women, gave rise by 1905 to a healthy and flourishing population of 1059 persons. Many writers have praised the physical beauty of hybrid stocks in various parts of the world. Hoffman has described the Anglo-Chinese hybrids as people of good physique and mentality. There is abundant evidence that mulattoes, so far as mental development goes, are considerably superior to the full-blooded negro, though many observers are con- vinced that the mulattoes are physically inferior to both blacks and whites, and this opinion is supported by the measurements of numerous recruits during the Civil War; but the claim that the mulattoes are relatively infertile and tend to die out in a few generations is not based on adequate data. An impartial survey of available evidence leads us to infer that with the exception of the probabh^ inferior physique of the mulatto, the mixture of even the most dis- tinct races is not in itself productive of degeneracy either physically or mentally. Crosses of superior with inferior races may be below the level of the superior race, but this is owing to the admixture of inferior blood and not to race fusion per se. There is no ade- quate evidence that the products of the admixture of races of approximately the same degree of development are biologically inferior to either race. Neither can we say, on the whole, that these mixtures exhibit any marked SHALL EAST WED WEST? 493 degree of superiority. There may be, of course, certain combinations of traits that may be desirable. But ob- servation does not justify the assertion that in general the gains outweigh the losses. What we know of the re- sults of race-crossing in men fails to show any illustra- tions >of that conspicuous benefit that sometimes follows the crossing of related varieties of plants and animals. We have no analogue of the Burbank walnut, which greatly surpasses both its parent species in growth and vigor. It may be that careful study will show that there are certain races and peoples whose blood can be min- gled with great advantage. But it would we unwise, in the light of our present knowledge, to advocate a gen- eral amalgamation of races even on purely biological grounds. Race mingling is going on rapidly enough as it is, and it would he a part of prudence to study more closely just how it is working out before adopting the questionable policy of accelerating this process. A race of superior inheritance has little to gain and very much to lose by mingling its blood with that of an inferior people. There may be races of lower cultural level than others which carry an inheritance as good or better than the so-called superior races. The mingling of such races may be advantageous biologically and eventually from a cultural point of view, also; but before racial fusion can be advocated, it should be shown that the less-de- veloped race is of equal worth with the more advanced one in native quality. We should not be compelled to prove the native inferiority of the more backward race. The burden of proof should rest upon those who uphold the doctrine of essential race equality to establish the MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? fact that races are essentially equal in their inherited en- dowments before advocating the intermarriage of distinct races of mankind. The verdict which we believe the cautious biologist is compelled to give is that, in the light of our present knowledge, or perhaps we should say our present igno- rance, it is not advisable for a people of superior inheri- tance and proved accomplishments to fuse with a dis- tinct alien race. Race-fusion for us is a dangerous ex- periment. But while it is possible that in regard to mis- cegenation with certain alien races, future research may remove some of our ground for apprehension, our wisest course at present is the maintenance of racial integrity. Thus far we have been considering the mixture of races as a purely biological problem. We must now dis- cuss briefly the social aspects of miscegenation not merely because of their great importance, but because the biolog- ical results are in a measure dependent upon social causes. Race-mingling commonly occurs extensively between rela- tively inferior representatives of both races. This seems to be especially the case in the union of white and blacks in the United States, as has been shown by Mr. Hoffman in his study of the American negro. Pride of caste and position keeps races pure. And those who occupy the lower strata of society are more likely to contract unions with the members of the less cultivated race. Social causes, therefore, determine, to a certain degree at least, the type of marriage selection that occurs in interracial unions, and hence, to a certain degree also, the biological effects of miscegenation. Illegitimate unions between in- ferior races and the better stock of the superior race are a not infrequent result of race contact. The products of SHALL EAST WED WEST? 495 such unions may be biologically sound, but they are apt to occupy an uncertain social status and to prove unde- sirable additions to society. The social effects of miscegenation vary greatly from country to country. In large parts of South America it is no discredit to be a mongrel. Where pride of race is lost, and where there is an indiscriminate mingling of races, we usually find a backward people, devoid of enterprise and lacking in high intellectual activities. If we explain the shortcomings of the cross-breed as a prod- uct of his unfavorable social environment, we can only defend miscegenation by advocating the suppression of those sentiments and reactions which make human beings recoil from intimacy with human creatures who look, act, talk, or smell differently from their own kind. The feel- ings which keep people from accepting all races on equal terms are very deep-seated traits of human nature. It is, perhaps, possible that by the proper education from early childhood these feelings might be largely overcome. If such a transformation could be effected, it is uncertain how it might react upon the development of those higher and finer traits of human nature whose cultivation we highly prize. But leaving this psychological question aside, we must face the practical difficulty that, however desirable it might be to abolish the feelings of race antagonism, our efforts in this direction would meet with a rather large amount of obstinate opposition. We must take human nature as we find it and deal with it accord- ingly. We may tell our neighbor that he should not cherish any unreasonable sentiments against the marriage of his daughter with a Polynesian or a native of Sene- 496 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? gambia, but our neighbor would probably be little moved by our counsel, and even though we might oppose a log- ical refutation of all his objections to the match, he would doubtless retain a residue of sentiment — sheer prejudice we may call it — which no argument could dis- lodge. He might in turn tell me that I should have no scruples about eating human flesh, that such food is highly nutritious and easily digestible if properly pre- pared, and that it is poor economy in these days of ex- pensive living not to avail ourselves of this natural re- source. But if he were to refute completely all the ob- jections I might offer, I am quite sure that my unfounded squeamishneess would effectually deter me from the prac- tice of feasting off the dear remains of my esteemed contemporaries. There are, or have been, many peoples who felt about this matter of diet quite differently from what I do. There are also people who have no particular sentiments against indiscriminate miscegenation. After all, one might claim, it is merely a matter of taste, and what we should do is to break down those barriers of prejudice which prevent race-mingling and help to bring about a period of universal brotherhood and peace by the free intermarriage of the peoples of the earth. There are many to whom such a Utopian scheme has made a strong appeal. Against it may be urged not only the dangers of such a proceeding on biological grounds, but a number of considerations which show that such an attempt would be socially undesirable, if not disastrous. We find, as a matter of experience, that the mongrelization of humanity is accompanied only too fre- quently by the demoralization of social consciousness, SHALL EAST WED WEST? 497 the promotion of internal discord and political corrup- tion, moral laxity, and the development of vice and crime. Peoples that result from the mixture of distinct races have seldom, if ever, risen to great heights of intellec- tual achievement; and any nation which incorporates a considerable measure of the blood of an alien race, if we may judge from the lessons of history, is destined to decadence. It is essential for the welfare of a nation such as ours, which already contains a large amount of hereditary diversity in its population and is in no dan- ger of becoming ultra rigid through inbreeding, to keep itself free