Speech #680078779

Foster. Secretary of State. said in 1893: The subject of conventional agreements to the power of sel -preservation must be implied. for it can not be presumed that when governments contract with each other they will fail to take notice of the existence of so inherent a right of sovereignty and attempt to grant away that which. by the very nature of things. is Incapable of being granted. Our first immigration law was all act of Congress of March 3. 1875. It prohibited the immigration of aliens who were undergoing a sentence for conviction in their own country of felonious crimes and women imported for immoral purposes. In 1882 a broader law was enacted forbidding vessels to land aliens in this country who were convicts. lunatics. idiots. and so forth. APirm 1t Our labor conditions became seriously affected by business interests which employed much labor. importing great numbers of aliens to work in mines. build railroads. and. to perform various other kinds of services. In southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia organizations conducted a business of corralling persons who had been attracted through advertisements and delivering them en bloc under contract to employers of labor in America. For the sake of the profit to be extracted from them penniless laborers were gathered. dispatched. and cared for during their long journey to a destination on the other side of the globe as if they were so many cattle. The seller not only incited the peasant to migrate but took a mortgage on his home for the passage money or took the bond of some relative that the migrant would repay the 1passage money. These parties were through billed from their native village to some part of America. There they were met by a confedcrate of the shipper. who took them in charge and finally delivered them in this country to some one who had contracted with this organization for so much labor. or he would deliver these foreigners to some one who was recruiting labor on commission for a construction gang. This condition our Congress attempted to remedy when it passed the act of 1885 forbidding the importation of labor under contract. In 1891 Congress enacted a much broader immigration law. embody lag in it. all the features of former acts and greatly extending its terms to remedy other evils. In 190"3 a sIill broader law was passed by Congress. This class of legislation was considered by almost every Congress from that time 6cown to 1917. when the law containing the literacy test was passed over the Presidents veto. Then followed in 1921 the law fixing immigration on a percentage basis. We are now to condder a bill which changes the lercentage basis for fixing immligration from 3 per cent. based on the census of 191.0. to 2 per cent. based on the census of 3890. The causes affecthig immigration are mainly economic. In our own country the main considerations having weight with the intending immigrants. causing them to emigrate into the United States. have been (1) economic prosperity as against excessive population and poverty existing in iiany foreign countries. (2) political freedom which a republic affords as contrasted with oppression of monarchies. (3) r.211ious freedo) and equality guaranteed to all as compared with the disabilities under which many peoples are held . (4) clhss barriers and castes. which so largely prevail in many countries of the Old World. A great change in the racial composition of immigration and in the ideals of inunigrants has taken place in recent years. In the beginning America was an unsettled wilderness filled with savages. danger.% and hardshins. It served as a retreat for those who were of strong heart. aretreat for those who rather than surren(ler religious principles or ideals were willing to quit the shores of their nativity and face the dangers and uncertainties certain to be emicountered on uncharted seas and in in unsettled land.