Friday, April 27, 2007

Aliens or Americans

Aliens or Americans?
by Howard B. Grose, 1906

UNGUARDED GATES

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, And through them presses a wild, motley throng-- Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes, Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Celt, and Slav, Flying the old world's poverty and scorn; These bringing with them unknown gods and rites, Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws. In street and alley what strange tongues are these, Accents of menace alien to our air, Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! O Liberty, White Goddess! is it well To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate, Lift the downtrodden, but with the hand of steel Stay those who to thy sacred portals come To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn And trampled in the dust. For so of old The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome. And where the temples of the Cæsars stood The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.

--Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Introduction, by Josiah Strong 13
I. The Alien Advance 15
II. Alien Admission and Restriction 51
III. Problems of Legislation and Distribution 87
IV. The New Immigration 121
V. The Eastern Invasion 157
VI. The Foreign Peril of the City 193
VII. Immigration and the National Character 231
VIII. The Home Mission Opportunity 267

http://manybooks.net/pages/groseh1919819198-8/1.html