We Americans, should thank heaven for every steamer which arrives here crowded with Italians.

Charles E. Russell.

When several years ago, another bill for the restriction of immigration, similar to the present Dillingham-Burnett bill, was before the Congress of the United States in Washington, one of the many worthy Americans who strongly opposed it was Charles Edward Russell, at that time Editor of the "New York Journal" and now a writer of repute, especially devoted to social and political questions and author of several splendid publications among which "Why I am a Socialist", "The Uprising of Many", "Lawless Wealth", "Songs of Democracy", etc. We remember a splendid editorial published by Mr. Russell in the Journal which created quite a sensation and was indeed one of the most noble defenses and enthusiastic eulogies of the Italian race.

Now that all the narrow-minded politicians, helped and backed by the 2American Federation of Labor and by all the other enemies of European immigration, are all in arms trying to have the Senate pass a new immigration restriction law, barring from the American shores all people who are not literate, no matter how good, honest, willing and healthy they may be, we find great satisfaction in reproducing part of Mr. Russell's editorial, with which he makes a kind of appeal to the American people.

ITALIANS LOVE LIBERTY.

Can any of you imagine a source of political danger in the Italian immigration? You would forget in such a case, that the Italians have loved liberty more and much longer than the Anglo Saxon ever did, you would forget that Garibaldi and Mazzini were of Italian blood; you would forget that when the most absolute despotism reigned in dark England, Venice and Florence were republics.

Can anyone think that we cannot absorb this race and that it could instead, outdo us and deviate our republic from its destiny? You do not know then with how much rapidity the Italians can assimilate our 3political customs; you don't know that his children crowd the public schools and are prouder than you are of their rights of American birth. You do not know and can not know that the most enthusiastic of all the Americans are the American children born of Italian parents.

THE GREATEST BLOOD IN THE WORLD.

Instead of impeding the Italian immigration, a wise and patriotic government should use every effort to encourage it; we are in need of all this immigration, because the Italian blood is the greatest blood in the world. Consider what it has been in history! Of this blood was the race which, on the point of the javelin drove civilization into the brains of barbarous Europe. From this blood came to us the first idea of order, or justice of organized society and art. When your ancestors were savages, immersed in the darkness of barbarism, in the solitude of Northern Europe, the people of this blood were building the Pantheons and wrote the codes of justice. When the idea of the Anglo-Saxon life was limited to a pirate boat and to one undefended city to be burnt, the savants of this blood discovered and saved precious manuscripts and Dante composed his immortal poem.

For 1700 years since the birth of Christ, the measure of civilization of any tribe of Europe was the proportion of the Latin blood which flowed in its veins, was the extension of learning drunk from the fountains of Italian knowledge.

Should we exclude this blood from our shores? We, whose artistic instincts are stereotyped in the complicated horrors of the enbankments of the Thames and in the indescribable, foggy obscurity of a street of London? We, who are trying to embellish our cities with buildings of 30 or 40 stories?

BLESS EVERY STEAMER CROWDED WITH ITALIANS.

No, if you are wise thank heaven for every steamer which arrives here crowded with Italians and pray for always, more to come. This is the blood which will always make impossible the monstrous and bloody phanthom of an Anglo-Saxon alliance; this is the blood which will make of America of the future the home of gold dug from the earth.

What will this race be when the Anglo-Saxon tediousness and pertinacity 5will be illuminated and smoothened by the Italian sentiment of beauty? Never in history of the world has there been similar probability of success for such a race so free-minded, so enlightened, so progressive, so productive in art and every form of human energy, and we can rest assured that for the future of our nation, the more Latin element we will have with us, the higher and more elevated will be the final American type.

Charles E. Russell