The AFL Erects a Wall

There were others at the hearings who suggested that the Hawaiian representatives were using the Japanese as an excuse to obtain a source of cheap labor. Around the time of the hearings America's largest labor organization, the AFL, was holding its national meeting in Denver, Colo-rado. On June 21 the AFL executive council was instructed to prevent revision of the Chinese Exclusion Act that would reinstate contract labor immigration. The AFL further declared the "gentlemen's agreement" negotiated by Shidehara and Morris a failure. Asserting that the Japanese had cunningly outwitted the intent of the California anti-alien law, the AFL convention voted in favor of the total exclusion of the Japanese and other Orientals from the United States.

The AFL, which had a membership of more than 5 million, was an organization that politicians could not ignore. On June 3, shortly after arriving in Washington, Dillingham and his colleagues, through the good offices of the secretary of labor, met AFL president Samuel Gompers for three hours. Dillingham came away from the meeting optimistic. As he told former governor McCarthy, "Gompers and the officials next to him are not hostile themselves to the Chinese labor plan." But Gompers's craftiness may have given such an impression. "Sam" Gompers was a small-statured man of sixty-seven when he met the members of the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission, but he exuded an obstinacy that brooked no deceit. He gauged his opponents as he puffed on the cigar constantly in his mouth or dropped ashes from it. He was known for never showing his true feelings and controlling the pace of his conversations. The people he most despised were those born with silver spoons in their mouths, privileged from birth, like Walter Dillingham.

Gompers emigrated from London when he was thirteen years old and became active in the labor movement as a cigar maker. He was the founding president of the AFL, a post he held until his death in 1924. Under Gompers, the AFL pursued a course of harmony between labor and management. Clearly distancing itself from radical socialist groups like the IWW, the AFL avoided direct involvement of labor unions in political struggles. During the First World War, Gompers was on the advisory board of the Council of National Defense, and he aligned organized labor with national policy. It was his multifaceted flexibility that allowed him to bear the burden of preserving his large organization.

Gompers's name was known in Japan from the early days of its labor

movement. Fusataro^[*] Takano, who organized the first labor union in Japan, was awakened to the labor movement after witnessing the activities of the AFL when he was a struggling student in San Francisco. Indeed, he directly sought advice from Gompers about starting a labor movement in Japan. Impressed by Takano's enthusiasm, Gompers appointed him the AFL agent in Japan, and after he returned home he sent dispatches to the AFL journal on labor issues there. At times this was his main source of livelihood. In 1897 he established the Society for Formation of Labor Unions (Rodo^[*] Kumiai Kiseikai) with others who had also recently returned from America, including Sen Katayama.

From the beginning the AFL worked to raise living standards for skilled workers but did not concern itself with organizing unskilled laborers. It also denied membership to African American laborers, and it maintained a policy of racial discrimination toward the alien laborers from Asia. One of the AFL's first activities was to support the passage of the anti-Chinese immigration legislation in the 1880s.

Interestingly, while the American Congress was passing anti-Chinese immigration laws, the issue of immigrant Chinese laborers also arose in Japan. The Rodo Kumiai Kiseikai led by Takano and his colleagues, taking an anti-foreign stance, called on Japanese workers to unite against letting in Western capitalists who might exploit Japanese workers or Chinese laborers who would work for cheaper wages than Japanese. In short, rather than confront the AFL's policy of racial discrimination, the early leaders of Japan's labor movement followed the same line.

In 1905, when the increase in Japanese laborers migrating to the mainland from Hawaii was becoming an issue, Gompers proclaimed, "The Caucasians are not going to let their standard of living be destroyed by Negroes, Chinamen, Japs or any others."^[26] After Congress passed anti-Chinese immigration laws, the AFL turned to targeting Japanese laborers, who, like the Chinese, worked for low wages, sent their savings back to Japan, and had no intention to settle in America.

