fourths of one per cent of the whole. My confidence in that capacity of theirs for selfprotection is such as to convince me that the presence in the country of some 100,000 Japanese—about one-tenth of one per cent of its population, is no menace to their safety or their well being or their complete independence. This faith is all the stronger when I reflect that these 100,000 people represent the net result of nearly forty years of practically unrestricted immigration which began in 1870 and ended in 1907. The effect of the so-called Gentlemen's agreement, arrived at in that year, was such that during the next succeeding six years—1908 to 1913, inclusive—there were more departures than arrivals—31,777 who went out against 30,985 who came in. And anyone who believes that the descendants of 100,000 Japanese can in any calculable number of generations, have any appreciable influence for harm on the descendants of 110,000,000 of the powerful amalgamated race that now occupies the United States, must, it seems to me, have lost all sense of proportion, as the result perhaps of too much contemplation of the prolificness (to use a word of Herbert Spencer's) of the Japanese in comparison with the effect of race suicide and birth control and the doctrines of the Rev. T. R. Halthus on the great American people.
Now as to land ownership, the figures are almost, if not quite as significant as in the case of immigration. I refuse to believe that the proprietorship by the Japanese of 28,000 acres of farm land and the cultivation by them under lease or contract of some 200,000 to 250,000 acres, out of a total of 29,000,000 acres of arable land by some 24,500 Japanese are fraught with peril to the 2,615,000 people that are estimated as making up the population of California.
Is there any one of the readers of The Voter who thinks that the interests of the sovereign State of Oregon are likely to suffer because its population of 672,765 (in 1910) included 4,308 Japanese who operated 172 farms having a total acreage of 6,477, of which they owned 2,793? Or is there any member of that splendid community of 8,500 souls who occupy the Hood River Valley, who is disturbed as to his own safety or that of his children or his children's children because
[5]
