The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-05-03
ALL WERE JAPS|
No White LaborerS on the
Northern Pacific.
Fear Expressed That Other LIN 8
VIII Secure InmigrantS-A
Hint for Exclusion.
(San Francisco Chronicle.)


The employment of Japanese labor
on the Northern Pacific Railroad has
| displaced a large amount of white labor
and at the rate contracts are being
gentleman who has lately returned to
Tacoma from trip over the State
! says: 'On the Northern Pacific, after
leaving Ellansburg, l saw trainloads
and trainioads Of railroad laborers ana
| camps and camps of them, and not a
white man among them. All were
Japs. a Tacoma dispatch, printed
yesterday, states that the coolies are
pouring into the country by thou
sands, not only on the ships of the
Mail Steamship Company, but on the
Vancouver and Victoria"
The Northern Pacific, having found
this labor profitable it is only a ques-
ton OF time when the Southern Pacific
and all the other Western roads with,
If permitted by law, also employ IL.
There are literally some millions of
Japanese who would like nothing bet
ter than fifty cents a day, with food
and housing, at any kind of manual
abor in this country. Fifty cents OF
our money is dollar in the Japanese
outside the treaty ports do not earn
an average Of twenty-five sen (the ma
tive cent? per day the year around, and
out of that they must pay all their
living expenses. SO Japanese dollar
per day and found means a fortune
to the average native laborer. The
Northern Pacific, as we believe, pays
more than that now; but when the
coolie market becomes glutted the
wage scale will fall. At the bottom
figure, however, enough coolie labor
may be had to supplant every white
section hand west of the Mississippi
river if not every one in the United
States.
So far, the DAVIS to restrain contract
labor and INDECENT labor immigration
have proved to be ineffective. A Jap
anese contract laborer always swears
er shows money enough to get him
past the customs examiner and then,
as soon as he turns the corner, hands
it back to the agent of the emigra-
ton society that loaned it to him. In
Hawaii during the period when Japan
was trying to food the islands with
her surplus coolies every deYice to head
off the influx was unavailing, and to-
day, if Hawaii had not been annexed,
the Japanese might have outnumbered
all other nationalities there. Before
long, if the thrush is not stopped, there
will be more Japanese here than Chi
neSe.
1t is greatly to be hoped that this
kind OF immigration will not be per-
mitted to go on until it results in race
troubles and the revival of sandlOt poll
tics. AS it must be checked some day,
it had better be checked soon. Hap
PLY, the Japanese Government has
given many indications of a willingness
to assist the United States in solving
the problem, even conceding the right
of this country, under the terms of one
of its past treaties, to enact restrictive
laws. If this mood has survived the
ratification of the treaties which are
about TO give Japan the status of a COM
pletely civilized power, then a way out
will be easy to find. That it has done
so there is some unofficial evidence,
though any formal expression ON that
point would naturally wait upon the
initiative of the American Government