The public and particularly the laboring classes in the West, where most of the Japanese remained, objected to this increasing immigration, while a number of leaders of American opinion devoted themselves to converting the public to a belief that the military ambitions of Japan included the Philippines and possibly Hawaii, where the Japanese were a formidable element in the population.

As a consequence there arose a strong demand that the principles of the Chinese Exclusion Act be applied to the Japanese.

The situation was made more definite by the fact that the board of education in San Francisco ruled in 1906 that orientals should receive instruction in special schools.

The Japanese promptly protested, and their demand for their rights under the treaty of 1894 was supported by the Tokio Government.

The international consequences of thus discriminating against the natives of so rising and self-confident a country as Japan, and one conscious of its military strength, were bound to be very different from the difficulties encountered in the case of China.