PREFACE
larger life they had dreamed of. Who would exclude any of them if he but knew what a land of promise America is to the poor of other lands?” Her sympathy with the visible alien at the gate was so keen that she had no feeling for the invisible children of our poor, who will find the chances gone, nor for those at the gate of the To-be, who might have been born, but will not be.
I am not of those who consider humanity and forget the nation, who pity the living but not the unborn. To me, those who are to come after us stretch forth beseeching hands as well as the masses on the other side of the globe. Nor do I regard America as something to be spent quickly and cheerfully for the benefit of pent-up millions in the backward lands. What if we become crowded without their ceasing to be so? I regard it as a nation whose future may be of unspeakable value to the rest of mankind, provided that the easier conditions of life here be made permanent by high standards of living, institutions and ideals, which finally may be appropriated by all men. We could have helped the Chinese a little by letting their surplus millions swarm in upon us a generation ago; but we have helped them infinitely more by protecting our standards and having something worth their copying when the time came.
Edward Alsworth Ross.
The University of Wisconsin,
- Madison, Wisconsin,
- September, 1914.
