Speech #630424042

Germany. Russia. and other lands. and though that stream of fresh and revivifying blood has ceased to flow into some sections of our country. it still continues to renew the energies and courage of the North and the West as ever. Wherever the immigrant has come his energy. courage. fidelity. and brains have made the regions wherein he has cast his fortune blossom like the rose. Wherever he has gone schools have sprung up. industries have flourished. trade has increased. wealth has multiplied. prosperity has bloomed. and patriotism. peace. law. order. Intelligence. and a opiness follow in his footsteps. Mr. President. we know that a literacy test will bar from our land its most vital necessitystrong. vigorous. simple. Godfearing peasants. who come here to find homes and to make the wilderness blossom into fertility. But will a literacy test keep out a single criminal whose record and antecedents we are ignorant of? You will find some illiterate criminals who have been guilty of crime of sudden passion. of violence. men who united ignorance with illiteracy. but it is everlastingly true that the crimes most injurious to society. most detrimental to business. commerce. finance. are never the work of illiterates. The forger. the conspirator. the crooked promoter. the business defaulter. the blackmailer. the bank thief. the political grafter. and all that class of criminals. outside of and oUtnumbering the criminals of passion and violence. are literate. They read and write. for these vicious talents must be supplemented by literacy to make them profitable. Vicious talent sharpened and developed by letters is the most serious problem society has to deal with. Yet this absurd literacy test will admit the dangerous European criminal of the continental cities and bar out the honest and hardworking and badly needed peasantfarmer and laborerwhether he be English or Irish or French or German or Hebrew or Polish or Italian or Lithuanian. In evey crisis of the countrys history these alien classes have stood loyally by the Republic that gave them asylum and home. In conclusion.