Let us examine the matter calmly for a moment. and look at the bill in its details and what may be effected by it. If the government of Germany or Hungary or France or any other government on the face of the earth should commit an outrage upon a citizen of the United States anywhere. a million swords would leap from their scabbards. our war ships would plow the seas with their guns shotted to the muzzle. if necessary. to avenge the wrong. But when Germany or Hungary or Italy or France or any other nation sends hither in the reeking rags of the immigrant steerage a dangerous pestilence or plague. with death and desolation upon its wings. the Government of the United States is to sit down and hang its head in shame and humiliating helplessness and say to inferior jurisdictions of State or city. "By your leave New York city. by your gracious and condescending permission Tammany Hall." the great Government of the United States will lend a hand in the protection of its own people from this invading and destroying pestilence. Mr. Chairman. let me say that the Federal Government has long enough occupied this attitude of humiliating subordination to inferior jurisdictions. and this House ought not to suffer it to continue any longer in that situation. and if it does. it is not at all unlikely that within the compass of a year this nation may repent in sackcloth and ashes its pusillanimous course of inaction.
Keywords matched
steerage immigrant