Anti-alienism Leads to National Relapse, Washington Parley is Warned

Recurring waves of anti-alienism are a symptom of a state of national relapse, Rep. Rudolph G. Tenerowicz of Michigan, told 400 delegates to the fourth annual conference of the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born here today. “First it is anti-alienism,” he warned, “then it is anti-unionism, and finally the minority religious beliefs become the scapegoat.”

A similar warning came from James B. Carey, secretary of the C.I.O., who said that the same propagandists who oppose admission of refugees actually oppose aiding native Americans climb out of the slough of unemployment. “A man or woman willing to work is an asset to this country, not a liability,” he said.

Tenerowicz denounced as vicious the Smith and Hobbs bills now before Congress. The Smith bill requires alien registration, while the Hobbs bill is designed to create concentration camps. “Ironically,” he said, “the sponsors of both these insidious measures are attorneys, for both could profit by re-reading the Constitution of the United States.”

State Senator Stanley Nowak of Michigan exposed to the conference the machinations of an organization known as the Industrial Legion of America. Taking apart a pamphlet attacking Jews and aliens, distributed by this organization, Senator Nowak said: “This is as vicious and as demagogic a bit of propaganda as the German Nazis ever put out.”

“The American Fascists,” he added, “will try to make the aliens, the Jews and the Negroes the scapegoats for the evils of our economic system, just as the German Nazis and Italian Fascists did in their countries.”

Messages urging tolerance and fair play were received from President Roosevelt, three Cabinet members and Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy as the conference opened yesterday.

The President’s message said in part:

“Every American takes pride in our tradition of hospitality to men of all races and of all creeds. One of the great achievements of the American commonwealth has been the fact that race groups which were divided abroad are united here. Enmities and antagonisms were forgotten; former opponents met here as friends. Groups which had fought each other overseas here work together; their children intermarry; they have all made contributions to democracy and peace.

“Because of the very greatness of this achievement, we must be constantly vigilant against the attacks of intolerance and injustice. We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization. If reason is to prevail against tolerance, we must always be on guard. We welcome therefore the work to maintain the rights of the foreign born.”

Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s message said: “Our national existence is a successful vindication of the idea that, in an asylum of freedom, barriers of race, of religion, of language and of other differences, which breed antagonism and conflict elsewhere, disappear in an effort for the common good. If our nation is not to decline and decay, we must not permit these barriers to re-appear in our national life.”

Secretary of Interior Harold L. Ickes’ message said: “It seems to me to be self-evident that any attack on the foreign born is, in the last analysis, an assault on the liberties of all American citizens. For, as President Roosevelt said recently, all of us are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.”

Justice Frank Murphy’s statement reads: “It is an unfortunate fact that in times like the present there is an increasing tendency to look with suspicion upon individuals of foreign birth. I am glad that your group is continuing to remind Americans that the democratic way is to judge a man not on the basis of events in other lands or the accident of birth…”