Speech #590091401

And they and their children have the right to expect the Government. which they support. love. and help to maintain. to do all in its power to add to their opportunities in life. to increase their chances of earning a livelihood and to make life happy and congenial rather than to put stumbling blocks in their path. Anything that tends to put them in competition with a degraded class. or with others who. by reason of their lack of thrift and desire for respectability and decency. can exist under circumstances and conditions not conducive to the public good. would be little short of criminal. For the majority of these immigrants that come to our country and compete with our honest laboring people are those who. in their native land. receive what would be equivalent in our money to not more than 25 to 50 cents for a days work of twelve or fourteen hours. When they gee either by the public press or by letters from this country that our laborers for ten hours work are receiving from $1.50 to $2 a day for ordinary labor. the mighty rush sets in. and they are willing to Immigrate here and work for a dollar per day. which is a great injustice to our home people. I have stood upon the dock at Naples. Italy. and seen as many as three large oceangoing steamers leave with emigrants for America. not one of whom could speak our language. who had only as much of this worlds goods as could be carried in an ordinary gunny sack. and who bore upon their countenances every indication of dissipation. What is true in this regard of the immigrants from Naples is equally true of many other ports. They are made up of the very lowest classes of other countries. Mr. President. I do not mean to say that all immigrants are of this class. but I do unhesitatingly state that a very great majority of them are. The time has come for us to enact laws not only to protect our own citizens from such conditions. but that will compel other countries to keep at home their disreputable subjects. which their conditions have fostered.