Speech #540077647

Native Celts. liberally infused and amalgamated with Germanic races and duly tempered and hardened by the Normans. constituted the ethnic makenp of the English people who colonized these shores. They were the concentration and quintessence of the Saxon and Celt. the Norman and the Norseman. A blending of all these made the mightiest nation on the face of the earth. and our vast immigration has only measurably enlarged. broadened. and deepened the process. The earlier grafting was upon a Celtic stock. this later grafting has been upon an English stock of the seventeenth century. In both cases the grafts are from the same source. but the Germanic races of the nineteenth century are as much superior in culture and intelligence. in capacity for selfgovernment and refinement to those who succeeded the Romans in Britain as the English of the seventeenth century were superior to the native Celts who confronted Julius Caesar. There has been in this century a finer graft upon a better stock. and surely the result is a nobler tree. I have compiled and shall append to the printed copy of my remarks a table. classifying our immigration by races. From this table it appears that the blood of nearly 15.000.000 of Germanic people has been infused into the heart and loins of the American people. And these immigrants have not come to these shores. as their ancestors did to the Celts of Britain. as a scourge. as freebooters. and as pirates. but they have come on a mission of peace. to participate with us and to aid us in evolving from the great undeveloped resources of this country a mighty nation. mighty in wealth and numbers. and above all mighty and noble in the makeup and texture of its people. The new blood is transfused into the old. The sluggishness of ease and plenty is quickened by the unrest of limited opportunities and honest poverty. The immigrant Nikola Tesla transmits and guides the unutilized force of the American Niagara. In the great realm of human development the one is the lesser though necessary complement of the other. It can not in fairness be said that this great Germanic immigration has been of other than great advantage to our country. The immigrants. however seared and benumbed they may have become from the enviromnent of the land of their birth. have no sooner landed on American soilthan they have. intuitively and asif by inspiration. respondedin full measure to the intellectual. moral. and political instincts and requirements of the nation. and have become thoroughly assimilated to all that is good and progressive among our people. and the children of these immigrants have become the most intense and emphatic of all Americans within our borders. But while all this is admitted as to the Germanic races. it is said that people of other and inferior races. wholly unfit for American institutions and wholly unfit for selfgovernment. flock to our shores. And Russians.