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IMMIGRATION’S MENACE 
Senator Lodge Strongly Favors More Restrictive Laws 
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PART ONE 
O Liberty, white Goddess, is it well 
To leave the gates unguarded? On thy 
breast 
Fold Sorrow’s entdren, soothe the hurts 
of fate, 
Litt the down-trodden, but with hand of 
steel 
Stay those who to thy sacred portal come 
To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a 
care 
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be 
torn 
And trampled in the dust. For so of old 
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled 
Rome, 
And where the temples of the Caesars 
stood 
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair. 
—Aldrich. 
| Notre—In our issue of April 28th, 
we published the arguments of Dr. 
Eliot against the restriction of im- 
migration and we now present argu- 
ments favoring the restriction of 1m- 
migration. In justice to Senator 
Lodge it must be said that the article 
from the Senate Records is not in- 
tended as a refutation of Mr. Eliot’s 
argument but is Mr. Lodge’s invinci- 
ble and independent reasoning —T Hr 
EDITOR. | 
There can be no doubt that there 
is a very earnest desire on the part of 
the American people to restrict fur- 
ther and much more extensively than 
has yet been done foreign immigra- 
tion to the United Statés.. + * * lt 
now remains for me to discuss the 
larger question, as to the advisability 
of restricting immigration at all. 
This is a subject of the greatest mag- 
nitude and the most far-reaching 
importance. It has two sides, the 
economic and the social. As to the 
former, but few words are necessary. 
There is no one thing which does so 
much to bring about a reduction of 
wages and to injure the American 
wage earner as the unlimited intro- 
duction of cheap foreign labor 
through unrestricted  immugration. 
Statistics show that the change in 
the race character of our immigration 
has been accompanied by a_ corre- 
sponding decline in its quality. 
number of skilled mechanics and of 
the persons trained to some occupa- 
tion or pursuit has fallen off, while 
the number of those without occupa- 
tion or training, that is, who are to- 
The: 
tally unskilled, has risen in our re- 
cent immigration to enormous  pro- 
portions. ‘This low, unskilled labor is 
the most deadly enemy of the Ameri- 
can wage earner, and does more than 
anything else toward lowering his 
wages and forcing down his standard 
of living. An attempt was made, 
with the general assent of both po- 
litical parties, to meet this crying evil 
some years ago by the passage of 
what are known as the contract-labor 
laws. ‘That legislation was excellent 
in intention, but has proved of but 
little value in practice. It has checked 
to a certain extent the introduction of 
cheap, low-class labor in large masses 
into the United States. It has made 
it a little more difficult for such labor 
to come here, but the labor of this 
class continues to come, even if not 
in the same way, and the total amount 
of it has not been materially  re- 
duced. Even if the contract-labor 
laws were enforced intelligently and 
thoroughly, there is no reason to sup- 
pose that they would have any ade- 
quate effect in checking the evil which 
they were designed to stop. It is 
perfectly clear after the experience of 
several years that the only relief 
which can come to the American 
wage earner from the competition of 
low-class immigrant labor must be by 
general laws restricting the total 
amount of immigration and framed in 
such a way as to affect most strongly 
those elements of the immigration 
which furnish the low, unskilled, and 
ignorant foreign labor. 
It is not necessary to enter fur- 
ther into a discussion of the economic 
side of the general policy of restrict- 
ing immigration. In this direction 
the argument is unanswerable. If 
we have any regard for the welfare, 
the wages, or the standard life of 
American working-men, we should 
take immediate steps to restrict for- 
eign immigration. ‘There is no dan- 
ger, at present at all events, to our 
workingmen from the coming of 
skilled mechanics or trained and edu- 
cated men with a settled occupation 
or pursuit, for immigrants of this 
class will never seek to lower the 
American standard of life and wages. 
On the contrary, they desire the same 
standard for themselves. But there 
is an appalling danger to the Amer- 
ican wage earner from the flood of 
low, unskilled, ignorant, foreign la- 
bor which has poured into the coun- 
try for some years past, and which 
not only takes lower wages, but ac- 
cepts a standard of life and living so 
low that the American workingman 
can not compete with it. 
I now come to the aspect of this 
question which is graver and more 
serious than any other. ‘The injury 
of unrestricted immigration to Amer- 
ican wages and American standards 
of living is sufficiently plain and is 
bad enough, but the danger which this 
immigration threatens to the quality 
of our citizenship is far worse. ‘That 
which it concerns us to know and 
that which is more vital to us as a 
people than all possible questions of 
tariff or currency is whether the qual- 
ity of our citizenship is endangered 
by the present course and character 
of immigration to the United States. 
To determine this question we must 
look into the history of our race. 
Two hundred years ago Daniel De- 
foe, in some very famous verses called 
the ‘“ True-born Englishman,” de- 
fended William III, the greatest 
ruler, with the exception of Crom- 
well, whom England has had _ since 
the days of the Plantagenets, against 
the accusation so constantly made at 
the time that he was a foreigner. 
The line taken by Defoe is the highly 
characteristic one of a fierce attack 
upon his opponents. He declared in 
lines which were as forcible as they 
were rough that the English-speaking 
people drew their descent from many 
sources; that there was no such thing 
as a pure-blooded Englishman, and 
that King William was as much an 
Hnglishman as any of them. ‘The 
last proposition, in regard to the 
King, whose mother was a Stuart, 
was undoubtedly true. It was also 
superficially true that Englishmen 
drew their blood from many strains; 
but the rest of the argument was 
ludicrously false if the matter is con- 
sidered in the light of modern _his- 
tory and modern science. 
For practical purposes in consider- 
ing a question of race and in dealing 
with the civilized peoples of western 
Europe and of America there is no 
such thing as a race of original purity 
according to the divisions of ethnical 
science. In considering the practical 
problems of the present time we can 
deal only with artificial races—that is, 
races like the English-speaking peo- 
ple, the French, or the Germans— 
who have been developed as races by 
the operation during a long period of 
time of climatic influences, wars, mi- 
(Continued on Page 40.) 
