Speech #640066051

I am persuaded to believe that this. House would adopt them almost unanimously. We who are opposed to the bill object to it chiefly because of the. literacy test. I have heard many arguments emanate from the distinguished gentleman: from Alabama in support of his measure. I have heard him on the floor of this Houseeven plead the cause of organized labor. but only when this bill was up for consideration. I have heard him here plead the cause of the patriotic societies of this country. he has told us many times this fight is their fight. but I have never heard until this hour that. because the literacy test is not in the immigration law today. the recent raid of the Mexican bandits over our line could not have been prevented For the first time we have learned that Villa and his bandit highwaymen were able to come within the confines of our great country and "murder our sleeping soldiers" because we have no literacy test. I wonder if the gentleman takes himself seriously. Oh. we will hear him before the day is over appealing to "My Old Kentucky Home " and " Down on the Suwanee River." and. his heart will weep for organized labor once more. but I never heard his voice in debate when we were trying to passan act to do something for the whitefaced children of this country who work out their young lives in mine and mill and factory and cannery. a measure fathered by the. distinguished Congressman from Colorado . Mr. Chairman. I have on previous occasions. and in this same hall. inveighed against the literacy test in thisbill. which. in my judgment. is unAmerican. unChristian. and almost inhuman. I have said that a literacy test will bar from our land its most vital necessitystrong. vigorous. simple. Godfearing peasants. who come here to find homes and tomake the wilderness blossoin into fertilitybut will your literacy test keep out a single criminal. whose record and antecedents we are ignorant of? You will find some illiterate criminals who have been guilty of crime of sudden passion. off violence . men who united ignorance with illiteracy. but it is everlastingly true that the crimes most injurious to society. most detrimental to. business. commerce. finance. are never the work of illiterates. The forger. the conspirator. the crooked promoter. the business defaulter. the blackmailer. the bank thief. the political grafter. and.all that class of criminals. outside of and outnum bering the criminals of passion and violence are literate. They read and write. for these vicious talents must be supplemented by literacy to make them profitable. Vicious talent sharpened and developed by letters is the most serious problem society has to deal with. Yet this absurd literacy test will admit the dangerous European criminal of the continental cities and bar out the honest and hardwdrking and badly needed peasantfarmer and laborerwhether lie be English or. Irish. or French or German or Hebrew or Polish or Italian or Lithuanian. But enough of the literacy test for the present. Mr. Chairman. movement is the law of life. the running rivers refresh and fertilize the world. the constant flow and ebb of the tides keep the. ocean from stagnation and tle- earth from death. and above and beyond the circling spheres in their ordered march around the center of our systemitself in flight through space round vaster systemscontrol. maintaih. and direct the movement and motion of our sphere. which is Life. The sun draws from the deep the rains- it scatters over hill and dale to feed the rivers. supply the springs and renew the seas. the earth. moves the moon. which is tle mother of the tides. and so all the forces of God and nature. from the green things growing in our yard even to the outermost rim of limitless space. unite to compel this universal movement. which is. Life. Manthe races and nations. thetribes. and the clansis subject to this universal law. it has been sosince the beginning of recorded time. and this human movement is immigration. The race has ever been on the move. Out of the cradle of the race in the mysterious heart of Asia. stream after stream of races and tribes have flowed. pushing their* predecessors onward before them. followingthe march of the sun from east to. west. urging the vanguardout ofthe mountains Into the desertt:- and the plains of Asia and onward into Europe. battling and contending for life and empire. mingling: the. bloods of the irinan elements into the fabric of nationality.