Speech #680076588

But wherever lie is. be adds to oar prosperity. He is ambitious for his children and their education. and. thank God. he usually has plenty of them. a fact most unhappily criticized by some of our modernists. as though the bringing of little tots into the world was a sign of inferiority. He becomes naturalized in a comparatively short time. he tries to become Americanized. His tendencies are not those of a radical. The foreignborn population of Rhode Island. consisting largely of Italians and Slavs. amounts to 42.6 per cent. yet the total Socialist vote in that. State at the last election was hut 2.6 per cent. Wisconsin. which has a small population of the newer immigration. but a large number of the Nordic stock. polled a Socialist vote of 12.1 per cent. Connecticut. which is second in the number of foreignborn whites with a total of 41.2 per cent. cast but 2.8 per cent for the Socialist Party.* Practically all the great leaders of radicalism in this country come from the oldtime stock. while few. if any. are the product of the newer immigration. But the crowning insult to the peoples of southern Europe arrives when we exclude them at the front door and pernit to enter at the back door boards of Mexicans. Last year 63.768 Mexicans came into the States. and a million more could have done likewise. had they so desired. for there is no quota law. or restriction of any sort for our southern neighbors. I do not know what standard is used to measure desirability. but I do know that the average Italian is as much superior to the average Mexican as a fullblooded Airedale is to a mongrel. Yet this bill will permit every Mexican in Mexico to enter the United States. and the same bill limits the number of Italians to 3.912 immigrants. The impression Is prevalent among some of the Members of this Congress that the Johnson bill develops a sharp issue between the sons of Italy and the sons of the American Revolution. A statement of that sort always suggests to my mind a cheap vaudeville team which drags into its closing number the American flag to pull the act out of mediocrity.