200 - WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

ican, instead of being the social economic menace as so often pictured
by well-meaning but uninformed persons, they are rather an asset to
the State and community. In the community where I live, many of
the residents and some of the most prominent at that, are direct
descendants of the Mexicans who inhabited California when it became
a part of the United States of America. And who is there to say they
are not good citizens? Anyone who has been there knows just exactly
what I am talking about.
We have had enough experience with the Filipino to know that he
is a great menace socially, an incompetent worker and trouble maker.
One who will neither keep his own contract nor be satisfied to allow
his neighbor to keep his. ~ He is an agitator, a soap box orator and a
man who would quickly fall for the thing that happened in New York
the other day, when 20,000 men marched behind a red-draped casket
that you read about in the paper. You do not find any Mexicans
doing that?
Mr. Box. What has caused the succession of revolutions down there
for the last 70 years?
Mr. Harr. What caused ours in America?
Mr. Box. Well, I understand, but then you can not compare the
stability of American life to the shifting changes of Mexican life,
national life.
Mr. Harr. Well, I don’t know, and I didn’t live, of course, when
our forefathers rebelled from England. I am glad they did, but I
say to you that we have not found Mexican laborers to be agitators.
The CuarrmMan. Well, he has not reached one-half of your population,
 either by ancestry or newcomers.’ The Mexican in your valley
is not yet one-half of the population, either as a citizen of Mexican
ancestry or as a newcomer.
Mr. Hart. I am not so sure about that. I know that they have
heen around Monterey for generations. ,
The CrarrMAN. Do you think one-half the people in your country
are of Mexican ancestry? :
Mr. Harr. You take it in Monterey, some of those early settlers,
their descendants can trace their ancestry way back. I am not so
sure but what I might say that they are one-half. I would not want
to go on record as saying they are, but I am not so sure. As I think
over the people that I know and that are living in Monterey and
taking in those early settlements, but what that might be true.
I wish I had the words to express to you and to impress upon you
she seriousness of this situation, and to so impress you that you would
allow no legislation to be passed without it being based entirely on
facts secured from a most thorough investigation by an unprejudiced
body, for I am convinced if such an investigation were carried out
that the findings would be that rather than exclude the Mexican you
would shut the door to the Filipino and the Porto Rican first, and
consider the Mexican last.
The Cramman. Now, let us straighten that up a little. Porto
Ricans are citizens of the United States. In that respect they are
different from the Filipinos. Porto Rico was taken into the union as
an unorganized insular possession, and a while after that, several
vears after the war with Spain, the Foraker resolution was passed
which gave the people of Porto Rico an opportunity to be taken into