Speech #580034256

Mr. Chairman. with ten years experience in service in this House I have formed the judgment that the best service a man can render this body and the people atlarge is to confine his efforts very largely to the work that comes before the committees to which he has been assigned and try to inform himself on those subjects and then to lay the result of his labors and whatever information he may have gained before this House for the benefit of his colleagues. It has been my lot to serve for some years on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and on the Committee on Immigration. In the last Congress two bills of great importance affecting the welfare of our country were laid before those two committees. the Chineseexclusion act before the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the immigration act before the Committee on Immigration. For several weeks we sat in the Committee on Foreign Affairs and heard the fears expressed by people on the Pacific coast in relation to the yellow peril. We heard from the various labor organizations that there was no fair competition between the Mongolian and the workingmen of this country. On the other side we heard the protests of the housekeeper and fruit grower and agriculturist. saying that it was impossible to secure adequate labor with which to run their works .and gather their crops. We formed a bill after mature deliberation which passed through this House and which I think represented the treatment in the fairest way of all the conflicting interests on the Pacific coast of our country. and I regret to say that that bill failed of passage in the Senate. but. Mr. Chairman. in regard to the bill on immigration. and from the information that was submitted to our committee by those who appeared before it. in my judgment there is a greater peril to our country than that which threatens it from the East. The Mongolian may come into our country. but he does not assimilate with our people. he does not have any social or moral influence in this country. because. being a race apart. that communism will not exist with which those influences will have force. But. Mr. Chairman. there is a tide of immigration pouring into our country which is increasing at a rate that. unless your attention happened to have been called to it. would not strike the ordinary observer. It was the facts. Mr. Chairman. which were laid before our committee during the consideration of the immigration bill that called my attention so strongly to this evil which exists on the Atlantic coast. In the present year that has just passed 1.000.000 of immigrants entered the ports of the United States. twothirds of those came from southern Europe. Those who come from southern Europe as a class are not desirable immigrants. and yet that is a section that furnishes twothirds of those who come into our ports. Why are these immigrants not desirable? I insert a table from the report of the CommissionerGeneral for the year ended June 30. 100o. which bears on this subject strongly. Report of aliens arrived and debarred at the ports of United States and Canada for the year ending June 30. 1903.