Speech #540100353

Mr. President. it seems to me that this provision ought to be confined to male immigrants. The Senator from Massachusetts in making the report from the committee gives as the basis for this legislation that the admission of . illiterate immigrants debases our citizenship and degrades our labor. Now. there are a large number of young women over the age of 14 years who come to the United States and who are engaged as domestics by the people of this country. Under the laws of the United States in regard to national suffrage they can not vote. and I take it that really at the bottom of this whole question is illiterate suffrage. - I do not see how the workmanship or the labor of a man who can not read or write debases the labor or workmanship of anybody else. If he is an industrious. temperate. and honest workman. how do6s his employment degrade any other labor in this country? We might just as well be frank with each other in discussing this question. The great objection to illiterate immigration is that it corrupts our suffrage and endangers the basis of our Government. which is the virtue and intelligence of the people. Besides that. if we look at the tables just furnished this morning by the Commissioner of Immigration in his last report. it will be found that the number of women who come into this country as immigrants is very inconsiderable compared with th6 men who come as immigrants. There are two tables in this report which show the increase or decrease of male and female immigration during the years 1895 and 1896. Those tables will be found upon page 28 of the Commissioners report. They show.* for instance.c that from Italyand I take that as the country which figures most conspicuously in this whole question. because it is from Italy that there comes the most objectionable and the largest immigrationin 18951896 there came into the United States 49.980 male immigrants. and in the same year there came 16.465 women immigrants from the same country. The number of women is very inconsiderable. and their coming into this country can neither debase our citizenship nor degrade our labor. I have said that Italy furnishes the most objectionable of these immigrants. and I call the attention of Senators to a very interesting table which I have just noticed on page 30 of this report. I have never seen the question put in so strong a light as it is by this table. For instance. from Italy there came into the United States in 18951896. 66.445 immigrants. of whom 30.728 were illiterates. and the amount of money which they brought into the United States per capita was $8.75. In immediate juxtaposition to that statement is the immigration of Germany. which stands out in the strongest contrast to that from Italy. From Germany there came into the United States in the same year 24.230 immigrants. and out of this large number there were but 410 illiterates. Each one of those immigrants brought into the United States $38.31. Nothing could put in stronger light the difference in the immigration from these two countries. This might be pursued further. because it shows that from France there comes a veiy small proportion of illiterate immigration. but the amount of immigration from France is very inconsiderable compared with that from Germany. Now. Mr. President. it seems to me that this provision ought to be confined to male immigrants. There can be no danger either to our civilization or to bur labor from allowing these girls to come into the United States whose laboris domestic in its nature. I. can coiceive of no reason. except an arbitrary one why this provision should be extended to women.