from the admixtures of distinct racial stock. Our problems of assimilation are sufficiently taxing now without our adding to them. The more diverse the racial elements that come to our shores, the slower their assimi- lation. The more trying and tense become their relations to our populations, the more amalgamation becomes rele- gated to the relatively ill favored of our race, the more undesirable is the status of the cross-breed and the more the hybrid population tends to sink in the social scale. It may be urged that many of these ill effects are the result of race prejudice. Be it so. Race prejudice is a very real thing; it is quite possible that it has important and valuable functions. It has served to keep races pure. And for a superior race to keep pure is a very important condition for the maintenance of its culture, as well as the most distinguishing virtues of its biological inheri- tance. As long as a people preserves its high endowments and avoids the fate of decadence which has so often overtaken peoples in the past, the maintenance of its integrity is not only a right, but an imperative duty. 498 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? In saying this, we do not condemn race-crossing in general or on principle. Race-mingling affords a fruit- ful source of variability for the operation of natural se- lection, and it has doubtless been an important factor in the relatively rapid evolution of man from his animal ancestry. Among races of approximately equal endow- ment it may confer a number of advantages, but it is also a source of danger. In the light of our present knowledge of how particular crosses work out not only in the first generation, but in subsequent ones, the wisest counsel for a superior people in regard to race-mixture is to go slow and to play safe. The bearing of all this upon the Japanese question is now clear ; it may be summed up thus : 1. While it is probable that the peculiar virtues and abilities of the Japanese people who have come to Hawaii and California depend largely upon inheritance, we are as yet ignorant of the extent to which they are the prod- ucts of past environmental conditions such as climate, food, working conditions, political customs, religion, and culture prevailing for many centuries in Japan. It would be desirable to have more definite knowledge of the inborn capacities of the Japanese before attempting to infer w^hat would probably be the result of crossing with racial stocks living in America. 2. There is no trustworthy evidence at hand to show whether a cross-breeding of Japanese with various Euro- pean stocks results in a higher or in a lower human type. And yet it is important to learn the facts of this matter before race mixture gets out of hand. 3. In view of these uncertainties, and on account of the great harm that might arise from ill-considered action, SHALL EAST WED WEST? 499 it would be best both for America and for Japan to take the prudent course and check the possibilities of exten- sive race mingling until both countries have made an ade- quate scientific study of its effects. 4. Such a study can be made in Hawaii and in Cali- fornia, where the number of Japanese is great enough to facilitate observations and to give weight to statistics based upon them. Opportunities will doubtless be af- forded here or elsewhere for studying the issue of matings between the better-endowed representatives of the Japa- nese and whites ; it would be unfair to base general con- elusions on observations limited to the unions of the in- ferior members of the two races. 5. But quite aside from the results of race fusion per se, the products of mixed marriages depend to a consid- erable extent upon the type of marriage selection which takes place. This matter should be studied also, so that we may be able to forecast with some degree of accuracy what types of mating would be most likely to result from more extensive race contact. If we should obtain a pre- ponderance of cross-breeds of inferior parentage, a result which experience with race-mixtures indicates would be quite likely to happen, there would be a further argu- ment against the union of Japanese and Americans. EVILS IN THE BIRTH-RATE In the meeting of Orientals and Occidentals, the birth-rate of the two races inevitably forces itself upon our attention. The biological fortunes of any race de- pend upon what is sometimes called its net fecundity, or its natural rate of increase. The crude birth-rate is, of course, only one factor in the increase of populations; 500 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? countries that now show the highest birth-rate, as Mr. Thompson has pointed out, are those which increase the most slowly, if at all. The real rate of increase is deter- mined by the excess of births over deaths. And among many countries in which the birth-rate is low the death- rate has been reduced so much faster rsiatively that the natural rate of increase has become greater than it was a few years ago. In other words, many countries with low birth-rates are those which are now multiplying most rapidly. In "Considering these facts we must, of course, also reckon with the influence of war and conquest. Peoples expand as a result of successful conflicts. We are prone to look upon the conquering race as the expanding race. We may cite examples of the rapid spread of the Mon- golians and the Anglo-Saxons hy successful warfare which removes the obstacles to territorial expansion. But whatever war may do for a people, its biological function is for the most part nullified if it does not lead to an enhanced birth-rate. Where conquests do not lead to the acquisition of territory in which they may multiply with increased rapidit}^, or to acquiring advantages which may lead a country through developing its own industry to support a larger population, they are fruitless victories from the biological point of view, however important they may be in other respects. The biological influence of war is determined by its effect on the birth-rate, quan- titatively and qualitatively. But the curious thing about recent wars is that the vic- torious nations have commonly failed to reap any biolog- ical benefits. They have not utilized victory so as to enhance their birth-rate. Formerly peoples, like the SHAtL EAST WED WEST? 501 Children of Israel, secured through extermination of their enemies a real biological advantage. Where native pop- ulations have been pushed aside by the invading white man, victory has meant racial expansion. But the bril- liant victories of Napoleon in the nineteenth century, which brought to France much power and prestige, merely depleted her stock and drained her of her best blood. And had she been victorious in the Franco-Prus- sian War, there is no reason to believe that she would have increased much in population, because her birth- rate had been falling since nearly the beginning of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, Austria has been defeated in almost every war in which she has en- gaged, but has steadily increased in population and in military power, while her old-time victorious rival has relatively lost ground. And to take another illustration, the Poles, who have suffered successive defeats and loss of territory until the final complete partition of their country among their enemies have kept up a rapid birth-rate, which has proved a sore trial to their conquerors. Defeat caused the extinction of Poland as a nation, — it may do so again, — but it has not greatly diminished the number of Poles or their rate of multiplication. Likewise, we find that defeat, exile, and oppression has failed to extin- guish the Jew, who has cherished the traditions of a high birth-rate and tribal integrity from remote an- tiquity. It is often the defeated people ivho win the biological victory lOr the real victory in the struggle for existence. It is often the victorious who go down to defeat and de- cadence. From the point of view of biology there is no 502 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? sense in defeating a nation and then allowing it to out- hreed its victors. All this has a vital bearing on the meeting of Orient- als and Occidentals. It is to be hoped that this encoun- ter of the races may alwaj^s be friendly. But contacts are bound to become more numerous and intimate as the years go on, and we should not fail to consider the pos- sible, if not probable, occurrence of armed conflict in the not distant future. The tendency of both peoples to ex- pand will present in various forms many difficult situ- ations that may lead to war. And in any war growing out of this primitive elemental provocation to conflict it woidd he folly for the victorious people to allow the real biological victory to slip through their fingers. What history teaches of the wisdom of diplomatists who adjust terms of peace does not afford much assurance that they might not commit this very blunder. But, war or no war, the white and 3^ellow races repre- sent two expanding bodies which are