education springing up at the call of the modern
mind; hills, prairies, and mountains alive with in-
dustry and progress. But over the scene hang the
clouds of an on-coming storm. The air is electric
with danger. Instead of universal happiness, the
scene is marred by the gleam of hate, the note of
discord, and the sound of strife between man and
man. Right relations are distorted. The bond of
friendship between capital and labor has been
broken. Mutual distrust has entered. Labor and
capital have forgotten what each owes the other
capital that labor creates wealth, is human and has
sacred rights; labor, that capital furnishes employ-
ment, "that capital like force, must be massed to
accomplish great ends;" that labor receives the larg-
est percentage of all the value industry creates,
and that capital is the directing force which makes
this industry possible. Let the toiler stop and
think. Every influence today is a force shaping the
position of the workingman into one of power and
stability, while through all run the mighty sinews
of capital, connecting and supporting the whole. To
capital credit is due, for the foresight and respon-
sibility that creates enterprise. To labor justice
must be given, with a living-wage that represents
a fair return under the existing economic conditions.
The difficulty of our situation is increased be-
cause our dangers are worked into the very founda-
214 WINNING ORATIONS
tion and principles of our government, into our sys-
tems and laws, our customs and habits. They have de-
veloped in the growth of our industries. From all
sides conditions have contributed to complicate and
intensify the difficulty of the problem. From the
evolution of organized power have come the giant
corporations and the labor organizations. Corporate
power has made possible the amassing of the
country's wealth in the hands of the few, and the
consequent poverty of the masses. With the con-
centration of wealth has come the vulgar flaunting
of the very rich before the very poor, the high cost
of living, and the system of graft in politics and
society. The very forces that have made us strong
have developed our peril.
This ever-widening breach in our commercial
life must be closed. But two classes in our midst
make it impossible, the ignorant and the criminal.
These twin evils infest our life and cause our peril.
Ignorance has ever been the henchman of
tyranny and greed. A wide-spread industrial educa-
tion is imperative. Ignorance cannot reason justly.
It falls an easy victim of conditions. To the ignor-
ant laborer capital becomes a tyrant, against whose
oppression a blow in the dark seems its only redress.
"Well may capital tremble when political power is
in the hands of ignorant labor. The power can not
be removed; the class must be destroyed; labor must
be enlightened." Labor made intelligent, can think
rightly. "It knows that capital is the motor of the
age. It is ever changing places with capital; the
incompetent heir forfeits his place to the able em-
ployee." Make the laboring class sane and virile
with the power of knowledge, and the toiler becomes
an added force in solving the national problems.
But more menacing even than the ignorant is
the criminal, the criminal rich, the criminal poor.
SOUTH DAKOTA 215
Whence this class? The product of our civilization?
Not so. Look deep into the history of life, and from
its darkest pages comes the answer, the cause of
crime is in the loss of conscience. In our industrial
growth conscience has been dethroned by our mad
struggle for gain. It must be restored. The great
need of our business world is conscience. It alone
can restore right relations between labor and capital.
"Capital without conscience means tyranny; labor
without conscience, anarchy." Lacking this great
pilot of human progress, the ship of our national
life will be driven upon the rocks by the industrial
storm now beating upon us with increasing fury.
Ignorance, the slave of fear and hate, and crime, the
destroyer of virtue and nobility must be eliminated
from our life or the voice of "war's grim command"
shall again summon us with drum-beat and bugle-
call.
Whither shall we turn for the enlightenment
of the ignorant, and the awakening of conscience in
the heart and mind of the criminal? To the poli-
ticians and political parties? They have tried and
failed. Their plummet is for shallower waters. Our
hope is in the educational forces of the nation, the
home and the church, the school and the college. The
atmosphere must be surcharged with the seriousness
of the hour. These problems of industrial and social
life must furnish themes of study and discussion.
Let it become a national law that no child or adult
shall continue to work without becoming intelligent-
ly familiar with the great fundamentals of educa-
tion and government. If we cannot thus care for
the foreigner, let the ports of entry be closed until
we can properly provide for those within our gates.
