Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The second object of a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by
a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent
capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American
citizens. This would not keep out all anarchists, for many of them
belong to the intelligent criminal class. But it would do what is also
in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of ignorance, so potent in
producing the envy, suspicion, malignant passion, and hatred of order,
out of which anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. Finally, all
persons should be excluded who are below a certain standard of economic
fitness to enter our industrial field as competitors with American
labor. There should be proper proof of personal capacity to earn an
American living and enough money to insure a decent start under
American conditions. This would stop the influx of cheap labor, and the
resulting competition which gives rise to so much of bitterness in
American industrial life; and it would dry up the springs of the
pestilential social conditions in our great cities, where anarchistic
organizations have their greatest possibility of growth.
Both the educational and economic tests in a wise immigration law
should be designed to protect and elevate the general body politic and
social. A very close supervision should be exercised over the steamship
companies which mainly bring over the immigrants, and they should be
held to a strict accountability for any infraction of the law.
There is general acquiescence in our present tariff system as a
national policy. The first requisite to our prosperity is the
continuity and stability of this economic policy. Nothing could be more
unwise than to disturb the business interests of the country by any
general tariff change at this time. Doubt, apprehension, uncertainty
are exactly what we most wish to avoid in the interest of our
commercial and material well-being. Our experience in the past has
shown that sweeping revisions of the tariff are apt to produce
conditions closely approaching panic in the business world. Yet it is
not only possible, but eminently desirable, to combine with the
stability of our economic system a supplementary system of reciprocal
benefit and obligation with other nations. Such reciprocity is an
incident and result of the firm establishment and preservation of our
present economic policy. It was specially provided for in the present
tariff law.
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