The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1908-03-01
farther than that the government does

farther than that the government does
not go. The federal government has
nothing to do with defining the quail
fications required for suffrage. Each
state is law unto herself, and more
than half Of the states originally grant
ed suffrage to foreigners before they
had taken out naturalization papers
| Several of the states now, however
have remedied this.
| Then we have given the incoming
foreigner no thought as to his former
life, his training, fitness for farm OF
shop, former climatic conditions, OF
present needs. He has been punched
off by railroads like cattle, and tipped
out into places under conditions thai
| would make an American too diseour
aged to live, and too angry TO die
Yet in spite of all this, when given
even a ghost of chance he has come
up and filed with honor every place
that is open to a foreign-born citizen
They point to the burro in Colorado
as the fellow that made the railroad to
Pixies Peak, but we can peint to the
Irish and Italian as the builders of our
great railroad systems. We can look
| to the splendid commonwealth of the
northwest and say, Behold the Ger
man, the Swede, the Norwegian and
Dane" We can glance through any
of our professions and pick from the
top. Scotch and English, and Irish, and
German, and Jew That our foreign
element knows we'll the art of getting
the shekels is seR-evident. OF the
ten great dry goods stores On State
street. Chicago. three are American,
and seven Jews. This average will
hold good in Broadway, New York
Mr.. Powderly, at the conference,
humorously referred TO Broadway as
the Jerusalem Of the New World.
Suppose We shut the gates against
hiun-what then? The South needs
peopIe-must have them, If her fields
are to be titled and her resources de-
veloped. Some one at the conference
suggested the mountaineers Of the
Rorthern-south, the purest blood We
have in the states. But the lands near
them are cheap. They have no need
to come to US. Opportunity is knock
ing at their front door.
What of the farther north? Now,
am about to say some plain things. If
they should not be said, cross them
out. The man farther north has no
faith in our soil and no patience with
our business methods. That's the rub.
As soon as We can demonstrate on a
scale large enough to be seen that
up-uo-datS farming pays, as soon as
We can assert with uplffted hand that
the railroads will not eat him UP at
every turn, as soon as he is assured of
a welcome, social and political as well
as commercial. he will come, but is
he is too well satisfied where he is
to make a leap in the dark.
What of the west? I have no faith
in the westerner coming here OF
course cheap land is tempting, but the
fellow that hustles gets along Well
there, and the westerner can hustle.
Then, 700 the western man is a
product Of the west. When he does
he does it ON a big scale
He raises and fattens cattle by the
bunch, plants corn in fifty on one
hundred acre lots, and markets both
it and his cattle by the carload He is
no dairyman, and the man that sue
ceedS here must keep COWS He is
no grubber. his lands have been tree
less and the one who comes here must
do more or less of this drudgery
With all respects then to the Hon.
CRADLES at the conference, I say the
is our hope.