JAPANESE TENDER A MEMORIAL TO STRAUS

C.T. Takahashi, acting president of the Japanese Association, prior to the departure from Seattle of Secretary Oscar Straus of the department of commerce and labor, presented a memorial to that officer on behalf of local Japanese residents, in which is set forth the Nipponese side of the Japanese problem, so called.

The memorial says in part:

"The yearly number of Japanese immigrants into this country does not exceed a hundredth part of the entire immigrants in one year. In the fiscal year ended June, 1906, there were only 13,835 immigrants from Japan as compared with 265,138 from Austria-Hungary, 273,120 from Italy and 215,665 from Russia. In the preceding year the Japanese numbered only one to ten compared with Russian immigrants; one to thirteen compared with Austrians, and one to fourteen compared with Italians.

"Moreover, the number of Japanese immigrants is not increasing, as has been reported in the newspapers. Their figures for 1901 were much smaller than those for the preceding year; then there was an increase up to 1903, then a falling off for two years, then a slight increase last year.

"It has also been asserted that if Japanese immigration be not stopped, the Pacific Coast will soon be turned into a second Hawaii, where 74 per cent of the adult population is Japanese and Chinese. It is, however, very unreasonable to forecast the future of the Pacific Coast from the experience of Hawaii.

"The reason why the Japanese and Chinese population has become so large in the Hawaiian Islands lies in the fact that the Japanese and Chinese had come to settle there before the Americans had acquired that territory. Previous to the annexation of the islands by America, the native government, in order to promote and develop the sugar industry, concluded a treaty with Japan authorizing the latter to import contract labor without restriction. Thus a large number of Japanese laborers had already been there before the United States took possession of the islands. Had there not been such a treaty encouraging Japanese immigration, the Japanese population of Hawaii would never have grown so large."