Let a Carnegie, instead of building libraries, and
endowing palaces of peace, educate and lift up the
great mass of foreigners employed in his own works.
216 WINNING ORATIONS
Place in every school and college curriculum,
courses in practical work; instate the living subject
that is vital to the age in which we are doing our
work.
Some intelligent effort has been made to meet
the situation. For the adults are provided technical
courses in sociology and mechanics, psychological
experiments for efficiency under scientific manage-
ment, and city settlement work. For the child we
have the George Junior Republic, the National
Newsboy Association, the Juvenile Courts, and child-
labor laws in some states. These have resulted
from the effort to right the wrongs, but they have
only touched the outer edge, the heart of the prob-
lem has not been reached. Industrial intelligence
and moral responsibility must become the very
atmosphere of our schools and homes.
"Capital must be humanized; labor must be
Christianized. Christian labor is the sublimest force
in history." Upon this are we built and in this do
we hope for the future.
Christian industry is wrought into the very
life of the Republic. Gaining a foothold upon the
soil of Massachusetts and Virginia, winding up
through the mountain defiles, it took its way out
across the plains, "striding up the side of the tower-
ing Rockies, over the crowning heights" and down
upon the fertile shores of the Pacific, led by the
best blood of the Anglo-Saxon race. Thus it pushes
to the front, pioneering for a new race of men, con-
quering the wilderness, sowing the prairies with
homes, lining the continent with cities, wresting
coal and precious metal from the grip of the earth,
refining the crude into the pure, harnessing the
streams, creating educational centers, giving the
best of its manhood and womanhood to the building
of a nation, wherein dwelleth righteousness and se-
SOUTH DAKOTA 217
curity. But note the procession that moves against
these interests of civilization, faithless industry, led
on by ignorance and crime. Let the voice of op-
pressed ignorance; the murderous slaughter of the
Chicago Teamsters Strike; the voice of outraged
womanhood rising from white slavedom; the bombs
which wrecked the Los Angeles Times building; the
cry of the mothers and children rising from the
hovels of the Lawrence textile mills; let these show
us the fury of industry without intelligence, without
conscience, without God.
Then let the spirit of the Man of Galilee touch
our troubled life; touch it "in the vaults of greed,
in the homes of want, in the camps of sin," touch,
and win, and unite. Let the light of intelligent
manhood drive out the night of ignorance, and the
glory of a living conscience reign supreme. Let him
whose brain is weary with honest thought, grip the
hand that is rough with toil.
Then with a united industrial people, with our
problems settled in the halls of peace, and our land
alight with brotherhood; our commerce shall travel
the high seas, and go to the ends of the earth. Our
ideals shall influence the policies of all nations, and
under God the glory of this people shall never de-
part.
TWENTY-SIXTH CONTEST (1913)
THE RESTRICTION OF IMMIGRATION
(FLOYD POOL, STATE UNIVERSITY)
Ellis Island is the great gateway to America.
Through its portals are admitted every day of the
year three thousand foreigners. Dawn sheds its
light on a veritable army that has left the father-
land for a New World. Twilight fades into dark-
ness leaving a new burden of care on this Republic.
What America means to the immigrant is evident;
but what the immigrant means for America is a
problem of increasing perplexity.
Prior to 1820 immigration to the United States
was insignificant. Soon after the war for inde-
pendence came the hard times of Europe, followed
by the German and French revolutions, and the
Russian legislation against Jews. These unstable
conditions in Europe and the golden opportunities
of the New World caused immigration to America
to assume alarming proportions. From one hundred
fifty-one thousand in the decade from 1820 to 1830,
it has increased until today thirty per cent of our
entire population is foreign born. Do you know that
since 182Q over twenty-eight million immigrants
have been admitted to the United States? Do
you know that in the last decade over eight million
persons passed through the doors of America? Do
you know that every year one million people enter
the gates of this Republic? Such a movement of
population is unprecedented in the history of the
world!
Every civilized nation has a part in the great
tide of immigration to America. The commercial
progress of the United States has become the beacon
light to success for every victim of adverse circum-
220 WINNING ORATIONS
stances. As the great mass of eager people crowds
its way to the new continent, insane, paupers,
criminals and illiterates creep into the surging tide,
and in the maddening whirl of business enterprise
we have failed to guard the gates against the in-
creasing throng of undesirable immigrants.
