Take England as an example of a country in the state of social and industrial development that we are approaching. She is old and crowded with population. Her resources have been exploited, her railroads have been built, her canals have been dug. Her industries are of course vast in extent, but their expansion becomes more and more difficult, and it grows harder and harder to find employment for the increasing hosts who demand work. If it were proposed to bring into England, from some other country, a hundred thousand, or even a thousand, penniless laborers, what a unanimous outcry would be raised against the inexpediency of such action! The vehemence with which the idea would be opposed may be judged from the uneasiness and even indignation already excited there by the gathering in London of a colony, comparatively insignificant in numbers, of immigrants from Eastern Europe. The condition of the United States is still very different from that of England. She has over five hundred inhabitants to the square mile—we have but twenty. There are still fertile plains in the West that have not felt the plow, and lodes of ore in our mountains awaiting the miner’s pick. We have still great resources to develop. But there evidently is a point in a country’s history at which foreign immigration, once vitally beneficial, becomes injurious. The question that calls for earnest discussion and speedy settlement is whether we are now approaching that point—whether we have not already arrived there. RULING OUT ART. In their dealings with Art, Congress and the Treasury Department have not been fortunate. The legislative and executive authorities at Washington seem to think that the great and glorious principle of protection to American industries demands the exclusion or heavy taxation of every product of foreign art. The Treasury recently distinguished itself by issuing an order that all engravings, etchings, and photographs found in the mails from abroad should be confiscated. Under this ruling an American traveling or residing in Europe cannot mail a photograph to his relatives at home. An immigrant from Ireland or Germany cannot receive the likeness of his mother or sister in the “old country” unless it is sent him by an express company and through the custom house, whose expenses and delays are almost prohibitory.