JACK WEITZEL: The immigration law of eighteen eighty-two put other limits on immigration. It closed the country to criminals, the mentally ill, and persons who could not support themselves. Later, others were added to this list. Persons with diseases. Anarchists. Alcoholics.

This, however, did not greatly reduce immigration from eastern and southern Europe. And opponents of immigration demanded stronger action.

Some proposed a literacy test. Immigrants would have to show that they could read and write. An immigrant who could not, would not be permitted to enter the country.

loc.govHenry Cabot Lodge

ROBERT BOSTIC: Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts urged Congress to pass such a law. In a Senate speech, lodge said:

"If we care for the welfare, the wages, or the standard of life of American workingmen, we should take immediate steps to limit foreign immigration. There is no danger to our working men from the coming of skilled workers or of trained and educated men. But there is a serious danger from the flood of unskilled, ignorant foreign labor.

"This labor not only takes lower wages, but accepts a standard of living so low that the American working man cannot compete with it."

Senator Lodge continued.

"A literacy test will bear very lightly, if at all, upon English-speaking immigrants or Germans, Scandinavians and French. The races which would suffer most under a literacy test would be those with which the English-speaking people have never united, and who are most different from the great majority of the people of the United States."