forth, and he shouted, "Aw, every one o' youse has stole apples!" After this outburst, stage fright with all its paralyzing horrors seized upon Lanky. Like an animal at bay he stood abject and cowering for some minutes and finally whined out, "Say, fellers, I didn't stole dem apples. Curly here is de bloke wot stole dem." At this several of the boys shouted, "Shame, shame!" and the wretched Lanky realized that he had made a fatal blunder. With the courage of desperation he blurted out, "Aw, kill me, then, if youse want ter," and threw himself upon the bench. Mr. George said to the company, "Is he guilty or not guilty?" There was a pause and one boy called out in explanation of this technical phrase, "He wants to know wedder he done it or wedder he didn't done it." With a howl came the unanimous verdict of the jury, "He done it!" And then Mr. George done it" upon the person of Lanky. After Lanky had left the tent, muttering that he would "lay for a chance to get even with every guy in the bunch," Mr. George said to Curly, "Now it's your chance, my boy." Curly had not watched Lanky's misfortunes in vain. He well knew he couldn't "put anything across" on that jury and so he did not try. He said, "Yes, I took de apples, but Lanky didn't play me quite square when he said I took dem all. I don't know which of us took de most. I guess we didn't count, but I took me share an' I'm willin' ter take me share of de trashing, but I jus' wan ter tell you fellers dat I'll hole me right hand up an' promise dat I hopes ter die if I ever takes any more, 'cause I know it hain't right to steal an' me mudder she would feel orful bad if she know'd I'd been crookin', an' dat's all wot I got ter say." And with that he dropped upon the bench, buried his head in his arms, and burst into tears. Mr. George said, "Is he guilty?" "Is he not guilty?" asked Mr. George. Again no response, except that the whole company was plunged into an animated conversation. A group of the older boys withdrew somewhat from the others and appeared particularly absorbed in discussion. Finally one of these boys, evidently speaking for the others, said, "Mr. George, there hain't no doubt 'bout it that Curly is guilty, but say, Mr. George, won't youse please go light on him?" Here was a "recommendation for mercy" and Mr. George proceeded "to go light enough on Curly," to suit the most sympathetic observer. After disposing of Curly, Mr. George said, "Before dismissal I want to tell you that hereafter all discussions of this kind are going to be settled in this tent by you boys and girls." The next morning there were only half the usual number of offenders. Mr. George then announced that there would be no more whippings, but that those convicted would be required to pick up stones in the meadow for a number of hours commensurate with their offense. This new method of punishment still further reduced the volume of business of the court. This incident marked the end of Mr. George's merely personal work in saving individual boys and girls and the beginning of his great work for humanity. He had substituted loyalty to an idea for loyalty to himself. These boys and girls had dealt justly with their fellow offenders, not because of loyalty to Mr. George, but because of loyalty to a great abstract idea Justice. This loyalty to Justice has since become the mainspring not only of the Junior Republics, but of many other institutions and organizations for boys and girls — and men and women, for that matter. When Mr. George founded the Junior Republic at Freeville, as a concession to the unwise advice of wise friends he took the office of president himself. After he had found that this was a mistake — that it weakened the sense of responsibility of the boy and girl officers and citizens he determined to resign and urge the election of one of the boys in his place. This he did and recommended as his successor the boy whom he thought most reliable. On the strength of Mr. George's recommendation, this boy was very properly elected. At the end of his year's term he sought reëlection and got Mr. George again to endorse and back him. No sooner had Mr. George announced his intention of supporting the president for reëlection, than there appeared in the field an insurgent candidate. This boy took for the slogan of his campaign, "Let us have no boss - not even even Daddy George!" Mr. George's protégé was overwhelmingly defeated and the young insurgent elected in his place. Probably no one was more delighted at this unexpected result than Mr. George himself. His young citizens had had to choose between loyalty to him personally and loyalty to the principles of self-government. While they doubtless did not consciously think it out, they had instinctively chosen to be loyal to an idea rather than to even their well-loved leader. As I have said, this kind of loyalty is not by any means confined to Junior Republics, but may be found wherever boys or girls have been allowed a real share in the