Speech #680081383

I am sure that this bill will pass and that the 1890 census will be taken as the quota basis. This question is an economic question. we will settle it on that basis mainly. Labor---organized laborwants restriction of immigration. they are now in the cities enjoying fair wages. but with the stream of immigrants pressing on from the outside and the emigration from the western farm pressing on from within it is only natural that a slowdown or a complete stop in Immigration is asked for. Nor is organized labor alone In this demand. The unorganized labor element now pouring from our farmsthat are being devastated by the deflation brought on after the war by our high financeinto our cities at the rate of a million persons a year likewise asks for restriction. Business and professional men have come to have a new outlook upon economical questions. The farmer might be inclined to favor continued immigratiou. would the presentday immigrant come to the farms. but even in the great Northwest. where the farming class is mainly Scandinavian and German. very little either Scandinavian or German immigration has trickled onto the farms Where I live we have not averaged a dozen immigrants a year until now. when some of our German farmers are sending for needy relations in Germany. The young Germans that now come here and come to relatives living on farms would take to farming but farming does not pay. so the farmer is rather indifferent on the immigration question. Some farm organizations tell him that Immigration will bring him cheaper help that he needs to compete with countries where wages are lower. but the last couple of years the farmer has done most of his labor with his own immediate family. Small. ordinary retail business men and professional men feel that they will get along better with wellpaid and steadily employed native labor. so they favor immigration restrictions. Big business favors immigration for the reason that the person whose standard of living is lower than that of our own laborers will be willing to work for lower wages. Besides. the bulk of our immigration of late yearsthat which will be cut down most by the passage of this billhas gone into the factories in the great manufacturing centers. where the first comers among them now have obtained citizenship and where these see to it that the new arrivals become citizens as soon as they possibly can. These newer additions to our citizenry exert a tremendous pressure on the Members of Congress from the industrial States. It is indeed amusing to see that the blueblooded Yankees stand in this place and plead for the continued open door for the very people that will shortly. ifnot now stopped. dispossess them of the very soil they walk on. It is a significant fact that most of the amendments to weaken this bill have come from representatives of the industrial sections. After the election of McKinley as President. the south European immigration increased tremendously. until in the year 1907 it totaled nearly a million souls. nearly four times as many as the northern immigration. Our captains of industry were solely responsible for that. yet we have people among us who can not understand why we shall take the census of 1890 for our quota basisthat census that shows this country preponderatingly northern with a very small per cent of southern blood in it. The battle has been raging on the floor of this House as to whether or not this bill is discriminatory against certain nationals. The gentleman from New York in pleading for the Madden amendment for an average quota of �the 1890. 1900. 1910. and 1920 census which would increase the total numbers by about 50.000. gave the very best reason for the adoption of the 1890 census as a quota basis in the plea he made against it when he said that the immigration into the United States from 1860 to 1890 was 75 per cent from the northern countries of Europe. That is exactly why the 1890 census is being used for the purpose of figuring the quota basis. That is why people hailing from some of the northern countries. like the Scandinavian countries. are for this basis. even though inder this bill the quota from the Scandinavian countries will be cut about 50 per cent from what the present law allows. The people who came to this country as Immigrants before 1900 were the ones who settlefl the great West and who had then also laid the foundations for our great cities. These people came here at the call of the American people that wanted the great agricultural resources developed. They did not crowd any other people out of the way by cutting wages. they were people used to a high standard of living.