Migrants, Metrics, and the Making of the Politics of Consumption in the Progressive Era

In February 1920, Los Angeles County Health Officer J. L. Pomeroy commented on the habits and practices of Asian immigrants: The Japanese claim to be a cleanly race, and yet inspections made throughout the county of the housing conditions scarcely bear this out. The bath-tub as used on a Japanese farm is an imported affair. One tub of water is heated for the entire family group, which consists of eight or ten people.… Facilities for privacy seem to be lacking, and certainly, from a sanitary standpoint, this cannot be too strongly condemned. The care of the food in the Japanese homes is woefully insanitary. Their methods of cooking are primitive. The women seem to have little knowledge of domestic science … The fact that women work in the fields with their husbands from daylight until dark, undoubtedly accounts for the uncleanly conditions of their homes. Whatever the excuse may be, the average Japanese home in the country is dirty and often filthy…. The background for Americanization therefore seems lacking. 1