Hostname: page-component-6d856f89d9-gndc8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T07:25:32.390Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Important or Impotent? Taking Another Look at the 1920 California Alien Land Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2004

MASAO SUZUKI
MASAO SUZUKI
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Economics, Skyline College, 3300 College Drive, San Bruno, CA 94066. E-mail: suzuki@smccd.net.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Opposition to Japanese immigration led to Alien Land Laws that barred Japanese immigrants from buying or leasing farmland. Although there is general agreement that the 1913 California Alien Land Law had little impact, historians and social scientists have differed over the effectiveness of the 1920 initiative, which closed loopholes in the earlier law. Census data show a decline in Japanese American agriculture over the short and long run, which cannot be fully explained by the agricultural downturn of the 1920s. This evidence indicates that the 1920 California Alien Land Law had negative consequences for Japanese immigrant farmers.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 125 - 143
Copyright
© 2004 The Economic History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alston Lee. 1983 “Farm Foreclosures in the United States During the Interwar Period.” This Journal 43, no. 9 885– 903.Google Scholar
Azuma Eichiro. 1994 “Japanese Immigrant Farmers and California Alien Land Laws: A Study of the Walnut Grove Japanese Community.” California History 73, no. 1 14 29.Google Scholar
Bunje Emil. 1957 The Story of Japanese Farming in California. San Francisco: R and E Research Associates
Chan Sucheng. 1991 Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston: G. K. Hall
Chan Sucheng. 1986 This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press
Chuman Frank. 1976 Bamboo People. Del Mar, CA: Publisher's Inc.
Consulate General of Japan. 1925 Law Cases Affecting Japanese in the United States, 1916–1924, Vol. 1. San Francisco, CA
Critz Jose, Olmstead Alan, and Rhode Paul. (June 1999) “Horn of Plenty: The Globalization of Mediterranean Horticulture and the Economic Development of Southern Europe, 1880–1930.” This JOURNAL 59, no. 2: 316–52.Google Scholar
Daniels Roger. 1977 The Politics of Prejudice. 2nd ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press
Daniels Roger. 1988 Asian America. Seattle: University of Washington Press
Export-Import Section, Agricultural Adjustment Administration, 1935 Report on Planning. Part 2, Agricultural Exports in Relation to Land Policy. Washington, DC: GPO
Fuchs Lawrence. 1961 Hawaii Pono: A Social History. San Diego and New York: Harcourt Trade Publishers
Fuller Varden. “The Supply of Agricultural Labor as a Factor in the Evolution of Farm Organization in California.” In U.S. Congress Senate Committee on Education and Labor. Hearings Pursuant to Senate Resolution 266, Exhibit 8762-A. 76th Congress, 3rd Session [1940], pp. 19827–49.
Gordon Margaret. 1954 Employment, Expansion and Population Growth: The California Experience 1900–1950. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press
Hallagan William. 1980 “Labor Contracting in Turn of the Century California Agriculture.” This JOURNAL 40, no. 4 757–76.Google Scholar
Higgs Robert. 1978 “Landless by Law: The Japanese Immigrants in California Agriculture to 1941.” This JOURNAL 38, no. 1 205 225.Google Scholar
Hunt Clarence M. 1920 “Swat the Japs and Save the State! Vote “Yes” on Proposition One— The Alien Land Law.” The Grizzly Bear 28, no. 1 1 2.Google Scholar
Ichihashi Yamato. 1932 Japanese in the United States. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Ichioka Yuji. 1984 “The Japanese Immigrant Response to the 1920 California Alien Land Law.” Agricultural History 43, no. 2 157–78.Google Scholar
Ichioka Yuji. 1988 The Issei. New York: The Free Press
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research–ICPSR, 1992 Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790–1970. URL: http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/, Ann Arbor, MI:
Iwata Masakazu. 1962 “The Japanese Immigrants in California Agriculture.” Agricultural History 36, no. 2 25 37.Google Scholar
Iwata Masakazu. 1992 Planted in Good Soil. New York and San Francisco: Peter Lang
Jelinek Lawrence. 1982 Harvest Empire: A History of California Agriculture. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser
Jiobu Robert. 1988 “Ethnic Hegemony and the Japanese of California.” American Sociological Review 53, no. 3 353–67.Google Scholar
Johnson H. Thomas. 1973/74 “Postwar Optimism and the Rural Financial Crisis.” Explorations in Economic History 11, no. 2 173–92.Google Scholar
Jones-Correa Michael. 2000–2001 “The Origins and Diffusion of Racial Restrictive Covenants.” Political Science Quarterly 115, no. 4 541–68.Google Scholar
Kidner Frank. 1946 California Business Cycles. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press
Lebergott Stanley. 1975 Wealth and Want. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Lipsey Robert. 1963 Price and Quantity Trends in the Foreign Trade of the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Lukes Timothy, and Okihiro Gary. 1985 Japanese Legacy. Cupertino, CA: California History Center
Matsumoto Valerie. 1993 Farming the Home Place. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
McGovney Dudley 1947 “The Anti-Japanese Land Laws of California and Ten Other States.” California Law Review 35 7 54.Google Scholar
Modell John. 1977 The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation: The Japanese of Los Angeles, 1900–1942. Urbana: University of Illinois Press
Olmstead Alan, and Rhode Paul. 1997 “An Overview of the History of California Agriculture.” In California Agriculture: Issues and Challenges, edited by J. Siebert, 1– 27. Berkeley: University of California, Giannini Foundation, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Pajus Jean. 1937 The Real Japanese California. Berkeley, CA: James J. Gillick, Inc.
