After leaving the newspaper business, he became a leading figure in the anti-Japanese movement in California and formed key exclusionary groups to lobby for alien land laws and race-based limits on immigration and naturalization.

graduated from Santa Clara College in 1877, and after the elder McClatchy's death in 1883 he took on joint ownership of the Bee with his brother.

As early as 1915, he began writing about the menace posed by Japanese immigrants, and by 1919 he had largely retired from the paper, turning his efforts instead to publishing a series of anti-Japanese pamphlets.

The AEL’s purpose was the same as its predecessor the exclusionary group only expanded their nativist goals to affect other Asiatic peoples.

McClatchy was able to surround himself with prominent Californian politicians at the time, such as Attorney General Ulysses S. Webb, Governor Hiram Johnson and Senator James D. Phelan.

McClatchy was able to formulate arguments that would only benefit the eugenics belief that had been gaining popularity since the 1917 Immigration Act.

Attempting to use the Thind and Ozawa cases to help differentiate white from the “other.” These cases were able to distinguish asiatic people as a race other than white, however, with immigration from Mexico seemingly increasing post-war; McClatchy was adamant about adopting a test-case for Mexicans to gain a classification of their race to ensure they would not be able to be exempt from the 1924 Immigration Act.