PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 61 



have gone back to China, entitled under the laws to return, and have 

 come back, they have been turned away and deported, under one 

 pretext and another, because the men in charge of this are subservient 

 to the politicians and the politicians are subservient to the great labor 

 organizations of California, and there you are. (Applause.) 



Xow, as to the fact of the need of this labor and the loss that is 

 coming upon the State unless we are permitted to have that labor, your 

 enemies themselves admit it. One of the metropolitan newspapers, 

 so called in San Francisco, said two years ago that it was better for 

 every pound of fruit in California to rot on the ground than to have 

 Chinese here to pick it. One of your members of Congress, living in 

 a fruit region, said it was better that the prunes should rot on the 

 ground than to have Chinese here to pick them, and if the rural people 

 in his district had had a candidate to vote for that would have expressed 

 their opposition to him he would have been left at home; but unfor- 

 tunately, as parties were lined, they had no choice and they satisfied 

 themselves by cutting down his vote, by refusing to support him. The 

 rural people of California should believe that this is a burning issue; 

 that it is a question that goes to their prosperity and the prosperity of 

 the State, for there is but one way out and that is to organize. 



When the Secretary of Commerce and Labor was out here I had a 

 committee of some thirty or forty gentlemen from the rural districts of 

 California and two from Idaho and Utah wait upon him and tell him 

 the needs of labor, and he was surprised. He said he thought the anti- 

 Chinese association in San Francisco was uttering the whole voice 

 of California, that organization led by Tveitmoe and Furuseth and 

 McCarthy and Casey— Tveitmoe, who served his term in the Stillwater 

 penitentiary in Minnesota and came to California to dictate to you 

 what kind of labor you should employ. He said, "I thought that man 

 was uttering the voice of California." He said, "Now, let me give you 

 some advice. Make your voices heard, sign memorials, send them to 

 me, send them to Congress, send them to your members, and let it be 

 known that there is not this unanimous sentiment against Chinese 

 labor in California that we have been told exists. That is the only 

 thing for you to do. " 



Now, if this labor has never inflicted economic damage on California 

 nor industrial damage on California, if its performance has always 

 been beneficial and profitable to the people of this State, why should 

 we on this coast be denied the right to draw upon that labor as the 

 people upon the Atlantic coast draw upon the labor of southern and 

 southeastern Europe? Aren't you equal? You pay your Federal taxes. 

 Your heart swells in patriotism for the flag. You love and support the 

 institutions of your country. You face Asia. Asia is to this coast what 

 Europe is to our Atlantic seaboard. We need commerce with Asia. 



