Speech #610096965

But back to the joy rides. They had a carriage to the castles at Edinburgh. a carriage to Westminster Abbey. a carriage to the Tower of London. a cab to Regent Square. and a cab to the British Museum. I wonder if they were trying to investigate immigration conditions in Westminster Abbey or in the British Museum. In Siracusa we find "a carriage ride to the catacombs." Mr. Chairman. a place that is filled with dead mens bones which are decaying hour by hour and the stench that arises from them. if long endured. will produce certain death. Yet the commission was investigating immigration conditions among those dead bones that are giving forth such a stench that would ordinarily drive a hyena to his hole: Ah. do you think. sir. that the commission was in an honest discharge of its duties in the matter of investigating immigration conditions when its members were taking these joy rides? No man who has a reverence for the truth will insist that they were. But. 0 Mr. Chairman. there are so many things here that can be shown by the records. and I will say. in passing. that I have introduced a resolution calling for an investigation of the expenditures of this commission that took $90.000 with them when they went upon the European trip. only $20.675 of which has been accounted for in their reports. We would like to know what became of the balance of that $90.000. and we would like to know the nature of the many other extravagant expenditures that have been made by the commission. $667.992.67 spent. and nothing to show for it except four or five little reports that do not amount to a hill of beans. the greater part of the information contained in them having been copied from something that had already been written and said upon the immigration question. and therefore they are nothing more or less than plagiarism in the true sense of the word. and not based upon an intelligent investigation of immigration conditions by this commission. But from what the gentleman from New York said the other day. one would naturally conclude that he was a friend to the cause of immigration reform conditions in this country. and I thought from what he said that he was in favor of the $4 head tax. because he said that the commission was I responsible for the legislation that provided for It. and that they had brought so many millions of dollars into the country by reason of their recommendations. to offset the expenditures that they had made. that the country was financially much better off than it would have been if the commission had not been created. But let us see what the gentleman says upon that subject in a letter written to New York about the time the commission was created. Let us see if he is a friend to the conditions as they exist In this country under the law. or whether he is not seeking to destroy the law and to help to pollute the social conditions of the country by bringing in a class of immigration that can not come here under any sort of decent law. I read. Mr. Chairman. from a letter written from this city on February 19. 1907. just the day before the Immigration law was approved that created the commission. it is directed to the Liberal Immigration League. 150 Nassau street. New York: