THE NORDIC OUTLOOK
In the preceding chapters we have seen the unity of the nation greatly impaired in race and religion and threatened in language, but the country is still 70 per cent Nordic and 80 per cent Protestant, and no one foreign language seriously threatens our English speech. There are nearly 50 per cent of Old-Native American Whites in the country at large, although they have been swamped by aliens in New England and in the industrialized States of the Northeast.
The great majority of the senators of the United States are still of old American stock and so are the members of the House of Representatives. The leaders of the nation in science, education, industry, and in the Army and Navy are still overwhelmingly Nordic, so that with these elements in our favor we are still in a position to check the increase of the other elements and contend against their deleterious effects upon our institutions.
Much of the immigration during the last century has been identical with the old British stock in all respects. The English and the Scotch who have come over here, as well as the Scandinavians and most of the Germans, and perhaps some other elements, are to be regarded as reinforcements of the older stock. On the other hand, most of the people from southern and eastern Europe must be regarded as distinct menaces to our national unity.
The remedy is first and foremost the absolute suspension of all immigration from all countries; and the signs of the times indicate that such suspension is inevitable. Such a total suspension of immigration would remove all grounds for charges of discrimination against Asiatics, which now embarrass our foreign relations. At the very least, the same quota limitations should be imposed on the countries to the south of us as are enforced against Europe.
In view of the fact that during the great depression which began in 1929 we had millions of unemployed of our own people here, we should be deaf to sentimental pleas for the admission of relatives of any kind. If families are separated, it has not been through the fault of the American people, and the immigrant can return whence he came, if he wishes to join his family. As a matter of fact, it is only one or two groups which are so vigorously clamoring for the admission of relatives.
Not only should European immigration be entirely stopped but still more, all immigration of every sort from countries to the south of us should be barred. In the islands and on the coasts of the Caribbean, and in Mexico and in Central America, to say nothing of the countries farther south, we have a vast reservoir of Negroes, and of Indians in the interior, who sooner or later will be drawn toward the United States by the high wages of common labor. The strictest legislation at this time is necessary to prevent this impending invasion before it assumes the dimensions of a flood, such as has already happened in the case of the Mexican Indians. If immigration be not absolutely prohibited, at very least, no one should be allowed to enter the United States, unless a visitor or traveller, except white men of superior intellectual capacity distinctly capable of becoming valuable American citizens.