America for Americans

...Despite the denials of the advocates of the nationalorigins p!an in Congress of racial animosities and prejudices, immigration restriction, designed originally to protect American labor, is designed to keep inviolate the American racial make-up as it now exists...

...By a process of calculation that was inconclusive, to say the least, and far from convincing, Congress has attempted to define for all time the racial elements that compose the American stock...

...When he saw that I was bent for that direction, my friend said, "I want you to know that I am the most resolute anti-archaeologist in the whole province of Ulster...

...The claim of American origin is, after all, only a claim of precedence...

...The problem became one of safeguarding American standards of living against the attacks of aliens who would forego comfort and convenience to accumulate money...

...he came to Ireland with the highest hopes of winning his country's independence...

...It is given by Chairman Hawley, of the Ways and Means Committee of the House...

...Labor began to feel the competition of the alien who was willing to work for lower wages...

...But what measure of reassurance and good-will does it convey to those who are beginning to wonder how their fortunes are to be affected by the growing economic supremacy of the United States in the international field...

...The exaggerated nationalism which succeeded it reached its apotheosis on the eve of another devastating conflict...

...The dry South joins with the farm section to cut down the representation of the urban centres of the North and East which are not only wealthy but wet...

...No, no...

...It reflected the misgiving with which foreigners contemplated the growing stream of American products--machinery, textiles, raw materials-flowing into or through their ports...

...The endeavor to obtain opportumties for the trade of its nationals is a commendable policy for any government to pursue...

...This economic doctrine may be sound or unsound...

...I expected that you would be interested in a tragedy of circumstance...

...The drys would choke their convictions down the throats of the wets by force of law and welcome man-killing with applause if it accomplishes this purpose...

...The Senate has always resented any implication that the President is directing its footsteps, and Presidents have a habit of oscillating between conviction and expediency in shaping a course of parliamentary action...

...The House has always looked with cynical scrutiny on the claims of its elder senatorial brother to titular headship of the legislative household...

...What is the reply of Congress to the anxious inquiry addressed to this Colossus of the West...

...But under the surface stirrings of these legislative catspaws a much deeper, and perhaps a much more fateful current is moving...

...Out of that crucible we were to emerge cleansed and purified, consecrated to the task of helping one another to make the world a better place to live in...

...We made it and it belongs to us...

...Long before the present Congress came into existence the phrase "economic imperialism" had been coined to express the foreign conception of the overshadowing industrial and commercial activity of the United States built upon a foundation of vast natural resources, an equally vast consuming market and mass production...

...I know a boat song...

...for that purpose obstructing the laws of naturahzation of foreigners...

...Even the representatives of foreign governments are reminded that in their own houses they are not observing American social ideals, and one of them, the British ambassador, has amiably it is made and what may be expected of it when it can wander as it will, during the forthcoming regular session, over the whole legislative domain...

...From keeping the undesired alien out it was but a short step to keeping under surveillance and getting rid of the alien already in if his conduct does not square with American standards...

...Are the so-called hyphenates and the handful of communists within its borders a menace to its institutions...

...What is the occasion for this sudden outpouring of patriotism...

...The collapse of feudalism bathed Europe in blood...

...It has come closely enough to grips with the problems confronting it to disclose the stuff of which Gaste consciousness zs always with us...

...He failed--that's enough for me...

...Dry proposals have been advanced to compel foreigners to conform to American manners and morals--if prohibition has anything to do with morality--and neighboring governments are decided to mold his appetite after the current American pattern...

...This same philosophy of America for Americans finds exaggerated expression in the national-origins provision of the Immigration Law...

...The national-origins provision of the Immigration Law has been upheld by an undemocratic, parliamentary maneuver to keep America for American racial stock...

...when we were in the boat I pulled in the direction of an islet on which the old keep known as Cloughoughter Castle stands...

...The tariff bill passed by the House and now under Senate scrutiny, rests upon the theory that American markets are sacred to American producers, the offspring of which is the strange project of shutting out bananas in order that the appetite of I2o,ooo,ooo of consumers might forcibly be adjusted to apples grown in American orchards...

...I'd give the island and the keep and whatever interest they may have for anyone to have seen Thomas Hardy in the flesh...

...The struggle over the tariff, the contention between the House and Senate, the ability or inability of President Hoover to pick his way through the parliamentary wilderness reveal no new traits of character...

