JAPANESE ARE CREATING ALARM
Increased Activity of Orientals In Organizing Agricultural Colonies on Coast Leads to Suspicion of Motives.
WHITE FARMERS ARE BEING CROWDED OUT
Alleged Tea Plantation Lately Started Near Port Crescent, in Clallam County, Gives Rise to More War Talk.
Many persons are viewing with alarm the rapidly increasing number of Japanese colonies that are taking possessions of productive agricultural sections of the Pacific Northwest and by industrious application and concentrated energy are rapidly making it impossible of profit for white farmers to compete with the Orientals in tilling the soil.
Those who remember the experience of the ranchers of the Sacramento Valley, in California, are prone to make dismal prophecies of the fate which awaits the majority of the ranchers located in the sections in which the Japanese have established colonies. It is even reported that in some places the Japanese are employing the same tactics which enabled them to obtain control of the California valley, which is one of the most productive sections of the Coast.
The method the Japanese adopted to gain supremacy in the Sacramento Valley was, first, to work for such wages as tempted the farmers to dispense with white labor that refused to meet the low scale. After the Japanese had succeeded in supplanting all the white labor in the valley, they made demand for higher wages themselves. The first demand was granted. Later they made another demand to be increased to the old scale that was paid the white labor. This was refused, and they quit work. The farmers then attempted to replace them with white labor, but could get not white men to work for them on account of having employed the Japanese.
Finally the farmers were compelled to reinstate the Japanese at the white labor scale. Before long other raises were demanded until finally the matter became so irksome that the ranchers were glad to accept offers of the Japanese to purchase the ranches. Gradually the white ranchers sold or were crowded out, until the whole valley eventually came into possession of the Japanese, who have controlled it ever since.
Similar Treatment Feared.
Already farmers in the White River Valley, near Seattle, have come to fear that before long they may be subjected to the same treatment by the industrious brown men. Japanese have been pouring into this district for months. Many of them have acquired valuable lands and hundreds of others are at work on surrounding farms. Reports have emanated from the valley of mysterious mass meetings held late at night by the Japanese, and many conjectures have been made as to the outcome of all this activity.
In the White River Valley and other productive sections the Japanese have, whenever, possible, obtained the farms by purchase, or, failing in this, have effected long leases at high rentals. Negotiations have been opened in many instances for the purchase of improved lands at prices which will involve the expenditure of small fortunes. Nowhere, it is reported, has the price put upon property deterred the prospective purchasers, showing that the Japanese have command of plenty of funds to carry out their enterprises.
The latest evidence of activity in the same line is the information given out recently that negotiations have been completed between the Puget Sound Mill and Timber Company, of Seattle, and representatives of the Japanese government for the lease of a vast logged off area in Clallam County, Washington, near Port Crescent, embracing nearly 1,000 acres. On this land it is the intention, say the representatives of the foreign government, to establish a great Japanese tea farming colony. It is rumored that 500 Japanese will be at work on the ground in the next three weeks.
Current with the securing of this tract of land by the Japanese have come rumors that the whole affair is a carefully concealed attempt to locate a large force of well-trained ex-soldiers of Japan in a strategic position, where they will be of immense assistance in any movement made by the Japanese fleet upon
In speaking of the comparative security with which such an organized colony can work against the peace of the country, a former army officer now residing at Port Townsend, within sight of Forts Worden, Flagler and Casey, has made the following statement:
"It was recently pointed out that the defenseless condition of the Sound below Point Wilson really renders the big forts near Port Townsend ineffective, for the reason that a landing party of 1,000 men at Dungeness can come overland and, by a rear attack, take Fort Worden. Once in possession of that formidable defense work, they can speedily silence the guns of Forts Casey and Flagler, thus providing free access to Puget Sound for an invading fleet.
"The presence of a large colony of Japanese on the shores of the Strait, many miles nearer the ocean, cannot, as a consequence, be looked upon in the light of anything but a serious menace to the safety of this great inland sea, in event of invasion at the hands of the Japanese. With a colony of 1,000 or more of these men, all of whom are finished soldiers, already on the land, a material advantage is afforded a landing party, for there is no doubt that many of the so-called 'tea farms' are provided with modern rifles and ammunition.
"These 'colonists' are in an excellent position to intercept telegraphic communication, and, in view of the fact that a naval attack is seldom advertised long in advance, can make a formidable stand against all the soldiers the United States is able to rush to the vicinity, before the transports land their troops. Guided by the 'farmers,' the invaders can quickly press forward to the headquarters of this artillery district. With Fort Worden invested, it would be only a short time before the flag of the Rising Sun would be located here, at Casey and Flagler, and later on at the big navy yard which the government has established in a hidden and alleged protected position on the Sound.
"Argument along this line may be looked upon by the over-confident as the talk of an alarmist, but there is no gainsaying the fact that the Japanese, before they precipitated hostilities by sinking a little Russian gunboat at Chemulpo, were in possession of the finest military maps and of thorough information as to the number of troops and their equipment that Russia could make available in Manchuria. It has been conceded by all experts who have analyzed that decimating and prodigiously expensive war that it was the preparedness prevailing in the Japanese war office, and the utter lack of that important adjunct on the other side, that made it possible for the Nipponese to meet and crush forever in the long-prevailing Russian supremacy in the Far East."
Japanese Tea Farm Which Occupies Strategic Point