120 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

FURTHER STATEMENT OF FACTS FOUND AND CONCLUSIONS REACHED BY
MR. BOX; BASED ON SOURCES OF INFORMATION OTHER THAN THE
FOREGOING INQUIRIES AND ANSWERS
ENOWLEDGE OF MEXICANS AND MEXICAN IMMIGRATION

I have lived in Texas, a Mexican border State, throughout my entire life.
Indeed my forefathers were there while Texas was yet a part of Mexico. My
acquaintance with Mexican people of all classes, from the fortunate, dominating
few, to the mass of oppressed and wretched Mexican peons whom the upper
classes treat as degraded inferiors, has afforded me considerable opportunity
to observe them and the economie, social, and political results produced wherever
 large numbers of them are assembled.
In the active practice of my profession as a lawyer I have often vitited many
of the counties of the Rio Grande Border from EI Paso to the lower valley, and
the cities San Antonio, Austin, and Houston, farther north and east, where I had
opportunity to see Mexican-border conditions and the tendencies of Mexicanpeon
 population.
Having taken some active part in the public affairs of my State, I have for
many years noted the effect of the lower stratum of Mexican life upon the
political and social problems of that region.
During more than 10 years’ service as a Member of the House of Representatives
and of this, ite Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, I have given
study to the problem of Mexican immigration. Following up my former observations
 by special studies, during the latter half of the year 1929, while my colleague
on this committee, Hon. Thomas A. Jenkins, and myself were making the survey
on which we are reporting, I visited 40 to 50 of the counties of Texas and all of
the larger Texas cities in which this population is greatest and can be studied
at best advantage.
I extended my travels entirely across the State of Oklahoma, through a great
portion of the middle and western parts of Kansas, nearly twice across the beetsugar
 producing areas of Colorado, and the full length of the State of New Mexico.
Nearly all of this travel was done in an automobile which afforded me and my
assistants opportunities to make stops and side trips wherever there was a prespective
 opportunity to observe the Mexican peon migration and its effect upon
the communities into which it was pouring.

IMPORTED FOREIGN LABOR WANTED

The claim that these peons should be admitted in large numbers because their
labor is needed on farms, on railroads, in mines, in industry, and elsewhere, is a
repetition of the arguments which have been made by the same or kindred
interests against every proposition to restrict immigration from Asia and Europe,
throughout the struggles of the country to protect itself against the perils which
such immigration has threatened and, in disturbing measure, actually brought.
In every instance, as the country became sufficiently aroused to act, the
adoption of the restrictive policy has proven that the claims of the objectors were
unfounded.
A look into the facts of the present situation convincingly argues, as experience
has in other instances proven, that the sounder economic policy harmonizes with
the demands of racial, social, and political considerations for restriction.

PRESENT UNEMPLOYMENT EXTENSION
There is now widespread and very extensive unemployment in the United
States. A practically unlimited amount of data proving this could he presented.
but the fact is too well known to require proof.
The writer has observed this unemployment and the fact that Mexican peons
are being employed to displace native white and negro labor from such work as
is being done, at lower wages and under much worse living and working conditions,
 in great areas of the country. The extent of this unemployment and
displacement has been, and is, extremely distressing.
My effort has been to study this question entirely from the viewpoint of the
welfare of my fellow Americans and the Nation now and hereafter. If any
hostility to these humble Mexican peons, with whose ignorance, poverty, lowly
conditions, and bad prospects for the future, I sympathize deeply, has colored
my findings or facts, or conclusions as to the policy dictated by the public welfare,
I have not been conscious of such hostility. I am quite sure that I have not