Speech #680084596

With wage earners already here receiving an average return of only $1.100 a year why bring in more to compete for that inadequate return and then make it more inadequate? Let the foreign stream. from which all of us came. he arrested. therefore. until the reservoir into which it has been discharging may find a safe and peaceful level. The tremendous impetus immigration received shortly after the Civil War has made the position of native workers still more difficult. that of the captains of industry still more powerful. enabling the latter through the advantages afforded by an overcrowded labor market to add to their already enormous fortunes. helping to perpetuate and magnify the unequal distributioa of wealth which came with the mechanical era. Since the Civil War over 25.000.000 aliens have swarmed into this Republic. only 1.000.000 less than all the white citizens in the United States in 1860. most of them unmarried and competing on that basis with native hands of families. whereas only four or five million aliens had entered during our entire history from 1790 until the Civil War. and these were almost wholly of the same racial strains as those already here. namely. strains from northern Europe and the United Kingdom. Many of tile 25.000.000 entering since the Civil War have died. many have returned to the homelands after accunulating a stake at the expense of native standards. but the number here in 1920 was nearly 14.000.000. more than a fifth of our entire male population 21 years and over. and 7.000.000 of these were unnaturalized birds of passage. The result is that the old fireCivil War American stock is diminishing. its families decreasing because they can not be maintained against competition like this. The native white American laborer of preCivil War stock has already been driven from eastern industrial centers in such numbers as to change materially the racial complexion of States and communities famous in the struggle for American independence. In New York City. the foremost American metropolis. 53 per cent of the male population. 21 years and over. is foreign born. in Boston. 46 per cent. in Massachusetts. 41. per cent. in the New England States. 38 per cent. in the States of New York. New Jersey. and Pennsylvania. 35 per cent. I mention these conditions in no spirit of racial hostility. but to show that the United States Is a veritable Tower of Babel.