Speech #540082061

In the city of Chicago this first group of nationalities contribute 6.41 per cent to the total population of the city. and they have 44.44 per cent of the slum population of the city. About seven times the proportion of them live in the slums that live in the whole city. and practically everyone of them who lives in Chicago lives in the slum precincts. On the other hand. of the immigration from the United Kingdom. France. Germany. and Scandinavia 80 per cent of the total population of Chicago is made up of them. and only 10 per cent of the slum population comes from them. showing that less than onethird of the proportion of this group of immigrants live in the slums of that city. In New York about 9 per cent of the total population is from the first group of races to which I alluded. and yet 51 per cent of the slum population is their record there. while of the other group the United Kingdom. France. Germany. and Scandinavia give 31 per cent of the total population. while of the slum population they are only 8 per cent. I say theates a tistics demonstrate beyond any question whatever that the immigration that this bill would keep out congregates in the slums of our great cities. where resort those dangerous. festering. and explosive elements which more than anything else threaten the destruction of our whole social fabric. The danger of the slums was eloquently portrayed by Lord Macaulay in his speech upon "Reelection to Parliament." when he said: * * * In the very hearof great capitals. in the neighborhood of splendid palaces and churches and theaters and libraries and museums. vice and ignorance might produce a race of Huns fiercer than those who marched under Attila and of Vandals more bent on destruction than those who followed enseric. I say that the slum problem. made so formidable by the conditions to which I have referred. may yet sadly justify the prediction of Lord Macaulay that as Rome was destroyed by the Huns of the fifth century so this great Republic may be destroyed by the Huns of the twentieth century. except that the Runs of the twentieth century would come from within and be engendered by our own institutions.