Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative. Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval.–Editor.]

The Wadsworth bill, calling for the admission of 35,000 wives and minor children of declarants, which was recently passed by the U. S. Senate “should be approved on its merits by the lower house of Congress,” urges the Chicago “News.”

“The concession made in the Wadsworth bill to immigrants who have taken steps to acquire the status of citizenship is moderate and reasonable,” the paper writes. “It is designed to ameliorate conditions that in more than a few instances are known to be tragic. Moreover, it is a measure of economic and moral stabilization. Family life is particularly beneficial to persons in a new atmosphere, where many adjustments are to be effected and social dangers avoided.”

A protest against the attacks on “foreigners” that have been made since the renewed efforts in the U. S. Congress to modify the present immigration laws, is voiced by the New York “Forward” of Dec. 27, wherein we read:

“Since there has been a bit of noise in Congress about modifying the immigration laws attacks have come from all directions against the ‘foreigners.’ Anathemas have especially been hurled at our own New York. In the papers and on the radio ‘good and pious’ folk are declaring that New York, which has a large immigrant population, is a veritable Sodom, where all the bootleggers, gamblers and gangsters are to be found.”

Drawing a parallel between New York and other cities where the immigrant population is much smaller, the “Forward” adds: “The enemies of the immigrants are either blinded by their hatred or else they are ignorant of the conditions in New York and other cities. Of course New York has its gangsters and bootleggers and gamblers, but compared to other cities it is but a Sunday School.”

URGES PRESIDENT COOLIDGE TO REFUTE FORD’S CHARGES

The suggestion that if Congress takes no action on Congressman Sol Bloom’s resolution President Coolidge should make a public statement refuting Ford’s charge that the United States Federal Reserve System is under Jewish control, is put forth in the “Jewish Morning Journal” of yesterday by Jacob Fishman, who observes:

“We have a precedent for this in the President’s speech at Omaha when the Klan became unbearable. At that time Coolidge gained grace overnight in the eyes of all liberal minded people. And his speech had the desired effect. The Klan is today merely a living corpse.

“Henry Ford and his journalistic hirelings of the ‘Dearborn Independent’ have now become as unbearable as the Klan. If Congress does not wish to tear down his mask, it becomes the duty of the President in one of his next addresses to denounce in the strongest terms Ford’s dual charge against the Jews and the Federal Reserve System. The country would believe the President and Ford would be thoroughly discredited. Will the President do it?”