Carl Schurz

“ And as to the labor argument, is not there something supremely absurd in the idea that in this country, with its immense undeveloped resources, the interests of labor would be best promoted by keeping the producing force at the lowest possible ebb, for fear of an increased competition of labor? ”

“ Has the assimilating force of American life and of our free institutions so completely run out that, in our congenial climatic conditions, we would despair of absorbing into our social body without serious danger a comparatively small number of people belonging to races which have shown themselves elsewhere capable of a high order of civilization? ”

“ Laboring-men are worried by a lack of employment in bad times, and their leaders with equal facility or unscrupulousness assign the competition of new-comers as the cause of it all, and shout for the stoppage of immigration as a sure remedy. If immigration were really stopped there would be a grievous disappointment among the believers. It would soon turn out that the immigrant was not the cause of the deterioration of our political life, nor the lack of employment ”

“ That immigration throws upon our shores hordes of undesirable foreigners, whose infusion into our social body, and whose eventual admission to political rights and privileges, will in a dangerous degree lower the standard of American citizenship; secondly, that it brings great masses of the pauper laborers of the Old World into direct competition with our laboring force, and thereby will lower the wages and the standard of living of American working-men ”

“ From such a country, with resources promising an increase of its wealth beyond calculation, it is more than grotesque to exclude by law persons with two strong arms and an honest willingness to work because they are unable to read and write twenty words of the Federal Constitution, or, if male immigrants happen to have wives who cannot read or write those twenty words, to oblige them to separate themselves from their wives — for this the Lodge bill substantially does. ”

“ Does not every man of experience who has seen much of this country know that some of the States in which the foreign-born population is proportionately strongest are among the most orderly, best-governed, and most prosperous in the land ”

“ That restriction has been attempted and partially effected by various legislative provisions excluding contract laborers, and subjecting all other immigrants to a careful scrutiny as to their character, their physical condition, their means of support, and so on. Immigration has very much decreased, owing in part to the economic depression which has prevailed in this country for several years, and in part to our immigration laws, which make the transportation companies responsible for the return of objectionable immigrants, thus imposing considerable financial risks upon them ”

“ While formerly the overwhelming majority of the immigrants had come from Germany, Ireland, and the Scandinavian countries, the tide was now running most strongly from Hungary, Russia, Poland, and Italy. ”