only 56.8 per cent of their possible capacity, this fact is used as an argument in favor of immigration. We regret that it was republished in the weekly circular letter issued by William H. Barr, president of the National Founders' Association. As a general proposition Mr. Barr's letters to the members of that organization are so illuminating that we have been very much surprised he should have fallen into the error of adopting the figures of the National Association of Manufacturers in this false argument for increased immigration. As a matter of fact, we have millions of foreigners just as unassimilated as those in Hamtramck, Detroit. We have more than 1,250 papers in this country printed in foreign languages, and nobody outside of their readers has the slightest idea of what doctrines they are teaching. But we do know that the statements recently made by Secretary Hughes that the Russian Government has been seeking to develop among the foreigners in this country a bolshevistic desire to overturn our Government is unquestionably true. That has been going on ever since the Bolshevists captured Russia.

When Ambassador David Francis returned from Russia he wrote the Manufacturers Record that he was sure a very large amount of Russian gold was being expended in this country for the express purpose of developing Bolshevism in America. In his letter he stated that Russian bankers came to him in secret and asked him to cable to this Government to prevent the payment to bolshevistic agents for the spread of that propaganda, of money which these banks had on deposit in the United States banks. These bankers told him that under penalty of punishment they had been compelled to cable to their bank correspondents in this country to pay out the amounts specified to the men whose names were given in these cables; but knowing that they were bolshevistic agents they appealed to Ambassador Francis to notify this Government and to see that the American banks were warned. When he returned to America, however, Mr. Francis found that his message to the State Department haa not reached Washington in time to prevent some of this money being thus expended.

We need no more of the class of people from Russia and from southern Europe tinged with this bolshevistic, socialistic, communistic, anarchistic ideas, whose hearts and lives and brains are fertile soil for the sowing of the seed of revolutionary overturning of this Government.

At times there has been a scarcity of labor, but this can be better met by the larger development of labor-saving machinery than by crowding this country with foreigners.

We repeat the statement often made in this paper that if we can not have rapid material progress without enlarged immigration, it would be better that our material progress go on at a slower pace.

We trust that Chairman Johnson and the members of his Immigration and Naturalization Committee will see that no bill, not even any from Secretary of Labor Davis, is permitted to pass Congress, which under any condition whatever would enlarge the influx of the undesirable element that seeks to leave Europefor Europe's good-and seeks admission to this country to intensify the conditions already here.

With that editorial, I think I am quite safe in saying that not only our extensive membership, but public opinion in America, is quite in agreement. Both also, I think, are quite in accord with President Coolidge when he urged quota restriction in his last message to Congress, wherein he says:

American institutions rest solely on good citizenship. They were created by a people with a background of self-government. New arrivals should be limited to our capacity to absorb them. America must be kept American.

The first census (of 1790) showed a population of less than 3,000,000, of whom 91.8 per cent were English, Scotch, and Irish. Of the 95,000,000 whites here in 1920, 14,000,000 foreign born were born in 45 different countries, spoke 40 different languages, and were composed of 32 different racial strains. I do not mean to argue the desirability of immigration from a racial standpoint. I admit that it does not depend so much on racial blood as upon the moral and other standards, customs, and ideals of the country whence the immi

grants come. An alien can not become assimilated so long as he remains a part of a hard, unassimilated alien mass or foreign colony in this country, such as we find at Hamtramck and in our various foreign-stock cities, where in some instances they amount to "foreign provinces " in this country, and where men with certain naturalization papers are nominated for office by both political parties because of such alien mass colonization. Can that be bipartisan government? Is that in keeping with the safety of our free representative institutions and plan of government, particularly if these foreign colonies are not only not reduced but augmented and multiplied?

We can not subscribe to some of the testimony before this committee to the effect that Americans won't work, won't do the work, were worse protestants against conforming to the draft and fighting their country's battles, and the like, than foreign born. I do not believe such allegations. As a matter of fact, it was members of this order, all native born of native-born parents, who first responded to Lincoln's call for volunteers and endured such an unwelcome transit through Baltimore; and their local camps still retain medals evidencing that response to their country's call to arms. It was this order which rallied, just after war was declared against Germany, one day at Scranton, Pa., over 2,000 of its members, schooled in military tactics, all native born, to enlist in the United States Army, and caused the Secretary of War to write a commendatory letter declaring their patriotism unsurpassed.

