economic
crime he is fostering--"

"Easy, soldier! You're discussing my father, whereas I desire to
discuss the Yellow Peril. To begin, are you prejudiced against a
citizen of Japan just because he's a Jap?"

"I will be frank. I do not like the race. To a white man, there is
nothing lovable about a Jap, nothing that would lead, except in
isolated cases, to a warm friendship between members of our race and
theirs. And I dare say the individual Jap has as instinctive a dislike
for us as we have for him."

"Well then, how about John Chinaman?"

His face brightened.

"Oh, a Chinaman is different. He's a regular fellow. You can have a
great deal of respect and downright admiration for a Chinaman, even of
the coolie class."

"Nevertheless, the Chinese are excluded from California."

He nodded.

"But not because of strong racial prejudice. The Chinese, like any
other Oriental, are not assimilable; also, like the Jap and the Hindu,
they are smart enough to know a good thing when they see it--and
California looks good to everybody. John Chinaman would overrun us if
we permitted it, but since he is a mighty decent sort and realizes the
sanity of our contention that he is not assimilable with us, or we with
him, he admits the wisdom and justice of our slogan: 'California for
white men.' There was no protest from Peking when we passed the
Exclusion Act. Now, however, when we endeavor to exclude Japanese,
Tokio throws a fit. But if we can muster enough courage among our
state legislators to pass a law that will absolutely divorce the
Japanese coolie from California land, we can cope with him in other
lines of trade."

She had listened earnestly to his argument, delivered with all the
earnestness of which he was capable.

"Why is he not assimilable?" she asked.

"Would you marry the potato baron?" he demanded bluntly.

"Certainly not!" she answered.

"He has gobs of money. Is that not a point worthy of consideration?"

"Not with me. It never could be."

"Perhaps you have gobs of money also."

"If I were a scrubwoman, and starving, I wouldn't consider a proposal
of marriage from that Jap sufficiently long to reject it."

"Then you have answered your own question," he reminded her
triumphantly. "The purity of our race--aye, the purity of the Japanese
race--forbids intermarriage; hence we are confronted with the
intolerable prospect of sharing our wonderful state with an alien race
that must foreve