On the other hand, the economic status of the Japanese in California has been steadily developing. They are entering in some directions into serious competition with the white race. Thus, in agriculture, their steady expansion through industry and thrift has caused alarm among small white farmers. Added to this is the high birth rate among the Japanese, which, because of their racial and cultural distinction, forms a problem touching the fundamental questions of the American commonwealth.
By the foregoing analysis of the situation, we see that although the problem of the Japanese in California has been made the subject of political and private exploitation, and thereby rendered unnecessarily complicated and acute, it is, nevertheless, a grave problem which contains germs that are bound to develop many evils unless it is properly solved.
In the following chapters we shall study the status of the Japanese in California in respect to population and birth rate, their agricultural condition, their living and culture, and their economic attainments, with a view to elucidating just wherein lie the precise causes of the difficulties.
FACTS ABOUT THE JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA--POPULATION AND BIRTH RATE
A knowledge of the facts regarding the Japanese population in California is important, because it has been a point of sharp dispute between those who insist on exclusion and those who oppose it, the former arguing that the Japanese are increasing at an amazing rate through immigration, smuggling, and birth, threatening to overwhelm the white population in the State, the latter contending that they are not multiplying in a way menacing to the State of California. The fact that such a dispute prevails in the matter of the number of Japanese suggests that it is, at least, one of the crucial points on which the whole problem rests. This is true in the sense that, if the Japanese in California were decreasing in number as the American Indians are, it would be totally useless to waste energy in an attempt to quicken the final extinction. If, on the other hand, they were to multiply in a progressively higher rate so as to overwhelm the white population, it would certainly be serious both for California and for the United States.