RHODE ISLAND HISTORY - Rhode Island Historical Society

58 PROVIDENCE VISITORBiahop Willi.m Hichy. Ih~ In.h -A m~ric.n BWoopof P1olrid~l>('~from 19/9 10 Hilland when a similar bill passed the House of Representativeslater in the year, it pointed out thatthe Chinese and Japanese governments successfullyprotested the bill's clauses relating to Orientals,forcing amendment of the bill. "Whyshouldn't the Caucasian races be shown as muchconsideration?" the Visitor needled. The paperconsistently argued that the only just restrictionswere those that banned the mentally retarded.the dangerously ill. prostitutes and sex offenders,and the "socially unfit... the paper's term for anarchists.socialists, and other radicals.ZJThe Visitor argued passionately against literacytests:The immigration committee has found it difficultto frame a bill which will protect us againstthe peril ofEuropean agitators and not excludeemigrants who come with honest purpose to theland ofopportunity. No one knows better thanthe immigration committee that the illiterates arenot the most undesirable and in the words offormerSpeaker Cannon, "highly cultured men andwomen in some of the American colleges havestrange ideals on social questions."Advocates ofthe literacy test overlook the facrthat ability to read and write is not an esunrialqualification. The most dangerous and undesirableapplicants are too ohen those who have acquiredandmisapplied an education and who comesolely for the dissemination ofideas that are destructiveto American institutions and principlesthat are dangerous to social welfare. 1tBy heaping scorn on the dangerous alien radical.the Visitor served both patriotism and the causeof the immigrant.The paper did not limit its defense to Europeanimmigrants. It editorialized against a 1919 attemptby some senators to pass a bill effectivelybarring the "asiatic people" from American citizenshipthrough a type of grandfather clause. In asimilar manner. a long editorial of 1921 criticizedAmericanization attempts that treated immigrantsand their children as lesser beings. "Speakingby and large. immigrants are the best blood ofEurope," the paper noted. and it pointed out thattheir coming was the result of " honest ambition,"not any "lack of enterprise."uThe Visirorwas silent. however, on the RhodeIsland Americanization Act of 1919, which madenight classes in English compulsory for personsaged sixteen through twenty-one who did notmeet state standards of literacy in that language.~There were probably many reasons forits silence. The Americanization issue had nationalisticovertones for many Americans, and it waspotentially dangerous to the church hierarchy forthat reason. Most likely the Irish-oriented paperwas unwilling to tackle an issue of limited importanceto Irish-Americans despite that issue's impactupon "newer" immigrants who were directlyaffected. The paper's silence, moreover. couldhave been an attempt to please conservative, na ­tionalistic sentiment both within the church andoutside it, It was far safer to criticize any congressionalaction, especially on restriction. than tobattle on the local level over potentially explosive