Speech #630133787

In order to develop the cottongrowing Industry negroes were imported into our State. The industry developed.. but the trouble that that imported slave labor has given us has made it the dearest labor any country ever secured. Now. in our own way our people are doing their best to solve this vexed question. but we would have little hope of solving it if there were dumped upon us a class of immigrants such as are now coming to our shores from southern Italy. Greece. and Turkey. They have no capacity for assimilation with our white people. They must have some society. and we fear they would turn to the negro race. mingle with them. and so aggravate our race problem as to make it hopeless. In favoring the restriction of immigration I am not unconscious of the fact that it was through immigration that our own country was developed years ago. but when gentlemen refer to that fact they fail to refer to the difference in the class of immigrants then and now. In the early part of the last century South Carolina offered inducements to settlers and home seekers from abroad. and as a result the English. German. Irish. and ScotchIrish came to our State. but today we receive little or no immigration from these countries. Southern Italy is furnishing the largest percentage. and now the Asiatics are threatening to come to drive American workingmen out of employment. J. Ingram Bryan. a professor in the Imperial College of Japan. in an article appearing in Munseys Magazine of August. 1913. says. among other things: The man of the East has proved his capacity to adapt himself to all circumstances aLd therefore his fitness to live. He can underlive. and therefore can outlive. any occidental. Again. he says: The occidentalWhich covers the Caucasian racecan not live save at a cost sufficient for the maintenance of 20 oriental lives. There Is an oversupply of unskilled labor in the country today. and consequently the workingman is in favor of restricting in some way the tide of immigration. Last year there were admitted 1.427.227 immigrants. and the figures indicate an increased number this year. Where years ago the employees of the Steel Trust were Englishspeaking people. it is claimed that today 90 per cent are foreigners. In some manufacturing plants few nativeborn persons are employed. and it seems that they have concluded that they can better control the uneducated foreigner and that he can be driven to work longer hours for less pay. The annual report of the Commissioner of Immigration for the port of New York for the year 1911 contains the following: The new immigration. unlike that of the earlier years. proceeds in part from the poorer elements of the countries of southern and eastern Europe and from backward races with customs and institutions widely different from ours and without the capacity of assimilating with our people as did the early immigrants. Many of those coming from these sources have very low standards of living. possess filthy habits. and are of an ignorance which passes belief. Types of the classes referred to representing various alien races and nationalities may le observed in some of the tenement districts of Elizabeth.