Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/864

842 and powerfully keep alive such sentiments in the hearts of the people? We are not at this moment discussing this question from an economic point of view. It would be quite possible to grant, from the latter standpoint, that what is called commercial protection is a national necessity; and yet to admit and lament the fact that the moral result of such a policy was most unfavorable to the national character, and, above all, unfavorable to those broad, liberal, and humane sentiments which ought to characterize a nation which habitually regards itself as leading the van of civilization.

An illustration of the pettiness to which what we have called the unscientific view of the means by which national prosperity is promoted naturally leads is found in the recent legislation which imposes an educational test upon foreigners wishing to make this country their home. The immigrant, if over sixteen years of age, must be able to read and afterward write from twenty to twenty-five words of the Constitution of the United States; otherwise he is sent back to the country whence he came. The individual may be physically sound, and may be a capable and patient worker, prepared, even with the drawback of illiteracy, to take his chances in this new land; but he is refused admission. Why? The main reason, as we believe, is that the throwing of such difficulties in the way of the foreigner is in line with the sentiments which, as a people, we have been carefully nourishing for a long time past. It is a phase of "protection."' But surely do we need to be protected from foreigners who come here to do the hard work of the country? Is it not in our power to teach them respect for the law, if they need such teaching? And might it not be expected that the "free air" of this continent and the free play of American institutions would do something for their intellectual and political development? In times past, when our own illiteracy showed a larger percentage than it does to-day, and our whole population was much smaller, we admitted illiterate immigrants by the thousand without question and gave them a hearty welcome. To-day, when the volume of immigration is much less than it used to be, and when our own educational level is alleged to have materially risen, we must turn back the able-bodied foreigner unless he can show that he has been to school. In those days we made no question about our ability to absorb the vast hordes that presented themselves, and we did it. Today, when our population is much larger and the number of strangers arriving much smaller, we impose a scholastic test.

Looking at the law as a proposed safeguard of national prosperity, we must say it has a most fatuous appearance. The ability to read and write shows that the individual has so far been cared for by others, but affords little evidence as to his own intelligence or character. A great many vicious and socially dangerous persons are to be found among the educated, so called, while among the wholly uneducated are large numbers of faithful and honest workers. It would be interesting, but perhaps a little disquieting, to know just how many persons in this country who could write out, if necessary, the whole Constitution of the United States are supporting themselves by more or less predatory modes of life; and it would be further interesting to know what proportion of their dupes they find among those who can read and write, and what among the wholly uneducated. The fact is that "education" throws open to the vicious means of fraud they would not otherwise have possessed, and