434 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

or ‘‘Hole-in-the-Wall,”” as it is called on this side of the boundary. A prominent
 citizen of the city informed me that in this place one will generally find
some of the “industrious” American farmers of the vicinity busily furnishing
more work for Mexican brewers and distillers, while they are shouting their
heads off for more ‘‘cheap Mexican labor’ to keep their crops from going to ruin.
Now, Mexico has the right to say who shall enter and who shall not and the
conditions under which aliens may come into her territory. She has the right
to restrict and even exclude foreigners if she so desires. She may take such
action as she deems essential to her domestic welfare. From what has been stated
it is evident she is taking such action. Nor has all the story been told. In view
of these facts, what becomes of the claim that international good will between
the two countries will be destroyed if we restrict Mexican immigration numerically?
 In taking such action would not the United- States be doing just what
Mexico is endeavoring to do?
The entire press of Mexico for years has stressed the bad and inhumane treatment
 extended to Mexicans in the United States and preached to the people
not to come here, but now that restriction of such immigration seems inevitable
they are all up in arms and indignant about it. That they have been somewhat
successful in arousing some sentiment and fears is evident from the fact that one
can find a few persons in this country who really feel that an assumed good will
would be destroyed by such legislation. Theirs is but another sob story designed
to hide the real problem. Either a woeful misunderstanding of the facts or else
an unwillingness to give up profits resulting from the exploitation of these Mexicans
 will usually explain the real cause for this great concern over international
good will. Indeed, a critical study of the causes of the enthusiasm of such zealots
of international good will is illuminating for it is generally true that an analysis
of .the motives of those opposed to restriction of immigration is in itself overwhelming
 evidence of the necessity of such restriction. Certainly this seems to
be true of the vast majority of those who wish to give up our birthright for a
dish of Mexican porridge.
Nor has Mexico been content with her efforts to conserve her own resources:
and territory for her native born. Through peaceful invasion she has slowly
but surely acquired control of the country north of the Rio Grande. Indeed,
her control has become so powerful that she has vast American industries by
the throat and she is in a position to strangle them to death and to hurl them
into financial ruin, if their claims be true, so essentially do these industries
depend on Mexicans to perform the tasks necessary to production. Railways,
mines, trucking interests, fruit and beet-sugar growers, and cotton farmers
are—if we are to accept their own statements—helplessly in the grip of Mexico's
peaceful invasion—a recession of which, it is claimed, would bankrupt the
Southwest. The mere fact that these industries claim to be absolutely dependent
on menial labor from Mexico seems to be sufficient proof of the existence of
social and economic conditions that have become dangerous to our own national
welfare, for do not the interests making such claims thereby admit that their
section of the United States has become thoroughly Mexicanized? Does it not
follow from their assertions that their economic status is dependent on the
powers that be in Mexico? What would happen to these “American” industries
if Mexico should put in force a law already on her statute books which gives
the national Government the power to prohibit the emigration of Mexicans
into the United States? Do not the facts seem to indicate that Mexico proposes
to do this very thing at the psychological time? From whatever angle one
approaches the problem to-day it is evident that Mexico intends to put her
own national welfare above all else. Can we do less? That there are persons
willing for us to do less is evident from the following statement made before
the Commonwealth Club of California by a prominent official of the Southern
Pacific Co., which claims that it needs Mexicans for track work:
‘‘And so without hesitancy and without fear let us reach across the Mexican
border, take hold of this man struggling to rise and come into the sunlight of
liberty, and say ‘come on over and help us and in the helping, help yourself, and if
in the ages to come you become the dominant race, we will accept the verdict—the
survival of the fittest’ * * * Natural selection will cause the purer blood
to rise to the top and the impure and defective disappear, the resulting race thus.
becoming a complex of the best of all.”
Here, indeed, is an optimism unwarranted by the records of human history.
One is justified in asking such questions as these: Fit for what? How can “the
impure and defective disappear,” even through mongrelization—which seems to
have been a major cause of the downfall of every great civilization in history?