£12 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

“Worse than this, it lowers the morale of American laborers; they feel degraded
when employed on the same job with Mexican or Japanese laborers. Many
Americans will not accept employment where Mexicans and Japanese laborers
are employed.” —F. E. Ashcroft, health officer, Chulavista, Calif.
“Mexican women and girls are employed in our canneries.”’—Fred M. Stern.
merchant, leather goods, San Jose, Calif.
“They all work, even the 6-year-old children; consequently the American
women are displaced because the Mexican does not demand anything. We are
displeased very much with inereasing Mexicans.”’—E. T. Gattis, grocer, Cerpentino,
 Calif.
“In laundries, canning, packing, etc., considerable displacement. Future
American manhood and womanhood ought to have equal consideration with
businesses that cry for protection against the importation of cheap goods and
import cheapest kind of labor from most backward nations.”—R. B. Haddock,
district superintendent schools, Oxnard, Calif.

MEXICANS EMPLOYED IN THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY
Oriental Textile Mills, Houston, Tex., nationality of employees: Americans,
46 per cent; Mexicans, 54 per cent, 2
El Paso Cotton Mills Co., El Paso, Tex., nationality of employees: Americans,
5 per cent; Mexicans, 95 per cent.
San Antonio Cotton Mills, San Antonio, Tex., nationality of employees:
Americans, 9 per cent; Mexicans, 91 per cent. (Above taken from statement
sping October 25, 1929, by Hon. Charles MecKemy, Texas State commissioner
of labor.
The following quotations are some of the many expressions of the ruinous
effects of this imported Mexican peon labor upon farmers and farm life, through
its influence in aggravating the overproduction of American farm products and
the ruin of the market therefor.

INCREASING SURPLUS OF FARM PRODUCTS
“If our farmers are raising a surplus, why should they import more laborers
to create more surplus?’’—Mrs. Elsie J. Bozeman, county superintendent of
schools, Hanford, Calif.
“‘Tendency’ is too mild a word. It has already gone far toward completely
displacing native farm labor and tenants. Only selfish Americans desire Mexican
immigration. I have seen constant and increasing evidence of development of a
situation very harmful to American life (of a desirable type).”—Elmer C. Nash,
realtor and school teaching, Tueson, Ariz.
“They almost clean out white laborers on the farm. They are of no credit to
any country.”-—M. A. Shipman, farmer, Westminster, Colo.
“If the sentiment of the whole people of east and west Texas could be obtained,
a large majority would favor the Box bill. The Mexican can take a frying pan,
50 cents worth of beans, a blanket, and work a week. American white Deoble
can not compete with their labor.”
“Am above an average cotton farmer of this section. If I can not get my
cotton gathered without them, the next year I won’t plant so much and neither
will others, The reduction in acreage is about all that is going to help us cotton
farmers. We ought to favor your bill.”—A. M. Coleman, farmer, Roscoe, Tex.
“The large landowners of south and west Texas import this cheap labor into
Texas to grow cotton and other farm products in competition with our nativeborn
 citizens. How many vears will it take, if conditions are allowed to remain
as they are, before our Mexican immigrants will hold the balance of power in
the election of our officers?’ State—R. H. Calmess, farmer, Huntsville, Tex.
“Let this committee compare the needs of individual farmers, real Americans,
who depend on the land for a living and on whom our integrity as a Nation
depends, with those of a few hig agricultural companies, not farmers themselves
but capitalists, not dependent for a living on the earnings of farms, and decide
Jen is the most legitimate need.”’— Conrad Frey, physician and farmer, Melvin.
ex.
“The same state of mind prevailed among the early cotton planters of the
eighteenth century in regard to cheap labor as represented by the negro slave
trade. To-day we clearly see the evils of our negro problem. Farsighted Americans
 can never allow ill-educated groups to pollute our already polyglot streams
ih the lowest types of Central Americans.”—M. M. Kornfield, Houston,
ax