Session #64 · 1915–17

Speech #640039457

South Italian ---------------------------------------------- 56 Polish ------------------------------------------------------ 40 Slovak ------------.-------------------------------------- 25 Hebrew ------------------------------------------------------23 North Italian --- 14 Magyar --------------------------------------------------- 12 Those are the major percentages. The minor percentages are as follows: Per cent. German ------ . ------------------------------------------ 4 Irish -------------------- ---------------3 English ----------------------------Scandinavian ----------------------------------------------- 1 In other words. the gentleman from Massachusetts brought prominently to the attention of the House the fact that the northern and Protestant raceswith the exception of the Hebrews. of whom I .will speak in a inomentwere not affected by the literacy test. while the southern and Catholic nations were the ones that would be excluded. Now. if it was desired to bar out imlnigrants for tile reason that we were getting too many. there has been a biU pending in Congress ever since I first came here that would do it. That is.a bill which would prevent any more immigrants coming from any one country than the average that have come from that country in the last five years. In other words. it would apply it to all countries equally. but that is not desired. Their desire is to keep out the immigrants from Catholic countries. and it is time that we who are Protestants should have the courage to call attention to that fact. Now. tlat is -accentuated in this bill by the very evident attempt that is made to let in the Hebrews.
Identified stereotypes
Southern and Catholic nations are being unfairly targeted by the literacy test.
Keywords matched
literacy test immigrants

Classification

Target group
Also mentioned
Polish Slovak Hebrew North Italian Magyar German Irish English Scandinavian
Sentiment
Negative
Stereotyping
⚠️ Yes
Confidence
95%
Model
gemini-2.0-flash
Framing
Cultural threat Legal / procedural

Speaker & context

Speaker
WILLIAM BENNET
Party
R
Chamber
H
State
NY
Gender
M
Date
Speech ID
640039457
Paragraph
#2
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