something else. [Laughter.] And he was a member of it, and so I charge it to the commission. Their accounts contain many charges for carriages and they were all allowed. They were all certified to by the chairman of the commission as correct, and all admitted by the auditor to have been for official business. Some of them are amusing, as I think you will conclude. I find here a carriage trip to Bethany from Jerusalem. [Laughter.] Did you ever hear of any immigration coming to this country from Bethany that would be poisonous or deleterious to the social conditions of this country. [Laughter.] I never did, and yet they took a business trip to Bethany to investigate immigration conditions, or else they did it for pleasure, and if they took it for pleasure, then it was at the expense of the Government, and they had no more right to do it than I have to take a hack ride in this city at the expense of the Government if I should care to ride over it for pleasure. They had a trip to Bethlehem from Jerusalem to investigate immigration conditions; a carriage journey to Joppa to investigate immigration conditions; a carriage trip to the ambassador's and return in London to investigate immigration conditions in that august embassy; a trip to the House of Lords. Gentlemen, do you think it necessary to go to the House of Lords to investigate immigration conditions? [Laughter.] If you do, then I do not understand why we should not throw the gates wide open and permit citizens from every country to come to our shores if we are going to permit members of the House of Lords to come. [Laughter.] They went there for the purpose of investigating these lordly gentlemen in order to benefit immigration conditions in this country, of course. Mr. MANN. Will the gentleman allow me a question there? Mr. MACON. Wait until I get through with this enumeration. They had a carriage ride to the Lake of Killarney. Mr. BENNET of New York. I would like to ask if the gentleman charges I took that ride? Mr. MACON. I charge that the commission did. Is the gentleman a member of it? Mr. BENNET of New York. I never was in Ireland in my life. Mr. MACON. And did not take any wine while abroad, I suppose? Mr. BENNET of New York. Never. Mr. MACON. It is charged up in your bill on file in the Treasury Department. Mr. BENNET of New York. Unquestionably it is; and I will tell you just where it came. In the Sicilian trip, where I paid all the bills for all the party, consisting of Mr. BURNETTMr. MACON. You took wine also; did you not? Mr. BENNET of New York. I did not. Mr. MACON. Did you drink anything at all? any. I paid for it, but did not drink Mr. MACON. You paid for it out of the commission's money? Mr. BENNET of New York. I certainly did. Mr. MACON. When did you become an abstainer? Mr. BENNET of New York. Thirty-nine years ago. [Loud applause on the Republican side.] 28417-8723 Mr. MACON. Well, let us see about that. Let me read from the New York Sun of March 30, 1909, and see whether or not the gentleman is a teetotaler: The article is headed "Liberal William and the Liberal Sunday." The Another day star has fallen from the firmament; another light-ship has gone ashore on the coast of reform; another beacon in the pathway of purity has been quenched. We hate to admit it. We have suppressed the fact as long as we could; but we can do no more. Hon. WILLIAM S. BENNET, "Our Billy," has gone over to the demon rum. The white ribbon is trailing in the mud-there is the sound of ribaldry in every Raines law hotel. Even in the Republican county committee headquarters beneath the marble tower that tops the skies there is the sound of unrestrained weeping. No more tea parties with Beautiful Billy" to pour; no more of those sweetly instructive "at homes of the Hon. HERBERT PARSONS. A pillar of the community has been wrenched from its foundations and another shorn Samson goes to his ruin,, while the temple of teetotalism trembles to its base. * * Our friend has fallen off the water wagon! [Laughter.] It is not an unheard-of thing. Other people have had a similar experience. Here it is almost the 1st of April; and that is a respectable period for any New Year's resolution to persist. [Laughter and applause.] Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from New York attempts to convey the idea that he did not take wine when he was abroad, because he quit thirty-nine years ago, but here is a statement saying that he fell off the water wagon only last year. laughter and applause.] [Great The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman will proceed in order. Mr. MACON. I thought I was doing that. The CHAIRMAN. The Chair is of the opinion that personalities of that sort from a newspaper should not be used in that way. Mr. JAMES. That was a pleasantry, not a personality. Mr. MACON. Goodness alive! I am not offering anything offensive, I hope. I was only reading an article from a Republican paper about a Republican falling off of a water wagon. But back to the joy rides. They had a carriage to the castles at Edinburg, a carriage to Westminster Abbey, a carriage to the Tower of London, a cab to Regent square, and a cab to the British Museum. I wonder if they were trying to investigate immigration conditions in Westminster Abbey or in the British Museum. [Laughter.] In Siracusa we find "a carriage ride to the catacombs," Mr. Chairman, a place that is filled with dead men's bones which are decaying hour by hour [laughter] and