Speech #680073828

Then our industries began to expand rapidly. We wanted men for our mines. our mills. our factories. For 20 years this development was most rapid and the demand for artisans. as well as unskilled laborers. by the captains of industry called for wideopen doors for the immigrant. They were not content to let the flow of immigration. however. as in the early years. be dependent upon those who sought our shores because of their desire to have our land their land. our faith their faith. our ideals their ideals. but through organized agencies sought to stimulate immigration beyond the normal. It was a policy shaped by large contractors and large industrial corporations and steamship companies. The tide became a flood. a deluge. a devastation. Still we went on expanding. enlarging. bringing in more and more of contract labor heedless of a day of reckoning. Here and there a voice was raised as of a prophet crying in the wilderness. but except for the protest of organized labor no insistent warning voice was raised. That protest was only against contract labor and had no relation to the finer aspect of the perpetuity of the traditions and institutions of the Nation. In 191.4 the only limit was the capacity of the steamship comPanies and the aid that could be extended by the immigrant already here to his friends and relatives back in the old land. Not until 1917 did we pass any real restrictive legislation. That was the illiteracy test. Then came the World War and the conditions arising from it. These conditions brought to a sharp focus the problem that confronted us in this question of immigration. a problem that had given every thoughtful American alarm for half a century. The certainty was that the immigrants of the immediate future at least would be the hordes of eastern and southern Europe. with miscellaneous Asiatics. fleeing from the ruin and devastation of the war. That meant the turning over of the Nation and its destinies to a helpless heterogeneous mass. with our national ideals and institutions thrown into discord. Prompt. decisive action was called for. and the new policy of America in the matter of immigration was enacted. History will record it as one of he greatest achievements of the domestic policies of the Republican administration under the leadership of President Harding. The question now today before us is.