We have taken the man burdened with a large family. who could not take them far west. we have taken the man who had just merely enough. just practically enough. to get to us and stay there. and out of him and out of his descendants we have made American citizens. What is this question of money alongside of good citizens? [Loud applause.] In the city of New York alone we spend $27.000.000 a year for education in our public schools. and if we need more we will spend more. The State of New York. in her entire school system. is spendIng between $40.000.000 and $50.000.000. and the city of New York. burdened as they say by foreign immigration. contributes $125.000 a year under our State system of taxation to send money into the school districts up the State. where they have not a large number of foreignborn. as we have. and the foreignborn are helping stand the burden of the education of nativeborn children in the rural districts. And those rural districts are maintaining education nobly. They were assessing themselves as high as $25 on the thousand in the rural districts of New York so that every child in the Empire State could have an education. Personally I wish to make this point: Immigration has not hurt us. I am not now talking about restriction. I am not now talking about selection. I am talking about the facts of the past and what immigration has done for us and the way it has built us up. The late Senator Hoar truly said : For many years a large majority of the people of the city of New York were of foreign birth or parentage. But how wonderfully most of these have grown in the elements of good citizenship and of Ihonorable manhood. and how wonderfully their sisters and daughters have grown in the elements of womanhood.
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