Hoover May Appeal to Special Congress Session Against National Origins

That President Hoover, who in his acceptance speech opposed the national origins clause, will appeal to the special session of Congress, in order that he may not be compelled to issue a proclamation on April 1, putting into effect the plan he opposes, was the opinion expressed by the “New York Telegram” in an editorial yesterday.

“As had been expected, the Senate was prevented from taking a vote on the question of postponing the application of the national origins immigration system by a filibuster,” the paper writes. “The House approved delay, but Senator Reed, of Pennsylvania, was able to keep the upper chamber from expressing itself.

“The result is that President Hoover presumably is directed by law to proclaim on April 1 that national origins quotas shall go into effect July 1.

“Hoover, as one of the commission of three directed by Congress to work out the quotas, is firmly convinced that the national origins system is impracticable. Determined efforts to get a vote in the Senate were largely due to his conviction, which is shared by a large number of Senators.

“There is one possible loophole in the ambiguous text of the act which may enable the President to avoid issuing a proclamation, bt this is doubtful. The Attorney General will be asked to give an opinion on this question.

“Hearings and debate in Congress showed that both advocates and opponents of national origins were swayed to a considerable degree by racial feeling. This was unfortunate, though perhaps unavoidable.

“The theory had been that it would be possible to determine to what extent the various racial groups had contributed to a theoretically compositic American nation, and to apportion future immigration on that basis. Data was found inadequate, and the quotas finally offered are admittedly based to a large degree on guess-work.

“Hence the only question should be whether an inaccurate and unscientific quota system should be substituted for the present one, which by and large has been satisfactory.

“President Hoover will be able to appeal to the special session for delay and will be able to give in detail his reasons for asking it. It will be impossible then for a few Senators to prevent an expression of opinion by the majority.”