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Whose Frontier?

The Survey of Race Relations on the Pacific Coast in the 1920s

ECKARD TOY

THERE WERE FATAL FLAWS in President Woodrow Wilson's belief that fighting a war against Imperial Germany in 1917 would make the world safe for democracy. The Great War of 1914-1918 had already set in motion events that would undermine Wilsonian idealism and overwhelm movements toward political and social reform. Even as the United States and its allies celebrated victory on November 11, 1918, hope and exultation dissolved into pessimism, materialism, and social conflict. While the United States and Japan gained prestige and international influence, World War I contributed to the collapse of European empires and spawned the Bolshevik Revolution. The millions of dead and displaced victims of war, revolution, and a deadly, worldwide flu pandemic further undermined international stability. Peace did not end conflict. American forces continued to conduct "Gunboat Diplomacy" in the Caribbean and China, U.S. soldiers fought against Bolshevik revolutionaries in northern Russia and Siberia, and U.S. Marines faced years of guerrilla warfare with insurgents in Nicaragua. 1
      Americans had difficulty adjusting to their new role in world affairs. The suppression of dissent in wartime and the lengthy illness and political decline of President Wilson contributed to the postwar Red Scare and American rejection of the League of Nations. While international problems renewed concerns about unregulated immigration, a series of race riots, challenging economic problems, and growing labor unrest, including a General Strike in Seattle, added to the postwar anxieties at home. The inauguration of President Warren G. Harding in 1921 represented a shift in power from Democrats to Republicans, but it did not end the uncertainties. Prohibition, the automobile, and motion pictures spurred new social trends, challenged old moral codes, raised religious controversies, and spawned a series of culture wars in the "Roaring Twenties." A revived Ku Klux Klan exploited these discontents and grew rapidly into a large, nationwide movement during that decade. Unsettling as these factors were, the sudden death of President Harding in the summer of 1923, as rumors of personal and political scandals swirled about him, added another discouraging indicator of a nation seemingly adrift. 2


 
Figure 1
    An increasing number of women and children — such as those in this photograph of a work camp in the Hood River Valley — signified a transition to a more settled population among Japanese residents in the 1920s.

    OHS neg., OrHi 48921
 


 
      But there were countervailing trends. Significant strains of idealism persisted in the remnants of prewar progressivism and the movements for women's rights; and the prewar Social Gospel, though challenged, did not succumb fully to the pressures of religious fundamentalism in the 1920s. Early in the fall of 1923, as Congress debated the merits of a more restrictive immigration quota system and the exclusion of immigrants from Asia, the Institute of Social and Religious Research (1921–1934) approved a proposal for a Survey of Race Relations on the Pacific Coast. Looking westward from New York City, Institute directors described the ambitious project as "the first unpartisan, scientific survey of the Oriental situation on the Pacific Coast" and called for a cooperative research endeavor stretching from British Columbia to southern California. Their goal was "to find all the facts, economic, biological, social, moral, religious, legal, and political, that condition the life of the Asiatic in America and his inter-relations with the American and Canadian people."1 3
      The Institute's stated scientific goal was laudable, but the desire of the directors to use the Survey to reduce racial tensions conflicted with the social practices, cultural influences, and economic conditions of the early 1920s and made the timing of the proposal questionable. Anti-Asian attitudes were commonplace, and facts alone were unlikely catalysts for change. Additionally, the perceived motivations of the Survey's eastern sponsors alienated potential allies on the Pacific Coast, and Asian Americans played only a minor role in organizing its administration. As Henry Yu writes in his highly praised study of the institutional and intellectual history of the Survey, the missionary-allied organizers and the social scientists conducting it were sometimes at odds but, together, represented "the historical transition from gentlemanly to institutional Orientalism." Moreover, the Asian American subjects of the Survey, Yu declares, were "objectified, in all the senses which that word connotes."2 There was another notable factor. Very few women participated in the Institute and the Survey at any leadership level. 4
      While national and international issues presented major challenges to the Survey's advocates, local and regional factors were also significant obstacles. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was only one historical example. Anti-Chinese violence was widespread on the Pacific Coast in the nineteenth century; and anti-Japanese sentiment was commonplace, even among political reformers, in the early twentieth century. Not long after the "Gentlemen's Agreement" between the United States and Japan in 1907–1908 effectively ended the influx of male Japanese immigrants, progressive leader Chester H. Rowell, then editor of the Fresno Republican, published "Orientophobia: A Western Editor's Views on the White Frontier" in Collier's. He rejected complaints by easterners about efforts in California to prohibit Japanese ownership of land. "Nothing," Rowell wrote, "can keep our Pacific Coast essentially a white man's country except our continued determination to keep it so." Fearing that unregulated immigration and Japanese ownership of farmland might lead to potential racial amalgamation, Rowell asked: "Shall the frontier of the white man's world be drawn at the Golden Gate or right down the middle of our social structure?"3 In 1913, the year California adopted an alien land law, Arthur Dunn confirmed these racial attitudes in an article in Sunset, "Keeping the Coast Clear: The Japanization of Hawaii a Warning to the West." Tracing Hawaii's "Japanese Question" to early 1893, when a Japanese naval vessel made a show of that nation's flag in Honolulu shortly after an American-led coup overthrew the queen of Hawaii, Dunn echoed Rowell's argument about eastern critics of anti-Japanese legislation. "The Pacific Coast," he explained, "has a vision in this matter as yet unseen by some New England and Middle Western eyes." The answer was simple. "The Spirit of the West," he noted, "is positively opposed to all aliens who cannot be assimilated."4 5
      World War I and its aftermath magnified these earlier problems and added new ones. "Probably no section of the country," historian Earl Pomeroy wrote about the Far West, "went through more drastic readjustments between 1916 and the early 1920s." The Pacific Coast states, once regarded as progressive for use of the initiative and referendum, "became less famous for reform than for repression ... against religious, racial, and political minorities." These regional factors were often regarded as challenges to eastern economic interests. During a period when naval disarmament, the Open Door Policy, and immigration issues dramatically increased tensions with Japan, the internationalist-minded sponsors of the Survey of Race Relations expected it to be "one of the great peace promoting tasks of 1924."5 Institute directors embraced a significant new trend in social science methodology, as sociologists and cultural anthropologists abandoned college campuses to conduct research in such contrasting settings as the frigid villages of Greenland, the exotic islands of the South Pacific, and the ordinary middle America of Muncie, Indiana. "The field of race relations," a Survey report concluded, provides "an incomparable laboratory which serves both as a training ground for ... advanced students and as a field of public service."6 These goals proved elusive. 6
      Institute directors hoped to tap this latent spirit of reform and a new internationalism during a decade not noted for either characteristic. At both its administrative and research levels, the Survey of Race Relations linked the Progressive Period YMCA, missionaries, and remnants of the post-World War I Interchurch World Movement (1918–1920) with the embryonic Institute of Pacific Relations, which was founded in 1925.7 Missionary objectives and humanitarian ideals meshed with practical concerns about maintaining good diplomatic relations with Japan, expanding Asian markets, and protecting the free flow of Asian laborers to the United States and Canada. "The Race Relations Survey," sociologist Robert E. Park explained in a speech to the California Development Association, "had its origin in the belief that the organized forces of good will in the United States and abroad would be more effective if their work was based on a better understanding of the sources of [racial] conflict."8 7
      In 1921, soon after the collapse of the short-lived Interchurch World Movement, John R. Mott and colleagues from YMCA, missionary, and educational circles established the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys to complete several research projects previously commissioned by that religious organization.9 A consummate administrator, Mott served simultaneously as director of the Committee and general secretary of the International Committee of the YMCA Galen M. Fisher, a member of the "Mott network" in the YMCA, became executive secretary of the research committee, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. was its most influential donor. Early in 1923, the Committee formalized its mission by changing its name to the Institute of Social and Religious Research and, with additional funding from the Rockefeller family, embarked on an ambitious program to promote innovative social science research.10 "Counsellors" for the Institute included Mary Hunter Austin, Allen T. Burns, John H. Finley, Edwin F. Gay, Jeremiah W. Jenks, William M. Leiserson, Walter Lippman, Hon. Newton W. Rowell, John A. Ryan, and Robert E. Speer. The Survey of Race Relations was only one of nearly seventy projects the Institute sponsored before disbanding in 1934. Notable publications stemming from these studies included Middletown (1929), The Red Man in the United States (1923, 1924), 1,000 City Churches (1926), Negro Problems in Cities (1928, 1929), and Rural Social Trends (1933).11 8
      The original suggestion for the Survey of Race Relations can be traced to George Gleason, a former YMCA official in Japan who was secretary of the organization in Los Angeles. He first mentioned the idea during a conversation in 1921 with Fisher, who encouraged him to write a formal proposal. In February 1922, Gleason submitted a "Plan for a Study of the Japanese Problems on the West Coast of the United States," explaining that "this West Coast problem is one of the many racial questions stirring the world. Its early solution would be a real contribution to the mitigation of racial friction all over the world." Emphasizing the periodic strains in American-Japanese relations caused by the immigration issue, Gleason hoped that the project could avoid sensationalism and "capitalize on the good will and spirit of conciliation generated at [the 1921] Washington [naval disarmament conference]." The central feature of the plan was the establishment of an interracial committee on the Pacific Coast similar to those that promoted scientific studies and racial cooperation in the South. After responding to a few changes that Fisher recommended, Gleason submitted a revised proposal with a new title in April 1922: "Suggested Plan for a Survey of the Japanese Situation in California."12 9
      While California had the largest population of Japanese in the nation and the project received its initial impetus from public concern about the "California Question," various hereditary associations, the American Legion, Canadian veterans, the Ku Klux Klan, labor unions, and farm organizations elsewhere on the Pacific Coast had engaged in vigorous campaigns of anti-Japanese agitation. But these responses to the Japanese were only one part of a broader historical legacy in the region, since anti-Asian attitudes were deeply embedded in social practices, law, and economic relationships.13 Although Institute directors proclaimed that "the Survey will impose no program, will advocate no policies, and will champion no special interests," they believed the Survey would be a positive response to this heritage of racism and nativism.14 10