the stench that arises from them, if long endured, will produce certain death. Yet the commission was investigating immigration conditions among those dead bones that are giving forth such a stench that would ordinarily drive a hyena to his hole. Ah, do you think, sir, that the commission was in an honest discharge of its duties in the matter of investigating immigration conditions when its members were taking these joy rides? No man who has a reverence for the truth will insist that they were. But, O Mr. Chairman, there are so many things here that can be shown by the records, and I will say, in passing, that I have 28417-8723 introduced a resolution calling for an investigation of the expenditures of this commission that took $90,000 with them when they went upon the European trip, only $20,675 of which has been accounted for in their reports. We would like to know what became of the balance of that $90,000, and we would like to know the nature of the many other extravagant expenditures that have been made by the commission; $667,992.67 spent, and nothing to show for it except four or five little reports that do not amount to a hill of beans, the greater part of the information contained in them having been copied from something that had already been written and said upon the immigration question, and therfore they are nothing more nor less than plagiarism in the true sense of the word, and not based upon an intelligent investigation of immigration conditions by this commission. But from what the gentleman from New York [Mr. BENNET] said the other day, one would naturally conclude that he was a friend to the cause of immigration reform conditions in this country, and I thought from what he said that he was in favor of the $4 head tax, because he said that the commission was responsible for the legislation that provided for it, and that they had brought so many millions of dollars into the country by reason of their recommendations, to offset the expenditures that they had made, that the country was financially much better off than it would have been if the commission had not been created. But let us see what the gentleman says upon that subject in a letter written to New York about the time the commission was created. Let us see if he is a friend to the conditions as they exist in this country under the law, or whether he is not seeking to destroy the law and to help to pollute the social conditions of the country by bringing in a class of immigration that can not come here under any sort of decent law. I read, Mr. Chairman, from a letter written from this city on February 19, 1907, just the day before the immigration law was approved that created this commission. It is directed to the Liberal Immigration League, 150 Nassau street, New York. LIBERAL IMMIGRATION LEAGUE, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 150 Nassau Street, New York, N. Y. GENTLEMEN: Referring again to your kind invitation to be present at the mass meeting to be held under the auspices of your league on the 22d instant, would say that I find that, owing to the engrossing nature of my duties here, I shall be unable to be present. I am more than pleased to have been able to report from the conference committee so moderate a bill as that which has just passed Congress. Actually, through the bonding privilege, people who are now being rejected daily, because of poor physique, low vitality, or liability to become public charges, can, after this law takes effect, be admitted, so that the campaign of the Restrictionists has ended in a bill under which persons who can not be admitted under existing law, can, after this new law takes effect, be admitted. And no additional persons, other than epileptics, certain classes of insane persons, and a certain class of contract laborers will be excluded. A confession, Mr. Chairman, that under the new law a class of people can be brought into this country who will become obnoxious, poisonous to the society of it, who will become a charge upon the Government, a charge upon the burden-bearing citizens of this country from one end of it to the other, a pol28417-8723 lution of the happy social conditions of which we are so justly proud and jealous. In regard to the head tax of $4, it is without justification, but it will be an irritation and not a restriction. If we had not accepted it, we probably could not have obtained a bill, and thus have been deprived of the bonding clause. I should advise that your league continue. The increased head tax is worth protesting against, and, in addition to that, notice was publicly given on the floor of the House that the restrictionists intend to continue their campaign, with the idea of getting the educational test in the Sixtieth Congress. If the restrictionists continue their campaign, you ought to continue yours, and I can not speak too highly of the work of your league during this Congress, without which it is quite certain there would have been educational test upon the statute books to-day, thus excluding yearly about 200,000 deserving immigrants. an Regretting my inability to attend, and wishing you every success in your efforts, I am, WILLIAM S. BENNET, Member Immigration Commission. Very truly, yours, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from New York took some exception the other day to my making an attack upon a Member of Congress without hunting up evidence before I pro-· ceeded that could be proven even to