154 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



toward modern civilization, the Japanese are in full harmony with the 

 nations of Europe. It is their mission to bring modern civilization to 

 Asia. This they are literally doing in Korea, one of the most interesting 

 experiments in the reclamation of a dying nation undertaken in mod- 

 ern times, comparable to our sanitation of the Canal Zone of Panama. 

 At the same time, the hold of Japan on Korea, like our hold on Pan- 

 ama, rests on the right of arbitrary seizure. 



The main justification of the exclusion of Japanese unskilled labor- 

 ers must be found in the economic conditions on the two sides of the 

 Pacific. It is our theory in America that there should be no permanent 

 class of unskilled laborers, and that it is the duty as well as the right of 

 every man to make the most of himself. 



In most other nations, a permanent lowest class which must work 

 for the lowest wages and do the menial service of society is taken for 

 granted. This theory is affirmed in the Chinese proverb, " Big fish eat 

 little fish, little fish eat shrimp : shrimp eat mud." It is no part of our 

 policy that shrimps should remain shrimps forever. Cheap labor is 

 exploitable to the injury of labor of a higher grade. There is then a 

 degree of justice in the contention for the exclusion of the cheapest and 

 most exploitable type of laborers, whatever their race or the country 

 from which they come. 



There is also legitimate ground for fear that a wide-open door from 

 Asia would crowd our Pacific coast before the natural population of 

 America has found its way there. Such a condition would add to the 

 economic wealth of the coast at the expense of social and political con- 

 fusion. 



Many honest men fear the advent of large numbers of Japanese as 

 likely to provoke racial troubles similar to those which exist in the 

 south. I do not share this opinion. No race is more readily at home 

 in our civilization than the cultivated Japanese. That the rice-field 

 coolie does not assimilate is because of his crude mentality and his lack 

 of any training, either Japanese or American. This is broadly true, 

 though among these people are many of fine instincts and marked ca- 

 pacity. The condition of mutual help and mutual tolerance in Hawaii 

 shows that men of a dozen races can get along together if they try to do 

 so. The problem of the south is the problem of slavery ; the problem of 

 the half white, the man with the diverging instincts of two races, this 

 status changed in an instant, by force, from the position of a chattel to 

 that of a citizen. It is the problem of the half -white man given polit- 

 ical equality when social equality is as far away as ever. No bar sin- 

 ister of this sort nor of any other kind separates the European from 

 the Japanese. 



Social reasons for exclusion have a certain value. The Japanese 

 are the most lovable of people, which fact makes them the most clan- 



