JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144150, 21 July 1913, Page 5

JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA.

Exactly what the Japantse are doing in California, and what functions they fulfil in developing the industry of the State, are points of particular interest just at this time when there is an increasing agitation to keep Japanese immigrants out of the country. A writer in the Japan Magazine, a monthly poriodical published in English at Tokyo, sets forth the situation, with a plentiful hacking-np of statistics. It was in 1869, he informs us, that the first Japanese emigrants, some forty in all, set out for California. In 1878 there were only 120 there; by the end of the next decade there were 1000, and so rapidly did their numbers swell that in 1908 the Japanese population amounted to 60,780. These Japanese are mostly engaged in farming. In 1911 the acreage under cultivation by them was 239,720, mostly devoted to potatoes, vines, fruit trees, berries, and vegetables, the total value of products amounting to over twelve millions of dollars annually, or nearly twenty per cent, of the total agricultural products of tho State. Taking into account the labour performed by the Japanese on land over which they have no control, it may be said, add’s the writer, that they produce at least ninety per cent, of the total results of agriculture in California. In the Alameda agricultural district the Japanese population is about 1200, rising in the summer season to over two thousand. Sonic two hundred are engaged in tho salt fields, the rest give their time to market gardening, orcharding, and general agriculture. They it is who handle the millions of cherries, tomatoes, and apricots which swell the market in season, and they also take an important place in the immense wiieat harvest of the vast fertile valleys of the State. Some 16,500 till tho soil in Northern California, and around Sacramento they are the biggest fruitgrowers, vineyardists, and vegetable producers the country knows. Tho low-lying district along tho river is almost wholly given up to the Japanese, and near Stockton alone them are about 4000 Japanese.farmers, all doing a brisk and productive business. The writer of the article questions whether tho development qf tho country in an agricultural and horticultural direction could be accomplished without the Japanese labourers. In Los Angeles they outdo the natives and Chinese,ns greengrocers, and are noted for their .industry and sobriety. As hotelkeepers, provisioners, lanndrymen, cooks, tailors, dyers, shoemakers, etc., they are also making headway, and as importers and exporters they are cqm'ing more and more to occupy a position of importance in the trade of California, while they’ carry on seventenths of tho fishery business at Los Angeles and elsewhere along tho const. AVhat the land would do without the Japanese, comments the writer, is a question no one, not even their severest critics, has ever dared to answer.