the Chinese were barred out. After accepting the outlaws of every
European state, the poor of all lands, they shut the door on our
"coolie" countrymen.

In this way, briefly, America has grown to her present population of
80,000,000. The remarkable growth and assimilation is still going on--a
menace to the world, but in a constantly decreasing ratio, which has
become so marked that the leading Americans, the class which corresponds
to our scholars, are aghast at the singular conditions which exist.
Non-assimilation shows itself in labor riots, in the murder of two
Presidents--Garfield and Lincoln--in socialistic outbreaks in every
quarter, and in signal outbreaks in various sections, at lynchings, and
other unlawful performances. I am attempting to give you an idea of the
constituents of America to-day; but so interesting is the subject, so
prolific in its warnings and possibilities, that I find myself
wandering.

To glance at conditions at the present time, about 600,000 aliens are
coming to America yearly. What is the result? I was invited to meet a
distinguished German visiting in New York last month, and at the dinner
a young lady who sat by my side said to me, "I wish I could puzzle him."
"Why?" I asked, in amazement. "Oh," was her reply, "he looks so cram
full of knowledge; I would like to take him down." "Ah," I said. "Ask
him which is the third largest German city in the world. It is New
York; he will never guess it." She did so, and I assure you he was
"puzzled," and would scarcely believe it until a well-known man assured
him it was true. There are more Germans in Chicago than in Leipsic,
Cologne, Dresden, Munich, or a dozen small towns joined in one. Half of
the Chicago Germans speak their own tongue. This city is the third
Swedish city of the world in population. It is the fourth Polish city
and the second Bohemian city. I was informed by a professor in the
University of Chicago that, in that strange city, the number of people
who speak the language of the Bohemians equaled the combined inhabitants
of Richmond, Atlanta, Portland, and Nashville--all large cities. "What
do you think of it?" I asked. "We are up against it," was the reply. I
can not explain this retort so that you would understand it, but it had
great significance. The professor, a distinguished philologist, was
worried, and he looked it. A lady who was a club woman--and by this I do
not mean that she was armed with a club, but merely a membe