Speech #610103421

He has been taught to live up to the high standard of American living and to educate and maintain his family in a style becoming his station as an American citizen. He can not do this if forced to compete in his labor or business with an ignorant foreigner who had nothing spent on his own education and who is spending nothing on the education of others. who has been enured by long years of deprivation to the most rigid economy. and who can therefore subsist himself and family on what an average American family would throw away. Nothing can sooner crush the spirit and destroy the independence of our laboring classes than to be driven into the exacting and cruel competition of foreign pauper labor. I know the land agents and those who want to employ cheaper labor are demanding immigration. They are willing to pack the earth to suffocation for temporary good times. I am not. We of this generation owe a duty to the generations yet to come. No form selfishness can take is more cruel than that which wants to make use of all the resources of the country at once and leave nothing but a struggle for existence to the next and succeeding generations. As a student of history I know that this free Government can not long endure unless there is a miarked change in the quality and quantity of our foreign immigration. Let us hope that the Immigration Commission. now at work uponthis question. will make a thorough report to the present session of Congress and that remedial legislation will speedily follow. Let us permit only those to come to our country who are capable of selfgovernment in their own. and when they do come to our country let us see to it that they remain here long enough to learn our language and the genius of our Government before we clothe them with suffrage. and only then if they have shown themselves in every way worthy of being intrusted with the destiny of that free Government for which our fathers struggled. As a further accentuation of the fact that desirable immigration is decreasing rapidly and undesirable immigration is rapidly increasing. it need only be stated that for the fifteen years from 1.878 to 1892 our immigration from Italy. Russia. and AustriaHungary was only 1.372.747. For the fifteen years that followed. or from 1893 to 1907. inclusive. immigration from Italy. Russia. and AustriaHungary rose to the tremendous figure of 5.554.319. On the other hand. our Immigration from Germany. Great Britain. Ireland. Denmark. Norway. and Sweden for the fifteen years from 1878 to 1892. inclusive. was 5.555.854. For the following fifteen years. or from 1893 to 1907. inclusive. immigration from Germany. Great Britain. Ireland.