Speech #630380516

The man who can not do so. it matters not how intelligent he may. be natively. is a menace to any community and to any government. It does astound me that the claim is made that education is not an essential of good citizenship. for as I stand on the floor of the Senate the evidence is spread on every desk of the fact that a man engaged in making the laws of his country would be laughed out of this building were such a man. by some miraculous combination of circumstances. elected to this body. who:could neither read nor write. It Is a monstrous proposition in this day when we have all agreed that the power to get behind your own doors in your private room and take the great facts upon which rest the moral. the mental. the social. and the political welfare of your country. and there settle them. with the thought of the best of all the ages is essential to the- best citizenship. that we should swing wide our doors and say that that flood tide of immigrants from Europe who through all the ages of printing and of progress in educational lines have not availed themselves of such advantages shall come here to lower the percentage of literacy in this country. to menace and to jeopardize our society and our institutions. I do stand with amazement when I am confronted by men in high place who tell me that the educational qualification is not a. test. I never pretended to say. and none of the advocates of the literacy test pretend to say. that it is an infallible test of morality. but .there is not a man who will dare deny that it is an evidence on the part of the individual acquiring the ability to stand the test that he wants to learn and to acquire the power to know for himself the difference between those things which make for good citizenship and those which do not. The Senators who are opposing the literacy test will not say that as a principle. as a rule..it is not a test of a mans qualification for good citizenship. There may be exceptions. but have we as a body of men come here to stultify ourselves and to jeopardize the country by distorting the rule in order to fit a few exceptions? The Senator is too well learned in the law for me to take up the time of the Senate in calling his attention to the operation of that general principle.