CHAPTER VI JAPANESE FARMING IN CALIFORNIA Japanese Farms and Acreage in California. The Japanese are more conspicuous as farmers in California than in any other state. Of a total of 2,502 farms, embracing 157,259 acres, recorded in a bulletin recently issued by the Census Bureau 1 as being controlled by Japanese in 1910, 1,816, with an aggregate acreage of 99,254, were in that state. Thus California had 72.6 per cent of the farmers and 63.1 per cent of the farm lands controlled by the members of that race as owners or tenants. The value of the land was $20,239,638; of the buildings, $1,177,897; of implements, $540,685; of domestic animals, poultry, and bees, $750,936. Other Figures. These Census figures relating to the number and acreage of farms are considerably smaller than those reported in the Japanese-American Yearbook, where the name of each owner or tenant and his acreage are given. The difference is explained in part, it would appear, by the fact that certain classes, such as those doing a part of the farm work and sharing the product or receiving a price agreed upon, included in the one are excluded from the other. But whatever the explanation of the difference, the total acreage owned or leased by Japanese in 1909 was reported in the Yearbook as 153,683 as against the total of 1 Bulletin 127 (1914). 99,254 reported by the Census for 1910. The corresponding figure for 19131 was 281,687 acres. Of this total, 26,707 acres were reported as owned, 255,980 as leased or worked "under contract." Though there is reason to believe that these figures and the growth of Japanese farming indicated by them are exaggerated, a considerable number of purchases and many new leases have been made during the last three or four years. The county assessor's reports show that in March, 1912, Japanese owned 331 tracts of land embracing 12,726 acres. An unusually large number of purchases were made during the succeeding fifteen months, and especially during the few months alien land bills were under consideration, so that perhaps the total acreage now owned approaches 20,000. It is not unlikely, moreover, that lands now owned or leased in California have a combined acreage greater than the total reported by the Census for all the states in 1910. Japanese Farming largely Intensive. As would be expected, most of the farming carried on by Japanese in California is of the intensive kind in which they have been conspicuously employed as laborers. This is very well shown by the data collected by the California Commissioner of Labor five years ago. Though the number of farms investigated was perhaps less than four fifths of the number operated by Japanese and though in some 1 A statistical investigation of Japanese farming is being made by the Japanese Association of America, but the results are not yet available. 2 Fourteenth Biennial Report of the California Labor Commissioner, p. 633. respects the figures are now out of date, the following table still shows with a fair degree of accuracy the kind of farming engaged in.1 Their Relative Importance as Growers of Certain Crops. Thus the Japanese farmers are largely growers of vegetables, potatoes, fruit, berries, grapes, and sugar beets. Their relative importance as growers of these in 1910 is shown by the table on next page compiled from the reports of the Census Bureau. Unfortunately data are not presented in Bulletin 127 for grapes, deciduous fruits, and certain other crops. If the forms of tenure most closely related to a labor contract had been included, as they are in the Japanese-American Yearbook, the acreage reported for Japanese would be considerably larger. Moreover, it is considerably larger now than in 1910. 1 From Thirteenth Biennial Report of the California Commissioner of Labor, p. 267. (a) Acres of improved lands in farms. The Census does not report total acreage for all crops. Yet, as is shown by this table, the Japanese control a very small percentage of all the improved lands in farms and, except in the case of berries and certain kinds of vegetables, a very small percentage of the land devoted to different crops. The only branch of agriculture not covered by this table in which the Japanese control a large percentage of the total acreage, is in the growing of deciduous fruits. Most of their Holdings in a comparatively Few Localities. Another fact of considerable importance is that most of the Japanese farmers are found in a comparatively few localities and chiefly those in which they have been most important in the agricultural labor supply. In the Vaca Valley in 1913 they leased or owned approximately one half of the land devoted to the production of fruit and grapes.1 About Florin they own or lease about one third of the farm lands.2 Along the 1 See Chapter VII. 2 Ibid. American River, back of Sacramento, Japanese and a few Chinese own or lease forty of forty-two ranches. In the "Newcastle district," where in certain localities most of the land is devoted to the production of grapes, deciduous fruit, and strawberries, the total acreage in 1909 being about 14,000, the Immigration Commission found that 6,992 acres of this were owned or leased by Japanese.1 Of approximately 70,000 acres in ten districts along the Lower Sacramento, the Immigration Commission found that the Japanese leased something more than twenty-five per cent in 1909. Likewise of 42,682 acres in fourteen large tracts along the Lower San Joaquin, the Japanese were leasing 8,692. Near Livingston the Japanese control about 3,000 acres, nearly all of it in adjoining farms.2 In view of such facts as these, it is not surprising that 1,540 of the 1,816 Japanese farms and 70,614 of the 99,254 acres controlled by them, as recorded in the Census for 1910, were in twelve of the fifty-eight counties of the state.3 1 Immigration Commission, Reports, Volume 24, pp. 413 and 420. 2 See Chapter VII. These twelve counties and the number and acreage of farms in each, as reported in Bulletin 127, were as follows: |