The fractured metaphor: When the 'open door' shifts from personal liberation to political exclusion

“ Some men are afraid of books, and some are afraid of life; some do not understand books, and some do not sympathize with, nor care to understand life. Literature is the key to the door of life for those who wish to open! There is no wall cramping the ambitions, blinding the eyes, deafening the ears of those who seek their nutriment in the spiritual messages and solemn understandings of the greatest minds of the ages. The symbol of a man walking down the street with no heart to feel, nor mind to understand the happenings about him, is the relationship between two stones. ”

“ It is the melting pot that has purified the sorrows and joys of men, since man had wit enough to know his pangs and jubilations. There is a vehicle which will bring us to a universal sympathy, if not an understanding, of our human kindred. There is a powerful tool, welded by man, with which we can awaken ourselves to an appreciation of our universe, from which we can obtain consolation in our difficulties, stimulus for our ambitions, tonic for our depressions. The medium, the cauldron, the vehicle, the tool is Literature. ”

“ These hours of poetic ecstasy make life a thing to be cherished. The sources of such ecstasy are manifold—the love of man and woman, or parent and children, religious communion with the Spirit, comradeship, work, pursuance of duty, speed, health, beauty, the joy of the builder or artist, attainment to a higher understanding, sadness, hope,—from such springs come the bubbles of the wine of life, heartening the cherished hours. Our greatest poems are those that have never been written—true experience is poetry, and experience is an open door to life. ”

“ If we consider Nature, including man, as one great spirit, we feel that those who have lost an embracing sympathy are apart from that great spirit, are drifting off into the barren deserts of bewilderment and decay. If we consider men as individual souls plotting their own destinies, we must see in those who have lost their intimate touch with the surge of their fellows' labors, and their sympathy to the power of beauty, pariahs, true outcasts, apart and alone.
How great is your appetite for life? How great is your willingness to break the shell of your prison and liquidate your heart? ”

“ It is a safe warning never to read a book because it is fashionable. Never read a book because you think it will form an engaging topic of conversation; always read because you want to derive a sincere inspiration, an enlarged point of view. Within a library is encased the soul of the past, the meaning of the present, the promise of the future. From it we derive the entire tradition of which we are inheritors, the deeper movements of which we are a part, the prophecies of the future in which we and ours will live. ”

“ The United States cannot have an open border to every illegal alien family and minor on the face of the Earth. We must have rules, we must have laws, and we must enforce those laws. The driving factor in the surge of illegal families and minors is the belief that there will be no consequence for illegal entry and no likelihood of removal or reprisal. ”

“ So, to-day one needs no prophet’s mantle to foresee that presently the world [Pg 270] will be cut up with immigration barriers which will never be levelled until the intelligent accommodation of numbers to resources has greatly equalized population-pressure all over the globe.... Dams against the color races, with spillways of course for students, merchants, and travellers, will presently enclose the white man’s world. Within this area minor dams will protect the high wages of the less prolific peoples against the surplus labor of the more prolific. ”

“ The man who buries himself in his library and exists only in the books therein is an unsocial, stagnant creature; but the one who reads as a means of attaining to a more productive life among his fellow men is the one who has gained the true riches of literature. ”

“ Bebel is an example of what the open door of opportunity will do, and he had to force the door himself. A few years ago, in a moment of reminiscent confidence, he confessed that he used to cherish as an ideal the time when he could, for once, have all the bread and butter he could eat. In America we are accustomed to this rising into power of obscure and untried men. But in Europe it is rare. European Social Democracy is an expression of the desire on the part of the people for the open highways of opportunity. ”

“ If dress is not everything in Paris, it is safe to say, at least, that a respectable exterior is indispensable to one who would escape from poverty. Now, thanks to my marquis and my coat, society was once more open to me. This was another dangerous rock, and I once more risked being shipwrecked. Pray do not think me conceited if I say that it would have been much more to my advantage in some respects, if I had been as ugly and as awkward as your friend Stangstadius. A good-looking man without means, in society as it is now constituted, will everywhere find a door open to fortune—and to shame. ”

“ To break down all the barriers which hedge us in, to open a thousand doors entering upon undiscovered countries of ambition and delight, to forget time, to forget everything but the joy of living, to experience the thrill of carrying heavy burdens and the overcoming of obstacles, all we have to do is to see the world through the eyes of the boy of ten. ”

“ Most things, to be sure, are "easier said than done," but after having found that the proper door to open is that which leads to the world of fervid expectancies, experienced by the boy, we may at least attempt to find the key that fits the lock. ”

“ It has been pointed out occasionally, as a sedative to the fears aroused by the immense immigration of the twentieth century, that while the positive immigration has increased tremendously, it has not increased at so great a rate as the population of the country. The ratio between immigration and total population was higher in the early fifties and early eighties than at any subsequent period. The assumption is that if we could successfully assimilate the immigrants of the earlier period, we certainly ought to be able to take care of those of to-day. ”

“ With our ever-increasing number of ignorant Southern European immigrants, who have come from countries where republican forms of government are practically unknown, it seems that our inherited tradition of a republican democracy will be undermined through ignorance, unless, indeed, these new citizens be given an understanding of our history and the meaning of our systems.
To-day many specious types of radicalism, that are for the most part pleasant Utopian dreams of the future, standing upon no foundation and drawing no nutriment from the past, are thundered about most seriously. ”

“ The inclination of the immigrants themselves to stick so closely to the great centers of population must be overcome. If the great crowds of foreigners that inundate these shores every year could be distributed in a sensible and logical way over all the vast uncultivated territory in which this [Pg 103] nation is so rich, we should never hear any complaint of too much immigration. No better farmers can be found anywhere than among the foreign peoples who seek America. ”

