evil we dread, or shall we somehow foster the germs of good will? Shall our legislation be panicky and steady-by-jerks, or shall it be enlightened and progressive; shall the laws be administered evasively, or evenly, in the interest of peace and progress or of race and class conflict? Even admitting that Orientals are in a different class, what real reason is there for prophesying that they and white races cannot live upon the same soil, use the same language, and in time share each other's mental and social ideals? The process of co-operation will not be difficult when once the alternative course is fairly faced and its consequences fully realized in imagination. For the alternatives are sanguinary and brutalizing. It takes but little imagination to depict the future if the Chinese and Japanese are given over to mobs, and are refused justice; if they are traduced, denied education and civic rights; if they are treated as animals, and are barred all humanities and amenities. For such abuses, both soon and late, there will be a fearful reckoning. A complete estrangement from us of eastern nations, with all that it involved of commercial loss, and the possibility of war, are the least of the evils thus invoked. The greater evil would be visited upon our national character, for in shutting our doors and persecuting inoffensive immigrants, we would have surrendered to mob power, and the mob yielded to always means increasing inhumanity and injustice poured back full measure into the bosoms of those who were their instructors. All the more would such retributions heap up for us, when the chief charge we can bring upon the Oriental, is that, class for class, he is cleaner, thriftier, more industrious, and docile, better bred, better trained, and better mannered than his white neighbor in the world of labor and life. These views will be called academic, and whoever holds them ought frankly to admit his own limitations. The exclusionist and high restrictionist have the apparent advantage of figures and experience, and can always plead "the present distress." They seem on solid ground when they appeal to the instincts of race purity and of self-preservation. They alone, perhaps, realize the hardships and strains put upon communities and individuals, when the competition of labor seems to drive the better men to the wall. But it must be repeated, those who are mixed up with a problem do not always see the best way out. They cannot understand the need of sacrificing a nearer benefit, to the larger principle. Theirs is the shortsighted view perhaps in this very case, which once drove the Moors out of Spain to the lasting injury of peninsular civilization, which blinded all Southern France in the silk weavers' riot to fight the newlyinvented loom; and which united the squireocracy and agricultural laborers of England against the first steam railroads. Economic history is full of such hardships of progress and sufferings of adjustment. The peril is always a great one, that sympathy with those who suffer, may blind rulers and peoples to greater coming good for greater numbers, including it may be even the present sufferers. In the very nature of society, if progressive, there is always a fighting line where the unskilled labor of society is to be done, and another fighting line where the highest leadership is to be achieved, where the greatest principles of civilization are trying to win out. Over this conflict and friction, the will of the whole people as expressed in good government, in wise legislation, in impartial enforcement of the laws, in enlightened study of conditions should insure civilization against retrogressive steps. The problem of immigration, especially in the shape in which it is presented to Western America, should be placed in charge of an expert governmental commission of the highest class, with ample powers, capable of patience and detachment from prejudice, in order to formulate all the facts and propose the practicable solution of how the civilization of the west and the east may meet, and how they may mingle-since mingle on some terms they must-with advancing good will and the mutual attainment of material, moral and social good. This is the challenge that the situation presents to united America. The East as well as the West is concerned in answering it upon the highest lines of national and international harmony. When we ask ourselves what grounds of encouragement there are to hope that an honorable solution will be reached, it needs but to rehearse some of the achievements, over equally stubborn problems lying all about us, and to measure up the new pace which is set for education, for enlightenment, for solidarity of national sentiment, for new evaluations of human lives, and above all for the obligations of society towards its weaker members. National Education Association. 