252 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

nationals who in growing numbers, since the advent of the automobile,
make frequent visits to the other country.
The CuarrmanN. I desire to place in the record a memorandum from
Mr. Charles S. Davison, an attorney in New York, who has given the
subject considerable study.
{The matter referred to is here printed in full as follows:)
January 30, 1930.
To the Committee on Immigration:
A perusal during the past several years of the printed records of the proceedings
of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the House of Representa~
tives—which relate to the subject in which above all others the interests of this
Joni are concerned—hasg enforced upon the mind an impression long enterained.

It is that few stop to consider the sacrifice of time, opportunity in other direetions,
 and comfort which is made by members of Congress. Unfortunately we
are more wont to criticize for real or even imaginary shortcomings than to seek
out the praiseworthy when considering others.
No one would say that he by any means agreed with all the results produced
by all the committees of Congress, nor indeed with all those produced by any
individual committee. But the amount of painstaking inquiry and effort which
is freely contributed and of time ungrudgingly expended, is in the aggregate stupendous.
 For example, the records of this very committee during the past ten
years cover exhaustively almost every aspect of the subject of immigration.
They form a history complete as far as it goes, and in a sense constitute a series
of essays on immigration. Naturally it is more from the point of view of the
present day and its particular needs as well as of the present effect of immigration
apon this country, than from the point of view of the past. or upon the general
aspects of the question.
This is to be regretted, for the lessons of experience are not only of general value,
out are perhaps the safest guides for legislation, as, indeed, for all other action. If
[ may venture the suggestion, it would not be out of place for the committee to
call before it and take the statements of historians upon the results of immigration
and naturalization in the past among other peoples and in other lands. There
are men in this country, of whom unfortunately I am not one, who are learned
in the history of the past, from which alone we can judge the future. Can any
republic survive that admits the unfit within its borders and allows them to
qualify as citizens upon but slight or comparatively slight tests? Have we not
already soaked our citizenship with so great a mass of the unfit as to spell out the
{inevitable destruction of this Republic? Is not our end as a republic now inevitable?
 Is it not true that each republic which has opened its doors and its
citizenship to the unfit has disappeared from that cause? Has been engulfed?
Has perished from rottenness within? Is not that our approaching history beyond
even the hazard of a peradventure? I fear you would find affirmative answers
from any nonpartisan to whom you addressed such inquiries. I am not referring
to representatives of the unfit races who might come before you, but to disinterested
 scientific observers. - Read our news sheets. Consider the growing public
licentiousness and corruption daily spread before a now callous and nonreacting
populace and listen to the voice of prophecy—I quote from a letter written in
January, 1807-122 years ago this month by Fisher Ames to Timothy Pickering:
“You describe our dangers and disgraces with so just a discernment of their
causes, and with so much feeling for the public evils that will be their consequences,
 thal I am ready to acquit former republics from a good deal of the
reproach that has survived their ruin—the reproach of wanting sense to see it,
when it was obvious and near. Probably, however, we shall yet find evidence
enough in the works of their great writers, to prove that the wise and good among
their citizens did forsee their fate, and would have resisted it, if they could;
but that a republic tends, experience says, irressitibly toward licentiousness,
and that a licentious republic, or democracy, is of all governments that very one in
which the wise and good are most completely reduced to impotence.” .
The day “of judgment has steadily neared this Republic. The question is,
can that ultimate day be deferred, and, if so, by how much, and through what
means. Pray stop and consider: Who sell the drugs among us that destroy youth
and wreck manhood—those unfit aliens and their immediate descendants who
shonld never have been allowed to enter. Who were the purvevors of strong