Undesirable people are coming into our country
in ever increasing numbers, poisoning our civiliza-
tion, and striking at the very vitals of our Republic.
No longer can we ignore these facts. We must de-
termine who shall and who shall not come to take
up his abode in our land. The time has come when
we must guard our liberties and protect our civili-
zation; when we must place further restrictions on
our present immigration.
From an intelligent perspective of the question,
there are to be seen three distinct and separate
phases: the racial, the social and the economic.
First, then, the racial aspect. Until 1882, the
streams of immigration arose largely in northern
Europe. These immigrants were blended by the
ties of freedom into a race, strong physically and
intellectually the American. The new race sacri-
ficed life for the possession and maintenance of
home and certain religious and political standards.
It conquered nations. It built up a democracy of
truth and right. It developed a national character,
moral, wholesome, and ambitious. Its ideal was
freedom for all, the brotherhood of man.
Suddenly there broke in upon this progress and
harmony a race of people inferior in mind and body,
a race that had never known self-government. There
came with them illiteracy, pauperism, criminality,
low standards of living. Immigration from south-
ern Europe increased ten fold; while that from
northern Europe decreased four fold. In a brief
space of time, the old or desirable immigration
SOUTH DAKOTA 221
ended, and the period of the new or undesirable im-
migration was ushered in.
The hopeful attitude generally taken toward
this invasion is that the seething of the "melting
pot" will remove the dross and produce an article
just as good, if not better, than the old. This at-
titude carries with it the qualification that should
we not succeed with the parents, the public school
will succeed with the children. But the tendency
of the majority of our immigrants is to settle in
racial groups. The child finds in his new home
the same conditions as in his former home; the same
examples, the same companions. When a child is
reared in environments which are in harmony with
his hereditary instincts, public school education can
not mold new traits of character. Then, as in
Austria-Hungary, different races will live side by
side never wholly merging into a definite national
type.
The problem now is how to unite into one people
a congeries of races. Is this within our ability? Can
we assimilate these manifold races from beyond the
seas? Can we make them real Americans? Not un-
til we have made them more receptive to intellectual
enlightenment; not until we have formed some better
means for distribution and assimilation; not until
we have made drastic changes in our laws for the
restriction of immigration; not until then, can we
expect to have again a pure American race.
Important as we consider the racial side of the
immigration problem, even more vital is the social
aspect. It is wrapped in the alien habits and ideals
of our thirty millions of immigrants. The pages
of American history are stained with the blood of
crime; crime, fifty per cent of which, according to
the Census Reports, is due to foreigners. The im-
migration commissioner, in his annual report, de-
222 WINNING ORATIONS
plores the fact that when an Italian dies he leaves
as his only baggage a stiletto. Strange to think
we harbor a class of immigrants whose sole com-
panion is a knife! Strange to think we harbor a
class of immigrants whose children, according to
John R. Commons of the University of Wisconsin,
are twice as criminal as their parents.
Insanity and disease have also produced marked
effects upon our society. With the advent of the
period of new immigration our insanity increased
from twenty-eight to thirty-eight per cent. Senator
Lodge of Massachusetts says of the thirty-five
thousand persons in the asylums of New York, forty-
seven per cent are foreigners. It was the immi-
grant, when the yellow fever epidemic raged in New
Orleans in 1905, who was so troublesome to the
physician. It was the immigrant who introduced the
dread eye disease, trachoma, into the Manhattan
schools. It was the immigrant who spread the bu-
bonic plague on the Pacific coast.
Many social evils are due to illiteracy. Social
institutions depend for their existence upon the
ability of men to exchange ideas and act together
intelligently for common purposes. Ignorant of any
art or culture, without refinement, thirty per cent
of our immigrants bring with them the superstition
of ignorance. Three hundred thousand illiterate for-
eigners settle in our midst every year! Fifty per
cent of the people in the slums of our great cities
are from the delinquent classes of southern Europe
the classes that have fallen into the lower strata
of civilization.
