Speech #640066255

We are not legislating for the colonial period. when public schools were almost unknown in the world. We are not legislating for the period of. the American Revolution. though the founders of this country must have believed that the safety of the Republic rested upon the intelligence of the individual citizen. for they established our publicschool system in the same mortar in which they set our Constitution. We are not legislating for the generation immediately following our Civil War. when over 90 per cent of our immigration cane from an enterprising. thrifty. alert. adventurous. energetic. courageous class of men. who easily became Americans. who had American ways. who respected American laws. and who loved American institutions. from the. fisherman of Norway to the vine grower of France. who came here not at the behest of the agents of the great steamship companies. but of.their own free will to carve out for themselves a future and conquer a wilderness. But. Mr. Chairman. the frontier is gone. and most of our natural resources. Gods provision for the people. have passed into the hands of great corporations who control mines. mills. forests. fisheries.. food products. and the highways of traffic over which they are carried. and who are today exploiting the people by on the one hand urging us to protect the products of their industries so that the toiler and laborer of this country may be protected from the products of cheap foreign labor and on the other hand are fighting this test. tooth and nail. that the cheap immigrant laborer may be had to defeat the just demands of the intelligent American laborer. Mr. Chairman. on the wings of steam and with the voice of electricity they rally their discipled forces for aggression or defense as speedily as the devil in the ancient legend showed to Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth.