Speech #630424089

I am therefore thoroughly convinced that the products of American factories. mines. forests. and the farm should be protected from free competition with like products of lowpaid foreign labor by the imposition of reasonable tariff duties on the imported article. to the end that American labor may readily find employment and that such employment be fairly safeguarded. The pending measure seeks to directly protect labor. and what is particularly denominated common labor. from the unrestricted influx of unskilled labor from Europe. and especially from the eastern and southern parts of Europe. While the bill carries many provisions increasing in innumerable ways our present protection against the insane. physically and mentally. defective. the diseased. the pauper. contract labor. and against the degenerate. immoral. and criminal classes. its primary object is to afford some. additional protection to the laboring classes of our country by providing the "literacy test." requiring all -immigrants to pass an examination in reading before they shall be allowed to enter our gates. It is claimed by those who have given the subject careful study that the past enforcement of the "literacy test" would have barred from this country yearly at least 300.000 of the great horde of Immigrants that have been landing on our shores during the past few years. a class which has come into direct competition with the common labor of this country. While I dislike very much to discriminate against the man who can not read. as he frequently mnakesan excellent citizen. and is usually a hardworking and honest man. still the Immigration Commission after a long investigation and research have been unable to discover a better method for restricting this great stream of immigrants which has been pouring into our country year after year until their increased numbers have crowded out of employment the American laborer and augipented the army of our unemployed by the hundreds of thousands. contributing to the want and distress from which our laboring classes are now suffering. Our country has been the asylum for the oppressed of all lands. We have been generous to the distressed of all countries. whether the result of religious. persecution. war. famine. pestilence. or other calamities fat have overtaken them. and we have given bountifully of our substance and have frequently extended over them the protective arm of our Government. and our enlightened sympathies and high sense of duty to humanity will cause us to quickly and amply respond to such demands in the future. but we must look to the safeguarding of our own household in order to insure our future ability to respond to such demands by adopting those policies which will promote thrift and prosperity and save American institutions from the slough of decay through an overassimilation of the uneducated and in many instances unAmerican notions of civil liberty. The perpetuity of a representative government depends upon the intelligence of its citizenship. and xve therefore spend millions of dollars for the cause of education and in building up our great publicschool system. and it seems to me that so long as I we have thousands of laborers unemployed and who are clamoring for work at even a living wage we -ought to attempt to check that stream of immigration which -not only adds largely to this army of the unemployed. but -which tends to offset the benefits derived from our publicschool system. and which lowers the standard of intelligence of the American electorate. The percentage of illiteracy in certain European countries is much higher than in the United States. while in some it is considerably lower. According to the census of the United States for 1910. of the entire population of 10 years of age and over. 7.7 per cent were illiterate. of the Whites. 5 per cent were illiterate. and of the negroes. 30.4 per cent. Among the foreignborn whites 12.7 per cent were illiterate. as compared with 3 per cent among the native whites. The report of the Immigration Commission published in 1911 discloses that in 1900 Austrias per cent of illiterate was 23.8. Belgium. 21.9 per cent. Hungary. 41 per cent.