SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE OF THE JAPANESE

West Coast Times, 21 June 1916, Page 4

SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE OF THE JAPANESE

(Lincoln Steffens, iu “Colliers” ’ for March 25th). The Californians themselves do hot deny that it is the superiority of the dap that they dread. They admit it. The Californian authority I quote granted it, and, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, they all assert it. And timt fear of being outdone and run out by them accounts for the. intensity of the feeling against the Japs iu California. One incident will have to serve to illustrate. When the anti-Japanese feeling ran at its highest.in California I happened to ho out there on other business, and 1 called on a’ woman at Iter groat 'orchard-farm in one of the richest valleys in the State. She showed me hoi place with pride, ' And it was a pici tore. ; “All my life and all rny capital are , planted in his fruit ranch” site said. I “I work it with Jap labour. But,” ! she added with fire in Iter eves, , am for Japanese exclusion'!” ; 1 A strong statement of the prevailing passion, and interesting. I asked for jan explanation. She said that every year as the trees came to fruit she had her own Japanese labourers o» the job; a quick, keen, skilled, careful lot of little men; more and more of them till the crop was'about ready to 1 nick. Then every year a little Jap business man would call, offer to buy the whole crop as it stood. But he’d bid for it half its market value. She’d reject bis offer and go on with her preparations to handle her fruit with her own (Japl labour. A day or two ; before the time to begin to han-est the little business' man would come hack, renew his offer, raising his price perhaps, a litie—a very little. Considering it preposterous, she would again refuse. The next day all her workers would quit her; a strike’; a ’labour .strike called by a business Juan-. She. understood; she’d hunt up ,thd smiling bidder and take his best bid.-' And tie would turn to with “her” labour and ■take in the. fruit and—the profit. This is typical, as 1 have Icarneu since; the Japanese were-getting and some of them still hold monoplie K of : some products in California. ‘ A -Japanese potato king rides there . now.