The Nemesis of Immigration
Our American civilization has received during these three hundred
years two crushing blows. So staggering have been these onslaughts
that it is still doubtful whether or not we can recover and go on as a
democratic people. On both occasions the blows have come primarily from
a relatively small group of profiteers. During the first two hundred
years of our history the African slave traders of old England and New
England traded their vile cargoes of rum for the black man, and sold
him throughout the Americas. So they accursed half our country with
slavery. To-day their deeds remain in the form of a large population of
black people, which, like a millstone about its neck, still drags upon
every natural aspiration of the Southland.
The desire for cheap labor was not fully satiated through the
importation of the African slave. The coming of modern industrialism
gave it a new turn. Our American system of industrialism has been
based, from the first, largely upon a European system of labor. Without
the slightest question as to their unfitness to take part in our social
life, or our political democracy, without thought of anything in the
world but securing much labor for little money, our employing classes
have, until very recently, persuaded the nation to give them a free
hand in their immigration policy. What the importation of the black man
did to the South in accursing our history for centuries, immigration
has done and is still doing to the industrial districts of the North
and West. Having advanced far beyond Europe in the development of a
democratic civilization, we have now again, deliberately, turned back
upon our past and prevented the social, intellectual and political
progress of our country by instituting the conditions of a degrading
poverty, illiteracy, overcrowding, slums, and mediaeval religious
worship. The gang rule and the boss rule of our cities are simply a
return to monarchical forms without the decencies of government and
the refinements of society which an hereditary monarch provides. All
this we have gotten together with the riches we so much craved. We have
amassed our wealth only to realize, perhaps too late, that our very
food and drink are ashes and vinegar.
There have come into America during the last fifty years great hordes
of immigrants. The tide reached its height in the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1914, when it totalled 1,320,000. From Europe there came
during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921, 805,000. With our cities
swarming with millions of unemployed, congress was impelled at the
end of the last fiscal year to pass the three per cent law. This law
permits, annually, immigrants to come from each European nation to the
extent of three per cent of their peoples already here in 1910. That
is, if 100,000 Rumanians were settled among us in 1910, 3,000 a year
are now permitted to come. This law is difficult to enforce. Within an
hour I have read in the day's news that 1,100 immigrants, mostly from
Hungary and Armenia, brought over by the greedy shipping companies
in excess of the three per cent quota of those nations, are to be
admitted. This is done as a Christmas gift to these unfortunate people.
Once arrived at our ports, who can have the heart to return these
unfortunates to Europe. No doubt this act of charity will be repeated
again and again.
If we permit this three per cent law to be continued during a time of
economic stress and unemployment, we may expect the profiteers, and
cheap labor advocates generally, to come upon us with their demand
of unrestricted immigration as soon as times are better and workers
are more in demand. Of course, as might be expected, these foreign
born already here are most zealous in their advocacy of unrestricted
immigration. In the first place they wish to bring over their relatives
and friends. Then, too, the foreign born wrongly interprets all
opposition to unlimited immigration as being a base imputation against
his particular people. The thoughtless and unpatriotic appeal of all
these groups is usually made upon the basis of a sentimentalism. "Is
America not the haven of refuge for the oppressed?" they ask. In the
same manner was the trade in African Negroes defended three hundred
years ago. The blacks were being brought over, it was said, "in order
to Christianize them." If half of them died on the way and were thrown
overboard to feed the sharks, as often happened, still our intentions
were said to be Christian. This sickly, and ofttimes affected,
sentimentalism is one of the most disgusting features of both the
criminal profiteering of the few, and of the criminal carelessness of
the many among our people.
Reflect for a moment upon the fact that there are at least one hundred
millions of poor in Europe, who would come to America now if they
could. They await only ship space and money to pay for their passage.
To bring over one million this year is always to prepare the way for
two millions next year. Each incoming crowd soon invites and pays the
way for a greater host of relatives and friends.
This importation of the poor and destitute does not much benefit
European countries, if indeed it helps them at all. A country, which,
like Italy or Belgium, is primarily industrial in character, has long
since reached its limit of population. Remove a million Belgians or
a million Italians to America, and their places are at once refilled
by a million more births at home. Hence the creation of Italian or
Belgian slums in Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago does not ultimately
decrease the size of the slums in Brussels or Naples. Nor does the
overflowing tide help the home country where, as from Poland or
Hungary, the emigrants are largely peasants. The land of Poland and
Hungary is held in large estates. Every peasant who deserts the
soil of Europe to fester in our cities merely postpones the change
in the land system which denies him opportunity in his own country.
