Imperial (67 page)

In 1950, Imperial actually comprised fewer people than in 1920. Over the course of the twentieth century, Tijuana, which began with slightly fewer residents than Imperial, increased her population by a factor of four thousand seven hundred and forty-seven, while Imperial increased hers by a factor of eight.

Did the busy boomers of El Centro, Brawley, Calexico and Holtville ever ask themselves: Could this happen here? After all, it was occurring in Meloland; Salton, Mortmere, Dos Palmas and Caleb had already grown equivalent to Coachella’s Palmdale—but of course all of those latter failures had taken place north of the Imperial Valley; and who could say that Meloland wouldn’t pull through?

ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE

To me, Imperial City is a metonym for the greater entity I call Imperial; one decline mirrors the other. But when the city went down, who cared for socioeconomic prophecy when a more straightforward narrative conveniently anchored in present and past stood ready to hand, a narrative, moreover, peopled with humans rather than forces? All the losers needed to do was blame their arch-boomer, hero of
The Winning of Barbara Worth,
compassionate banker, developer-savior of the valley, who although a town was named for him there actually lived in Redlands with his two maiden daughters?

The narrative runs: W. F. Holt and his partner C. A. Barker form one of their accustomed syndicates, buy land cheap from A. R. Robinson and establish the railroad junction which will become El Centro. Our “Little Giant” owns the
Imperial Valley Press,
so it is a simple matter to get that publication to write:
There will be absolutely no excuse for Imperial when El Centro gets the county seat.

The engineer Rockwood, to whom we telegraph some of our thanks for the Salton Sea accident, never liked the location of Imperial in the first place, because
the rough and salt lands between Imperial and Brawley
would give prospective settlers a terrible impression, and because flowers and shrubs w
hich residents of the Valley would naturally desire to put about their homes
did not do well in Imperial’s soil. Had it been up to him, he would have established Imperial a mile and a half north of El Centro; then there would never have been an El Centro.

Imperial City had absolutely no excuse. That’s why she died. As for the rest of us, who find plenty of excuses for ourselves, why shouldn’t our cantaloupe and asparagus empires endure forever? After all,
WATER IS HERE.

Chapter 66

THEIR NEEDS ARE EVEN MORE EASILY SATISFIED (1893-1927)

It is an interesting commentary on the effective development of public opinion throughout the rest of the United States concerning the Japanese “problem” in California, that the Japanese constitute but 1.7 per cent of the total population of that state, while Mexicans constitute 6.5 per cent.

—Paul S. Taylor, 1934

M
y fellow Californians, do you remember the Chinese? Not me! They were never here; they’re gone.

In 1893 the Chinese population of Redlands was over two hundred; by 1896, patriotic advocates of American labor have reduced it to twenty-four. Masked men with shotguns evict seven Chinese from Casablanca. Meanwhile, Japanese laborers have begun to arrive in California. By 1897 we already find a Japanese Christian Mission in Riverside. The annotated chronology from which I have been taking many of these dates flags 1899 as the year when
Japanese workers rapidly replace white section hands of the Santa Fe Railroad in the desert areas of southern California.
(Accordingly, in 1900 the U.S. Deputy Collector of Customs in San Diego warns that
large numbers of Chinese laborers are crossing the border.
They’ll pop their heads up in a minute.) In 1900 a Japanese orange picker attacks his Chinese rival with a knife while on the job in Riverside. In 1904, masked Caucasians menace Japanese fruit packers in Cucamonga; Japanese get attacked in Highlands and Corona. All the same, the Japanese are working out so nicely that the
California Cultivator
sees fit to advise:
Lemons which made the size known as 300s, only, should be picked. There is a difference of $1 a box between 300s and 360s. A man who picks 360s ought to be put off the ranch. If you cannot get a white man to pick 300s, then get Japs, and if they cannot do it properly, then get a woman . . .

