writer would take advantage of the opportunity which treatment of such a subject as immigration affords to treat also upon certain abuses of the enfranchisement, in direct relation to and regarded as a concomitant of immigration. Howbeit, since neither time nor space permits of an exhaustive review of so weighty a subject, he will but cursorily remark upon a few of the more obvious defects and abuses of our franchise laws in connection with the naturalization of aliens. For is it not a distinct menace to the stability of our institutions and to the peace and prosperity of the nation, that so many thousands of foreign-born, foreign-bred, and foreignraised people should every year become "naturalized Americans," with privileges equal to those of nativeborn and more educated and intelligent citizens?

These men the purely foreign increment, or immigrants of an alien race and language cannot possibly become fitted for the exercise of intelligent and sympathetic citizenship for some time, no matter how capable of reading and writing in their own language; neither is it reasonable to suppose that their natures and prejudices can become so transformed and modified within five years as to render them entirely reliable and consistent Americans. Besides, apart from mere educational disqualifications and considerations and regardless of their educational bias and racial prejudices, it is safe to affirm that the more intelligent among them will quite frequently be found more antagonistic to good government and more dangerous

among the leaders of revolutionary agitation from abroad that those doctrines of social discord and of Anarchy primarily originate and by them they are disseminated. It would therefore seem self-evident that not only should more drastic methods be adopted in order to check and regulate the volume of foreign immigration, but more discrimination should likewise be displayed by the authorities where professed functions are assumed to be thus directed.

In brief, the industrious and intelligent classes from all countries should be gladly welcomed here, and their way should be made smooth, but the non-producing classes and the shiftless and vicious-no matter how intelligent should be turned back or their way made exceedingly hard. We do not want these latter; yet there is nothing in our immigration laws, practically, to stem the torrent of this class of immigration.

And so, also with their enfranchisement. If they must come, let us at least exclude them, as far as may be, from the exercise of the franchiseby an extended probationary period, so to speak. In plain words, let them prove their fitness first, as evinced by their ability to earn an honest living or by their general good conduct. Let the test be that of industry, temperance, and common intelligence.

It now remains but to chronicle, as briefly as possible, the advent and dark deeds of Anarchy and of the anarchists in this country. It is a hateful

subject, for the leaders are, and always have been, such a sorry set, and their tools and instruments, or their emissaries and means employed, such depraved wretches and so utterly infamous that one's soul revolts at the mere prospect of having to treat of them at all impartially and seriously. But it is a plain duty. To begin, then: From what may be gathered from the contents of a little book by Félix Dubois, entitled "The Anarchist Peril," it would appear that America is indebted (?) to one Prince Michael Bakounine for the propagation of anarchical principles here. At all events, this Russian aristocrat and refugee was for a number of yearsever since 1841-one of the most notorious of anarchist leaders in Europe; and him we must regard as the founder of the anarchist partyas its organizer-and as the chief promoter and disseminator of anarchical doctrines and tenets. Others there have been, and are, in plenty, who were as infamous as this man, but none, perhaps, quite so mischievous or of such deadly peril to the human cause and to human progress. fice it, then, in connection with Bakounine's name, to say that he died in Switzerland in 1876.

Among other anarchists who have done so much to make the name of Anarchy hateful to all right-minded men are Élisée Reclus, Kropotkine, and Brousse, the last-named two of which triad edited the first (official) anarchist organ, published in 1878, under the title of the Avant-Garde, the checkered career of which, however, was happily cut short within a year

But Kropotkine, it appears, was something of an author as well as a journalist. Besides numerous incendiary pamphlets and brochures written by him, there was a book, "The Battle for Bread," published in 1892. But bullets and dynamite were much more congenial to this man's nature than "bread ever could have been-no matter how sensational his "battle" for it.

It will be observed that many of these anarchist leaders are Russians, and, quite often, men of rank. "What, then," it may be urged by some one, "has all this to do with Anarchy in America?" Only this: the founders and disseminators of Anarchy everywhere nearly always flee to England or to America, where they sedulously prosecute their nefarious work unmolested, and, by reason of their knowledge and use of the English language, they perpetrate their devilish work not only in their own but in our language. For these men, the leaders of this revolutionary organization, are men of more than ordinary intelligence-such as it is-and therein consists, to the writer's thinking, the danger to the Commonwealth of our immigration and naturalization laws, which actually encourage-to say nothing of allowing-the importation and enfranchisement of such men. We know what happened in Chicago, and what has since happened in Buffalo. We must know, also, if we will but think of it at all seriously, that, in view of the fact that so many thousands of ignorant foreigners. have found asylum in this country, it must be little short of willful madness

to admit incendiary leaders of this class on the mere assurance of their ability to "read and write," who have means enough to satisfy the inquiries of immigration agents and officials, and who cannot be actually identified as "non-political" criminals or exconvicts. Something more should be required than vouchers and certificates of this nature. Immigrants should be made to prove their social and industrial fitness and qualifications, or else be sent back where they came from.

