At the same time, persons outside the labor movement began to be apprehensive as they contemplated the undoubted evil, as well as the good, that seemed to be associated with the “alien invasion.”  They saw whole sections of great cities occupied by people speaking foreign tongues, reading only foreign newspapers, and looking to the Old World alone for their ideas and their customs.  They witnessed an expanding army of total illiterates, men and women who could read and write no language at all; while among those aliens who could read few there were who knew anything of American history, traditions, and ideals.  Official reports revealed that over twenty per cent of the men of the draft army during the World War could not read a newspaper or write a letter home.  Perhaps most alarming of all was the discovery that thousands of alien men are in the United States only on a temporary sojourn, solely to make money and return home with their savings.  These men, willing to work for low wages and live in places unfit for human beings, have no stake in this country and do not care what becomes of it.

=The Restriction of Immigration.=—­In all this there was, strictly speaking, no cause for surprise.  Since the foundation of our republic the policy of the government had been to encourage the coming of the alien.  For nearly one hundred years no restraining act was passed by Congress, while two important laws positively encouraged it; namely, the homestead act of 1862 and the contract immigration law of 1864.  Not until American workingmen came into open collision with cheap Chinese labor on the Pacific Coast did the federal government spread the first measure of limitation on the statute books.  After the discovery of gold, and particularly after the opening of the railway construction era, a horde of laborers from China descended upon California.  Accustomed to starvation wages and indifferent to the conditions of living, they threatened to cut the American standard to the point of subsistence.  By 1876 the protest of American labor was loud and long and both the Republicans and the Democrats gave heed to it.  In 1882 Congress enacted a law prohibiting the admission of Chinese laborers to the United States for a term of ten years—­later extended by legislation.  In a little while the demand arose for the exclusion of the Japanese as well.  In this case no exclusion law was passed; but an understanding was reached by which Japan agreed not to issue passports to her laborers authorizing them to come to the United States.  By act of Congress in 1907 the President was empowered to exclude any laborers who, having passports to Canada, Hawaii, or Mexico, attempted to enter our country.