 
Figure 2
    Japanese organizations entered a float — including cherry blossoms, a Samurai warrior, and Uncle Sam — in the floral parade in Portland in 1908. The cultural blending illustrated in this float is indicative of an increased Japanese immigration to the West Coast.

    OHS neg., OrHi 56162
 


 
      Although anti-Chinese sentiments had been widespread, the Exclusion Act of 1882 and a tendency to be sojourners contributed to a declining, aging, and primarily male Chinese population by the early 1900s. Survey researchers focused on the Japanese principally because their experience most clearly reflected changing patterns of immigration and the heightened fear of economic competition in labor and agriculture in the years after 1900. While racists on the West Coast had played on fears of the "Japanese Menace" before World War I, the dimensions of the problem for the postwar generation were more apparent. Disturbed that many Japanese had families and had become settled residents and independent farmers — no longer fitting their earlier image as "agricultural coolies" — Dr. George P. Clements, the manager of the Agricultural Department of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, used racial stereotypes and historical analogy to compare "our Japanese question" with "what the Negro question was at the end of the Civil War." Emphasizing that the Japanese, unlike the slaves, had come to the United States voluntarily, Clements concluded: "We would like to enucleate this Japanese wart before it becomes a malignant cancer as the Negro is in the South today."15 11
      The Institute of Social and Religious Research moved into this volatile atmosphere seeking to use social scientists as lay missionaries in a crusade against racial prejudice. The directors of the Institute approved a preliminary version of the Survey in the fall of 1922, expanding Gleason's proposal by including other Asians and the rest of the Pacific Coast. In order to assess the regional response to the proposal, Fisher assigned J. Merle Davis to conduct "a quiet investigation of public opinion of the Pacific Coast regarding the possibility of conducting a comprehensive study of Asiatics in America." Davis, another member of Mott's YMCA network, had served the organization in Japan for many years, but he faced a difficult challenge in his new assignment. At the very time the Ku Klux Klan was having its greatest success in Oregon and California and was growing rapidly in Washington and British Columbia and just as the Oregon legislature adopted an alien land law aimed at Japanese immigrants, Davis spent nearly four months beginning on February 15, 1923, making contacts on the Pacific Coast. Heeding Fisher's warning that some directors of the Institute "feel that action, not information, is called for," Davis solicited opinions about achievable goals from "15 pastors, 12 bankers, 22 businessmen, 9 ym and ywca secretaries, 28 educators, 12 legionnaires, 31 farmers, 15 labor representatives, 11 women leaders, 9 officials, 11 lawyers, 7 social workers, 16 editors, 11 mission workers, 15 native sons, 6 doctors, 5 politicians." Of these, he tabulated 188 responses: "approved 165; neutral 19; and opposed 4." Davis submitted a positive report to Fisher, and the Institute appropriated $25,000 with the understanding that sponsors on the Pacific Coast would contribute an additional $30,000 to the project.16 12
      After receiving Davis's report, Institute officials appointed him administrative director of the Survey and approved the selection of a Pacific Coast Central Executive Committee, chaired by Stanford University President Ray Lyman Wilbur. During a meeting in September 1923, Institute directors dropped studies of Hawaii and Lower California from the proposal and officially labeled the project the "Survey of Race Relations: A Study of the Oriental on the Pacific Coast." They appointed Park as the director of research, and Davis expressed confidence that the Survey would inform American public opinion and also permit "government officials and students of international affairs in the whole Far East ... to understand for the first time the real, unbiased meaning of the contacts of their nationals with the people of Canada and the United States." David Starr Jordan concurred. The distinguished former president of Stanford explained to Davis "that a private investigation is desirable now when a joint high commission would not be secured" because Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes was preoccupied with Europe and wanted to "make as little other disturbance officially as possible."17 13


 
Figure 3
    This 1920s Ku Klux Klan parade in Ashland is an example of the increasing racial tension that prompted social scientists to conduct the Survey of Race Relations.

    OHS neg., OrHi 49676
 


 
      For three weeks in September 1923, Park and Davis met with interested groups of community leaders in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Vancouver, British Columbia. Although Park and Davis avoided publicizing their contacts with local Asian communities, some nativist organizations refused to meet with them. Typically, business associations, educators, and the clergy received Davis and Park warmly, while labor unions and organizations representing farmers and veterans were less receptive. Soon, five regional committees, centered in each of the major cities on the Pacific Coast, undertook the task of raising a combined $30,000 pledge: British Columbia, $3,000; Washington, $4,000; Oregon $3,000; Northern California, $10,000; and Southern California, $10,000.18 14
      While acknowledging these positive steps, Davis stressed the need for scientific and academic leadership to forestall any political manipulation of the Survey. But old opponents of Asian immigration would prove difficult to accommodate. After attending the organizing meeting for the Northern California committee, California labor leader Paul Scharrenberg commented cryptically: "Too many preachers running this thing. I am done with it." Nativist organizations were also reluctant to cooperate with the Survey. As early as September 1923, for example, C.L. McEnerney, grand director of the Native Sons of the Golden West, informed Davis that "my organization will henceforth decline to participate in the movement."19 15
      Davis and Park fought hard to overcome local resistance and inertia. In September 1923, Park visited interested faculty members on regional university and college campuses and sought potential research sources. From October through December 1923, Davis shuttled among the widely separated regional committees, noting that "the organization has been moving steadily forward," even though, as he admitted, "the process is somewhat slow and laborious."20 In Seattle, he found support from James Duncan, secretary of the Seattle Labor Council, who stated: "I feel that labor people are a good deal closer to Japanese working men than we are to American Capitalists." But Davis also encountered resistance, and the initial enthusiasm for the Survey proved difficult to sustain. Attorney Thomas N. Swale, representing the American Legion, resigned from the Survey's Seattle finance committee, declaring: "Well, if the Legion gets out of the Survey and the Labor Council gets out, it will take the guts right out of this investigation, won't it? Very likely the Farm representative will take similar action too, and you won't have much guts left."21 Interest waned with each delay in starting the research phase, and the fall holiday season was an additional distraction. Davis spent nearly three weeks at the end of December bolstering the "three northern units, some of which," he reported, "have sagged a good deal." Largely because of local issues, interest in Oregon and Washington was at "low ebb," Davis concluded. Still, he reported, "the Canadians are very well organized and exceedingly keen on the whole subject."22

