1904. Upon the refusal of China to continue the treaty of 1894, Congress passed legislation extending and continuing all laws then in force. All legislation was extended to insular possessions. Certificates of residence in insular possession were required.

1907. In 1906 the question of similar legislation against the immigration of Japanese came up. Bills introduced into Congress providing for an extension of Chinese exclusion act to embrace the Japanese failed to pass. The matter was finally settled by the passport provision in the general immigration law of 1907. This provision declares

That whenever the president shall be satisfied that passports issued by any foreign government to its citizens to go to any country other than the United States or to any insular possession of the United States or to the Canal Zone are being used for the purpose of enabling the holders to come to the continental territory of the United States to the detriment of labor conditions therein, the President may refuse to permit such citizens of the country issuing such passports to enter the continental territory of the United States from such other country or from such insular possessions or from the Canal Zone.

By means of an understanding reached with Japan at this time it was agreed

That the Japanese Government shall issue passports to continental United States only to such of its subjects as are nonlaborers, or are laborers who, in coming to the continent, seek to resume a formerly acquired domicile, to join a parent, wife, or children residing there, or to assume active control of an already possessed interest in a farming enterprise in this country.

1911. A treaty of commerce and navigation was entered into with Japan, of which the first article reads as follows:

The subjects or citizens 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 anything incident to or necessary for trade, upon the same terms as native subjects or citizens, submitting themselves to the laws and regulations there established.

They shall not be compelled, under any pretext whatever, to pay any charges or taxes other or higher than those that are or may be paid by native subjects or citizens.

The subjects or citizens of each of the high contracting parties shall receive, in the territories of the other, the most constant protection and security for their persons and property and shall enjoy in this respect the same rights and privileges as are or may be granted to native sub

jects or citizens, on their submitting themselves to the conditions imposed upon the native subjects and citizens.1

1913. California passed a law relating to the ownership of land by aliens. Aliens eligible to citizenship are given the same rights as citizens. Other aliens

May acquire, possess, enjoy and transfer real property, or any interest therein, in this state, in the manner and to the extent and for the purposes prescribed by any treaty2 now existing between the government of the United States and the nation or country of which such alien is a citizen or subject and not otherwise, and may in addition thereto lease lands in this State for agricultural purposes for a term not exceeding three years.

Canada

Chinese are kept out by means of a high head tax. Every Chinaman entering, except those belonging to a limited exempt class, is required to pay $500.

An agreement with Japan, similar to that existing between Japan and the United States, puts a check on Japanese immigration.

Hindus are excluded by means of a provision in the Canadian immigration law which requires that immigrants must come to the Dominion by a continuous journey from the country of which they are natives and upon through tickets purchased in that country. There are no steamship lines operating between India and Canada.

1 Millis. Japanese Problem in the United States. p. 313.

2 Note that the ownership of land is not specifically mentioned in the Article quoted from the treaty.

3 Millis. Japanese Problem in the United States. p. 316.

AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION

Outlook. 97: 63-4. January 14, 1911

Oriental Immigration

A great popular conviction may be false, but it must always be taken seriously in a democracy. There is a great popular conviction on the Pacific coast that Oriental immigration is perilous to American institutions. This is not merely a class prejudice of laborers against competing laborers. In 1879 the Legislature of California ordered a test vote to be taken for and against Chinese immigration. The result was that out of 162,000 votes there were but 638 for such immigration. The ballot was secret; the conclusion is certain: the people of the state were then practically a unit against such immigration. There is no

reason to think that any change in the public sentiment of the Pacific coast has taken place since that time. There is very good reason to believe that it now extends to Japanese as well as to Chinese immigration. This is not a passing passion; it is not a class prejudice; it is a permanent conviction.

Various reasons are given for this conviction, but they are not the real, certainly not the fundamental, reasons.

