resolution expressing the muddled idealism of that body to whom the question was necessarily academic and unrelated. to their material interests. Had it been subjected to the touchstone of the economic welfare of the German and French. proletarians, there can be little doubt as to the attitude of Bebel and Jaures. Bebel would have declared as he declared in regard to disarmament. "The culture,, education, art, and literature of Germany were the heritage of the race, the property of the proletariat and that to defend them was no false patriotism, no treason to the workingclass." He would have declared that to permit the influx of millions from Asia would be "to put the more advanced nations at the mercy of the more backward ones" and to "adopt such tactics would be fatal to the German Social Democracy." See International Socialist Review, Sept., 1907, p. 133-4. So too would Jaures have spoken defending at all hazards the standard of life of the French workingman. Neither of these men could maintain their position as leaders of the proletarian party, did they not always fight for the betterment of the conditions of their constituents. But the American workers were represented by not a man from the West who knows what Asiatic immigration means, and were misrepresented by delegates better acquainted with Europe than with that portion of the United States lying west of New York City.. It is significant that the three countries that have Asiatic immigration are opposed to it, viz., South Africa, Australia, and America. The people that are not opposed to it are just those who have none of it. And of course those socialist residents of the United States who import their opinions ready made from Europe and are incapable of applying the fundamental principles of Socialism to the local facts cannot be independent in this matter from the dictum of our well-meaning European Comrades who did not know what they were talking about.

Three reasons all false are adduced for favoring an open shop, for that is the practical meaning of the anti-exclusionist's argument.

First: It is asserted that the Japanese standard of living is as high as that of the European immigrants or of the native workingman, hence there can be no competition disastrous to the workers already here.

Let us appeal to the facts!

Hawaii has been open to the unrestricted immigration of the Japanese and may therefor be taken as an illustration of what would happen on the mainland of America were the Asiatic given perfect freedom to come. Bulletin No. 66 of the Bureau of Labor deals with the question statistically. The

Capitalist planters had declared that "the success of the plantations is conditioned, not only by cheap labor but also by law-abiding and docile labor. White labor is either too expensive or too unreliable for profitable operation." And on this demand the importation of Asiatics began. In 1884 there were some 116 Japanese in the island, the plantations were being operated by whites, Hawaiians, and Chinese. In 1900 there were 56.000 and now there are probably 60.000 Japanese. The percentage of the total population was 0.14% in 1884 and 36.50% in 1900. In 1905 the Japanese constituted 65% of the employees on the sugar plantations. Most of these were contract laborers, whose condition was little removed from serfdom. The testimony of wage-schedules and of capitalists combines to show that though strikes have occurred the Japanese are far more law-abiding and docile than any other labor.

The results to the wage schedule are seen in the following figures reported by the U. S. Bureau of Labor.

Similar figures can be produced for Pumpmen, Overseers, Teamsters, Painters, Wharfhands, Sugar Boilers and helpers, and other occupations in the Island. These figures taken from occupations where white and Japanese laborers are in competition show conclusively that the Japanese are absolutely the worst paid of the whole population, worse even than the Chinese. Not only are their wages worse but their hours of labor are longer. While in some trades a slight advance in wages has been gained in the past decade, in those occupations peculiarly liable to Japanese competition wages have declined. For instance, Field hands received 73c a day in

1900, 64c in 1902, and 63c in 1905. (This is the average including female labor).

First the unskilled laborers, then the skilled labor, then the petty merchants, the little storekeepers feel the disastrous competition of the Japanese. Hawaii is suffering to-day from excessive Orientalization. It is dominated by Japanese standards of living. Take the Building trades. In 1881 one establishment employed 41 white carpenters and 7 helpers; 17 more than the seven largest establishments employed in 1905. One establishment employed 6 bricklayers in 1881 and only three were employed by the 7 biggest concerns in 1905. It is not because building has ceased but because the Japanese with their lower wages and longer hours have displaced the whites. The effect on the merchants is evident. They have fewer customers, and these have slenderer purses; and as the Japanese enter business they become rivals.

The standard of living would be debased were the whites compelled to stay on the islands. Fortunately for them California is not as yet inunated by the flood of Asiatic immigration and still offers good wages and fair employment as things go. It costs a white man $40 month to live in Hawaii. The Portugese however manage to exist on $15 to $20. But the Japanese saves money on $10 a month.

