"There must be a thousand of them, Farrel."

"That means not less than five thousand Japanese, Mr. Parker. It means
that literally a slice of Japan has been transplanted in La Questa
Valley, perhaps the fairest and most fruitful valley in the fairest and
most fruitful state in the fairest and most fruitful country God ever
made. And it is lost to white men!"

"Serves them right. Why didn't they retain their lands?"

"Why doesn't water run up hill? A few Japs came in and leased or
bought lands long before we Californians suspected a 'yellow peril.'
They paid good prices to inefficient white farmers who were glad to get
out at a price in excess of what any white man could afford to pay.
After we passed our land law in 1913, white men continued to buy the
lands for a corporation owned by Japanese with white dummy directors,
or a majority of the stock of the corporation ostensibly owned by white
men. Thousands of patriotic Californians have sold their farms to
Japanese without knowing it. The law provides that a Japanese cannot
lease land longer than three years, so when their leases expire they
conform to our foolish law by merely shifting the tenants from one farm
to another. Eventually so many Japs settled in the valley that that
white farmers, unable to secure white labor, unable to trust Japanese
labor, unable to endure Japanese neighbors or to enter into Japanese
social life weary of paying taxes to support schools for the education
of Japanese children, weary of daily contact with irritable, unreliable
and unassimilable aliens, sold or leased their farms in order to escape
into a white neighborhood. I presume, Mr. Parker, that nobody can
realize the impossibility of withstanding this yellow flood except
those who have been overwhelmed by it. We humanitarians of a later day