"PROMISED LAND."

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 52, 3 March 1930, Page 10

"PROMISED LAND."

PROBLEM IN CALIFORNIA. INFLUX OF FILIPINOS. SERIOUS MENACE FEARED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, February 3. The influx of Filipino ■ workers, now arriving at an estimated rate of 10,000 a year at the three Pacific ports of entry, has reached stages designated in California as "the most serious Oriental labour problem since the Japanese ' invasion ' prior to 1924." The situation, said to be alarming social workers and union labourites, is creating a background of western sentiment behind the Welch Act, reintroduced ,by Representative Richard Welch, of San Francisco. The measure classifies Filipinos as aliens ineligible to citizenship, thus making them ineligible to entry under the 1924 Exclusion Act. Estimates as to the number of Filipino workers now in California run from a total of 50,000 to 05,000. In 1925, according to the immigration section of the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco 4895 Filipinos landed in San Francisco, 1513 in Seattle and 585 in Los Angeles. The estimated total in these ports in 1929 was 10,000. The official Filipino population of Hawaii is G0,075, thus making an estimated total for both continental and insular United States of 110,078. The problem, therefore, it is said, is considerably more serious than was the Japanese labour problem prior to 1924.

One serious moral hazard in the Filipino question is the fact that only 3.7 per cent of arrivals are women, while the California law forbids inter-marriage between whites and Mongolians, construed to include Filipinos by opinion of the Attorney-General. Another is the crime situation, showing the number of Filipinos in California penitentiaries. The health problem is the most serious, since the low wages Filipino workers receive is insufficient to guard them against disease. They suffer ' particularly from tuberculosis and pneumonia. Generally, ti is admitted, Filipino immigrants coming to the United States are young men, ambitious for education and willing to work, but. work at extremely low wages.,

Barrier is Fought. Hawaiian sugar interests are anxious to amend the proposed Welch Bill, making an exception of the territory. Public opinion in Hawaii, however, apparently back the sugar men. Governor Wallace Farrington and the two newspapers there want no exception made, on the ground that some day Hawaii will be admitted as a State and any exception would be used as an argument for keeping it a territory.

Commenting on the situation, the San Francisco "Daily News" says: "It's an axiom in .trade that cheap things cost more in the long run. Pacific Coast history proves that this law applies also to cheap labour.

| "In the late 70's anti-Chinese riots 1 broke out in California. The Chinese coolies, who had been imported by the thousands to do the rough work of the gold mines, became an economic menace to the whites. Denis Kearney, 'sand lot orator,' inflamed the mobs with his cry, 'The Chinese must go!' From Eureka to San Diego disgraceful scenes were enacted, hundreds of heads were cracked scores of Chinese were killed. In 1882 Congress came to the rescue with the Chinese Exclusion Law.

"Then came the Japanese 'invasion' in response to the call for cheap farm labour. Because the Japs lived frugally procreated freely and worked cheap'y' anti-Japanese riots broke forth. A proud race was offended deeply "by the 1924 Exclusion Act. Harvest of Blood. "Now the third importation of cheap labour is bringing its harvest of blood At Exeter and Watsonville in Californiain.laknna, Washington and in other coast centres demonstrations against Filipinos are beginning.- The first casualty occurred near Watsonville. . Hawaiian sugar planters, charged with having brought Filipino labourers to the islands under contract to work at low wages in the sugar fields, were blamed for the race riots in California, by Paul Scharrenberg secretary of the California btate Federation of Labour.

The race riots of Monterey and. Santa Clara counties and their i SSUe are inevitable as the results the third invasion of California by Oriental labour," said the Labour leader. "Hawaiian suear planters are primarily to blame. Appro!" mately 80,000 Filipino workers havTb een imported under contract with the suoar planters of Hawaii. There is nothing prevent their coming from Hawaii to°the mainland, and this they Lave been doing m-large.numbers. ; "~ ~ --- «

"In Hawaii the Filipino workers receive from Idol to l.oOdol (four to six shillings) a day. On the Pacific Coast they can command twice that. One can hardly blame the Filipino who refuses to be happy in Hawaii if he can so easily move eastward to-the promised land."^ "There are more Filipinos in California to-day by nearly 100 per cent than there were Japanese at the time of the violent agitation against the "Japanese that led to the Exclusion Act of 1924.

"I spite of the promised agitation of Hawaiian interests Filipino exclusion, whether through Filipino independence or through the Welch Bill, must follow that of the Chinese and the Japanese. It is inevitable. Delay will only result in more riots and ugly demonstrations."