204 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

might be a sensible system that under economic conditions as they are
in America at the present time, where agriculture is not as profitable,
generally speaking, as some other walks of life, that you can not any
more expect to keep a foreigner, whether he is a Mexican or a German,
or what he is, on the farm, than you could expect to keep a naturalborn
 American on the farm. The economic force is the most potent
force in human life, probably not even excluding the religious force;
and if an American citizen or a foreigner can make more money in
the city, the drift of events will almost compel him to go to the city.
But that does not argue against the solution I am suggesting, or
rather the means of finding a final solution of this matter. To have
Congress finally drop the curtain against these farmers on the border
line at this time would compel some of these farmers to drift into the
city and add to the labor condition that is not altogether happy.
The Crarman. No; you have got me wrong. The foreigner stays
on the farm, and his children go into the cities.
Mr. Gray. I do not agree that the foreigner stays on the farm.
But the point I sought to make was that the economic forces would
work themselves out on the foreigner just about as they work on the
American national, to go to the city. There would be just about the
same proportion of the foreigners going to the city as our own nationals.
The Cuairman. The statement has been made frequently that the
Mexican is not likely to be a landlubber, that he is docile and he
accepts conditions as they are. Now, if he does stay in the country,
on the farms, he is taking the place of white boys, of citizens, which
boys are forced to to to the cities. I know it from experience. The
more a place fills up with one color or race of people of any color, the
more certain the white people are to get clear out. That has been
our experience on the Pacific coast. So there is a racial undermovement
 beneath it, pushing the other races outward, and your fine
membership will find the opportunity to get members grow less as
you get along.
Mr. Gray. Now, let us not talk of the case as it is before us, but
let us talk in terms of years, or decades. Suppose Congress should
pass either the Johnson or the Box bill—and the two bills are similar,
although the details are different—the farmer on the border States
could not get enough labor to handle the crops that are growing there
aow, cotton being one of them. * Let us take that crop as an example.
If they have to go into something else, what will they go into? Dairying,
 most likely. It takes less people to run a dairy farm, taking it
altogether, than it does to run a cotton farm, because at cotton
picking time, it takes lots of people. Say that a dairy farm can be run
with a certain number of people throughout the year on a family
basis. Now, let us assumed that these people can not raise cotton.
They will go into dairying, and the drift will be to dairying, because
all people, from the President of the United States down, are preaching
diversification; and diversification, to the average citizen, means
milking cows. And what is the situation? We have dairymen in
New York, Maine, Michigan, Alabama, and every State of the Union,
elating my own State of Missouri, which is one of the big dairy
tates——
The CuairMaAN. And my own.
Mr. Gray. And your State of Washington, yes. Now, if you make
it impossible for these people on the border to raise a crop of cotton
that they are presently raising, and force them into the dairv business,