Speech #550134646

It is Quixotic patriotism and can not act as a guide for American statesmanship. whose imperative duty and highest mission is to protect the interests and preserve the safety of our own people. No State or community wishes to have thrust upon it the mass of illiterate. unpatriotic. degraded. and pauper humanity which this bill is designed to exclude. Of the States replying to the inquiry of the immigration investigating committee in 1896. not one wished that kind of immigration. There is not a State from which have not come earnest expressions of a desire for this legislation. It has the active support of nearly every labor organization in the country except some of German composition. which particular class of our good foreignborn citizenship seems in some instances.and communities to be laboring under a misconception of the purpose and effect of the bill and of its own best interests. It is practically a plank in the platform of the political parties in the last general election. There is room and welcome for immigration of the right kind. The great West and Northwest. the South and Southwest. have fields of unnumbered acres inviting farmers of all the good peoples of the civilized world. Those sections are ready and anxious to welcome them.