And fifty per cent. of them are illiterate! Shall we let them come? Shall we perhaps teach them to eat rice with the rest of us? Shall we divide our inheritance with them? Shall we remember only that each of them has a vote? The leveling methods of the Age of Transportation, the day of the iron trails, have made possible, and have made imperative, these very questions. Their answer lies in the future, yet perhaps no very distant future. There are not lacking those, and they constantly increase in numbers, who believe that the answer must be the putting up of the bars against all future immigration except of a closely selected sort, and preferably that bred upon this continent. America has eaten overmuch; she may yet assimilate, but she must gorge no more. We can now rear actual Americans enough to feed the world, and to defeat the world when the time shall come for the fatal shock of arms, and under a system of rest and recuperation we may become a united and strong America; while under the system of the past, and the system that now prevails, we must presently become a warring and divided, hence a weakening, land. ----- Footnote 60: Mr. Paul Morton, of the Santa Fé Railroad. Footnote 61: Mr. James J. Hill, of the Great Northern Railroad. Footnote 62: Wm. F. Flynn, in “Forest and Stream.” Footnote 63: Prof. Benjamin F. Terry, of the University of Chicago. Footnote 64: Rev. George C. Lorimer. Footnote 65: Since the above lines were written the following editorial comment appeared in a leading American daily newspaper: “Almost every nation in the world is sending an increasing number of immigrants to the United States. Last month (April, 1903) the new-comers numbered 126,200, being 30,000 more than for April of 1902. The total for the year may reach 1,000,000, or half the population of Chicago, the second largest city in the country. “Is so great an influx of foreigners natural or desirable? Many in a condition to know say that immigration is promoted largely by mine-owners and railroad managers, who wish to be kept supplied with cheap labor, and who do not care particularly whence it comes or whether it will be desirable material out of which to make American citizens, or whether its presence may not contribute to social or industrial disorder. “Many of the great railroad systems approve of unrestricted immigration because it swells their profitable emigrant business. They have their agents in Europe soliciting that kind of business. The greater the number of men and women that can be induced to come to this country and to buy tickets to interior points, the more money the roads make. They offer low ocean and rail rates, which tempt the emigrant and yet are profitable to the roads.