America for Americans! | Page 9

serious one, is, Who are those that come? I have said some are noble, some are true, some are easily transformed into the Typical American. But then we are to remember that most of the foreigners who come here are twelve times as much disposed to crime as are the native stock.
Our population of foreign extraction is sadly conspicuous in our criminal records. This element constituted, in 1870, 20 per cent. of the population of New England, and furnished 75 per cent. of the crime. The Howard Society of London reports that 74 per cent. of the Irish discharged convicts have come to the United States. I hold in my hand the annual rum bill of this country for the last year. It is nine hundred millions of dollars! I ask myself, Who drinks this rum? Native Americans? Some! [Laughter.] Some drink a good deal. [Renewed laughter.] But let us see the danger that comes to us from inebriety among our foreign population.
The wholesale dealers in liquor are estimated at sixty-five per cent. foreign born, and the brewers seventy-five per cent. Let us take Philadelphia, that old Quaker city, the City of Brotherly Love, that city that seems to be par excellence the city of the world, and here are the figures: There were 8,034 persons in the rum traffic, and who were they? Chinamen, 2; Jews, 2; Italians, 18; Spaniards, 140; Welsh, 160; French, 285; Scotch, 497; English, 568; Germans, 2,179; Irish, 3,041; Africans, 265; American, 205. I suppose we will have to mix the Africans with the Americans, and the total would be 470 Americans, and then there were persons of unknown nationality in the rum traffic, 672; the sum total being 8,034. Of this number 3,696 were females, but out of the 3,696 all were foreigners but one. There was one American woman in the rum business, and I blush for my country. Yet there were 1,104 German women, and 2,548 Irish, and of the whole number of the 8,034 engaged in the liquor traffic of that city, 6,418 had been arrested for some crime. [Applause.] We are bound to look at these facts. Are we a nation of foreign drunkards?
Then there is another danger--the tendency of emigrant colonization. I suppose it is known to you that New Mexico is in the hands of foreigners--in the hands of the Catholic Church. It is also a fact of Congressional report that 20,557,000 acres of land are in the possession of twenty-nine alien corporations and individuals, an area greater than the whole of Ireland. I would have no part of this country subject to any church. I would have no foreign language taught in the public schools to the exclusion of or in preference to the English language. I would have no laws published in a foreign language, whether for the French of Louisiana or the Germans of Cincinnati. [Loud applause.] I would utter my solemn protest, and that in the hearing of all politicians, especially those men who want to be Presidents and can not be Presidents, and those who hope to be ere long--I would utter my solemn protest to-day against what is known as the "Irish vote" and the "German vote." [Applause.] We do not want any "foreign vote." Down with the politician that would seek an "Irish vote" or "German vote." [Great applause.] All we want here is an American vote. I would not vote for any man for President who would stoop so low as to bid for the German vote or the Irish vote. [Continued applause.] The other safeguard is an extension of the term of residence required for naturalization. Some say make the term twenty-one years. What is the term now? Five years. I read from "Revised Statutes," section 2165 and 2174, that a person applying for citizenship must be a resident of the United States at least five years, and one year within the State or Territory wherein the application is made, and that during that term (I wish I had all the judges here to-day) and that during that term he is to give satisfactory assurance to the court that he has behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same. "A man of good moral character!" what a sublime utterance, and how infinite. I would be glad to know what judge takes the pains, when a hundred of these foreigners apply just on the eve of the election, that they may qualify themselves to vote, what judge inquires whether they are men of good moral character? Yet such is the provision of the law of the land. We have assumed the authority to limit suffrage. We say