 16
THE SURVEY STRUCTURE took final form in January 1924, after Davis and Gleason organized the Southern California Executive Committee in Los Angeles. That regional committee included Harry Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, John S. Horn, president of the Los Angeles Labor Council, and Arthur S. Bent of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, with Gleason serving as regional secretary. "With this council formed," Davis exulted, "the coast-wide organization is completed, and we are ready for Dr. Park."23 Institute directors approved a nine-month schedule for the Survey, and Park took a leave of absence from the University of Chicago. In early January 1924, only a month before his sixtieth birthday, Park and his wife moved to San Francisco's Chinatown, where they lived until returning to Chicago in September of that year. 17
      An energetic and imaginative scholar, Park had come late to his discipline. Like his contemporary Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1931), Park (1864–1944) belonged to a generation of historians and social scientists who came from "the farms and small towns of mid-America." He grew up in the bustling river community of Red Wing, Minnesota, which he later described in terms reminiscent of another "Mississippi River boy," Mark Twain. Park never discarded a utopian vision of his childhood, despite an adult social perspective nourished in academic circles in the United States and Germany; nearly ten years experience as a newspaper reporter in the journalistic environment that produced Lincoln Steffens, John Reed, Joseph Pulitzer, and William Randolph Hearst; and service for several years as public relations man, personal secretary, and ghost writer for Booker T. Washington. In 1913, at nearly fifty years of age, Park accepted an appointment as lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the principal founders of the influential "Chicago school of sociology."24 18
      Park was an eclectic student of society. His approach to social science was largely "an attempt," as Fred H. Matthews describes it, "to suck the essence out of other people's experience, to savour it without committing oneself or getting hurt." Park adapted Georg Simmel's theories on social interaction and the stranger in society, absorbed ideas on social contact from Albion W. Small, and borrowed the theme of social changes and the life history method that William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki had pioneered in their seminal study, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918–1920).25 19
      After spending several years studying African Americans in the South and European immigrants in the cities of the Middle West and East, Park looked westward. Shortly after writing an introduction for Jesse F. Steiner's The Japanese Invasion in 1917, Park took two long trips by rail to the Southwest and the Pacific Coast in 1917 and 1919, filling his diaries and journals with accounts of Asian and Mexican Americans. He compared their experiences with those of the European immigrants and described the Pacific Coast as North America's racial frontier on the Pacific Ocean. Emphasizing the evolutionary stages of a "race cycle" extending from conflict to assimilation, Park adapted his version of a frontier thesis to the Survey of Race Relations. Like Frederick Jackson Turner, Park described the frontier as a two-dimensional social environment, both process and place. But, if Turner was "ethnocentric and nationalistic," as Patricia Nelson Limerick charged in Legacy of Conquest, Park emphasized the dominant role of race relations in an international context.26 20
      To better understand that social interaction, Park proposed "a new parochialism" that would "encourage men to seek God in their own village and to see the social problem in their own neighborhood."27 This emphasis on local influences and individual experiences can be seen in his choice of source materials for the Survey: statistics on economics and education, letters, narratives or personal experiences, life histories, and newspaper clippings. Although he remained within his journalistic comfort zone, Park did not ignore the consequences of history or the goals of historians. "In general," Park wrote, "a study of this nature requires the materials that an historian might want, fifty or a hundred years hence, if he were to give a lively, intimate and authentic picture of the relations of the immigrant races and the native population of the present day."28 21
      Under the administrative leadership of Ray Lyman Wilbur and Davis, the Survey gathered a talented research team. With Park established in San Francisco, Winifred Raushenbush, a graduate student at the University of Chicago and Park's principal research assistant, traveled to Canada to aid in the work begun by economist Theodore H. Boggs of the University of British Columbia. Raushenbush, the daughter of Social Gospel minister Walter Rauschenbusch (family name changed spelling in the 1940s), focused her attention on the Chinese residents of Victoria and Vancouver, B.C.29 Sociologists Emory S. Bogardus and William Carlson Smith of the University of Southern California and Roderick D. McKenzie and H.H. Gowen of the University of Washington shared the research program with economists Boggs, Edward O. Sisson of Reed College, and Eliot G. Mears of Stanford University. Dozens of faculty members and students from other regional colleges and universities volunteered to assist with the research. While business associations, labor unions, and veterans' groups typically gave only half-hearted cooperation, many social workers, clergy, and private citizens eagerly participated in the research program. The immigrants and their American-born children, who were the focal point of the study, played only limited roles as interviewers, researchers, and administrators. 22
      While vestiges of the prewar progressive faith in experts survived in these efforts to apply scientific principles to social problems, scholars could not initiate policy, and Park was cautious about the possibility of achieving any immediate social benefits from the Survey. Bogardus, however, was optimistic that colleges and universities could conduct social surveys that would "furnish the whole country with authoritative materials, change and mold public opinion, and create a scientific and non-magical control over social questions and social progress."30 23
      With the research program officially underway, other concerns surfaced. The Survey's financial dependence on the Institute of Social and Religious Research made some West Coast participants apprehensive about interference by easterners in decisions affecting economic and social patterns in the West. In this, they resembled earlier generations of westerners who might bristle at the financial influences of easterners in the West but did not refuse their money. The members of Wilbur's Central Executive Committee accepted the Institute's money after agreeing at their first session in January 1924 that the Survey should be "administered and financed as a unit" and should handle its own funds. The Central Executive Committee voted to include Filipinos and Koreans in the Survey after agreeing that it was "not at present practicable to include Hawaii."31 24


 
Figure 4
    Professor Edward O. Sisson of Reed College taught economics and served on the survey's Central Executive Committee. Sisson published Educating for Freedom with his wife, who is pictured here.

