I called attention last evening. I think. to the platforms of the two great parties of this country in that year. but let me repeat. The Democratic Party in its national platform said: We hold that the most efficient way of protecting American labor is to prevent the importation of foreign pauper labor to compete with it in the home market. To what.did they refer as pauper labor? It was this new immigration of which we had received in all perhaps a million souls from eastern and southern Europe. The Republican national platform of the same year contains this clause: For the protection of the quality of our American citizenship and of the wages of our workingmen against the fatal competition of lowpriced labor. we demand that the immigration laws be thoroughly enforced and so extended as to exclude from entrance to the United States those who can neither read nor write. It is apparent that President Wilson is unacquainted with the political history of that period. He challenges Congress with. the direct inquiry. " Has any political party ever avowed a policy of restriction in this fundamental mattergone to the country on it and been commissioned to control legislation?" Yes.
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foreign pauper immigration pauper labor