ASSIMILATION AND PROGRESS 331 
country to which it comes, a feeling of hostility grow 
ing out of race prejudice is likely to be roused. Such 
has been the feeling on the western coast of the United 
States against the Chinese, Japanese and Hindus, ow 
ing to the very decided difference in personal charac 
teristics and in habits of living of these people, entirely 
aside from the question of their influence on wages 
and the welfare of the wage-earning classes. 
desirable to exclude those who can not be 
ASSIMILATED 
Such a feeling is natural, altho, of course, one can 
not justify race prejudice as such. The coming in of 
People who will not be assimilated creates discord and 
makes separate classes or castes in a community. 
Usually this process does not tend toward an im 
provement of political institutions, but rather toward 
their deterioration, entirely aside from the question 
as to whether the immigrants were lower or higher 
m the scale of civilization. If the newcomers are so 
different that they can not be adapted to the condi 
tions prevailing in the country to which they have 
come, they inevitably produce discord, even tho their 
habits are fundamentally no worse, either politically 
Dr morally, than those of the people with whom they 
are brought into contact. Of course, if they were 
powerful enough so that they could promptly mold 
the institutions of the new type into harmony with 
their ideas, the situation would be different, but such 
a state of affairs has not arisen and will not arise 
with any group of immigrants in this country. It 
may, therefore, be assumed that the immigrant who 
can not be adjusted with a reasonable degree of readi 
ness to the customs and institutions of his adopted