specialized skill, and in the second place, these Japanese are
mostly unmarried young men between twenty and forty. A
knowledge of English is necessary in certain of the occupations,
but that too need not be more than elementary. There are hardly
any illiterates among them as far as their own language is con-
cerned. Most young men are graduates of middle schools and
have enough education to qualify for any of the occupations
enumerated. Those with no occupation are mostly women and
children. In other words, the table is set forth simply to give a
normalized snap-shot picture of the occupational status of the
Japanese in California. And the most striking fact about this
picture is the narrowness of the field of Japanese activity. Be
that as it may, we will examine somewhat in detail the more
important of these occupations.

 
  

Japanese in Agriculture.

Japanese take to farms like ducks to water. Nearly 50 per
cent of Japanese immigrants are engaged in horticultural and
agricultural industries, either as farmers or as farm hands, the
latter predominating in number. There are doubtless several
reasons for this state of affairs. For centuries Japanese have
been an agricultural race. Japanese labor immigrants here were
almost exclusively drawn from the agricultural classes of Japan.
It was natural, therefore, that they betook themselves to the
industry as soon as the opportunity was offered to them. And
already in the early eighties a few of them found their way to
the orchards of the Vaca Valley. In the latter eighties a group
of about thirty Japanese left San Francisco and went to the
Sacramento Valley. A similar group landed in the Santa Clara
Valley at about the same time. At that time agricultural labor
in the State was practically monopolized by the Chinese. But
the Restriction Law of 1882 providing for exclusion of Chinese
laborers—“skilled or unskilled and those engaged in mining for |
ten years,” began to curtail their labor supply. By 1890 the |
number of Japanese reached little over 1,000 and the farmers
of California began to experiment with Japanese as farm hands. |
They were then gradually substituted for Chinese, who were.

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