Speech #680070621

No one can deny that there are today in this country certain groups of individuals who are preaching the cause of Soviet Russia. We know that individuals on trial for plots to overthrow the Government of the United States have not hesitated to preach the gospel of commnism rather than the stability and prosperity of American representative governmtient. Under our immigration law. during the year 1f922. there were admitted to this country about 30.000 individuals from Russia. They have come fresh from the terror of blood and death which has swept that country. They probably have come to escape chaos. but they themselves are in a State of mental chaos. and today we have no means of knowing what becomes of those aliens after they enter this country. We do know that the Russian Is preaching revolution In America and hopes to plunge the United States into the same sort of maelstrom that has wrecked his own country. And Russia is not the only country where wild theories of political and economic order are developing. A great deal of our immigration today is from those nations whose economic and political structures have been torn from their foundations by the bloodiest war mankind has ever known. They have come. many of them. from a wilderness of hate and greed which has embittered them against all mankind. Their effect on the economic life through AP.IL 2 their relations with labor in our industries. and their effect on the mental. moral. and physical standard of the American citizens with whom tisey come in contact. Is vitally important. Today certain groups of individuals are continually and persistently seeking to throw down the immigration bars and repeal the restriction laws. Some of these groups make their appeal upon the ground of a labor shortage. According to the Secretary of Labor the immigration figures indicate tbat the workers who have been able to secure admission under our laws are not the kind the employer says he needs. But we do know this: That among those who have entered our country are Immigrants whose mental. moral. and physical makeup constitute a usenace to the political. economic. and social life of the Republic. and to continue to permit immigration at the present rate. or to increase it. will mean the practical destruction of our whole industrial system. The clamor for more immigrants by certain employers because of a purported shortage of labor is many times t mere subterfuge. It is a cry to secure cheap labor for their own use. They desire a general influx of aliens to glut the labor market and beat down wages. There are some employers today who think the proper way to fix the price of a days labor Is by the light of a great crowd at the gate seeking employment. When you lower the wages of American workingmen by putting them in competition with the cheap labor of foreigners. you strike at the very foundation of American industrial prosperity. From the standpoint of labor I am in favor of reducing the nulber of immigrants permitted to land under our present law. sut. Mr. Chairman. whatever law we enact relative to this question will aid only if strictly enforced.