256 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

as common laborers, and so far as the number employed is concerned, the job
will remain at a peak level for approximately 10 or 12 years, maybe longer, and
if the present situation concerning immigration from Mexico is allowed to continue,
 there is no good reason to believe that thousands of Mexicans will not
filter across the border to be employed for a short period of time on that job, and
then gradually sift into the States of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and
Colorado, and even farther north and east than these States.
Second, we know that your committee is being presented with a virtual avaanche
 of telegrams advising the members of your committee that if such restrietive
 legislation were enacted, that agriculture in California would be paralyzed.
[n answer to this statement, which is general, may we call your attention to
similar claims that were made for the same industry and several others when
there was agitation for legislation to exclude immigrants from the Orient, partic
ularly Chinese, and later, Japanese. At that time it was claimed that many of
the industries on the Pacific coast, and particularly in California, would die,
necause of lack of available labor. Oriental exclusion has been accomplished,
and coolie labor barred froin our shores. In contravention of the claim that was
made at that time, we have but to point to the very phenominal growth of the
Pacific coast, particularly Califo.nia and the southern part of that State.
We believe that your committee will agree that any basic industry of any part
of a Nation such as ours that must depend upon peon labor and the lowering of
the conditions and standards of living where that industry exists, has something
vitally wrong with its management, and needs correction, instead of encouraging
and further weakening it by the application of such cheap labor conditions.
It is also claimed by the opponents to restrictive immigration legislation that
white men and women will not perform the labor generally performed by the
Mexican peons, and, in contradiction to that, we wish to submit this statement,
which we believe the Department of Labor will verify from its records—that
this same peon labor is very rapidly supplanting American labor in many industries
 in the Southwest, industries that have been manned entirely bv American
white labor up to the time of the transition.
With all of the above in view, and in the name of Ameriean traditions, in support
 of American standards of living, and of the American wage earner and
his family in the Southwest particularly, the organized labor movement of this
community respectfully but stoutly urges your committee to take favorable aetion
upon the legislation now before it. known as the Box hill.
Very truly vours.

J. W. BuzzeLy,
Secretary-Treasurer, Los Angeles Central Labor Council.
The Criairmax. The roll call on the Franklin highway bill is on
in the House. I do nog think we can go.on any further this afternoon;
20, without objection, we will adionrn mintil to-morrow morning at
10.30.
(Whereupon, the committee adjourned to meet at 10.30 .0’clock
a. m.. Friday. January 31, 1930.)

TE