Speech #690205896

Mr. President. it seems to me that it might be questioned whether we really need. from an economic standpoint. to bring in any immigrants at all. I do not know whether the attention of the Senator has been directed to this phase of the subject or not. though his range of study and knowledge is so wide that it doubtless has been. but it is the opinion of political economists. for instance. of the late Francis J. Walker. and other economists that I might mention. that the population of this country would be just as large as it is today if not one single. solitary Immigrant had ever landed upon our shores since the end of our War of Independence. The idea Is that the effect of letting dn from time to time immigrants accustomed to harder conditions of living than ours has been to check early marriage and to keep down the propagation of our native population. Benjamin Franklin. for instance. mentions the fact that during the War of the Revolution or about that timeI forget which at this momentnotwith. standing the fact that the early streams of American colonization had ceased almost entirely. our domestic population was doubling itself every 25 years. We have never in our history. I believe. had any higher rate of increase than that. Another very interesting fact is that in th South. to which comparatively little immigration has come. the population has. if I am not mistaken. multiplied at that rate. too. If the views of the economists that I have mentioned are correct. why. I repeat. should we trouble about immigration at all? Our own natives and present foreignborn citizens would see to the multiplication and they would increase without any foreign aid if we only continue to maintain our present easy conditions of living in this country. That is the point: The capacity of the human species for rapid multiplication under congenial circumstances is almost infinite. What keeps down a population is competition regulated by a low standard of wages. It is that which operates as a check upon early marriage and the quickened multiplication of human beings which flows from early marriage. If we look into the philosophy of the thing. this is an important aspect of the whole immigration question. If it is not particularly desirable that we should have any more immigrants in this country. if it is desirable that the present liberal rate of wages which our own working people. native and naturalized. obtain should be perpetuated. why should we concern ourselves acutely about any foreign immigration. whether English. Irish. German. Scandinavian. or Italian? Our first duty Is to our own people. those who are within our gates. not simply our native but also our naturalized stock. I echo most earnestly one view expressed by the Senator from Pennsylvania a few moments ago. I think that we ought to apply the immigration quota system to immigrants from Mexico and possibly some other countries to which it does not apply. Of course. I recognize -the great benefit that has resulted to the United States from the many different strains that have entered into the blood of its people. and I am not advocating any contraction in the present volume of immigration so far as Europe is concerned. What I .have said I have said merely by way of intimating that I do not go so far as the Senator from Missouri in favoring foreign emigration to our land.