competing for terri- tory. War or no war, supremacy belongs to the race that produces the larger number of babies that grow up. Peaceful penetration may be just as effective as armed invasion, if not more so. War is just an incident to real victory, which is often not taken advantage of. So long as the two races are in contact and maintain themselves without blending, they are bound to engage in the struggle for supremacy. This may lead to con- flict in the military sense or not. The struggle for ex- istence is inevitable. W^ar is only one kind of struggle. It may be avoided, but this will not alter in the least the fact that the Darwinian struggle for existence will con- tinue, and that, as a consequence of this struggle, one SHALL EAST WED WEST? 503 group will tend to prevail over the other. The meeting of Oriental and Occidental means competitive struggle in one form or another. It may be entirely peaceful and accompanied by all the amenities and suavity of the most refined social contacts ; but the struggle for existence and the process of selection will go ruthlessly on just the same. The term ''struggle for existence" is too frequently in- terpreted as implying conflict. Most organisms do not actually and literally struggle with one another, al- though they may be engaged in keen competition. Plants growing peacefully side by side are active com- petitors for food and water and place in which to grow, and it is very common to find one kind of plant com- pletely supplanting another species in a given locality. So it may also be with man. Kaces tend to expand, and where they come into contact there is bound to be compe- tition. There will be a yellow peril to the white race and a white peril to the yellow race wherever contacts occur. As before stated, a prime factor in the biological for- tunes of a race is its birth-rate. It will be instructive, therefore, to consider some features of our own birth- rate and the changes that have occurred in it in recent years. The first fact that calls for notice in this connec- tion is the fall of the birth-rate which has been going on in the most civilized white countries for the last few decades. This fall began early in France and in the United States, but it apparently did not affect England, Germany, and other northern European countries until about 1876, and southern European countries until a rather later period. In all European countries the death-rate has also fallen during this period, and in some 504 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? cases more rapidly than the birth-rate, so that the actual rate of increase has become more rapid than before. Since, however, the death-rate in the healthier countries cannot be expected to become reduced greatly below its present figure, a further decline in the birth-rate must inevitably check the natural rate of increase. In Ger- many the birth-rate has declined more in the decade between 1900 and 1910 than in the preceding thirty years. The fall everywhere has been more rapid in cities than in rural districts, and is in general lowest in the largest cities. Paris and other French towns have for long failed to reproduce themselves, and Berlin by 1910 virtually reached the same condition. The latter part of the nineteenth century has seen an enormous relative growth of city populations, and in France, Ireland, and many parts of England the rural population has actually fallen off, while the larger cities were rapidly increasing in size. In most countries the rural population has increased much more slowly than the urban. Labor-saving machinery on farms has removed the necessity for many farm laborers. The development of industries in the cities has created means of livelihood for the increasing numbers of the population, and cities have drawn especially those who are in the ages fitted for industrial employments. The present indications are that in the future increments of population will largely go to swell the ranks of urban inhabitants. Cities have always been destroyers of men, and the great industrial development of which urban growth is mainly the out- come has doubtless been racially injurious, whatever may have been its contributions to the development of civilization. City life has generally meant great mor- SHALL EAST WED WEST? 505 tality, shorter life, reduced fecundity, increased drunken- ness, vice, crime, and disease, especially venereal diseases, high infant mortality, and a general deterioration of the physique of urban inhabitants. Cities also tend to exaggerate the evils of differential fecundity, which have been perhaps the worst features of the decline of the birth-rate. They tend with especial rapidity to eliminate those stocks which have won suc- cess financially, socially, or in the field of intellectual endeavor. As cities become larger, as they will, the general birth-rate will tend to fall, and the relative ster- ilization of stocks which carry our best inheritance will probably increase. The worst feature of the decline of our birth-rate is the fact that those who forge to the front in any social, economic life leave the fewest offspring, while the improvident commonly produce large families. Not much over half of our college-bred women marry. Those who do, fail to produce enough children to maintain their stock. These studies have shown that the relatives of college women and others of the same social status have families not quite as large as the college women them- selves. The graduates of Har\^ard, Yale, and several other universities fail to reproduce themselves. Cattell has shown that American men of science fall far short of reproducing their stock, and the professional classes gen- erally exhibit the same failing. From successful busi- ness men and the professional classes birth restriction has passed on to the high-class artisans and skilled workers. The study of Miss Elderton of the declining birth-rate in the north of England proved that artificial limitations of birth through preventive measures and abortion was very 506 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? extensively practised in the more intelligent, better-paid working classes, and that only those on the lowest level continued to produce large families. Studies at the Gal- ton Laboratory have shown that low wages, ignorance, irregularity of employment, and high fecundity have a high positive correlation. Among the more intelligent laboring population birth restriction is rapidly becoming a settled custom. The general influence of socialism is distinctly toward reduction of population. It is among socialists that new Malthusianism has received a warm, if not an enthusiastic reception. We find N. i\I. societies springing up, with their various journals, in England, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, and in the United States, most of any large cities having their organizations for spreading the gospel of birth-control. There is no stopping this movement. As industry de- velops, and as education becomes diffused throughout the masses, it is bound to go on. We may regret that birth- control is exercised by those whose progeny we can least afford to lose, and that it is practised the least by those who should use it the most. But as matters now stand, birth-control not only reduces the quantity of our popu- lation, but it deteriorates the quality. Sooner or later the world will have to check the growth of its population. If we do not take the matter in hand ourselves, nature will do it for us through war, pesti- lence, famine, or all combined, and the former method is certainly the less disagreeable. Personally, I believe we shall witness a further decline in the birth-rate in the next few decades. France has virtually ceased to increase. The Americans that go back more than two generations have either ceased to increase or will prob- SHALL EAST WED WEST? 507 ably soon do so. The rapid development of industrial- ism, the increasing pressure of population, the diffusion of knowledge, the elevation of standards of living, the diminishing hold of religious dogmas, and the spreading custom of birth-control will all conspire to bring about a rapidly diminishing growth of population throughout our Western world, and also for some time at least a deterioration of its quality. That, in truth, is our situ- ation in regard to the birth-rate. In the Oriental world w^e have in China an exceed- ingly high birth-rate, which has been coimterbalanced by a remarkably high death-rate, especially in infancy. But it is not to be expected that when the standard of education comes to be raised in China this murderous infant death-rate will be suffered to continue. The por- tentously high birth-rate of Japan is in a measure checked by a high infant mortality'-, but Japan has now a surplus of some 700,000 births over deaths. It is not to be supposed that a nation which in its w^ar with Russia applied the principles of hygiene and sanitation with an ett'ectiveness never approached by any Western power will long tolerate her present