THE COMING OF THE ORIENTAL
I
If the coming of the foreigner has been Canada's greatest danger from
within, the coming of the Oriental has been one of her most perplexing
problems from without. It is not only a perplexity to herself. It is
a perplexity in which Canada involves the empire.
Take the three great Oriental peoples! With China, Great Britain is in
friendly agreement. With Japan, Great Britain is in closest
international pact. To India, Great Britain is a Mother. Yet Canada
refuses free admission to peoples from all three countries. Why? For
the same reason as do South Africa and Australia. It is only
secondarily a question of labor. The thing goes deeper than that.
Consider Japan first: Panama is turning every port facing west into a
front door instead of a back door. Within twenty years, the combined
populations of American ports on the Pacific have jumped from a few
hundreds of thousands at San Francisco and nothing elsewhere to almost
two million, with growth continuing at an accelerated rate promising
within another quarter of a century as many great harbors of almost as
great population on the Pacific as on the Atlantic. The Orient has
suddenly awakened. It is importing something besides missionaries. It
is buying American and Canadian steel, American and Canadian wool,
American and Canadian wheat, American and Canadian machinery, American
and Canadian dressed lumber. Ship owners on the Pacific report that
the docks of through traffic are literally jammed with goods outward
bound--"more goods than we have ships," as the president of one line
testified.
When the reason for building Panama has been shorn of highfalutin
metaphors, it concentrates down to the simple bald fact that the United
States possessions on the Pacific had grown too valuable to be guarded
by a navy ten thousand miles away around the Horn. True, Roosevelt
sent the fleet around the world to show what it could do, and the
country howled its jubilation over the fact. But the Little Brown
Brother only smiled; for the fleet hadn't coal to steam five hundred
miles without hiring foreign colliers to follow around with supply of
fuel. "Fine fleet! To be sure we have the ships," exploded a rear
admiral in San Diego Bay a few years ago; "but look here!" He pointed
through the port at an insignificant coaling dock such as third-rate
barges use. "See any coal?" he asked. "If trouble should come"--it
was just after the flight of Diaz--"we haven't coal enough to go
half-way up or down the coast."
II
Sometimes we can guess the game from the moves of the chess players.
With facts for chessmen, what are the moves?
It was up in Atlin, British Columbia, a few years after the Klondike
rush. Five hundred Japs had come tumbling into the mining camp,
seemingly from nowhere, in reality from Japanese colonies in Hawaii.
The white miners warned the Japs that "it wouldn't be a healthy camp,"
but mine owners were desperate for workers. Wages ran at from five to
ten dollars a day. The Japs were located in a camp by themselves and
put to work. On dynamite work, for which the white man was paid five
to ten dollars, the Jap was paid three and five dollars. Still he held
on with his teeth, "dogged as does it," as he always does. Suddenly
the provincial board of health was notified. There was a lot of
sickness in the Jap camp--"filthy conditions," the mine owners
reported. The board of health found traces of arsenical poisoning in
all the Jap maladies. The Japs decamped as if by magic.
Simultaneously there broke out from Alaska to Monterey the anti-Jap,
anti-Chinese, anti-Hindu agitation. California's exclusion and land
laws became party planks. British Columbia got round it by a
subterfuge. She had the Ottawa government rush through an
order-in-council known as "the direct passage" law. All Orientals at
that time were coming in by way of Hawaii. Ships direct from India
were not sailing. They stopped at Hong Kong and Hawaii. The
order-in-council was to forbid the entrance of Brown Brothers unless in
direct passage from their own land. That effectually barred the Hindu
out, till recently when a Japanese line, to test the Direct Passage
Act, brought a shipload of Hindus direct from India to Vancouver.
Vancouverites patrolled docks and would not let them land. A head tax
of five hundred dollars was leveled at John Chinaman. That didn't keep
John Chinaman out. It simply raised his wages; for the Chinese boss
added to the new hand's wages what was needed to pay the money loaned
for entrance fee. A special arrangement was made with the Mikado's
government to limit Japanese emigration to a few hundreds given
passports, but California went the whole length of demanding the total
exclusion of Brown Brothers.
