Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/231

1894.] an asylum to the insane, to criminals and paupers, instead of to the "oppressed "classes of the old world. As for "refuge," the word has become equally inappropriate. A paper read before a prominent workingmen's association some time ago bore the significant title, "The Refuge of the Nations or the Refuse—Which?"

Perhaps one reason for the perennial recurrence, so to speak, of the phrases in question, is the possible association they may have in our minds with the great leaders of 1789,—with Jefferson, for instance, or Washington himself. No association of the kind could be more misleading, however, or less warranted by facts. While the supposed views of these statesmen may have had considerable weight, their real ideas, although they have a direct bearing upon immigration, have been entirely overlooked.

It is most unfortunate, as well as singular, that such is the case. For to our Revolutionary era and its teachings we may turn with especial confidence. The signers of the Declaration and the framers of the Constitution did not confine their attention solely to the need of their own generation. The nature of their task compelled them to anticipate its results, and gave them an almost prophetic insight into the country's future. And so we find the leaders of 1789 debating many questions that have since come to assume great practical importance,—hence the special value of their writings.

Prominent among the questions referred to was that of immigration, and the views of our ancestors on this subject would surprise a generation accustomed to the extreme liberality of the present system. Indeed, it is safe to say that in no respect have we made so wide a departure from the principles and traditions of 1789 as in encouraging or permitting indiscriminate foreign immigration.

Not that the problem had then as sumed its present proportions. The journey from Europe to America a century ago occupied almost as many months as it now requires days, and arrivals were numbered by the hundred instead of by the hundred thousandBut the matter very soon became one of anxiety and apprehension, as the writings of Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and others clearly reveal. These statesmen evidently favored a very gradual immigration as best adapted to a rapid and complete assimilation. Nor was such a feeling confined by any means to the conservative members of the Federalist party. On the contrary, Thomas Jefferson, the oracle of modern Democracy, believed in careful selection and restriction. That great statesman, in fact, clearly foresaw and predicted some of the very evils which unrestricted immigration has brought in its train.

Perhaps the best way to point the contrast already alluded to between 1789 and 1893, is by aid of the imagination, picturing to ourselves the effect of certain features of our civilization upon the minds of Washington or Jefferson, had they the opportunity to behold them. Were these statesmen to return and visit some of our large cities at the present time, they might have reason to think they stood on foreign soil. They could walk for miles through the French quarter, the German quarter, the Italian, Spanish, Bohemian, or Chinese quarters, where a knowledge of foreign languages is actually of more value than their native tongue. Vast "colonies" of these people would appear before their bewildered eyes, inevitably taking the color of their surroundings, retarding the process of assimilation, and complicating in every way the moral, social, and political problems of the surrounding community.

Subsequent to the administrations of Washington and Jefferson, a considera-