PHELAN WARNS OF JAPANESE MENACE

Senator Says Orientals Are Rapidly Acquiring Land by Evading Statute.

MAY BECOME LAWMAKERS

Universal Service, Special by Leased Wire.

SAN FRANCISCO, Friday, April 18. -- United States Senator James D. Phelan, in addressing the members of several organizations at the Palace Hotel yesterday, took occasion to emphasize the menace which he says lies in the constant, silent movement of Japanese into California.

Senator Phelan also stated that his campaign to keep the Japanese from getting a firmer hold in California would not be relaxed.

Senator Phelan also spoke at length on the League of Nations, his hope for early permanent peace, the creation of a great mercantile marine and problems of the future. Of all these, he said, the most vital to the Pacific Coast is the Japanese invasion. He said:

"It is impossible for those people who do not live in California or New Zealand to appreciate the situation in California today. I have taken the position that it is only our duty to inform the people that is a menace of national importance.

All States Exposed.

"No state can be invaded by an enemy without all states being exposed to the same menace.

"The Chinese were willing to work for wages, while the Japanese want to cultivate the land for themselves.

"Hawaii floats the American flag and is the key of the Pacific. There are possibly 100,000 Japanese in the whole of the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiian Islands are in no true sense a part of the American territory.

"In a very few years the sons and daughters of the Japanese will control the vote and you will see a Japanese legislature in Hawaii. Are you going to permit the same thing in California? The soil is everything. The crops come from the soil and give employment to the farmer, the raw products necessary to give work in the various occupations come from the soil. The basis of our wealth, our taxation, rests on the soil.

Evade Land Law.

We passed a law in 1913 prohibiting the sale of land to Japanese. They have evaded this law by leasing and by taking the land in the names of their children born here. Their birth rate has grown at a tremendous rate.

They are coming in over the Mexican border, where we have not adequate protection. When there was an undue number the federal authorities caught eighty in one day. Notwithstanding the vigilance on the part of the government, they are coming.

They take leases for three years. Then they pass the lease on to a relative or friend, indefinitely tying up the land. And this because they make enormous profits out of leases. But they will not work for wages -- only for themselves. As leaseholders they work twenty hours a day and the women work in the field until the last minute. You may see Japanese mothers working with their infants strapped to their backs, as I have seen.

Driving the White Men Out.

We must take great precautions to prevent these people from taking our land. They are preventing our own people from acquiring and working the land. The race of the white man in California will deteriorate, because they are driving them out.

The league of nations has not given the Japanese the immigration rights they expected to get at the Versailles conference. And one of the valuable lessons which the war has taught the Orientals is that this great, soft, untrained nation had the stamina and vitality to raise itself to heroic deeds in the hour of trial.

They did not think we would or could do it. The lesson has been a most wholesome one for the Oriental to learn.