Speech #880072473

This is a situation that feeds on itselfpoverty and crime in one group breed fear and hostility In others and this. In turn. impedes the acceptance and progress of the first group. thus perpetuating its depressed condition. This was the dismal situation that faced many of the southern and eastern European immigrants just as it had faced some of the earlier waves of immigrants. Indeed. one New York newspaper had these intemperate words for the newly arrived Italians: "The floodgates are open. The bars are down. The sallyports are unguarded. The dam is washed away. The sewer is choked * * * the scum of immigration Is viscerating upon our shores. The horde of $9.60 steerage slime is being siphoned upon us from continental mud tanks." As it had been with their predecessors. the struggle to establish themselves in the New World was a hard one for the newcomers from southern and eastern Europe. Indeed. for many. the struggle continues to this day. Fear. bigotry. hatredthese do not die easily and since they are not based on fact and logic. they do not yield to the evidence of fact and logic.