There is no man on the floor of this House who stands more nearly absolutely four square on the question of religious liberty than the man who is now addressing you. And the injection of any such sectarian talk into this issue is foreign to the question. It is purely a question of a literacy test to be applied to the mlan who would come in here under ordinary circumstances. The extraordinary conditions under which a man imight come have been provided for in this bill. I come from a State that has on its statute book a compulsory education law. and the same kind of talk was made in the Missouri Legislature against that law that has been made here against this one. It has been about our mothers and grandmothers who could not read. but I think the American Congress should legislate with its face to the future rather than to the past There are plenty of gentlemen on the floor of the House who. if their native ancestry had been required to read before their descendants could come to Congress. would not have been here. but that is no indication that we are to look backward and say because father could not do so the son must not. You are squarely against the issue. and how men can stand and plead for illiteracy. not only domestic illiteracy. but imported illiteracy. is more than I can conceive. wheil we have provided an asylun for the religious and( political refugees. If citizenship is not worth the attempt to acquaint oneself with the general channels for the distribution of knowledge. then citizenship in this country does not amount to much. We have been asked to do everything and the man coming here to do nothing.
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literacy test refugees