Poli Adon, and Engstrand Warren. 1945 “Japanese Agriculture on the Pacific Coast.” Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics 21, no. 4 352–64.Google Scholar
Regan M. M. and Johnson A. R. 1942 “The Farm Real Estate Situation, 1939–40, 1940–41, and 1941–42.” Circular #662, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Rhode Paul. 1995 “Learning, Capital Accumulation, and the Transformation of California Agriculture.” This JOURNAL 55, no. 4 773– 800.Google Scholar
Ruggles Steve, Matthew Sobek, et al., 1997 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 2.0, Minneapolis, URL: http://www.ipums.umn.edu.
Stover H. J. 1936 “Annual Index Numbers of Farm Prices, Farm Crop Production, Farm Wages, Estimated Value per Acre of Farm Real Estate and Farm Real Estate Taxes, California, 1910–1935.” Mimeographed Report #50, Berkeley, CA: Giannini Foundation on Agricultural Economics
Stover H. J., and A. W. Stuart. 1934 Monthly Prices of Selected California Truck Crops on the San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, and New York City Markets, 1910–1934. Berkeley, CA: Giannini Foundation on Agricultural Economics
Strong Edward. 1933 Japanese in California. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Strong Edward. 1934 The Second Generation Japanese Problem. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Sullivan W. 1947 “Statistical Information on Farm Tenure in California.” Berkeley: University of California College of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Agriculture
Suzuki Masao. 1995 “Success Story? Japanese Immigrant Economic Achievement and Return Migration, 1920–1930.” This JOURNAL 55, no. 4 889– 901.Google Scholar
Takaki Ronald. 1989 Strangers from a Different Shore. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company
Taylor Paul, and Tom Vassey. 1936 “Historical Background of California Farm Labor.” Rural Sociology 1, no. 3 281–95.Google Scholar
Thomas Dorothy. 1952 The Salvage. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press
Tolan Committee. 1942 “The Japanese.” Part 1 of National Defense Migration, Supplement to House Report 2124, 77th Congress, 2nd Session
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1914 Thirteenth Census of the United States (1910), Chinese and Japanese in the United States. Washington, DC: GPO
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1923 Fourteenth Census of the United States (1920), Agriculture. Washington, DC: GPO
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1932 Fifteenth Census of the United States (1930), Agriculture. Washington, DC: GPO
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1932 Fifteenth Census of the United States (1930), Outlying Territories and Possessions. Washington, DC: GPO
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1943 Sixteenth Census of the United States (1940), Agriculture, Vol. 3. Washington, DC: GPO
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1943 Sixteenth Census of the United States (1940), Characteristics of Non-White Population by Race. Washington, DC: GPO
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1953 Seventeenth Census of the United States (1950), Agriculture. Washington, DC: GPO
War Relocation Authority. 1947 People in Motion. Washington, DC: GPO
Whecking E. H. 1927 “The Farm Real Estate Situation, 1926–27.” Circular #15, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Wright Gavin. 1986 Old South, New South, New York: Basic Books
Wright Gavin. 1987 “Postbellum Southern Labor Markets.” In Quantity and Quiddity, edited by Peter Kilby 98– 134. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press
Wright Gavin. 1988 “American Agriculture and the Labor Market: What Happened to Proletarianization?” Agricultural History 42, no. 3 182– 209.Google Scholar