According to the latest census there were in the United States, of our 76,300,000 population, no less than 26,200,000 persons of foreign birth or parentage. Of these, ten and a half millions were born abroad, while 11,000,000 more were born in this country of parents who were foreign-born. Since 1880 and up to 1901 no less than 18,000,000 foreigners have come to us. That is to say, counting in arrivals and births since the taking of our latest census, and making due mortality allowance, we have to-day a population more than one-fourth of which was born abroad or is of foreign parentage. The anti-immigration crusade based upon these figures insists that the foreigners come too fast for Americanism to digest and assimilate them, that they will undermine and destroy free institutions. Also, there is the cry that these recent comers are of peoples less desirable than those that used to send their millions to us. The newcomers are impossible in point of numbers, undesirable in point of quality. As to numbers--Our first, and last previous, great flood of immigration was between 1840 and 1861. In those twenty years about 13,000,000 immigrants came. Our population in 1840 was 17,000,000. Thus, the immigration was about 80 per cent. Between 1880 and 1901, the immigration was about 18,000,000. Our population in 1880 was 50,000,000. Thus, the immigration was not much above 35 per cent. Clearly, the present “horde” is numerically not imposing or alarming in comparison with the foreign invasion of half a century ago. Our country is still sparsely inhabited; one-third of its area is still absolutely undeveloped. If half a century ago, with the then comparatively limited and crude means of transforming the foreigner into the American, thirteen million foreigners did not “swamp” seventeen million Americans, how can the present lesser immigration seriously or permanently hinder the alert, democratically militant America of to-day?