THE AMERICAN
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER.
"AMERICA FOR AMERICANS." We hold that all men are American! who Swear Allegiance to the United State without a mental reaerv atlon ta favor of the Pope.
PRICE FIVE CENTS
Volume V.
OMAHA, NEBRASKA, FRIDAY. DECEMBER C, 1895.
Number 49
AMERICA IN DANOERI
Imperilled by the Influx of Ro
manized Foreigners.
Bet. Dr. Scott F. Hershey State Some
Facta Which hUrtle-ETlli f II
literacy, Crime, Paaperlsm and
Insanity.
People's Temple la a Mecca for pa
triotic Americana In our time, and Is
likely to be esteemed by our children's
children as Faneuil Hall is by us to
daythe central rallying point of gen
uine Americans, the birthplace of
loyal aspirations and noble endeavors
for God, home and country.
The audience gathered yesterday
was unexpectedly large, of excellent
spirit, and listened with Intense inter
est to Dr. Hershey's thrilling utter
ances on "Shut the Gates."
After the customary song service, in
which the great congregation heartily
joined, Rev. Mr. Emory, of Portland,
Me., was Introduced, and read the
Scriptures. Rev. Dr. Dick offered
prayer.
Miss Grace Bradbury sang "Ave
Maria," after which, as an encore, she
sang a new patriotic song In praise of
Old Glory, which was received with
rounds of applause.
Deacon Bradbury said: "I think we
ought to be very grateful to the Boston
branch of the W. C. T. U. I do not
think any temperance man has not
blushed at the position In which we
have been placed in this country by
Miss Frances E. Wlllard and other
leading spirits of the temperance or
ganizations. The action of the Boston
branch the other day was most admir
able. They protest against the post
tlon they were put In In the great meet
ing In Baltimore a few weeks ago, and
they have taken a sensible, healthy
position with regard to the Roman
Catholic Church on the temperance
question. I hope the question is settled
for all time.oWhat a consummate farce
it is to talk of uniting with Rome on
the temperance question, when it Is
well known that theytruu the saloon."
(Applause).
The notice was given that next Sab
bath Rev. Dr. Flfield will speak on
"Popery vs. Progress;" the Sabbath
following, Professor J. A. Lansing, re
cently returned from a Pacifio Coast
visitation; the Sabbath following, Rev.
Dr. J. D. Fulton will give an oration on
Dr. S. F. Smith, author of "America."
By vote of the audience, a patriotic
Thanksgiving day public service was
decided to be held at People's Temple
at 3 p. m., with such speakers as Dr. J.
A. Lansing, Dr. G. C. Lorimer, Dr. J.
D. FultonJJand Dr. Scott F. Hershey.
Each personit attending was invited to
bring some visible contribution for the
poor of the city of Boston, in the shape
of vegetables, meats, etc., which would
be received) (as a Thanksgiving contri
bution to the poor by the patriotic con
gregation) by George F. Washburn,
Mr. Howard and" Mr. O. C. Emerson.
Miss Grace Bradbury sang, "Do You
Hear theJCharge of Battle?"
Mrs. E. Trask Hill was introduced,
and spoke briefly concerning the plans
and needs of the independent women
voters, and aBked for a financial contri
bution in aidjof their work, which was
taken, amounting to over $50.
The 'lecturer of the afternoon, Dr.
Scott F. Hershey, came forward, and
was received with intenEe applause.
He said:
"I feel that the crisis that is on In
this city is of such importance that we
might appropriately devote this entire
hour to the consideration of the ques
tion, but I shall endeavor to be brief in
the discussion of the theme before me.
"Some thirty years ago, Henry Ward
Beecher was wont to say: 'Let immi
gration come. America can assimilate
all of Its un-American elements. As
the elephant lifts his proboscis to eat
of the oak, the elephant does not be
come oak; the oak becomes elephant.'
"Yes, i but we have 'added to our
knowledge and experience an entire
generation. Now we demand that be
fore the Americanelephant lifts his
proboscis to eat of the foliage from the
great dak of foreign immigration, we
shall first have the worms swept away,
hanging in such ugly festoons and
nests from the branches, else we shall
take Into our body politic a blood-poison
that shall prove fatal to us. Applause.
