York a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a legislature will be chosen? On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne and to ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a workingman who hears his children cry for more bread? I seriously apprehend that you will, in such a season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning; that you will act like a people who should in a year of scarcity devour all the seed corn, and thus make the next a year not of scarcity, but of absolute famine. There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation will increase the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. As I said before, when a society has entered on its downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth; with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country and by your own institutions." Good Sense to I do not agree with all that Lord Macauley says because I believe the good sense of all the American people will solve their problems, but it is well to heed what he says and exercise good sense vigorously and continuously so as to prevent the conditions described by him. James Bryce, formerly British Ambassador at Washington, in his work, "The American Commonwealth", states: 6 What Bryce "The coming of these humble suppliants for entrance into the land of a people rich and strong cannot but affect that people. What changes in the character and habits of the American people will this influx of new elements make, elements wholly diverse, not only in origin, but in ideas and traditions, and scarcely less diverse from the Irish and Teutonic immigrants of previous years than from the men of predominantly English stock, who inhabited the country before the Irish or continental Teutons arrived? This is the crucial question in which every study of the immigrant problem leads up to. It is a matter of grave import for the world, seeing that it is virtually a new phenomenon in world history, because no large movement of the races of mankind from one region of the earth to another has ever occurred under conditions at all resembling these. But it is primarily momentous for the United States, and that all the more so because these new immigrants go to swell the class which already causes some disquietude, the class of unskilled laborers, the poorest, the most ignorant, and the most unsettled part of the population. That there is ground for anxiety in the presence of this vast and growing multitude of men ignorant and liable to be misled cannot be denied. Let it not be forgotten that a low standard of living is an economic disease." Prof. Frank Julian Warne, Secretary of the New York State Immigration Commission, and Special Expert on the Foreign Born Population, United States Census of 1910, in his book entitled "The Immigrant Invasion," says: Prof. Warne's "Never before in the history of this people, Views with the possible exception of the Revolutionary and Civil War periods, have the underpaid and ignorant laborers of the Old World been called upon by the inexorable logic of economic forces to decide so momentous a question as the election of a President of the United States and all others in authority." Prof. Warne believes that the only course is to restrict immigration and take an inventory of those already here and who must be raised to a higher standard of living and trained for their duty as citizens. William Williams, former United States Commissioner of Immigration at New York, in his work, "The New Immigration-Some Unfavorable Features and Possible Remedies," remarks: Mr. Williams' "The most important effects of immigraPrediction tion today are the racial effects. They constitute a question not between the citizens and immigrants of today, but between the citizens' children and grandchildren. We owe our present civilization and standing amongst nations chiefly to people of a type widely different from that of those now coming here in such numbers. The probable effect on the future of this country of the millions of further immigrants representing the bad elements of Russia, Austria and Southern Italy, who are sure to come here during the next few years, if permitted to do so, should be made the subject of exhaustive scientific research, which might or might not show that to maintain our institutions and standards of civilization substantially as they are it will be necessary to limit this new immigration in some manner far more radical than any hereinbefore suggested." Dr. Prescott F. Hall, Secretary of the Immigration Restriction League, in his work, "Immigration and Its Effects Upon the United States," says: Dr. Hall on the Foreign Vote "The enormous political power which can be exercised by the foreign-born is shown by the fact that of the males of voting age over one-quarter are foreign born, and that nearly three-fifths of these have been naturalized. Indeed, the foreign vote of two generations hence is larger than the native vote of native parentage. One grave danger lies in the liberality with which the ballot is given foreigners." I have given these quotations to emphasize the responsibility of the educated citizen. Personally, I am opposed to a too rigid restriction of immigration because the country needs strong men and women to cut down the forests, to reforest the land, to dig the coal, to build good roads, and to do the many kinds of work needed under modern conditions of life. Particularly does the country need those who are willing to clear the land and to till the soil and do the work on the farm, the ranch, and the orchard, which is so vitally necessary if this country is to improve and cheapen its food supply. Is it not wiser to permit these strangers to come to us and then teach them the duties and responsibilities they owe to the country that gives them the great opportunities that this country furnishes rather than to turn them away? Most of these new citizens are not students. Seldom do many of them read even newspapers. As Stevenson would say, "Life is their volume." When they first come hard work and discomfort is often their lot, but there are countless examples of success far greater than they could have achieved in their foreign homes. A large proportion are receptive and subject to the influences that surround them. They may become a menace, but they can be made a boon to the country if their good qualities are developed and the bad ones eliminated. It is for the Lotos Club and bodies of similar cultivation and force to say which. We ought not to neglect the newcomers to our shores. Threats of the terrors of the law will not do all that is needed. By individual appeal and personal responsibility must these new peoples in our land be taught the power for good of this great nation. Consider the great growth of the population and the change of the character of it since 1870; the marvelous growth in material wealth, and remember that much of the brains and energy of the country have been very busily engaged since the Civil War in the wonderful material development of the country and that possibly not enough attention has been paid to some of the fundamentals of national life. Our prosperity has increased the complications of government, and the close attention given by our people to business has diverted the personal attention of many from public affairs, and there is not the feeling of interest and responsibility about them that characterized the American people when there were fewer people and less wealth. Vast Increase in Wealth In the year 1870 the estimated wealth of this country was $24,054,814,806. In 1900 it had increased to $88,517,306,775, and in 1904, the last year for which it has been computed, to $107,104,192,410. Between 1890 and 1900 the increase was $23,480,215,588, or 36 per cent., while in the four years from 1900 to 1904 the increase was $18,586,885,635, or about 21 per cent. In 1870 the wealth per capita was $624; in 1904 it was $1,318. Goldsmith says: "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay." Wealth has accumulated in a phenomenal manner in this country, but we cannot, and must not, permit a decadence of our citizens. Failure to Vote Has not the time arrived when, by individual effort, we must see to it that the so-called professional politicians do not control our foreign-born citizens or their immediate descendants? Are those of us who are fortunate enough to have received a good education, to have a little more than actual bread and butter, to have some traditions about the United States doing all that we should, as citizens, to help? In Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware about thirty per cent. of those entitled to vote did not take advantage of the franchise. In the country at large about thirty-five per cent. failed to take their share of the responsibility of selecting a ruler. In a number of Northwestern states and cities for which I have the figures, in 1910, when there was not the interest of a Presidential election, from 45.9% to 59.1% of those having the right to vote did not do so. These figures show that |