Speech #590092336

It can not therefore be said that this amendment proposes a new principle in legislation. It having four times received the emphatic indorsement of one or the other branches of Congress. The Republican national platform for the year 1896 declared in positive and emphatic terms in favor of excluding immigrants who could not read and write. I read from that platform : For the protection of the quality of our American citizenship and of the wages of our workingmen against the fatal competition of lowpriced labor. we demand that the immigration laws be thoroughly enforced. and so extended as to exclude from entrance to the United States those who can not read nor write. Not only that. Mr. President. but President McKinley. who was elected upon that platform. in his Inaugural address delivered March 4. 1897. recognized and indorsed. in the broadest and most comprehensive terms. the principle involved in this amendment. I quote from that address: Our naturalization and Immigration laws should be further improved to the constant promotion of a safe. a better. and a higher citizenship. A grave peril to the Republic would be a citizenship too ignorant to understand or too vicious to appreciate the great value and beneficence of our institutions and laws. and against all who come here to war upon them our gates must be promptly and tightly closed. Not only President McKinley. but our present Chief Executive. Mr. Roosevelt. in his message to Congress December 3. 1901. indorsed the educational test proposed in my amendment in the most positive language. Here Is what he says upon this subject: Our present Immigration laws are unsatisfactory. We need every honest and efficient Immigrant fitted to become an American citizenevery immigrant who comes here to stay. who brings here a strong body. a stout heart. a good head. and a resolute purpose to do his duty well In every way and to bring up his children as lawabiding and God fearing members of the community. But there should be a compre hensive law enacted. with the object of working a threefold Improve ment over our present system. The second objectSays President Roosevelt in this messageof a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by a careful and no merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent capacity to appre elate American institutions and act sanely as American citizens. This would not keep out all anarchists. for many of them belong to the intelligent criminal classes. But It would do what Is also in pointthat is. tend to decrease the sum of Ignorance. so potent in pro ducing the envy. suspicion. malignant passion. and hatred of order. ou of which anarchistic sentiment mentally springs.