Speech #710092133

The Cubans pay no taxes in the United States. they are bound by no United States laws in restraint of their exploitations. Through the enjoyment of a low. inadequate. and preferential tariff Cuba pours its sugars into this country and throws out of employment our laborers and farmers quite as effectively as if their lowgrade workers of all hues and shades came in here themselves and did the work of production in the United States. They stultify our immigration laws. they appear before our Congress and plead for themselves as against American farmers and producers. by preventing sugar production in the United States and thus encouraging production of crops of which. we have a surplus. they involve us in intricate problems of legislation so difficult that the skeletons of efforts at their solution mark the congressional trail of the past 26 years. What Cuba has cost the people of the United States since we gave it freedom from the Spanish yoke at the cost of our blood and treasure is beyond computation. Unless Cuba expects to throttle the domestic sugar industry there is no just basis for its opposition to the rates which are proposed in this measure.