high infant death-rate. This enterprising nation will be quick to put into prac- tice the methods of saving infant life which have been carried out in Europe and the United States in the last ten years with signal success. Japan wants population. She wants colonies into which to expand. Her people in Hawaii, Korea and the Philippines retain their solidarity, intermarry little with other races and rapidly develop population that remains Japanese in spirit and in loyalty to the empire. There is little doubt that with the Japa- nese the encouragement of a high birth-rate is a na- 508 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? tional policy. And if at present the net fecundity of the Japanese is below that of the white race, the indica- tions are that with the reduced death-rate which a people so efficient, patriotic, and far-seeing as the Japanese may be relied upon to effect, the natural rate of increase of population will probably exceed that of their white com- petitors. It may be that industrial development, improved stand- ards of living, socialism, birth-control, and infection by the essential irreligion of the Western world may come to check the natural increase of the Japanese people and eventually the other Asiatics, but these forces, which are already producing some effect, have to work against a deeply ingrained loyalty to family and to country and a clearly defined national policy of expansion. And be- fore nations arrive, if they ever will, at that stage in which they limit their population to the point at which they will no longer be tempted to make aggressions upon their neighbors there will probably arise many perplex- ing problems of adjustment between the Japanese and Occidentals in various parts of the world. The advancement of medicine and hygiene can scarcely fail to increase the net fecundity of the Orient. That will mean expansion through immigration or armed invasion. Nothing will aggravate the yellow peril so much as the sanitation of Asia. If that comes, carried out in a thorough and effective way, it will inevitably lead to very important developments. What course they may take, no one can say. APPENDIX APPENDIX Comparison of American Family Budgets with Japanese Budget No. 1 This budget represents the result of a study made by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics to deter- mine the cost of maintaining the family of a government employee in Washington at a level of health and decency. No provision is made in this budget for savings other than the original cost of household furniture and equip- ment which would average about $1,000 in value. This represents a saving of about 121/2 % of the yearly salary since the time of marriage. The family considered in this budget is a husband, wife, a boy of eleven, a girl of 1a\e, and a boy of two years. Budget No. 2 This budget is the result of a study by the National Industrial Conference Board to establish a minimum existence budf?:et for a family of five in industrial centers. Special attention is called to this budget, as any budget less than this standard does not cover what may be con- sidered a mere existence level. Budget No. 3 This budget represents the result of the estimated ex- penditure of 60 farm laborers' families in the fruit growing sections of New Jersey. These families were 511 512 APPENDIX selected, because there was no other source of income worthy of consideration except the earnings of the hus- band. The house was furnished by the fanner, together with food and fuel estimated at $140. The result showed that the average number of children for these families was three, giving a family of five, which allowed for actual comparison with the other budgets submitted. Budget No. 4 This budget represents the actual distribution of in- come for families in 92 industrial centers having £in income of less than $900 a year. This budget does not in any way meet actual needs and provides merely enough to cover mere existence costs for the lowest class of American industrial workers. Budget No. 5 This represents the budget of a Japanese working- man's family in Tokio. All items of expenditure except those shown have been included under miscellaneous. The following survey taken from '' Millard's Review" gives us a further insight into Japanese budgets. "The results of a considerable rise in the cost of living, with which the rise in the incomes of people in general did not keep pace, has brought developments emphasizing the fact that the millions of Japanese workers are away at the other end of the ladder of good fortune. Even the average middle class family in Japan is said to re.ceive only $25 to $50 per month in in- come, and the laborer gets only 50 to 75 cents a day. In Osaka, a municipal statistics bureau has recently made a number of investigations of living costs, etc., and its figures show the fol- lowing comparative rise in costs since July, 1914. Taking the cost then as 100, the averages in June, 1919, were : JAPANESE FAMILY BUDGET COMPARED WITH ESTIMATED AND ACTUAL BUDGETS OF AMERICAN FAMILIES. 2262 I38S I080 Miscell. 1 1 Fuel 1 III Housing Clothing Food ^^^ UJ 843 336 514 APPENDIX "Food, 215; cotton goods, 376; fuel, 224; rent, 122; average of foregoing, 209; wages, 189. "And there has been a large increase during the past six months in the cost of living. The rise in Osaka for November, 1918, to November, 1919, was over 60 per cent." A Washington Clerk's Standard of Living Here are the elements which enter into a budget of a Government clerk in Washington, who is married and has three children. The items represent in each case an av- erage struck from the budget of 280 families : The number of calories needed by a man at moderately hard muscular work is 3,500 per day. A family usually wastes about 10% of the caloric value of food in preparation, cook- ing, etc., and also a small per cent of the food which enters the mouth is not digested or assimilated. Therefore, 3,500 calories purchased means approximately 3,100 to 3,200 calories actually consumed by the body. The standard of 3,500 calories for a man at moderately hard muscular work is about right. The following food budget has been drawn up on the basis of a family of five — husband, wife, and three children, boy, 11 ; girl, 5; and boy 2; According to the standard established by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, taking the caloric re- quirement of a man as 1.0, that of a woman is 0.9; a boy of 11, 0.9; a girl of 5, 0.4; and a boy of 2, 0.15, making a com- bined food requirement about equal to that of 3.35 adults. Following is a comparison of the food allowance of this budget with the minimum standards generally accepted by scientific students of the subject: Ounces op food consumed per man per day Dairy Prod- Veee- Meat Fish ucts Milk Cereals tables Fruits Fats Sugar Average of 280 families. 5.6 0.9 15.5 12.1 15.1 17.6 5.8 2.1 2.7 tandard 4 or 5 2 16 11 or 12 12 16 or 20 16 or 20 2 2 APPENDIX 515 The average dietary has its obvious defects, and is not recommended as ideal. For instance, it is highly de- sirable, from both an economical and a dietary standpoint, for a family to secure its protein from the use of eggs and eat less meat than the quantity used in the average budget. As here presented, the food budget which has been arrived at is based on what the experience of a large number of families in various sections of the country shows to be a practical mini- mum for the maintenance of health. Theoretically, the level of health and decency in clothing has been interpreted as a level which takes into account not only the physical needs of warmth, cleanliness, and comfort, but which also has such regard for appearance and style, as will permit the family members to appear in public and within their necessarily rather narrow social circle with neatness and self-respect. But an effort has been made to allow only those quantities of clothing consistent with the minimum require- ment for health and decency. The clothing budget has been cut down to what amounts to almost a subsistence budget. In the case of the wife it would be highly desirable from the point of view of comfort and of the standard expected of the wife of a Government employee that she be allowed at least $50.00 per year more on her clothing budget. She has been allowed only one afternoon dress of wool to last two years, and she has been allowed no dress petticoat to wear with it. It would be much more satisfactory if she were allowed one jersey-silk petticoat a year. It is questionable if the georgette waist al- lowed every other year can be made to last two years even with the most careful laundering, and this is her only fancy blouse. The same is true of the two cotton house dresses al- lowed. She is allowed no furs, and the suit allowed is of rather light weight, so that for the sake of her own health it would be much better if she could afford to buy a better coat for winter wear. She has been allowed one wool dress every two years for afternoon or evening wear. 516 APPENDIX Only