Speech #600064556

In iS82 Russia sent 21.600. in 1905. 215.600. In 1882 it sent 3.3 per cent. in 1905. 21 per cent. This. gentlemen. gives us a comparison of the emigration from the three principal countries of northwestern Europe with the three principal countries of eastern and southern Europe. In these statements I have generally used round numbers. In 1882 eastern and southern Europe sent us 13 per cent of our entire immigration. in 1905 it sent us 79 per cent. While northwestern Europe has decreased nearly fourfold. eastern and southern Europe has increased more than tenfold. Gentlemen. can we cut ourselves loose from the dollar mark and say that the comparison bodes good for our children and the children of our people? It is said by those who differ from me that we have reached the highwater mark find that it will soon begin to recede. This has been repeated time and time ag~ain for several years. and yet we see the highwater mark rising with each year that comes. and the deplorable phase of the matter is that as the increase of the undesirable grows greater the number of the desirable grows less. CommissionerGeneral Sargent. in his last annual report. says that the average monthly arrivals of immigrants at Ellis Island alone during the last fiscal year was 93.654. equaling the total number arriving during some entire previous years. Mr. Sargent further says in this report. page 4: The immigration for the year 1907 (1.285.349) exceeded that for 1906 (1.100.735) by 184.614 and that for the year 1905 (1.026.499) by 258.850. or an increase over the year 1906 of more than 17 pei" c6nt and over the year 1905 of more than 25 per cent. This does not include the thousands who steal in surreptitiously every year. On page 74 of this report Mr. Sargent quotes from the report of a special Inspector recently detailed to make investigations in Mexico as follows: I The sum and substance of my recent Investigations In Mexico crystallizes Itself into the conviction that. taking the most conservative view. fully 15.000 aliens from Europe and Asia enter the United States annually from Mexico. The reason of the decrease of desirable Immigration often given is that conditions are so much better In the countries in northwestern Europe than they formerly were that it has given a check to inmmigration from that part of the world. To some extent this is true. but as I traveled through Scotland and Ireland. as a member of the Immigration Commission. I found the poverty and oppression of the people pitiable to see. I asked two or three intelligent young Irishmen. who were .qoming to Queenstown to board the ship on which I sailed. .fiy more of them did not come to America. and they replied. that thousands more would come every year if they could only get the money to pay steamship fare. Can we conceive of much greater poverty than that of a people thousands of whom are prevented from coming to our country because they can not raise $30 or $40 to pay steerage passage on a steamship? Yet less than 4 per cent of the adult Scotch and Irish who come to America are unable to read and write and as a rule. they make firstclass American citizens. On account of this Republican panic the number of immigrants has recently fallen off. but just as soon as times begin to improve we will see that same swarm of birds of passage again flocking to our shores. Those who have returned to their native homes within the past few months have taken millions of dollars to further the hard conditions already existing here. Mr. Chairman. is this great increase from the healthy and the intelligent? One extract from the annual report of the ConmnissionerGeneral of Immigration for 1900 will answer that. On page 7 of that report he says: The constant increase of the number of aliens afflicted with contagious diseases. insanity. and idiocy is significant. In my investigations ill Europe I visited a number of emigrant boarding houses at one of the ports through which iany of them pass. There were a large number of Syrians in these houses waiting to ship for America. They were about the dirtiest lot that I saw on my trip.