    OHS neg., CN 009897
 


 
      The Pacific Coast committees faced problems that were partly logistical, partly social, and partly ideological. The geographical area covered by the Survey was immense, and each regional committee had to contend with local social, political, and economic factors. Wilbur's Central Executive Committee ruled that the representation of Asian groups on regional councils "should be determined by each council itself." The decision of the Northern California Council to reject financial contributions from Asian groups or individual Asians or "from persons directly representing 'wide-open' immigration or urging Oriental immigration" suggests the apprehension some regional committees had about maintaining the appearance of scholarly objectivity and political neutrality. Even with pressing financial problems, the regional committees held to this principle, fearing that otherwise they would be "jeopardizing the fair reception of the Survey by the public." Researchers often sought advice from local social workers and police; but, aside from limited contacts with immigration and customs officials, the U.S. and Canadian governments played no role and contributed no money to the Survey. The Japanese Imperial government also maintained discreet neutrality, although consular officials were receptive to interviews and submitted periodic reports to Japan about the Survey.32 25
      There was limited progress to report. The Survey of Race Relations never achieved Park's optimistic projections. There was a shortage of trained interviewers, and the language barrier was only one of several problems. While the number of participating Asian scholars and interviewers was limited, the Survey faced a chronic lack of financial support on the Pacific Coast. Complaining that "people are interested but not interested to the point of putting out money," Park soon began to describe the Survey as a preliminary phase of a more comprehensive research project centered in regional colleges and universities.33 But the colleges could provide only limited assistance, usually in the form of released time for instructors and course credits for students. As an undergraduate institution, Portland's Reed College provided little more than moral support to Sisson. 26
      Despite facing numerous obstacles, the Survey researchers conducted dozens of field studies and eventually compiled 640 life histories and nearly 6,000 pages of related information into sets of "major" and "minor" documents about racial assimilation and social attitudes. The life histories were brief biographical and autobiographical sketches or oral histories. While many of them were of only marginal value as "social documents" and were spread thinly over a broad geographical and social base, the data reinforced Park's assumptions about the influence of cultural and racial factors on social conflict. The Survey data provided comparisons with his earlier studies of African Americans and immigrants and confirmed Park's faith in the "race cycle," which traced social interaction from competition through conflict and accommodation to assimilation. But for Park, "assimilation" did not mean social or racial integration, and his interpretations of the causes of racial conflict reflected this ambivalence in his theory and his personal attitudes.34 27
      There was less ambivalence at the local level. The efforts of Davis and Park to promote the Survey in Seattle and Portland reflected other vivid contrasts among the social, economic, and educational influences shaping the two cities early in the twentieth century. During a four-day visit to Seattle in September 1923, Park was pleased with the positive response to the Survey by leading University of Washington faculty members in sociology, economics, religion, and history, although he considered some of the studies of Asians done by students to be "rather amateurish and tentative." He closely observed Chinese and Japanese neighborhoods in Seattle, and his conversations about the Survey with some local clergymen and representatives of the Japanese community were encouraging. But Park reserved his greatest praise for the contributions of the newly appointed organizing committee of business and social leaders in Seattle. The organizing committee, with distinguished Judge Thomas E. Burke presiding, pledged to contribute $4,000 to the Survey. "I was interested and somewhat surprised," Park wrote in his diary, "to find ... the number of people who were present who were actually interested and well informed in regard to the Japanese question."35 28


 
Figure 5
    Richard F. Scholz was the second president of Reed College and was credited with stabilizing the college's liberal arts curriculum. He presided at an organizing meeting for the Oregon Committee of the Survey of Race Relations in 1923.

    OHS neg., CN 014544
 


 
      After Seattle, Park visited Vancouver, B.C., where he gained a favorable impression of studies conducted at the University of British Columbia. He was greatly disappointed by his experience in Portland a few days later. Although intrigued by Portland's Chinatown and a deportation case of a "Chinese slave girl," who was cited as a prostitute, the contrasts he perceived between Portland and Seattle were notable. On September 16, Park attended a YMCA retreat at Reed College hosted by the school's president, Richard F. Scholz, a historian. Park helped oversee the establishment of an Oregon committee for the Survey during the conference, but he was not pleased with the result. The Master of the state Grange chaired the new committee, and E.E. Schwartztrauber was acting secretary. Park noted a striking irony in the contrast with Seattle. He found that "labor, the Legion, and the farmers" were represented but business groups and educators were notably absent. "Aside from President Scholz of Reed College and William M. Ladd of Ladd and Tilton Bank," Park wrote in his diary, "Portland can hardly be said to have been represented." Unlike Seattle, Park found "no enthusiasm" in Portland. "The whole question," he concluded "is a purely academic matter as far as Portland is concerned."36 Although C.C. Chapman, editor of The Oregon Voter, Sadie Orr Dunbar, a social worker, Otto R. Hartwig, George B. Noble, and George A. Palmer accepted positions on the board, Park's assessment was correct. 29
      The Survey faced other significant obstacles in Oregon. The Ku Klux Klan, which gained national attention because of its political strength in the state from 1921 through 1924, exploited local religious issues and racial antagonisms. Speaking in Eugene, Oregon, in January 1922, the Rev. Reuben H. Sawyer echoed the racial ideas of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard by proclaiming the virtues of Anglo-Saxon racial purity. Sawyer, the state's official Klan lecturer, emphasized the corrupting influences of aliens on American society and morals and expressed his suspicions about Japan's goals in Asia and his fear of the "rising flood of color" throughout the world. Only months before Park attended the meeting at Reed College, the Klan joined the Grange and the American Legion in successfully lobbying the 1923 legislature for a law, similar to those in California and Washington, restricting ownership of land by non-citizen Japanese. There were other indicators of the Klan's influence in the state. In March 1923, the leaders of the Portland Chamber of Commerce, who later advised their organization's members not to participate in the Survey, opened the chamber's meeting rooms for a birthday banquet for Fred L. Gifford, the Grand Dragon of the Oregon Klan. News that Governor Walter M. Pierce and Portland Mayor George L. Baker were the featured speakers and guests of honor at the banquet reinforced impressions that Oregon had capitulated to the Klan.37 30


 
Figure 6
    The Rev. Reuben H. Sawyer of the East Side Christian Church in Sunnyside traveled throughout Oregon promoting the Ku Klux Klan. His lecture, which drew a large audience to Portland's Municipal Auditorium in December 1921, was a standard feature of Klan recruiting rallies in the state.

    OHS neg., OrHi 38855
 


 
      Challenged by inertia and opposition in Portland, Park and Davis considered extending the Survey to the nearby Hood River Valley in Oregon. This small valley, situated between the Columbia River and Mt. Hood, was approximately sixty miles east of Portland and had the largest concentration of Japanese outside of Portland. The valley's few hundred Japanese residents, many of them married and with children, worked in lumber mills and as agricultural laborers, farmers, and businessmen.38 In late November 1923, Davis spoke to a small group of residents in the town of Hood River. After explaining the purpose of the Survey, Davis discussed the possibility of including the mid-Columbia area in the study. But there was much negative sentiment to overcome. Advocates of an alien land law had been active in the Hood River area for several years, and the Hood River Post of the American Legion was instrumental in promoting the bill adopted by the legislature in the spring of 1923. The issue divided the county. While Hood River attorney George R. Wilbur, a veteran and former state senator, led opposition to the Japanese, Hugh G. Ball, editor of the Hood River News, had worked in Japan for several years and editorialized against the land law. Groups in small communities elsewhere in the valley held opposing positions. The Parkdale Forum, "by unanimous vote," registered its opposition to the bill, while the Pine Grove Grange adopted a resolution supporting "the anti-Japanese measure." A local legislator commented: "I wish Commodore Perry had stayed home." And Joseph W. Morton, a former state legislator from Hood River, argued in a state senate hearing in 1923 that such a law "would subvert the treaty between the United States and Japan and would be considered an unfriendly act." During a later research trip to Oregon, Park made notes about these local issues and considered using Hood River as a case study; but, aside from identifying several individuals, including some Japanese, he did not conduct any interviews.39 31


 
Figure 7
    A delegation of Japanese women and officials thank Portland Mayor George L. Baker and representatives of local organizations for contributing relief aid to victims of the devestating Tokyo earthquake of 1923.

