Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-03-02
VOICES OF THE PRESS.
"kiII the Foreign Devils"
louisville Courier-Journal.)

Extremes meet. But a Scant ten
years ago a polyglot army, hydrahead-
ed, crept and fought it's way through
horde of bloodthirsty Orientals toward
Pekin. The real China wrapped itself
| like python around the legations.
Men of the Christian world fought as
| though they had snapped generals for
a time; women made bandages and
prayed, each with her ration of poison
hanging about her neck against the
hour it should be needed. The world
looked on, alternately shuddering and
raging, and even when the coils were
cut and the barbaric sack of the
treasures Of five thousand years began
the Western nations piously praised
heaven for the enlightenment and
sense Of human brotherhood, the cos
mopolitan, with which they had been
endowed
A ocant ten years. And now. the
youngest of the civilizations, alleging
a motive just the opposite from that
which animated the oldest a decade
ago. is shouting in long crescendo:
xiii tho foreign devils" First it was
the negro, then the Chinaman, then the
Japanese. then the italian and now the
Greek-as witness the scenes in Oma-
ha. ..e..
Without doubt we are peculiar peo-
pie What was. on China's part, man
Hesitation of ignorance and resistance
tc the march of progress becomes. in
ourselves the preservation of the high
er ciVilization-a manifestation of the
genius of the dominant race-even
though we are at last arrived, at the
low
nate each other. we. white men.
The long period of lawlessness is
ripening to it's fruit. When q people,
the ruost gregariouS and sociable in the
world. except possibly the French,
reach a point where they esteem the
gun and the torch and the brick
tic most effective instruments for i'm
posing our standards of civilization up
on aliens it indicates that either the
bonds of society are lOOsening, that
justice has departed from among US or
that the infusion of alien blood has
reached the saturaton point. If the
former case should prove true the
yielding to the mob spirit. the UNI
checked indulgence of fickleness and
cruelty, will but the sooner lay the ma
tive-born American at the mercy of
the very elements that rouse his an
ger or apprehension. If this growing
unrest and these outbreaks are but the
blind manifestations of the instinct of
Self-preServatiOn, an instinct OF the
mass that has sensed danger before
the brains of the statesmen have been
able to discern it, then the manSfeSta-
tons should be checked all the quick
en- Either as an instrument of race
antlplthy or an aid to economic super
iority the mob is the poorest of all
tools.
A man may once in thousand times
succeed in killing with a revolver the
fly that is singing his horse. The
mortality among the horses he owns
is likely to be considerably higher. The
fact that the Omaha mob recently
found Indictment in speeches delivered
by city officials indicates how far I'm
patience with present conditions, to
say nothing of disdain for law, has
made Roadway. That the Greeks in
that city were undertaking and sup
erseding American labor to an extent
sufficient to cause well-grounded ap-
prehension is not clear. The Greek as
a rule follows some small business of
MS own tndC QOeS not DrinS MN illlO
conflict with the wage Garner. An
economic system which offers wage
so large that it seems untold wealth
to the foreigner and at the same time
imposes prices for commodities so high
that they leave no surplus for the
American who lives in the comfort he
was born to-this may be at the root
of the matter, but it remains to be
demonstrated. If the foreign-born la
borers are, as Gompers and Mitchell
claim, living at the low standard of
their native countries while appropri-
ating the fruits of American labor or
CARNATIONS and each newcomer is pro-
vided with job by labor bureaus,
while native born workmen are idle,
then it would seem that those who
control the labor market are in a way
to reap wild harvest. They hold the
key. But the wage-earner will find
that killing the foreign devir' is not
going to better his case.
THE astronomers anpaar RI no doing