Four typed letters, signed.
Three Typed Letters, signed, from US Congressmen from Minnesota F. C. Stevens, James Manahan and George R. Smith, Washington, D.C. , Jan. 14-16, 1914 and 1 Typed Letter, signed, from the first US Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson. All written to A.G. Johnson, publisher of a Swedish-language newspaper in Minneapolis, opposing a “literacy test” provision of an Immigration bill which had been vetoed by President Taft: “…this country can use every man and woman of sound mind, sound morals and sound body who comes to make this his or her home. The development of our country is to a great extent due to the industry and the toil of the immigrant…The man who uses the pick and the shovel, the man who works at the forge or the bench, the man who carries the hod or swings the axe, however illiterate he may be, if of sound body and morals, can perform his work well and rear children who will be a credit to our civilization… I do not believe in excluding on the mere ground of illiteracy the honest, healthy, industrious immigrant, who stirred by ambition comes to our shores to better his own condition and that of his family and to take his place in our civil and industrial life…” Facing the threat of another presidential veto, Congress dropped the literacy test provision, substituting “national-origin” quotas in the landmark 1924 Immigration Act, which, for nearly half a century, prevented many Jews, Italians, Slavs, Chinese and Japanese from entering the country.