Immigration

Picture
In Jordan's 1907 commencement ceremony address at Stanford, he expressed concern over the recent trend in immigration. He feared that the "beaten men of the beaten races" were entering the US by the hundreds and bemoaned that they were leading the nation down a path of increased corruption and crime.  In this speech, he refused to believe that personal cause or environment formed the etiological roots of this immigrant pauper stock. Rather he believed that their pauperism could be traced back to inferior genetics (#1 p. 72). While Jordan's humanitarian idealism prevented him from advocating the imposition of barriers against foreign immigrants, his less public opinions revealed stronger tendencies of ethnically specific discrimination. In a private letter, he wrote that "the Irish, the Greeks, the South Italians and the Polish Jews contain largely elements permanently deficient in the best traits we hope for America, but the trait which is least desirable of all is the one we never hear spoken of, that is, these people as a whole are temperamental." He argued that the US republic could only be successful to the degree in which its men express self-control and are governed by their minds rather than their emotions (#1 p. 74).

Not only did Jordan express concern towards pauperism and corruption, but he also was concerned about immigrants and their potentially hazardous, democracy-undermining characteristics. He emphasized that the United States must be built on people with sound heredity. For Jordan, a  "good citizen is one who can take care of himself, and who can rear his family without  overreaching--without demanding special privileges or special support" (#2 p. 47).  In addition to not burdening the government's social and financial resources, Jordan believed the ideal immigrant included people who were skilled laborers and subscribers to capitalism and democracy. Particularly, in terms of capitalism and democracy, Jordan feared that a bad stock of immigrants would corrupt the tenets of the US governing and economic system. He feared that immigrants would introduce class consciousness (distinctions between aristocracy, bourgeois, and proletariat) that would corrupt the egalitarian nature of the US democracy.  In his own words, he contended that "a democracy can know no class consciousness, no class spirit, no class legislation" (#2 p. 47). He believed that in the United States there did not exist "high nor low" citizens but just plain citizens. Not only did he fear social disruption but also immigration's deleterious effects on a democracy as a governing system. First, he believed the United States' admission of the unhealthy into the country would create a tyranny because the tyrant seizes control in nations in which "men are not masters of their own fate" (#2 p.48). Second, he feared that immigrants would try to nudge the United States towards a socialist system in order to cure economic ills.