The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1906-03-31
COMPETITION OF JAPS
ALARMS WESTERN MEN
Industries as Well as Working
men Suffering from 1mitat-
ing Yellow Man.
They are Taken a Mighty Hold
on Furniture Business
With Bamboo Articles.

Luc question OIL In0 lmmlSrdLlOnS OIL
Japanese to the United States and
Hawaii and it's effect upon unskilled
labor has. received considerable atten-
tion recently, but surely something
should be said relative to the bearing
that such immigration and competition
has upon our manufacturing industries
and the commercial relations between
the two countries.
The Japanese laborer comes to work,
to gain a living, to better his condi-
t1on pecuniarily, and to learn Gin fact,
nearly all class themselves as students
and not laborers. Many of them when
questioned assert that their object in
coming to this country is to study, but
under stress of circumstances were
obliged to work at farming or at any,
thing they could get to maintain them
selves until such time as more lucra-
tive avenues of employment were open
ed, and finding themselves in position
to accumulate money, they naturally
abandoned all desire for student life
With their keen perception, energy and
enterprise together with dexterity and
Initiative faculties, they are quick to
comprehend. and, an art or trade once
learned, they become adopts and quick
~ engage In teaching others of their
race. To work and learn with them
ly unskilled, but the highest branches
of skilled labor.
They have taken mighty hold on
the cheap furniture business, turning
out immense quantities of bamboo, cane
and wicker furniture, which is cut
ting materially into the furniture
trade, because the articles placed upon
the market, owing to their cheapness.
find ready sale, and displace the like
article made by white labor. From one
industry they take to another, and now
. throughout the city may be seen the
Jananese boot and shoe worker, the
skilled steam laundry worker, the
oeweler and watch maker, the tailor,
the printer and the photographer.
The result of the adven; of Japanese
labor into the shoe trade throuehout
every town and hamlet in California
is the driving of the small white shoe
. worker into other avenues of employ
rnent. $3s;ss s5.S
"a
San francisco the Japanese are acu,,ir--
|; Ing stronghold, to the disadva ntare
of many white women formerly EN-
ployed at the business. In packing
teas and other store work they are
1ast supplanting the whites one firm
alone-a firm handling fancy brand
OF coHee-employe twenty or more of
them, but we may rest assured that the
Japanese so employed will not be con-
tent with working as porters and ware
housemen all the time, but will upon
mastery of the business establish them
selves In the same line Such has been
the experience of Hawaii in the mast
and such will be our experience in the
future
In Japan and China there is a. labor
with which neither America nor Europe
could or would compete Official fig
ures from Toxic show that ship-build-
ers In the private yards of that Empire
receive fifty sen day, the highest rate
OF wages paid in all Japan to artisans:
IN textile industries the maxium rate
Is tWenty-nine sen, sen being equal
to approximately half cent.
If the cheap labor of Japan were in
competent, there would be little, if any,
significance In the figures, but the labor
OF the Sun Rise Kingdom" Is compare
bly, skillful. The farmers of that Em-
plre, for instance, have developed q
husbandry that lis the admiration Of
practical men and scientific horticulture
lists, the world over.
The experts of the United States De-
partment of Agriculture go to japan to
study Oriental triumphs of cultivation.
And with sufficient workmen able to
exist upon wage that would mean star
walton or gradation to an American n
workman, this country might we'll look
with alarm to increasing influx Of tho
Japanese against which the wage earn
ers of California are uttering a united
protest-Japanese and Korean Exclu-
sion League, San Francisco, Cal.