In fact. I know if this law goes into force you will hear a howl from one end of this broad land to the other against such a bill. because the business interests. conditions In the farming communities. and the necessity in this country for the class of labor you propose to exclude will be such that everybody voting for it will hear as a result of that vote a protest against this class of legislation. I do not wish to be misunderstood in the attitude I assume with relation to the immigration question. I will concede that the laws affecting immigration are not perfect. Evils do result from their enforcement and application. But the committee having this legislation in charge failed entirely in. recognizing the real weakness of the whole scheme of immigrant legislation. The evils flowing from our immigration laws require for their correction not restrictive. repressive. or prohibitive laws. but. on the contrary. laws that will provide for the proper distribution of the immigrants in order to avoid congestion in our large cities and in order that assimilation can be more effectively. accomplished and the country generally benefited by this immigration. These reforms can not be effected by the application of the literacy test. The western and southern sections of the country. require an influx of white settlers for the development of their vast natural resources. which for lack of such labor are in a deplorable condition of stagnation. And it is astonishing in the face of the existence of this necessity to find such persistent activity among the Representatives of these sections in opposition to a liberal policy affecting immigration. You can not legislate morality into a people. Moral stamina Is the result of long and gradual development tnder the beneficent influence of an advanced civilization. The literacy test alone will not accomplish this. The educated crook. the intellectual swindler. the confirmed anarchist. all can comply with this socalled literacy test and find admission to our shores. While the honest. hardworking. industrious. and Godfearing person suffering from conditions of illiteracy for which he is no way responsible. and under which it has been his unhappy. fate to be born. would. under the operation of this test. be excluded from the blessings of our free institutions. The fallacy and utter groundlessness of the extravagant claims made by the advocates of this test as an instgumentality In the betterment of conditions of the country socially. commercially. and politically is conclusively shown by a very strong editorial which appeared recently in the Boston Morning Herald. and which reads as follows:
Identified stereotypes
Generalization about honest, hardworking, industrious, and Godfearing illiterate people.