who will come by limiting the opportunities for their activity here
when they arrive.” +

“Tn other words,” says Dr. Gulick, “this is an indirect legislation
for the control of immigration and looks toward the exclusion
of those Japanese already owning real estate in California.” ?
Another writer says, the law is unjust, impolitic, and unnecessary.
“It is unjust because it takes advantages of discrimination under
the naturalization law to further discriminate between aliens of
different races lawfully in this country. It limits the property
rights of those who must remain aliens and safeguards those of
others who might, but do not, become citizens. It changes the
law with reference to the ownership of the soil which no doubt
furnished a motive for some to immigrate. Moreover, as the
representatives of the Japanese government have pointed out on
many occasions, subjects of the United States are not only ac-
corded the same property rights as other aliens in Japan, but
these rights are extensive. Though aliens may not own land in
fee simple because the government has not as yet placed in effect
a law passed by the Japanese Parliament in 1910, conferring that
right, they may lease land for such long periods and under such
conditions that the difference is not great. Hence the Californian
| is not reciprocal.”

 
  
  
   
    
 
 
  

“The law is impolitic because it is opposed to the spirit and fun-
damental principles of amity and good understanding, upon which
‘the conventional relations of the two nations depend. It is the
kind of legislation that retards and interferes with commercial
‘relations, and no large part of the foreign commerce to which
‘California is a party is with Japan. The development of closer
‘commercial relations with Japan and other eastern Asiatic coun-
tries should be cherished, and not retarded and interfered with.”
“Finally, investigation makes it evident that ownership carries
with it the closest approach to American standards and the best

1 Speech by Attorney-General Webb before the Commonwealth Club
of San Francisco, August 9, 1913, quoted by Gulick in his American-
Japanese Problem, p. 189.

2 Ibid.

63