Furthermore, in Poland, Hungary, Rumania, etc., this peasant is now
needed more than ever before to raise food crops. He leaves his country
because conditions are bad. These evil conditions are due, in part, to
the aftermath of war. But this is only secondary. The primary cause
of poverty among the peasants of Southern and Eastern Europe has been
large holdings of land and conditions of practical serfdom, but, above
all, primitive and backward means of production. Instead of plowing his
land with a plow, this backward peasant turns it up with a hoe three
times the weight and with only half the cutting edge of an American
garden hoe. Instead of reaping his grain with a reaper, the Polish or
Russian peasant reaps with a scythe of about the size, weight and shape
of an American fence rail. So, to compensate for his own ignorance,
backwardness, and the crude mediaevalism of his whole environment,
this peasant escapes responsibility by rushing to the United States.
His case is exactly the same as that of the city wastrel from Belgium
or Italy. In leaving his own country he does not help it in the least.
In coming to America he drags us down to the pit of Hell.
As regards the immigration from Japan, the West Indies, and Mexico,
the conditions are only exaggerated. They are exaggerated by greater
differences in race and by the wider gulf which separates our economic
conditions from theirs. There are tens of millions of people in India
who never know from one year's end to another what it means to have
enough to eat. One good American dollar will outfit their wardrobe
for twelve months. Throw these millions into the industrial life of
America, and in twenty years' time their place in India will be taken
by as many millions more, just as wretched, just as absolutely hopeless
as the millions who are begging, starving and dying to-day. Here is a
place where sentimentalisms are only trash. A sentimental attitude by
an American toward this problem is a criminal attitude. It is a sort
of criminal insanity which makes for suicide. If the suicidal intent
concerned only the individual, we should not worry nearly so much. But
it is our country which is committing suicide.
The problem may be simplified by a comparison. Let us picture our
sentimentalist as possessed of an American family of wife and three
children living in an eight room house. Will this average citizen
welcome the arriving immigrants into his own house to the extent of
five per room? If he lives in Texas, will he fill his home with Mexican
peons; if in California, with Japanese and Hindoos; if in New York,
with Sicilians or Turks? All that I ask is that he be fully consistent.
If the sentimentalist is willing to prevent his own children from
having homes in America in order to provide homes for the Japanese;
if he is willing to prevent his American neighbors from having
children in order to make way for the children of the Japanese of
to-morrow--then he ought to be willing to open wide the door of his own
house in order to provide for the destitute immigrant.
There is something quite terrible in the stern fact that this country
will belong to the people who multiply most rapidly. The imbeciles and
the other feeble-minded, if permitted to do so, multiply much more
rapidly than normal persons. Suppose that we permit this class to
multiply at will and carefully preserve its progeny from disease and
other causes of a high mortality. In that case we can easily calculate
the time when the feeble-minded and insane will number a majority of
our population. Among the competing races in America the birth-rate
is the ultimate victor. The German and the Irish among us outbreed
the original Americans. The French-Canadians and the Poles outbreed
the Germans and the Irish. The Negroes and the Japanese outbreed all
the whites. Return to the liberal immigration policy of five years
ago and we shall become a conglomeration out of which it will be
impossible to build a nation. Under such conditions almost no sound
reform policies, no national progressive movement of any sort, can be
successfully advocated and executed. Stop immigration and a homogeneous
English-speaking nation will again be developed. Such a nation will
solve every economic and social problem as it arrives. Such a nation
will develop according to our Anglo-Saxon methods of free speech,
free press, democratic methods and popular respect for the law. We
are dealing here with the most crucial and fundamental issue of our
generation.
The time has come to brand every advocate of continued immigration as
the outright enemy of this country and of our American civilization.
We are already two generations late in waking up to this matter. We
are on the very brink of the pit, and if we are to act at all, we must
act in unity and at once. Eventually, after our present foreign
element has been Americanized and absorbed as best it may be we might
permit again a small amount of carefully selected immigration annually.
But even that would be a mistake. Future Americans should be born and
reared in America. Again and again let me urge that I am not claiming
that Americans are inherently superior to other peoples. We have a
peculiar civilization to guard and to guide. The tendency in our
industrial regime is always for the weaker, the more humble, the more
serf-like peoples to undermine the sturdier native whose standard of
living spells his destruction. The lower standard of living which the
immigrant willingly accepts, at least at first, is his essential curse.