    OHS neg., CN 012628
 


 
      Although Park worked hard to promote the research program, he could do little to create interest where none existed. Survey researchers had little success in Oregon, where there were relatively small populations of Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians and considerable anti-Japanese sentiment. Oregon also lacked a major urban university, and the research facilities and faculty of the University of Oregon and Oregon Agricultural College were not comparable to those of major universities elsewhere on the Pacific Coast. If Park considered Oregon "the most backward region as far as the Survey is considered," he was pleased with the progress in the state of Washington. He described the research conducted by Roderick McKenzie and H.H. Gowen at the University of Washington as "better organized than elsewhere on the Coast with the exception of Los Angeles," where sociologist Emory S. Bogardus of the University of Southern California led the research program.40 32
      The University of Southern California provided the most favorable research environment and made the most significant contributions to the Survey. President R.B. von Kleinsmid actively supported the project, and the Sociology Department had well-trained scholars and, in Bogardus, an ambitious leader. Bogardus conducted studies of social distance scales, which measured racial accommodation; William Carlson Smith traced the experiences of second-generation Asian Americans; and colleagues from other colleges in the Los Angeles area contributed life histories and research data.41 These Survey projects stimulated the rapid expansion of graduate programs at usc. "We have ... developed through the Survey," Bogardus reported, "a Society for Social Research, a Social Research Library, and a Social Research Clinic." He added: "We have graduate students ready to work under the direction of the professors as money is provided." The influence of sociologist Earl Fiske Young, who had just joined the usc faculty, was felt almost immediately, as he prepared a social base map and told a meeting of the Social Research Society that the Survey especially needed "maps illustrating changes in population and conflict situations."42 33
      Although universities and colleges on the Pacific Coast provided considerable research assistance and many volunteers for the Survey, business and organizational sponsors failed miserably in meeting their financial pledges. The Central Executive Committee reported on June 1, 1924, that British Columbia had collected only $465, Washington $2,015, Northern California $2,556, and Southern California $1,500. As if to underscore the lack of its contributions to the research program, the Oregon committee did not collect any money.43 34
      This failure of regional sponsors to meet their pledges led to increased pressure on the researchers by the Institute directors. As early as July 1924, Galen Fisher hinted that John D. Rockefeller Jr. was losing interest in the Survey, and he reported that some of the Institute directors expected the Survey to have a more immediate social impact. The persistence of racism and the passage of a new federal law blocking immigration from Asia seemed proof of these concerns. Nevertheless, Wilbur continued to request funding from the Institute to enable Park and Davis to work beyond the original September deadline. Although Fisher conceded that the research had potential long-term value, he explained that the directors "felt that the outcome of the present Survey" was not clear. He pressed Park for "a statement of findings" by October 1, promising that the Institute would not "make any official statement at this time" about "the failure of the Coast Committee to raise the $30,000 stipulated in the agreement...."44 35
      Facing a virtual ultimatum, Park described to Fisher his plan for publishing several volumes of data and pleaded for funding "to preserve some portion of the present administrative machinery of the Race Relations Survey." Only three weeks before the September deadline, Fisher informed Park and Davis that their appointments would be extended through December 1924. The Institute's directors reluctantly accepted the fact that Park had been too optimistic in predicting that most of the projects would be completed by August 1 and that the first volume of research data would be published in January 1925. Early in August, Park admitted that the first volume "will not be ready for another year."45 Even that projection was too optimistic. 36


 
Figure 8
    C.C. Chapman was a member of the short-lived Oregon Committee for the Survey of Race Relations.As editor of the Oregon Voter, he contributed a sometimes independent and colorful style to Oregon politics and journalism in the 1920s.

    OHS neg., OrHi 4245
 


 
      Soon after learning about his renewal, Park told a group of social scientists meeting at the Faculty Club of the University of California in Berkeley that the Survey would soon enter a "third stage" and focus on subjects "in which the men of the universities are becoming interested." He was enthusiastic about the possibility that local communities could "become the social laboratories" for "the practical application of theories worked out in university classrooms."46 This long-term approach reflected the "Chicago School's" emphasis on applied research, confirmed Park's divergence from the Institute's original goal, and served as a rationale for the Survey's lack of immediate social and political influence. In addition, a research network among the regional colleges would reduce the dependence on outside funding and avoid the problem that George Gleason suddenly represented. 37
      By the end of August 1924, Gleason had become a liability to the Survey. His sympathy toward the Japanese was commonly acknowledged, and he even ran the Southern California Regional Committee from his YMCA office. Opposition to Gleason and the Survey had been building for some time. The California nativist publication, Grizzly Bear, printed an editorial warning against the Survey in June 1924:
This outfit is presumed to be making a survey of Oriental conditions. Its guiding hands are pro-Jap, and its finances derived largely from pro-Jap sources. Its real purpose is to assist the Japs in their "peaceful invasion" of California.
     This committee asked for, and was denied, endorsement by the Native Sons of the Golden West, the California American Legion, and other Organizations and individuals that are endeavoring to keep California White.47
 		38
      Later that summer, Sacramento newspaper publisher V.S. McClatchy, the honorary secretary of a joint committee of anti-Japanese organizations, privately warned Davis that the California State Grange, the American Legion, the Native Sons of the Golden West, and Federated labor were considering a direct attack on the Survey because of Gleason's association with it. When the Grizzly Bear criticized Gleason for working with the internationalist Palisade's Conference, identifying him as pro-Japanese and even labeling the Survey the "Gleason Survey," Davis acted. 39
      "Yours will be the last regional office to keep in action," he wrote Gleason in August 1924. Oregon's office had closed long before. "British Columbia," Davis noted, "closed its office in May, Northern California on July 1st and Washington closes on August 31st." Davis then abruptly asked Gleason to resign, explaining: "The way that this Survey is shaping up with its larger and longer outlook is quite different from what you and I and most of our committees visualized at the start."48 Notifying Wilbur, who concurred with his decision to dismiss Gleason, Davis warned that the step "must be done quickly and firmly" because he "is such an able man and so aggressive that he is apt to run away with his committee." It was a distasteful affair, especially since Davis knew that Gleason "was the first man to propose this Survey." But, as he reasoned, Gleason "is a propagandist for the Japanese, and has seen in the Survey a means of bringing about better understanding of the Japanese and a bettering of their conditions here." Sentiment could not get in the way of research, and Davis feared that Gleason's continued association with the Survey would give "an unsavory and false reputation to our whole movement, which may seriously embarrass us." This version of neutrality would have a high price. Less than two weeks after Davis asked for Gleason's resignation, the Southern California Committee moved its office from the YMCA to the Los Angeles County Farm Bureau, and W.S. Rosecrans of the Farm Bureau staff took over the Survey's local administrative duties.49

