It is represented that our citizens of German extraction are hostile to the bill. A German steamship company is hostile.. I think our fellowcitizens of German extraction who are not in the least affected by the bill as immigrants have yet to show their T hostility. I have the petitions of a half dozen labor organizations of New York. every member of which is of German birth or nationality. and they have unanimously asked for the passage of the bill and sometimes for much severer measures. Mr. President. those of us who have been studying this question. as the Senator from New Hampshire and I at least have done for the last eight or ten years. have tried to bring forward a measure which would commend itself to the good sense and to the humanity of the people of the United States in mitigating a great and pressing evil. We have been urged to put on a heavy capitation taxa rough. indiscriminate method of restriction which we have put aside. Demands with which many of us have sympathized have been pressed.upon us with a view to get us absolutely to limit immigration to 50.000 or 100.000. Those petitions are on your table today. Some ask for absolute prohibition. Some ask for a limitation to 100.000 or 50.000. They come from organized labor. but unorganized labor feels the same way. Workingmen have awakened to the plain fact that every additional immigrant is another competitor in the terribly overcrowded ranks of the unemployed. We have sought to get a test which should be fair and which should not only restrict but should also sift and discriminate. It was one of the early settlers of this country. from which this great nation of States has grown. who said. "God sifted a whole nation to plant these colonies in the wilderness." Surely it is not too much to sift now the hordes that pour out of every European steamship unsifted. uncounted. unchecked. into the great port of New York.
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immigrants immigration immigrant