Los Angeles herald., 1907-08-19
JAPANESE QUESTION
NHE San francisco chamber or cor

fairs Of the Japanese foreign office, in
the Fairmont hotel Saturday, going to
the extreme of providing special Jap
anese features in the menu, service and
decorations. that the agent of Japan,
sent here to look into the troubles Of
his countrymen with American citizens,
might be favorably impressed. One
dispatch tells that some of the enter
tanners intended to eat with chopsticks
in order that the Japanese agent might
be impressed with American goodwill
toward him and his countrymen. Sec
rotary of Commerce and Labor Straus
graced the occasion with his presence,
having accompanied the agent on the
voyage hither from Honolulu.
Just why the caterer failed to pro-
vide South of Market street turkey"
and a deputation of Tar Flat" hood
lums is not stated. 1t would have been
more to the purpose than much of the
nauseating doings were. This keen,
business-like Japanese, after very ex-
cellent coaching from Secretary Straus,
must have felt measure of contempt
for men who could sink a principle for
which their state and nation is ready
to fight, to the level of stomach dip
lomacy. and hold up the national in
dorsement Of the exclusion law on a
knife and fork
That international courtesy called for
social attentions to this official of an
alien people is true, but that represen-
tative men of the state and nation
should undertake to cloud the issue
bound up in the Japanese question
with an exhibition of toadyism that
would shame Uriah Heep, is past
comprehension. It there is a weakness
in our national diplomacy touching this
question 1t was confessed in this trick
of dining, winning and hot air, and no
man is keener to see it than Mr.. Kiki-
jiro Ishii.
There are those who would take the
agent to see our Notifications, fleets,
navy yards and sea coast defenses; our
armories and all that tends to defense
in war; who. would open the history of
bedeviled labor on this coast for the
past twenty-five years. and read to him
many chapters therefrom; who would
compare manners, customs, religions,
tendencies and the training of Ameri-
can workingmen with those of the Jap
anese; who would show the impossi-
bility of mental, moral or social assim-
ilation; in short would-open to him the
real reasons why the United States in
general, and the Pacific coast in par
ticular, will not stand for oriental i'm
migration in an unrestricted measure.
They would show to this agent of
Japan that with six months of training
his countrymen would usurp many
branches of semi-skilled labor, take
bread from the mouths of serving
market, lower wages in every channel
of service, and send their earnings to
Japan Like their fellow orientals, they
would colonize and nurse disloyalty,
knowing their nation is powerful
enough to be reckoned with, and we
should wake up some day to find we
had warmed a viper in our national
breast.
The law of cause and effect applies
here. The effect is in the humiliating
spectacle in the Fairmont hotel; the
cause is not far to seek. 1t is found in
the foolish policy of bounding labor
which, until labor turned and captured
the city government, has f1ourished in
San Francisco for forty years past.
Beginning with the building of rail-
roads and the inflow of thousands of
Chinese, it's purblind directors failed to
see the inevitable till ragged and
hungry labor arose and the exclusion
act came.
That labor turned intolerant and OPP
pressive, leading up to present condi-
tons, does not change the nature of
the policy that made such things pos
sible. A fight for a renaissance of that
laundering policy is now on; cheap
labor that can be driven is the prize
to be played for, and under the guise
of seeking markets and establishing
trade the same element of San Fran
cisco's moneyed men would turn back
twenty years OF history ana SuDJuSdIe
again the bone and sinew of the people.
The fact that her leading men did
toady to a representative of Japanese
labor interests in the contemplate
manner outlined in the dispatches is
proof that San Francisco has not
learned the lesson of the sand lots"
and that the awful chastisements of
God, nature and man have been in
vain to teach her. Earthquakes, fires,
strikes, grating, all may be overcome
in a land where men may toll and re-
ceive fair recompense therefor, but no
republic can live whose people are de-
MED the right to work for living wages
by the competition of a horde of aliens.
The goodwill and business of the jap
anese nation are desirable, so are the
love and loyalty of the masses of our
own people 1t is up to San Francisco's
leading men to be the first to choose
between the two.
Los Angeles BARRIERS argue, and not