Speech #550049969

Then came the industrial army from the old to make of- the new a greater and a better world. They came. not as of old came their ancestors from the steppes of Asia. to waste and obliterate civilization and its fruits. but. uplifting high the banner of industry and peace. to make glad the waste places and to cause the wilderness to "blossom as the rose." And. sir. there is no marvel of fiction. no achievement of reality stranger than fiction. that equals the transformation of a continent from the wigwam of the savage and the lair of the wild beast to the myriad homes of happy. peaceful. industrious mortals devoted to every pursuit that satislies the wants and to every art that ministers to the tastes of highly cultured and enlightened humanity. And the transformation has been the work of the white immigrant. Having been done. we smite the hand that has upbuilded us and put a stigma on the workman whose skill and toil are our pride and our boast. And. sir. to give a sting to ingratitude some of those who. coming from a foreign shore. have prosperedbeneath the Stars and Stripes. and many descended from ancestors recently subjects of foreign princes. are clamorous to bar the avenue to any further unrestricted immigration into our borders. Thus it is that the evil of native selfishness has been quickly assimilated by some of the foreign born in our midst. It is unquestionable that every country has the right to protect itself against the dangers that lurk in the admission of races whose ideas. manners. and habits are hostile to its social organization and its public or private welfare. In accordance with this view we have enacted laws which exclude the Chinese. It is proper and just to hold this continent against the Mongolian. He is not of the type of man that. from the earliest dawn of civilization to date. has advanced mankind to a high standard of excel. lence and culture. A great wall landward and the hitherto inviolate seahave kept him isolated.