Speech #630424049

I take it. is unnecessary to discuss here. lint that the advocates of the literary test should believe in it because they think that a curtailment of the number of those who are coming will be of assistance in the solution of a great many of our difficult social and political and economic problems is the question that I want especially to speak on this morning in the few minutes that I have. At the first conference of charities and corrections which I ever attended. a young sanitary engineer who had been making a study of typhoid fever in the city of Pittsburgh had made the discovery. lie thought. that typhoid fever and similar epidemics usually began in our foreign neighborhoods. and spread from there to other parts of the city. His conclusion further was (and I do not want to vouch for anytbing excepting his line of reasoning) that this was due to the fact tIat the immigrant was accustomed to a purer water supply at home than the native American. who represented a sort of survival of the littest. so far as the struggle against impure water was concerned. His further conclusion was that In the interests of public health in Pittsburgh and other cities with large foreign population we ought to be able to work out some kind of test by which we could exclude those who were liable to fall victims to impure water. and so protect the American public. Now. that is. of course. the general line of reasoning of those who are discouraged at the slow progress that we are making in the line of ure water. to the better industrial and social conditions. and a more lealthful and normal life for us all. They find the discouragement in the way of pure water in Pittsburgh more than they can face. perhaps. and so they say. "Well. let us get rid of some of the group that are suffering from this situation." That is. of course. a kind of short cut which is not going to help us in those problems in which I am more interested than any other. those which mean better control of the conditions under which men and women work. better wages. and better living conditions all around. It is therefore perfectly futile to devote ourselves to this test in the expectation that we are going to change the large group of the people in the community who are opposed to better living conditions for the workingman and better wages for the workingman. The presence of the immigrant is not responsible for that attitude of mind. And so it seems to me that. throughout. the discussion of the question of a literacy test brings us round to the question of where we should devote our strength and our efforts and our hopes. and it is not in this direction. I want to say tbat I feel very strongly that the immigrants who are coming and who have come in the past have been very distinctly a democratic asset. We have pronounced to the world certain big fundamental propositions in regard to the equality of rights and opportunities. To those we are only struggling to live up. little by little.