Speech #670038696

When they knew from experts who appeared before the committee that the resumption of the Muscle Shoals plant to make fertilizers for the farmers of the country needed a meager appropriation to continue it. they sat in their places and refused to make the appropriation that would have redounded to tile benefit of the farmers in cheaper fertilizers. Those things are not enumerated among the achievements set forth by the Washington Post. the official organ of the administration. But the next in importance which is enumerated in this editorial is thePassage of an immigration bill checking the flood of aliens to the United States. and thereby protecting American labor from unlimited competition with foreign labor. What other Republican would claim credit for the passage of the immigration bill as a party achievement? If it had been left to Sentators on this side of the aisle. we would have placed upon the statute books a real restrictive Immigration bill. and the reason why it is not a real restrictive Immigration bill and does not go further to protect the labor of the country against cheaper labor being brought in from abroad and our country from being flooded with undesirable immigration from foreign lands. as this editorial says. is that it was strangled by Members of the Senate on the other side of the aisle. We tried to have adopted an amendment restricting the number of immigrants coming into this country to 1 per cent. but it was voted down by Senators on the other side. I myself offered the amendment to make it 3 per cent. lowering it from 5 per cent as carried in the original bill. which tie majority side favored. and that was agreed to and was finally incorporated into the law. Yet we find that this Republican organ claims for the Republican Party the credit for passing an antiimmigration bill.