The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1896-03-16
LODGES SPEECH.
Continued from Page l.

the wages, or the standard OF life OF
American workingmen, We should take
immediate steps to restrict foreign immi-
grafton for there Is an appalling danger
70 the American wage-earner from the
flood Of low, unskilled, ignorant, foreign
labor which not only take lower wages,
but accepts a standard OF life and living
80 low that the American workingmen
cannot compete with IL.
The injury of unresticted immigration
to American wages and American stand
ards OF living Is sufficiently plain and Is
bad enough, but the danger of immigra-
tion VIII ich threatens the quality OF our
citizenship Is far worse. With the excep-
tion of the Huguenot French, who formed
but small percentage OF the total popu-
mics were all of the same original race
stocks. Tho Dutch, the Swedes and the
Germans blended and simply BILE nded
again with the English-speaking people
who, like them, were descended from the
Germanlc tribes. During the present GEN.
tury down to 1876 there have been three
large migrations TO this country. In ad-
dition to the always steady stream from
Great Britain, one came from Ireland
about the mid lie OF the century, and
somewhat later on came from Germany
and one from Scandinavia, in which Is
included Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
The Irish, altogether of a different race
stock originally, have been closely as
sociated with the English speaking peo-
pie for nearly thousand years. They
speak the same language, and during the
long period the two races have lived side
by side and to some extent inter-married.
The Germans and Scandinavinians are
again people of the same race stock as the
English who founded and built up the
colonies During this century, down to
1873, then, as In the two which preceded,
there had been scarcely any immigration
TO this country, except from kindred or
allied races and no other which was
sufficiently numerous to have produced
any effect on the national characteristics,
or TO be taken into account here.
Since 1876, however, there has been
great change. While the people who, for two
hundred and fifty years, have been migrat-
ing to America have continued To furn ish
large numbers of immigrants TO the
United States, other races OF totally diff
erent race origin, with whom the English
speaking people have never hitherto been
assimilated or brought in conta,t, have
suddenly begun to immigrate TO
the United States in large numbers.
Russians, Hungarfans, Poles, Bohe-
mians, Italians Greeks and even
Asiatics, whose immigration 10
America was almost unknown 20 years
ago, have during the last 20 years poured
in In steadily increasing numbers, until
now they nearly equal the immigration
of both these races kindred in blood or
speech or both, by whom the United
States has hitherto been built up and the
American people formed. This momen-
tous fact is the one which confronts you
today, and If continued il carries with il
future consequences far deeper than any
other event of our times. Ii involves in a
word nothing less than the possibility of
a great and perilous change in the very
fabric of our race.
NJ. Gustave lie Bon, a distinguished
French writer, says in his very remark
able book on the evolution of races:
"Most of the historic races of Europe are
still in process of formation and ii Is i'm
portant to realize this fact in order to un
derstand their history. The English alone
represent a race almost entirely fixed. In
them the ancient Briton, the Saxon and
the Normans have been effaced to form
new and very homogeneous type.
"Tbat which Identities race and sets
IL apart from Others is not to be found
merely or ultimately in Its physical APP
pearance, its institutions, its laws, its
literature, or even its language. You
can take Hinooo and give him the
highest education the world can afford.
He has a keen intelligence. He Will alb
sorb the learning of Oxford; he will ac-
Quire the manners and habits of En-
gland, he will sit in the British parlia
ment, but you cannot make him an En-
glishman. Yet, he, like his conqueror,
is of the great Indo-Eurvpean family.
But he has taken six thousand years and
more to create the difference which exist
between them.
When we speak of race, then we do
not mean its expressions in art or in lal-
guage, or its achievements in know
ledge. We mean the moral and intellec-
tual characters, which in their associa-
iion make out the race and which repre-
sent the product of all its past. the inher-
itance OF all its ancestors and the motives
of all its conduct.
What makes a race are their mental,
and above oil their moral characteristics,
the slow growth and accumulation of con-
verts of toll and conflict These are the
qualities which determine their social
efficiency as people which make one race
rise and another fall, which we draw out
through many generations of ancestors,
about which we cannot argue, but in
which we implicitly be ieve, aud which
guide in every short-lived generation as
they have guided the race itself across
the centuries.
Mr.. Lodge, said, speaking OF the char
acteistics of the Anglo-SaXon race which
has people the United States: "There is
not perhaps In the world ra ;e which is
more homogeneous and which the men,
tuf constitution Is more easyto define IN It's
great outline. Transported to a wilder
ness lnhaDlteu only by savages and having
only itself TO count uponswe know what
that race has done for you; scarcely CEN
tury has been necessary to those people to
place themselves in the first rank of the
great powers of the world, and today
there is hardly one who could struggle
against them."
Such achievements as nj. lie Bon
credits us are due to the qualities of the
American people whom he, as a man Of
science looking below the surface, rightly
described as homogeneous. Those quail
ties are moral far more than intellectual,
and 1t is on the moral qualities of the En-
glish speaking race that our history, our
victories and all our future rests. There is
only one way in which you can lower the
equalities or weaken those characteristics
and that is by breeding them out. IL a
lower race mixes with q higher In suf-
flcient numbers, history teaches US that
the lower face will prevail. The lower
race will absorb the higher, not the higher
the lower, when the two strains approach
equality in numbers. In other words,
there is limit TO the capacity OF any
race for assimilating and elevating an i'm
ferior race, snd when you begin TO pour
in unlimited numbers people of alien or