HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: CALIFORNIA FARMING, JAPANESE IMMIGRATION, AND THE ALIEN LAND LAWS

At the turn of the twentieth century California agriculture was undergoing a qualitative change. Towards the end of the nineteenth century California was the nation's number two wheat-producing state, with highly mechanized, extensive farms. By the early twentieth century, crops such as cotton, sugar beets, fruits, and vegetables, grown on smaller farms with more intensive use of farm labor, came to dominate California agriculture. One consequence of this transformation was the increased use of farm labor: by 1910, about half of the agricultural work force in California was made up of wage laborers, compared to less than 20 percent in other states.³

A growing number of Japanese immigrants filled the increasing demand for agricultural labor by California farms in the early twentieth century, whose supply of Chinese labor was cut off by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In addition to the more than 66,000 Japanese who came to the continental United States from Japan between 1900 and 1908, another 35,000 came by way of Hawaii. By 1905 Japanese immigrants dominated the supply of seasonal farm labor in California. Like the Chinese immigrants who had provided much of California's farm labor in the nineteenth century, Japanese immigrants were organized under co-ethnic labor contractors. Japanese immigrant laborers also inherited the legacy of anti-Chinese sentiments, and were treated as “coolies” or illegal contract laborers.⁴

These sentiments, and the view that Japanese immigrants were the agents of a rising foreign power, soon led to efforts to end immigration from Japan. The first restriction on Japanese immigration came in 1908 when the government of Japan agreed to end the emigration of Japanese laborers to the United States and the U.S. government banned Japanese laborers from entering the continental United States via Hawaii, Canada, or Mexico. This “Gentlemen's Agreement” did restrict the immigration of Japanese laborers. However, the total number of Japanese entering the United States only fell slightly, due to a large increase in the number of family members (women without occupations and children) who followed their relative and to the growing number of immigrants re-entering the United States after going back to Japan.⁵

In response to the curtailment of Japanese immigrant labor, California farm employers tried to diversify their sources of labor. However, their efforts were not successful so they turned to labor contracts and tenancy to insure a supply of Japanese immigrant farm labor. Tenant farming was also much more attractive to Japanese immigrants than agricultural labor, because under tenancy they could utilize family labor to increase total income and save money to purchase land.⁶

Between 1900 and 1920 there was a rapid expansion of farms operated by Japanese in California as well as of acres farmed (see Table 1 and Figure 1). The growth of Japanese agriculture could also be seen in the increasing proportion of Japanese male immigrants who were farmers, which went from less than 1 percent in 1900 to more than 20 percent of working adults in 1920. In contrast, the total number of farms in California also grew between 1900 and 1920, but only by 34 percent. The percentage of non-Latino white male immigrants in California who were farmers actually declined from 16 percent in 1900 to 13 percent in 1920.⁷

The growing number of Japanese farmers provided a new target for the anti-Japanese movement, which opposed the settlement and family formation of Japanese immigrant farmers. Opposition to Japanese immigration became a campaign issue; in 1913 the California legislature passed an Alien Land Law, banning the purchase and long-term leasing of land by “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” Although never mentioned explicitly, Japanese immigrants were the main targets of the law.⁸

The 1913 Alien Land Law was written with a number of loopholes, which were known to some of the legislation's promoters. These loopholes allowed Japanese immigrants to circumvent the law in a number of ways. Land could be purchased under the name of an American-born (citizen) child. A land corporation could be set up. American-born offspring of Japanese could be recruited to buy land for Japanese immigrants. Further, the 1913 law only prohibited the purchase and long-term leasing of farmland; rental agreements of three years or less were allowed. These loopholes, combined with the agricultural boom during World War I, allowed Japanese immigrants to continue expanding their farming after the 1913 Alien Land Laws were passed (see Table 1 and Figure 1).⁹

International considerations also served to keep a lid on anti-Japanese legislation during World War I when Japan was an ally of the United States, but soon after the war ended it reemerged. With the slogan “Keep California White,” James Phelan reignited the anti-Japanese movement in his 1920 campaign for reelection to the United States Senate. The core of this movement consisted of members of the nativist Sons (and Daughters) of the Golden West, the American Legion, the California Federation of Labor, and farm groups such as the California Grange, all of whom were angered by the growing settlement of Japanese in California, despite the “Gentlemen's Agreement” and the 1913 Alien Land Law.¹⁰

