Speech #630424065

Over this subject we can no Ionger slumber. Shall we behold a moral contagion spreading and expanding with the most inveterate ravages amid the ranks of our gowing population without endeavoring to arrest its progress? Shall this mass of immigrants be suddenly identified with ourselves and our children. Inculcating their habits and their rinciples without an effort on our part to stay the impending calamity? Vhy attempt to exclude the ravages of sickness and disease and suffer. the fatal ravages of moral desolation to stalk In triumph among us? We read from an article published In 1835 entitled "Imminent Dangers to the Institutions of the United States of America Through Foreign Immigration": Then we were few. feeble and scattered. Now we are numerous. strong. and concentrated. Then our accessions of immigration were real accessions of strength from the ranks of the learned and the good. from enlightened mechanic and artisan and intelligent husbandman. Now immigration Is the accession of weakness. from the ignorant victims of the priestridden slaves of Ireland and Germany. or the outcast tenants of the poorhouses and prisons of Europe. In the report of the meeting of the delegates of the Native American National Convention held in Philadelphia on July 4. 1845. -the following Is found in one of the addresses delivered at the meeting: It Is an incontrovertible truth that the civil institutions of the United States of America have been seriously affected. and that they now stand in Imminent peril from the rapid and enormous Increase in the body of residents of foreign birth. Imbued with foreign feelings. and of an ignorant and immoral character. The almshouses of Europe are emptied upon our coast. and this by our own invitation. not casually or to a trivial extent. but systematically and upon a constantly increasing scale. . And so this cry against immigration has been made since from almost the birth of this Nation to the present time by those blinded by a narrow selfishness and prejudice. refusing to read or recognize the pages of our countrys history. that is so grandly emblazoned with the patriotic deeds and marvelous achievements of thousands of immigrants who reached our shores in deepest poverty and distress. but with the bright hope burning in their breasts that these United States would give the honest labor of their hands and their intellects opportunity to win and enjoy a quiet and peaceful home and a new and a better life. At first the threatened menace of immigration was from England. Next it was the Irish. then the German immigrant. who was heralded as endangering American institutions. More recently the Swede and the Norwegian immigrant was the subJect of attack as being an undesirable addition to our citizenship. Today we are told the threatened danger lies in immigration from southern Europe and from Poland and Russla. While reading in the library a few days ago I came across it paragraph in an article in the National Geographic Magazine for November. 1914. which is interesting in this connection. The National Geographic Magazine is not. as you know. a political magazine.