We favor the 1890 census as a base, because it is the only census year that will do justice to the descendants who established our free institutions and who have perpetuated them for posterity. Continuation of immigration on the basis of the 1910 census will create alarm and react in race prejudice. The present temporary quota law, basing its 3 per cent on the census of 1910, discriminates against the immigrant stock which founded this country, fought the American Revolution, perpetuated the Republic, and whose offspring are entitled to at least equal, if not greater, consideration than all or any others. If a later census year must be the quota base, then reduce the percentage to the vanishing point or enact suspension outright.

I appreciate the lateness of the hour, the long, tedious session you have had to-day, and that you desire to end the hearing on the general phases of the question to-day.

I thank you.

(Thereupon, at 5.10 o'clock p. m., the committee adjourned until the following day, Tuesday, March 11, 1924, at 10.30 o'clock a. m.)

SELECTIVE IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION

TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 1924

UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, Washington, D. C.

The committee met, pursuant to adjournment on yesterday, at 10.30 o'clock a. m. in the Immigration Committee room, the Capitol, Senator LeBaron B. Colt presiding.

Present: Senators Colt (chairman), Keyes, Willis, Reed of Pennsylvania, King, Harris, Harrison, and Copeland.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. proceed, Mr. Kinnicutt.

You may

STATEMENT OF MR. FRANCIS H. KINNICUTT-Resumed.

Mr. KINNICUTT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I represent the Immigration Restriction League (Inc.), of New York City. That league is composed of about 20,000 American citizens, almost all of them voters. It has, however, no restrictions of any kind on its membership. It is chiefly located in New York City, Brooklyn, and the neighboring districts in New Jersey.

This league, as you probably know, has been organized for some time. It was founded in 1908, at the time when our immigration was at its highest, when in many consecutive years we were getting more than a million people a year from Europe.

I should like to read into the record certain resolutions adopted by the league.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well.

Mr. KINNICUTT (reading):

At a regular meeting of the Immigration Restriction League (Inc.), of New York, held on the 14th day of December, 1923, the following resolution was adopted by unanimous vote:

Whereas a bill, H. R. 101, has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Hon. Albert Johnson, and has also been introduced in the Senate, as S. 35, by Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge; and

Whereas said bill, besides removing the hardships in the present immigration quota law and introducing the needed improvements in the administrative features thereof, contains a provision recommended by President Coolidge in his recent message to Congress for basing the quotas upon an earlier census, whereby the less assimilable immigration of recent years will be reduced to safe proportions:

Resolved, That the Immigration Restriction League (Inc.), of New York, with an active membership of over 20,000 American men and women, hereby urges upon Congress the enactment of this highly important bill into law.

This is a certified copy of the resolutions, duly certified by the secretary, Mr. A. R. Webster.

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The league is aware of the fact that the Senate Committee has voted in executive session to reduce the quota to 2 per cent but to retain the present quota basis of 1910 in the bill introduced by Senator Reed. The league is in favor of several changes which have been introduced in the Senate bill, as compared with the House bill, particularly the provision which merely grants a preference to relatives of citizens of the United States but keeps them within the quotas.

The league has always felt, and has several times acted accordingly, on this phase of the question that while it recognizes the claims of the near relatives of people who are already here in this country to reasonable treatment with reference to the admission of near relatives that are still on the other side, it believes there ought to be some definite limit. We are quite willing to leave that to the committees of Congress to work out; that is not for us. But it depends primarily, of course, on humanity, always with a view to the limits that national self-preservation imposes. There are 14,000,000 foreign born in the country, and every class of relative that is added rolls up into a snowball. Ninety per cent of the immigrants admitted in recent years, as the chairman has pointed out, have been relatives. So much for that.