"When Robert Hall Jheard of the re
sult of the Battle of Waterloo, he ex
claimed: 'Now Is the clock of the
world's progress turned j back twenty
centuries.' If immigration continues
to pour in upon our shores the bigotries,
and vices, and criminal tendencies, and
characteristics of certain countries of
Europe until we shall have In this
country a balance of power resting in
the control of undesirable, irrepressible
criminal classes, then weshall be com-
American Citizen:
palled to say that 'Immigration has
turned back the clock of American prog
ress at least 300 years. ' The questions
and the problems which have agitated
the countries of the Old World are con
fronting us In this land to-day, and we
shall have to fight over again the bat
tles which shook the nations of Europe
In the Sixteenth century. No nation
can long maintain the spirit of its insti
tutions, the unity of its laws and the
native Inspiration of its patriotism
with the invasion of a foreign, diverse
and antagonistic people pouring into
the country in such numbers as to
threaten in its population to outnumber
the population of natlvo parentage.
"Recent statistics have shown us that
we have not one, but two, very signifi
cant race problems in this country: The
one Is that of the colored race the col
ored belt south of Mason and Dixon's
line, which is 6,700,000 strong; the
other is that of the foreign belt north
of Mason and Dixon's line, 8,700,000
strong. And at least one-half of this
foreign belt is In colors so dark that
as I confront the blackness I stand ap
palled at the murmuring storm that I
hear coming up from over the horizon.
"We have in this country to-day
twenty-two native white-born of our
American-born parentage, to which we
have nineteen foreign-born, or of foreign-born
parentage. This statement
presents a condition that ought to be
considered alarming. I understand
more and more that this platform ought
to have presented from it expert studies
and most reliable authorities. I do not
consider It has come to be very helpful
to us to have from this platform state
ments of conditions which are twenty
or thirty or fifty years old, or fac's
gathered from newspapers of a quarter
of a century ago. What we want Is
such authority as, I trust, 1 present for
my proof of the questions that I raise
this afternoon, viz.: The census of 1890,
the report of the special commission
appointed by the Fiftieth Congress of
the United States, and the report of the
Government (Bureau of Education.
These authorities I hold to be incon
trovertible. That of the special Con
gressional Committee is a report, the
testimony it contains being sworn to as
testimony, and I do not believe it con
tains a statement that can be over
thrown. "I ask you to consider the fact that
we have been adding to our population
by foreign immigration almost one-half
a million a year for several years. And
for the last fifteen years we have added
each year by foreign Immigration a
number of people sufficient to populate
with their present population either
one of such states as New Hampshire,
Vermont, Rhode Island, South Da
kota, Montana, Wyoming or Oregon.
"In New England during the last ten
years 1885-1895 we have had a growth
of foreign population of 44 per cent.
We have had a growth In our native
population of 10i per cent. In other
words, in the New England States our
fljrCS. I y&. 4 A I y
THE ROMAN CHURCH AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.
I'd be much obliged to any one who can point out the American
foreign population has grown more
than four times as fast as our native
population.
"In Boston we have one native voter
American voter to every 21 of for
eign voters, or whose parents were foreign-born.
And if you would allow me
the privilege of selecting these foreign
born voters, or designate the countries
from which we would desire the" to
come, then I would make no objection
to that proportion whatever; but when
it happens that the most undesirable
sections of the world contribute the
largest proportion of this balance of
power, the question of our native and
foreign-born population becomes a very
serious question.
"In New York City they have 134,457
native voters and 314,481 foreign voters.
"In thirty-five out of the fifty largest
cities of this country the foreign-born
voting population exceeds the native
voting population. Are the municipali
ties of the United States American in
their control, or foreign?
"Since I860 we have received every
year more and more an undesirable
population from abroad. I believe that
we can stand squarely upon this state
ment, that each year the character of
our immigration has been growing
lower and lower. And let me say In
passing that until the last year the Im
migration statistics have not Included
those ' coming from Canada or from
Mexlco,or from the countries of the Old
World by way of Canada. Hundreds
of thousands have landed at Canadian
ports and directly crossed the border,
ooming Into the United States; and un
til the last two years they have- not
been included in the Immigration sta
tistics. The Commissioner of Statis
tics of Immigration for Canada esti
mated that for seven years 500,000 of
their foreign-born Immigrants left
Canada and came to the United States.
Where have they come from?
"Here Is a sample year: In 1892 we
received 623,084 Immigrants. There
came from Ireland, 55,467; from Russia
and Poland, 117,692; from Austria and
Hungary two of the most bigoted
populations of the world 180,136; from
Italy, 62,137; from France, 65,000; from
Spain and Portugal, 10,347, and other
countries making a total of 332,347, or
over 50 per cent, of all who came to us
that year came to us from the most un
desirable sections of the world. Let
me read you as quickly as I can a state
ment made in the report of one of the
United States Consuls, who by the
special Congressional Committee was
asked to present a brief opinion as to
the conditions and character of the
people who came from the Old World.