1914: 35-40 Responsibility of American Educators in the Solution of America's Oriental Problem. Sidney L. Gulick The attitude which the United States takes to Japan and China in this and the next few decades promises to be epochal in the history of man. And the responsibility for the attainment of the right attitude depends in no small measure on our educators and our institutions of learning. The general attitude of our people is today one that is based on profound ignorance. It expresses itself in disdain, scorn, misrepresentation. Asiatics are regarded as inferior in race, degraded in character, and unassimilable in nature. We allow no Asiatics to become citizens of America, whatever their personal qualification. This refusal of rights of naturalization is made the ground of differential race legislation by several states. Such legislation, however, is regarded by Japanese as invidious and humiliating, contrary to the treaties, and in conflict with their national dignity and self-respect. This is the crux of the so-called Japanese question. This is what is causing the Japanese people so much pain and indignation at the recent anti-Asiatic legislation of California. Japan does not ask for an open door for labor immigration. She is widely misunderstood at this point. She does ask for a square deal on the basis of manhood equality with other races. Her people are not willing to be regarded or treated as an inferior race or as intrinsically undesirable. When China awakes to the situation, she will unquestionably develop the same feelings and make the same appeals as Japan is making today. It is impossible, however, for America to respond to this appeal of the Asiatic for equality of treatment, good will, and friendship so long as the present conception of the Asiatic and his civilization prevails among us. To admit him to our citizenship is regarded by many as intolerable. We might as well admit baboons or chimpanzees some are openly saying. Good American citizens, and even Christians who believe in sending missionaries to Asiatics in their own land, regard them with disdain and scorn, holding that they are intrinsically different from us so different that it is impossible for them ever to enter into our life, understand our civilization, or share with us in this great American experiment in democracy. Such individuals are fond of Kipling's famous ballad: Oh, East is East and West is West That is to say, East and West are so different that, entirely regardless of the question of inferiority or superiority, these two great sections of the human race cannot possibly mix. The effort to provide for their mingling, they hold, will inevitably end in turmoil and finally in disaster. They forget, however, that Kipling did not stop with the lines they love to quote. Tho he well recognized the differences between East and West, he also saw deeper and beyond. For he added in the lines immediately following: But there is neither East nor West When two strong men stand face to face, The fact is that the unities underlying all branches of the human race are far deeper and more real than first appear. The differences are relatively superficial. Now one of the outstanding duties of our educators is to study these pressing problems of international life and the new relations necessarily arising thru man's recent mastery of nature and the relative collapse of space. We need to know the facts. Our entire people should be educated on these matters. We must be led by a sane and kindly attitude toward those great civilizations of the Orient and their peoples, not by ignorance and race prejudice. Our popular attitude toward Asiatics today is based on ignorance of the peoples, their history, and their attainments. It is based on a tradition that has come down from the past, a tradition, however, which better knowledge does not justify. Educators should lead in the overthrow of these race misunderstandings and prejudices which threaten to bring enormous and disastrous consequences to both the East and the West. The popular view that Asiatics are undesirable because of their absolute non-assimilability is based on assumptions which modern biology, psychology, and sociology as well as actual ex perience, show to be quite erroneous. Our institutions of learning should promptly set to work instructing our people on these matters, for they are of highest international importance. The rank and file of our people should no longer be misled by belated conceptions which, tho long regarded as scientific, are now seen to be baseless. We are in great danger lest mediaeval views of race nature and race relations shall plunge us into serious yet needless difficulties. Modern education has overthrown, to a large degree, the mediaeval dogmas of theology, rendering thereby an inestimable service to religion. There is crying need that it render the same service to our international life by overthrowing similarly mediaeval dogmatism as to race nature and race relations. World's Work. 15: 10041-4. March, 1908 Japanese Immigration. Viscount S. Aoki What would the American people say if any of their race should be prohibited from entering Canada or Mexico or a faroff country? I ask this question at the beginning of this article because I want to bring home to those who read the natural attitude which every Japanese must adopt when contemplating the agitation in progress in certain sections of the United States for the enactment of an exclusion law against his countrymen. You are an expanding people. Your emigrants are entering the Dominion to the north in droves. They are entering and remaining in Mexico, Cuba, and South American countries. In those countries, especially in Canada, many of them have become farmers. They are trying to live economically, to gain as much profit as they can, to observe the law and to become honest, decent, law-abiding citizens. They are succeeding, and they are reflecting credit upon their native land, upon their adopted country, and upon themselves. Now take the situation of the Japanese. We, too, are an expanding people. Our population, according to the last census, is 50,400,000. Our total area, including Formosa and the southern extremity of the Liao Tung Peninsula, upon which Port Arthur is situated, is 176,386 square miles. The population of the United States is almost 90,000,000, excluding your insular |