two night dresses a year have been allowed and these will be insufficient if she has any illness during the year. A winter hat has been allowed only every other year and no allowance has been made for retrimming. Without retrim- ming, it will be out of style by the second year which is de- moralizing to a woman's self-respect. It would be highly de- sirable from the standpoint of comfort and probably of economy, if she were allowed two pairs of silk stockings each year. The shoes allowed are heavy walking shoes. It would be well if she were allowed one pair of dress shoes at least every other year. The $5.00 allowance for miscellaneous items is very small when the simplest collar and cuff set is at least a dollar, when hair nets that last only a few days are 12% cents each, and when all other miscellaneous items have doubled in price. Annual cost of rent, fuel and light $428.00 Housing standard: The minimum housing standard for a family of five has been taken as one of four rooms with bath and running water. The possession of a bath and run- ning water is necessary to health and cleanliness. The pos- session of four rooms is absolutely necessary to a family of five to prevent extreme overcrowding, and is, of course, the minimum. It would mean a kitchen, a combined living and dining room and two bedrooms, with the necessity in many cases of the combined living and dining room being used as a sleeping room. Upkeep of house furniture and furnishings $70.00 This budget takes for granted that the prudent man and woman have attended to securing their furniture before they have the burden of a large family; and therefore that ex- pense need not be considered in attempting to fix a living budget for a family when it is at its period of maximum ex- pense. However, the upkeep of house furnishings such as bedding, linens, etc., is a necessary recurrent expense. 6% of the total value of the furniture has been allowed for this APPENDIX 517 item. A special investigation by agents of the Bureau of Labor Statistics determined that the minimum amounts of furnishings necessary for a house of this size cost $1,083. Even if some second-hand furniture were bought, this total could not well be reduced below $1,000. For annual upkeep 6% of this amount or $60 would be necessary. About ten or eleven dollars is required for curtains, electric light bulbs, etc. Laundry work, assistance with washing 1 day per week $104.00 The wife is presumed to do the cooking for the family, to do the cleaning of the house, to make most of the simpler garments worn by herself and the children, to keep all clothes in repair, to care for the children, and to do the marketing. It would be unreasonable to expect that she should do the laundry work unassisted, so this budget has al- lowed for the assistance of one person for one day each week and $2.00 is about the prevailing rate in Washington for this kind of service. Cleaning supplies and services $32.92 These include toilet soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, combs, hairbrushes, shoe polish, barber's services: husband's hair- cut, children's haircut, household: laundry soap, ^2 pound bar, starch, unspecified cleaning supplies and services, such as borax, ammonia, washing powder, bluing, insect powder, etc. Health $80.00 Some allowance must of course be made for the mainte- nance of health. This expenditure includes physician, dentist, oculist, glasses, and drugs, both prescriptions and prepared remedies. No definite number of visits to the doctor can be assumed as necessary, but aside from the occurrence of major ill- nesses, colds and the various diseases of childhood will doubt- less make a doctor's services necessary at some time during the year. 518 APPENDIX At least one visit to the dentist during the year for three members of the family will be necessary, and rarely does one visit prove sufficient. A special investigation of the expenditures of 64 families during the year ending July 31, 1919, shows the average ex- penditures for doctor, dentist, oculist, and other items neces- sary for the maintenance of health to have been $90.37. Insurance: (a) Life, $5,000 ordinary policy, yearly premium $110.00 The male head of a family should carry insurance on his life to protect his wife and children. In order to do this it is necessary that his yearly income be sufficient to meet the yearly insurance premiums. The only question would seem to be as to the amount of insurance which should be carried. It would seem that a $5,000 policy would be the minimum for protection and safety. In the event of the husband's death this would assure an income to the wife and children of not over $300 per year, or $6 per week. Insurance: (b) Furniture $1.50 Furniture insurance is a cheap form of insurance which it is highly important that every family should carry, as the loss of household equipment is an extremely serious matter to a family of low means. Inquiry made of the Underwrit- ers' Association of the District of Columbia shows that the annual premium of $100 worth of furniture (in a brick house) is 15 cents per year when paid for a period of five years. Insurance on $1,000 worth of furniture, which would be about the average value of furniture of the type of fam- ily had in mind in this study, would be $1.50. Car fare, 900 rides $45.00 There are many Government employees in Washington who live so near their offices that car fare is an expense that need rarely be incurred. On the other hand, the large area covered by the city and its suburbs makes it absolutely nec- essary for a considerable portion of the employees to ride to APPENDIX 519 and from their work, and for another portion of the em- ployees to ride at least a part of the time. In view of this it seems reasonable to allow the husband two car rides per day for each working day, or 600 rides in total. Approximately three trips per week on the street car have been allowed for the wife and children. Local open markets within easy walking distance are available to comparatively few families in Washington, and many who walk one way must take a car home after the market basket has been filled. In addition to this, the mother of three children will need to make occasional trips to the stores in the central part of the city to purchase clothing for the family, and it will be necessary usually for her to take with her the 2- and 5-year-old children, involving two car fares. It is assumed that the children will be able to walk to and from school. Amusements and recreation $20.00 The importance of recreation as a factor in healthy living need not, of course, be emphasized. It is accepted as an everyday fact. The only question is as to the character and cost of such recreation. Much wholesome amusement arises, naturally, within the circle of the family and its friends and costs nothing. On the other hand the complexity of modern life in the city places a money price on many simple and desirable forms of amusements. Thus a picnic for a family, or a visit to the park, involves a considerable item of car fare, while a trip on the river will cost a dollar or more. Moreover, occasional visits to the moving pictures are to be expected of at least some members of a family. Thus, even though the more expensive forms of amusement and recreation, such as summer vacations, are eliminated, some expenditures for this item are absolutely necessary if a family is not to lead a completely isolated life. It is impossible, however, to establish quantity standards for amusements and recreations. The most reasonable method would, therefore, seem to be to use as a guide the 520 APPENDIX average amount expended by families of Government em- ployees. A special investigation of expenditures of 64 families of Government employees in Washington sliows that their average expenditures for amusements and recre- ation during the year ending July 31, 1919, amounted ap- proximately to $20. On the average these families had expended a similar amount on vacations, but no allowance for vacation has been made on this budget. Newspapers 1 daily newspaper, $8.40 A newspaper, daily and Sunday issues, is placed in the budget because it is desirable that every citizen should read a daily paper. In addition, the modern newsj^aper offers a variety of literary and educational features at a minimum expense. No allowance is made for magazines or books, not because the reading thereof is not desirable, but because a family, forced to careful economy, may avail itself of the public libraries for all forms of literature. The yearly subscription rates of the Washington news- papers vary slightly, with $8.40 as the minimum. It is felt that the maximum should be allowed in order to permit the reader his choice of newspapers. Organizations, such as the church and labor unions, play such an important part in life that some expenditure on this account must be regarded as essential. Expenditures for this purpose are accepted as necessary for the majority of families only in the case of the church and labor organi- zations; membership