Japanese business leaders like Eiichi Shibusawa were apprehensive about the anti-Japanese problem on the West Coast. They regarded the Japanese immigrant laborers as the cause of anti-Japanese sentiments and concluded that anti-Japanese sentiments were casting a dark shadow over U.S.-Japan relations. To alleviate that condition, in 1915 Bunji Suzuki and other members of the Yuaikai^[*] attended the AFL convention held in California, in the heart of the anti-Japanese exclusion movement. Ignoring the objections of Phelan and other anti-Japanese legislators, the AFL gave Suzuki the opportunity to make a speech declaring that no na-

tional borders divided the common interests of workers. Suzuki attended the following year's AFL meeting, but its anti-Japanese policy did not change. During the 1920 referendum in California on the revision of the Alien Land Act, an AFL resolution supporting it swayed the outcome of the ballot. The California state AFL was the strongest branch within the organization.

On June 25, the fifth day of the hearings, Paul Scharrenberg, secretary of the California AFL, testified as a representative of mainland laborers. He cited the "Japanese problem" in Hawaii as a bad example that should not be repeated in California and made it clear that the AFL was strongly opposed to permitting Chinese immigration. Two days later an AFL representative read a telegram from George W. Wright, president of the Honolulu Central Labor Union, the Caucasian workers' organization in Hawaii, declaring opposition to the renewal of Chinese immigration. "Hawaii's emergency commission misrepresenting conditions," it began. "Statistics in our possession indicate no actual labor shortage in Territory. . . . Japanese here striving for American ideals and standards. Strike purely economic. No nationalistic issues involved." It called the HSPA's charges of Japanese conspiracy to control industry "a ridiculous falsehood." Another statement was presented by the Iron Molders' Union in Honolulu: "To-day we are competing with the Jap, which is bad enough, and if the planters are allowed to flood this territory with cheap foreign labor we Americans will be compelled to leave here."^[27]

The AFL mounted the strongest opposition to the Hawaii Emergency Labor Commission's efforts. After the AFL convention in Colorado, Gompers directed local branches throughout the United States to send telegrams opposing renewal of Chinese labor immigration to Albert Johnson, chairman of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. At a press conference in Washington on July 11, Gompers denounced the Hawaiian sugar planters for hiring the most easily exploited workers. Now, he said, they were targeting Chinese coolies who were used to exploitation and unmerciful conditions. He characterized the touting of a "Japanese conspiracy to take over Hawaii's sugar industry" in the commission's petition as "a Hawaiian conspiracy."^[28]

The first round of the hearings closed on July 8 for a two-week recess. Washington had already entered its hot, humid summer season. In Honolulu the evening trade winds bring cooler temperatures, but in Washington the summer temperature changes little between day and night, offering no relief while people sleep. Dillingham had been living in a hotel

for two months, but he was undaunted by the AFL's firm opposition. On the contrary, he was determined to overcome this challenge.

When Scharrenberg testified against the renewal of Chinese immigration, Dillingham sent a telegram to Frank Thompson, the HSPA attorney: "One of the Gompers crowd has tipped me off twice that our bill would be half won if we could pull off or split the opposition from home. I hope that work to that end is going on." He also directed that a petition campaign be mounted to show general public support in Hawaii for the renewal of Chinese immigration. The campaign was so widespread and intensive that the Iron Molders' Union of Honolulu complained to the secretary of the interior, "We, the Molders of Honolulu, as taxpayers, object to the office that has been created by the Planters Association and the Chamber of Commerce for the sending of telegrams, letters and wireless messages to congressmen and influential friends in the states at the expense of the taxpayers of Honolulu."

On June 28 Dillingham had wired George M. Rolph, general manager of C&H Sugar in San Francisco to request an introduction to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Just before the hearings recessed, on July 8, Dillingham wired his thanks to Rolph, saying that he had a "satisfactory meeting." He also contacted former Senator Phelan for advice on how to handle the AFL representative from California.