That country out there [indicating] is a sheep and goat industry and cattle industry. This is the best agricultural country right here [indicating]. The cattle of Texas come from this section with the exception of two parts down here [indicating]. This country [indicating] is also developing into a magnificent oil country-the greatest oil field in the United States is right in these three counties.

Senator KEYES. In the sixteenth district?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir. Now, about what would happen in this country if this immigration is cut off right here [indicating] in the citrus fruit district-in the fifteenth congressional district-around Brownsville, which is developing into one of the great citrus-fruit districts of the country? They will soon come up to California. Californians do not think so, but it will. Then right above here, you come up here and you get into cabbage and lettuce. Those people are getting away from cotton and getting into vegetables.

Then you come over here [indicating] and get into what is known as the "winter garden" district, which is rapidly developing. That is all in the fifteenth district, which is growing the greatest spinach area in the United States. All the spinach you eat you get from right down there. Right in here [indicating] is where they raise tomato plants. The largest tomato plant shipments in the world come from that place all plants, not of the tomatoes, but of the plants. They are shipped all over the world from this point right in here.

Right in here is where these watermelons you people eat come from; and from up here in the North come 6,000 car loads a year shipped out of there.

To give you another idea, this country was very thinly and sparsely settled, and it is still sparsely settled. But it is very rapidly being settled by men who come from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and even New York; they are coming down into that country. This land in here [indicating] has to be grubbed, and when I say "grubbed" I mean cleared of mesquite, etc., which has to be cut off of it. The Mexican labor is the only one we can find to do it. We have had an unsatisfactory experience with white labor for that.

Getting over into this country, you come into the sheep, goat, and cattle country.

Senator KEYES. That is the sixteenth district?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir. All of that work is done with Mexican labor. They have a permanent labor supply there that stays with them year by year. But for the seasonal activities, they come in waves to this country.

When this cotton-picking opens up down here about the 15th of August, they come in and they pick that. By the time they get that picked they move up to this county [indicating], and when they get that out they have covered the whole State. They move in the cotton season five times across the State of Texas. And thus when they get through slong sometimes, in this section up here, if they get up that far, it is some time in December, before they get through gathering the cotton crop. Then they come back and work in these vegetables here, onions, for instance; there are one-fourth of the onions of the United States raised in the fifteenth district in Web County, spinach, cabbage, etc.

After they have made this loop and come back, they work in those fields until along in the spring. After those harvests are over with, those peaks are through, they go on back into Mexico. I know that is a much-mooted question.

I have given you some idea of the territory we serve, and which would be vitally interested, as practically 98 per cent of the agricultural labor of that section is Mexican. The one thing that you gentlemen will be called upon to solve is what is common agricultural labor? That is what we have to have. In that connection, about their going back: There has been much said, and I was called to task by the House committee over there in reference to this telegram which Mr. Garner has just filed, which I had intended to file, but he has already done so, which calls attention to the fact that we of south Texas and I am sorry to say it, gentlemen, but we dispute the figures given by a great arm of our Government. Whether they do it wilfully or not, whether ignorantly or not, we do not know. But we have called them to task, and we have asked them to explain. The Secretary of Labor came to Texas and made six great speeches in Texas, and in those speeches he said there were 3,000,000 Mexicans in the United States. We called his hand, and told him that his own figures did not bear him out in that statement. Then he finally admitted that there were not quite 3,000,000. We ourselves tell you that there are possibly about a million Mexicans in the United States.

We went to the Mexican Government, and I placed those figures on record in the House committee. They asked me the question, whether I would take the Mexican figures before I would the figures furnished by my own Government. I had prepared to meet that issue. I went to the Canadian Government.

Last summer I went to Canada, and I discovered that even the figures on the Canadian border, when you consider that 800,000 American citizens have gone into Canada in the last 15 years and settled on Canadian lands, and our figures only show about 150,000, we say there is something wrong; and I am sorry to say it, but I can not accept our Government's figures on Mexican immigration. We instinctively know they are not there. The public utility reports may not be in the best repute at the present time, but as an index of what is going on in the country the public utility reports are the best I know of. In 1923, 29 per cent of the customers of the public service company were Mexicans; to-day there are only 23 per cent. We who live along there see that they are not there. We do not know and have not been able to find out-we have been trying to get these gentlemen to tell us where they go. We know they go back. We can cite you instance after instance where a man gets his crop harvested during the harvesting period by people who come over and harvest his crop, go back to Mexico, and the following season come back to this same man, year after year. We know those things happen.

For the economic side of it, as to what we have along that border and what would happen to us, there are two things that would happen. if this law goes into effect. First, a great many of those farmers, men who have come from all over the United States, will have to go out of business. They will have to stop farming.

The second thing that will happen is this, the international complications. Let me say this in regard to the border patrols: They have a wonderful set of men, and we would like to see them increased. I might say to you that in my honest opinion in the last two years illegal entry of Mexicans has been decreased by at least 50 per cent, due to the activities of these men. They are good men; they are doing the best they can with what they have got We would like to see them get more money and get a larger force. But if you cut them off from legal entry-the Mexican does not mean to violate any law, but he is a migratory being and wants to move somewhere, and he is going to come over into the United States. And in that Big Bend country, with 900 miles of border and 400 miles there [indicating], the few men you have there can not possibly care for that border as it should be. When those rangers and those border patrolmen go to shooting up some of those boys you are going to have Mexico on your neck wondering what you are "shooting up our boys for?" They do not understand.

