Speech #540077645

President -of Harvard University. has bee. good enough to say: I believe every healthy and honest man. woman. or child brought into this country to be ai altogether desirable addition to the resources of the United States. Consequently. I think that immigration should not be restricted. dicept by rules intended to keep out paupers. criminals. and persons afflicted with incurable or contagious diseases. As to the contractlabor law. it seems to me a stupid piece of demagogic barbarism. More laborers. skilled and unskilled. are just what this halfoccupied continent needs. Mr. Edward Atkinson. -whose writings on economic questions are well known. in an article the drift of which will be gathered from its title. "Incalculable room for immigrants." says: It seems almost pusillanimous to refuse a refuge to the oppressed and to the industrious and capable for fear the institutions of this country may suffer. If we can not deal with onehalf of this great continent. of which the resources are as yet hardly even known. will not this prove that our capacity is not yet equal to our opportunities? These labor organizations. therefore. do not favor any such proposed restrictive and prohibitive legislation as proposed by this ill. or a consular inspection. or a high head money tax. They. although subjected to the competition of new labor forces. have no voice to raise against the admission of alien immigration. This law has been strenuously enforced ever since its enactment. and the good effects of it are discernible each year in the diminishing number of immigrants coming to our shores. By this bill it is proposed to make a new class of excluded immigrants. adding to those who have just been named "the totally ignorant." Paupers. diseased persons. convicts. and contract laborers are already excluded. Three of this class. paupers. diseased persons. and convicts. of course we do not want and will not have under any circumstances. The bill excluding contract laborers has excluded the best of the class of immigrants who would come to this country. the skilled laborers. Whether this is wise it is not my purpose now to consider. Now we propose to exclude the next best class of laborers under the educational test. It is not the learned and the refined. it is not the doctors. lawyers. and professional men. whom we look for in the immigrant ship. nor yet the dilettante of the youth of southern Italy. who frequent the Olympic games. or. breathing fresh perfume from their curly locks. with their lily fingers pat the red brawn of the gladiators in the arena and bet their sesterces upon their head. but we do want the strong. cleanlimbed. ruddychecked. vigorous. young. and healthful toilers who are willing and able to carve out with their own good right hands the way to fortune and to favor in the land of their adoption. Uneducated they may be. not able to read or write in their own tongue or in that of any other. but not bad hearted. poor in purse. but not paupers. We will educate these immigrants when they get here. We will find the task less difficult to make a homogeneous mass of these people. adapting them to our customs and to our purposes. than if they had preconceived notions from the education which they had received abroad. We do not want them partial to the learning and culture of Europe.