Speech #600089349

Of this number. 205 died. This indicates a state of affairs which surely ought to be remedied before 1909. and I respectfully urge that such steps as may be deemed necessary to hasten the going into effect of this humane provision of law may be given the fullest consideration of the Bureau. We concede that the amendments put on this bill by the House Committee on Immigration make it a great improvement on the Senate bill. and in some respects Is probably an improvement on section 42. but fearing the result of an effort to pass this bill through the House. even as amended. may put us back in the clutches of the steamship companies. we believe it dangerous to try to pass the bill through the House even as amended. We know what are frequently the results of the deliberations of conference committees. and we believe that imperfect as section 42 is. we had better give it a fair trial than to begin to change It without knowing where we will land. Should we go back to tile Senate bill. the conditions referred to by Commissioner Watchorn will be reinstated. the steamship companies will continue their cruelties to helpless Immigrants Who fall Into their hands. This Is not a question of restriction. for the steamship companies will conform rather than lose the price the passage of the immigrant. but It is a question of forcing these heartless corporations to have greater care for the lives of those who can not protect themselves against their greed. If through conference or otherwise the steamship companies accomplish their wicked purpose. we are not responsible for the results and here serve notice on our colleagues on the committee who voted to report this bill and on our colleagues of the House who vote for Its passage that on your hands and not ours will be the evil results of those who suffer by It. I also desire to include in my remarks the following statement from a gentleman whom I purposely sent to Baltimore only last Sunday to examine one of these boats and which I have not time to read: Yesterday an opportunity presented itself. of which I have availed myself. in seeing with my own eyes the steerage compartments of an oceangoing liner. This opportunity I have long sought. principally for the purpose of ascertaining the truth of the pitiful stories which I have had related to me by hundreds of alien immigrants who have crossed the Atlantic as steerage passengerstales of great hardship. sickness. and misery while confined in the steerage. The absolute truth of these stories of sufferings was proven to my complete satisfaction on my visit to one of the many liners which arrived last Wednesday. at the immigration station at Baltimore. Kid. Upon my entrance to the steerage compartment. I was silently greeted with a stench that was nauseating in the extreme. very much like that emitted from a decomposing carcass. Upon investigation I found that the lavatories. reeking with accumulated filth. the wooden floors being thoroughly saturated with excrement. were In no small way responsible for the putridity.