 40
THE SURVEY CONTINUED to lose momentum during the fall of 1924. Although not offering any alternatives, the Central Executive Committee admitted in a report that the commitment to neutrality created "a formidable obstacle to the financial appeal," since "a majority of Pacific Coast people have taken extreme positions upon the Asiatic question." The report blamed nativist agitation and congressional legislation for complicating the problem. "Some of the most intelligent men on this Coast," the Committee concluded gloomily, "told us that there was no longer need of it."50 After Park returned to Chicago to assess the research data, Davis described the Survey as changing "from an imported movement to an indigenous, West Coast movement."51 This conclusion confirmed two insurmountable problems. The goals of the Institute's directors in the East never meshed with the research goals of the social scientists or the social, political, and economic realities of the Pacific Coast. 41
      When the remaining members of the original staff disbanded at the end of December 1924, Wilbur arranged for Eliot G. Mears, an agricultural economist at Stanford University, to retain his academic appointment while working part-time administering the remnants of the Survey from a campus office. Mears was critical of Park's approach to the Survey, believing that he was probably "right in focusing on a few main studies" but complaining that "there has been no careful attempt at a well-rounded research or investigation program."52 While Mears was correct in this assessment, the directors of the Institute revealed their mounting frustration with Park's slowness to inform the public about the racial issue on the Pacific Coast. 42
      Reluctantly responding to pressure from the directors, Park suggested in the fall of 1924 that the Institute sponsor a conference to publicize the research. Wilbur grasped eagerly at the suggestion, hoping that such a conference would satisfy the original agreement and possibly attract new sponsors for the Survey. Although unstated, he may have hoped that a major conference might also bring some national attention to Stanford. After Institute directors approved funding for a conference and recommended that it be held at Stanford in March 1925, Fisher informed Davis that the conference would not be a substitute for the promised books. The directors, he explained, "are of the opinion that the results of the Survey should issue in two substantial volumes."53 43
      For the moment, however, a Findings Conference was the only alternative, and the members of the Survey team assembled at Stanford on March 21–26, 1925. Mears opened the proceedings with a six-thousand-word report, which was later published as Tentative Findings of the Survey of Race Relations.54 During discussions, Park defended his eclectic approach to sociological theory and asserted that social science could be "a substitute for politics." He emphasized, in an address to the conferees, that the mixing of cultures and races was a primary result of modernization, but he was ambivalent about whether the result was good or bad. Race relations, Park concluded, were largely psychological, but also a matter "of brute physical fact" and partly, in a bow to Bogardus, "a matter of social distance."55 He compared the Survey researchers with psychoanalysts and described their need to probe in order "to find out what is at the root ... of behavior ... and thus enable us to talk about it." He believed that the Survey had brought the problem of race relations into public view where it could now be analyzed. But Park's previous life experience in small-town Minnesota, the immigrant ghettos of Chicago, and the segregated South shaped his conclusion. He could not bring himself to argue that racial barriers and social customs should disappear. "We might solve the problem," Park reasoned, "by establishing regions where the negro [sic] could live and farm and where he could not live; or regions where the Oriental could or where he could not. All these things need to be worked out."56 44
      If the Findings Conference temporarily signaled a new spirit of cooperation between the social scientists and the Institute's directors, it did not resolve their basic disagreement about the goals of the Survey. In a session closed to journalists, one researcher "questioned the advisability of attempting to change racial attitudes," and even the generally optimistic Bogardus questioned whether efforts to educate the public about race relations would be successful without spending "a good deal more [money] on finding and interpreting the facts."57 The conference ended much as it began, with disagreements about practices and goals dividing scholars and Institute directors. 45
      Barely two months after the conference ended, Fisher informed Wilbur that Institute director Raymond B. Fosdick felt "rather uncomfortable" about the "Tentative Findings"; John R. Mott shared his feelings. They had "expected the findings to allude directly to the situation caused by the Exclusion Clause and that reference would be made ... to other groups than the exclusionists." In July 1925, Fisher rejected Wilbur's request for additional funds to run the Survey's central office at Stanford, citing as the principal reason "the condition precedent, the receipt of a satisfactory, completed manuscript from Dr. Park, was not fulfilled." Park and Fisher exchanged correspondence about the uncompleted manuscript until, in April 1927, two full years after the Findings Conference, Park informed Fisher that his teaching and research duties at the University of Chicago "would make it impossible for him to complete his interpretative volume on the Survey until after ... retirement" in 1929. He expected to move to California at that time and would "make the completion of this volume his first task."58

 46
PARK DID NOT MOVE to California and never wrote the book. He continued productive scholarly activities for many years, but pursued other interests, including human ecology studies with Roderick D. McKenzie. If Park neglected the Survey of Race Relations, it nevertheless had a lasting influence on him. The Survey confirmed his beliefs about race and reinforced a positive vision of frontiers that he shared with historian Frederick Jackson Turner. Park's Red Wing, Minnesota, after all, was not far in distance, time, or circumstance from Turner's Portage, Wisconsin. But Park's vision of a frontier was not limited by geography or determined by social institutions. The Survey of Race Relations, as he explained at the Findings Conference, was "an attempt to study a worldwide process," which he described in terms resembling the urban sociologist's zone of emergence. "A frontier," Park wrote several years later, "is not merely a mark where peoples meet but a zone of transition where they intermingle."59 47
      While disagreeing about numerous issues, Park, Davis, and the Institute directors shared one important trait: they failed to understand the history, politics, and social dynamics of the Pacific Coast. The religious and economic motivations of the East Coast Institute directors inevitably shaped their views of American and Canadian relationships with Asia and the place of Asian immigrants in the two countries. The directors also allowed too little time to complete such a major academic project. Aside from some extended studies in California, researchers visited few places outside the major cities and were too dependent on the cooperation and resources of the major universities. The response to the Survey in Oregon confirmed these problems. Oregonians of all races did little to finance or encourage the Survey of Race Relations. Businessmen and educators typically neglected the Survey, nativists rejected it, and the small number of Asians in the state reduced the Survey's relevance in the eyes of the few Oregonians aware of the project. 48
      Even as they planned for the Findings Conference in the spring of 1925, the Institute's leaders were looking beyond the Pacific Coast. In late June and early July 1925, barely three months after the conference at Stanford, Wilbur, Davis, and Park joined 144 other delegates from eight Pacific Rim countries at the first meeting of the Institute of Pacific Relations in Honolulu. Mott and Fisher had been instrumental in a series of exploratory conferences leading to the founding of the ipr, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. helped fund it. As if to confirm this connection with the Survey, the delegates in Honolulu elected Wilbur chairman of the ipr, Davis became the first general secretary of the international organization, and Park presented an address, "The Race Survey on the Pacific Coast" and participated in a roundtable discussion on "The Sociological Approach to Pacific Problems."60 49


 
Figure 9
    A soldier posts "Civilian Exclusion Order #1" in Kitsap County, Washington, on March 23, 1942. World War II internment was, in part, a result of discordant "race relations" on the West Coast.

    OHS neg., CN 021104
 


 
      Although Park did not fulfill his obligations to compile books about the Survey, the academic experiment left significant intellectual and material legacies. Bogardus, McKenzie, Mears, William Carlson Smith, and several Asian American scholars wrote books using data and interviews from the Survey.61 As Henry Yu explains in Thinking Oriental, these social scientists, many of them products of the Chicago School, became academic mentors and provided stimuli for a new generation of scholars of Asian heritage. The Survey also led to the expansion of graduate programs in sociology and the introduction of courses in race relations in many high schools and colleges on the Pacific Coast. Equally important, the Survey left research materials for later generations. In addition to Park's papers at the University of Chicago, several universities on the Pacific Coast established archival collections of life histories, questionnaires, research notes, and the personal papers of the principal researchers. Though fragmentary and incomplete, the life histories and other documents provide a valuable source of information about the Asian American experience during the first decades of the twentieth century. Still, the Survey of Race Relations did not resolve the "Japanese Question" in a positive manner, as the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians during World War II conclusively demonstrated. Even today, more than eight decades after the Survey ended, many of the pivotal questions its advocates asked about international relations, racial conflict, and immigration issues remain unanswered. 50


Notes

The author wishes to thank the Beveridge Fund of the American Historical Association and Walter Nugent's 1984 NEH Summer Seminar at Indiana University for supporting research for this long-overdue project. Thanks also for helpful suggestions by G. Thomas Edwards and anonymous readers.

1. "Pacific Coast Race Survey" and "The Oriental Survey of the Pacific Coast and Hawaii," William Carlson Smith Papers, Special Collections, University of Oregon, Eugene [hereafter Smith Papers]. See Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 149–51.

2. Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), viii, ix.

3. Theodore Roosevelt's administration reached a diplomatic compromise with Japan. In return for the Japanese government refusing to issue passports to immigrant laborers, Japan could issue passports to "laborers who have already been in America and to the parents, wives, and children of laborers resident there." See Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), 255; Chester H. Rowell, "Orientophobia: A Western Editor's Views on the White Frontier," Collier's 42 (February 6, 1909): 13, 29.

4. Arthur Dunn, "Keeping the Coast Clear: The Japanization of Hawaii a Warning to the West," Sunset (July 1913), 122, 124.

5. Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, & Nevada (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 216; "Pacific Coast Race Survey," Smith Papers. See also Yasuo Wakatsuki, "Japanese Emigration to the United States, 1866–1924: A Monograph," Perspectives in American History 12 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979); Roy K. Akagi, Japan's Foreign Relations, 1542–1936: A Short History (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1936); K.K. Kawakami, ed., What Japan Thinks (New York: Macmillan, 1921); T. Iyenaga and Kenoske Sato, Japan and the California Problem (New York: G.P. Putnam's sons, 1921); "Notes Exchanged between Japan and the United States on the Immigration Question," The Japan Magazine 14 (June 1924): 342–50; Yuji Ichioka, "Japanese Immigrant Response to the 1920 California Alien Land Law," Agricultural History 58 (April 1984), 157–78; Nagayo Homma, "Portrait of the Intellectual as an American," American Studies International 18 (Autumn 1979): 27.

