[untitled]
One of the provisions of the United
States Immigration Law (passed in March, 1903,) is as follows: “No
person who disbelieves in or who is opposed to all organized government,
or who is a member of or affiliated with any organization entertaining
and teaching such disbelief in or opposition to all organized government,
or who advocates or teaches the duty, necessity or propriety of
the unlawful assaulting or killing of any officer or officers, either
of specific individuals or officers generally, of the Government
of the United States or any other organized government, because
of his or their character, shall be permitted to enter the United
States or any territory or place subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
This enactment was placed upon the statute book as the result of
public indignation over the assassination of President McKinley
by the anarchist Czolgocz. In view of the motly [sic] herd
of lawless cranks and moral degenerates from the slums of Europe
that the tide of immigration has been pouring upon the shores of
the United States during the past decade or so, we think this an
excellent law. Not so, however, thinks anarchist John Turner, who
hails from England, and who, during his incarceration in the immigrant
detention cells on Ellis Island, N.Y., several weeks ago, pending
deportation to the place whence he came, wrote for one of the New
York journals a doleful article in dispraise of reactionary legislation
of this kind in the new world. He melodramatically says: “I am locked
in a cage 9 x 6 feet, strong enough to hold an elephant, and am
guarded night and day.” “Such treatment,” he adds, “is the beginning
of a new political tyranny in which America, with its democratic
institutions, can give points to monarchical Europe.” If this experiment
does anything to suppress the propagation of doctrines which moved
the unbalanced mind of Czolgocz to murder William McKinley, then
we rejoice in anarchist Turner’s vicarious sufferings. Socialism
of the dangerous European sort is already rearing its unlovely front
in the western part of this Dominion. It attempted bodily harm to
one of our best known public men some two or three months ago. Some
such modification of the present easy access of the avowedly lawless
brotherhoods to Canada may be necessary in the near future.
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