ad been edged
courteously over the Canadian border;--when all this had been done,
there would still remain the great American People. Of this great People
there would remain certain local variations--in parts of the South, in
New England, on the plains--but each clearly recognisable as a variety
only, differing but superficially and in substance possessing
well-defined all the generic and specific attributes of the race.

If the entire membership of the Chicago Club were to be transferred
bodily to the Manhattan Club-house in New York, and all the members of
the Manhattan were simultaneously made to migrate from Fifth Avenue to
Michigan Avenue, the club servants, beyond missing some familiar faces,
would not find much difference. Could any man, waking from a trance,
tell by the men surrounding him whether he was in the Duquesne Club at
Pittsburgh or the Minnesota Club in St. Paul? And, if it be urged that
the select club-membership represents a small circle of the population
only, would the disturbance be much greater if the entire populations of
Erie and Minneapolis and Kansas City were to execute a three-cornered
"general post" or if Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Maine, swapped
inhabitants? How long would it take the inhabitants of any one town to
settle down in their new environment and go to work on precisely the
same lines as their predecessors whom they dislodged? The novelty would,
I think, be even less than if Manchester and Birmingham were
miraculously made to execute a similar change in a night.

I do not underrate the magnitude of the problem presented to the people
of America by the immense volume of immigration from alien races, and
chiefly from the most undesirable strata in those races, of the last
few years. On the other hand, I have no shadow of doubt of the ability
of the people to cope with the problem and to succeed in assimilating to
itself all the elements in this great influx while itself remaining
unchanged.

It seems to me that the American himself constantly overestimates the
influence on his national character of the immigration of the past. To
persons living in New York, especially if, from philanthropic motives or
otherwise, they are brought at all into immediate contact with the
incoming hordes as they arrive, this stream of immigration may well be a
terrifying thing. Those who are in daily touch with it can hardly fail
to be oppressed by it, till it gets upon their nerves and breeds
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