WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 221

Mr. Tavror. I appreciate that, because of the fact that we always
grant that on any side you will find prejudiced minds, of course.
The CrairMaN. Also, California 1s a very long State, presenting
many kinds of climate and many different kinds of agricultural
problems, and each year this thing is delayed it gets a little worse.
It would have been much easier to slow down Mexican immigration
in 1917, at the time it broke loose on account of violations of 9h law,
on account of the necessities of war—it would have been much easier
to fix then than it is now.
Mr. Tavror. But, Mr. Chairman, if you had done that you would
have heard from California in a way that you did not hear from her,
because we knew that we had that source of labor that was not
objectionable. That is the reason.
The CuairMaN. We would not have gotten started with lots of
fn such as dates, oranges, and so on, if it had not been for that
abor
yo. TayrLor. Every one of those things were growing there before
that.
Mr. Box. May I say just here to Mr. Taylor, and in all courtesy,
I want to help solve this thing if we can, and he is doing it from his
viewpoint and I from mine. We are treading in the steps that men
have been walking in for over a hundred years. When the Constitutional
 Convention met in Annapolis in 1787 this question came up
when they were determining whether or not they would import
Africans in the South, and it was generally insisted that they ought
to be brought in, because the South could not clear its land and do
its work without them. I live in the South. I am very much
devoted to my whole country and to my local country. I know Mr.
Madison told them then that if they carried this on the injury would
be incurable. All the strife that we had for 50 years before the Civil
War, in which most of us in that country lost everything that our
fathers would have left for us, we have reaped as the consequences of
a great race question. We can not look at it as a matter of some
particular valley or some particular group. It has been a blight on
the whole country, and we have got the very question that you
gentlemen talk about as affecting California now as dealing with a
particular race, we have got it to leave to our children, the great
race question. So that you must not imagine that this committee
should look at it purely as a temporary matter or something that has
originated in some particular section. The country has adopted the
restrictive policy. If it had adopted it in the constitutional convention,
 if it had been possible to do so, the country would have been a
hundred per cent better off right now. That is my judgment.
Mr. Tayror. Well, Judge Box, no man could have made a better
argument in behalf of the thing that I am trying to get over to this
committee than you have. You never heard anyone at that time,
during the time that you speak of, when they were discussing whether
they should bring in African negroes or not, saying that it was necessary
 to bring in the African negro in order to protect this Nation
from a social menace. )
‘&gt; Mr. Box. No; they said it was necessary to keep from destroying
the industry. CL
Mr. Tavror. It was an economic situation.
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