6. Survey of Race Relations [Eliot G. Mears], Tentative Findings of the Survey of Race Relations: A Canadian-American Study of the Oriental on the Pacific Coast (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1925), 5.

7. See Eldon G. Ernst, Moment of Truth for Protestant America: Interchurch Campaigns Following World War One (Missoula: University of Montana, 1972); and Edgar Eugene Robinson and Paul Carroll Edwards, eds., The Memoirs of Ray Lyman Wilbur, 1875–1949 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1960), 315–28.

8. "Dr. Park's Proposal to the California Development Association," June 13, 1924," Survey of Race Relations Papers, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, Calif. [hereafter SRR]. See also Park, "Our Racial Frontier on the Pacific," Survey 56 (May 1, 1926): 192–6.

9. Ernest D. Burton, president of the University of Chicago, W. H. P. Faunce, president of Amherst Agricultural College, James L. Barton of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and Raymond B. Fosdick, attorney and later president of the Rockefeller Foundation, joined Mott on the board of directors.

10. "Statement," Oct. 15, 1923, and Galen M. Fisher to L. K. Frank of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, Oct. 24, 1923, Rockefeller Archive Center, North Tarrytown, N.Y. See also Galen M. Fisher, Creative Forces in Japan (New York: The National Council, Dept. of Missions, 1923), 178–80.
      A citation from Princeton University described John R. Mott (1865–1955) as "a new Crusader bent on the Christian conquest of the world." Quoted in Robert T. Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 138. See John R. Mott, The Evangelization of the World in This Generation (1900 repr., New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1972); Raymond B. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York: Harper & Bros., 1952); Basil J. Mathews and John R. Mott, World Citizen (New York: Harper, 1934); and C. Howard Hopkins, John R. Mott, 1865–1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979).

11. See [Galen M. Fisher], The Institute of Social and Religious Research, 1921–1934 (New York: The Institute, 1934); G.E.E. Lindquist, The Red Man in the United States (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1923); H. Paul Douglas, 1,000 City Churches (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1926); Thomas J. Woofter Jr., Negro Problems in Cities (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1928); Edmund deS. Brunner and J.H. Kolb, Rural Social Trends (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933); and Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929). The Lynds conducted their initial research in Muncie, Indiana, during the same months as the Survey of Race Relations. See Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1937), ix.

12. George Gleason to John R. Mott, Feb. 17, 1922; "Suggested Plan for a Survey of the Japanese Situation in California," April 22, 1922. SRR. Gleason wrote What Shall I Think of Japan? (New York: Macmillan, 1921). See also Robinson and Edwards, eds., Memoirs of Ray Lyman Wilbur, 314.

13. See Dorothy O. Johansen and Charles M. Gates, Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest, 2d ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967); Carlos A. Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989); and David Alan Johnson, Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840–1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

14. "A Proposal for Cooperation between the California Development Association and the Survey of Race Relations Committee," June 12, 1924, SRR.

15. Speech by [Dr. George P. Clements], manager, Agricultural Department, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, 1921. Smith Papers. For an example of a northern California nativist spokesman, see newspaper publisher Valentine S. McClatchy, Japanese Immigration and Colonization: Brief Prepared for Consideration of the State Department, 1921 (1921; repr., San Francisco: R and E Research Associates, 1970). John Modell, The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation: The Japanese of Los Angeles, 1900–1942 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 41, 44–45, 54–55, 64–65, suggests that the anti-Japanese movement was better organized in northern California and less shrill than its counterpart in Los Angeles.

16. Fisher to J. Merle Davis, July 11, Aug. 15, Oct. 31, 1922, "The Oriental Survey of the Pacific Coast and Hawaii," SRR; Gleason, "The Pacific Coast Race Survey or a Pacific Coast Contribution to Race Relations" (c. April 1924); and Davis to Garson C. Cook, Dec. 2, 1923. SRR. See also Davis, "We Said: 'Let's Find the Facts': And This Is What They Answered — First and Last — on the Coast," Survey 56 (May 1, 1926): 201–2.

17. "Pacific Coast Race Survey." Smith Papers; David Starr Jordan to Davis, Aug. 28, 1923. SRR.

18. "Survey of Race Relations," Smith Papers; Robinson and Edwards, eds., The Memoirs of Ray Lyman Wilbur, 315.

19. Minor Document B-86, Smith Papers. Despite his anti-Asian sentiments, Scharrenberg participated in the first conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations in Honolulu in 1925. Davis to Ray Lyman Wilbur, Sept. 16, 1923; C.L. McEnerny to Davis, Sept. 21, 1923, SRR.

20. Minutes of Northern California Executive Committee," Oct. 22, 1923; Davis to Wilbur, Oct. 20, 1923. SRR.

21. Survey of Race Relations, Stanford University On-Line Collections, Stanford University Library.

22. Davis to Wilbur, Nov. 9, 23, 1923; Davis to Vaughan MacCaughey, Dec. 7, 1923; Davis to Caroline Schleef, Dec. 1, 1923; Davis, "Brief Report on Progress," Dec. 12, 1923. SRR.

23. Davis to Wilbur, Jan. 3, 1924, SRR.

24. Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York: Knopf, 1970), 77. Winifred Raushenbush, Robert E. Park: Biography of a Sociologist (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979), 3–14, 29–32. See also Roscoe C. Hinkle and Gisela J. Hinkle, The Development of Modern Sociology: Its Nature and Growth in the United States (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954), 18–19, 33–37. 28; and Martin Bulmer, The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity, and the Rise of Sociological Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

25. Fred H. Matthews, Quest for an American Sociology: Robert E. Park and the Chicago School (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1977), 116–17; Laurance Veysey, "Reappraising the Chicago School of Sociology," Reviews in American History 6 (March 1978): 114–19. Park adapted the race cycle idea from Simmel's four-stage theory of social interaction: competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. See Stanford C. Lyman, "The Race Relations Cycle of Robert E. Park," Pacific Sociological Review 11 (Spring 1968): 16–22. See also, Everett C. Hughes et al., eds., The Collected Works of Robert Ezra Park, vols. 1–3 (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1950–5); William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918); and Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted (New York: Harper & Bros., 1921). Although the last book appeared under the names of Park and Miller, Thomas was the author.

26. "Introduction" in Jesse Frederick Steiner, The Japanese Invasion: A Study in the Psychology of Inter-Racial Conflicts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1917), vii–xvii. Park included a brief description of the Japanese immigrant press in San Francisco in The Immigrant Press and Its Control (New York: Harper & Bros., 1922). See Park, "Our Racial Frontier on the Pacific," Survey (May 1, 1926), 192–6. See also Bogue, "Social Theory and the Pioneer," in ed. Richard Hofstadter and Seymour Martin Lipset, Turner and the Sociology of the Frontier (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 75. Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: Norton, 1987), 21.

27. Robert E. Park, "Community Organization and the Romantic Temper," Journal of Social Forces 3 (May 1925): 677.

28. Robert E. Park, "A Race Relations Survey: Suggestions for a Study of the Oriental Population of the Pacific Coast," Journal of Applied Sociology (1923), 162.

29. See Raushenbush, Robert E. Park, 113ff. For the Canadian perspective, see Theodore H. Boggs, "The Oriental on the Pacific Coast," Queen's Quarterly 33 (Feb. 1926): 311–24.

