Speech #570065102

It does not aim to prevent the incursion of the hordes that ahnually come to this country for the purpose of temporarily engaging in mining. working in the lumber camps. and manufactories. and in railroad construction. intending to return to their own country when they have saved a small competence. It does not pretend to prohibit or prevent the addition of these hundreds and thousands of stalwart. ablebodied laborers to the number already at work in this country. Its enactment would not prevent the owners ofour coal mines from populating the regions in which they are located with classes of alien laborers socially unfit for citizenship. who care nothing about citizenship. and are therefore essentially disqualified from becoming Americans. Its enactment would not put an end to the systematic promotion of undesirable immigration by the steamship companies. As for the provision forbidding the owners of the transAtlantic lines from thus promoting undesirable immigration we all know it will not have a feathers weight in preventing the evil practice. As long as the law tolerates the addition of undesirable alien laborers to the laboring classes already here. the steamship companies will continue to promote the business they have heretofore fostered so carefully. When this bill shall become a law (if it does become a law). how easy it will be for the Congress responsible for it to claim credit for the passage of a more stringent immigration law? From the beginning of this controversy down to this hour the demand of the workers in this country has been that the stalwart 6foot laborer. capable of competing in the labor market with those already toiling for a living herenot the organ grinder or the beggarshall be excluded. No effort has been made to meet this demand.