One of these consuls says: 'I have
formed the opinion since being in
the service of the United States
as consul, and it is a very decided
one, that the evils attending the im
migration to the United States from
the country which I am in, arises from
the character of the persons who emi
grate. Their mode of life and habits
of thought and moral characteristics
far outweigh any good resulting from
the additions they may make to the
producing power of our country.'
"Another consul says: 'A few days
ago, I saw at a railway junction two
common freight-cars filled with emi
grants for the United States forlorn
looking creatures, half-starved and not
decently clad. In thts cars, men, wo
men and children, with all the worldly
goods they possessed, were packed like
sardines in a box, to the number of
sixty. There was not a seat In the cars,
not so much as a board for any of the
poor mothers, with Infants, to rest
themselves upon. In changing cars,
this pitiful, motley crowd were roughly
handled, and herded together in the
railroad yard like so many cattle. Long
train-loads, among them car-loads of
just such miserable creatures, arrive at
Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp and other
seaports on every sailing day. Mostof
them are too poor to get beyopd New
York.'
"There is a report as to a large num
ber of our Immigrants and their char
acter. "There are two serious charges I
make. The first is: That almost all
of the crime In this country, most of
our illiteracy, most of our pauperism
and most of our insanity in this country
each of these four evils Is mostly
produced by our foreign population.
That is a serious charge. And sec
ondly: I say that most of this Illiteracy,
crime, pauperism and insanity pro
duced by our foreign population, is
produced by those who come to us
from particular sections ot the Old
World. And this second charge is one
which I shall ask you to consider very
seriously In a few minutes.
- "Look at these charges: That Illit
eracy Is mostly a foreign product In
our country. This audience will agree
with me that an educated citizenship
is the only sure safeguard that we have
for the continuance of our American
Institutions. We have in this country
17,000,000 voters, nearly; we shall have
that number by the next Presidential
election. We have in the United States
to-day 6,500,000 of people over 10 years
of age who are totally illiterate. By
total illiteracy I mean a condition of ig
norance in which a person can neither
read nor write to the extent of writing
his own name in his own language.
Is this true I hold in my hand the
statistics from the Government Our
Illiteracy has been growing in this
country. The proportion of growth in
the illiteracy of our country is greater
than our growth of population. But
we have 5,500,000 totally illiterate.
"In 1880 we had a native white popu
lation In the United States of 19,250,000;
that Is, 19,250,000 native Americans
had in their entire population 650,960
illiterates, or one out of thirty about
three to 100. I stand on this platform,
believing that the condition of the
world to-day and of the past will bear
me out In the statement that there is
Flag in this scone.
no country In the world to-day, or ever
has been in the past, of any consider
able population, which can give the
splendid showing of ninety-seven out of
100 educated to that degree; yet that is
the fact In regard to our native white
population In this country.
"During that same year we had a
foreign-born copulation of 6,394,711,
which prodi. ed 763,620 Illiterates, o
one to over eight of Its population
three times as much as that of our
native population aod when the foreign-born
population was less than a
third as great as our native-born popu
latlon.
"In Massachusetts, In 1885, we had a
total of Illiterates over 10 years of age
In our native population of 13,800, and
In our foreign population In the same
state of 122,263. Now, is this Illiteracy
of this country a native product or a
foreign one? And these illiterates
who have come to our country from the
nations of the Old World, have they
not come to us from particular coun
tries? They have not come to us from
the Protestant Provinces of Canada, or
from the North of Ireland, or from
Scotland or England, or to any great
extent from Germany, except the Ba
varlan districts. They have come to
us from the other sections of the Old
World, almost exclusively. I might
remind you that less than thirty years
ago, when Victor Emmanuel undertook
to establish state schools in Italy, he
prepared careful statistics of the condl
tion of his country In education, and
these showed that out of a population
of 26 0011,000, over 17,1,00,000 could
neither read nor write. According to
the statement of the Italian Consul in
New York City, with which the United
States report does not entirely agree,
there were 80,000 Italians in that city,
and just 5 per cent, of them could read
in the English language. The Italian
population of that city has 20,000 voters,
and we are confronted with the fact
that in 1884, 1,200 additional voters
would have changed the Presidency of
the United States. I know that there
are some people who do not like to have
us state such facts. I have noticed that
there are some people who like to hear
me talk, to some extent at least, if I do
not uncover the ugliness of some facts
which ought to be looked at In this
country.
