Speech #620115381

I now present to the Senate a resolution passed last September by the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union. The farmers union Is the largest and most compact farmers organization of any time or place. and claims over 3.000.000 members. This organization has been petitioning Congress for years to enact a literacy test. I am only going to read some of the whereases of this resolution. because they state the reasons for their attitude far more forcefully and tersely than I am able to state them: Whereas the Immigration Commission. after a four years Investigation at home and abroad. involving an expenditure of a million dollars. reports that " many undeniably undesirable persons are admitted every year"i that "there is a growing criminal element in this country. due to Iorelgn immigration ". and that "substantial restriction is demanded by economic. moral. and social considerations". and Whereas that commission recommends Increasing the head tax. excluding illiterate adults. requiring some visible means of support. fining the foreign steamships for bringing undesirables that could be rejected on the other side. and other measures. law In other new countries. and urged for years by this organization in its resolutions. before congressional committees. and otherwise. and Whereas It is proposed to relieve the Northeast of Its intolerable Immigration evils and to continue the unloading of undesirables upon this country by divertipg and distributing the incoming. everincreasing influx from southern Europe. Asia. and northern Africa over the agriculfural sections of the South and West: Resolved. That the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union of AmericaI desire to state right here that that is the strongest farmers organization we have ever had in my State.