management of their own. affairs. Boys have a way of living up to what is expected of them which is as distressing to those who expect evil as it is gratifying to those who expect good. There are a hundred or more public schools in which the principles of selfgovernment have been introduced in a conscious and tangible form. This case occurred in the school court of a great public school on the lower East Side in New York. The prisoner at the bar was charged with having jumped upon the rear platform of a passing car and rung up some fares. When the young District Attorney came to sum up to the Judge, he said in conclusion, “Just a word more, your Honor (His Honor was fourteen years old) before I sit down. Everybody who Everybody who knows anything about our school knows have self-government here. Now, supposing the president of this car company should write to our principal a letter that his cars was troubled by boys doing things to them more goin' past our school than any other place. Wouldn't that be a disgrace to our school and to all our officers an' to every citizen? An' what would people say about our self government, wouldn't they say as how if that was the way we acted when we had self-government, why then we wasn't fit to have it? Now, your Honor, I think you ought to think about this before you give your sentence in this prisoner's case." His Honor evidently did "think about this." He pronounced the prisoner guilty and penalized him by prohibiting him not only from taking part in the athletic games, for which he had been in training for some weeks, but even from attending them. Had there been no self-government organization in this school, the well-known loyalty among boys would have prevented these very boys, the District Attorney and the Judge, from even reporting the wrong doing of their companion, to say nothing of meting out justice to him. Wherever there is this loyalty of one to another, unhappily akin though it be to the “honor among thieves," there can be built up a higher loyalty which shall entirely override, when the two come into conflict, this merely individual loyalty. The organization which to-day is harnessing this loyalty of boys on the largest scale, and turning it to the service of all, is the Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts of Moorhead, Minn., decided that the condition of the streets was not a credit to their town. Their petty loyalties to their "bunches" and their "gangs" had been merged into a large loyalty for their community. Instead of sending a letter of complaint to a newspaper, as some of their elders had done, they marched in a body to the central square, armed with burlap bags and sharp-pointed sticks, whence, on the blowing of a whistle, they scattered through every street of the town. With a fine frenzy of cleanliness, quite unknown to the adult professional street cleaner, they seized, bagged, and destroyed all pieces of loose paper and other offensive articles throughout the length and breadth of the town. Had these boys scattered a like amount of refuse, their act would have been attributed to boy nature, and that meaningless formula, "Boys will be boys," would have been quoted. Obviously it was just as much an expression of boy nature to clean up this town as it would have been to do the opposite. If boy nature has usually expressed itself in a less fortunate manner, it must be attributed to other causes than its inherent qualities. The delegates to the National Conference of Charities, held in the city of Boston last year, were given a steamboat excursion about Boston Harbor. Two bright-looking lads were selling copies of the Survey to the delegates. As one of these boys passed near where Mr. George was standing, a delegate turned to his companion and said, "That is one of the judges we saw sitting at the Newsboys' Court last night dealing out fines and warnings to the young offenders who had violated their licenses." One of the party thereupon explained that the newsboys of Boston, of school age, were organized into an association of which the members in good standing were licensed by the city to sell newspapers. There were regulations and obligations, some of which were covered by city ordinances. Some people interested in self-government had secured the adoption of measures creating a judicial body of five, three of whom were newsboys elected by their fellows, and two adults, to try the cases of violation of rules. The court was established. The moral tone of the organization immediately changed for the better, and even those who had been most incredulous at first had acknowledged that the plan was a success. Another delegate then said, "I went expecting to be amused, but instead of that I never felt more awe or reverence in the United States Supreme Court than I felt in the presence of those boy judges, and evidently everyone else in the room, whether boy or man, had the same feeling. I don't know when they closed court last night. They tried