Another sweep of the searchlight brings us to the Immigration Problem.  We are today the most cosmopolitan country of the world.  At the rate of a million a year immigrants are pouring in upon us, and no wonder they come, when they read of the marvelous fortunes made in the new world; of Mackay a penniless boy in the old world, worth fifty millions at middle life in America; A.T.  Stewart peddling lace at twenty, a merchant prince at fifty; Carnegie a poor Scotch lad at eighteen, a half billionaire at seventy.  These with many more such results on a smaller scale, rainbow the sky that spans the sea, and from the other end, this end is seen pouring its gold and greatness into the lap of the land of the free.  So they come, and though they do not find all they expected, they do find far more here than they left behind, and writing letters back over the ocean, they set others wild with a desire to live in America.  Many of them are excellent people; their children go into our public schools and come out with ours, one in thought, one in purpose, one in feeling.  A little boy in Chicago said: 

“Papa, you were born in England?”

“Yes.”

“And mama was born in Scotland?”

“Yes.”

“And you had a king at the head of your armies?”

“Yes.”

“Well! we licked you all the same.”

The children of our foreign born citizens in our public schools are intensely American.  A boy who was born in this country but whose parents were foreign born, was for some misdemeanor chastised by his father.  When his playmates teased him he said:  “Oh, the whipping didn’t count for much, but I don’t like being licked by a foreigner.”

There is another class coming to our country not only injurious but dangerous.  They bring with them the heresies of the lands they hail from.  They do not come to be American citizens.  There is not an American hair in their heads, or an American thought in their minds.  Every drop of blood in their veins, beats to the music of continental customs, and they come prepared to sow and grow the seeds of anarchy.  Many come with tags on their backs giving their destination; not to build American homes; not to learn our language; not to obey our laws, or honor our institutions, but to undermine the honest laboring classes who toil to build homes and educate and clothe their children.  I say, take off their tags and let them tag back home.  Out of this class came the men who cheered to the echo a speaker in Chicago when he said:  “I am in favor of dynamiting every bank vault in this city and taking the money we are entitled to.”  Out of such schools of anarchy, came the man who crossed the sea from Patterson, New Jersey, to send a bullet through the heart of King Humbert, and out of this class came the teachers, who shrouded our land with shame and sorrow in Buffalo, New York.