e the founders of
America.

In the second place, the reception accorded the newcomers differed from
that given to the immigrants in the early days. By 1890 all the free
land was gone. They could not, therefore, be dispersed widely among the
native Americans to assimilate quickly and unconsciously the habits and
ideas of American life. On the contrary, they were diverted mainly to
the industrial centers. There they crowded--nay, overcrowded--into
colonies of their own where they preserved their languages, their
newspapers, and their old-world customs and views.

So eager were American business men to get an enormous labor supply that
they asked few questions about the effect of this "alien invasion" upon
the old America inherited from the fathers. They even stimulated the
invasion artificially by importing huge armies of foreigners under
contract to work in specified mines and mills. There seemed to be no
limit to the factories, forges, refineries, and railways that could be
built, to the multitudes that could be employed in conquering a
continent. As for the future, that was in the hands of Providence!

=Business Theories of Politics.=--As the statesmen of Hamilton's school
and the planters of Calhoun's had their theories of government and
politics, so the leaders in business enterprise had theirs. It was
simple and easily stated. "It is the duty of the government," they
urged, "to protect American industry against foreign competition by
means of high tariffs on imported goods, to aid railways by generous
grants of land, to sell mineral and timber lands at low prices to
energetic men ready to develop them, and then to leave the rest to the
initiative and drive of individuals and companies." All government
interference with the management, prices, rates, charges, and conduct of
private business they held to be either wholly pernicious or intolerably
impertinent. Judging from their speeches and writings, they conceived
the nation as a great collection of individuals, companies, and labor
unions all struggling for profits or high wages and held together by a
government whose principal duty was to keep the peace among them and
protect industry against the foreign manufacturer. Such was the
political theory of business during the generation that followed the
Civil War.

THE SUPREMACY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (1861-85)

=Business Men and Republican Policies.=--Most of the leaders in industry
gravitated to the Republica