Page:Disapproving Anti-Japanese Agitation.djvu/6

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agement after they have done so). I think they are more to be desired than those other aliens who come here, acquire the right to vote, and then as members of communities that are hostile to the genius of our Government, pertinaciously insist that a malefactor shall sit in the Halls of Congress; I deem them less objectionable than those unhappy people of Southeastern Europe who have had the life and character crushed out of them under ages of tyranny, so that they prefer continued existence in filth and squalor to higher standards of living, in spite of all inducements that are offered them thereto. And it goes without saying, I think, that we might better welcome the Japanese than the anarchists of Russia and contiguous countries who conspire to abolish all government and reduce the world to chaos, many of whom we are now finding it necessary to deport at risks far greater than many of us appreciate. The Rev. U. G. Murphy of Seattle, remarks in a pamphlet recently published, "No one ever heard of a Japanese having anything to do with any kind of anarchistic movement."

So it is not the fear of their overturning our Government that afflicts us, but the sense of danger that they may "possess the land" in the way of individual ownership and ultimately drive out our own people. It is also urged that, being a prolific race, their children be denied the right of citizenship that belongs to them under the Constitution of the country in which they are born, lest they increase at such a pace as to imperil the supremacy of those who now control the country. And before we join in a crusade against the Japanese it behooves us to enquire whether there be just cause for either of these contentions.

In the first place, I have confidence in the power of the great American people to take care of themselves, to continue the upbuilding of a noble race of men, having behind it a mixed ancestry but containing heroic elements, and ultimately to control, by amalgamation as far as possible, by domination, and as a last resort by deportation, so far as the public safety may require, all sorts and conditions of men that come here. I believe they can manage the 8,785,000 immigrants from all countries who arrived here in the first decade of this century, even though that number included 62,432 members of this dangerous Japanese race, amounting almost to three-

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