slative
regulation seemed sufficient to protect the people.

This tendency to over-exalt the State's industrial function was not the
only danger which confronted us. Another was that from immigration. So
enormous was the influx of foreigners that we were threatened with a
fatal emasculation of our national character. The manner in which we
incorporated alien elements theretofore was among the wonders of
history, but it was at least a question whether we could continue to do
this always. It seemed in part therefore a healthy sentiment which by
the law of 1882 excluded Chinese labor-immigrants. New-comers from other
lands were also refused domicile here if imported under contract,
[Footnote: Law of February 26, 1885] or unable to support themselves.
The stronger law against the Chinese at first sight seemed invidious,
but there was some justification for it in the fact that those people
almost never settled down permanently as citizens of the United States,
but returned to their native land so soon as they earned a competence.
Italians of the lowest class did this to some extent, but the great bulk
of our foreign-born population came here with the purpose of becoming
American.

Our Irish-American fellow-citizens gave concern to many. One complaint
was that they brought hither their anti-English prejudices, by the loud
and continual assertion of which they tended ever to embroil us with
England. There proved to be slight danger from this source, particularly
after the rise of a powerful pro-Irish sentiment and party among the
English themselves. Others had great fear of the Irish as Catholics,
they being the chief representatives of that faith in the United States.
The growth of the Roman Catholic Church in our borders was certainly
very rapid. An American clergyman, McCloskey, was made Cardinal in 1875.
A University, subject to the Catholic Church was erected in Washington.
Catholicism in America was no longer a mission church as it had been
until quite recently, but had a full national organization as in the
other great nations of the earth.

A strong movement was developed among the Catholic clergy against our
common schools as usually administered. Parochial schools were erected
in most Eastern cities and large towns, and efforts made to fill them
with children who, but for their existence, would be in the public
schools. Public schools were denounced as godless because they did not,
as of course they could not, giv