Henry Cabot Lodge

Henry Cabot Lodge was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Immigration Restriction League, an anti- immigrant organization that was prominent from its founding in 1894 until the 1920s. In the following viewpoint, an excerpt from a speech he gave before the Senate in 1896 in support of a bill proposing a literacy test for immigrants, Lodge asserts that requiring a literacy test for new immigrants would weed out the worst of the new immigrants; those who passed the test would be able to assimilate more easily into American culture. Lodge claims that the values of the new immigrants, mostly from southern and eastern Europe, are incompatible with American ideals. In addition, the mixing of races through interracial marriage would pollute the white American race.

Mr. President, this...