Speech #630384050

I could read at much greater length of the Irish and the Germans. I pass on. however. to show that the same cry has been raised against other races. In 1885 the New York Bureau of Immigration Statistics held a long hearing. just as this committee has had some hearings. and just as this con.mission we have heard about had hearings. They summed up their observationsthey were speaking of the immigrants from -northern Europe. the Danes and the Swedesand they said of them that they " interfere very much with the keeping up of the wages in the trade." and that. therefore. they were an undesirable people. Whoever desires to follow that subject can read the Sixteenth Annual Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1898 and find the comment on page 1047. So we find protest against Danes. against Swedes. against Irish. against Germans. against Dutch. and a general protest against all immigration. at least against German immigration. from Benjamin Franklin himself. One of the principal arguments of the Knownothing Party against foreign immigration. and particularly against Irish inmnigration. was that the Irish were a criminal race. The Knownothing Party asserted that 1 out of every 154 Irishmen was a criminal. and hence they argued as followsI am reading from Mr. Hourwichs very illuminating work: One of the favorite arguments against Immigration since the days of the Knownothings has been the assertion that " the foreigner. in proporlion to his numbers furnishes by far the greater part of crime." In Ihe middle of the nineteenth century the Irish Immigrant was the object of popular odium as -one one hundred and fiftyfourth of a criminal. That was the charge. The news papers and pamphlets of that time published statistics which showed that. although the foreign population was only an eighth of the whole. yet It furnished * * * 1.000 more criminals than all the remaining seveneighths of the people.