the little chaps first and sent them home, and they were trying some of the older lads, and still had quite a bunch of them on hand when we left." Mr. George listened to these comments in silence, but with a glad heart. He had seized the opportunity to fan the flame which resulted in this court when it had been discussed by a group of enthusiasts at dinner in the City Club of Boston. He went over to the lad whose recognition had started the discussion and said, "You're one of the judges of the Newsboys' Court, I understand." "Yes," replied the boy with an earnest, straightforward look. "How do you like your job?" A serious expression came into his face as he replied, "In a way I like it, but a feller has got to keep his eye peeled on himself, and his 'think-tank' pretty clear." "I hear your court sat very late last night." "Yes," he said, "we had a good many cases last night." "How many sessions do you hold a week?" "One usually, and sometimes two." "How much are you paid for service on the bench?" "Fifty cents from the city every night we serve." "Who decides the number of nights you shall sit?" "We do the judges." "If you wanted to, could you hold a session every evening?' "I think prob❜ly we could," he answered. "Then why don't you hold more sessions. instead of continuing them so late?" asked Mr. George. "Because," he said, "we don't want to have it look as if we was graftin' off the city." This newsboy's energies were directed in a helpful direction. But it is very improbable that such a thing as loyalty to his city had ever entered this boy's head before the formation of the Newsboys' Court. The writer visited this court last August. There were only two boys on the bench. Both the adult judges were away on their vacations and the third boy was working at a summer hotel. The cases were presented to the court by the Supervisor of Newsboys, an adult, and the parents of the offenders were called as witnesses. Also, the young judges impressed upon them their responsibility for the good conduct of their boys. A frequent offence was boarding moving cars to sell papers. In these cases the judges described some fatal accidents that had befallen boys in doing this, to bring home both to the boys and their parents the great danger involved. A frequent penalty for a minor offense was an order to memorize the rules and regulations of the Association. This Court is an adjunct of the School Committee of Boston and its decisions are legally binding. The night I visited it, two newsboys were handing down decisions that are legally recognized by the city of Boston. Most boys are suffering from an inverted esprit de corps. They are loyal to their "bunch," their "gang,' their "gang," their intimate friends, or perhaps even their family, but all too often their loyalty is to destructive agencies. In Junior Re-. publics, in School Republics, in the Newsboys' Court, among the Boy Scouts, and in many other similar organizations, this inverted esprit de corps is being turned right side up. Nor is it only by these rather elaborate organizations that the loyalty of boys can be awakened. There are hundreds of people throughout the country to-day who are helping boys' "gangs" but who have scarcely heard of Junior Republics, School Republics, Newsboys' Courts, or even the Boy Scouts. But it all comes in the last analysis to putting a boy in a gang, turning "the gang" toward helpful purposes, and making use of the boys' loyalty to keep them straight. THE JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA WHY CALIFORNIANS REGARD THEIR PRESENCE AS "THE BEGINNING OF THE BIGGEST PROBLEM THAT EVER FACED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY CHESTER H. ROWELL which we were protesting. In the legislative balance, that baby outweighed the great Exposition. HE California legislature was assembled in the Senate chamber for joint hearing on the Japanese bills, whose recur- And, dealing with the problem wide and rent agitation brings Cali- long, no far-sighted man can dismiss the fornia biennially into the spotlight of the world. Directors of the Panama-Pacific Exposition (the writer among them) were pleading for conservative action, or inaction. A gaunt farmer rose to reply: "Up at Elk Grove, where I live," he said, "on the next farm a Japanese man lives, and a white woman. That woman is carrying around a baby in her arms. What is that baby? It isn't white. It isn't Japanese. I'll tell you what it is "It is the beginning of the biggest problem that ever faced the American people!" Psychologically, this epitomized the whole question the beginning of a race problem, multiplied in imagination by the possibilities of all the future; the challenge, which sort of baby shall prefigure the future Californian. Without waiting for the hearing to end, the Assembly committee withdrew and unanimously reported out one of the very bills against farmer's challenge as a mere figment of fancy. Let only that happen in California which has already