Speech #630132306

Mr. Chairman. at the proper time I shall offer several amendments to this bill. all correlated and having to do with the exclusion. deportation. and repatriation of mentally defective aliens. At the outset I wish to make It plain that. with the exception of the literacy clause. I am in favor of this bill. but I am against the literacy clause only because I believe it to be a wrong way and an ineffective way of accomplishing the desired result. While it must surely be the purpose of the committee in reporting the literacy clause only to exclude the unfit. yet the literacy clause is founded on the assumption that illiteracy is synonymous with undesirability. The cause of danger to the American race is far deeper. as I shall endeavor to show. Please bear in mind that the percentage of mental defect among the foreign born in the city of New York. which city I take as an example of the recent immigration from southern Europe as opposed to the older immigration from northern Europe. is 2.48 times the percentage of mental defect among the native born. and whereas the literacy clause is intended to be the means of keeping out undesirables from the southern section of Europe by taking advantage of the fact that opportunities for education there are very limited. yet the percentage of illiteracy in the hospitals of the State of New York among the foreign born is only about 13 per cent as against about 26 per cent of illiteracy among all the aliens admitted to the United States. Therefore the literacy test will fail to exclude in any considerable quantity the most undesirable of aliensthe mentally defectivewhile at the same time it will exclude large numbers of highly desirable people who have had no opportunity to learn to read. The injustice and inadequacy of the literacy clause would therefore appear to be selfevident. and the only real question before this House is the substitution of just and adequate provisions in place of the literacy clause. I come now to the point of view of the Commission on Immigration which was appointed in 1907. and reported in 1910. on whose recommendations. made after nearly four years of exhaustive investigation. this literacy clause in a modified form was presented to the last Congress. This commission. among other matters. based its conclusions upon its desire to exclude "those physically and morally unfit * * * and inefficient." without any realization of the startling fact. since provenby scientific research. that an enormous proportion of disease. immorality. crime. pauperism. and inefficiency in men. with its equivalent of harlotry in women. is the result of inherited mental disease easily and directly traceable to the parents and grandparents of any individual so affected. . If it can be shown in exact arithmetical proportion what results may be expected from certain inherited qualities. are we not forced to the conclusion that the true way to maintain the glorious standard of the American race is not by a reading test of 30 words. not by a hasty mental examination at an American port. not alone by the observations of trained psychiatrists on shipboard during the long voyages to this country. for which this bill does not provide. not alone by mental examination by trained psychiatrists in the Federal service at the points of embarkation abroad. for which this bill does not provide. but in future years by the personal visit of a trained agent of this Government to the family of the intending immigrant in order that he may see for himself the inheritance which each immigrant has received from his parents. and so determine whether the children of that immigrant. as well as the man himself. be fit for American citizenship? The amendments I shall offer do not go so far as this. I have no reason to expect that the Members of this House. without careful study of the operation of the Mendelian law as applied to the heredity of insanity. will agree with me as yet. But I do wish it known that shortly after the Immigration Commission made its report to Congress Dr. Rosanoff proved beyond the question of a doubt the existence of the neuropathic taint as a recessive character. thereby opening the way for better legislation by Congress today than was possible from the information before the Immigration Commission three years ago. . Criminals who are serving time are very largely of the feebleminded classperhaps 50 per centalthough such meager figures as have been compiled would not show quite such a large percentage. In the study of these subjects we can not do better than to follow the suggestions of Signor BeltraniScalia. recently inspector of prisons in Italy. who said: Leaving aside all abstract speculations and uncertain theories. It is requisite that In moral science we should follow the same path that has been so advantageously taken in the study of natural science * * * because moral facts. as well as those which are called natural facts. have a cause so to be. If the criminal class is recruited largely from the feebleminded. and feeblemindedness is an inherited strain following the Mendelian law. should we not in justice to the American people write into our immigration law something better than the literacy clause? In 187475 there was conducted by Robert L. Dugdale. under the auspices of the Prison Association of New York. an investigation which resulted in the tabulation of the career for five generations of the family which he called Juke. I wish briefly to refer to this family. not with any idea of showing inevitable hereditary criminality. hereditary degeneracy. or hereditary pauperism. but to show the terrific economic waste. the lack of efficiency mentioned in the report of the Commission on Immigration as one of the things to be guarded against from imnmigrants. because we have enough of it in this country now. The Julie family lived in a rocky. inaccessible part of the State of New York. Five hunlred and forty of their descendants. blood relatives all. and 169 related by marriage or cohabitation are registered in Mr.