crouching slaves may not become a race of conquerors. Slavery may have done for the negro what the feudal system did for the English race. It took the English more than one generation to prove their superiority to the followers of William the Conqueror. Even to-day there is a formidable army of human beings with white skin and Caucasian features who combine vices and iniquities far exceeding anything Africa has produced. The white man flourishes on the crime committed against the Indian.
"Out of the nettle of disaster the South has plucked the flower of progress." But there are tendencies in our civilization to-day which threaten to bring progress to a halt. That in America, just four centuries old, there should be found the greatest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, the most enforced idleness and the deepest vice and crime, shows that natural laws have been ignored.
"Poverty," said Carlyle, "is the hell of which we all are afraid." There are grim hunger and shame, and with them pestilence holds sway. The poverty in all our great cities, as well as throughout our landlorded and mortgaged frontiers, is, year by year, growing more general and terrible by the combination of capital to crush labor. To gratify this lust for gain, the faces of the poor are ground, the widow and the orphan robbed; the moral and spiritual nature is dwarfed; civility is converted into a hollow pretence, patriotism into a sham and religion into hypocrisy. The reward is everything that wealth can give to make life comfortable, while the victims of this avarice are sent to that unpitying abyss that gaps beneath civilized society. But only a part of the evil and misery comes from the devastating influence of these harpies of our civilization. Much of it is caused by the dregs of European civilization which have been cast upon our soil.
To better their own condition, the older and more crowded countries over the sea have dumped upon our ground their criminals, paupers, and every other undesirable class. Our temple of liberty has been converted into a world's almshouse. Countless numbers of ignorant, brutal men have been unloaded here who will not assimilate and can never become real citizens.
For this reason are the riotous Huns present and the Hungarians, the least desirable of all immigrants. These, fierce, seditious and quarrelsome in their own country, lose none of their characteristics in this. What a formidable class they are, their history in the mining regions of Pennsylvania shows. For the reason that Italy emptied her galley-slaves upon our soil have we the Mafia here, whose first principle is lawlessness and whose purpose is robbery. While colonies distinct in ideas, language and mode of life are planted among us, a menace to peace and safety, and each ready to hail its own sovereign for revenge.
Nine tenths of all our labor trouble comes from the Europeans who have lived on a mite a day in mines and factories and learned lessons of anarchy from their distress. The comparatively enormous sums they can earn here rouses in them an inordinate desire for gain. They plan incendiary strikes, resort to violence, destroy property, organize for riots, and drive away our peaceable men from their work or drive them into starving wages.
The only difference between anarchy and trusts is in method; they ultimately are alike; both grow by strangling the law: they alike thrive at the expense of the people; the one breeds the other. The anarchist feels justified in violating the law and sinning against God, because he has adopted his theories from the modern trust. The anarchists conspire to crush the wealthy; the trusts conspire to crush the poor; having the power of the almighty dollar behind them, the trusts succeed while the anarchists fail. Neither trusts nor anarchy should find place on American soil.
Thousands of laborers are yearly thrown out of employment by foreign competition. Not only are numberless whites in need of these advantages seized upon by the foreigner, but our colored population is sadly in want of them. A country's duty is to home first. If there is not a stop put to this class of immigration, life will become as hard and cruel here as in the densely crowded countries of Europe. No other nation would tolerate a dumping. ground made of its soil. There is still abundant room for immigrants who will make good, loyal citizens. But the very nature of our constitution demands that the vicious, pauper and criminal element should be excluded. The best principles of all ages and all nations were embodied in it. Our nation was destined to work out the problem of modern civilization for the benefit of all oppressed nations. Our republic should feel a responsibility in working out its destiny.
Our population is growing weaker through the deteriorating influence of immigration from country city-ward. Each census marks a decline in growth of the rural population of the United States as compared with that of the country at large. Every decade the tendency becomes stronger to move from country to city. The country is the place for breeding healthy citizens. The supply of healthy blood to cities and towns is diminished. It is the alluring attractions of city life that are dragging the population downward. When people learn to have more pure and wholesome ideas of living, the tide of migration will recover its balance.
At every corner of our cities stands the saloon with as stream of the water of death flowing to destroy the people. It alike turns the crank of state and feeds crime. The indifference of society makes the case almost hopeless. The people have succumbed so long to this hideous fascination that they are indifferent to the appalling truth. So firmly does the rum power hold fashionable Christianity that it remains dormant while hundreds and thousands of men are led to wretchedness and despair by this seductive ruin. It looks idly upon the young who pour this poison into bloom of their youth and destroy the foundation of manhood; upon the hearts of wives and mothers breaking over evils they can not resist upon the disgrace of motherhood and the shame of womanhood; on all the see where this fire of hell burns.
What a satire upon our civilization that this republic upon whose altar our fathers surrendered their hopes and sacrificed their lives for its glorification and its freedom, should fall a prey to greed and selfishness. Even now the foundations of society and state are quivering with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The cause for alarm so long as the power of the country is placed in the hands of the gin distiller and the publican.
