Fad and Fashion 205 



Very frequently these men can barely speak our lan- 

 guage, nor can they read it — which failings ensure 

 an almost total ignorance of our country's laws. 

 They are but doing as their like always did at home, 

 and they really meant no harm. An animal is to 

 them simply the means to the desired end, and if it 

 will not proceed, or perform its task, it must be 

 beaten until it does. You can punish such a man by 

 imprisonment, etc., but you perpetrate a moral crime 

 in so doing, for you force him to leave his family 

 possibly to the tender mercies of charity. You cannot 

 " reform " Jiim, but you can so educate his chil- 

 dren, so impress upon their receptive minds the why 

 and wherefore of right and wrong, that they shall 

 be advanced, informed, broadened far beyond his 

 boundaries. He is a necessary evil — possibly leav- 

 ing his own country for its good, and being a blot 

 upon this as long as he lives : but here he is, countless 

 swarms of him, and constantly arriving, — the scum 

 of Europe, the dregs of the world. His descend- 

 ants are the Americans of the future, and no opera- 

 tions in the interest of genuine humanity and Chris- 



