The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-08-20
PROF. NORTON ON IMMIGRATION

PROF.. NORTON ON IMMIGRATION.
AS Massachusetts was the cradle of
liberty in America, so are American
ideals still cultivated there. 1t would
be almost impossible to estimate the
influence of the town meeting upon our
institutions, and it is not altogether
certain that its Redistribution would
not be a wholesome thing in our mu-
nicipal affairs.
Some years ago there was inaugur-
ated at Ashfield, Mass, an annual din
ner at which distinguished men dis
coursed upon matters of great moment
to Americans everywhere. These meet
ings are held in the old town hall,
rugged and stout-timbered structure.
On the 18th inst the eighteenth annual
dinner was given. Among the speakers
on that OCCASION was Professor Eliot
Norton, of Harvard university. His
remarks were plain, little calculated
to f1atter national vanity but all the
more wholesome for that. He declared
that the root of the evils from which
we are suffering and which threaten
worse to come, is the ignorance of great
masses of our people, an ignorance
manifest in the wide acceptance Of
specious fallacies, and the general low
tone of political morality. The proper
ton of the ignorant and of those insult
ficiently educated to- be good citizens
of the republic, he said, has especially
increased in recent years. owing to the
immense change which has been talk
ing place during the last two genera
tons in the composition and character
of the nation. There is but too much
truth in all that, yet that which he
said about the evils of our immigra-
ton system will strike all thoughtful
citizens as very true and very regret
table
eve may date" says the distinguish
ed professor, 1.-The beginning of the
change from that sad year 1887, the
wear of the great Irish famine, when
some 100000 poverty-stricken and ig
norant exiles sought refuge and liveli-
hood ON our shores. From that time
to this the stream of poor emigrants
from all parts of Europe has never
ceased to flow i'm enormous volume
Not only the conditions of life of the
laiboring classes in Europe, and the
happier conditions existing here, but
mistaken legislation on our part has
swelled this vast flood. During the
last twenty-five years many million
foreigners have been added to- our pop
ulation. Some of them well-to-do and
well-bred, many of them of excellent
character fit to make excellent crtl-
zens, but the great majority of them
belonging to the classes which from
the beginning of the recorded life Of
man. have been oppressed and desper-
ate They have come with the tradi-
tons and characters formed by thou
sands of years of oppression, of fgnor-
ance, of suffering, of ill-requited toll.
And here they have found themselves
at one secure against the legal oppres-
sion, with every opportunity to obtain
material comfort on easy terms, and
not only admitted to a full share Of
political power, but f1attered by dema-
gogues and raised to sudden import
ance in the state They have made
large use of their opportunities; they
have taken on the varnish, often the
veneer of civilization But true civil
ization is not to be acquired in a gem
GRAFTON. The ingrained habit of mind,
the mental and moral disposition re-
sulting from ages of oppression, are
not outgrown in a single term of life.
We have not assimilated our i'm
mense immigration of the past thirty
or forty years, and the consequence is
that from a homogeneous people we
have become a heterogeneous people.
Into the American body polite have
been imported political ideas absolutely
alien to those which are distinctive of
our government; and they are having
an influence upon our institutions, and
not a beneficial one. 1t is a danger in
our politics that these alien and hostile
ideas are encouraged by pampering
and pandering to what is known as
the various foreign votes. Those who
are thus pandered to soon come to
realize that their power in politics
arises from the very fact that they
have not become assimilated to the
American body polite. All this in turn
means the perpetuation of anti-Ameri-
can ideas upon American soil. 1t is
time we looked to what may be termed
the moral well-being of our politics.
The evil of foreign immigration is that
its prejudices and false ideals are en-
couraged too much by our native poll
ticians.
t.Tha man who raises his hand