Chairman. I am one of many who believe that section 38 is the most important provision in this bill. Many men who have given much thought and study to this subject have become impressed with the truth that theconditions of immigration to this country are very different from what they were twenty years ago. The immigrants that make the great tide that is yearly flowing here are different. and the conditions in our own country are very different. Therefore the problem is totally unlike what it was fifty or seventyfive years ago. or even twenty years ago. As the gentleman from Massachusetts has quoted from the Hartford convention. we will go back that far. The problem is even more different from that of ninety years ago. Indeed. there was no immigration problem then. In the first place. we have now very little wild lands to be settled by the immigrants from Europe. and in the second place the Immigrants that are coming to this country today are not generally- the class that have come in the past. that go to Texas or to any other place in the South or in the North to settle on the vacant lands or meet the demand for farm labor. but they are the class that settle mostly in the large cities. who go into the slums already too full and help to fill them still fuller. the class that feed the sweat shops in the great cities. If you will study the immigration statistics you can not help being impressed with the fact that the increase of immigration is not going into the country. but is constantly augmenting the already large element that is not desirable in the great cities. You will find that 60 per cent of the immigration of last year went to the five great States containing the great cities. I have no fault to find with the statement of the gentleman from Texas that Texas today needs 200.000 laborers. but the gentleman must be cognizant of the fact that the laborers who are now coming here are not going to Texas. Texas is getting none of the increase in the immigration of this year. although there will probably be an increase of 150.000 over last year. Neither is any other agricultural State getting any of this increase. Now. the question is. What class of laborers. what class of immigrants. do we desire? Is it desirable by some process to sift them. admitting only the best. or shall we keep the gates wide open? If it is desirable to sift them. then what method shall we pursue?
Identified stereotypes
Immigrants are described as settling in slums, feeding sweatshops, and being generally undesirable.