Sacramento daily record-union., 1889-10-05
FOSTERING FOREIGN IMMIGRATION.

The Ahd California, of San Francisco,
considering the subject of an increase of
travel to this coast, says:
"No need to cross the sea to look for
people for California Our railroads sus-
tain costly efforts in Europe to induce
foreign immigration, which, after it comes,
must learn new language, the laws and
institutions of a new form of government,
and too often instead of being assimilated
by our people digests US instead It would
be better to abandon all such urgencies
and agencies, leave foreign immigration to
its natural impulses when it will come as a
streamlet, not as torrent, and put the ener-
gies lavished at such long range into induc-
ing an immigration from the East, that does
not have to assimilate, that brings With it
industry, thrift and economy, and does not
intend to shed them Immediately upon
settlement"
The philosophy in this extract is broad,
and pregnant with suggestion. The
thought of the American people is strongly
setting in the direction of the sentiment of
the expression of our contemporary. The
conviction is fastening upon the public
mind that from this time for
ward it will be the part of wisdom to leave
foreign immigration to purely voluntary
impulses. If it is urged and stimulated by
cpaoiaI axar+;o,, 10 email 80 ,,ol,,,,o :. l..
comes an artificial accession to our popula-
tion, that infiicts hardships upon the
laboring classes. The effect upon Califor-
MIA is, under such stimulation, less per-
haps, for comparatively few people cross
the continent, and consequently we reap
very little benefit even from the best order
of that immigration. The average Eu-
ropean immigrant has usually exhausted
his financial ability when he has landed
on the Atlantic shore, OF very soon there
after he Is unable to proceed far into the
country. This class, and it constitutes the
vast majority, is not that which California
most desires for home-builders; its con-
stituents do not constitute the population
we need. Indeed, while the Ata wisely
suggests that foreign immigration may we'll
be left to its natural flow, ssthere is
strong drift of public sentiment in favor
of applying such restrictions, and qualif-
cations to even that flow, as will check it,
and this sentiment is the outgrowth of the
experience and observation of the Ameri-
can people of the influence of unrestricted
immigration upon our social, industrial
and political institutions There was
time when the vastness of the unsettled
acreage of our empire of domain encour-
aged US to invite the foreign element to
come in and occupy the land, or take the
places of those ofour own people who went
westward with the pioneer drift. But we
have now reached position from which
we can discern the future with the clear
ness of vision that enables us to see the
vacant lands of the nation occupied by
people Of our own growing, and to realize
a condition of affairs in which the influx
of large and foreign element, dependent
upon immediate employment for ex-
istence, will result in a leveling process
in industrial walks, that will be the reverse
of beneficial to the independence of char
acter and freedom of action, not to mention
the ambitions and aspirations, social and
otherwise, of American wage earners. So
far as California is concerned, the time has
passed when we can wisely bid for foreign
What we need and can
more proftably obtain, is immigra-
tion from the thickly populated East
of our own people, who by reason of
climatic exigencies, independence of purse
and natural desire to add to the comforts
of life, find in our favored cline and
natural endowments the nearest approach
TO the sum of their desires. There is of