Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/617

 584

The Green Bag

States Regarding Oriental Immigration." By Associate Justice Albert G. Burnett of the District Court of Appeals of California. Annals, v. 34, no. 2, p. 37 (Sept.). "The West is not unduly or at all excited over the question of immigration from Japan; it is only determined. It has heard from Washington that the Mikado's government is going to refuse permission to its subjects to come to the United States. It hopes this will be done, but it is somewhat dubious when it hears rumors from day to day of the vast numbers of Japanese who are debarking in British Columbia and stealing their way across the border. . . . Those now living there propose that it shall continue to be a home for them and their children, and that they shall not be overwhelmed and driven eastward by an ever-increasing yellow and brown flood." "Un-American Character of Race Legisla tion." By Max J. Kohler, A. M., formerly Assistant United States Attorney, New York. Annals, v. 34, no. 2, p. 55 (Sept.). "It is apparent that the desire to exclude the Chinese laborer has worked incalculable harm both to them and to us, at least in excluding non-laborers and causing much unnecessary and unintended hardship. If cheap pauper labor, competing on unequal and unfair terms with American labor, be involved, such labor can be excluded under general laws, not applicable to the Chinese merely, and not making exclusion the rule and a few enumerated classes of non-laborers the exception. It must be apparent, however, to justify even such reversal of our established beneficent and satisfactory American policy of a century and more, that the danger be general and continuous, and not temporary and spasmodic, and that it is one that cannot be cured by effective distribution, so as to deprive sections needing such labor badly of the benefits to which they also are entitled." "Treaty Powers: Protection of Treaty Rights by Federal Government." By Dean William Draper Lewis, Ph. D., University of Pennsylvania Law School. Annals, v. 34, no. 2, p. 93 (Sept.). "The means which are unquestionably within the power of the federal government, if properly used, would appear to be ample to enforce all treaties. The doubts, and they are many, which surround the subject,. . . are ... as to the extent of the treaty power, not as to the right of the United States to maintain respect tor, and punish violations of, those treaties which it may lawfully make." "The Legislative History of Exclusion Legislation." By Chester Lloyd Jones, Ph. D., Annals, v. 34, no. 2, p. 131 (Sept.). "The excitement was for the time at least allayed by an expedient included in the im migration act of 1907. . . . Congress authorized the President to exclude from continental United States any immigrants holding pass

ports not specifically entitling them to enter this country. . . . The 'Japanese question' was for the moment out of politics. It is by no means certain, however, that the seeds of future disagreement are removed. . . . The whole subject of Japanese immigration is one which calls for careful settlement by a treaty which shall at the same time avoid antago nizing a proud nation and remove an element which unregulated can hardly avoid causing increasing uneasiness and ill feeling on the west coast." "The Exclusion of Asiatic Immigrants in Australia." By Philip S. Eldershaw, and P. P. Olden. Annals, v. 34, no. 2, p. 190, (Sept.). "No expense is grudged to keep unsullied the policy, and more than a policy, the ideal of a 'White Australia.' This, as has been shown, is not a passing ebullition of feeling. It may be not inaptly described as the Monroe doctrine of Australia, only it should be borne in mind that we are acting with reference to Eastern Asiatic peoples only. . . . "Any attempt in derogation of this doctrine would be viewed with grave apprehension by Australia, under the a^gis of the British empire, and resented as an unfriendly act." Taxation. "A Forgotten Chapter in Scot tish History." By a Philosophical Radical. Blackwood's, v. 186, p. 424 (Sept.). "To be logical, Mr. Asquith should ordain that when manufacturers' profits, lawyers' fees, and workingmen's wages rise above a certain point, toll should be levied on the increase, even on the plea that as the various parties' abilities remain the same the increased value must necessarily be the creation of the community. In this matter the socialists are more logical than their Liberal colleagues. They see no reason why the capitalist's profits should not be placed in the same category with the landowner's rents, and thus pushing the Ricardian theory to its logical conclusion, they demand the nationalization of capital as well as land. That way anarchy lies." "The Increment Tax: The Land Clauses Neither Unprecedented nor Socialistic." By Alfred Mond, M. P. Nineteenth Century, v. 66, p. 377 (Sept.). This writer considers just, and by no means socialistic, the "great principle of obtaining for the community, by means either of local or national taxes, a reasonable share of the increased value of land which is generally recognized to be mainly due not to the efforts of an individual, or even a group of individuals, but to the growth of the population and the consequent necessity for land to live on." Uniformity of Laws. "States with Ideas of their Own." By Philip Loring Allen. North American Review, v. 190, p. 515 (Oct.). "The various legislatures, notably those of New York and Wisconsin, through their