30. Park commented: "I suspect that 'improving Race Relations' means something rather immediate and definite, and something that cannot possibly happen." Quoted in Matthews, Quest for an American Sociology, 114. See Emory S. Bogardus, The New Social Research (Los Angeles, 1926), 283. Bogardus incorporated much of his research for the Survey in this volume, and Park wrote the "Preface" in which he identified "public opinion" as "the central problem" of the book and, ultimately, of the Survey.

31. "Race Relations Survey Central Executive Committee Minutes," Jan. 21, 22, 1924, SRR.

32. Ibid.; "Northern California Committee Minutes, Race Relations Survey," Jan. 29, 1924, SRR. See Yuji Ichioka et al., comps., A Buried Past: An Annotated Bibliography of the Japanese American Research Project Collection (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). Official reports and many life histories in this collection, which is at UCLA, are in Japanese.

33. Park to Wilbur, Apr. 29, 1924; "Minutes of Southern California Regional Committee, Los Angeles, Apr. 4, 1924, SRR.

34. See "The Life History as a Social Document." SRR. Park and his colleagues at the University of Chicago had already experimented with this approach, and the life history narratives of the Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s would be based on this interview technique. See Paul J. Baker, "The Life Histories of W. I. Thomas and Robert E. Park," American Journal of Sociology 79 (Sept. 1973): 253–4. See Matthews, Quest for an American Sociology, 157, 163, for a discussion of Park's theories and methods.

35. Robert E. Park, "Diary and Journal," Sept. 12, 1923, 121, Robert E. Park Papers, University of Chicago Library, [Hereafter Park Diary and Journal].

36. Ibid., Sept. 16, 1923. Scholz's sudden death after minor surgery in 1924 no doubt had some negative effect on Reed College's support for the Survey.

37. Cited in Eckard V. Toy, "Robe and Gown: The Ku Klux Klan in Eugene, Oregon during the 1920s" in Shawn Lay, ed., The Invisible Empire in the West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 153–4. See also Toy, "The Ku Klux Klan in Oregon," in G. Thomas Edwards and Carlos A. Schwantes, eds., Experiences in a Promised Land: Essays in Pacific Northwest History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986), 269–86. For population statistics, see Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, vol. 2, Population: General Report and Analytical Tables (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1922), 46; Hood River News, March 9, 1923.

38. See Linda Tamura, The Hood River Issei: An Oral History of Japanese Settlers in Oregon's Hood River Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); and Lauren Kessler, Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family (1993; repr., Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 2006). See also Yuji Ichioka, Before Internment: Essays in Prewar Japanese American History, ed. Gordon H. Chang and Eiichiro Azuma (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006).

39. Hood River News, Apr. 7, Dec. 1, 1922, Jan. 1, Feb. 2, Feb. 16, 1923; Park Diary and Journal, March 10, 1924.

40. Park to Davis, April 23, 1924; "Detailed Statement of Research Projects of Race Relations Survey on the Pacific Coast," SRR.

41. William Carlson Smith complained about Bogardus's leadership style at USC and his desire to use the Survey research project as an instrument of social change, Smith to Ellsworth Faris, Aug. 23, 1926. Smith Papers. Smith would later teach at the University of Oregon.

42. "Survey of Race Relations, Minutes of Southern California Regional Committee, Sept. 5, 1924; June 4, 1925; "Pacific Coast Race Relations Survey," Oct. 3, 1924, SRR. See Emory S. Bogardus, A History of Sociology at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1972), 4–5, 8–9, 18–19; Bogardus, ed., Trends in Scholarship: Annotations of Theses and Dissertations Accepted by the University of Southern California, 1910–1935 (Los Angeles, 1936); and Bogardus, "Report of the Sixth Meeting of the Social Research Society," Oct. 7, 1924, SRR.

43. "Survey of Race Relations on the Pacific Coast: Statement of Regional Budgets," June 1, 1924, SRR. George Gleason, "Report of Progress," July 18, 1924, Smith Papers, gives the figures as $1,415 for Washington, $2,446 for Northern California, and $1,496 for Southern California.

44. Park to Fisher, June 21, 1924; Fisher to Wilbur, Park, and Davis, July 10, 1924, SRR.

45. Park to Fisher, June 21, 1924; "Race Relations Survey: A Statement of Major Research Projects that Have Grown Out of the Oriental Survey" (n.d.); Fisher to Wilbur, Aug. 5, 1924; "Survey Forecast"; "Survey of Race Relations, Minutes of Northern California Committee," Aug. 7, 1924, SRR.

46. "Minutes of Meeting led by Robert E. Park at Faculty Club, University of California," Aug. 21, 1924, SRR.

47. Davis to Wilbur, Aug. 30, 1924; reference to Grizzly Bear, June 1924, SRR.

48. Davis to Gleason, Aug. 26, 1924, SRR.

49. Davis to Wilbur, Aug. 30, Sept. 11, 1924, SRR. See also Scott Beekman, William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 26.

50. "Report of Central Executive Committee of Survey of Race Relations to Institute of Social and Religious Research," Sept. 22, 1924, SRR

51. "Report of Committee Meeting, Southern California Regional Committee," Oct. 10, 1924. The Southern California Regional Committee disbanded at its seventeenth meeting, held in the City Club of Los Angeles on June 4, 1925. "Minutes of Survey of Race Relations, Southern California Regional Committee," June 4, 1925, SRR.

52. Wilbur to Samuel J. Holmes, Dec. 2, 1924; Eliot Grinnell Mears to Wilbur, Dec. 4, 1924, SRR.

53. Park to Wilbur, Oct. 22, 1924; Fisher to Davis, Oct. 29, 1924; telegram, Fisher to Wilbur, Jan. 26, 1925, SRR. Fisher suggested "three days for research workers and inside group two days."

54. "The Survey of Race Relations," Smith Papers, Mears, Tentative Findings.

55. "Findings Conference, The Survey of Race Relations, Stanford University, March 21–26, 1925," SRR.

56. "Minutes of the Closed Convention of the Survey of Race Relations, March 23, 1925," SRR.

57. "Minutes of Meeting of the Research Council of the Survey of Race Relations at Stanford University, March 25, 1925," SRR.

58. Fisher to Wilbur, May 9, 1925; Wilbur to Fisher, July 25, 1925; Fisher to Wilbur, July 3, 1925; Wilbur to Fisher, July 25, 1925; Fisher to Wilbur, April 8, 1927, SRR. Eventually, Park submitted a draft, and the Institute offered him "limited financial support" to complete the manuscript. The editors of Survey magazine devoted the May 1, 1926, issue to "The Survey of Race Relations and Pacific Affairs."

59. "Minutes of the Closed Convention of the Survey of Race Relations," SRR; Park, Race and Culture, 118. For a strikingly similar definition, see Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson, eds., The Frontier in History: North America and South Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 7–9.

60. For the history of the institute, see Institute of Pacific Relations, History, Organization, Proceedings, Discussion, and Addresses, Honolulu Session, June 30–July 14, 1925 (Honolulu: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1925), 7–40; J. Merle Davis, Notes from a Pacific Circuit: Report Letters of J. Merle Davis, M.A., Gen. Sec. to Ray Lyman Wilbur, Chairman, Pacific Council (Honolulu: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1927); and John Merle Davis: An Autobiography (n.p., Kyo Bun Kwan, 1962).

61. Emory S. Bogardus, The New Social Research and Immigration and Race Attitudes (Boston: D.C. Heath and Co., 1928); Eliot Grinnell Mears, Resident Orientals on the American Pacific Coast: Their Legal and Economic Status (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928); William Carlson Smith, Second Generation Oriental in America (Honolulu, 1927); and Americans in Process: A Study of Our Citizens of Oriental Ancestry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1937); and R.D. McKenzie, Oriental Exclusion: The Effect of American Immigration Laws, Regulations, and Judicial Decisions Upon the Chinese and Japanese on the American Pacific Coast (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928).

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