"I have here a paper which came to
me yesterday, which actually gives
within four Inches of two columns of its
editorial page to me. It expresses it
self about me Applause and laughter
It is in language very interesting. For
Instance, It says that "This Dr. Her
shey of Boston ought to have a troun
clng so severe that he would not forget
It through the remainder of his absurd
days.' That Is almost comical. What
Is the matter with the editorial in that
paper? It is simp'y because I have
told some things to which I stand com
mitted upon undeniable facts that have
been produced under oath, and the edl
tor of this paper does not know them to
be facta, but he ought to. 1 may say
that this paper la the organ of one of
the Roman Catholic bishops of this
country. And on the same editorial
page I find this: 'When geometry and
the catechism alternate la our schools,
then, and not till then, can we hope to
enjoy the blessing of a true education.'
Well, I don't know about geometry
being alternated with anything la the
schools of Italy; but I do know that
there was considerable of the catechism
taught In the schools of Italy before
the days of Victor Emmanuel and Gari
baldi. The Roman Catholic Church
to-day must be charged by the intelli
gence of the world with having pro
duced In Europe teeming populations,
millions and tens of millions, who are
totally and absolutely Illiterate, and I
protest against having them come in
overwhelming numbers to this country.
Great applaune.
"How la It In regard to crime? Our
foreign population has given us mostof
our crime more than 50 per cent, of It.
Immigration for a long while has been
a sewerJor the overflow of European
crime. Before this special commission
of the Fiftieth Congress the commis
sioners of immigration of New York
city testified, and the superintendent
of Castle Garden testified, that they
frequently found on Italian Immigrants
to the United States first, a govern
ment passport showing that they came
to this country with the knowledge of
the Government of Italy; second, that
on their clothing marks were found
showing that they had come out of tha
prisons of Italy,
"Do you know there are several gov
ernments of Europe that for a number
of years have been taking government
money and by official aot taking their
criminals out of their jails and prisons
and sending them to the United States?
It is a fact that one of the European
governments In one year appropriated
$1,000,000 to send criminals to America.
It is a fact that for a number of years
from 20 to 30 have come every year
from the prisons of a particular country
of the Old World. A woman now, or
two years ago, in a prison of this coun
try, testifying under oath, declared
that she bad been In a prison in her
own country for the murder of her own
child; that her term of imprisonment
was five years, and that before she had
served one year she was given her lib
erty and a free passage to America on
condition that she would come to this
country at once.
"A lawyer In this city, called to a
client, a foreigner, said: 'How long
have you been in this country?' 'Eight
or ten weeks.' 'How many crimes are
you charged with now?' 'Two.' 'How
many crimes have you committed since
you have been in this country?' 'I
don't remember.' 'What is your busi
ness?' 'I am a criminal by profession.'
'How did you come to this country?' 'I
was given my freedom on condition
that I at once should come to America.'
"Two men were arrested in one day
in Cincinnati one charged with one
crime and the other with three. Both
of them had been just two weeks from
the Immigrant ship at Castle Garden.
Both of them confessed to having been
in the prisons of Europe.
"Hundreds of thousands of dollars
every two or three years by a few gov
ernments of Europe which I could spec
ify have been used for the purpose of
sending the inmates of their jails and
prisons and their chronic criminals to
this country.
"What are the statistics with regard
to crime in this country? In 1850 we
had one criminal to every 3,500 of popu
lation. I am not ashamed of that. I
question if there are any countries In
the world of equal population that can
make such a showing as that. But how
Is It to-day? or how was It In 1890, five
years ago? We had in that year one
criminal for every 7861 of our entire
population. In other words, our crimi
nal population has grown more than
five times as fast as the general popula
tion of the country.
"In the nine North Atlantio states
in 1890 the native population was 8,891,
000, and the foreign population was
8,230,576 Now 'the first, or native,
population, had in 1890 a criminal popu
lation of 3,960. The foreign population
of these nine states had In the same
year In the jails and prisons 8,564. In
other words, the foreign population in
1890 of these nine states, North Atlan
tic states, contributed 66 per cent, of
our crime.
"We had in the jails of Massachu
setts in 1890 of native population 169; of
our foreign population, 760. The nine
teen millions foreign population of our
country (and in that population I In
clude both the foreign population and
those born of foreign parentage) north
of Mason and Dixon's line in 1890 gave
more criminals than the 34,000,000 na
tives of all the states and territories of
the Union combined.
To be continued next week.
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