Why? What was the Pacific Coast afraid of? When the State Departments
of the United States and Canada met the State Department of the Mikado,
practically what was said was this. Only in very diplomatic language:
Whiteman: "We don't object to your students and merchants and
travelers, but what we do object to is the coolies. We are a
population of a few hundred thousands in British Columbia, of less than
three million in the states of the Pacific. What with Chink and Jap
and Hindu, you are hundreds of millions of people. If we admit your
coolies at the present rate (eleven thousand had tumbled into one city
in a few months), we shall presently have a coolie population of
millions. We don't like your coolies any better than you do yourself!
Keep them at home!"
This conversation is paraphrased, but it is practically the substance
of what the representative of the Ottawa government said to a
representative of the Mikado.
Brown Brother: "We don't care any more for our coolies than you do. We
don't in fact, care a hoot what becomes of the spawn and dregs of
no-goods in our population. We are not individualists, as you white
men are! We don't aim to keep the unfit cumbering the earth! We don't
care a hoot for these coolies; but what we do care for is this--we
Orientals refuse to be branded any longer as an inferior race. We'll
restrain the emigration of these coolies by a passport system; but
don't you forget it, just as soon as we are strong enough, in the
friendliest, kindest, suavest, politest, most diplomatic way in the
world, we intend not to be branded any longer as an inferior race. We
intend to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in the management of the
world's affairs. If we don't stand up to the job, throw us down! If
we stand up to the job--and we stood up moderately in China and Russia
and Belgium--we don't intend to ask you for the sop of that Christian
brotherhood preached by white men. We intend to force recognition of
what we are by what we do. We ask no favors, but we now serve you
notice we are in to play the game."
Neither is this conversation a free translation. Shorn of diplomatic
kotowing and compliments and circumlocutions, it is exactly what the
Mikado's representative served to the representatives of three great
governments--Uncle Sam's, John Bull's, Miss Canada's. If you ask how I
know, I answer--direct from one of the three men sent to Japan.
Can you see the white men's eyes pop out of their heads with
astonishment? They thought they were up against a case of labor union
jealousy, and they found themselves involved in a complex race problem,
dealing with three aggressive applicants for places at the councils of
rulers governing the world. California was ordered to turn on the soft
pedal and do it quick, and officially, at least, she did for a time.
Canada was ordered to lay both hands across her mouth and never to
speak above a whisper of the whole Brown Brother problem; and
England--well--England openly took the Jappy-Chappy at his
word--recognized him as a world brother and entered into the famous
alliance. And the coming of coolies suddenly stopped to the United
States and Canada. It didn't stop to South America and Mexico, but
that is another play of the game with facts for chessmen.
Chinese exclusion, Japanese exclusion, Hindu exclusion suddenly became
party shibboleths--always for the party _out_ of power, never for the
party _in_ power. The party in power kept a special Maxim silencer on
the subject of Oriental immigration. The politician in office kept one
finger on his lip and wore rubber-soled shoes whenever an almond-eyed
was mentioned. With that beautiful consistency which only a politician
has, a good British Columbia member, who rode Oriental exclusion as his
special hobbyhorse, employed a Jap cook. In the midst of his stump
campaign against Orientals he found in the room of his cook original
drawings of Fort Esquimalt, of Vancouver Harbor and of Victoria back
country. I was in British Columbia at the time. The funny thing to me
was--all British Columbia was so deadly in earnest it didn't see the
funny side of the inconsistency.
III
I was up and down the Pacific the year the Mikado died, and chanced to
be in San Diego the month that a Japanese warship put into port because
its commander had suicided of grief over the Emperor's death. The ship
had to lie in port till a new commander came out from Japan. Japanese
coolies were no longer coming; but the Japanese middies had the run and
freedom of the harbor; and they sketched all the whereabouts of Point
Loma--purely out of interest for Mrs. Tingley's Theosophy, of course.
