Speech #620198743

It will be readily seen how unwise it is under such circumstances to take such patients from the landing stage and carry them through the builtnp portions of a city. to be detained somewhere in the center of population. That is one of the objections to the present detention house in Philadelphia. which. by virtue of the erection of a new detention house. will soon happily be abandoned. At present those immigrants who are detained are carried through the streets of a very thickly settled portion of the city to a detention house and are there held until discharged for one reason or another. If it should happen that smallpox should break out after the immigrants have arrived at any landing stage. whether it be at Boston or New York or Philadelphia or Baltimore. it could very easily start an epidemic where the people are so thickly settled as they are at New York. for instance. or at Boston or at Philadelphia. Hence it is a wise provision. as written into this bill. that tile new site shall be somewhere near the waters edge. It is a matter of health precaution. I think the communities through which these immigrants go to the detention stations are entitled to this measure of protection against possible epidemics. Now. in our city of Philadelphia we have struggled against that condition for a long time. and we are freeing ourselves from it now. and I trust that Baltimore may be given the same facilities to relieve the residential portions of the city of any possible invasion of disease due to the conditions stated. I realize. as does the gentleman from Illinois . the peculiar position in which the gentleman from Alabama is placed in his advocacy of this bill. As the father of a measure which is proposed to restrict immigration. he is put in the very anomalous position here of providing additional facilities for immigrants. The author of the Burnett bill has given great and deep thought to this subject of immigration. and has always conducted himself in a manner befitting the chairman of an Important committee and a Member of this Ilouse upon this question. Just how he will explain the advocacy of a measure which means more and better facilities for immigrants while at the same time he presents to the country a measure which says we shall limit tile number of future immigrants I do not know. But. being L member both of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization and the Committee oil Public Buildings and Grounds. he does his duty as he sees it. no matter which committee he represents. I hope that the measure now pending. advocated by one who can be so broad and generous in his advocacy of measures as is the gentleman from Alabama. will pass this House. [Mr. BURNETT addressed the committee.