The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-08-02

Commissioner General of Immigration Frank P. Sergeant gives the expert opin- ion that the number of aliens who will arrive here during the coming year will exceed the million mark thereby surpass- ing all in this respect During the twelve months. ending with July, the army of alien invasion reached the grand total of s57O46 men, women and children, the great majority of them ignorant of our language laws, institutions, but a few degrees removed beyond a semi-sav- age state, united in every way to be- come component parts of our civilization and invested with the high privileges of our citizenship.
 Not another country in the world would receive such an agglomeration of undesirable clements. France has effec- tive barriers against such an influx were 1t threatened with so great a calamity. So have great Britain and Germany. They could not land on the shores of any one of those countries The ships that gave them transportation and att tempted to unload them would find themselves under the ban of the law, and the guns of a war vessel or for tress would quickly back the order to return them whence they came The self-protection of these countries make this rigid exclusion imperative. Their political, economic and social systems could not withstand the strain to which 1t would subject them. And the time has come when our system cannot do SO. American ports must be closed against the scum of European cities which is now being dumped into New York and other centres of population.
 The sound material which should enter into the formation of American citizen ship, character, life, homogenity, is not in vast proportion of these unfortunate victims of European misrule oppression and tyranny. Nor can it be implanted In them. The monarchs, statesmen and ruling classes generally of the nations which send us these wrecks of humanity are responsible for thls degra dation of the creatures that are fleeing to us and so long as we continue to receive them so long will these imperial despots and the so-called nobility that flourish and fatten under them, block and postpone the work of reform and regeneration among their starved. crushed. brutalized subjects. The hour has struck when our government must speak plainly on the subject. no matter what information al complications or unpleasantness may How from It. And 1t will not be vio- lation of the rules of diplomacy to do so. It will not be an interference in their in- ternal affairs to tell them that our civil ization shudders at the horrible spectacle this emigration from them presents and that in Justice to ourselves and the hope of amelorating conditions, we must turn it back
 Chief of the offenders in this respect Is the royal house of Savoy. which boasts an antiquity far beyond that of any reigning family in Europe From a part, not all, of the dominions ruled by this monarchy, comes the least desirable ac- cession to our population Because of misrule and oppression, extending over long periods of time and still continued, there exist In the Italian Kingdom mur- derous organizations. with which the government appears unable to cope for reasons 1t would be idle to discuss From our American point of view they must be set down. first. to bad government, and. secondly, to inefficient admlnistra- ton. But that Is not the question that immediately concerns us. It is the noto- rious fact that the officials of the Ital- ian government seek to get rid of these criminal classes with whom they cannot deal as they deserve to be dealt with bv encouraging. if not forcing. them to migrate to us. In other words the ma chinery of Italian monarchy is constantly in active operation to transplant to our soil murderous associations of Italian