Proceedings of the Asiatic Exclusion League , August 1909

As is usual, I'll just deal with the most interesting bits of the proceedings.

This is getting to be pretty much absurd when so much attention is put onto what kind of building the PJAs move into. This is taking hate to very strange levels, to watch someone so closely you count how many people move into a house, compute the cubic content of the house, and then bring in a district attorney to bust the people on a law that's probably never been used.

Part of the proselytizing that the League was involved in. Notice the “...dangers confronting our country by the ever increasing numbers of Japanese and other coolies native of Asia...” bit. This is so much like all the anti-immigrant material going on in today's world, but this time the focus is on Mexicans rather than Japanese and Chinese.

“...so menacing and arrogant had become the Japs and so unscrupulous their methods to obtain possession of land...” The whole thing about Japanese owning land really gnawed at the craw of the anti-Japanese section of California. A good bit of all this was economic jealousy, as the Japanese were able to get land that no one else could grow things on and then turn around and grow profitable crops on the land.

I think a factor that I haven't read about elsewhere is in play here. It relates to the “land.” The “land” in California was American, and why should foreigners be allowed to own American land, at least in the minds of some of the anti-Japanese.

One of the members says “...Exclusionists of his part of the State had succeeded in getting rid of every Japanese in the restaurants and saloons in San Jose.” Not only did the League not want Japanese owning land, but they didn't even want them to have jobs in any businesses owned and run by white men.

This is an example of how labor was involved in the anti-Japanese movement.

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