Evening star., 1923-04-01
Labor That Is Too Raw,

At this time of disclosures Of COM
lnunist plots against the government
Of the United States the American
people are not likely to be responsive
to the propaganda of steel mill owners
and other large employers of raw"
labor for q letting down of the imni-
grafton bars. The kind of immigration
the steel mill owners want is not the
kind that Is good for this republic. It
Is entirely too raw to be digestible.
Contention that continuous iInporta-
ton of lowgrade labor is necessary to
the welfare of American industry is
an insult to the inventive genius and
American industry what il is today. If
1t were true that fifty years Of prog
ress in substituting machinery for
manual labor had come to a stopping
place, industry would, indeed, be in a
bad way. But it is not true, and it is
a short-sighted policy which persuades
The steel men TO place immediate
profits above permanent national we'll
being. Even If social and political
considerations make no appeal to
them, they ought to know that no gen.
eral and enduring prosperity can be
foundationed IN this country on the
debasement Of labor. Instead Of clam
oring for the unlimited supplies which
they never again can have they would
do better TO set their inventors and
{,;p n
use L smaller number Of Il higher
grade Of workers.
Any changes in the immigration
laws to which the American people
will assent are likely TO be in the way
of more, instead of less, stringent regu-
lationS. The notion of this country as
q melting pot" no longer appeals TO
them. Too much refractory material
has been dumped into 1t. If they ia
vored any present change at all it
would he to move back about a quar-
ter of i century the basis for the
reckoning Of percentages. This would
let in q larger proportion Of immi-
grants from the British Isles and
northern Europe generally and fewer
from the races in the southeast Of Eu-
rope, which have been demonstrated
to be non-fusible with the American
stock.
The time is not distant when the
demand will be for still further re-
striction and gradual extinction OF i'm
migration. Conditions which once made
q generous immigration policy logical
are rapidly passing away. This no
longer is d country with seemingly
unlimited resources waiting to be de-
voloped; and with natural increase
adding q million or more Il year to its
inhabitants the day is coming inevita-
bly when population will SO press on
food supplies that emigration will be-
come as necessary q policy to the
United States as it now is to the over
populated countries of Europe.
Looking forward to that time, there
is growing conviction that 1t is our
duty to save as much as possible Of
what we have left for our children
and our childfen's children. In future
years the human race must feed itself
by coaqucring the waste places Of the
world, as our fathers came TO America
when it was waste, conquered it and
made il fat. But now the law of
diminishing return has begun to oper-
ate, and the fatness is giving way to
lean. Each future generation will find
the struggle for existence more diff.
cult, and it Is becoming a serious ques-
ton whether we have a right to con-
tinue longer to divide a diminishing
heritage. There is no injustice in
asking that those who are forced to
quit their homelands should now un-
dertakc 10 do what our fathers did be-
fore US and what in time our sons
must do-go out into the hard places
of the world, subdue them and bring
them into harvest.