NATIONAL ORIGINS PROVISION OF IMMIGRATION LAW 77
That in general, Mr. Chairman, is our attitude on the national-orioins
provision of the 1924 act. It is in the law now. The 1890
ensus was an expedient. The national origins has been twice
extended.
We earnestly beseech you, Mr. Chairman and this committee, to
use your best efforts in seeing that now the national-origins clause
of the immigration act be put into effect.
I thank you very much.
Mr. Lio¥p. If there are no questions, 1 would like Mr. Edward R.
Lewis, member of the Chicago bar and chairman of the executive
committee of the Immigration Restriction Association, and author
of the volume, “America, Nation or Confusion.”
Mr. Lewis. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee—
The CirarMAN. Mr. Lewis, may 1 thank you first, for sending me a
copy of your work which I read with utmost pleasure, if not with the
utmost profit; and 1 appreciate very much indeed the fact that vou
did send me a copy.
You may now proceed in your own way, stating first your name,
residence, and occupation to the reporter; and then in detail in such
fashion as vou desire vour views upon the pending matter.
STATEMENT OF EDWARD R. LEWIS, CHAIRMAN EXECUTIVE COM-MIOTES
IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION ASSOCIATION, CHICAGO.
TI.
Mr. Lewis. My name is Edward R. Lewis. I am a lawyer In
Chicago. Ill. My residence is in Wenetlka, Ill, a suburb of Chicago.
I am chairman of the executive committee of the Immigration Redriction
Association of Chicago, an organization which was organized
in Chicago in June, 1927.
Senator Harris. Are you representing anyone else. except this
organization you refer to?
Mur. Lewis, Sir?
Senator Harris. Do you represent anyone else except the organization
you refer to?
Mr. Lewis. No, sir. In studying the national origins question
and the various bases for determining the quotas, 1 thought last fall,
I believe, then. it first occurred to me, that an interesting study should
be made of the representative historians of some of the important
racial groups in this country, to see what their own estimates of
the strength of those racial groups was. In other words, the very
root and essence of national origins is that which counts everybody
and is fair to everybody; and yet there were gentlemen, earnest
citizens, whom I thought very sincerely believed that they were not
fair, and I thought that it would be worth while to see what the
representative historians of some of our larger racial groups had
estimated. 1 think it is a fairly cafe statement that most of the
disputes have arisen on the division of 1790 stock, which was
3,172,000. I think there is an estimate of the American Council of
Learned Societies that if you add those in the territory outside of
the census, it would be about 75,000 more which increased to about
$1,000,000 and some hundred thousand in 1920, or an increase of
thirteen times; and the origins experts have divided the 41.000.000
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