Speech #500085459

The Chair so understood. and so put the question ing the character of our present enormous foreign immigration. It is to the House. a question that has long and grievously agitated the people of the PaXIX388 cific coast. and we are familiar with all its worst phases. If it has now become a national question. affecting the more populous East as well as the extreme West. we may reasonably hope for effective measures of relief in the protection of the whole country against this foreign invasion. On the Pacific coast we have confronted this condition of affairs relating to foreign labor for more than thirty years. during which time our laborers have been compelled to come into competition with the imported cheap and degraded labor of Asia. and yet our people have protested. and until recently. in vain against this Chinese immigration. We have shown that it does not assimilate and is not incorporated into the industrial system of the country. You are now confronted with the same condition of things arising out of an invasion from another direction. A large part of this excessive immigration into New York. it is said. consists of contract laborers or hired slaves precisely as the Chinese are brought into San Francisco. There has been an effort to restrict Chinese immigration. but the law is evaded. It is a fact that while prior to the adoption of the present law the average annual Chinese immigration into San Francisco was about eight thousand. yet under the operation of the present restriction lawit amounted last year to about eleven thousand. so that this law that was intended to be restrictive has resulted in permitting an increase of immigration of these people whose labor is sold before they leave HongKong. I am glad that this resolutionhas been brought forward. and I hope that the investigation will be thorough and cover the whole subject. including Chinese immigration to the Pacific coast. as wellas the pauper labor 1rom Europe. I hope the amendment liniting theexpense of the select committee to $3.000 will not be adopted. Let the committee cover the whole ground. so that legislation may be had as fully as the subject demands.