Omaha daily bee., 1888-04-22
AMERICA FOR AMERICANS.
But Theodore Roosevelt Tells How
to Become Americanized.
LOYAL TO HIS ADOPTED LAND
Socially and Politically, the Foreigner
May Rise to Distinction and
Fame as Have Others
Before Him.

There have recently been many signs
Of a popular awakening to the fact, that
much of the foreign immigration TO our
shores is Of a highly undesirable kind;
and, together with this, there have also
appeared, here and there, symptoms of
the revival of the old feeling Of dislike
and distrust of all immigrants, good or
bad-a feeling whose fitful slumbers,
during the past sixty years, has been
varied once and again by spasms of
erratic activity, whose outcome has
often been ludicrous, sometimes harm
full and occasionally both.
Although these two phases of senti-
ment so often appear side by side, yet
there is properly nothing whatever in
common between them.
1t goes without saying, that IL is vi
tally important for all decent American
citizens, no matter where they were
born or what creed they profess, to join
hands in keeping out men whose admis-
sion into u commonwealth can result
only in harm to the body politto..
But all this has nothing whatever to
do with q feeling of hostility for foreign
ers simply as such-a feeling COM
pounded of fear, contempt and jealousy
which even when it does moi manifest
itself openly in political agitation, is yet
always latent in the breasts of no incon-
siderable portion of our citizens, 1t is a
di%screditable prejudice, as any man can
satisfy himself by a brief examination
of the facts. OF course, it must be ad-
mitted that the behavior of some of the
present immigrants-indeed of some
whole classes of NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. a
partial justification for this prejudice;
yet even II slight study of u past his
tory is enough to show us that both the
fear of, and hostility toward, our fellow
citizens of foreign birth or ~parentage,
are, if not wholly baseless, yet based on
very insufficient grounds.
The people who feel this fear and hos
tility seem to forget that u whole his
tory ismade up of waves of i~mmigration;
and that this immigration was formerly,
as now, drawn from the ranks of many
widely-different nations. A common
mistake is to talk of our revolutionary
ancestors as forming Il heterogeneous"
body, M in speech and blood, whereas,
in reality, the Americans of that day
were of quite as heterogeneous compost
ton as are we ourselves at present.
Americans of 1776 were so far from
OH jug Al CIV atttu Il " ilui SNch III
doubted whether half of them were of
pure, Or nearly pure, English blood. In
New England the English blood was
purest; but ever in New England there
was an Irish admiXture-much larger
than some New England historians are
willing to admit-dating from as far
back as the time of Cromwell, by whom
the Irish were first shipped over. There
were also many French Huguenots.
One Of the great New England revolu-
tionary families was that of the Sulli-
vans; m of the very few revolutionary
battles fought on New England soil was
won by the Irishman Stark; and the
most formidable rebellion that aver took
place in a New England state was chris
tened by the name of it's leader, Shea
Tor Shay, in its Anglicised form). This
same rebellion was put down by a gov
ernor with the French name of Bow
dom; and the similarity Hugue-
not names OF Revere and Fanueil are
among the best remembered of MaSsa-
chusetts. Virginia, then the leading
state. and the only one outside of New
England where the people of English
stock were largely predominant, con-
tanned also many Huguenots, and Ger
mans, besides the Scotch-Irish along its
western border. In the middle states
bndJ Is, III NSW 1Ofhs TSDhSylVanld
New Jersey, and Delaware, the people
OF English blood were certainly in the
minority, and those of French, Dutch,
German, Swiss and Swedish descent
were, taken together, more numerous,
in proportion to the whole population L,
than is 10Y the case in any group of
American states, evcn including Mime
sofa and Wisconsin. Similarly, the
Carolinas and Georgia contained COM
munities speaking French, Dutch,
German and Gaelic, while the
mountaineers, as in Pennsylvania
and Virginia, were mainly Scotch
| Irish, so that in the southern colonies
also, the people OF pure English stock
were greatly in the minority.
Certainly such n showing as this
ought to remove from the mind OF the
most apprehensive all fear arising
merely from the variety and extent of
the present immigration. The Ger
man Doors and Irish c%otters," who have
come over during this century, form a
relatively smaller part OF our population
than did the Dutch and German Doors
and Scotch and Irish cotters a century
back. In no one of our states at the
present day are the foreign and non
English elements SO plentiful as they
were in New York and Pennsylvania at
the Tune Whcn the nrSt continental con-
| gress was assembled.
The noxt assertion to be considered,
is the one to the effect that the people
who come over here to-day compare
~unfavorably with the people who came
over here prior to l776; or, in other
| other words, that the immigrants of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
were of a better class than those of the
nineteenth.
Beyond question, n of the most seri-
| Gus evils from which, as q nation, we
now suffer, is to be found in the char
acter of part OF the immigration to our
shores. The question as to how this
immigration can be best checked, is OF
the greatest Importance to the future
we'll being of our people; to solve it
would be u feat of practical statesman
ship, beside which the solution of the
silver difficulty or of the reform of the
tariff, or OF the question of the reduc-
ton of the surplus itself, would sink
into absolute insigniicance. We are
made the Electromagnetic for shoals OF
criminals; and be it remembered
that the crimiuality of many ~so-called
political" offenders OF the present day
is quite as markedly ~noxious as that Of
any other class. Moreover, much OF
the ''cheap labor" that comes here from
certain European states is of q kind moi