55 Presidential Addresses 



sanely as American citizens. This would not keep 

 out all anarchists, for many of them belong to the 

 intelligent criminal class. But it would do what is 

 also in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of 

 ignorance, so potent in producing the envy, suspi- 

 cion, malignant passion, and hatred of order, out of 

 which anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. Fi- 

 nally, all persons should be excluded who are below 

 a certain standard of economic fitness to enter our 

 industrial field as competitors with American labor. 

 There should be proper proof of personal capacity 

 to earn an American living and enough money to 

 ensure a decent start under American conditions. 

 This would stop the influx of cheap labor, and the 

 resulting competition which gives rise to so much of 

 bitterness in American industrial life; and it would 

 dry up the springs of the pestilential social conditions 

 in our great cities, where anarchistic organizations 

 have their greatest possibility of growth. 



Both the educational and economic tests in a wise 

 immigration law should be designed to protect and 

 elevate the general body politic and social. A very 

 close supervision should be exercised over the steam- 

 ship companies which mainly bring over the immi- 

 grants, and they should be held to a strict accounta- 

 bility for any infraction of the law. 



There is general acquiescence in our present tariff 

 system as a national policy. The first requisite to 

 our prosperity is the continuity and stability of this 

 economic policy. Nothing could be more unwise 



