Speech #630132987

Mr. Chairman. something has been said in thm debate about the vetoes of immigration bills carrying the illiteracy test by former Presidents Cleveland and Taft. When PredS dent Cleveland exercised his veto the percentage of illiterate aliens coming into this country was less than 3 per cent. Today the illiterates entering our country are over 33 per cent. President Taft vetoed a similar bill to the one we are now considering in a 12line message. in Which he stated that he did it with much reluctance. Now. I wish to submit to the House the utterances oi two other exPresidents and the present occupant of the White Ilouse on the immigration question. President McKinley. on this identical kind of legislation now under discussionthe great McKinley. who was wise. just. and humanein a message to Congress said: Our naturalization and immigration laws should be further improved to the constant promotion of a safe. a better. and a higher citizenship. A grave peril to the Itepublic would be a citizenship too ignorant to undeistand or too vicious to appreciate the great value and beneficence of our institutions and laws. and against all who come here to war upon them our gates must be promptly and tightly closed. Illiteracy must be banished from the laud if we shall attain that high destiny as the foremost of the enlightened nations of the world. under Providence. we ought to achieve. The Republican convention which nominated President McKinley placed this plank in the platform: For the protection of the quality of American citizenship and the wages of our workingmen against the fatal competition of lowpriced labor we demand that the immigration laws be thoroughly enforced and so extended as to exclude from entrance to the United States those who can neither read nor write. Mark you. when this plank was adopted and approved by a large majority of the American voters the percentage of illiterate aliens entering the country was less than 6 per cent. today it is more than 33 per cent. President Roosevelt. one of the political idols of the American people. and twice their choice for President by unprecedented majorities. made this statement to Congress in one of his messages: The second object of a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American citizens. President Wilson. today the head and leader of the Democratic Party. when not seeking as a candidate the socalled "foreign vote." wrote as an impartial historian in 1902 this statement. which will be found in volume 5. page 212. of his History of the American People: The census of 1890 showed the population of the country Increased to 62.622.250. an addition of 12.466.467 within the decade. Immigrants poured steadily in as before. but with an alteration of stock which students of affairs marked with uneasiness. Throughout the century men of the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe had made up the main strain of foreign blood which was every year added to the vital working force of the country. or else men of the LatinGallic stocks of France and northern Italy . but now there came multitudes of men of the lowest cla&.s from the south of Italy and men of the meaner sort out of Hungary and Polandmen out of the ranks where there was neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligenceand they came in numbers which Increased from year to year. as if the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population. the men whose standards of life and of work were such as American workmen had never dreamed of hitherto. The people of the Pacific coast had clamored these many years against the admission of immigrants out of China. and in May. 1892. got at last what they wanteda Federal statute which practically excluded from the United States all Chinese who had not already acquired the right of residence. and yet the Chinese were more to be desired. as workmen if not as citizens. than most of the coarse crew that came crowding in every year at the eastern ports. The gentlenman signing the minority report on this bill tells us that had this bill been in operation he would have been denied admission to this country as an alien. and yet in his personal biography carried in the Congressional Directory he states he attended the "grammar and high schools in Bohemia." and I submit that if he attended said schools and could not read 40 words in his own language. then he was. indeed. a very dull scholar.