DECEMBER, 1923
THE UNITED AMERICAN
29
so many of their kin have found home and oppor­
tunity, and whom they wish to join? Just this: Admit
those whom we need and who are fit, giving prefer­
ence to those who have relatives here who can vouch
for them, but none who lack a clean bill of health,
moral and physical. Abolish the arbitrary, unscien­
tific and cruel percentage quota of our present law.
It is a makeshift. Establish a commission cn immi­
gration at Washington whose function shall be to de­
termine the country’s needs.
It may be advisable to establish by law certain
maximum numbers per year, but it would be better to
trust the commission, possibly subject to the approval
of the president. Have this commission comprised of
nine men representing the great industries of the
I country and the general public, and let them say how
much new blood we may safely admit from over­
crowded Europe. Then at all the great ports of Eu­
rope let an American medical and industrial staff
pass upon the would-be immigrants that the needless
crowding, inefficiency and suffering of Ellis Island
may cease Haphazard immigration is a source of
danger. Scientific immigration adds to our strength
and power. The task is worthy of our best states­
men.
We plan to receive good immigrants. We must also
[send home bad ones. We lack any proper record of
[aliens once they pass our gates. Such record is needed
and should be made yearly by every immigrant until
be becomes a citizen. If not a citizen after ten years
then he should go home. We have no place for those
seeking protection and opportunity under our laws
but do not support them.
And what of our own people, those whose ancestry
goes back through generations, past the Civil War
to Bunker Hill and Yorktown, to Plymouth Rock and
Jamestown? Is their record perfect? Have they
achieved the ideal of the fathers who laid the foun­
dations of civil and religious liberty in the early
colonies, in the Constitution, and who sealed their
beliefs in blood for your benefit and mine? Unfor­
tunately, no. Human nature yields to prejudice to
passion, to jealousy, to hatred, today as in the time of
Caesar.
We have universities on a hundred hills and schools
in a thousand valleys but human life is cheaper in
America today than in many lands we hold inferior.
Read the appalling story of crime, of suicide and of
accidents which are due to criminal carelessness and
realize that Utopia is far in the future.
We have every phase of religious belief and unbe­
lief preaching their doctrines with the utmost free­
dom and inconsistency. Yet the crime-wave is the
text of many sermons and the source of anxiety to all
thinking people. Has Christianity failed? By no
means. Without it civilization would have failed as
Greece and Rome succumbed to the barbarians. Who­
ever preaches faith in God, obedience to His law and
the law of the nation, in responsibility here and in
the life to come, is worthy of respect and support re­
gardless of the name upon the banner.
There are forces at work seeking to break down
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