Speech #710026455

When the emergency law of 1921 was passed. which. by its terms. was to endure for only a year. and was extended by subsequent resolution so that it finally lasted three years. there were available about two weeks for the calculation of some kind of numerical distribution of the total. It was suggested. I think. by the Commissioner of Immigration at that time. that one method that could be used was to take the statistics of foreignborn persons in the 191.0 census. the latest census that had then been published. and to split up the number arbitrarily according to that list of foreign born. There was not any other method available at that moment. Nobody has since then been able to suggest an alternative method. other than this nationalorigins scheme. The committees and the two Houses of Congress accepted the suggestion unhesitatingly. they took the 1910 census. which had these figures of foreign born in it. and they said. "We will let in a number equal to 3 per cent of the foreignborn people here in 1910." The 1910 census. of course. was made on a basis of prewar geography. There was not time. in the space of two weeks. to calculate the distribution of those figures according to postwar geography. and with all these new countries that had emerged from the peace conference. with all of the countries which had lost territory in the war. and those that had gained. it was almost a wild guess. based on the number of square miles of territory switched. as to how they would divide up those quotas. It can readily be seen that nothing else but a guess based on square miles of territory acquired would do for Yugoslavia. or Czechoslovakia. or Estonia. or Lithuania. or Finland. or any of the new countries. That was not satisfactory. as I have said. The quotas were all lopsided. So. when the 1924 bill came along the suggestion was made by Professor Garis. of Vanderbilt University. that a mnuch better way. and the way to get an immigration that was much more like the American population. was to go back to the 1890 census. which was a point about midway between what was called the old immigration and the new. when the tide set in from southern Europe. Professor Garis suggested that instead of basing the quotas on 191.0 or 1920. the latter of which was then available. we should go back to 1890. and that is what Congress decided to do. thinking that the figures were quite readily available. I will show in a few minutes.