The man who resolves not to take any heavy responsibilities upon his time or pocket until he considers himself fairly settled in life, can always make his way to the new country, and there in no part of this land, although it is not a land flowing with milk and honey, in which he cannot find something to do. I once was made curious, by the conversation of a number of workingmen in a large pork-packing establishment in a small town in the West, to know where they had come from, and what their previous occupation had been, and among twenty-seven men I found twenty-one businesses and professions represented, not one of which was pork-packing. Nevertheless each of these men was earning two dollars and a half a day, and keeping an eye open for something better, which I am happy to say I saw some of them realize within a few months. At that very time at least one-half of the trades which these men had originally learned, and in which they were all supposed to be experts, were languishing in the East, and a great number of those engaged in them were in that desperate condition of mind that in other countries has often precipitated riots and brought about bloodshed and prolonged disorder.
But--let workingmen note the distinction--only two of these twenty-seven men were already married. What they had earned already was their own. They were able to move about from place to place until they found a satisfactory opening in life. Some of them afterward went to the dogs. It is impossible to find any lot of men together by chance in which there will not be some incompetents and some who, through one failing or other, would be their own enemies if they were in the best of hands. There were only twelve men in the first company of assistants organized by Jesus Christ, and one of them turned out to be a scoundrel in spite of the excellent company in which he found himself.
Because this is a land of liberty a great many foreigners imagine it a land of license. To do them justice, they do not know any better. But we do, and it is our duty to teach them the difference. If we don’t, we, not they, will be the principal sufferers.
The subject of immigration has been largely discussed by the newspapers of late, and a good deal of demagogy has been got off in Congress on the same subject. But sensible people are pretty well agreed that it is time to put some restriction upon the use of America as a common dumping ground for the world’s offal and rubbish. This country is not an asylum for criminals or paupers. That ought to go without saying and it should not require any argument to prove, but it seems we have been very careless in this direction. A short time ago the New York _Herald_ said: “America is no longer to be considered the legitimate dumping ground for the paupers, the idiots, the insane and the criminals of Europe,” and Congressman Ford, chairman of the Immigration Committee and father of the bill which was presented in January, made the statement that “if the law could be strictly enforced I believe our immigration would be decreased from these sources at least one hundred and fifty thousand per annum.” This is an awful proportion of the aggregate of immigration, for the entire figure exceeds half a million per year very little. Still Mr. Ford may be supposed, from his position, to know what he is talking about, for his committee has spent a great amount of time in examining a great many witnesses who are supposed to understand the nature of the immigration to this country of the peoples of the whole world. But enough about paupers, idiots, insane and criminals; everybody is agreed that we do not want them.