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Show THE "UNEVANGELIZED" IMMIGRANTS. Sectarian organs utter at almost regular intervals inter-vals piteous wails of mingled anger and grief at the "hordes" of uncivilized and unevangelized immigrants im-migrants who are entering our gates in ever augmenting aug-menting numbers year after year, and who come from "benighted Catholic countries." They pro fess to be angry at this awful "menace" to our superior su-perior American civilization and to the "Protestant "Protest-ant morality" for which our republic is, they seem to think, justly noted; and they pretend to be sorrow sor-row stricken at the thought that they are powerless power-less to remove the "menace." If the editors of these perturbed organs will peruse with attention, and ponder over with candid and receptive dispo-" sitions. the following sensible remarks which were recently made on this subject by the New York Evening Post, they will never again feel inclined to utter any more jeremiads in reference to it: "The foreigner who lands on our shores has eyes to see and ears to hear. He could scarcely spend ten days in any American city without learning learn-ing all the vices which came over in his vessel can readily be duplicated amonar our native-born citizens. citi-zens. Nor does he need to study us very long to discover that some of our most dangerous evils are supported by wealthy new-holders, who yet contribute contri-bute liberally to promote the 'assimilation' of the foreigner to a Christian native-Americanism. Any church is seriously out of its true path when it countenances the idea that the line between right and wrong in American social, political and-religious life runs for any distance whatever parallel with the line between the immigrant and the native born. Carl Schurz was potentially a better American Ameri-can when he fir?t saw the American shore looming up on the horizon than thousands who can trace their American ancestry back for two centuries. The foreigner who is too deeply imbued with the political tenets of his own land ever to become a good American citizen, ordinarily stays at home. If many of those who do come bring defects with them inconsistent with our highest ideals of citizenship, cit-izenship, they possess these defects as imperfect human hu-man beings, not as members of any particular race, or nationality. It takes but little knowledge of human hu-man nature to perceive that the city pulpit, which is continually thundering forth indignant anathemas anathe-mas against the 'European disregard for the American Amer-ican Sabbath,' is not going to wield any great power pow-er in winning over to restful, innocent and udif t-ing t-ing habits of Sunday observance such of the foreign-born population within its territory as art. given to spending the day otherwise. And to think of it, that only last Sunday a Chicago minister, from his pulpit, declared himself as favoring a wide-open city on the Sabbath!" |
