Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/175

 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 139 the rate of nearly a million a year (Mr. Warne in his excellent and ominous book computes that dur ing the past ten years every time the clock strikes the hour, night and day, one hundred immigrants step ashore) bringing languages, religions and cus toms at variance with our own. Our Constitution was made by English-speaking people for English- speaking people, by the self-governing for the self- governing; it rests upon the idea of a homogeneous population, with the same general traditions of law and life. With what stability it will rest upon a kaleidoscope of tribes and peoples speaking neither one another s language nor our own is a question very likely to concern the United States at some not distant day. Meanwhile the law of 1907 works little good; and we leave the incoming piebald hordes untaught. After March 4, 1907, the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Appropriation Act of February 26 provided that the salaries of the vice-president, the speaker of the house and members of the Cabinet should be at the rate of twelve thousand a year and seventy-five hundred should be the com pensation of congressmen. A fund not exceeding twenty-five thousand a year had been provided for the president s travelling expenses by an Act of June 23, 1906. In that month the state of Okla homa was admitted to the Union. Certain further foreign agreements should be mentioned: A United