Speech #510217058

NETTLETON. Acting Secretary. Not only has the immigrant tax been sufficient at the present rate to pay all the legitimate expenses it was designed to meet. but at the date of the last report of the Secretary of the Treasury there was a surplus arising from this source of over $139.000. I submit. sir. that any increase in this tax would seem to be unnecessary and in the direction of a restriction of possibly desirable immigration. Let me be clearly understood in the position I take with reference to this whole immigration problem. I am absolutely opposed to unlimited. unrestricted immigration. I am very earnestly in favor of the strict entorcement of the alien contract labor law. I most sincerely advocate the exclusion of all classes of immigrants inhibited by the bill under discussion and which I have specifically mentioned. While I favor most strongly these necessary and proper checks to the landing upon our shores of these inhibited classes. I ask that no bar be placed in the way of proper and desirable immigration. Doctrinaires may make insistence that skilled workmen constitute about the only class of immigrants desired in this country. I hold. sir. as the result of the investigation I have been able to give to the matter. that the class of people most to be desired are agricultural laborers. The new South wants this class of people and the limitless West makes demand for this kind of labor. Only a few days ago a convention of farseeing and intelligentmen representing Southern and Southwestern interests was held for the purpose of taking action upon this important matter and to devise means for turning the tide of immigration toward these sections. Ours is not the only country where this kind of labor is needed. The South American states have offered large bounties to secure the immigration from abroad of this class of people. and have freely offered sections of irrigated lands to those who would develop and cultivate them. The Government of Italy has made direct but futile efforts to check the emigration of its people to America. It is not perhaps too much to say that all Europe views with displeasure if not with alarm the emigration of desirable elements among its peoples to this country. I will not undertake to strengthen the suggestion of arecent essayist that the measure of the value to us of this immigration can be estimated by the extent of this agitation abroad. I simply state the proposition in this connection as what may be regarded as almost an admitted fact. Two hundred and seventy years ago a sturdy band of voyagers landed at Plymouth. These were "immigrants." who sought for consciences sake an asylum here. They brought with them little other than strong arms and stout hearts. and a faith firmer even than the flinty rock on which they landed. What did these. the first Immigrants from abroad? One of the earliest. perhaps the very earliest. of the New England chroniclers. has quaintly said: After God had carried us safe to Now England. and we had builded our houses. erected appropriate edifices for Gods worship. and settled the civil government. the next thing we longed for was to advance learning and to perpetuate it to posterity. Through earnest effort learning was advancedit was perpetuated. and today. standing side by side this whole land over. the free church and the free schoolhouse are the outward and physical symbols of the nations progress. This progress has overthrown narrow intolerance. it has swept away provincial prejudice. The first English immigrants brought to us the lessons of an older civilization. The Irish carried in their hearts elements of patriotism that placed them at once among the best lovers of our common land. The Germans. the Scotch. and the Swedes bore with them to these shores all the characteristics of thrift and industry and stability.