Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1894-08-10
FRIDAY MORNING. AUG. 10. 1894.

The large plans we see being mOoted to
attract the immigration of Europeans to
the Southern States, do not, we are sorry
to say, appeal to us with any force. We
are sorry to say it, simply because it is not
pleasant to hold back from any plan to in
crease the prosperity of our section. But
we do not believe any solid, permanent
prosperity will come to this part Of our
land from the importation Of the sort OF
nom English speaking population which
has been coming to America and has over
run the West and Northwest in the last
fifteen years. We are even ready to say
that we do not wish to see single ship
load of Europeans landed in the Southern
States until our national immigration laws
are changed, and q far different and stricter
system than now prevails, adopted.
No thoughtful observer who has watch
ed the enormous immigration to America
in the last twenty years, the character OF
it, and the outcome of it, can fail to come
to the conclusion that it has been over
done il all respects. They seem to PEG
pie who have sought the Republic with
very vague idea of law and with all impress
sion that this is a sort of Socialistic Area
da in which mel are entitled to q living
NO matter in what numbers they come.
and if it is not furnished them, then re
sort to violence is their remedy. The
strikes. the turbulence, the seditiouS ora
tory, the wild ideas of the relations be-
tween those who have and those who have
not. seem nearly all to be Of foreign growth.
The plain truth, however disagreeable it
may be, is that this great country has had
its stomach overloaded for a long time with
immigration and it has gotten beyond its
power to assimilate it. The doctrine of
Protection which has been enforced for
thirty years under the pretence of keeping
the products of ''pauper labor'' out OF the
country, has given the European the idea
that this is Paradise of high wages, and
brought to our shores instead OF the pro-
duct of pauper labor, the pauper himself.
He has in his struggle for a living cut the
American workman S wages down and the
result has been turbulence and strikes.
For strange to say, after having been
chiefly instrumental i'll lowering the wages
he is the first to ncite to strikes for higher
pay.
So fan, our fellow citizens of the North
and Northwest have been the beneliciaries
of all the good, and lIesufferers from all the
brought. For our part we would not have
the South share with them in their expert
ence. The South in the great labor trou-
bles of the past years, has been land of
peace, quiet and security compared with
that portion Of the country that has had
the most INN igration, aid we would have
it continue so to be. We should like to
have Americans come from every quarter
of the Union to share in our peaceful pros
perity, but no shiploadS of immigrants
under our present laws. The South is
growing with a steady, natural, healthy
growth, which means a prosperous and
sturdy old age The West has been growing
with an unhealthy rapidity which has
brought the diseased condition now so APP
parent in its early youth, and which prom
ward to with anxiety.
SO strongly have recent events in the
United States impressed this view on the
people Of the South, that we believe they
would be willing not to see another Ship
load of Europeans enter a port in the
Union for the next ten years, and after that
only under entirely new and changed
conditions of entrance. Give the country
time to digest what has been forced down
its throat; time to ;issimilate and make
good American citizens Of What it already
has: time to give them American ideas Of
property, of law, of labor, and of respec>
for the rights Of others No government
ever invented hy man could long stand the
strain of such importation of incoDgruous
and unassimilating material as ours has
had to receive for many years past, and it
will he the height of wisdom if we put a
stop to it for wheat least long enough
for us to train what we have already
gotten.