...Overabundance and scarcity offer the same threat of disaster...

...5. Put principles above parties and in a spirit of entire nonpartizanship support those who support the principles for which we stand...

...Not only have I no interest in that keep and whatever it stands for, but I am unwilling to listen to even one word about it...

...Murphy, a veteran Washington observer, scores that "mantle of selpsufficiency" which he believes has been draped around the dmerican outlook...

...He was trained in the wars of Spain and France...

...Evidently our first patriots saw no taint in the blood of foreign nationalities...

...4. Defend the country and institutions against all enemies, foreign and domestic...

...If Congress is in the same mood when it reconvenes as it was when it recessed, the unfortunate alien will probably have ample occasion to realize that this land of opportunity is only for native Americans who follow American ways...

...Well, this was the last stronghold in Ireland that was taken by the Cromwellians...

...In spite of dreadful disunion, in spite of the lack of policy on the part of the Council which he served, in spite of its opposition, he made an army, he won a brilliant victory...

...refusing to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands...

...Were the signers of the Declaration of Independence un-American when they declared of King George: He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states...

...Is America, which has grown great among nations--so great that other nations watch with some trepidation its advance--threatened with destruction...

...presents a convement opportumty for an examination of the political conscience--at a time when a little introspection cannot be anything but wholesome...

...Is it any wonder that foreign peoples, struggling for economic foothold after the shock of war, begin to ask themselves whether their place in the sun is to be permanently darkened by this lengthening shadow of the industrial giant overseas ? It is no secret that this growing misgiving in many lands is disturbing to America's captains of industry who are beginning to be more concerned with the breaking down than with the building up of trade barriers, many of which are begotten of fear and distrust...

...But Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill was the finest soldier that Ireland produced...

...Seeing that you have that name...

...And don't you know that you are spoiling the day for me...

...The long list of American patriotic societies and associations, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the Daughters of the American Revolution, standing by the provision discloses the character of the motive for its support...

...What we have in mind is that Americans should have the primary or preferential right in our markets which they have created by their industry, ingenuity and foresight...

...We cannot cross this lake without thought or talk of Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill...

...But does the recent acttvity of Congress indicate that intense national feeling has influenced important government decisions~ In the following paper Mr...

...It was the quantitative, not the qualitative, aspect of immigration they had in mind...

...2. Resist the efforts of unassimilated or hyphenated groups to use the government of the United States for the furtherance of the policies of foreign governments, states, peoples or organizations...

...All sorts of measures are advanced by the Ioo-percenters to keep under surveillance and harass the alien, not because he is a menace to society but because he is a menace to the domination of the traditional American stock...

...The agrarian West looks with resentment upon the towering rise of the industrial East, laying its own grievances at the door of the other's triumph...

...July3i, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 331 This is not a manifesto of the Ku Klux Klan but the declaration of a federation which purports to represent and speak for three score organizations the membership of which might be easily induced to believe, if they are not already convinced, that they constitute the flower of American culture...

...At length the proposed restriction took the form of protecting the racial stock of the United States, of keeping the native stream unpolluted by the infiltration of other nationalities...

...3. Advocate the maintenance of a high standard of living...

...the self-constituted guardians of this later day or the long line of statesmen who have originated and applied the policies that have made the country what it is...

...If Congress does not act, the patriotic societies will lay siege to it...

...I hate anything that has to do with Irish or English history...

...Nicholas Murray Butler would, or "Ioo-percentism" or "political provincialism" in its worst sense, the national legislature has shown in approaching the questions with which it has dealt in its two months of deliberation an inclination to carry to extreme lengths the doctrine that has always been the pet child of the politicians and the shibboleth of democracy in an assertive mood America for Americans or, obversely, America against the rest of the world...

...Like water it was desirable up to a certain point and undesirable if it attained the proportions of an engulfing flood...

...July3t, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 329 AMERICA FOR AMERICANS By ELMER MURPHY ONGRESS on a holiday...

...If America is to be kept American, who is to define Americanism...

...I see Hardy's Poems in your pocket...

...Immigration restriction was not a new question when the war began, but up to that time it was purely an economic question...

...I'll sing it as we pull...

...It was an O'Reilly stronghold . . . " "I suppose you imagine that I'm bound to take an interest in anything connected with the O'Reillys...