The league still favors, however, the 1890 census basis, and so voted at its last meeting. The principal reason why it believes that the census of 1890 is preferable as a basis for the quotas to that of 1910 is that it reduces the proportion of immigration from southern and eastern Europe, while still granting to the countries of those regions a proportion of the total quota of immigration which is fair and gives those countries as a whole a somewhat larger proportion of the total amount of immigration than they would get if their quotas were exactly proportionate to their racial representation by stocks deriving from those countries in our present total population according to the census of 1920.

The CHAIRMAN. The racial representation by stock is in my opinion a factor impossible of ascertainment, as demonstrated by the last census report. Where you have 58,000,000 people here who are the children, native born, of native parents, it is impossible to segregate stocks. The Census Bureau have been endeavoring for 15 or 20 years to determine the number that would have been derived from the original colonial stock of 3,000,000, and their conclusion is this. If they had had children in the natural course and no immigrants had been admitted, the original 3,000,000 would have amounted to 47,000,000; but they say in this computation that it is possible that not more than 20,000,000 persons in this country are of absolutely pure native white stock, while the remaining 27,000,000 of people, of the total of 47,000,000 estimated as the numerical equivalent of the native white stock, may be made up in varying proportions of native stock. Moreover, the bureau experts say that it would be theoretically possible for every native white person of native parentage in the United States in 1920 to be of mixed native and foreign stock.

Mr. KINNICUTT. May I ask, Senator, as to the date of that— The CHAIRMAN. Wait a minute. There is a pending amendment before the committee on this racial stock proposition as a quota

basis. The present quota law is based upon the number of foreign born of each racial group in the country. Now, when you reach the third generation they are no longer foreign born or immigrants, but become native born in all the census classifications.

Now, will you please go on? I did not want to interrupt you; and we are here to listen.

Mr. KINNICUTT. I am grateful to you, Mr. Chairman, for expounding your position on this matter. I grasp the point of your statement as to a large part of our population, the majority. It is impossible to get the exact racial pedigree, you might say, from colonial times. We do know this, however, that in the census of 1790, our first census, when we had a population of about 4,000,000, according to the census statement in a book entitled

The CHAIRMAN. They estimated 3,000,000 in all the colonies. Mr. KINNICUTT. Well, I will accept your correction-3,000,000. We know that that 3,000,000, according to the census estimate and an analysis of that census, shows about 91 per cent entirely derived from the British Isles. We had that as a start. Now, I am going to argue backward, in this respect. I am going to take the other end of it.

It

It is a pretty definitely ascertainable quantity, this new immigration. If you take the census of 1920, of course, it gives the number of foreign born. That is approximately 14,000,000, by races. gives the number of children native born, both of whose parents were of one nation or another

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kinnicutt, I know I have diverted you, but you are reaching a much debated question. There were three methods of calculating the descendants of the Colonial stock, and the census authorities adopted a somewhat new method. I understand what your position is, that by racial stock you are not discriminating against southern and eastern Europe in taking the census of 1890. But the fact is we took the census of 1910, and just as soon as you go back to 1890 our racial groups of foreign stock regard it as a discrimination. On that issue this committee decided, by a vote of 7 to 4, to retain the census of 1910.

Mr. KINNICUTT. Well, if argument on this thing is closed before the committee, of course, I will stop my argument.

The CHAIRMAN. No; we are here to listen to any argument that you wish to present.

Mr. KINNICUTT. I had almost finished on that; I was only going to make two more remarks. As far as there is a cry of discrimination, not on the part of everybody, but, with all due respect, on the part of certain racial groups, particularly the Italian and Jewish groups, and I think the Rumanian group-I say the cry is not well founded. So far as southern and eastern Europe goes you can get the approximate number that would represent their part of the immigration that corresponds with their stocks in this country.

That is a fairly definite quantity. It amounts to not more than 15 per cent of our white population, and not more than 11.7 per cent of the total population. Those figures are quite easy to work out, and they get under the 1890 census 15 per cent under the regular quotas, and the lion's share of the relatives under the House bill. Of course, you have a different provision as to the relatives.