The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1907. JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14432, 24 July 1907, Page 6

The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1907. JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA.

While all tho noAvspapors are declaring that war between tho United States and Japan io unthinkable-, it ifi an well to remember that tho ant-i-Japaneso agitation in California continues and that tho outstanding questions between tho two nations are not yet settled. Ostensibly tho original quarrel was about tho schooling of a handful of Japanese children in San Francisco. At tho time of the earthquake distress, tho people of Japan sent (subscriptions amounting to £50,000 to San Francisco by way of expressing their sympathy with tho citizens upon whom tho disaster had fallen. Six months later tho San Francisco Board of Education decided to exclude Japanese children from tho ordinary State schools and to compel them to attend n separate "Oriental" school) on the ground, presumably, that white children, might bo contaminated by contact with tho little brown boys and girls. Tho law under which tho authorities acted was passed thirtyfour years ago, and was aimed at the Chinese, for whoso benefit • a special Rohool was .established. No attempt was mado to ©nforco it against the Japanese for many 3'ears, and actually there seems to have been no suggestion of tho segregation of Japemeeo scholars until a year or two ago. But when the labour unions captured the city administration in 1901 they proceeded to organise an agitation against Japanese immigration, and at length they attacked the schools, their policy being to niak© California an extremely uncomfortable place for Asiatics to live in. When the earthquake and the 'fire destroyed Chinatown, the Chinese flocked from San Francisco to ether Califorman cities, find their special school was almost deserted. Gradually tho anti-Japanese influences compelled the Board to order Japanese scholars to attend this school, and so tho international trouble began. When the Federal Government interfered, the School Board quoted the law of 1872 as allowing it no discretion in tho matter, and it pleaded, further, that an overwhelming majority of the Japanoso " schoolboys" woro grown men, whose presence in the ordinary schools was very undesirable. Investigation showed, however, that out .of 25,736 school children in San Francisco schools in December there wore only ninoty-threo Japanese, one-third of them born in the United States, and twenty-eight of them girls. There were only two boys out of their teens. Of tho thirty-one boys over the ago of fifteen, twenty-six were in the secondary schools and only six in the primary schoole, ao that there really seams to have been nothing in the educational position to cause tho race purists ol San Francisco any alaim Obviously we have to look further for the cause of the trouble. The people of Japan are-increasing in numbers at the rate of half a million a year. They aro elbowing one another out of the little empire, and they must find room for their surplus population. Eo-rea land Manchuria attract some, but tho climatic conditions are not favourable* and the coolie class cannot readily obtain employment on the mainland. The high wages of the Pacific, coast have certainly been , a great inducement to emigration. Japanese coolies may not go direct to San Francisco, so they go by way of Hawaii where they pay their poll tax of a pound a head and stay for a few weeks in order to qualify for the journey to California. A thousand labourers aro permitted to land in Hawaii each month and each month sees a thousand sturdy coolies migrating from Hawaii to California. Tho white man argues that the beat flower's in a garden will always be choked to death if weeds aro permitted to grow among them, and the antiJapanese agitation is an attempt to use tho hoe.