...by implication criticized for not ordering their affairs with an eye to American standards of social conduct...

...Again America has been saved for Americans and the bars which the House proposes to raise against the products of foreign countries have been erected against the nationals of foreign countries who might desire to cast their lot with this greatest of democracies...

...Congress, reflecting a popular mood, seems to be obsessed with the idea that not only is America big enough and strong enough to do as it pleases, but that other countries should for their own good do as it pleases...

...Yet Congress has just closed a prolonged struggle, which has aroused slumbering animosities and stirred antagonisms deprecated by no less a person than George Washington, over a question of reducing immigration by I I,OOO...

...If these squabbles are interesting, they are within the governmental household and of little moment from the view-point of a public actively concerned with government during a national campaign...

...At last we have an "American people" not welded together by devotion to the lofty principles and institutions established by the fathers of the republic and common attachment to democratic political ideals, but patched together out of an illsorted array of national stocks...

...Tariff schedules and national-origins legislation are adduced as evtdence...

...During the first quarter of the present year the United States shipped abroad I,O52,ooo,ooo pounds of raw cotton, lO9,356 automobiles and 57,716 motor trucks, I68,337,ooo yards of cotton cloth, 64,7~ I,OOO feet of motion picture film, II9,OOO typewriters, 64,78I plows--the list might be continued to more impressive lengths...

...The billions of dollars worth of commodities going to foreign markets are but a trickle from the swelling flood represented by a national income of $9o,ooo,ooo,ooo, but of growing importance as this flood threatens to oversweep the channels of domestic consumption...

...It is driven by the team of "exaggerated nationalism" and "exaggerated sectionalism," both of which are out of the same political stable...

...The right of any country to safeguard its own markets for its own people cannot be questioned...

...Whether or not one agrees with his indictment, the observations here set forth concern matters of tnterest and consequence which it is not well for good ctttzens to overlook.--The Editors...

...Minding one's own business is a commendable virtue in nations as well as in persons but it is to be doubted whether it can be cultivated by kicking one's neighbors down one's stairs...

...But the proposal to protect the American stock offered a retreat from the dilemma of apparently discriminating against the nationals of one country and in favor of the nationals of another, and immigration restriction has finally taken this form...

...After the war it took on a social guise...

...But don't you know that Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill died on this very islet and inside those very walls...

...The ideal American type is approximately 43 percent English or Scotch, I7 percent German, I2 percent Irish, 4 percent Polish and 3.8 percent Italian, with traces of the blood of other nationalities...

...Speaking of Owen D. Young, Julius H. Barnes said: We prize that leadership because it shows an American appreciation of the necessity of those in the hlghest circles of industry giving their talents, their understanding, their acquaintance, their influence, to building a field of international good-will and understanding...

...He says: We have no desire or intention of interfering with or preventing a proper flow of internatmnal trade...

...Under the existing tariff our foreign trade has greatly increased--approximately ioo percent...

...Seldom has a Congress been deluged with more rancorous debate, or have the undercurrents of prejudice and ill feeling swirled so near the surface of legislative discussion...

...A friend was there who was willing to pull an oar with me...

...Call it "pharasaical nationalism," as Dr...

...Sixty-three of them forming the American Coalition, have served this notice of their aims and purposes: To keep America American: To advocate restriction of immigration into the United States whereby racial and political solidarity may be accomplished with the least delay and to this end: x. Promote undivided allegiance to the United States...

...All of these are brood of the same parentage...

...The assertions of Senator Reed of Pennsylvama and the proponents of the plan that the opposition to it sprang from racial blocs of alien origin was no more justified than the assertion that the support of it came from those who favored other racial blocs...

...THE KEEP AT CLOUGHOUGHTER By PADRAIC COLUM I CAME to the lake that is outside Cavan town --one of the lakes through which the river Erne flows...

...Isn't it wonderful that you can have a mind easy enough to be concerned about such things when there's a squall coming up and neither of us expert in the handling of a boat like this...

...Is this to be done by drawing about us the mantle of self-sufficiency and, secure in our wealth, complacent in our virtue, triumphant in our progress, serve notice upon the world that its business is not our business and our business will always be our own...

...In i928 the net increase of American long-term invest33~ THE COMMONWEAL July 3 I, I929 ments abroad was $1,339,ooo,ooo...