Was the Pacific Coast League actually qualified to be

considered a Major League?

How about the Federal League?
The National Association,
the Negro League of the '20s,
the National League of 1890 - 93,
the American Association of the same period,
the American League at the beginning if the 1900s,
the Players League,
the Union Association, Mexican and Cuban Leagues, etc.

Gil, You forgot the forerunner of the American League---The Western League.

Did I read when forming the American league, a players Western League stats were suppose to count as part of their Major league stats, but never happened.

The PCL pre-1957 has a good argument, especially prior to WW2. The best PCL teams of the day could probably compete with the best of the MLB. I don't think that the Cuban and Mexican league teams could make that claim, but the Negro Leagues could

I read too somewhere that the stats from the 1900 season and WL were supposed to be carried over to the MLB record book.

Jay

I honestly do not know what makes one league a Major, while another is not.
I think that it is something akin to "they called it".

The National Association and the Union Association employed a philosophy that any team that wanted in, and would meet the fee requirements was welcome. This yielded unbalanced leagues. But I remember the expansion teams (NY Mets, for example); and they sure were not up to MLB speed in their beginning.

Other leagues were geographically limited (before air travel, for example). Care to row to Cuba?

Can any league be considered a "Major" which excluded African Americans, Japanese, others?

I dunno.