The Alien Invasion

by W. H. Wilkins

Why then add to the difficulties of this problem by letting in yearly thousands of these foreigners, chiefly the "lowest class of the lowest class," who, parasites that they are, flock at once to our great centres of population, and prey upon our people, underselling their labour, and taking the bread from their mouths?

We live in the days of a great social upheaval. We hear on all sides of the great "Labour movement." What does it mean? What is at the bottom of it all? Only the desire of our labouring classes to seek for themselves some alleviation of their lot; some increased opportunity for leisure; some better remuneration for their labour; some surer provision against sickness and old age. They are seeking—not always by the best and wisest methods perhaps, but that is not their fault—how to make their lives better and broader, healthier and happier. With these desires every right-thinking man is in sympathy. The complete realization of their dream may be Utopian perhaps—I do not know. But even if it be, what is there to blame in this divine discontent?

"Unless above himself he can

Exalt himself, how mean a thing is man!"

How are these longings to be gratified?—how are they to be even partially realized, while this unchecked flood of destitution and degradation pours in upon us from abroad?

We hear much in these days of schemes for elevating and evangelizing the masses of the poor in our great cities. All honour to such schemes, whether they succeed or whether they fail, for the motive which animates them is good. But it cannot be too often insisted upon, that spiritual and intellectual necessities do not arise until some decency of physical conditions has been first attained. Among the "submerged tenth," as they have been called, decency of physical conditions will never come to pass until steps have first been taken to forbid the entrance of the unclean and unhealthy of other lands. So long as the bare struggle for existence absorbs all the energies of our very poor, they cannot be civilized.

I do not underrate the greater worth of the moral life as compared with the purely physical life; but we must begin at the lowest rung of the ladder before we can ascend to the highest. As things are, the dregs of our slum population have neither the time, the energy, or the desire to be clean, thrifty, intelligent, or moral. In our haste we must not blame them. What they want first of all is better food, and more of it, warmer clothes, better shelter, higher wages, and more permanent employment. Unless we can first assist them to obtain these material desires, all our efforts to awaken the higher part of their natures will be in vain. Some perhaps will object that many of these poor creatures are so brutalized, so criminal, so degraded, that they have no higher nature left to awaken. I do not believe it—I will never believe it. However degraded a human being may be, however handicapped from his birth by the circumstances of his life, and even handicapped before his birth by the transmitted vices of his progenitors, there still is implanted in him, dormant and infinitesimal though it may be, that spark of the divine nature which alone separates man from the beast.

In writing on the social aspect of this evil, it is well to make one's meaning quite plain. I do not of course mean to say—no one can say—that to restrict the immigration of the destitute, the criminal, or the worthless, would be a panacea for all our social ills. Far from it; but it would at least remove from their way, one of the most potent causes of degradation in the material and social condition of the poor in our large cities. Until something has first been done to check this evil, charitable agencies, religious movements, colonization and emigration schemes will be beside the mark. However much good they may do here and there—and I freely admit the amount of good that such movements have done, and are doing every day—they will fail to go to the root of the evil, since they deal with effects and not with causes; they treat the symptoms, but not the disease.

Emigration is worthless while this continuous influx is allowed to go on. At the best, emigration is a drastic remedy only to be applied in the last resource. If, like the Great Plague, or Fire of London, emigration carried off the diseased, or swept away foul and unhealthy tenements, it might possibly be regarded with more complacency. But under existing circumstances this is just what emigration does not do. We must bear in mind that we can no longer draft off our social failures to other countries. Even our colonies now refuse to take the "wreckage" of the mother country. The people we emigrate now, are just those we can least afford to lose. And there is another consideration. Of the thousands we emigrate yearly, most are men, young, healthy, and vigorous. Of the women, all—or nearly all—are virtuous and industrious. In either sex the residuum, both men and women, and more especially women, remain behind. "Bad men die, but bad women multiply," once said a lady whose name is a synonym for all that is charitable and good, when urging the advisability of giving the fallen sisterhood of our great cities a chance of beginning life over again in some new land beyond the seas. These are pregnant words, but under our present system little or no provision is made for carrying them into effect. Things have come to such a pass, that while we emigrate the flower of our population, the industrious, the vigorous, and the courageous; the feeble, the idle, and the worthless remain with us; and this undesirable increment is ever being augmented by the refuse population of other countries.

Look at it from whatever point we will, it cannot be right that these things should be.