£16 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

Southwest who favor the continued admission of this class of alien Mexican
peons. By far the greater number of our requests for reports went to people of
whose views on this question we had no previous indication. Because they were
retail merchants and business men, officials in farm organizations, public health
officials, and superintendents of schools, we expected them to be familiar with
the problems of their communities and willing to make fair reports on what we
knew in advance to be a serious problem.
From hundreds of reports of similar import to these we have made no quotations.
 Very few reports from officials of labor organizations have been quoted—
not because they are untrue but because labor is known to have a direct financial
interest in the situation being reported upon. While we deeply sympathize
with the distress which this movement is bringing to laboring people and their
families, we have been and are doing our utmost to proteet them, along with the
community and general welfare and the future of great sections of the Southwest,
and of the whole country. We have endeavored to advise this committee,
Congress, and the country, so far as they will note our words, of what other
high-class people say about the effect of this infiltration upon every interest of
the country, including the meat-and-bread welfare of working people and their
families.
Jorn C. Box,
TuomAs A. JENKINS,
Members House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization.

PERSONAL VIEWS ON RESTRICTION OF IMMIGRATION FROM WESTERN
HEMISPHERE BY HON. THOMAS A. JENKINS

To the ImmicraTION COMMITTEE,
House of Representatives.
GentLEMEN: In addition to the joint report heretofore made to you by Hon.
John C. Box and myself, I beg leave to submit the following observations in the
hope that the same may be of some assistance to Members of Congress interested
in immigration problems:

RESTRICTION OF IMMIGRATION PRACTICED EARLY IN NATION'S HISTORY
The regulation of the admission of foreigners into our country has always been
a live subject. Even in colonial days bars were effectively erected by each colony
against those whose presence promised any opposition to the orderly procedure
of that colony.
The people of each colony welcomed those whose ideals were similar to theirs,
sut indicated a strong antipathy toward those with different ideals and ambitions.
Thus restriction of immigration was in effect very early in the history of our counbry,
 although without the sanction of statutory enactment.
These differences were not sufficient to affect the growth of the country. The
foundations of our Republic were not laid upon the differences that existed among
the colonists, but rather upon the marks of similarity. Oppression by the fatherland
 was visited upon each of the colonies without any apparent favoritism.
Common oppressions encouraged common sympathies; common sympathies
produced common hatreds, and the fire of common hatreds started the flames of
war. In times of war immigration is greatly lessened, and so it was during the
Revolutionary War. But with the return of peace the question again became one
of lively interest, as is witnessed by the comments of Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams,
and others of our great statesmen of that time. The establishment of a new
government, the corner stone of which was liberty, was as a pillar of fire to guide
the feet of the unfortunate people of the world who lived in the darkness of political
and economic serfdom. As the sunlight attracts the flower so this new Nation
attracted the liberty loving and the oppressed of the whole world. Immigration
to the United States from that time forward until the passage by Congress of the
quota law in 1921 stands out as ene of the wonders of the world. Nothing in
the history of the movement of populations has ever equalled it in numbers or
in effect upon the world.

THE IMMIGRANT AS A PIONEER

An army of immigrants worked its way across the Alleghenies and spread
tself out across the Northwest Territory and in a few years had populated the
Louisiana Purchase, and in less than 60 vears had discovered the gold mines of