WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 349

aliens. The conditions described above include Mexico, and if we
are going to permit these peon laborers to come to this country by
the thousands, relieving American citizens of their jobs, one may
expect our citizens to look about in foreign countries for some kind
of work. I want to impress on this committee that it is not occasionally
 we receive correspondence from railway men trying to get
employment in some other country, but it is quite the custom and
not the exception.
Recently a census was taken of the prison population of San
Quentin, a State penitentiary of California. There were 3,358
prisoners, of whom 438 were Mexicans. Statistics show that about
one-twelfth of the population is Mexican, but one-seventh of the
prison population is Mexican.
By the immigration law of 1924 the United States has gone on
record as favoring the discontinuance of the practice of making this
country the dumping ground for the poverty-stricken masses of
Europe, because of the fact that they are unaccustomed to our
living standards and tend to lower our own standards. Nevertheless,
we still permit the peons of Mexico to come to this country almost
at will, lowering our living standards and taking the jobs away from
the American citizens.
The workers of America have felt the results of the establishment
of Mexican standards of work, wages, and conduet in our industries.
Mexican standards of wages do not permit American standards of
life. Mexican labor has driven American workers out of many
trades, callings, and communities, and the influence of these lower
standards have permeated widely.
The admission of a large and increasing number of Mexicuns to
engage in all kinds of work is at variance with the American purposes
to protect the wages of its working people and maintain their standards
of living. The yearly influx of several scores of thousands from just
across the border tends constantly to lower the wages and conditions
of men and women of America in industry, in transportation, and in
agriculture. In industry, transportation, and agriculture they displace
 great numbers of Americans who are left without employment
and drift into poverty, being unable to maintain families or to help
sustain American communities. It is, indeed, unfortunate that this
fact is not fully realized by Congress, and that by failing to place all
countries under the quota provisions of the immigration law Congress
has not helped the lot of the American workers as much as it could
have. What has been done is to divert the source of the immigrant
stream from Europe to South and Central America, Mexico, and the
West Indies. The Mexicans are very largely peons of mixed blood,
characterized by low standards of living and social conditions. Their
presence is causing the rapid development of new social problems and
new race antagonism in the Southwest. A few rapacious landowners
entice these laborers in and give them work during the agricultural
season, but at the end of the season they are abandoned to their own
devices and soon flood the penal and benevolent institutions.
The border situation is becoming a grave one and all Americans
who are sane and patriotic will study very carefully and earnestly the
results of the loose-jointed policy of our Government by which we
have obtained a tremendous number of undesirables in the past and
bid fair to add disastrously to that number in the future, if something
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