Speech #470040966

They seldon if ever renounce their allegiance to their own country. but having accumulated what money they can. they expect to return there to die. Hence. I say. there is no asnalogy whatever between the ordinary immigration that we invite and welcome to our shores and that which the bill now before the House seeks to repress. and the attempts of gentlemen to confound are entirely misleading and I think inconsistent. One comes to adapt itself to our institutions and our civilization. the other brings with it its own institutions and its own civilization. and while we invite an immigration that adapts itself to our own civilization. we do not necessarily invite another that adheres to its own soonbarbarous civilization. The leopard does not change its spots. neither has the Mongolian race in the long centuries changed its characteristics. It is today what it was before and since the Christian era. Instead of having been affected by the influences and teachings of the Christian religion and the high civilization that has followed it everywhere. it has driven Christianity from its very birthplace. and no where in all the Mongolian world does it today find a resting place. and yet we are invited under the inspiration of a morbid sentimentalism to open wide our doors to a. race of people who have not now and never have had the first sentiment or impulse in common with our own Christian civilization. which has developed its highest type and found its fullest fruition under our Government and our free institutions. Holding as I do these views. I feel that it is not only a proper exercise of power but the imperative duty of this Government to restrict in every reasonable way the class of immigration that this bill is intended to reach. and to take all necessary precautions to prevent this land of ours from being overrun with a race of people who will inevitably bring with them that greatest of all calamities. the degradation of labor. During the entire existence of our Government we have been taught to look with apprehension upon anything that would tend to degrade the intelligent laboring class of this country. that has no counterpart on the face of the globe. and which ever has been and is now the sheetanchor of our republican Government and institutions. I was bred and educated in the political school of protection to American industries. and one of the strongest arguments in favor of a policy that has developed and enriched our country to so wonderfill an extent none addressed itself to my judgment and conscience so strongly as that whish was adduced in favorof protecting our own labor against the competition of the pauper labor of the old world. And yet we are expected to invite. or to at least tolerate. a cheap. degrading labor. with which the pauper labor of Europe can bear no comparison. We are invited to permit the degradation not only of the labor of the manufactures of New Englnd and the iron industries of Pennsylvania. which we have been called upon to protect against the pauper labor of Europe. buttthe labor of the entire country. We have already permitted this to be done to a great extent in the States on the Pacific slope. and are now asked to place no barriers to prevent its extension over all parts of the country. Cheap labor has. or may seen to have. its attractions and fnscinations.