238 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION
OTHER COMMON LABOR ALTERNATIVES REAL MENACE

- Even admitting that it would be better if the Mexican were not needed in this
country, we would like, in view of the evidence submitted that white labor can
not be secured to do this type of work, to ask one question. Where then, if
the Mexican is excluded, will this labor be procured from? When the Chinaman
was excluded, there were still the Japanese and the Mexican to call on. When
the Japanese was excluded, the Mexican was here. But if we shut out the Mexican
 whom have we left to call on? The answer is that there will be but three
groups left—the American negro, the Porto Rican negro, and the Filipino.
For the past two years very extensive studies have been made with regard to
the social problems of the Mexican, Filipino, and the Porto Rican negro in this
western area, particularly in California. The result is that whereas a year ago
there was a very considerable agitation on the part of the social agencies for the
exclusion of the Mexican, now we hear nothing of it. The reason is that these
same agencies have had such evidence presented to them that they are much
more concerned now about the Filipino, who is coming into this country in very
considerable numbers, and who does present a very distinet social menace, which
practically every one agrees far overweighs the worst imaginings of any of these
groups with regard to the Mexican; for the Filipino, far away from home, without
a family, and with well-developed social aspirations and reeking with disease, is
a very definite menace to the American blood-stream.
SHALL NEGRO RACE PROBLEM BE SPREAD MORE WIDELY?

All the evidence submitted with regard to the Porto Rican negro indicates much
the same problem. The question is, Shall we eliminate the Mexican and force
people who have tremendous financial investments at stake to bring in Filipinos
and Porto Rican negroes in order not to lose everything they have, because the
Mexican has been deliberately shut out of this country?
The American negro we all know. Are we Americans, with a full knowledge
of ‘the very serious racial problems which he has brought to the South and other
parts of America, willing deliberately to spread him over the rest of the country
in ever-increasing numbers? Now that he is there, the South needs him, and he
should be kept there. Just as surely, however, as a serious labor vacuum in the
Southwest is created through Mexican exclusion will there be a movement of
negro labor to the higher-paid jobs vacated by the Mexicans in that area. True,
the negro will not continue as a farm laborer when turned into a transient one,
but will drift to and remain in the cities, adding to their social and economic
problems as they have in the North. But this will only aggravate the problem,
for under economic stress the farmers and railroads will continue to pull still
more negroes from the South, Porto Ricans from the West Indies, and Filipinos
from the Orient, and in all three of these cases the problem will be far worse, for
there will be no end to the continual shift to the cities. The Mexican, on the
other hand, has very little tendency to shift to the cities except for such periods
as he may have no work. The Mexican is closer home and can, and does, return
there sooner or later in large numbers, whereas the task of returning negroes is
much greater and almost impossible in the case of Porto Ricans and Filipinos.
The American negro, the Porto Rican negro, and the Filipinos can not be deported
 if they prove Iater to be a crime menace. The Mexican can be. It seems to
us, therefore, that beyond question the Mexican is the safest source of common
labor and that until some way ean be found to safeguard the country from the
other menaces mentioned he should be permitted to enter as heretofore.

EXISTING LAW CREATING REAL PROBLEM

As a matter of fact, even the Mexican is becoming so scarce that reports which
are coming in of the labor situation, from Texas westward, indicate a very serious
labor shortage. For example, in the Imperial Valley, right next to the Mexican
border, where farmers are requiring 50 Mexicans to do their harvesting, they
are getting but 12 to 15. Where a farmer needs 10 to 15 laborers he is getting
but 2 or 3. Frankly, the situation is very acute right now, and those who have
in the past advocated the exclusion of the Mexicans from this district are just
beginning to realize that the shoe is on the other foot, and that instead of their
presence being a menace, their absence is creating a tremendously serions economic
problem for which as vet there is no apparent solution.