id:

"The South leads in illiteracy, but the North leads in non-English
speaking. Over 17 per cent of the persons in the east-south Central
States have never been to school. Approximately 16 per cent of the
people of Passaic, N.J., must deal with their fellow workers and
employers through interpreters. And 13 per cent of the folk in Lawrence
and Fall River, Mass., are utter strangers in a strange land.

"The extent to which our industries are dependent upon this labor is
perilous to all standards of efficiency. Their ignorance not only
retards production and confuses administration, but constantly piles up
a junk heap of broken humans and damaged machines which cost the Nation
incalculably.

"It is our duty to interpret America to all potential Americans in terms
of protection as well as of opportunity; and neither the opportunities
of this continent nor that humanity which is the genius of American
democracy can be rendered intelligible to these 8,000,000 until they can
talk and read and write our language.

"Steel and iron manufacturers employ 58 per cent of foreign-born
helpers; the slaughtering and meat-packing trades, 61 per cent;
bituminous coal mining, 62 per cent; the silk and dye trade, 34 per
cent; glass-making enterprises, 38 per cent; woolen mills, 62 per cent;
cotton factories, 69 per cent; the clothing business, 72 per cent; boot
and shoe manufacturers, 27 per cent; leather tanners, 57 per cent;
furniture factories, 59 per cent; glove manufacturers, 33 per cent;
cigar and tobacco trades, 33 per cent; oil refiners, 67 per cent; and
sugar refiners, 85 per cent.

"You will agree with me that future security compels attention to such
concentrations of unread, unsocialized masses thus conveniently and
perilously grouped for misguidance.

"They live in America, but America does not live in them. How can all be
'free and equal' until they have free access to the same sources of
self-help and an equal chance to secure them?

"Illiteracy is a pick-and-shovel estate, a life sentence to meniality.
Democracy may not have fixed classes and survive. The first duty of
Congress is to preserve opportunity for the whole people, and
opportunity can not exist where there is no means of information.

"It is a shabby economy, an ungrateful economy that withholds funds for
their betterment. The fields of France cry shame upon those who are
content to abandon them to their handicap.

"The loyal service of immigrant sol