The real reason for the opposition to Oriental immigration is its effect on the future of America. Zangwill says that God is throwing all European races into the melting-pot and forming out of them the America of the future. The opponents of Oriental immigration believe that the Oriental in America will always remain an alien element, unassimilated and unassimilable. The objection is well put by a philosophic student who is at least without local prejudice, Herbert Spencer:

I have, for the reasons indicated, entirely approved of the regulations which have been established in America for restricting Chinese immigration, and had I the power would restrict them to the smallest possible amount; my reason for this decision being that one of two things must happen. If the Chinese are allowed to settle extensively in America, they must either, if they remain unmixed, form a subjective race standing in the position, if not of slaves, yet of a class approaching slaves; or, if they mix, they must form a bad hybrid.) In either case, supposing the immigration to be large, immense social mischief must arise, and eventually

social disorganization. The same thing would happen if there should be any considerable mixture of a European race with the Japanese.

This peril seems to the Atlantic coast dweller remote, but this is because, to him, the problem is remote. The peril is serious, or would be if steps had not already been taken to guard against it. It is the negro problem over again, made more perilous because back of the Oriental immigration are two great nations, one in the process of formation, the other already one of the great world powers. In the judgment of The Outlook, Mr. C. H. Rowell, of the Fresno “Republican," is absolutely right; "The Pacific coast is the frontier of the white man's world, the culmination of the westward immigration which is the white man's whole history. It will remain the frontier so long as we guard it as such; no longer. Unless it is maintained there, there is no other line at which it can be maintained without more effort than American government and American civilization are able to sustain." We do not agree with him that "there is no right way to solve a race problem except to stop it before it begins." But if this is not the only way, it is the simplest, the easiest, and the best way. In the case of the European races education solves the problem. The educated German, Scandinavian, or Italian, if not the educated Slav, becomes in the second or third generation an American. But the educated Oriental remains an Oriental. Lafcadio Hearn had certainly no anti-Japanese prejudice; and it is Lafcadio Hearn who says: "The Japanese child is as close to you as the European child— perhaps cleaner and sweeter, because infinitely more natural and refined. Cultivate his mind, and the more it is cultivated, the farther you push him from you. As the Oriental thinks naturally to the left where we think to the right, the more you cultivate him, the more he will think in the opposite direction from you."

It is not that the Chinese and the Japanese are inferior races; it is that they are different; and it is better that different men, though frankly recognizing one another as equals in the major qualities of civilization, should have different homes. It is an old adage that no house is large enough for two families. No nation is large enough for two races. The East for the Oriental, the West for the Occidental, with no attempt to keep house together but free intermingling in international trade is the true solution of the Oriental problem. This is the solution which

the democratic instinct on the Pacific coast has hit upon. And the democratic instinct is right.

Congressional Record. 40: 3749-53. March 13, 1906

Japanese Exclusion. E. A. Hayes

In discussing at this time the question of the exclusion of certain classes of the Japanese from our shores, and particularly those of the cooly class, I am undertaking a not altogether pleasant duty. All men admire courage. The valorous achievements of any nation have in all ages challenged the admiration of the world. And when a weaker nation, making up for its lack of numbers by its energy, courage, and discipline, emerges from a contest with a nation numerically much stronger with the triumphant success which has recently attended the arms of Japan in its contest with Russia we, in common with the rest of the world, shout our bravos to the plucky little island nation. In what I shall say upon this question I wish not to be understood as detracting in the least from the credit due the Japanese people for what in the past half century they have accomplished in war and peace. Their achievements, which are not small, are the common heritage of mankind, and for that reason I glory in them. I would not that the United States should put one obstacle in the way of the progress of our sister nation. Rather I would help her in her upward and onward march all that we can without injury to ourselves.

The question raised by the bill to which I have referred is in no sense an international one. It is purely local in character. The right of every nation to regulate without interference the coming of aliens into its territory has been universally recognized in every age of the world's history. It is a right that we as a nation have claimed and exercised in the past and still claim and exercise. The question of Japanese exclusion should therefore be settled not as a question of international law, but solely as a question of domestic policy. Is it better for this nation that the Japanese people should be allowed to come and settle among us as we allow aliens of the Caucasian race to come, or is it better for the whole people of our country that they should be wholly or partly excluded? This question answered and the whole matter should be regarded as settled.