In 1905 The Asiatic Exclusion League, then known as The
Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, was organized and O. E.
Tveitmoe was made its president. He is still with it. Who he is
need not be told. He is too famous for that. The League, how-
ever, has already caused a great deal of unnecessary unpleas-
antness. The “School Question” of 1906 was entirely due to their
activity. The entire number of Japanese children attending the
public schools then was no more than 92, and these were scat-
tered in twenty different schools. Besides, the report of Secretary
Metcalf, who was sent here by President Roosevelt to investigate,
says:

“Many of the foremost educators in the State, on the other
hand, are strongly opposed to the action of the San Francisco
Board of Education. Japanese are admitted to the University of
California, an institution maintained and supported by the State.
They are also admitted to, and gladly welcomed at Stanford
University. San Francisco, so far as known, is the only city
which has discriminated against Japanese children. I talked
with a number of prominent labor men, and they all said that
they had no objection to Japanese children attending the primary
grades; that they wanted the Japanese children now in the United
States to have the same school, to have the same school privileges
as children of other nations. . . .”?

The smashing of Japanese restaurants was also encouraged by
the same League. And the municipal government was then in
the hands of Schmitz and Ruef.

Their agitation work has been much aided by certain politicians.
Mr. Kahn, who has been consistently decrying against Asiatic
immigration, among other things because of their ignorance, when
the Burnett-Dillingham Bill with the literacy test came before the
| House, pleaded for admission of illiterates. He further said,
“Restriction of immigration is not a new subject, and the present
agitation is but a recrudescence of anti-foreign agitation that has

1 Quoted in H. B. Johnson, “Discrimination Against Japanese in Cali-
fornia,” p. 99.

59