Speech #630381801

President. there Is more ineffable rot being taught in some of the universities today than there is in all the ignorant slums of a European capital. It takes a sane man half a lifetime of human experience to recover from some of it. Whenever I find some parlor socialist. somebody who has inherited a few millions from an ancester that amounted to something in his lifetime. who is going out to overturn society and to destroy the existing order of things. three times out of four in a metropolis you will find somebody carrying the degrees of an ancient university. whose intellectual processes have gone wrong. taught by somebody in the privacy of a professors cloister. taught by somel)ody who has gone mad on book learning. who thinks the whole course of empire is embraced between the covers of a book. some graduate of that kind.. who has no more place or part in the practical human affairs of life than the veriest ignorant immigrant that ever got through the. gates into our country ald raised a peck of potatoes or t bushel of corn. These men talk glibly about the laws of production. and of all the shameless rot under the guise of learning. of all the insuperable obstacles that have darkened the face of accurate knowledge. these gentlemen have 1roduced the worst. So. when it comes to mere knowledge and mere ability to stand h literacy test I find a great many of those wio have been natives here ever since I can remember. whom. in spite of their ability to pass a literacy test. I think I would vote to deport. although they were born here. if such a thing were constitutional. I would send them to Dry Tortugas. colonize then in the Philippine Islands or. if the punishment were within constitutional limits as not being cruel or unusual. I would banish them to Oyster Bay. The literacy test proposes to exclude. in the first instance. all those who are unable to read. This introduces a new test. Mr.