Improved standards of living as a cause of the high birth rate will also cease to operate as new immigrants will no longer enter; and the American-born generations will gradually take their parents’ place. The younger generations of Japanese are as a rule higher in culture and ideals than their parents. Accordingly, it is unthinkable, other things being equal, that they should go on multiplying themselves as their parents did. It is an established principle proved conclusively by the thoroughgoing Congressional researches in Rhode Island,[29] that the birth rate among foreign-born immigrants is exceedingly high, and that it steadily decreases in successive generations, reaching the normal American rate within a few generations. We are, then, on a safe ground in inferring that a similar tendency will also manifest itself among the Japanese in the United States.
Our discussions concerning future birth rate then, seem to point decidedly to the conclusion that since the present high percentage of the middle-age group and the married group is bound to diminish as time passes, and since the fertility of the future generations is not likely to be as high as that of their parents, it will decrease markedly by the time the present generation passes away. It is, therefore, only a question of time. The present is a transitional period, a turning-point, in the history of the Japanese in America. It is surely unwise, then, to become unduly excited over the passing phenomenon, and thereby defeat the working of a natural process which promises to bring about a satisfactory solution in the not distant future.
CHAPTER VIII
FACTS ABOUT THE JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA—FARMERS AND ALIEN LAND LAWS
Agriculture is by far the most important occupation of the Japanese in California. Out of the total Japanese population of 70,196 in California, 38,000 belong to the farming classes including those who are sustained by breadwinners. Besides, there are thousands of laborers who seek farm work during the summer. Perhaps owing to the facts that most of the Japanese immigrants are drawn from the agricultural communities in Japan, that the climate and soil of California are especially suited to the kinds of farming in which the Japanese are skilled—such as garden-trucking and berry-farming—the Japanese in California have been markedly successful in agricultural pursuits.
History of Japanese Agriculture in California.
The history of Japanese farming in California dates back to the time when the Chinese Exclusion Law was enacted in 1882. A number of Japanese laborers were employed in the Vaca Valley and another group in the vineyards of Fresno as early as 1887-1888. Since that time the number of Japanese farm laborers has steadily increased. They have distributed themselves widely in the lower Sacramento, San Joaquin River, Marysville, and Suisun districts. Later many Japanese settled in Southern California. During that early period the Japanese farm laborers were warmly welcomed by the California farmers because of the dearth of farm hands and because of their skill and industry in farming.
But the Japanese were not satisfied at remaining mere farm hands. They saved their wages and attempted to start independent farming. In many cases independent farming was not as profitable as wage labor, since the former involved risk and responsibility. Yet because of the incalculable pleasure which independence brings, because of the ease with which leases could be obtained, and because of the social prestige attached to the “independent farmers,” the Japanese developed a distinct tendency to lease or buy land and to take up farming by themselves rather than be employed as wage earners.