Speech #630135763

I am in favor of this bill. but I am opposed to this substitute and the amendment. I am opposed to them because I believe their adoption will defeat the bill. The gentleman from California read what purported to be the statements of the President of the United States as favoring the exclusion of Asiatic immigration. There is another side to that story. In the History of the American People. by Woodrow Wilson. written when he was not a candidate for the Presidency. I find these most significant words: Now. there came multitudes of men of the lowest class from the south of Italy and men of the meaner sort out of Hungary and Poland. men omit of the ranks where there was neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick Intelligence and 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 wanted. a 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. They had. no doubt. ninny an unsavory habit. bred unwholesome squalor in the crowded quarters where they most abounded in the western seaports. and seemed separated by their very nature from the people among whom they had come to live. but It was their skill. their intelligence. their hardy power of labor. their knack at succeeding and driving duller rivals out. rather than their alien habits. that made them feared and hated and led to their exclusion at the prayer of the men they were likely to displace should they multiply. The unlikely fellows who came in at the eastern ports were tolerated because they usurped no place but the very lowest In the scale of labor. I might read more that would inform the gentleman from California that if he ever hopes. while Woodrow Wilson is President of the United States. to secure an Asiatic exclusion law. it must be by passing the bill over the veto of the President of the United States. I am anazed at the gentleman from California . who claims to be for this bill. and who is a member of the committee that reported the bill. that he should now inject into this debate an amendment which he knows. if he has read the statement of President Wilson. would bring about the defeat of the bill by a veto from the President. Mr.