Speech #600060950

It seems easy to get legislation considered that strikes a blow at American labor. This bill strikes down the contractlabor law so far as the islands of Hawaii are concerned. This hurts in the first place the negro laborers of Louisiana who are earning wages upon the sugar plantations there by bringing into quick and easy competition with them contract laborers to raise sugar in Hawaii and to put that sugar upon the American market without any tariff between Hawaii and the United States. and. of course. in competition with these American citizens. negro laborers. in the State of Louisiana. Itis a blow. in the second place. though more remotely. at all American labor in the United States. because. notwithstanding the last wouldbe saving clause of the bill. which says. that "nothing herein contained shall be construed to admit to any part or place of the United States on the North American continent any alien who is inadmissible under the provisions of the act approved May 20. 1.07." it would be absolutely a physical impossibility after this bill once passes to prevent these people. having once been settled for a considerable length of time in Hawaii. from crossing the Pacific Ocean to the States upon the Pacific coast. So that. having raised the barrier. they would finally all come here that chose to come. The idea under this bill is to get cheap Portuguese labor in the Hawaiian Islands upon .the sugar plantations there. The very object of it is to get a cheaper labor. Now. the pretext made for it is that the law excluding contract labor is now being violated. as far as the Japanese immigrants into Hawaii are concerned. It is never sound doctrine to repeal a law. if it be a good law with regard to some. because others are violating it. If contract alien labor is entering into Hawaii. whether in the shape of Japanese. Chinese. or Europeans. the proper remedy is to enforce the law and stop it. and If the immigration commissioners now charged with that duty are not performing that duty in the Hawaiian Islands. then it isfor this Administration to replace theni with others who will perform that duty. or else for the American people to replace the Administration with an Administration that will appoint somebody who will perform the duty of executing the immigration laws. Mr. Speaker.