56 PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



the fidelity and dependability of that labor. Any raisin-grower in 

 Fresno will tell you that yon may pay white men $5 a day to work in 

 that temperature and at that stoop-over task and they may work one 

 day and that is all. Yon can't pay them wages enough to make them 

 stick to it and save yonr property. 



This labor, performed in times past by the Chinese and in a very 

 much modified volume now by those who are left, was non-competitive 

 with white labor, because it performed these necessary primary processes, 

 the stoop-over labor in the orchards and vineyards. Take the sugar-beet 

 production in this State. In traveling back and forth to my ranch in 

 Kern City this season, I passed the great sugar-beet plantations near 

 Tulare. There the white man came in with a plow and plowed the land, 

 most of the time riding, and if it was hot, with an umBrella over his 

 head. The beets were planted by a machine run by a white man, but 

 when the thinning came and the hand-weeding came and that work had 

 to be done, the white man disappeared from those plantations, because 

 he would not perform, for any wage, the stoop-over work necessary. 

 And so the Asiatics took possession of those fields; they thinned the 

 beets, they hand-weeded them. Then the long-legged, long-backed white 

 man, riding on a spring seat under an umbrella, cultivated with a plow- 

 ing device ; and when the harvest time came, involving stoop-over work, 

 the Asiatics appeared and the beets were taken from the soil, and from 

 that time on until they went into the mill. There white labor, employed 

 at high wages, made them into sugar. From the mill the sugar went 

 into transportation, again requiring white labor at high prices. The 

 absolutely necessary processes having been performed by the Asiatics; 

 then work and high wages were furnished to white men and women, 

 work that was agreeable to them and that they willingly performed; 

 but there was no competition between this white labor and the Asiatic 

 labor in these necessary primary processes, because the white labor 

 would not do it and the Asiatics would. This same principle of non- 

 competitive Asiatic labor runs through the asparagus production on 

 the islands in the deltas, to our celery production, largely to our bean 

 production, and to other productions in which millions of dollars have 

 been invested. 



Twenty-five years ago I took what was then the popular view of 

 Chinese labor in California. I committed many sins in taking that 

 view and added my voice to those who were doing their best to corrupt 

 and misinform public opinion on the question of that labor. Finally I 

 concluded that it was my duty as a citizen to take up original investi- 

 gation and find out for myself. I began that investigation, and at its 

 conclusion my opinions were entirely changed, because the result of that 

 investigation confirmed me in this opinion, that the presence of Chinese 

 in California never inflicted any economic, industrial or social damage 