Admitting swarms of low standard Europeans in order to "bring American
working people to reason" as regards their wages and conditions is a
piece of ignorant folly. In the end this always increases, instead of
decreases, our labor difficulties.
[Illustration: A "Klonklave" where One Thousand "Aliens" were
"Naturalized" and Became Citizens of The Invisible Empire.]
As I have already stated, our American labor problem can not be solved
by breaking down the American standard of living and the American
spirit among American born working men. Our labor problem can be
solved only by winning the employers and workers alike to accept a
common policy of justice and Americanism. The view that there is ever
"more work in America than we can do ourselves" is the falsest of
false economic theories. Why should we try to exploit our resources or
develop new projects of any sort at the crazy and destructive rate of
speed which has marked our industrialism during the past generation?
Just the contrary is the correct policy. The unskilled labor of America
must be done by Americans. A dozen of our presidents have wielded
the axe and guided the plow. The very foundation of our country is
a sturdy, intelligent, characterful and self-respecting working
class, who do not at all crave to be parsons and college professors.
Better build fewer miles of highway or dig less coal than destroy our
civilization by the admixture of unsuitable and unworthy elements.
There is an old story of a farmer who burned down his barn in order to
get rid of the rats. Here we have a case of burning down one's house
in order to settle an argument as to who is going to wash the dishes.
Right here appears what may be our supreme test in the building of a
great nation, in the conservation of our democratic civilization. Are
we Americans ready and willing to eat our bread by the sweat of our
brow? If we are, we shall live and prosper as a people. If we are not,
if we crave the importation of an ever larger servile class, then we
shall perish, and we shall deserve to perish. Democracy is impossible
in the presence of a class which holds common labor in disesteem. On
the other hand, no idle aristocratic class exists in all the world,
that the mills of the gods will not grind to dust and oblivion in the
end.
Another aspect of European emigration deserves especial comment. Let us
take for granted that it is desirable for a certain number of Europeans
to emigrate from their various home lands. Why do they not go to
South America, where millions of square miles are as yet untilled
and unbroken, and where raw materials in countless amounts await the
tools and the initiative of the worker? Or, why does not the European
emigrant go to East Africa, where a fair and fruitful land, resembling
California, is open to settlement by white men? Australia, with three
millions of square miles, has a population of only six millions. She
can take millions of immigrants, and provide lands and plenty.
The answer is simplicity itself, the mass of European wage workers
and peasants to-day do not wish to become pioneers. Those who are
physically, mentally and morally capable of becoming independent and
successful farmers no longer emigrate. They stay at home and improve
their conditions by instituting modern methods, as in Germany, Ireland,
and Scandinavia. They know that we have no longer free lands for them.
The present European emigrant is one who wishes to become a city
wage-worker or petty trader. Here in America considerable numbers have
attained great wealth. It is this story of the poor emigrant boy who
acquires millions of money and perhaps political distinction which
troubles the mind and disturbs the sleep of the unemployed European
wage worker, the peddler and the landless peasant. Stop European
emigration to the United States and within ten years South America,
Africa and Australia will begin to receive such emigrants as they need
for their natural and rightful development. But those who emigrate from
Europe to the great open spaces of the world will be forced to become
farmers, foresters and miners, producing the solid wealth which all the
world needs.
One further word. We shall presently come again upon a period of
prosperity. It will be limited by world conditions, probably, to
a few months, at the most to a year or two. During this period an
enormous propaganda for unlimited immigration will be again financed
by the profiteers and supported by the feeble minded and weeping
sentimentalists. At that time the intelligent and patriotic portion
of our citizenship must be especially alert and active. We must
so organize our working forces that great numbers can readily be
shifted from city factories to the harvest fields and back again.
Certain seasonable trades and outdoor construction work can be made
to supplement one another, so that the workers will not be forced out
of employment at any season of the year. To a man of the breadth and
experience of, for instance, Mr. Ford, the execution of such a plan
would be simplicity itself. We Americans can and must solve these
peculiar industrial problems on the basis of a slowly increasing native
population.
I realize fully that to consummate so great a reform as the permanent
stopping of immigration requires the setting in motion of larger forces
than the Klan can command. To this end every American must function
through his political party, his fraternal order, his business
associates or labor union, and his church. All the argument is on one
side. What we require is action, and we Klansmen propose to have it
without further dilly-dallying and compromise.