So much for organized Anarchy and ostensible anarchists. To conclude: The roots of Anarchy exist within our

The

selves, and sensationalism and violence are their commonest and most certain modern manifestations. dime novel and the yellow journal are even more pollutive of the minds and morals of the youth of the nation, and more corruptive of the imagination and the understanding, than the most incendiary anarchist literature possibly be. What opium is to the Chinese, so are sensational literature and yellow journalism to the American people in an inverted sense. The opium deadens the intellect and conscince, while the stimulant deranges the faculties and saps the understanding.

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HE reënactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act, among other things, it is said, will take up the attention of Congress when it meets again. Already considerable opposition to restricted Chinese immigration is reported manifest, and Southern Congressmen in particular are said to be possessed of kindlier feelings toward the little yellow men of the Far East. Chinamen may be invited to settle in the South, and in a large measure supersede as agricultural laborers the negroes, who have of late years apparently abandoned the country for the cities, to which they flock in such numbers that they are beginning to be a disturbing element in municipal economics. The theory is that Chinese would be likely to do well

in the places heretofore held, but now deserted, by the blacks. John Chinaman is now being looked upon as a possible means to the future salvation of Dixie.

This new programme, however, is likely to find as determined opposition as ever from representatives of Western opinion. The Pacific Coast is not in the least worried over the fact that since 1890 there has been a loss of Chinese population in the United States of 7,728, or 6.1 per cent. Such statistics, on the other hand, are pleasing. In addition to sectional prejudice, labor circles generally are also to be found lined up squarely against unrestricted Chinese competition in America. They fear the outcome should the present barriers against

Chinese industrial invasion be removed.

One argument against ameliorating the present law would seem to be that in those localities where the Chinese are most populous they are least popular. The strongest opposition comes from those who are most intimately in contact with John Chinaman in America.

Yet is it quite fair to make United States immigration laws aim in their negation so exclusively at the Chinese? Are there no other menacing immigrants than those who come with queues? How about the low-class Italian immigrants, the Polish Jews, and other ignorant Europeans who find in New York their Mecca? What shall be done about the French Canadians, who are such an important element in the factory cities of New England? In California are there not the Portuguese and the Japanese, the former having to a large extent driven out the Chinamen themselves in truck gardening and fishing, for instance, and the latter becoming more and more a disturbing element in the life of the cities? In other words, why, for example, should a Portuguese, who can live more economically than even a Chinaman and do more work, be welcomed, and a Chinaman, just because. he is a Chinaman, be excluded?

More than any other one reason, perhaps, the Chinaman in America is disliked and distrusted because he so obstinately persists in retaining his Asiatic ways.

He will continue to wear his Chinese clothes; he will retain his peculiar queue; he will buy, where possible, almost exclusively of his own

countrymen in the mercantile world; he will associate clannishly only with his own people; he will send all the surplus money he makes back to China; he always comes to the United States with the intention only of returning to his native country after he has made his fortune here, and if in the meantime death happens to overtake him he will not even be buried, if he can help it, here, but must have his ashes taken back to the land of his birth; and he will not become an American citizen. Of course, under the existing laws he cannot be naturalized if he would, but the precaution is an empty one-he would not avail himself of the privilege if he could. His preference is to be always an alien.

Furthermore, in his own country he maintains doggedly that conservative exclusiveness of which he, it would appear inconsistently, complains in regard to others. Only the middle of last month the Pekin correspondent of the London Times reported the Chinese having" raised the question of the residence of foreigners in the capital for purposes of trade. The Chinese have reminded the Ministers of the powers that the agreement of November, 1858, stipulated that foreigners had not the right to live in Pekin for such purposes.' And another dispatch says: "Prince Ching has written to the Ministers of the powers requesting the withdrawal from Pekin of the foreign business establishments. He says that Pekin is not a treaty port, that foreign business houses have been illegally established here, and that all such

houses should be moved to treaty ports. He desires the Ministers to secure their removal."

If China herself will be a little more liberal in the treatment of foreigners dwelling there; if the Chinese abroad will endeavor to adapt themselves a little more closely to modern civilized conditions; and if it can be convincingly shown that the existing provisions of the Chinese Exclusion Act are

not only too burdensome upon the Chinese but unwise for the best economic industrial development of the United States-then the Exclusion Act will have to go. But until there is evident some change for the better in the Chinese themselves, both at home and abroad, the necessity of any revolutionary reversal of American attitude toward Chinese immigration is not altogether apparent.