We

You ask me, What would be your solution? What will you do about this proposition? If I may be so presumptuous as to offer a suggestion to this body, I would suggest this: That before any action is taken that you as a committee visit our country down there. would be delighted to have you come to our section, because we believe that when you come there and spend a while with us you will come away with a different viewpoint. Words fail us when we go to tell you about that country. We can not express it and we would like for it to be expressed. But if you will come there and view the actual conditions, what we are doing and what we are trying_to accomplish, we think you would have a different viewpoint. We would suggest that before any action is taken that the problem of illegal entry be considered; that we work along with the Mexican Government to help us solve this problem. So long as we have a Monroe doctrine and are assuming the attitude of a big brother, then we ought to be a big brother, and by that means investigate not only the socialogical problems but the economic problems. Then I think a great deal of improvement can be made, and that the problem can be worked out.

I thank you.

Senator KEYES. For your information, Mr. Smith, I understand there will be quite a delegation from Congress down in your State in June, in the vicinity of San Antonio. You are inviting us to come down there.

Mr. SMITH. They will all be Democrats and they might not be able to do us much good. [Laughter.]

Senator KEYES. The committee will now stand adjourned until to-morrow morning at 10 o'clock.

(Thereupon, at 11.45 o'clock a. m., the committee adjourned to meet to-morrow, Thursday, March 1, 1928, at 10 o'clock, a. m.)

RESTRICTION OF WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1928

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10 o'clock a. m., in the committee room of the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate, Capitol Building, Hon. Henry W. Keyes presiding.

Present: Senators Keyes (presiding), Willis, Reed, Gould, and King.

Senator KEYES. The committee will come to order. We will proceed with the hearings on the bill providing for the extension of the immigration quota law to Mexico. I understand there are a number of witnesses here who wish to be heard this morning, all of whom are interested in this matter from the standpoint of the beet-sugar production. I also understand that most all of the witnesses of this morning have testified before the House at some length, and I would like to make the suggestion that if it is agreeable to the witnesses— of course, we want you to feel perfectly satisfied that you have been given a full and fair hearing-that if some one of you would put the matter in in as full form as you would like and that others who will hear the testimony will then corroborate it with such brief statements as they wish to make, that will not incumber the record, and for your information I might say, of course, that we have access to the printed hearings of the House. If that is agreeable, I would like to follow that course.

Mr. AUSTIN. Senator Keyes, Judge Shattuck, of Colorado, is on here, and wants to get away this afternoon. He is representing the Chamber of Commerce of Denver, aside from the beet-sugar industry, and I would like to have permission if he could just make a short statement preliminary to our case, so that he could get out this afternoon, if that would be satisfactory.

Senator KEYES. We will be glad to hear the judge.

STATEMENT OF HON. HUBERT L. SHATTUCK, REPRESENTING DENVER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, CHAIRMAN OF THE AGRICULTURAL AND LIVESTOCK DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE, DENVER, COLO.

Senator KEYES. Judge, if you would kindly state your full name, and address and whom you represent for the record.

Mr. SHATTUCK. My name is Hubert L. Shattuck; my address is Denver, Colo. I am here on behalf of the Denver Chamber of Commerce, of which I am a director and the chairman of the agricultural and livestock development committee of the chamber. The chamber

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has a department with a paid secretary under this title, "Agricultural livestock development department."

The city of Denver and the State of Colorado-the city of Denver particularly is dependent, I think you will readily see, upon its supporting territory.

From the earliest days of farming in Colorado more or less diversified farming has been carried on. We have rotated crops almost from the beginning of cultivation of the soil in Colorado.

It was discovered a number of years ago that the climate and the siol on the irrigated tracts in Colorado were particularly suited to the culture of the sugar beet. We produce a large tonnage per acre, and the beets carry a large percentage of sugar. The industry has grown until in our irrigated area there are now about 21,000 acres given to the culture of sugar beets, and we have in the State 17 sugar factories. We rank first among the States in the production of sugar from sugar beets, and we produce more than one-third of all of the beet sugar produced in the United States. It has been recognized from the beginning of this industry that the necessary hand labor was not performed by the highest class of persons.

Various bodies of workers have been employed, and now it appears that since the last law went into effect controlling foreign immigration that practically the sole supply of labor for the transcient work in the summer time in the beet fields is Mexicans, that is, the necessary number to take up the slack. A considerable portion of the work is done, as will be made to appear before the committee, by the farmers themselves and their families; then a considerable prtion by resident labor. Then that leaves a certain proportion, say 20 to 30 per cent, of the work that must necessarily be done by workers obtained from every available source during the growing and harvesting season, and the Mexicans, as I say, have come to be practically the sole reliance of the farmer and the beet sugar companies for this particular sort of work to take up the necessary slack, so that the industry can thrive to its greatest extent.

Our beet-sugar crop during the last year in the Denver territory amounted to between $30,000,000 and $40,000,000. Our livestock industry, which is hooked into the beet-sugar industry, was about a similar amount.

The pulp from the beet factories and the tops cut off in the fields are used by the farmers to feed to their livestock, and Colorado has reached a high development in the production of fatted livestocksheep and cattle both, until that has developed into a very large industry. These two represent the largest industry at present in the State of Colorado.

Now, if this bill should pass, we are very fearful that our production of sugar would be seriously curtailed, and that the farmer who has in the past particularly reaped considerable prosperity from the growing of beets and the growing of cattle would be seriously hampered in his getting labor, so that it would necessarily seriously curtail the industry, and that, the Denver Chamber of Commerce believes, would be a serious blow to our whole economic structure.

We have bank deposits at the present time of nearly $200,000,000, a considerable portion of which, of course, flows into the general marts of the country, and we feel that this is of sufficient importance