detriment
as a permanent resident, and if at the same time we need his labour,
what else is there to do but pay him and let him go when he has done his
job?

And he will go _if pay is all he gets_. Only when he is permitted to
settle down to his favourite agriculture in a fertile country does he
stay permanently. To be sure a certain number of him engages in various
other commercial callings, but that number bears always a very definite
proportion to the Oriental population in general. And it is harmless. It
is not absolute restriction of immigration we want--although I believe
immigration should be numerically restricted, but absolute prohibition
of the right to hold real estate. To many minds this may seem a denial
of the "equal rights of man." I doubt whether in some respects men have
equal rights. Certainly Brown has not an equal right with Jones to spank
Jones's small boy; nor do I believe the rights of any foreign nation
paramount to our own right to safeguard ourselves by proper legislation.

These economics have taken us a long distance from the ranch and its
Orientals. The Japanese contingent were mainly occupied with the fruit,
possessing a peculiar deftness in pruning and caring for the prunes and
apricots. The Chinese had to do with irrigation and with the vegetables.
Their broad, woven-straw hats and light denim clothes lent the
particular landscape they happened for the moment to adorn a peculiarly
foreign and picturesque air.

And outside of these were various special callings represented by one or
two men: such as the stable men, the bee keeper, the blacksmith and
wagon-wright, the various cooks and cookees, the gardeners, the "varmint
catcher," and the like.

Nor must be forgotten the animals, both wild and tame. Old Ben and Young
Ben and Linn, the bird dogs; the dachshunds; the mongrels of the men's
quarters; all the domestic fowls; the innumerable and blue-blooded hogs;
the polo ponies and brood mares, the stud horses and driving horses and
cow horses, colts, yearlings, the young and those enjoying a peaceful
and honourable old age; Pollymckittrick; Redmond's cat and fifty others,
half-wild creatures; vireos and orioles in the trees around the house;
thousands and thousands of blackbirds rising in huge swarms like gnats;
full-voiced meadowlarks on the fence posts; herons stalking solemnly, or
waiting like so many Japanese bronzes for a chance at a gopher;
red-tailed hawks circling slowly; pigeon