These groups spearheaded an initiative in 1920 that was passed by a three to one margin, closing many of the loopholes in the 1913 law. All rental of land was banned, and aliens ineligible for citizenship were barred from holding stock in corporations owning or leasing farmland. Despite efforts by Japanese immigrants to challenge these laws in court, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1923 upheld key sections of the law.¹¹

In that same year the California Legislature amended the Alien Land Law of 1920 to further restrict Japanese American farming.¹²

Following the lead of California, similar legislation was soon passed in nine other states: Arizona (1917); Washington, Texas, and Louisiana (1921); New Mexico (1922); Idaho, Montana, and Oregon (1923); and Kansas (1925). These states, together with California, were home to about 90 percent of the Japanese American population in the continental United States in 1920. During World War II, Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming also passed Alien Land Laws.¹³

Japanese American farming declined after 1920, in contrast to its continued expansion following the passage of the 1913 Alien Land Law. Between 1910 and 1920 the number of farms operated by Japanese in California almost tripled from 1,816 to 5,152, while the number of acres farmed increased more than three times from 99,254 to 361,276. In contrast, the decade after the passage of the 1920 Alien Land Law saw the number of Japanese-operated farms in California fall from 5,152 to 3,956, or about 25 percent, and the number of acres farmed fell from 361,276 to 191,429, or almost 50 percent (See Table 1 and Figure 1). The law had its biggest impact on tenant farmers as would be expected (because the law only banned leases and purchases of land, but did not affect ownership), so that the number of farms operated by Japanese American tenants fell 26.9 percent between 1920 and 1930, while the number of owner-operated farms actually rose 10.7 percent (see Table 2). The average size of Japanese American farms in California also fell from 70.1 acres in 1920 to 48.4 acres in 1930.¹⁴

Some scholars have questioned whether the loss of land really represented losses to Japanese immigrant farmers. John Modell has argued that the decline in the number of acres and size of Japanese-operated farms simply represented a move toward more intensive agriculture, noting that the value of Japanese farm land and buildings actually rose four-fold in Los Angeles in the 1920s. However other local studies of Japanese American farming in California differ: Eiichiro Azuma's study of the impact of the 1920 Alien Land Law on the farming community of Walnut Grove reports a 50 percent decline in the number of Japanese farmers following the passage of the law. Further, Japanese American farmers in Los Angeles do not seem to be representative of the state as a whole, where value of farms, lands, and buildings owned by Japanese fell from 4.5 percent of the total in 1920 to 2.5 percent in 1930 (see Table 3).¹⁵

In contrast to the decline of Japanese American farming in California after 1920, Japanese American agriculture in Hawaii grew in the 1920s. Hawaii, with its large Japanese American population and no alien land law, saw the number of farms operated by Japanese Americans increase from 3,098 in 1920 to 4,191 in 1930, an increase of one-third.¹⁶

THE DECLINE OF JAPANESE IMMIGRANT FARMING IN CALIFORNIA IN THE 1920S: THE ALIEN LAND LAW AND THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS

A major issue in the debate over the effectiveness of the 1920 Alien Land Law in California was the impact of the 1920/21 depression and the sharp fall in farm prices. One explanation of the decline in Japanese immigrant farming during the 1920s was that Japanese immigrant farmers overextended themselves during the agricultural boom during and after World War I and suffered a setback from the agricultural depression of 1920/21. Both scholars who argue that the 1920 Alien Land Law was impotent and those who argue that it had significant negative consequences agree that the downturn in agriculture was a factor contributing to the decline in Japanese immigrant farming.¹⁷

The financial distress of farmers can easily be seen on the national level during the 1920s. Farm real estate prices declined by almost one-third between 1920 and 1930.¹⁸

Farm foreclosure rates tripled during the 1920s from fewer than five per 1,000 farms in 1920 to more than 15 in 1930. The total number of farms in the United States fell by 2.5 percent over the decade and farmers were pushed back down the farm-tenure ladder as the number of owner-operators fell by 9.1 percent, while the number of tenant farmers and managers grew by 7.8 percent (see Table 2).¹⁹

