AldrichTB

The consensus reading is that this is Aldrich’s list of undesirable immigrants, of peoples he wishes to exclude from the United States.  It may be significant that he does not mention Africans, but this may cut more ways than one.  He includes groups, such Celts and Chinese, already on popular lists of undesirable immigrants, and such as Russians and Slavs, who would begin to appear among the undesirables as the Immigration Restriction League (founded in 1894) began to develop and bring forward legislative proposals.

http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/u-rel/aldrich-gates-rd.html

Ewig ist die Klage, vorgetragen von den Söhnen der Einwanderer, wie furchtbar doch die Einwanderer seien, die ins Land strömen. Ich hörte sie von polnischstämmigen Deutschen über die Türken und eine Generation später von türkischstämmigen Deutschen über Rumänen und Bulgaren.

  However, Aldrich also includes Teutons on his list, the one group virtually every New Englander and many other Americans agreed was the foundational American race.  Teutons comprise all speakers of Teutonic languages, including English. Tim Prchal recognizes that this is a problem.  If Aldrich is offering a list of races to be excluded from future immigration because at least some of them have unknown gods and rites and tiger passions that are destructive of American ideals, why does he include Teutons on this list?  Prchal’s solution is that Aldrich must want to end all immigration, to close the United States to all but the native born (41-2).  While this conclusion is possible, the more reasonable explanation is that Aldrich means that representatives of all of these peoples have flown from „the Old World’s poverty and scorn“ and have sought out „the later Eden.“ Therefore, he counsels the „white Goddess“ to take in all of them: „On thy breast / Fold Sorrow’s children, soothe the hurts of fate, / Lift the down-trodden.“  His grammar seems to make clear that he means literally what he says, that all immigrants, whatever their origins, who share these American ideals should be taken into the arms of the white goddess.  comes to welcoming and comforting „your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,“ the two poems are in basic agreement.

http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/u-rel/aldrich-gates-rd.html

that all immigrants, whatever their origins, who share these American ideals should be taken into the arms of the white goddess

 

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