Publication information
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Source: Canada Law Journal
Source type: journal
Document type: editorial
Document title: none
Author(s): anonymous
Date of publication: 15 February 1904
Volume number: 40
Issue number: 4
Pagination: 90

 
Citation
[untitled]. Canada Law Journal 15 Feb. 1904 v40n4: p. 90.
 
Transcription
full text
 
Keywords
anarchism (laws against); anarchism (government response); anarchists; John Turner; John Turner (public statements); anarchism (government response: criticism); anarchism (international response).
 
Named persons
Leon Czolgosz [misspelled below]; William McKinley; John Turner.
 
Document

 

[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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