But to fully understand the impact of the agricultural depression in the 1920s, two differing explanations of the crisis have to be considered: one which focuses on the decline in the prices of farm products, especially during the 1920/21 recession, and an alternative explanation which focuses on over-optimism among farmers and lenders during the post–World War I period which produced a boom and bust in farm real estate prices.²⁰

On a national level, the impact of the fall in farm prices during the 1920/21 downtown was severe: an index of farm prices fell 43 percent from 1920 to 1921, and even after accounting for the general deflation, the purchasing power of farmers (relative price of farm output) fell almost 19 percent. However, one would expect Japanese immigrant farmers in California to have been less affected by the agricultural downtown because they were heavily concentrated in truck crops whose prices held up better during bad times than those of other crops.²¹

To examine how Japanese immigrant farmers were affected by the 1920/21 agricultural crisis, I constructed an index of farm prices for crops grown by Japanese farmers in California for the years 1918–1920 and 1922–1924 using price indices developed by H. J. Stover weighted by the value of output reported by Japanese farmers (see the Appendix for details of this calculation). This index included crops that made up 89 percent of the value of the output of Japanese immigrant-operated farms in California in 1920. I found that the prices of crops most grown by Japanese immigrant farmers in 1920 did indeed hold up better: their prices fell about 17 percent over this period, compared to a 31 percent fall in California farm prices and a 35 percent fall for U.S. farm prices, as shown in Table 2.²²

Despite the fact that California farm prices fell almost as much as agricultural prices on a national level, the impact of the 1920s downturn was not as severe on California agriculture in general as it was on the agriculture of the country as a whole. The total number of farms in California grew by 15 percent over the decade (with all of the increase taking place between 1920 and 1925). California farmers continued to move up the farm tenure ladder with an 18.2 percent increase in the number of owner-operators outpacing the 6.9 percent increase in tenant farmers and managers.²³

If agricultural prices and the decline of farm income were the main reason for agriculture's economic crisis, then one would expect Japanese immigrant farmers to be less affected than California farmers in general. However this was not the case. U.S. census data show a large loss of farmland by Japanese farmers and a drop in the overall number of Japanese farms between 1920 and 1930. This decline, when the opposite trends were occurring among all California farms, can best be explained by the 1920 California Alien Land Law, not the decline in farm prices during the 1920/21 recession.

There is an alternative explanation of the agricultural crisis of the 1920s which is not based on the decline of farm prices. H. Thomas Johnson argues that the financial distress of the 1920s was not due to the decline in farm prices and incomes, but to excessive optimism during the postwar boom in farm real estate prices.²⁴

Johnson points out that farm prices and incomes rebounded in the 1920s after a sharp decline in 1920 and 1921, but that financial distress in terms of declining land prices, foreclosures, and failures of rural banks did not abate.

The real culprit according to Johnson was the expectation by farmers and rural lenders that it would take a long time for European farm production to recover from the war. This led to a speculative boom in farm real estate prices between 1918 and 1920. This boom was supported by excessive lending, which rose 18 percent in 1919 and 21 percent in 1920 alone. In addition, more risky second mortgages, which were largely funded by individuals and not banks, grew rapidly during and after World War I, and accounted for many of the loan failures in the 1920s.²⁵

At first glance, California did seem to participate in the World War I farm real estate boom, although perhaps not quite as much as did the country as a whole. From 1916, when farmland price increases began to accelerate, to their peak in 1920, California farm real estate values rose 44 percent as compared to a 60 percent increase for national farmland prices. California also had a higher percentage of farms that were mortgaged in 1920 than the national average: 50.4 percent versus 37.2 percent nationally, and the percentage of all farms that were mortgaged grew at a faster rate in California than for the country as a whole during the 1910s.²⁶

