obligations. By treaty, the United States pledges herself to accord Orientals privileges in America that are accorded to "citizens of the most favored nation." China and Japan accord such privileges to Americans. By statute. Asiatics are denied naturalization and citizenship here. And because of the hazy delimitation of state rights, certain States have found technical grounds for discriminatory anti-Asiatic legislation. Examples of state legislation concerning a question of international scope are the Alien Land Laws of several States resembling those passed in California, against the protests of Japan and our federal government, in 1913. The yellow journals of California misrepresented her attitude toward the law by failing to report that many earnest citizens and state organizations opposed it. This temporarily solves a local problem in an unjust and impolitic way, but it may later threaten the peace of America and the Orient. Out of 11,000,000 acres of farm-land the Japanese owned only 13,000, yet statements were published and believed to the effect that the Japanese "owned and controlled in California fertile land equal to a strip five miles wide the entire length of the State."
The fact that the immigration problem in