“ General Walker asserted that the shock produced on the American mind by the miserable class of immigrants in the thirties and forties, in itself, had a profoundly detrimental effect on the natural rate of reproduction. Immigration has the effect of vastly increasing congestion of population, and congestion limits its growth. Furthermore, in an average group of immigrants, the males exceed the females by more than two to one. ”

“ And no believer in the displacement theory has ever ventured to claim, as the argument requires, that if immigration were now stopped, the birthrate would again return to the old standard of 1820, or would cease to decrease somewhat. Especially of late, since the rate of increase of the native population has become much less, is the effect of continuing immigration apparent. In the decade of 1900-1910 the total population increased 16,000,000, while nearly 9,000,000 immigrants arrived. ”

“ We have opened our doors to unrestricted immigration, partly because capitalists want plenty of cheap labour, which is not a good reason; and partly because the immigrants want to come, which is not a sufficient reason. They also—despite the heart-rending conditions depicted by Miss Frances Kellor—want to stay. Those who return to the higher standards of Europe do not materially affect the situation. ”

“ But the census shows, that our wealth increases each ten years at the rate of 126.45 per cent. Now then, take our increase of wealth in consequence of immigration as before stated, and compound it at the rate of 126.45 per cent, every ten years, and the result is largely over three billions of dollars in 1870, and over seven billions of dollars in 1880, independent of the effect of any immigration succeeding 1860. If these results are astonishing, we must remember that immigration here is augmented population, and that it is population and labor that create wealth. ”

“ It is quite possible that emigration from Italy at the present time approaches the sudden and sweeping type sufficiently so that it may actually check the rate of increase of population.
As to the effects of the money sent home, and the returned immigrants, he finds contrary opinions, and facts on both sides of the case. Among the beneficial results of emigration he finds that wages have increased fifty per cent, so that the peasants who remain have benefited by the departure of others. ”

“ The rate of increase of population rises until the drain of emigration is offset, while the standard of living remains unaltered, and the total population continues virtually the same. The very fact of emigration gives a sense of hopefulness to the people, and the knowledge that there is an ever ready outlet for redundant inhabitants causes the population of the country to multiply more rapidly than it otherwise would. ”

“ In these scented, simpering units, congregated to gloat over the struggles of the victim, he recognized some part of the social system that was collected to insure finality of his doom. Escape from some deserted City church—some registry-office might be barely possible. Not here. “Gathered together here in the sight of God”—the man who had known God in the wilderness dared not follow the thought—“and in the face of this congregation.”
He felt his sleeve plucked. His best man was speaking. Part of the flickering smile was concentrated on his grinning lips. “Buck up! She's overdue. ”

“ What kept him? While the door was Still open? Merely the shell of an empty convention, homage to the precedent of the stereotyped. While a man might protect itself from the menace of death, he was forbidden—if the formalities be infringed—to protect himself from the sacrifice of his life.
The bride drew nearer in her stately advance. It was the culminating moment of her life; it marked the apex of achievement.
Collier stared at her, with the cold speculative eyes of one stranger who challenges another. ”

“ For, as the bridal procession drew nearer, Collier stared at her with hypnotized fascination. At last he knew her—as she really was. For he saw that the face of Laura was, in miniature, the replica of the gigantic face of the congregation—inhuman—artificial—appalling.
It was the quintessence of realization. Like a wild creature, enslaved in the snare, he strove impotently to escape. Something, older than Adam, freer than the wind, blinder than instinct, raged within him. Even now—even while the bride advanced—it was not too late. ”

“ As my mind steadied, getting accustomed (as one’s mind gets accustomed to anything) , it seemed to me as if some uneasy, miserable creature was pacing up and down before a closed door. Sometimes—but that must have been excitement—I thought I heard a sound like knocking, and then another burst, “Oh, mother! mother!” All this close, close to the space where I was standing with my lantern, now before me, now behind me: a creature restless, unhappy, moaning, crying, before the vacant door-way, which no one could either shut or open more. ”

“ The man who vows that he will never cross the threshold of some particular door must be either very foolish or very proud, or incapable of discerning that the swift turns of life bring us in front of those portals—open them—and push us in ”

“ After one good look the public might change suspicion to sympathy.
There was always the argument from the conventionally minded that “it isn’t done,” that diplomacy must be secret. John Hay didn’t think so. He told his friend Henry Adams in the course of his efforts to establish the “open door” in China that he got on by being “honest and naïf!”
The point in this policy at which most people, in and out of the present Conference, would stick is that word “naïf.” They would prefer to be thought dishonest rather than simple-minded. ”

“ I believe that civilization is not only the natural destiny of man, but the enfranchisement, elevation, and refinement of all his powers, and think that it is only in such moods as may lead him to envy the cud-chewing cattle, that a man who is free to the advantages of civilization could look with regret upon the savage state. But, nevertheless, I think no one who will open his eyes to the facts can resist the conclusion that there are in the heart of our civilization large classes with whom the veriest savage could not afford to exchange. ”

“ Humanity meant far more to her than art: she began her literary career by describing facts as she knew them: critics drove her to examine their causes, and so she gradually changed from the chronicler with strong sympathies to the interpreter with a reasoned philosophy. She discovered that a great deal of the suffering in this world is due, not so much to original sin, but to a kind of original stupidity, an unimaginative, stubborn stupidity. People were dishonest because they believed, wrongly, that dishonesty was somehow successful. ”