A Reply to 
 Hon. JOHN S. CHAMBERS 
 
 By COLONEL JOHN P. IRISH 
 
 JOHN P. IRISH 
 1904 Adeline Street 
 Oakland, California 
 
A REPLY TO HON. JOHN S. CHAMBERS 
 
 BY COLONEL JOHN P. IRISH 
 
 HON. JNO. S. CHAMBERS, 
 
 State Controller. 
 
 Dear Mr. Chambers: 
 
 Your article, published in the "Examiner" of January 25 th, on 
 the Japanese question, makes certain specific statements, statistical 
 and otherwise, on which you base arguments and conclusions intended 
 to aid the present anti-Japanese pogrom in this state. 
 
 You first give the prophetic figures showing that at what you call 
 the present rate of increase, even with half of it amputated, our Japa- 
 nese population in the year 2063 will be 100,000,000. This forecast 
 you say is carefully figured out by Mr. V. S. McClatchy of the Sacra- 
 mento "Bee." Now I like all of the McClatchys. I knew their 
 father well, and he was an estimable citizen, and the two succeeding 
 generations are worthy of him. I do not wish to stir the state to 
 mutiny and rage against that family. But applying the same mathe- 
 matics used by Mr. V. S. McClatchy against the Japanese, I find that 
 taking the property brought here by the original McClatchy, and 
 figuring on the percentage of its increase in his hands and those of 
 his family, that by the year 2063 the McClatchys will own all of 
 California, banks, buildings, bag, baggage and land! This calls for 
 immediate action. The progenitor of this family came here from the 
 north of Ireland, an alien immigrant, and planted a maw so to speak 
 and a gullet down which this state is to be swallowed for digestion. 
 
 Now for your specific statements. 
 
 First: You say that the Japanese population of this state "runs" 
 from 1 00,000 to 1 50,000. Quite a run is it not? 
 
 The report of the Commissioner General of Immigration for 1919, 
 shows the total immigration of Japanese to this country, from the 
 beginning, to be 229,030. The departures for only a part of that 
 period are 80,448, leaving a balance of 148,582. From this should 
 be subtracted the Japanese deaths, for the menace and malignity of 
 that race have not yet led them to refuse to die, and out of the total 
 remainder you have to find your 100,000 to 150,000 Japanese in 
 California alone. 
 
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With that charming inattention to useful details which is an 
 attribute of the Commissioner General, he omits to specify whether his 
 total of 229,030 Japanese immigrants includes those to Hawaii. If 
 it do you must exert yourself to find that 100,000 to 150,000 in 
 California alone, since the figures to which you run already outrun 
 the U. S. official count by 1,418! 
 
 The Board of Health reports from 1908 to 1917, 5,860 Japa- 
 nese deaths in this state, which will compel further exertion on your 
 part. For official count of the number of Japanese in California we 
 must wait for the census. The figures of the Japanese Association 
 are, to September, 1918, 68,982. 
 
 Going again to the official figures the Japanese arrivals in the last 
 twelve years were 89,376 and the departures were 73,308, leaving 
 a balance of only 16,308, out of which you conjure 50,000 increase 
 in our Japanese population in that time, which you say is "in keeping 
 with national figures." 
 
 Secondly: You are alarmed by the fecundity of the picture brides, 
 and say that "during the last five years 4,000 of these brides have 
 come in annually." 
 
 The records of the U. S. immigration office show that from 1912 
 to 1919, both years inclusive, a total of 5,070 picture brides came 
 here, for the whole period of eight years; but you say that in five years 
 of that period 20,000 came in! 
 
 You say the Japanese birth rate is 62 per 1,000. Now please 
 multiply the 150,000 Japanese you say are in this state by 62, and 
 you are mathematical accoucheur to just 9,300 Japanese babies here 
 every year. As you are so deeply interested in this delicate subject, 
 let us take an excursion into the official statistics of the Board of 
 Health. You say the Japanese births in Los Angeles County are one- 
 third as many as the white births. The Board of Health reports for 
 1917, in that county, 11,249 white and 1,265 Japanese births, or 
 lacking 2,484 of your one-third. In the same year in the eight counties 
 of Southern California including Los Angeles, there were 19,182 white 
 and 1,642 Japanese births, by the Board of Health records. Now in 
 my arithmetic one-third of 19,182 is 6,394, but you say that it is 
 1,642! 
 
 Remember it was getting muddled in his arithmetic that caused 
 the undoing of Ananias. 
 
