Speech #640217994

When we were confronted here a short time ago with legislation controlling the use we should make of the Panama Canal. after we had expended an enormous sum of money In Its construction. supposedly for the benefit of the people who paid the money. we were told that we could not use it for the special benefit of the people of the United States because there was a treaty with a foreign country which prohibited us from doing it.. Likewise. a short while ago. when Congress by formal action attempted to favor its own citizens against aliens by making a discriminating provision in the tariff duties in favor of goods that were imported in American ships. authorities outside of Congress held the law to be entirely nugatory. because they said that we could not favor our own citizens in that way on account of a treaty with a foreign country. So it is now. when we are attempting here for the third or fourth or fifth time to put on the statute books a law that has long been needed. to bring up to date. to suit. the new conditions of population and of competition of labor. a law regulating the immigration of aliens in the United States. we are told in the same tones. in a familiar way. that we can not accomplish what we seek to accomplish. because our hands are tied by some provision in a treaty with a foreign country. These are only a few examples. Mr.