I feel some apprehension that. while attempting to close the controversy. we may in fact reopen it and leave some unexpected loophole for further controversy. This. however. is a question not of ultimate ends to be accomplished. but of the means by which they may be attained. Confronted as we are with the danger of renewing active immigration from the most populous country on the globe. we may well apprehend the danger of a radical change in our population if we take no steps to stay the flood. Our country is the most desirable in the world in climate. soil. and natural advantages. It will be fully populated and in time contain as manyinhabitants as it can well support. The Damascus steel was the product of a combination of the various mines. but all the ore in the combination was the best of metal. So the mingling of the blood of the different nations of the same race from Europe has produced and is producing a new people in our country. The European nations furnish an ample supply from which to people this continent. and it is for us to choose whether the future progress of this young nation shall be clouded by adding the perils of a new Asiatic invasion. Four hundred million Mongolians are within less than two weeks distance from our Pacific shores. and the low price of transportation and high rate of wages in this country would induce an overwhelming tide of cooly labor. which would reverse the course of our progress toward the general improvement of industrial conditions in the United States. Our country is still in a great measure unoccupied and we are in a position to choose its future inhabitants. We declared some years ago that the Mongolian race was not a desirable addition to our population. and. with the world to choose from. we should select the best instead of the least desirable of the worlds races. We have racial problems enough without increasing their complexity. In peopling this Republic labor is a prime necessity. But it is of the first importance that our working people should not only be citizens by birth or adoption. but worthy in all respects to exercise the duties as well as to enjoy the privileges of such citizenship. A country whose natural attractions annually draw a half a million of immigrants may well select its adopted children and carefully choose only those who will in the next generation be Americans in the full sense of the word. Near my home in Iowa is a colony of sturdy Hollanders from the shores of the North Sea. They are of that rugged stock who were the admiration of the world in their struggle for independence against the Spanish rule in the sixteenth century.
Identified stereotypes
Generalization that Mongolians would cause a radical change in population and reverse progress.