Session #63 · 1913–15

Speech #630134950

To my mind our statecraft and our schools must have interlocking directories. The social welfare and the school system of any State stand side by side. on a high plane or a low plane. as the case may be. Therefore I favor compulsory education and rigid naturalization laws. No foreigner should be naturalized until he has lived with us as a good citizen for five years and can read and understand what he reads. But it is not fair to deny a man a chance to learn how to read. as this law does. by turning him back into the darkness of despotism and despair. Our exclusion laws are rigid enough now. We exclude the Asiatic. the anarchist. the insane and the idiot. the paralytic and the pauper. men who are sick or sore or silly are stopped at our shores. The report of the Commissioner of Immigration shows that during the past year there were excluded on account in sanity. 198. idiocy and imbecility. 72. feebleminded. 483. diseased (including tubercular). 2.564. defective. 4.208. criminal. 808. immoral 620. contract laborers. 1.624: likely to become a public charge. 7.956. Only the healthy and the honest men and women who come knocking at our doors are permitted to cross our threshold. If we do justice by them in our laws and properly control our industrial giants. all concerned will be mutually benefited. and 1914.: more and more. as the years go by. our roads will be built and our resources developed. our fields tilled and our hungry fed.
Identified stereotypes
Generalizing about the types of people excluded from the country.
Keywords matched
Immigration contract laborers Asiatic naturalized naturalization

Classification

Target group
Also mentioned
Asiatic anarchist pauper
Sentiment
Mixed
Stereotyping
⚠️ Yes
Confidence
90%
Model
gemini-2.0-flash
Framing
Legal / procedural Economic threat Other

Speaker & context

Speaker
JAMES MANAHAN
Party
R
Chamber
H
State
MN
Gender
M
Date
Speech ID
630134950
Paragraph
#2
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