Speech #500114292

The surest way to secure the loyalty of our adopted citizens is to attach them to the soil. Our foreignborn citizens in country homes have at all ties proved themselves peaceful. lawabiding. and patriotic. and loyal to our institutions and laws. In this bill you say to the immigrant: You may immediately upon your arrival. provided you will only declare your intention to become a citizen of the United States. enter lands anywhere within the public domain. and thus lay the foundation for a happy. prosperous home for yourself and family. but if you wend your way to rich Oklahoma you must remain a hewer of wood and drawer of water for a perod of two years. If this is the right policy as to this Territory. why should it not be equally applied to all public lands? Take the immigration of the last two years as a basis and apply this policy generally to our public lands. and you add to our wageworking population a million people. nearly half of whom are males between the ages of fifteen and forty years. the very time of life when every inducement should be extended to them to secure independent homes. Our total immigration for the year ending June 30. 1887. was 490.109. and of these 227.284"were males between fifteen and forty years. During the year ending June 30. 1888. the tolal number of immigrants exceeded that of the previous yearby about 50.000. With the labor question fast pressing upon us is it not the wise thing to keep open this safetyvalve. and not by the very force of this proposed legislation make the acquisition of homes more difficult? Ifyou carry this proposition to its legitimate results you will. as I have said. with our present rate of immigration. add to the already crowding. jostling ranks of wageworkers a million people. The tendency of this must necessarily be to make the relations between the employ6 and employer still more strained. and to increase the present difficulties and jealousies between labor and capital. Do not understand me as favoring alien ownership of lands. I do not. I believe no immigrant not fit for citizenship should be permitted to enter our ports. Those who have entered under proper restrictions. and who have declared their intention to become citizens. should stand the equal of every other citizen before the law as to property rights and the pursuit of happiness. Having adopted this couutry as their own they are as much concerned in its welfare and prosperity and the country is as much concerned in them as if their forefathers had landed on Plymouth rock from the Mayflower.