Yet this bill will prevent the Hawaiian planters from building up a Caucasian civilization in these islands and will compel them to continue Japanese labor in the sugar fields. I apprehend that there is not a Member on the floor who desires to orientalize these islands. and yet under the terms of this bill Caucasian labor will be excluded and planters will be compelled again to resort to the local cheap labor of Japan. There is another provision of the bill which excludes all those immigrants who can not become citizens under our naturalization laws. That provision will affect all Asiatics. so that the sugar producers of Hawaii will not be able to bring Caucasians from Europe or orientals from Asia to work their plantations. It is a remarkable condition of affairs. And yet this bill creates that very condition. Mr. Speaker. it is a strange fact that the most insistent advocates of this measure come from those sections of the Union where there is the most illiteracy and the least immigration. In that section of the Union from which I come we need hundreds of miles of electric railroads to bring the products of our orchards and vineyards to the seaboard. The educated native American will not do the rough. hard work of digging trenches. ballasting roadways. and laying rails. The men who do that class of work are. for the most part. illiterates. Our experience has been that they are frugal and hardworking Greeks and Italians. These immigrants readily embrace the opportunity to educate themselves. and their children become progressive. cultured. patriotic Ameiean citizens. I believe that the adoption of an illiteracy test will not keep out undesirable immigrants. but it will keep out thousands of "hewers of wood and drawers of water" whose labor would add materially to the prosperity of our country.
Keywords matched
immigrants immigration Asiatics undesirable immigrants naturalization