That same year, Japanese commence harvesting cotton and melons in the Imperial Valley, more than satisfying their labor-hungry employers. For the year 1906 we read that
Japanese citrus workers
are
gradually replacing the Chinese
in Riverside. We need have no fear that our lands will not become better and better as the years go by.

In 1900, ninety-seven Japanese dwell in the city of Riverside. Ten years later there are seven hundred and sixty-five; during the citrus harvest there might be three thousand. In 1907, the six hundred citrus workers of greater Riverside comprise forty or fifty Spanish speakers, fifty or sixty Caucasians, and Japanese.

Our lands may be getting better and better; but by 1907 the Asiatic Exclusion League has grown extremely alarmed.
The general persistency with which the Japanese are breaking into many industries, their frugality, their ambition, and their lack of business morality render them more formidable than the Chinese.
For instance, in Japanese restaurants in San Francisco, employees often work twelve-hour days; workers in white-owned restaurants work two hours less. Talk about crimes against nature!

In the summer of 1908, unemployed whites attack Japanese melon pickers in the Imperial Valley; the Japanese Consul General telegraphs to express his concern. No doubt we listened to him; for by 1909, Japanese make up forty-two percent of all California’s farmworkers.—How well off does that make them? In 1912, Japanese own only three hundred and thirty-one farms in California. No Japanese farmers own any acreage in Imperial County that year, although I do see seven Japanese leases totalling eight hundred and forty-eight acres.

(In an undated Imperial County photograph captioned
Masako, Eiko and Marie Yukawa at Date School across Date Canal from Ranch,
I see three little girls, the tallest with her arms around the others, dressed mainly in white, standing on a white dirt street in front of a white house.)

The collective bargaining procedures of the Japanese being more effective than those of Chinese, growers are already seeking to replace them, with Sikhs, Mexicans, midwestern farmboys, anybody. Their part in the Oxnard beet workers’ strike of 1903 was particularly shocking. In 1906 the
California Cultivator,
perhaps regretting its advice of 1904, sends out the alarm:
The Jap laborers in the fields around Watsonville struck, on Saturday night, for a raise of 2 ½ cents an hour.

Here are two letters to us from the year 1910:
I consider the Japanese immigration a thousand-fold more harmful and threatening than Chinese immigration ever was, or ever could have been,
advises Edwin A. Meserve, candidate for the United States Senate.
They are doing our laundry work with our machinery, following our own methods—which they have adopted.
Meanwhile, William Kent writes in from the Second Congressional District:
I have made it a large part of my campaign on the Asiatic exclusion idea, comparing it with the racial troubles brought on by the heedless importation of negroes.

Is the World Going to Starve? wonders the
California Cultivator
in 1920.
Out of the bigness of her domain and bigness of her heart America has said—and still is saying: “Come, we have enough for you all, help us reclaim our rich valleys, our hillsides, our deserts.”
That was mighty white of us, and guess what happened?
Take, for instance, the rich valleys around the city of Los Angeles. But a few years since they were filled with attractive homes of American gardeners and truck farmers. Today 85 per cent of Los Angeles’ vegetables are grown by Japanese. The change has been gradual . . . excepting to the American farmer who has been forced off the farm . . .The birthrate on California farms is being increased with wonderful swiftness by the shipping to this country of women who are sent purely for breeding purposes . . .
I wish I could have met one of those.

What shall we do? Why, make a Gentlemen’s Agreement—which goes into effect in 1909. Japanese immigrant labor arrives in ever smaller numbers; Northside has been saved.

NO REST FOR THE GUARDIANS OF AGRICULTURE

But that scarcely means that she can relax her vigilance; for certain other laborers with easily satisfied needs—laborers whom the Japanese had supplanted—wait just beyond the international line, plotting to force the American farmer off the farm!

In 1910, the
Riverside Daily Press
warns that thirty thousand
contraband Chinese
have come into Canada and are waiting their chance to infiltrate our pure United States.