 You say that "the picture bride is taught before she leaves Japan 
 
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that her greatest duty to the Mikado is to bear children." How do 
 you know that? Remember you state it as a fact. Who told you so? 
 Your mature age lines you up with Caesar's wife, else you might be 
 suspected of seeking very confidential and contraband information 
 from some of these Japanese maids. 
 
 I need not go to the local records to refute what is left of your 
 midwife fabricated statistics, as the whole body of your false state- 
 ment is covered by the official records of the State Board of Health 
 for the year 1919, furnished to me under official seal of Mr. L. E. 
 Ross, Registrar of that Board, as follows: 
 
 White births in 1919. . 50,898 
 
 Japanese births in 1919 4,378 
 
 As your statement requires 9,300 Japanese births for 1919, what 
 have you done with the 4,922 Japanese babies that you did not have 
 born? 
 
 Please comfort Mr. V. S. McClatchy with the fact that if the 
 birth rate of 1919 is sustained for the next ten years there will be 
 508,980 white children born in the state to 43,780 Japanese, and 
 in 100 years, the white births will have been 5,089,800 and the 
 Japanese only 437,800. As that brings him within 43 years of his 
 fatal date of 2063 A. D. when he says we will have 100,000,000 of 
 Japanese here descended from those now domiciled in the state, where 
 will he find the 99,562,200 needed to make up his 100,000,000? 
 He ought to be ashamed of his Ouija board arithmetic. 
 
 The invective and epithet you employ are evidence of a spirit 
 of hatred. You repeat the weather-beaten expression against admit- 
 ting Orientals because we cannot assimilate them. What do you mean 
 by that? The Jews are a more pronounced Oriental race than the 
 Japanese, for they have no Aryan blood while the Japanese have. 
 We have assimilated the Jews, industrially, financially and socially, and 
 blood assimilation is not infrequent, though it is canonized against by 
 their religion. 
 
 The Japanese, with a background of less than a century, have 
 assimilated western civilization, and have improved upon western art 
 and science. A Japanese bacteriologist discovered the source of the 
 bubonic plague; another, a colleague of Flexner, has discovered the 
 remedy for devastating eruptive fevers. Japanese ladies are stars 
 on the occidental lyric stage and Japanese actors charm in sock and 
 buskin on occidental boards. When the people of San Francisco 
 were shaken out of bed by earthquake and that city was leveled by 
 
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fire, a quarter of a million in gold was sent by Japan to feed and 
 shelter them. 
 
 While there may be a governorship in abusing them, it will carry 
 the taint that stains all honors won by lying. 
 
 We should be more mindful of the truth. One of your colleagues 
 in this anti-Japanese pogrom has published that Japanese have leased 
 10,000,000 acres in the Sutter basin. People read that, believe it 
 and go forth to persecute the Japanese, not knowing that there are 
 only 60,000 acres in the whole Sutter basin. 
 
 The Japanese have redeemed more bad land here than they 
 have acquired of good land. They subscribed $2,648,800 to our 
 war loans and tens of thousands to the Red Cross, during the war. 
 
 You want to outlaw them, to deny to their children their birth- 
 right. You -say you will not meet the Japanese socially. It is un- 
 thinkable that they should want to meet you. 
 
 There are no I. W. Ws., no anarchists, no bomb throwers, no plot- 
 ters to destroy our government amongst the Japanese. There are no 
 Japanese in our almshouses, and infrequently any in our jails. Their 
 standard of living is far higher than that of Southern European immi- 
 grants. They are paid and earn the highest wages paid for farm 
 labor, and do not underbid white labor, but excel it in skill and 
 efficiency. It is not true that white people retreat from a region settled 
 by Japanese. The Japanese conquered the refractory soil of Living- 
 ston, after a white colony had starved out and retreated. But when 
 the Japanese pioneers showed how to make the soil fertile, white 
 people flocked there and now outnumber the Japanese 8 to 1 . 
 
 Now what is left of the foundation of your argument when the 
 light of truth is turned upon it? 
 
 As a taxpayer I have been interested in your publication of the 
 taxation and revenues of this state, but I regret to say that your gross 
 inaccuracies, in your article promoting the Japanese pogrom, weaken 
 my confidence in your revenue statistics. 
 
 Your proposed legislative attack upon the Japanese violates our 
 treaty with their country and the constitution of ours. 
 
 The pogrom against them is urged by the Hearst and Scripps 
 papers, and the United States secret service may be able to reveal it 
 as a German and Bolshevik propaganda. 
 
 JNO. P. IRISH. 
 
 1904 Adeline Street, 
 
 Oakland, California. 
 
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