in other organizations, such as the Red Cross Society, the Y. M. C. A., and social clubs may be very desirable, but cannot be regarded as necessary for a family with a low income, (a) Church and other religious organizations $13.00 Membership in, or regular attendance at church almost compels contributions in one form or another. Not to be able to contribute usually makes the individual feel so "un- APPENDIX 521 comfortable" that he feels unwilling to attend. Just what the minimum contribution should be is difficult to determine. In any case, a family contribution of 25 cents a week would seem to be a bare minimum. (b) Labor organizations $10.00 Membership in a labor organization always involves con- tributions. The amount of these varies. The craft unions to which many employees in the navy yard and other me- chanical divisions belong have higher dues than the clerical workers' organizations. The most reasonable method of ar- riving at a minimum allowance for this purpose would be to use as a guide the average amount actually paid for labor organization dues by Government employees. The average for 64 families of Government employees in Washington during the past year was $10.08 each. Incidentals $52.00 Many other items, mostly small or occasional, cannot be entirely avoided by a family — such, for instance, as moving expenses, burial expenses, stationery and postage, telephon- ing or telegraphing at times, patriotic contributions, and charity. Also a few minor comforts — such, perhaps, as to- bacco — are almost in the category of necessities for certain people. No minimum quantities for these items can pos- sibly be specified. The only solution is to grant a modest sum of money as a maximum. The amount granted by this budget is $1 per week. Mr. Lauck found that the cost of supporting a family of five on this level of existence in Washington was $2,533.97 in IMay, 1920. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, it ran only to $1,790.68. The following estimates on population were made by the United States Bureau of Education in June, 1919. Estimated population of the Hawaiian territory, June 30, 1919 : 522 Nationality APPENDIX Total Percentage of total Asiatics 159,900 60.6 Japanese 110,000 41.7 Chinese 22,800 8.6 Koreans 5,100 1.9 Filipinos 22,000 8.4 Polynesians 39,260 14.8 Hawaiians 22,600 8.6 Caucasian-Hawaiians 10,760 2.2 Asiatic-Hawaiians 5,900 4.0 Latins 32,800 12.4 Portuj^ese 25,000 9.5 Spanish 2,400 .9 Porto Rieans 5,400 2.0 Americans, British, Germans 1,000 11.8 Russians, etc. Miscellaneous 706 .4 263,666 100. Estimated Electorate in 1930 and 1940. Territory OF Hawaii. Electorate in 1918 Estimated additions 1918-1920 Estimated total elec- torate— 1930 Estimated additions 1930-1940 Electorate ex- clusive of Japanese . . 19,837 8,220 25,057 6,850 Japanese com- ing of age less thirteen per cent for deaths and removals . . 237 10,628 10,915 19,942 20,124 18,848 38,972 26,792 APPENDIX 523 The following table of occupations shows an interest- ing variety of work being done by Japanese in Cali- fornia. The figures have been compiled by the Japanese Association of America. Southern California Professional 347 Merchants 1,397 Farmers 3,199 Nursery 280 Dairy 61 Fishery 543 Miscellaneous 1,128 Clerks 713 Farm Laborers 3,639 Fishermen 724 Other workmen. Indoors 1,065 Outdoor 1,432 In and outdoor . . 991 Students 303 Women 6,507 Children American born 7,139 Japanese Born 960 Northern California Commercial Employers 3,307 Employees 793 Domestic Labor 1,022 Agricultural Employers 4,696 Employees 10,605 20,423 Women 9,032 Minors under 17 years 11,092 Others 2,849 43,396 Subsequent correc- tions, corrections, not stated 4,704 Southern California 30,528 30,528 Total . . 78,628 Estimates of Future Janpanese Population in California We have asked Mr. Thompson to compute the probable growth of the Japanese colonies in California for the next forty years on the basis of three different assump- 524 APPENDIX tions. We present his interesting tables below. The first one assumes that Japanese immigration is checked immediately, so that the future increase will come wholly from Japanese already in the State. The second table assumes that Japanese continue to enter at the same rate as for the last ten years, and the third table assumes the influx to bear the same ratio to the total Japanese popu- lation of the State as it has during the last decade. In each table Mr. Thompson accepts the estimates of the State Board of Control as his point of departure. It is interesting to compare Mr. Thompson's findings with the wild forecasts of sundry journalistic prophets on the Pacific coast, some of whom see millions of Jap- anese swarming from vale to mountain-top, from Canada to Mexico, in another thirty years or so. Table I Estimate of the Japanese population in California by de- cades 1920-60 on the supposition that Japanese immigration is excluded henceforth. Probable natural in- Probable popu- crease of population lation at given during decade date ending Jan. 1, 1920 87,279 Jan. 1, 1930 117,279 Jan. 1, 1940 152,279 Jan. 1, 1950 190,279 Jan. 1, 1960 228,279 1. The excess of births over deaths for the decade 1920-30 is based upon an estimate of thirty-five per cent increase from this source ; for the decade 1930-40, thirty per cent for the decade 1940-50, twenty-five per cent for the decade 1950-60, twenty per cent. I believe that APPENDIX 525 Table II Estimate of the Japanese population in California by de- cades for the period 1920-60 on the supposition that the num- ber of Japanese immigrants entering California is the same for each decade as during the decade 1910-20. Increase of popu- Probable ^^!i«''.5''-^r^f Probable natural in- population ^^.tfj^r. ^ll crease of population ending Jan. 1, 1920.... 20,331 25,592 87,279 Jan. 1, 1930.... 30,000 25,592 142,871 Jan. 1, 1940. . . .43,000 25,592 211,463 Jan. 1, 1950. . . .53,000 25,592 290,055 Jan. 1, 1960. . . .58,000 25,592 372,647 1. The rate of natural increase used in this table is the same as that used in table 1. Table III Estimate of the Japanese population in California by de- cades for the period 1920-60 on the supposition that the num- ber of immigrants entering California during each of these de- cades bears the same ratio to the total Japanese population in California at the beginning- of each decade as it did during the decade 1910-20. Increase of popu- Probable natural in- ^fiToHmmf P^«^^^l« crease of population cr■rnt■,r^■n r.vf.r population dul-inir decade ^JJnlS-" tiou' ^YZ'"" «^'^i^« during decade ^^^^e ending Jan. 1, 1920 20,331 25,592 87,279 Jan. 1, 1930 30,000 54,000 171,279 Jan. 1, 1940 51,000 106,000 328,279 Jan. 1, 1950 82,000 203,000 613,279 Jan. 1, 1960. . . .123,000 380,000 1,116,279 1. In this table the same percentages for rate of natural increase are used as in tables 1 and 2. 526 APPENDIX these estimates are not excessive, because the Japanese population in California is at present largely made up of men and women in the early years of the child-bearing period, and as a result the rate of natural increase by excess of births over deaths will be very high until the age grouping becomes more normal. Comparative Costs of Military Maintenance The following official figures taken from the Japan Year Book for 1919-20 show the detailed cost of main- taining Japanese soldiers. In reading them, bear al- ways in mind that 1 yen is nominally fifty cents Ameri- can, but at present has something like double the pur- chasing power of our money in Japan. For roughly accurate comparisons, think of a yen as a dollar in terms of what it buys. Allowances to troops in Japan are allowed on contract plan as regards the 5 items of food, clothing, encampment-utensils, barrack necessities and horse allowances. The allowances are fixed as below: — Food. — 6 go (1 quart) of rice a day for a soldier, besides some money allowance for side-dishes. The money allowances differ according to districts where troops are stationed, rang- ing for regiments at home from 7.5 sen per diem to 11.4 sen (for Hokkaido), 12 to 15 sen for the Formosan garrisons, and 24 sen for those in China and 18 sen for Korea and Saghalien. Clotliing. — From yen 27 to yen 34 a year for each foot soldier, yen 31 to 37 for Cavalry, yen 30 to 36 for Artillery, yen 28 to 34 for Engineering and yen 29 to 35 for Commis- sariats. Encampment utensils and barrack necessities. — There are 26 grades ranging from the lowest of yen 4.64 a month for the APPENDIX 527 utensils and yen 6.76 for the others to the maximum of over yen 138 and yen 106.58 respectively. Horse allowance. — Barley, hay and straw constitute fodder. Per head rates a day are 1 kwan of hay or straw, and from 1.4 kwan of barley according to the services; 36 to 55 sen per month for hoofing and 25 sen a year for hair-cutting. This total allowance of approximately 11 yen in terms of American money equals about $5.50 a month for the average foot soldier, out of which he draws his salary and all his living and maintenance expenses. The Amer- ican soldier receives $30 a