the point of the crossing of every "t" and the dotting of every "i" in the information that I presented and based my charges upon. Upon what meat have Congressmen fed that they have grown so great that they can not afford to be questioned? I remember to have read that a Member of Congress from the State from which the gentleman comes was charged with a felony while a Member of this House and escaped upon a plea of the statute of limitations. I remember to have read that two Congressmen from the State of Oregon were indicted for felonies, one of them tried and convicted, and the other, though not tried and convicted up to the time his term of office expired, is standing trial at this moment upon the charge. I remember to have read that a Senator who had served the State of Oregon thirty long years was indicted for a felony, and died, figuratively speaking, between the court-house and the penitentiary, he having been convicted of the charge. I remember to have read that a Senator from the State of Nebraska was indicted for a felony while a Member of Congress, but escaped punishment by entering a plea of the statute of limitations. I remember that a Senator from the State of Kansas, while a Member of Congress, was indicted for a felony, convicted, and served his time in a felon's cell; and all of these gentlemen that I have mentioned belonged to the same party, were of the same political household and faith of the gentleman from New York. With that record standing boldly forth, am I not justified in concluding that perhaps a Congressman, even a Republican Congressman, can do something wrong that he can be charged with by a Member of Congress? Ah, Mr. Chairman, the fact that an individual is elected to the Congress of the United States is not conclusive evidence of his integrity, nor does it make him immune from attack. In the matter of wrongdoing he stands upon the same plane that the humblest human beings that ever breathed the breath of life occupy. An election to Congress no more makes a man sacred than does the simple election of a man to the office of justice 28417-8723 of the peace endow the justice of the peace with a full and complete knowledge of all the law of the land, whether enacted by legislatures or parliaments or other lawmaking bodies, including the courts, The information that I predicated my speech upon the other day was furnished me by the secretary of a secretary of an immigration league, and I want to say that, in my judgment, a thousand per cent more Congressmen of the other House and of this have been indicted for felonies, convicted, and have served time as felons than have immigration secretaries. And that being the case, I respectfully refer the history of the case to the gentleman from New York [Mr. BENNET], and ask him if I could not afford to use the facts given to me by an honorable secretary of an immigration society, in view of the fact that none of them have ever stood trial for felony, that none of them have ever been indicted, while Congressmen have been both indicted and convicted. Now, Mr. Chairman, a few words about the extravagance of this commission. They have over 200 persons in their employ, their salaries ranging all the way from $40 a month for a janitor to $28 a day for a detective to nose around over the country and get secret information about this, that, or the other thing; secret information about the farmers of the South, who perhaps may not have lived up to every contract exactly as somebody else might have them live up to them, but who live up to their contracts as completely and as perfectly as do the citizens of any other quarter of this Union, and any reflection or aspersion that is attempted to be cast upon them by appointing peonage detectives to go among them and nose around about their business is disgusting and repulsive to any decent and fair-minded man on earth. Mr. Chairman, as stated, this commission had in its employ 200 people, and they received salaries all the way from $40 a month for a janitor to $28 a day, many of them receiving in addition to their salaries their actual traveling expenses, and as high as $3.50 a day in addition thereto in lieu of subsistence. You will find by investigating the records that there has been a wholesale expenditure of the money of the people by this commission in a most extravagant manner. But they say, Mr. Chairman, that it has been spent in the interest of immigration investigations. But what have they to show for it? As I have said, there are only these four or five little reports, about 5 by 8 inches in dimension, and containing from 10 to 60 pages. Any immigration society could have gotten them out in less than thirty days, at an expense not exceeding $5,000 at the outside, and yet the American people are charged with this enormous expenditure, $657,992.67, and must bear the burden without a groan. I insist that the resolution that I have introduced ought to be passed, in order that an investigation of the expenditures of the commission can be had. If it has not been extravagant, let them come forth and show it. If they have been, let the American people know it, in order that the blame can be properly lodged. I also have in mind another commission-the Monetary Commission-which has the privilege, under the law, of expending every dollar they care to expend without accounting for it except in a lump sum. They are without limit and their accounts can not be questioned 28417-8723 |