happened in Hawaii; let only an awakening Orient pour through the Golden Gate a stream comparable to that which Europe has poured through Hell Gate- and that baby will have increased to the exact problem the Elk Grove farmer pictured. Injustice has been the only American way of meeting a race problem. We dealt unjustly by the Indian, and he died. We deal unjustly with the Negro, and he submits. If Japanese ever come in sufficient numbers to constitute a race problem, we shall deal unjustly with them and they will neither die nor submit. This is the bigness of the problem, seen in the telescope of the imagination, and is the whole reason for the emotional intensity of California's agitation over a situation whose present practical dimensions are relatively vividly and that the number owning or leasing land or engaged in business is still small, but is increasing. The total number of Japanese men is not legitimately increasing, but there is a steady increase in the number of women. insignificant. Californians are vividly conscious of their position as the warders of the Western mark. They hold not merely a political and geographic, but a racial, frontier - the border between the white man's and the brown man's world. To a keen sense of this trust, the possible crisis takes on the significance of a new Thermopyla. Psychologically, this is the Japanese problem in California, and no view of the situation would be just to California if it omitted a sympathetic appreciation of this state of mind, and of its possible ultimate justification. It is equally necessary to recognize that the question has a psychological aspect on the Japanese side also. At this very moment, while this is being written, twenty thousand people are surging through the streets of Tokyo, clamoring for war war with America, all because the 'California legislature is considering a measure which is already the unprotested law of the United States, by three separate Federal statutes, which is the law of five states, and has been immemorial law in Japan itself. Even a mob would not be so irrational on merely practical provocation. It is the whole revulsion of the brown man's race pride against the white man's race exclusiveness, concentrated for the moment on an otherwise inconsequential act of the white man's outpost province. It is a mutual state of emotional hyperesthesia. This subjective aspect of the situation is real and important. But the more immediate need is definite knowledge of objective facts. What are the actual conditions of numbers, distribution, immigration, and industrial status of Japanese in California? Exact information is difficult to obtain. Every figure of official statistics is challenged by the Asiatic Exclusion League, which offers, instead, equally vulnerable estimates of Orientals smuggled over the border. However, it may be said with certainty that, whatever the number of Japanese in the United States, most of them are in California; that in California they absolutely dominate certain occupations, chiefly the migratory labor in the production of fruit and vegetables; By the census, there were 71,722 Japanese in the United States in 1910, of whom about 55,000 were in California. It is estimated, on Japanese authority, that there were 11,400 Japanese in the United States in 1898, which number, however, was more than doubled in the next two years, and reached nearly 80,000 by 1908. Since then, on the face of the figures, the number has decreased to about 75,000. This estimate is reached, however, by subtracting from the number of residents and recorded immigrants the number departing for Japan. The Exclusion League claims that the majority of the immigrants now come in surreptitiously over the Mexican border, and that the decrease is therefore fictitious. The League even guesses that there may be 100,000 Japanese in the state. Probably a safe maximum estimate would be that not more than 3 per cent. of the population of California and not more than 10 per cent. of the population of any one county is Japanese. Officially, the proportion in the state is a trifle more than 2 per cent. and the distribution ranges from 9 per cent. in Yolo and San Bernardino counties down to none at all in many counties. The largest percentage in any city is in Sacramento, where Japanese constitute 5 per cent. of the population. The proportion in Sacramento County is 8 per cent. There are nearly 8,000 Japanese in Los Angeles and nearly 7,000 in San Francisco. Ten counties in the state have more than 1,000 Japanese each, ranging from 1,000 in Placer and Contra Costa to 11,500 in Los Angeles County. The Exclusion League's estimates might double some of these figures. Officially, the history of the migration of Japanese laborers to the United States begins in 1885, when the emigration of laborers was legalized, and ends in 1907, when the "gentlemen's agreement" went into effect, whereby passports are no longer issued in Japan to laborers destined for the |