THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1907. SAN FRANCISCO AND THE JAPANESE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8524, 31 August 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1907. SAN FRANCISCO AND THE JAPANESE.

Mr James D. Phelan, a former Mayor of San Francisco, writes in the American Review of Reviews upon the present condition of the city. He says • that the working men now realise that they have been betrayed by the men they elected to promote their interests. The citizens are determined that law and order must be maintained, and they will be maintained. There is no reason why San Francisco should not during the next five years recover her losses, and in the next generation double her population. As to the Japanese trouble, Mr Phelan says:—"The Japanese question has been unfairly injected into the situation. There is practically no racial prejudice, but the working men have been urged not to patronise the Japanese restaurants, for instance, because they are conducted by non-union help, and when union men were found in an establishment they were rudely disciplined by a mob, which would have proceeded in the self-same manner against union men who had patronised a non-union restaurant conducted by whites. This is a phase of the boycott, and does not rise to the dignity of an international question. San Francisco may be exposed for these reasons to occasional turbulence, but shall we condemn the air because it is the element of storms and hurricanes? These tempests which sweep over democratic communities clarify the atmosphere, and out of our local troubles will come a cleaner govern ■ ment, a better conception of the labour question by employer and employee, and a stronger loyalty to lav/ and order, which, like a rock, stands unshaken under the folds of the flag, which guarantees a square deal, equal rights, and stable rule."