SWARMS OF ASIATICS COMING TO THIS LAND

PORTLAND, Thursday, Sept. 26. Addressing a large gathering of ministers, their wives and in particular members of the Columbia River branch of the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church yesterday, Bishop James M. Thoburn, without doubt the most noted missionary in the world, declared that America will be swarming with Hindus, Chinese, Japanese and Koreans within a few years.

He made the prediction after careful deliberation, he said, and added that he regards this as indicating a world-wide movement of the nations of tremendous magnitude. He has no fears of trouble, believing it to be the will of God.

Bishop Thoburn declared he has just discovered this great fact, and explained that he regards it as the most significant movement within two or three centuries. His attention was attracted to it, he said, through the incoming of the Hindus, about whose arrival in Puget Sound ports there was recent trouble.

He said that, after visiting Seattle and talking with the Hindus in their native language, he realized that they are but the forerunners of the tens of thousands to follow, not only from India, but also from China, Japan, and Korea, to say nothing of other countries, including Europe.

"I hope no one will grow alarmed," said Bishop Thoburn, "but just as certain as anything that has already transpired in history, the Hindu, the Japanese, the Chinese and the Koreans are going to swarm to this country and we may as well try to sweep back the tides of the ocean as to try to keep them out. No matter what the rowdy element does they are coming, and whether they are a peril or not lies with us. We must either lift them up, or they will carry us down.

"I do not think the movement to this country carries any danger, for there is plenty of labor for those who come, and they are not apt to work any harm to others. It is a deep mystery to me how those Hindus who came to the Sound secured their passage, as they have to work in their native land for from 5 to 12 cents a day, and how they got the money to come here, I could not learn. They declared, however, that they were here of their own free will, and merely to better themselves."

Bishop Thoburn is one of the oldest members of the Episcopacy and has spent practically his entire life in the foreign fields, more especially India. He has circled the globe many times and has had more experience as a missionary than any living man.