month straight salary. All his expenses are paid by the Government. The comparison is obvious, all but for one point. A yen is worth 50 cents in American money, but in Japan its purchasing power is $1.00. The United States Army standard rations cost around 40 cents, and include 27 articles: beef, bacon, hash, sal- mon, soup, bread, beans, rice, potatoes, jam, tomatoes, prunes, dried fruits, butter, and the usual cooking acces- sories. The Japanese ration is a quart of rice and 4 cents, which means about 16 to 20 cents a day, even at the present abnormally high cost of rice. The meaning of these figures, as well as of the current military appropriations of Japan, depends entirely upon the kind of war to be waged. Thus, on the hypothesis of a war directed against the continental United States, Japan 's army and navy budget is ridiculously small. In fact, the size of it is proof enough that the Japanese Government is not entertaining even the possibility of offensive warfare against us. On the other hand, when 528 APPENDIX construed as an outlay for a defensive war fought in Far Eastern waters, its effectiveness is anywhere from four to ten times that of the American budget, the latter being regarded now as one for a long-distance war. It is now plain how misleading many reassuring state- ments about Japan's intentions have been, notably those made by Eastern journals like the New York '* Times, '* which, in a recent editorial, declares that ''since Japan's proposed outlay on her military forces is moderate com- pared with ours, it must be evident that Japan is not trying to steal a march upon the United States by pre- paredness for war on a large scale." INDEX Acreage, tillable, in world, 302 in America, 303 Agrarian Crisis, 392 in Australia, 476, etc. in California, 478, etc. in Denmark, 476 in Europe, 476 Agrarian reforms for U. S., 386, etc. America, Japanese illusions about, 47, etc. America, lack of interest in Japan, 43 Americanization, Illusions about, 373 Anglo-Polynesian hybrids, 492 Armenians in California, preju- dices against, 251, etc. Army rations, cost of Ameri- can, 526 cost of Japanese, 526 "Asalii," editorial on press cen- sorship, 69, 70 statement of on Japanese for- eign policy, 443 on Japanese diplomacy in China, 443 Asia, reconstruction of, 347 Australia, Agrarian reform .'n, 476, etc. Autocracy in Japan, 62, etc. Belgium, density of population, 76 Bellairs, Carlyon ; "rationing plan" of, 179, 180 Birth control movement, 506 Birth rate, in China, 507 of Japanese in California, 224 future reductions of Japa- nese, 365 and social forces, 331, etc. in world, 324, etc. decline of white, 503, etc. effect of cities on, 504, etc. and low standards of living, 468 Oriental and Occidental com- pared, 499, etc. Black race, future of, 338 Bland, J. O. P., comments on, 443 Blockade of Japan, difficulties of, 144 Boer War, significance of, 124, 125 Brisbane, Arthur, on America's food production, 290 Buddhist Temples in U. S., 453 Budgets of American and Japa- nese families, 512 Bushido, fiction of, 65, 66 Business practices of Japanese, 112, etc. Capper, Senator Arthur, farm industry, 393 Agrarian reform in, 478, etc. California, character of natives, 241 future Japanese population of, 524, etc. influence of climate, 261 invasion of discredited, 153 land-grabbing in, 242 landlordism in, 242, etc. physical geography of, 217, etc. standard of living in, 259 taxes on land holdings, 232, 244 traditions toward Japanese, 40 529 530 INDEX California {contiiuied) water supply of, 227 work and occupations of Japanese in, 522 Calif ornians, temperament of, 254 Chamberlain, B. H., on falsified Japanese history, 65, etc. Cheap labor, 463 Chiba, Toyoji. on Japanese farmers' skill, 208, 209 citizenship laws of, 431 China, corruption in, 343, etc. development of, as aid to Japan, 170 hopes of Japanese militarists in, 170 infant mortality in, 328 over-population of, 310 as place of conflict between Japan and U- S., 73, etc. sanitation of, as factor in fu- ture wars, 74 victory over Japan in League of Nations, 168 Chinese, America's exclusion of, 434 Citizenship, Chinese law of, 431 dual allegiance in, 438, etc. Japanese law of, 436 Civilization, degrees of in Asia, Europe and America, 345, etc. as affected by climate, 348, etc. Clan power in Japan, 49, 444 Climate and civilization, 348 influence on Californians, 261 Influence on Japanese in Cali- fornia, 264 Constitution, Japanese ; On Army and Navy control, 62 Colonization program for Japan, 384 Continental power of Japan, 123 Co-operation of Japanese farm- ers, 220, 221 Cotton, sources of Japan's sup- ply, 31, 32 Crimes, American failures to control, 12, etc. Crisis, Japanese, its four imme- diate causes, 6, 7 its three basic causes, 362 Crookes, Sir William, on the consiunption of wheat, 281, 282 Culture, nature of, 235, etc. Darwin, Charles; on cross- breeding, 484, 485 Davenport, on inbreeding, 487 Deadlock, military, 161, etc. Democratic forces in Japan, weakness of, 48, etc. Denmark, Agrarian reforms in, 476 Diff'usion of buying habits, 278 Digby, on famines in India, 326 Disarmament, 382 Draft animals and world food supply, 296, 297 Durham settlement, 478, 479 East, E. M., on corn breeding, 485 on future food production, 304, etc. Education, how controlled in Japan, 66 Embargoes as preventive of war, 178, etc. Emigration, failure of as per- manent relief for over-pop- ulation, 363, etc. and isotherms, 356, etc. Japanese and the Japanese crisis, 363 of Japanese into Siberia, 358, etc. possible control of Asiatic, 355, etc. to rural districts, 370, etc. Emigrants, Japan's political control over, 106, etc. INDEX 631 Emigrants ( continued ) Japanese, how watched by government, 441 Endurance, biological laws of, 131 American law of, 429 French law of, 430 Expatriation, Japanese laws on, 107, etc. Swiss case of, 429 Extraterritoriality, modern practice of, 425 Europe, Agrarian reforms in, 476 Family, its power in China, 433 Farm incomes in Japan, 81 Farm products, prices of, 418, etc. Farm laborers, average ages of, 397 in California, 403, etc. Italian, living conditions of, 414, etc. possibilities of advancement for, 396, etc. the tenant house, 398, etc. wages of, 403 Farmers, Japanese in Califor- nia, 202, etc. cause of unrest, 399 moves for "economic justice," 417, etc. poverty of in Japan, 78 skill of Japanese in Califor- nia, 208, etc. why they leave home, 395, etc. and the "Yellow Peril" in California, 205, etc. Farms, acreage handled by Americans, 306 size of in Japan, 77 Feudalism in wartime, 129 Finns, on New York farms, 469 Financial situation as force for peace, 25 Fisheries in California, Japa- nese, 212 Fletcher, Admiral, on Japan's strategic position, 137 Food control in United States, results of, 282, etc. Food and farm problem, of America, 377 of Japan, 376 Foreign investments and the "open door," 164, etc. Foreign traders' opinions about Japan, 41, 42 Formosa, colonization of, 75 Geddes, Ambassador Auckland, on social unrest, 402 Genro, position of, 56, etc., 457, etc. "Gentlemen's Agreement," futil- ity of, 362 how interfered with, 458 secrecy in revising, 157 Germany, American relations with in 1910, 4, etc. Japanese parallels, 55, etc. Go-no, power of in Japanese politics, 49 Government, irresponsibility of in Japan, 57, etc. form of in Japan, 55, etc. Habits, difficulty of breaking, 236, etc. diffusion of living, 278 of judging Japan, 38 Hara, Premier, suffrage reforms of, 96 Harding, W. G., on big navy, 17 Hawaii, Buddhism in, 195 character of Japanese in, 190, etc. electorate of, 524 increase of garrison in, 17 Japanese in, 185, etc. Japanese judgment on annex- ation, 18 loyalty of Japanese in, 196, 197 a parallel of Heligoland, 185, etc. 532 INDEX Hawaii (continued) school problems in, 193, etc. U. S. Commission of Educa- tion, survey of, 190, etc. Heligoland compared with Hawaii, 185, etc. Herero Rebellion, military sig- nificance of, 25, 126 Hinman, G. W., on Wilson's Oriental policy, IGO History of Japan, how falsified by bureaucracy, G4, etc. "Hochi," attack on Anglo-Sax- ons, 449 quotations from, 147 Holmes, S. J., on intermarriage of races, 481, etc. Hoover, Herbert, on future wheat prices, 307, 308 Housing condition of Japanese in California, 232, 233 Hungary, competition of races in, 466 Huntington, Ellsworth, on cli- mate and civilization, 348, etc. Ichihashi, Yamato, on Japanese farmers in California, 217, 208 Immigration, dilemma of, 368, etc. and standard of living, 274, etc. Imperial Edict, as basis of Jap- anese morals, 452 Imperial Rescript on Educa- tion, 66 Impregnability of Japan, 22, etc. Inbreeding, effects of, 486 Industrialists of Japan, and peace, 33 Industry in Japan, State own- ership of, 59, etc. Industry, and preventive checks on population, 334 Infant mortality in China, 328 in Japan, 328 Interests, natural American, 37, 38 Intermarriage of races, down- ward selection in, 494, etc. theories about, 482 in South America, 495 International Farm Congress, its progress, 417 Invasion of U. S., old delusions about, 126 Ishii, Viscount; on disarma- ment, 