Do you wonder that our social conditions are
so deplorable? Do you wonder that insanity and
disease are so widespread? Do you wonder that
crime is so prevalent in our society? These are
circumstances which must be altered! Will our
SOUTH DAKOTA 223
brave loyal sons of the United States stand by and
behold such conditions? Under what obligation are
we to receive the burden of the world's delinquents?
Awake! Ye Sons of America! Defend your rights
and your liberties!
Undoubtedly the most vital reason for the re-
striction of immigration is the economic; a reason
which involves the great mass of American work-
ing men; a reason which affects the entire economic
life of this Republic. In the investigations of the
Congressional Immigration Commission, it was
found that there was an oversupply of unskilled labor
in basic industries. The Commission reported that
this condition demanded immediate legislation re-
stricting the further admission of that class of labor.
The labor market of America is overcrowded. The
wage has become lower in proportion to the cost of
living; immigrant workmen are flooding our indus-
tries, and the American, because he can not and
will not compete with such a class of cheap labor,
is being crowded out.
The Chinese Exclusion Bill was passed because
that race was lowering the rate of wages and the
standard of living on the Pacific coast. California
is agitating the Alien Land Bill because the Japan-
ese are attempting to gain possession of large tracts
of land in that State. When the immigration com-
mission investigated two hundred different com-
munities in the manufacturing districts of the east,
they found two hundred communities overcrowded
with unwholesome and illiterate unskilled laborers.
The annual average earnings of a foreigner in the
Pennsylvania anthracite region was found to be
$396. Yet many supported families and lived in
such circumstances as to save money. In 1907 there
was remitted to Europe through immigrant banks
alone $141,000,000.00.
224 WINNING ORATIONS
Far be it from any American citizen to raise
his voice against that kind of immigration, that
from the north of Europe, in whose veins runs the
Anglo-Saxon and the Celtic blood. From those
nationalities have sprung scions whose names stand
high on the roll of honor. They have left the im-
print of their useful activity on the development of
every State in the Union. Welcome! Thrice Wel-
come!
We are not trying to keep out those, inspired
by the love of liberty, seeking greater social, edu-
cational or religious advantages, but we are trying
to safeguard our liberties, protect our institutions
2nd prevent this nation from becoming the dump-
ing ground for the unfit and criminal hordes of the
Old World
"O, Liberty, White Goddess, is it well
To leave the gates unguarded ? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate,
Lift the downtrodden, but with hand of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gift of freedom : Have a care
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn
And trampled in the dust."
The time has come when we must choose. Shall
we have American or immigrant labor? Shall we
have a high or a low standard of living? Shall we
have industrial peace or industrial war? Shall the
American or the immigrant reign? God gave us
this land! It is ours to rule! The life-blood of a
million people paid for its preservation! May the
curse of our fathers rest upon us if we throw away
the heritage of the past.
We are face to face with a national problem
of tremendous magnitude. This question must be
decided with unbiased judgment, and sentimentality
must be laid aside. Now, what are we going to do?
The concensus of opinion is in harmony with the
idea of the Immigration Commission that our
SOUTH DAKOTA 225
present laws are "weak and ineffectual." Some plan
must be adopted that will provide a more strict
discrimination between desirable and undesirable
immigrants. There are many courses open to us:
the literacy test, the admission of only those work-
men accompanied by wives or families, the limiti;-
tion of numbers and more equal distribution, the
material increase in the head tax. These are the
most important of the suggested plans. However
we restrict, a greater certainty in the exclusion of
undesirable immigrants must be secured. For fif-
teen years the cause of restriction has been cham-
pioned in the halls of congress with increasing ar-
dor; petitions urging restriction are becoming mul-
titudinous; in the last campaign both the Demo-
cratic and Republican parties advocated further re-
striction. The time will come it is now coming
when we shall no longer "see through a glass dark-
ly;" when we shall more fully realize the necessity
of stemming the tide of immigration; when the
Goddess of Liberty, with oustretched arms, will wel-
come a class of immigrants deserving the oppor-
tunities of a free land.
We are striving to maintain an ideal democracy.
