Speech #660333962

Let an alarm be sounded and newspapers immediately take it up. it goes from pen to pen and from mouth to mouth. increasing with each repetition in virulence and falsity. as does a neighborhood scandal. Soon everybody is swept off his feet. And so in this case the country has been led by excited propagandists to believe that our country is about to be overwhelmed by a countless horde of immigrants afflicted with incurable diseases and innoculated with the most vicious doctrines. Let me take just a moment to say that there has been no stage of American history when that same cry was not heard. It was made against the Dutch when they came here and began to populate large portions of Pennsylvania. and even so wise a man as Benjamin Franklin. probably the wisest man this country has ever produced. declared. in substance. that tie United States would be turned into a foreign province by the invading Dutch. and yet probably no better people ever lived anywhere than the Dutch immigrants and their descendants. It was again declared when the Irish. in order to escape the intolerable conditions of. their own country. fled to this land. They were denounced as ignorant paupers. Many. indeed. were unlettered. for education had been denied them. Their schools had been destroyed and their teachers had been persecuted. so that the schools of Ireland were held in the secret depths of the forest. and thus came to be known as "hedge schools." It was also true that the Irish immigrant was in many instances a pauper in appearance. frequently he had scarce clothing for his back. He cut but a sorry figure at first. He had to accept the most lowly occupations. and lie did. Whereupon the hue and cry was raised against the Irish immigrant. against the Irish. Yet. sir. in America the sons and daughters of Ireland have written their names on every brilliant page of American histo.y. The offspring of those who would have barred the Irish from our shores have found it very hard to keep pace with the descendants of the despised Irish immigrant. Again the cry was raised when the tide of Bohemian immigration set in. There had been persecution and rebellion in Austria. Accordingly. the Slovaks for a time had come in great numbers. They arrived wearing their leather waistcoats and smoking their long pipes. their countenances grizzled with the agony of toil and plowed deep with the furrow of hardship. At once selfappointed custodians of America cried out against these immigrants and prophesied the destruction of our country. The immigrants survived. They adopted American customs. They melted almost insensibly into our civic and political life. The descendants of these Bohemians today take their place in the ranks of our citizens and keep pace with the best there is. Similarly. a cry was raised against the Swedish. the Norwegian. and the Danish immigrants. yet there sit in this Chamber today two men. one a Norwegian and one a Dane by birth. They came as immigrants. One of these distinguished public servants told me that when he landed here he possessed but a single dollar. He probably could not have qualified for entrance under the present immigration laws. Attacks have likewise been made upon the Jewish people who have crowded to our shores. The spirit of intolerance has been especially active as to them.