18 Ito, Marquis; his program, 446 Japan, causes of irritation toward U. S., 18, etc. difficulties of understanding U. S., 51, 52 economic expansion of, 88 economic dependence on U. S., 30 growth of population in, 330 industrial depression in, 28 industrial system, 23 infant mortality in, 328 law of citizenship in, 436 Japanese, illusions about their adaptability, 46 business practices of, 112, etc. cleanliness of, 231 dislike of Continental cli- mate, 360 eflFects of their habits on Cal- ifornians, 258 impressions about America, 8, etc. loyalty of to Japan, 439, etc. maintenance cost of soldiers, 525 schools in U. S., 452 societies in U. S., 451 Japanese-American relations, three phases of future, 176 Java, Japanese expansion in, 93 Kato, Viscount ; condemnation of U. S., 21 Kawakami, K. K. ; on anti- INDEX 533 Ka wakami ( continued ) liberalism in Europe and U. S., 16 Kennedy, J. R.; and Japanese news agency, 68 Kenseikai, members of, 50 Kern County Land Company, holdings of, 242 King, F, H., on Shantung farm- ers, 77 Kokusai, Japan's news agency, 68 Korea, annexation of, 105 as a Japanese colony, 105 hopes of militarists in, 170 Japanese improvements in, 118, 119 as a source of military sup- plies, 123 Labor agitation in Japan, 98 Labor unions in Japan, 98 Land grabbing in California, 242, etc. Landlordism in California, 242 and Japanese in California, 249 Lane, D. F.; on skill of Jap- anese farmers, 210 on Japanese cooperatives, 220, 221 Lauck, W. Jett; budget esti- mates by, 277, 513, etc. "Letters from a Japanese Patriot," 67, 87 Levasseur, estimates on Eu- ropean population, 316 Living expenses in Japan, 88 Magyars, competition with Ru- manians, 465 "Mainichi"; indictment of American policies, 18, etc. Malthus on population, 320, etc. Manchuria and Japanese col- onists, 75 and war resources, 124 Manila as army base, 143, 144 Marshall Islands, value to Japan, 150 Martin, C. E.; on Japanese ex- patriation laws, 107 McClure, S. W. ; statement on wool crisis, 418 Mead, Elwood; breakdown of agriculture, 393, etc. on farm crisis, 405, etc. Meredith, Secretary of Agricul- ture; on farm decline, 394 Mexican border smuggling of Japanese, 200, etc. Micronesia, significance of Jap- anese mandates over, 150, 151 Middle-western farmer, methods of in California, 412 Mikado, power of, 55, 56 Militarism, antiquity of in Japan, 51 Militarists in Japan, their in- tentions, 444, etc. their possible moves, 168, etc. their Pan-Asian program, 447 Millard's "Review"; attacks on Japan, 70 report on Japanese labor unions, 98, 99 Miller & Lux, land holdings of in California, 242, etc. "Millionaire farmer," methods of, 400, etc. Missionary traditions about Japan, 39 work in Asia, early failures of, 238, 239 Morphia, sale of by Japanese, 90 Motion pictures, effect of on Asiatics, 8, etc. inferior quality of in Asia, 9, 19 National Board of Farm Or- ganizations, its program, 420 534 INDEX •'National honor," fiction of in Japan, 51 National policy, assumptions underlying, 270, etc. basic questions of, 285, etc. of Japan, scientific planning of, 120 necessity for, 2G9, etc. three procedures in, 367 Natomas Land Company, hold- ings of, 243 Naturalization of Asiatics, 40 1 Naturalization and immigra- tion policies, 460 Nav-y, American compared with the Japanese, 148, etc. Needs, American, 273, etc. New York State, changes in rural population, 469 News, quality of, cabled to Japan, 11 Newspapers, and handling of Japanese news, 256, etc, Nikolaievsk incident, 158, etc. Novicow, advocacy of race mingling, 490, 491 Okuma, Marquis, organizes pro- test, 20, 21 Opium, traffic in by Japanese, 91 uver-population, in Europe and China. 309, 310 Japan's, 73, etc. Ozaki, Yukio, attack on Jap- anese oligarchy, 450, 451 Pan-Asian movement, 447 Pan-Pacific Consortium, 391 Peace, four influences for, 23 Pearl, Raymond; on American food habits, 284 Perry, Commodore; purpose of opening up Japan, 18 Philippines, independence of advocated, 382 Poles, competition with Ger- mans, 466 conquerors of Germany through birth-rate, 501 Political parties, nature of in Japan, 50 one-man rule of in Japan, 50 Population, possible increase of in U. S., 366 of China, 318 distribution of in California, 219 density of in Japan, 76, etc. estimates of Japanese, 319 future expansion of non-Eu- ropean, 333, etc. of India, 319 of Japan, 73 Japanese in California, 198, etc. Japanese as future cause of war, 174 movement of to cities, 278, etc. perils of dense, 310, 311 world; rate of growth of, 298, etc. Press embargoes in Japan, 69, 70 Preventive checks on birth- rate, 332 Productive area of Japan, 74, etc. Program of international read- justment, 381, etc. Prussia, her old Polish problem, 466, etc. Public opinion, how controlled in Japan, 63, etc. Race prejudice, 497 Raw materials, Japan's lack of, 101, etc. Rehboter hybrids, 491 Reinsch, Paul; on China pop- ulation, 310 Rice crop and prices in Japan, 82, 83 growing in Japan, 77 Rowell, Chester W. ; on racial intermarriage, 483 INDEX 5S5 Rumanians, competition with Ma^ars, 4G5 Rural life, heterogeneity of, 371, etc. Russia and Asiatic emis^ration, 356, 359 as land of promise for Japan and Germany, 102 Sakhalin, American protests concerning, 160 San Francisco, opposition to methods of Japanese consul general, 190 Sanitation in Asia, possible ef- fects of, 508 Sato, Doctor, on Japanese ten- ant farmers, 78 Sato, General, on Nikolaievsk, 159 Sato, Lieutenant-General, on American invasion of Ja- pan, 147, 148 School teachers, wages and budget in Japan, 87 Scientists, concentration of in service of state, 117, etc. Scott, Robertson, on Japanese farmers, 80. etc. Segregation of Japanese in Cal- ifornia, 213 Seiyukai, numbers of, 50 Shantung, density of popula- tion, 77 Shima, George, statement by, 204 Shoin, Yoshida, 444 Siberia, a dilemma for Japan, 175 hopes of Japanese militarists in, 171 Silk industry in Japan, 30 Sino-Japanese Agreement, American efforts toward violations of, 19 Sleep habits of Japanese, 134, 135 Smith, J. Russell, assumptions as to standards of living, 293, etc. on future of agriculture, 291 on grains for fodder, 292, 293 Smuggling of Japanese from Mexico, 200, etc. Social forces and the birth rates, 331 Social inertia in the United States, 34, etc. Socialism in Japan, 95 Southern Pacific R. R., land holdings of, 242 Sovereignty, conceptions of, 424, etc. territorial, 426, etc. modern compromises in, 428 Standard of living, immigra- tion and, 274 as basis of national policy, 281, etc. and Americanization, 274, etc. how affected by immigration, 368, etc. in California, 259, etc. how misconstrued, 131 problem of Japan, 379 problem of America, 379, etc. low; military advantages of, 130, etc. of Washington clerk, 513, etc. State Department, weaivness of, 36 Steel, Japan's deperdenee on U. S. for, 32 Stephens, Governor, praise of Japanese in California, 229, 230 Stoddard, Lothrop, on "Crisis of the Ages," 341 on growth of races, 312, 313 errors in his population esti- mates, 314, 315 Strategic position of Japan, 126, etc. Strikes, in Japan, 98, etc. "Struggle for Existence," mis- interpretation of, 503 536 INDEX Submarines, value of in future wars, 151, 152 Submarine Defense Association, report of, 151, 152 Suffrage in Japan, 96 Tai-ping Rebellion, deaths in, 326 Takagia, Prof.; on Japanese cost of living, 88 Taxation in Japan, 100 Temperament of Californians, 254, etc. Textile industry in Japan, 31, etc. Thompson, W. S. ; on future of Japanese population in California, 226, 524, 525, 526 on world population, 298, 316, etc. "Times," Los Angeles, on im- portation of coolies, 245 "Times," New York, on Jap- anese army-navy budget, 527 Tokutomi, on Japanese imperi- ali-sm, 445 Torrid zone, the inhabitants of, 354 Trade e'hics of Japan, 19, 112, etc. Transport, difficulties of, in war on Japan, 141, 142 Treaty, provisions of Japanese- American, 454, etc. Tropics, obstacles in develop- ment of, 349, etc. Truck gardening by Japanese, 211 Unrest of Japanese masses, 98 Wages of Japanese in Cali- fornia, 230, 231 in Japan, 86, 100 War, effects of Japan's popula- tion on, 174 estimate of forces against Japan, 140, 141 improbability of early, 24 Japan's ignorance of injuries of, 27 probable cost of, with Japan, 145, 146 lost benefits of, to races, 500, etc. Water supply of California, 227, etc. Wheat, future prices of, 307, 308 Wheatfield riots, 411 White races, size of in world, 310, 320 Williams, E. T.; on national policies, 423, etc. "Winter sleep" in Russia, 132 Work habits of Japanese, 134 World war, effect on farm labor, 394 "Yorodzu," editorial attack on U. S., 21 on Nikolaievsk affair, 159 Zones, of high initiative, 352, etc. of low initiative, 352, ©tc. 606 ^ .<^ .A^ \'^ .0 - .aX^' %^- c!'^ ^ .r(\ cP' ,0 .^-^ ^^. ,0o. >- « V"^=:iti''-\^ ,# '%- ^.- >^^ oo^ X/..^^^ H .x^'^' "^rr''^^'/'^ ',. oX''^ .^-^ "-f^. .^"^ '-/v •0 X ^ >^ ^/Qjft ^^i^"^ ,0 o^ ''b^ ' ^ .K ,^^ "^>. .^\*^f;^a ^■^•' - \<^^' V;"-\>^\--. "^>. .^' -S^ '= I//' --IS: \>r - ,<^ ^'^^ 'h \0' 'O. ^ „ ^' « , ^^' ■"^^ \ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDDE4flm77fi 1