That Alleged 'Chamber' Report

That Alleged 'Chamber' Report

Alexander H. Martin, Esq., one of the committee of three (Harry E. Davis, Charles W. Chesnutt and Martin), which voluntarily met the local Chamber of Commerce committee on immigration, last week, informs The Gazette that the publication of last week, in a local contemporary, has not been adopted by the committee or the sub-committee which has the matter under consideration. The alleged report is undoubtedly the work of some southerner or southern sympathizing and prejudiced member of the sub-committee who would, if he could, bring about in this section of the country the adoption of the segregation and other color-line methods of the South. The alleged report in its entirety is what is advocated by the Ku Klux Klan thruout the country and is not only outrageous but positively un-American. The two dominant features of the alleged report are: first, a recommendation that Ohio law be over-ridden in order to bring about separate schools for our people, and other segregation; an impossibility at this time. Second, that Congress be asked to throw down the bars, now up against an indiscriminate immigration from foreign countries, in order that foreigners sufficient can be secured to replace the "Negro" laborers in the North. Fine (?) Americanism this!–favoring foreigners to replace native born American citizens in American industries here at home. No one could ever make us believe that the Chamber of Commerce of the city of Cleveland, Ohio, or its committee on immigration with George B. Harris as chairman, could ever adopt such un-American and positively outrageous recommendations as the kluxer-writer of that alleged report has ground out of his prejudiced-soaked brain.