Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/754

 722 Protective duties. Immigration. Land. [1890-1902 President McKinley's significant utterance delivered the very day before his assassination. Although himself the most conspicuous defender of the protective system, he declared in his last speech his conviction that the time had come when the restrictive policy should be modified to meet the new conditions of international competition in the neutral markets. The policy of reciprocity, supported by his great authority and accepted by his successor in office, though as yet checked by the extreme protectionist element, has unquestionably a strong hold upon the masses, even in the ranks of the Republican party itself. The freedom with which immigration has hitherto been permitted was partly the result of political idealism the sentiment that America has "room about her hearth for all mankind" but even to a larger extent the result of an economic demand for more labour. At the present time, however, population has increased sufficiently to supply this demand; and already the rate of increase has fallen from 33 per cent, in the decade to 20 per cent. Moreover, the character of the immigrants has changed. Whereas formerly the larger proportion of them were of the best races of western Europe, at the present time that kind of immigration has practically ceased ; and the country is receiving annually hundreds of thousands of the lower classes of south-eastern Europe, a more ignorant and turbulent element, which is not easily assimilated and which threatens to form a permanent proletariat incon- sistent with the theory, at least, of a democratic society. New problems of direct government activity have also arisen. The political importance of a trans-isthmian canal was clearly seen at the time of the Spanish war, but, if it is built, it will be primarily for commercial reasons. The gradual disappearance of free land has raised the problem of irrigation, at government expense, of the Great Desert, vast areas of which would be of unsurpassed fertility if only they had sufficient moisture. A cautious move in this direction was made in the Act of 1902, which provided for a self-supporting plan under which the sales of the first lands should provide for the irrigation of the next. The possibility of successful irrigation over large sections of the arid territory has been established; and every increase in population is likely to strengthen the demand for a vigorous policy along this line.