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Show OURS BECOMING FOREIGH SOIL. More than a million foreigners landed on our shores last year, most of them in New York City. Now New York City is foreign for more than half its population came from across the sea, so is Chicago; so will all our eastern cities be ten years hence. In the old days the best girls from the rural districts worked in New England factories. fac-tories. It was honorable -work, for they were good girls and were making by thrift and industry a little stake to later buy themselves the furnish-ments furnish-ments of a home. They were pushed aside by Irish girls who would work a little cheaper, but they, too, were good girls, and the morale of the industry was not lessened. They, in turn, were pushed aside by French Canadians, and they were good girls, but would work a little cheaper than the Irish. Now they are being rapidly pushed aside by Italians, Slavonians and the canaille of southeastern Europe. In the same way, in New York City, the car-drivers car-drivers and porters and stevedors were all Irish a few years ago, but the Germans supplanted them, and they in turn are being ousted by the Italians. Formerly throughout the state of New York, almost every land owner was a native born American or a descendant of the old Knickerbocker Knicker-bocker Dutchmen. But when New York City took on so many cheap laborers, the Irish spread out into the country and began to buy the lands. The old proprietors had about 160 acres each, but that was enough for four Irishmen. But now the Italians and Slavs are pushing them out, for a forty-acre farm is enough for five Italians. At first, nearly all the men employed in the iron mines and steel mills were Irish, Scotch and Welsh; now the bulk of them are Slavs, Italians and Greeks. A census, we think, would show that a majority of the land that is cultivated in the great old state of New York, is now owned by first and second generation foreigners.. New York City, is foreign, and yet Mr. Payne of that state is shocked in congress at the thought that a western state as big as three or four New Yorks, should have the same representation in the senate of the United States that New York has.. As things are going on, it seems to us that it will be refreshing ten years hence,' when the roll of the senate is called, to hear now and then an American Ameri-can name. And what is to be the final issue of all this? All these, people are, or goon will be, vot ers. Hundreds of thousands of them have no con- ill ceptiori of liberty, except that it means unre- 1f strained license for them through the ballot to work out their schemes. Hundreds of thousands rl of them, who may be called level-headed, have no !! conception of what Democracy and Republican- jH ism, as understood in the United States, means. Tens of thousands of them have fine educations,. but are helpless because there are no places for them in the high stations of this land, and be- cause they do not know how to do any useful work. Again, these people are coming in such -hosts that they are forming colonies, where thousands and tens of thousands live in such close prox-imity, prox-imity, that they keep up the customs of their .H native countries, and are no more Americans after 'H being on our soil ten years, than when they first landed. Who will any of us be after a little while jH longer? jH It seems to us that the very rich men of the east who expect to leave vast inheritances to their jH children and expect that their property will be ''H protected, ought to begin to take out insurance against the possible accidents of the future. It 'H seems as though the government itself ought to be most anxious for the future, and that both the government -and the rich should be seeking ' to make a diversion of this steadily swelling flood. jH The surest way would be by railroad building jH in South America and the pushing of these people out along the tracks thus laid, to appropriate and cultivate the lands along those roads. |