The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., August 01, 1923, Page 6, Image 6

THE UNITED AMERICAN
6
test law. It was probably at that time the most ex­
pedient thing to do so long as American public opinion
was not concerned in the Americanization and educa­
tion of the healthy and unspoiled adult immigrant,
but the operation of the literacy test law has given
us something more serious than illiteracy to deal
with in the human stream that has been passing in
through our gates since the literacy test law went
into effect.
*
■ *
*
The redeeming feature, perhaps, in the literacy test
law, many sincere and honest Americans claim to be
the check it places on the immigration of Mexicans
into the United States. The Mexicans, from every
angle, are an undesirable element on the north side
of the Rio Grande borderline. They can not be Amer­
icanized or assimilated among the people of the United
States and their lower standard of living makes them
indeed undesirable among our people. Yet, while the
literacy test law has technically placed a bar against
the illiterate Mexicans, and most Mexicans are totally
illiterate, it is a remarkable fact that the big employ­
ers of our country seem to have no trouble in circum­
venting the spirit of the law when they desire Mexi­
can crews of cheap labor. Mexicans are indeed cheap
laborers, so cheap, in fact, that most employers, after
a while, find them too expensive to keep on the job,
no matter how they “trim” their wages. If the liter­
acy of these hordes of Mexican laborers that have
been admitted into America, ostensibly to fill the
cheap labor quota in our greater industries from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, were to be tested as rigidly as
the European immigrants are being “literacy tested”
at Ellis Island, most of the Mexicans now here and
coming across the Rio Grande every day, would be
turned back into the land of cactus, or perhaps better
known as the land of “chi'li con frijoles” (pepper and
beans), from whence they came.
This condition leads us to the conclusion that if the
literacy test law’s supposed check on the Mexican
immigration were to be looked into, there is a mighty
reason for believing that so far as keeping the Mexi­
cans out is concerned, the law has not been inforced
for the same reason the inforcement of other laws
we have enacted have fallen down, because we Ameri­
cans are what many of our best citizens term, “notor­
iously indifferent and therefore inefficient in the in­
forcement of our own laws.”
♦
*
*
The literacy test law was enacted first during
Taft’s administration. Taft vetoed it. It was again
introduced under Wilson’s administration. Wilson
vetoed it twice for the same reason Taft did, contend­
ing that it was an abridgement of the old established
principle of “right to asylum.” The law was finally
passed over Wilson’s veto and became effective in
1917 when we had practically stopped all immigra­
tion as a war emergency measure. When we raised
the war emergency act against immigration we ap­
plied the three per cent quota law, consequently the
literacy test law, so far as the Europeans are con­
cerned, never had much of a chance to function before
the quota law took effect. Under the quota law the
need of the literacy test law diminishes and the stu-
AUGUST, 1923
dent of quality in immigration can not help but look
upon the law as being to a great extent a bar against
the healthiest blood strains of all nationalities.
The reason for the presidential vetoes is not vin­
dicated thereby, because the day has long since passed
and gone when the “American asylum” was full to
overflowing and the inmates began to show an alarm­
ing desire to run “the whole works” of the asylum.
One “ward” after another became a little independ­
ency and the inmates as “colonists” took a defiant
stand against the government of the asylum. The
realization of this menacing condition caused some of
us who through citizenship obligations fe'lt the re­
sponsibility of the asylum upon our shoulders, to call
for restrictions in the admission of “patients.”
♦
*
*
The lowest moral pervert from a European city can
qualify for entry under our present literacy test I
law and, if he is not now actually diseased, he can
not be legally barred, because in nearly every city in I
Europe there is some form of public education where- I
by even the undesirable may acquire an education I
sufficient to meet the requirements of this law.
The healthy, ambitious and hard-working young I
men and women from the rural districts of most of li
the European countries are less fortunate. Public I
education among the peasantry is very limited in H
most European countries. The consequences are most I
disastrous to those, who like many of their earlier ■
kinfolk of the district, decide to cast their lot in I
America. At the gate they find that they can not I
pass because they have had either insufficient or no ■
schooling. Ruddy cheeked, strong, vigorous and ■
healthy, anxious to find a piece of American ground ■
to till (even if it were nothing else than a discarded ■
piece of prairie, sagebrush or stumpland), these peas- I
ant folk must stand aside while their ashen colored, ■
hallow chested nationals, from the CITY of the na- I
tive country, who are looking for a tenement room in ■
the city and an opening for their “wits,” pass through I
with flying colors stamped with the literacy test laws I
approval and carrying with it a supposedly unim- I
peachable American acceptability.
I
Europe’s children of the slums who have had al
measure of schooling, have gradually exchanged their I
native habitat for a preferable residence in the great!
American cities. These elements are almost beyond I
the pale of redemption and they certainly cannot be B
Americanized to any degree making them or theirl
progeny acceptable integral parts of the American B
people. The admission of these tainted foreign strains, B
made possible through the literacy test law, is aB
doubtful vindication of that congressional enactment.®
If we have not received any greater number of theB
'literacy test proof undesirables of Europe, since thisB
law went into effect, we have at least, by accentuat-B
ing literacy as an admission qualification, weeded outB
a redeeming proportion of the purer strain which®
formerly found its way into our country.
I
Meanwhile the healthy, hard-working agricultural®
ly-trained peasants from the uncontaminated inlandB
valleys and mountain uplands of Europe, who havB
had no educational opportunity, who would like al®
most any kind of a chance on the American prairie|