Diaz's ministry had been very hard pressed financially before being
ousted by Madero. Some Boston and Pacific Coast men had secured an
option from the Diaz faction of the sandy reaches known as Magdalena
Bay in Lower California. The Pacific Coast is a land of few good
natural harbors; especially harbors for a naval station and target
practice. Suddenly an unseen hand blocked negotiations. Within a year
Japan had almost leased Magdalena Bay, when Uncle Sam wakened up and
ordered "hands off."
Nicaragua has never been famous as a great fishing country. Yet
Japanese fishermen tried to lease fishing rights there and may have,
for all the world knows. In spite of exclusion acts, they already
dominate the salmon fishing of the Pacific.
Coaling facilities will be provided for the merchantmen of the world at
both ends of Panama. Yet when England and France began furbishing up
colonial stations in the Caribbean, Japan forthwith made offers for a
site for a coaling station in the Gulf of Mexico.
But it was in South America and Mexico that the most active
colonization proceeded. There is not an American diplomat in South
America who does not know this and who has not reported it--reported it
with one finger on both lips and then has seen his report discreetly
smothered in departmental pigeon-holes. Up to a few years ago Mexico
and South America were enjoying marvelous prosperity. Coffee had not
collapsed in Brazil. Banks had not blown up from self-inflation in
Argentina. Revolution at home and war abroad had not closed mines in
Mexico. All hands were stretched out for colonists. Japan launched
vast trans-Pacific colonization schemes. Ships were sent scouting
commercial possibilities in South America. To colonists in Chile and
Peru, fare was in many cases prepaid. Money was loaned to help the
colonists establish themselves, and an American representative to one
of these countries told me that free passage was given colonists on
furlough home if they would go back to the colony. There is no known
record outside Japan of the numbers of these colonists. And Japan
asks--why not? Does not England colonize; does not Germany colonize;
does not France colonize? We are taking our place at the world board
of trade. If we fail to make good, throw us out. If we make good, we
do not ask "by your leave."
IV
When a shipping investigation was on in Washington a year ago, many
members of the committee were amazed to learn that Japan already
controls seventy-two per cent. of the shipping on the Pacific. Ask a
Chilean or Peruvian whether he prefers to travel on an American or a
Japanese ship. He laughs and answers that American ships to the
western coast of South America would be as tubs are to titanics--only
until the new registry bill passed there were hardly any ships under
the United States flag on the Southern Pacific. Each of these Japanese
ships is so heavily subsidized it could run without a passenger or a
cargo; high as one hundred thousand dollars a voyage for many ships.
Its crews are paid eight to ten dollars a month, where American and
Canadian crews demand and get forty to fifty dollars. In cheapness of
labor, in efficiency of service, in government aid and style of
building no American nor Canadian ships can stand up against them. And
again Japan asks--why not? Atlantic commerce is a prize worth four
billions a year. When the Orient fully awakens, will Pacific commerce
total four billions a year? Who rules the sea rules the world.
Japan's ships dominate seventy-two per cent. of the Pacific's commerce
now.
So when the war broke out, Japan shouldered not the white man's burden
but the Brown Brother's and plunged in to police Asia. Again--why not?
As Uncle Sam polices the two Americas, and John Bull the seas of the
world, so the Mikado undertakes to police the sea lanes of the Orient.
The Jappy said when he met the diplomats on the subject of coolie
immigration that he would prove himself the partner of the white man at
the world's council boards--or step back.
Is it a menace or a portent? Certainly not a menace, when accepted as
a matter of fact. Only the fact must be faced and realized, and the
new chessman's moves recognized. Uncle Sam has the police job of one
world, South America; Great Britain of another--Europe. Will the
little Jappy-Chappy take the job for that other world, where the Star
of the Orient seems to be swinging into new orbits? The Jappy-Chappy
isn't saying much; but he is essentially on the job for all he is
worth; and Canada hasn't wakened up to what that may mean to her
Pacific Coast.