Speech #640196371

I wish to state to the Senator that I have voted for three immigration bills that have been vetoed. and they all contained the literacy test. I was not quite satisfied that that was a proper rule to follow. but after all it was the best rule we could get to limit immigration. The trouble with immiglation in recent yehrs has been this: The earlier immigration that we got came from the British Islands. Germany. and the Scandinavian countries. and that immigration. instead of huddling. in the big cities and industrial centers along the seaboard. hiked to the West and occupied and took up and settled our unimproved land. and the immigrants became in a short time farmers and industrial producers. they became. in fact. capital and labor united in one person. The immigration in recent years has been of a different kind. Most of the immigrants have coime in recent years from southern Europe. Many of those people are good people. I have seen them and they are good people. but the trouble with them is they will settle in the big cities. in the manufacturing centers. and overcrowd those instead of going to the westward and settling and taking up land and improving the country like the earlier generation of immigrants. It has occurred to me that we do need a certain class of laborers in this country. Take the men who work on our streets. who dig our tunnels. and do our underground work. if you look at them and study them they are thrifty. industrious people. and they perform a class of labor that our ordinary American laborers do not want to do.