e swarming an excited, terror-stricken
stream of tenants. The front of a small Italian store had been smashed
in. It was undoubtedly the work of a bomb, and already the cheap
structure of the building had caught the flames. Men and women,
children by the dozen, all screeched and howled in a Babel of half a
dozen languages as Bob, with his fellow officers, tried to calm them.

The engines were soon at the scene, but not until Bob and others had
dashed into the burning building half a dozen times to guide the
frightened occupants to the streets.

Mothers would remember that babies had been left inside--after they
themselves had been brought to safety. The long-suffering policemen
would rush back to get the little ones.

The fathers of these aliens seemed to forget family ties, and even that
chivalry, supposed to be a masculine instinct, for they fought with
fist and foot to get to safety, regardless of their women and the
children. The reserves from the station had to be called out to keep
the fire lines intact, while the grimy firemen worked with might and
main to keep the blaze from spreading. After it was all over Burke
wondered whether these great hordes of aliens were of such benefit to
the country as their political compatriots avowed. He had been reading
long articles in the newspapers denouncing Senators and Representatives
who wished to restrict immigration. He had seen glowing accounts of
the value of strong workers for the development of the country's
enterprise, of the duty of Americans to open their national portal to
the down-trodden of other lands, no matter how ignorant or
poverty-stricken.

"I believe much of this vice and crime comes from letting this rabble
into the city, where they stay, instead of going out into the country
where they can work and get fresh air and fields. They take the jobs
of honest men, who are Americans, and I see by the papers that there
are two hundred and fifty thousand men out of work and hunting jobs in
New York this spring," mused Bob. "It appears to me as if we might
look after Americans first for a while, instead of letting in more
scum. Cheap labor is all right; but when honest men have to pay higher
taxes to take care of the peasants of Europe who don't want to work,
and who do crowd our hospitals and streets, and fill our schools with
their children, and our jails and hospitals with their work and their
diseases, it's a high price for cheap labor."

And