Speech #680076958

Mi-. President. there is one aspect of this immigration question that has received but little attention in the course of the discussion which has taken place in relation to the pending bill. yet it seems to me that this aspect is one of uncontnon importance. With the general object of the bill I am fully in sympathy. but. of course. this sympathy should be manifested in a just and circumspect spirit. I represent a State in which there are both a large nativeborn population and a large foreignborn population. and. as far as possible. I wish to see that an evenhanded measure of fair treatment in the matter of immigration restriction is meted out to these two elements. not to speak of the rest of the country. The United States has become the wealthiest and the most powerful country upon the globe. and it has also becomeone of the most populous. The census of 1920 evidences the fact that it now has a population of between one hundred and five and one hundred and ten million humnan beings. I claim that if immigration was ever really indispensable to the growth and prosperity of the United States it is so no longer. Surely a population of a hundred and five or ten million persons would supply all the seed corn that this country could reasonably need for the production of future crops of human beings. The probability is that the population of the United States would steadily increase from decade to decade without immigration. and that this progressive increase would not begin materially to abate until the population of the whole country had acquired such a density as to create conditions calculated to produce such an abatement. and I venture the assertion. paradoxical as it may sound. that the increase might be even greater without immigration than with it. The average American Is the bestfed and the bestclothed average individual in the whole world. and enjoys a larger share of all the comforts and of most at any rate of the pleasures of life than any other average individual in the world. and along with these economic conditions goes a higher standard of living on the part of our domestic population than prevails anywhere else in the world. In my opinion. since 1790 one of the principal effects of immigration into the United States has been to check early marriage upon the part of our domestic population and thereby to keep down its natural increase. Mr. Henry Fairfield Osborn. the president of the New York Museum of Natural History. has shown statistically that the increase of the domestic population of this country waxes and wanes exactly as immigration does or does not freely flow into it. in other words. fluctuates with the flux and reflux of the tide of immigration. and while this conclusion is more or less inconsistent with the views of one or more of our census experts. Gen. Francis A. Walker. the distinguished economist and the superintendent of our national censuses of 1860 and 1870. did not hesitate to express the belief that the population of the United States would be just as large today as it is if not one solitary foreign immigrant had ever put his foot upon our shores. nor is General Walker by any means alone in entertaining that Idea. The same conclusion has been reached by other American political economists of high authority. The correctness of General Walkers theory is borne out by facts which it seems to me. to say the least. have a great deal of probative force. There was no immigration into the thirteen original States worth speaking of for quite a time before the War of the Revolution. and there was none for quite a time after that war. yet we know. from the writings of Benjamin Franklin and from other contemporary sources. that never was the increase. of our American population more rapid than during this period. It was at a rate which meant the doubling of this population every 25 years. and never since that time. I believe. have our people multiplied at a more rapid rate. The Senator from Pennsylvania was entirely within bounds when lie stated that about 1790 the population of the United States was doubling every 22 years. that is to say. at a time when the great flow of subsequent immigration into the United States had not even commenced. It is also a fact that while It Is estimated that only 250.000 immigrants came into this country between 1790 and 1820--a period of 30 yearsyet during that interval in our history the increase in our population was no less than 150 per cent. Another most interesting fact. the truth of which was established by hearings in the Sixtyfirst Congress on the subject of immigration. is that though there had been comparatively little immigration into tile Southern States of the Union during the 50 years preceding tile census of 1900. still in those States the increase of population had been more rapid than in the Northern States. which had absorbed 75 per cent of the entire immigration that hiad gravitated to our shores. In other words. to repeat myself. the only effect of foreign immigration. so far as general reproduction in the United States Is concerned. has been to check early marriage on the part of our domestic population and thereby to arrest the multiplication of human beings that would otherwise have taken place. The famous economist. Malthus. advanced the idea. as we all know. that the tendency of the human species has always been. to outstrip in numbers its means of subsistence. and that the only real check upon an Increase of population is a lack of the means of subsistence.