But Hawaii is only a half-way station. They are coming into the mainland at the rate of more than 2500 a month and in increasing numbers. Unskilled labor has felt this competition for some time being compelled to relinquish job after job to the low standard of living it could not endure. The unskilled laborers are largely unorganized and voiceless. But as the tide rises it is reaching the skilled laborers and the small merchants. These are neither unorganized nor voiceless, and viewing the menace to their livelihood they loudly demand protection of their material interests. This menace is not due to the superior skill of the Japanese but entirely to their inferior standard of subsistence. It was very good of the International Congress to declare that it was the "duty of organized workingmen to protect themselves against the lowering of their standard of life which frequently results from the massimport of unorganized workers." But Necessity had already taught us that duty. When "the Congress sees no proper solution of these difficulties in the exclusion of definite races from immigration" we are obliged to inquire. what is meant by "proper." We of the Pacific Coast certainly know that exclusion is an effective solution. In the seventh decade of the nineteenth century the problem arose of the immigration of Chinese laborers. The Republican and

Democratic parties failed to give heed to the necessities of the situation and the Workingman's party arose and swept the state with the campaign cry of "The Chinese must go." Then the two old parties woke up and have since realized that to hold the labor vote they must stand for Asiatic exclusion. It is due to this that we are not now inundated by Chinese coolies in California and faced by a social race and labor problem like that of the South.

The second point urged by those who oppose exclusion perhaps had some weight with the Congress in distinguishing between "proper" and improper solutions. It is said by some of our wise economists that the American workingmen might as well meet the competition of imported Japanese labor as the competition of imported Japanese goods or face their competition in the world market. What reasoning arrives at this conclusion it is hard to discover. It involves the theory of the mutual interest of Capitalists and laborers, that wages depends on the price the manufacturer gets for goods produced. But is it really the same to the American workingman to have his wages (the price he sells his labor for) ground down and his job taken from him by a horde of competing Japanese laborers, as it is to have the price of the goods the capitalists put upon the market ground down by the competition of Japanese goods? In the first place the home markets are saved to the American capitalist by protection, and such employment as that may afford is kept to the American laborer. If the reply be made that the influx of Japanese-made goods into the world-market will cause the shutting down of our factories and the disemployment of labor, we can agree. But will the admission of Japanese laborers into America prevent the Japanese capitalists from flooding the world-market with their cheap-labor products? And as workingmen which do we prefer to see, the competition of American and Japanese capitalists in the world's commodity market, or the competition of American and Japanese laborers in the United States labor market? While low wages, unemployment and hard times may come from either source, we are bound to protect our own interests first. Let us as workingmen stop as much competition in the home labor market as we can and it will be up to the Capitalist to stop competition in what he has to sell in the world market.

Consider the attitude of the workingman in this matter. He looks naturally to the nearest and last-acting cause of his discharge for the key to a remedy. Though he may dimly perceive remoter causes it is the one right at hand that most powerfully impresses him. We can depend on a great deal

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of discontent from the man who is thrown out of a job. When the cause of his discharge is a wage-worker cheaper in price, different in color, peculiar in manners and alien in speech all the resentment of the discharged workingman will be directed against this "foreign labor," race prejudice will flare up and the bitter hate of a "scab race" will crush out the last semblance of "brotherly love" and "international solidarity." Protestant Yankee against Catholic Irish, Catholic Irish against the "dagoes" all of them against the "sheeny," and on the Pacific Coast the fierce hoodlumism of a Denis Kearny, group-consciousness in the group-struggle to survive! You can not do away with this by preaching Class-consciousness. and international solidarity. The material conditions are fatal to those ideals dealing with the question in that way.

On the other hand, what is the result when the proximate cause of the workman's discharge is the closing down of the factory? He sees then not that there is a job there but that a "foreigner" has it; he sees that the job is gone. The capitalists who have been taking exorbitant profits out of his labor and justifying themselves on the ground that they were providing the workers with a job, have broken this arrangement. They no longer provide the worker with a job. Their ability to dispose of the workman's product and get him his wages out of it for which they have been charging their profit this ability suddenly vanishes. The capitalists are up against it. Their system of doing business has failed. And when the capitalist business system fails to provide him with the means of life all the revolutionary impulse of the discharged workman's sense of injury is turned, not against a fellow-worker, nor used to fan the flames of race hatred, but becomes the power and energy that drives him into an attack on the capitalist' system.

We have now an immense amount of unemployment and the discontent is powerfully felt in the increase of the socialist strength. Shall we turn to the workingman who is now taking refuge with us, because the capitalist system has failed to give him the means of life, and say, "We propose to let the Japanese laborers come here in unrestricted numbers, though they work for half or a third of what you do and will undoubtedly displace you in the small amount of work that hard times has left to the toilers of America." If we do say that we should be locked up alongside of Harry Thaw in the Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It seems almost too preposterous to argue!

However it is not to be supposed that Comrade Boudin will be daunted. Japanese cannot become citizens and prac