However, the driving forces behind the national boom and California's increase were different. Nationally, the rise in farm real estate prices was driven by a rise in farm exports: between 1914, when World War I began, and the peak of farm exports in 1919, agricultural exports as a percentage of farm gross product almost doubled, from 16.3 percent to 32.1 percent. All of this increase was reversed during the 1920s, so that by 1930 only 15.5 percent of farm output was exported. Of the six major classes of exported farm commodities, the sharpest boom and bust in exports was in pork, followed by wheat. California has historically raised very few hogs, and by 1920 California's wheat production had fallen dramatically from earlier levels. There was one major class of exported farm products that not only did not have a boom and bust during and after World War I, but also increased during the 1920s: fruit. California was number one among the states in fruit production, growing most or all of the apricots, plums and prunes, almonds, walnuts, figs, grapes, olives, oranges, and lemons in the United States.²⁷

California's agricultural boom in the twentieth century was also sustained by a boom in domestic demand. California had a fast-growing population, which increased 60 percent between 1900 and 1910, 44 percent during the following decade, and 66 percent during the 1920s. California's population growth rate was three to four times the national average, and California was more urbanized than the country as a whole, further increasing the market for farm goods. California farmers were also able to increase their sales to other parts of the nation through the development of refrigerated transport and the growth of farm marketing cooperatives. Demand for many of the fruits and nuts grown in California grew rapidly because it was more income-elastic than the demand for staples such as wheat. California farmers were also able to displace imported fruits and nuts from Europe.²⁸

The different basis for the increase in farm real estate prices led to very different outcomes during the 1920s: between 1920 and 1929, national farm real estate values fell 32 percent, while California farmland suffered only a 4 percent drop! In addition to California agriculture's better performance in terms of growth in the number of farms and farm acreage, and movement up the agricultural tenant ladder, California's agricultural employment grew 6.5 percent in the 1920s while it fell 4.5 percent in the rest of the nation. California also had a lower rate of farm foreclosures than the rest of the country during the late 1920s.²⁹

The crops grown by Japanese immigrant farmers were largely fruit and vegetables, and thus should have been less vulnerable to the boom and bust of farm exports during and after World War I. Seven of the ten top crops (by value) grown on Japanese-run farms were fruits (grapes, miscellaneous fruits and nuts, berries, and cantaloupes) or vegetables (miscellaneous vegetables, potatoes, and onions). If the agricultural crisis of the 1920s was a result of the collapse of excessively high land prices based on excess optimism from the World War I boom in farm exports, then one would expect Japanese immigrant farmers to feel less effect than the average American farmer, as was the case with farmers in California. Again, the loss of land and farms by Japanese farmers during the 1920s can best be explained by the 1920 California Alien Land Law, not the decline in farm exports and the resulting agricultural depression of the 1920s.³⁰

DID EVASION BY JAPANESE IMMIGRANT FARMERS RENDER THE LAW IMPOTENT?

A final argument, made by Robert Higgs, is that evasion of the law rendered the 1920 California Alien Land Law impotent.³¹

It is true that Japanese immigrants did have a number of ways of getting around the 1920 Alien Land Law. Japanese immigrant farmers' efforts to circumvent the law can be seen in the growth of Japanese American farm managers, whose numbers grew from 113 in 1920 to 1,816 in 1930. In 1930 managers accounted for 90,587 acres, or almost one-half the total acres farmed by Japanese Americans in California (see Table 1).³²

But not all Japanese immigrant farmers were willing and able to evade the laws. An interviewer for a study of Japanese in the 1930s reported, “…many object to these subterfuges and refuse to attempt to transgress the law.” Another interviewer reported that “Many who had made verbal contracts to continue leasing were cheated or the verbal contracts were broken.” Those farmers who did evade the law were by no means immune from prosecution. Frank Chuman states that between 1920 and 1940 there were 16 appeals of escheat actions taken against Japanese immigrant farmers for violation of the Alien Land Laws. This number only includes cases that were appealed to the state appellate courts or to the U.S. Supreme Court, so the total number of cases was undoubtedly greater.³³

Higgs argued that, “…the apparently precipitous drop [in the number of Japanese-operated farms] from 1920 to 1930 was largely spurious. Much of this decline was offset by the greatly increased number describing themselves as managers, a common ruse to evade the alien land laws.” But even including managers, the decline in Japanese farming was severe. The number of Japanese-operated farms in California shows the smallest decline of a number of measures, falling from 5,152 to 3,956 (or 23 percent) in the ten years following the passage of the law. However acres farmed by Japanese fell 47 percent, and the value of their farms, lands, and buildings fell from 4.5 percent to 2.5 percent of the total, or by 44 percent (see Tables 2 and 3).³⁴

