No palliatives will serve to mitigate the ultimate issue, for if the white race should to-day surrender enough of its frontiers to ease the existing colored population-pressure, so quickly would these surrendered regions be swamped, and so rapidly would the fast-breeding colored races fill the homeland gaps, that in a very short time the diminished white world would be faced with an even louder colored clamor for admittance—backed by an increased power to enforce the colored will.
The profoundly destructive effects of colored competition upon white standards of labor and living has long been admitted by all candid students of the problem. So warm a champion of Asiatics as Mr. Hyndman acknowledges that “the white workers cannot hold their own permanently against Chinese competition in the labor market. The lower standard of life, the greater persistence, the superior education of the Chinese will beat them, and will continue to beat them.”[161]
Wherever the white man has been exposed to colored competition, particularly Asiatic competition, the story is the same. Says the Australian Professor Pearson: “No one in California or Australia, where the effects of Chinese competition have been studied, has, I believe, the smallest doubt that Chinese laborers, if allowed to come in freely, could starve all the white men in either country out of it, or force them to submit to harder work and a much lower standard of wages.”[162]
And a South African, writing of the effects of Hindu immigration into Natal, remarks in similar vein: “The condition of South Africa—especially of Natal—is a warning to other lands to bar Asiatic immigrants.... Both economically and socially the presence of a large Oriental population is bad. The Asiatics either force out the white workers, or compel the latter to live down to the Asiatic level. There must be a marked deterioration amongst the white working classes, which renders useless a great deal of the effort made in educational work. The white population is educated and trained according to the best ideas of the highest form of Western civilization—and has to compete for a livelihood against Asiatics! In South Africa this competition is driving out the white working class, because the average European cannot live down to the Asiatic level—and if it is essential that the European must do so, for the sake of his own happiness, do not educate him up to better things. If cheapness is the only consideration, if low wages are to come before everything else, then it is not only waste of money, but absolute cruelty, to inspire in the white working classes tastes and aspirations which it is impossible for them to realize. To meet Asiatic competition squarely, it would be necessary to train the white children to be Asiatics. Even the pro-Orientals would hardly advocate this.”[163]
The lines just quoted squarely counter the “survival of the fittest” plea so often made by Asiatic propagandists for colored immigration. The argument runs that, since the Oriental laborer is able to underbid the white laborer, the Oriental is the “fittest” and should therefore be allowed to supplant the white man in the interests of human progress. This is of course merely clever use of the well-known fallacy which confuses the terms “fittest” and “best.” The idea that, because a certain human type “fits” in certain ways a particular environment (often an unhealthy, man-made social environment), it should be allowed to drive out another type endowed with much richer potentialities for the highest forms of human evolution, is a sophistry as absurd as it is dangerous.
Professor Ross puts the matter very aptly when he remarks concerning Chinese immigration: “The competition of white laborer and yellow is not so simple a test of human worth as some may imagine. Under good conditions the white man can best the yellow man in turning off work. But under bad conditions the yellow man can best the white man, because he can better endure spoiled food, poor clothing, foul air, noise, heat, dirt, discomfort, and microbes. Reilly can outdo Ah-San, but Ah-San can underlive Reilly. Ah-San cannot take away Reilly’s job as being a better workman; but because he can live and do some work at a wage on which Reilly cannot keep himself fit to work at all, three or four Ah-Sans can take Reilly’s job from him. And they will do it, too, unless they are barred out of the market where Reilly is selling his labor. Reilly’s endeavor to exclude Ah-San from his labor market is not the case of a man dreading to pit himself on equal terms against a better man. Indeed, it is not quite so simple and selfish and narrow-minded as all that. It is a case of a man fitted to get the most out of good conditions refusing to yield his place to a weaker man able to withstand bad conditions.”[164]
All this is no disparagement of the Asiatic. He is perfectly justified in trying to win broader opportunities in white lands. But we whites are equally justified in keeping these opportunities for ourselves and our children. The hard facts are that there is not enough for both; that when the enormous outward thrust of colored population-pressure bursts into a white land it cannot let live, but automatically crushes the white man out—first the white laborer, then the white merchant, lastly the white aristocrat; until every vestige of white has gone from that land forever.
This inexorable process is thus described by an Australian: “The colored races become agencies of economic disturbance and social degradation. They sap and destroy the upward tendencies of the poorer whites. The latter, instead of always having something better to look at and strive after, have a lower standard of living, health, and cleanliness set before them, and the results are disastrous. They sink to the lower level of the Asiatics, and the degrading tendency proceeds upward by saturation, affecting several grades of society.... There is an insidious, yet irresistible, process of social degradation. The colored race does not intentionally, or even consciously, lower the European; it simply happens so, by virtue of a natural law which neither race can control. As debased coinage will drive out good currency, so a lowered standard of living will inexorably spread until its effects are universally felt.”[165]
It all comes down to a question of self-preservation. And, despite what sentimentalists may say, self-preservation is the first law of nature. To love one’s cultural, idealistic, and racial heritage; to swear to pass that heritage unimpaired to one’s children; to fight, and, if need be, to die in its defense: all this is eternally right and proper, and no amount of casuistry or sentimentality can alter that unalterable truth. An Englishman put the thing in a nutshell when he wrote: “Asiatic immigration is not a question of sentiment, but of sheer existence. The whole problem is summed up in Lafcadio Hearn’s pregnant phrase: ‘The East can underlive the West.’”[166]
Rigorous exclusion of colored immigrants is thus vitally necessary for the white peoples. Unfortunately, this exclusion policy will not be easily maintained. Colored population-pressure is insistent and increasing, while the matter is still further complicated by the fact that, while no white community can gain by colored immigration, white individuals—employers of labor—may be great gainers and hence often tend to put private interest above racial duty. Barring a handful of sincere but misguided cosmopolitan enthusiasts, it is unscrupulous business interests which are behind every white proposal to relax the exclusion laws protecting white areas.