Speech #620312865

President. I observe that in the very brief message sent to Congress by the President of the United States. in which he withholds his approval of the measure under consideration. he says: I do this with great reluctance. The bill contains many valuable amendments to the present immigration law which will insure greater certainty in excluding undesirable immigrants. The bill received strong support in both Houses and was recommended by an able commission after an extended investigation and carefully drawn conclusions. But I can not make up my mind to sign a bill which in its chief provision violates a principle that ought. in my opinion. to be upheld in dealing with our immigration. I refer to the literacy test. For tle reasons stated in Secretary Nagles letter to me. I can not approve that test. The Secretarys letter accompanies this. I wish to call attention. in connection with this fact. to the circumstance that the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. in addressing the President on this subject as his adviser. does not in a single instance take up any of the questions reported by the Immigration Commission regarding the existing conditions in the United Statesthose conditions were fully set out in its reports and upon them were based the recommendations of that commissionbut everything that he says in relation to such findings is in criticism of them. His letter -to the President Is distinguished chiefly for a failure to discuss any of those questions or to bring them to the mind of the Chief Executive. He discusses the question of the literacy test from the standpoint from which it has been discussed on the floor of the Senate this morning. that it will not tend to elevate the standard of individual immigrants who are coming to the United States. He also goes so far in his letter as to call attention to the great number of immigrants Nho have been admitted in the last year who are farmers. and leaves it to be inferred that they have gone to the farms of this country. Had that been so. the recommendation of the reading test would never have been made. That would have been a result which all the commissioners would have been glad to report. it is a result that we have aimed it in all legislation of recent years. The act of 1907 provided for a Bureau of Distribution. giving almost unlimited powers to the department to institute measures to divert the stream of immigration at the ports of entry and send it into the different States where land was for sale and where farn labor was in demand. but it has largely failed of its purpose. Even the Secretary does not claim that the scheme has been successful. The truth is that the immigration which has been coming into the United States in the last 10 years has almost wholly gone to the Atlantic division of States where the great basic industries of this country are more largely conducted. The immigrants have gone to the centers. each class and each race to the center where his class and his race most predominate. The commission found that there was an oversupply of conmon. unskilled labor in those centers and that the conditions were unAmerican. not elevating in any sense. They looked about for a remedy for this evil. and they state in their report. after reciting all the different remedies which had been suggested. that. in their judgment the most feasible measure was the educational test. because it would exclude about onethird of those particular classes which are most a menace to the institutions of the United States. in other words. the most undesirable classes of immigrants. Mr. President. I want to call attention to the fact that since the beginning of the Civil War we have admitted Into this country something over 23.000.000. probably 24.000.000. of alien immigrants. The number that have been received may perhaps be more fully understood when I say that they constituted seventenths of the population of the United States at the outbreak of the Civil War. Down to 1882 the largest proportion of all the inimigration to this country came from Great Britain.