Higgs also concluded “the alien land laws appear to have failed utterly.” because the “total number of Japanese farm operators in 1940 was virtually the same as it had been 20 years earlier.” Although it is true that there were 5,152 Japanese-operated farms in California in 1920 and 5,135 in 1940, Higgs overlooks the lack of any progress in acquiring farmland during these years. The War Relocation Authority records of Japanese taken to World War II concentration camps show that Japanese immigrants and their citizen children owned about 69,000 acres of farm land in California, slightly less that the 74,000 acres reported by Japanese immigrants in 1920. In 1940 only 28.4 percent of all Japanese American farmers in California (including American-born Japanese exempt from the Alien Land Laws) were full-owners and 6.3 percent were part owners, as compared to 67.8 percent and 10.5 percent, respectively, of all California farmers. Twenty years after the passage of the California Alien Land Law, Japanese American farmers were more than three times as likely as the average farmer to be a tenant.³⁵

Further, American-born offspring of Japanese, who as citizens were able to rent and buy farmland, owned much of this land. In 1920 American-born offspring of Japanese only numbered 20,814 in California, as compared to 51,138 Japanese immigrants. Further, the second generation was still quite young, with almost all of them under 20 years of age. However, by 1940 the second generation outnumbered their immigrant parents by almost two to one in California, 60,148 to 33,569. Even though most of the second generation were under 20, there were two-thirds as many adult American-born offspring of Japanese as immigrants. The number of second generation Japanese American farmers rose rapidly, so that by 1940 there were 1,663 in California as compared to 4,134 Japanese immigrant farmers.³⁶

Higgs does argue that looking at only immigrant Japanese farmers one can still find progress up the agricultural tenant ladder. Higgs states that because the population of Japanese immigrant adult males in California declined by about one-third between 1920 and 1940, from 32,000 to 21,000, while the population of Japanese immigrant farmers declined only 22 percent, from 5,039 to 3,911, so that: “the conclusion applies a fortiori: the Japanese immigrants substantially improved their tenure status in California agriculture during the two decades after the passage of the harsh Initiative act of 1920.”³⁷

But what Higgs does not make clear is that the data exclude the number of Japanese immigrants who were farm managers in 1920, while the 1940 number includes farm managers. He also used data on the number of Japanese owner-operated and tenant farms in California in 1920 from the Agricultural Census, while the 1940 data based on the Census of Population counts the number of male Japanese immigrant farmers, which was greater than the number of farms. After correcting for these factors, the number of Japanese immigrant–owned farms in California fell by 32 percent between 1920 and 1940, or about the same proportion as the fall in population.³⁸

One could argue that the fact that the proportion of Japanese who were farmers did not fall shows that the Alien Land Law of 1920 was not that effective. But this just means that farming did not lose its attractiveness when compared to alternative occupations, not that the laws had no impact. By 1940 over half of Japanese immigrants in the labor force in California were in agriculture, as compared to only 10.7 percent of all Californians. Japanese immigrants were largely excluded from moving up to semi-skilled jobs in manufacturing, which employed many (European) immigrants in the Midwest and Northeast. The proportion of Japanese employed in manufacturing was not only low, but actually fell from 12 percent in 1920 to only 4.1 percent in 1940, despite the rapid growth in manufacturing in California after 1900.³⁹

Last but not least, the combination of the Alien Land Laws and the incarceration of Japanese Americans into concentration camps during World War II dealt a severe blow to Japanese American agriculture in California and to Japanese American tenant farmers in particular. The War Relocation Authority reported that after World War II, “…few whose prewar farm operations depended on leased land were able to resume farming. Owners, however, had no great difficulty in getting back their land.” This observation is confirmed by census figures: between 1940 and 1950, the total number of Japanese American farmers fell by 40 percent, from 6,978 to 4,123; and the number of acres farmed dropped by 25 percent, from 348,568 to 262,405. Although the number of Japanese American farmers who owned land increased slightly, their farm acreage fell, and the number of Japanese tenant farmers and farm managers fell by almost 75 percent, as did their number of acres farmed (See Table 1 and Figure 1).⁴⁰