In 1915, a lady named Goldie Evans leads a gang of Chinese-smugglers from Mexico up through the Coachella Valley and into the orchards of California. A posse of Apaches track them; we report a gun battle in Thermal; Cahuilla Indians track the escapees; they do work Americans wouldn’t do.

In 1922, America’s heroes capture thirteen Chinese concealed in packing boxes in Oceanside. We’ll solve that problem once and for all! In 1924, the Second Exclusion Act establishes a rigid immigration maximum. Unfortunately, by 1927 Chinese are getting smuggled in airplanes!

STILL NO REST

And if this was the result of Chinese exclusion, how would the Japanese react? A historian from that enlightened epoch picks up his pen in the year 1926 and darkly alerts us all:
But whereas the Chinese were good losers, the more aggressive Japanese have by no means proved so meek and docile.

Chapter 67

NEGROES AND MEXICANS FOR COTTON (1901-1930)

. . . the Latin-American does not propose that anyone shall know him, he is ever on the defensive, he will not “Let you in.” This is the result of the treatment he has received from the so called superior people.

—Reverend A. B. DeRoos, 1920

T
he question of competent labor has become a most serious proposition to the fruit-growers of California . . .
runs an item in (you guessed it) the
Western Fruit-Grower.
The year is 1903. Wilber Clark is now established in the Imperial Valley if not yet at his Wilfrieda Ranch; one of his lives will be lived amidst fruit trees. And there’s a school in Mecca; oh, yes, the Coachella Valley’s orchards are coming along, coming along.
We need have no fear that our lands will not become better and better as the years go by.
Back to the labor question:
The Chinese and Japanese labor in California is not equal to the work, it seems, and a writer in the
California Fruit-Grower
suggests that an effort be made to locate colored families on fruit farms, claiming that they will in time learn the work as thoroughly as the Japanese or Chinese. Any plan which will remove some of the colored families from the cities of the country, where they are subjected to every form of temptation, will be a good move. It is a fact that the colored people of the city are not as good citizens as they would be in the country, nor is their health so good . . . But when one gets a darky on the farm, how is he to be kept there? It’s a hard proposition, anyway.
¹¹³

And so, once
the basic strata of the population
have been established, the Swiss,
a frugal, industrious people,
begin to build dairies in Imperial County;
the next class to come in considerable numbers were colored people from the cotton States of the South . . . Schools and churches are affording the people of this race an opportunity and encouragement to attain higher development.
Meanwhile, Muslims and Hindus also start to arrive in Imperial.

Fifteen years after that item in the
Western Fruit-Grower,
Judge Farr posthumously explains that
cotton has been especially valuable on the Mexican side of the line on account of the favorable labor conditions where Chinese could be imported and where Mexican labor was available . . .

Those Chinese have certainly become an anachronism in Northside! Allow me to quote from a magisterial history of California, published in 1926:
While the history of Chinese immigration is not a record in which the American can take much pride, and admitting that political ambition, bigotry, and race prejudice have had a prominent part in the agitation, nevertheless, few thoughtful students of the exclusion will now deny the contention that exclusion has been of distinct benefit to the United States.

It must surely be coincidental that on Northside
some difficulty has been experienced in securing labor.
Never mind;
but this difficulty has not proved so serious . . . Cotton is well adapted to the small farm, and it is probable that the labor difficulty will be finally overcome by planting Egyptian cotton on small farms, where the labor of the family can be utilized in the harvest season.

Small farms, oh, yes! I’d forgotten that Imperial is self-sufficient Emersonian homesteads. Meanwhile, a history of the Coachella Valley explains that even at the beginning of the twentieth century,
labor was supplied by the Indians already living in the area and by Mexican families drawn to the developing ranches.

Between 1914 and 1919, the number of Mexican laborers in Inland Empire citrus increases from twenty-three hundred to just over seven thousand. By 1973, two-thirds of those citrus workers will be Mexican.