152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



quite different from that of the coolies, the half slaves, of the continent 

 of Asia. 



These laborers were treated essentially as slaves in Hawaii. They 

 carried with them none of the culture of Japan, they received none in 

 their new homes. They did not go as colonists. The Japanese with 

 homes do not willingly leave these homes where " their own customs 

 fit them like a garment," to form new ones in another region. The 

 Japanese are not spontaneously colonists. They will go to other lands 

 for study or for trade or for higher wages. But they go with the hope 

 to return. The coolies went to Hawaii solely under the incentive of 

 higher wages. When Hawaii was annexed to the United States the 

 shackles of their slavery was thrown off, and the same impulse of 

 higher wages carried them on to San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver. 



In 1899, Mr. W. W. Scott, of Honolulu, a former resident of Japan, 

 warned the Japanese authorities of the dangers involved in this move- 

 ment of Japanese laborers to California. Their lower standard of 

 living and of wages would make them exploitable. This would bring 

 them in conflict with labor unions. Economic clash would beget race 

 prejudice, and Japan could not afford to be judged by her least attrac- 

 tive and least efiicient representatives. Influenced by these and sim- 

 ilar considerations the Japanese government in 1899 refused passports 

 to all unskilled laborers, and since that time none have come from 

 Japan direct to the Pacific states. 



But in response to the continuous demand of Hawaii they were for 

 a time allowed to go there. Japanese people already constituted the 

 great majority of the population of these islands. Even after pass- 

 ports were refused to laborers going to Hawaii, the immigration of 

 coolies from Hawaii to San Francisco still continued. 



There was and is a very great demand for Japanese help among the 

 orchardists of California. No other labor has been adequate and avail- 

 able and it is not easy to see what the fruit interests are to do without 

 Japanese help. In this work the European laborer has scarcely entered 

 into competition. The prices paid the Japanese are not less than the 

 wages of American labor in the same lines. The demand for Japanese 

 workers in household service and in canning establishments has also 

 been great and unsatisfied. 



From the fisheries which the Japanese have almost monopolized in 

 British Columbia and in Hawaii, they have been virtually excluded by 

 statutes limiting the fisheries of California, Oregon and AVashington to 

 citizens of these states. Unless born in the United States the Japanese 

 can not become citizens. 



A large portion of the Japanese laborers avoided the orchards and 

 established themselves in the cities where, as laundrymen, restaurant 



