WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 203

Mr. Box (interposing). You people of the Pacific coast who have
this trouble now arising out of the presence of another race who have
a special affinity for your white women, know something about what
the South has had in the past, don’t you? ;
- Mr. Hart. Yes; and we don’t want that condition to prevail in the
Pacific Southwest. That is the reason we don’t want the Porto
Rican, because we don’t want that. We are just as proud of our
families and proud of our country and your eastern part of it as well
a8 any man that lives, and we are not asking, just for the sake of
making a dollar to leave to our children and to my daughter, that she
must hve in the kind of things that you have just mentioned in the
South. We are not asking for that. We want—well, I am going to
spoil my argument again. I had this nicely built up there. -
Mr. Box. I beg your pardon for interrupting.
Mr. Harr. That is all right. I don’t care if you do. I am enjoying
 myself anyway. But the thing that I want to show you is that
we have a race in the Mexican that we can use without those things.
Going back to the Japanese; I will say he is a good laborer. You
pay him a fair price but he earns it, and you can afford to pay it to
him, because he does the thing that you hire him to do. Now then,
the Filipino is not a good laborer. He is dishonest. He will not
keep his own contract and he will not allow anyone else to keep his
contract if he can help it. He is an agitator and he will sit down
every time you turn your back. Then you have your social menace,
which I need not explain, because the newspapers have done it pretty
well, but I live there and I know those things to be facts.
The Mexican is well adapted to California field conditions, and
being a family type, of a roving disposition, fits in very nicely in our
field crop picture. Let me illustrate. As a general thing, there are
on my ranch at all times from 6 to 10 field workers, but many times
during the year at thinning and harvesting time there are as many as
75 working on the place at one time. They may be there for three
days or they may be there for two weeks, depending on what he is
harvesting, and the rapidity with which I can get to the market in
my country. When lettuce is ready to harvest, I must harvest it in
two days (the first cutting). In the Imperial Valley country in the
winter they have a few days longer. Conditions in California change
with the locality and with the proximity to the coast, but many times
during the year at thinning and harvesting we have a peak. What
is true of my ranch is true of many others. As ranches have their
peaks in labor, so does the valley, and there are certain months in
the year that the entire valley is low in labor demand. At these
times the Mexican family moves on to the San Joaquin for the cotton
and grapes and then farther south to the Imperial Valley and on
nto Mexico.
Now you say, “You are a farmer. What do you know about them
going to Mexico?” Well, I only know this about them going into
Mexico: I have seen and read the quotations of the figures that were
In the last testimony by the Government, where it said—our State
Department, our national Government, said there were about 2,500
went back, and the Mexican Government showed 50,000. But I
have worked alongside of these Mexicans in the fields. If you do
not do that, you will just lose a few cents an hour. If we are picking
ettuce, go out in the field. I am not doing that right now, but
when I had the Mexican I worked in the field along with him. and