FOREWORD The Japanese crisis in California is no local issue. It is one minor phase of a world problem that is already immense, intricate, and certain to grow steadily worse unless the most drastic steps are taken in the near future to solve it. The diplomatic complications it raises are mere surface ripples. Underneath them are stirring, fierce, human forces-hunger, overcrowding, suspicions as old as Asia, racial habits of life, and the fierce pressure of unheard-of new wealth seeking unheard-of profits on the last frontier of finance, which is China and Siberia. No ordinary office-holder, no bureaucrat, no diplomat trained in the conventions of his craft, can alone cope with a problem which these factors dominate. The real Japanese crisis is properly a task to which the united intelligence of the best-informed people in America and Japan must devote itself for a long time to come. No new "Gentlemen's Agreement" will settle anything. Neither will the new California land law nor the League of Nations nor the China Consortium. Still less will either the propaganda of the Japanese or of the American exclusionists or of the "White Australians.” And the reason for all this is quite plain. Beneath the diplomatic controversies, beneath the pulling and hauling of financial and commercial interests, the roots of the trouble lie in the elemental struggle for exist 435439 ence, which, since the World War, has become everywhere hideously evident to a degree which not even the most ardent Darwinian could hope for. The world is short of food and clothes. Too many babies are being born in the wrong places, and too few in the right places. The rich lands of the earth have all been occupied, and the poorer acres are now being pressed into service. And to aggravate the whole situation, millions of men everywhere are honestly trying to solve their problems of living by the use of political notions and political machinery that are grotesquely inadequate or even false. So far as American opinion is concerned, it has been perverted and tainted by the ignorance of its chief informants, the newspapers, by the misrepresentations of men personally interested in some exploitation, and by the honest enthusiasms and exaggerations of patriots on both sides of the Pacific. And this poisoning has proved unusually dangerous because the American public, lacking first-hand information about Japan and having no direct interest in that country, has been unable to appraise the flood of fact and fiction about the crisis. The following study deals with the five major aspects of the situation. It surveys the events up to the closing weeks of 1920; it analyzes the sources of misunderstanding between the Japanese and Americans; it inquires into the genuine conflicts of interest and policy; it considers the various possibilities of future conflicts on a larger scale; and, finally, it presents suggestions for a fundamental solution based upon what seems to me to be a scientific national policy. At every point an effort has been made to avoid technicalities of law, diplo macy, and scientific theory, in order to bring out in simple form the basic truths of the whole affair. This has compelled me to take an unduly brief and somewhat dogmatic stand with regard to a number of matters that are still decidedly controversial. In no case, however, has this course been pursued without a careful weighing of available evidence. Virtually all accessible sources of information and opinion have been inspected and in some measure utilized. Particular attention has been given to the statements issued by pro-Japanese and anti-Japanese propagandists. Many American, British, Philippine, and Japanese officials have given me valuable facts difficult of access; and business men, banking experts, economists, and export and import houses in New York and San Francisco have most courteously supplied me with significant data. More than two thousand newspaper reports have been clipped, and in some cases checked by a visit to the scene of the real or alleged news. During the summer and autumn of 1920 I journeyed about three thousand miles in California and the adjoining districts of Mexico, interviewing employers of Japanese, a few Japanese farmers, many American ranchmen, realestate operators, social workers, and various state and local officials whose work brought them into contact with some part of the Japanese problem. Of the several hundred Californians whom I had the good fortune to quiz, only one impressed me as seeing the issue in all its immense intricacy and at the same time having a statesmanlike solution ready. That man was Elwood Mead, chairman of the California Land Settlement Board, who has made his State famous by creating farms |