The Nativist Gatekeeping of the Grays Harbor Boom

A question of regulating foreign immigration to this country is of special interest to the people of the western or Pacific states, where a great number of our foreign-born population have found new homes. Foreigners coming here to take up and cultivate new lands, locate permanently and become law-abiding citizens of the United States have always been and still are valuable additions to the enterprising population of the great West. German and Scandinavian newcomers come to till the soil and create new homes for themselves and theirs. If all immigrants were of that class, no regulation of immigration would be asked for or needed for a century to come. In the latter years an entirely different class of immigrants have commenced to arrive at our shores and ask admission on equal terms with the more thrifty Northerners. The dusky Italian with his hand-organ and his secret affiliations, the lazy and unwashed refuse from Southern Europe, the fugitive from justice, the criminal paroled on condition that he shall leave his native country, the assisted pauper who cannot or will not work for a living and in whose language the word 'home' has no equivalent, have all come and knocked at our doors. The bulk of this class of immigrants are extremely illiterate and ignorant and nearly as objectionable as the Chinese, because they do not come here to become American citizens, but simply to make some money, one way or other, and then return to their native land. At best these Italian or Hungarian immigrants are nothing but common day-laborers and naturally flood the country and cities in search of employment as such, and the direct and immediate consequence is a depression of the labor market and a downward tendency of wages, until a point is reached where wages are entirely inadequate to the wants of the native laborers or those from the German and Scandinavian countries, who are used to decent and comfortable living.