In the meantime many measures for restricting immigration were
suggested in Congress. Of these, the literacy test met with the most
favor. Three times in recent years Congress enacted it into law, and
each time it was returned with executive disapproval: President Taft
vetoed the provision in 1913, and President Wilson vetoed the acts of
1915 and 1917. In his last veto message on January 29, 1917, President
Wilson said that "the literacy test ... is not a test of character, of
quality, or of personal fitness, but would operate in most cases
merely as a penalty for lack of opportunity in the country from which
the alien seeking admission came."

Congress, however, promptly passed the bill over the President's
objections, and so twenty years after President Cleveland's veto of
the Lodge Bill, the literacy test became the standard of fitness for
immigrant admission into the United States.[52] The law excludes all
aliens over sixteen years of age who are physically capable of reading
and yet who cannot read. They are required to read "not less than
thirty or more than eighty words in ordinary use" in the English
language or some other language or dialect. Aliens who seek admission
because of religious persecution, and certain relatives of citizens or
of admissible aliens, are exempted.

The debate upon this law disclosed the transformation that has come
over the nation in its attitude towards the alien. Exclusion was the
dominant word. Senator Reed of Missouri wished to exclude African
immigrants; the Pacific coast Representatives insisted upon exclusion
of Asiatics, in the face of serious admonitions of the Secretary of
State that such a course would cause international friction; the labor
members were scornful in their denunciation of "the pauper and
criminal classes" of Europe. The traditional liberal sympathies of the