Men of mettle! Men of grit! Men of vision! The
possibilities of future civilization in America are
"beyond the dreams of men." Patriotic, liberty-lov-
ing America of the future is the land that holds the
hope of humanity. It behooves every loyal Ameri-
can citizen to help guard the gates against an in-
discriminate immigration, which threatens to under-
mine our social and economic structure.
TWENTY-SEVENTH CONTEST (1914)
FROM FAME TO INFAMY
(SAMUEL MARBLE. DAKOTA WESLEYAN)
The year 1780 marked the crisis of the Ameri-
can Revolution. Armies had been sacrificed, re-
sources had been exhausted, martyr's blood had
been shed in the effort to win independence and free-
dom, but freedom had not been secured. The early
thrill and fervor of war had gone, and as American
arms sustained repeated defeat, and ultimate failure
seemed imminent, enthusiasm and hope declined, and
zeal gave place to despair. It was the darkest
period of the war. In this crucial hour, on an
autumn night, Benedict Arnold betrayed his home-
land. Goaded by vengeful passion, he secretly
turned traitor, thrust aside his honor, and made him-
self the darkest figure in American history.
He is called a "modern Judas," and at some
points these two were quite similar. Both men
might have been honored throughout the world, for
both had opportunities for the highest public serv-
ice. Both had commanding abilities, both were well
esteemed by their fellows, both were strongly moved
by selfish interests, and both became traitors. But
Judas was marked by his greed for gain; Arnold,
by pride and ambition. Judas had a miser's money-
lust; Arnold thirsted for glory and power. Judas
was crafty, cold, emotionless; Arnold was indis-
creet, arrogant, passionate. No sunny day of glad-
ness or service illumines the life of Judas. The di-
vine altruism of the Christ roused in him no answer-
ing passion. Sneering at Mary's sincere offering,
he could steal from the bag entrusted to his keep-
ing, and in the presence of sorrow and suffering, or
joy and gladness, he was alike unmoved. Arnold is
228 WINNING ORATIONS
different. Swayed quickly by his emotion, he is the
victim of each passing impulse. The passions that
whirl and boil in his blood make him erratic and
reckless. In floods of emotion he is swept from his
moorings, he is not his own master, his will is gone.
But to both men comes the crisis, when the final
battle is fought, and the outcome marks destiny.
They emerge from the test, traitors both; their
lives have the same deformity, and they go hand in
hand through the ages, comrades in infamy.
Although his life ended darkly, Arnold's services
before he turned traitor can hardly be over-rated.
When he checked the British at Saratoga, it meant
salvation for young America. As yet no European
power had come forward to aid the colonies. Nations
regarded doubtfully this new, untried America, with
her twelve hundred miles of unprotected seacoast, her
scattered population of less than four millions, her
four hundred thousand square miles of territory to
defend, and her pitifully small fighting force of fifty
thousand men. But with the defeat of Burgoyne,
the attitude of Europe changed. Spain, Holland,
and France, soon recognized the colonies as an in-
dependent nation, and France promised to send them
aid. "No military event," says the historian Creasy,
"has exercised greater influence on the future for-
tunes of mankind, than this defeat of Burgoyne."
And this victory, classed as one of the fifteen de-
cisive battles in the history of the world, was made
possible by Benedict Arnold.
Traitor though he became, he once was counted
the soul of honor. Prior to his days at West Point,
no man had questioned his patriotism. Quebec and
Champlain were unparallel. No soldier exhibited
greater bravery on the battle field than Arnold.
And his was the genius for leadership. Behold him
at Saratoga, where the jealousy of Gen. Gates had
SOUTH DAKOTA 229
deprived him of his command! With no authority
even to fight, much less to give orders, Arnold
watched with excited spirit the course of battle from
afar. His frame thrilled to frenzy; glory beckoned
him to the field. Stirred to madness by the din of
battle, he leaped on his horse and rode to the head
of his old command amid welcoming shouts and
cheers. Dominant on the instant, reckless in the
thickest of the fight, he ordered a charge at the ene-
my's center. Like a whirlwind he swept the British
works, cleared them at a single assault, routed the