And fifty per cent. of them are illiterate! Shall we let them come? Shall we perhaps teach them to eat rice with the rest of us? Shall we divide our inheritance with them? Shall we remember only that each of them has a vote? The leveling methods of the Age of Transportation, the day of the iron trails, have made possible, and have made imperative, these very questions. Their answer lies in the future, yet perhaps no very distant future. There are not lacking those, and they constantly increase in numbers, who believe that the answer must be the putting up of the bars against all future immigration except of a closely selected sort, and preferably that bred upon this continent. America has eaten overmuch; she may yet assimilate, but she must gorge no more. We can now rear actual Americans enough to feed the world, and to defeat the world when the time shall come for the fatal shock of arms, and under a system of rest and recuperation we may become a united and strong America; while under the system of the past, and the system that now prevails, we must presently become a warring and divided, hence a weakening, land.

[60] Mr. Paul Morton, of the Santa Fé Railroad.
[61] Mr. James J. Hill, of the Great Northern Railroad.
[62] Wm. F. Flynn, in “Forest and Stream.”
[63] Prof. Benjamin F. Terry, of the University of Chicago.
[64] Rev. George C. Lorimer.
[65] Since the above lines were written the following editorial comment appeared in a leading American daily newspaper: “Almost every nation in the world is sending an increasing number of immigrants to the United States. Last month (April, 1903) the new-comers numbered 126,200, being 30,000 more than for April of 1902. The total for the year may reach 1,000,000, or half the population of Chicago, the second largest city in the country. “Is so great an influx of foreigners natural or desirable? Many in a condition to know say that immigration is promoted largely by mine-owners and railroad managers, who wish to be kept supplied with cheap labor, and who do not care particularly whence it comes or whether it will be desirable material out of which to make American citizens, or whether its presence may not contribute to social or industrial disorder. “Many of the great railroad systems approve of unrestricted immigration because it swells their profitable emigrant business. They have their agents in Europe soliciting that kind of business. The greater the number of men and women that can be induced to come to this country and to buy tickets to interior points, the more money the roads make. They offer low ocean and rail rates, which tempt the emigrant and yet are profitable to the roads. “While some great employers favor unrestricted immigration because it gives them cheap labor, the labor unions may reach the conclusion that for that very reason unrestricted immigration must be harmful to their interests, because it will lead inevitably to a reduction of wages. When the supply of labor is much in excess of the demand the maintenance of a high wage scale becomes impossible. “While a large percentage of the immigration is unskilled labor, it must be remembered that many unions are composed of men who do that kind of labor. Moreover, some of them will learn trades and increase the number of skilled workers. When times grow dull there will be an excess of workers and wages will go down. The labor organizations belonging to the American Federation of Labor asked the last Congress to bar out illiterate immigrants. The object was to keep down the undesirable cheap labor immigration. The steamship companies, which make money off their steerage passengers and drum up business throughout eastern Europe, and some western railroads which are extending their lines, protested against and defeated the legislation ‘organized labor’ petitioned for. Considering the swelling tide of immigration, much of it of an undesirable nature, the labor leaders probably will ask the next Congress in emphatic language to order the exclusion of illiterates to protect American labor and the high standard of American citizenship.”

CHAPTER II
THE PATHWAYS OF THE FUTURE