Debaters 9 Handbook Series SELECTED ARTICLES ON IMMIGRATION COMPILED BY MARY KATHARINE REELY \\ Second Edition WHITE PLAINS. N. Y., AND NEW YORK CITY THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY 1917 1st Edition, August, 1915 2d Edition. February, 1917 v EXPLANATORY NOTE This book is made up in two parts. Part i, devoted to Euro- pean immigration, consists of a debate on the question of immi- gration restriction, with briefs, bibliographies and selected articles for both sides of the question. Following these comes a small group of articles bearing 1 on the war and immigration. Since August, 1914, immigration from Europe has been held in check. What will happen after the war is a matter of conjecture on which opinion divides. On one point all are agreed, however : The United States now has an opportunity to look at the ques- tion squarely and to make preparations, either for the exclusion, or for the reception and better treatment of those who may come when the war is over, whether they come in greater or in lesser numbers. Part 2 is devoted to Asiatic immigration the problem of the Pacific coast. This problem involves, in addition to the usual difficulties presented by incoming aliens, questions of international relations and states rights. To include all these in one debate was difficult. Nevertheless an attempt was made, and it is hoped that the brief offered may prove suggestive to students, whatever phase of the problem they may choose to work out. Acknowledgments are due to Mr. R. E. Cole, Counsel on Naturalization and Municipal Organization for the Committee for Immigrants in America, who read the brief on European immigration and offered valuable suggestions. M. K. R. White Plains, July, 1915. f\f\f*f\A I EXPLANATORY NOTE FOR SECOND EDITION Since the publication of this handbook in 1915 the question of restricting immigration by means of a literacy test has again come before Congress. The House passed the bill but the Senate decided to hold it over for another session. Discussions of im- migration during the year have been concerned largely with the problem of Americanizing the immigrant. With the exception of a bibliography no new material on this subject has been added to this volume, but attention may be called to the articles included in the first edition by Lajos Steiner (p. 204) ; Jane Addams (p. 209), and Grace Abbott (p. 216). Changes in this edition consist of: a revision of the two bibliographies, bringing them down to date; a revision of the section on The European War and Immigration with the addition of new reprints; the addition of a group of references on Americanization. M. K. R. November n, 1916. CONTENTS PART I EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION BRIEF n BIBLIOGRAPHY General References 19 Affirmative References 24 Negative References 27 References on European War 31 References on Americanization 32 Chart 34 GENERAL DISCUSSION United States. Immigration Commission. Conclusions and Recommendations 35 New York. Commission of Immigration. Social Condition of Aliens 45 Ripley, W. Z. Races in the United States. Atlantic Monthly 53 Folkmar, Daniel. Results of the First Census of European Races in the United States Science 58 Immigration Legislation 61 Maps 67-8 AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION Hall, Prescott F. Future of American Ideals North American Review 69 Ross, Edward A. Racial Consequences of Immigration Century 72 o CONTENTS Fetter, Frank A. Population or Prosperity American Economic Review 77 Ward, Robert DeC. National Eugenics in Relation to Im- migration North American Review 81 . Fairchild, Henry P. Problems of Immigration Nation 84 Devine, Edward T. Immigration as a Relief Problem Charities 87 Lauck, W. Jett. Industrial Communities Survey 90 ^TMitchell, John. Immigration and the American Laboring Classes Annals of the American Academy 94 Lauck, W. Jett. Vanishing American Wage-earner Atlantic Monthly 98 Dosch, Arno. Our Expensive Cheap Labor. .World's Work 102 Fairchild, Henry P. Immigration and Crises American Economic Review 106 Kent, William. Immigration Congressional Record 113 Ross, Edward A. Immigrants in Politics Century 117 Ward, Robert DeC. Agricultural Distribution of Immi- grants Popular Science Monthly 120 Devine, Edward T. Selection of Immigrants Survey 129 Lee, Joseph. Democracy and the Illiteracy Test Survey 131 Burnett, John L. Brief in Favor of the Illiteracy Test. Congressional Record 134 Parkinson, W. D. Literacy and the Immigrant Journal of Education 141 NEGATIVE DISCUSSION Andrew, A. Piatt. Crux of the Immigration Question. North American Review 147 Kohler, Max J. Some Aspects of the Immigration Problem. American Economic Review 150 Brooks, John Graham. Human Side of Immigration Century 155 Sulzberger, C. L. Is Immigration a Menace? National Conference Charities and Correction 161 Matthews, Brander. American of the Future Century 163 Crosby, Ernest. Immigration Bugbear Arena 166 Grant, Percy Stickney. American Ideals and Race Mixture. North American Review 169 CONTENTS 7 Claghorn, Kate Holladay. Our Immigrants and Ourselves. Atlantic Monthly 171 Willcox, W. F. Popular Delusions about Immigration. Independent 175 Low, A. Maurice. The American People 180 Bailey, W. B. Bird of Passage American Journal of Sociology 183 Hourwich, Isaac A. Immigration and Labor; a Summary. 187 Bennet, William S. Effect of Immigration on Municipal Politics Nat. Conf. Good City Govt 197 Coulter, John Lee. Influence of Immigration on Agricul- tural Development Annals of the American Academy 200 Steiner, Lajos. Our Recent Immigrants as Farmers Review of Reviews 204 Immigration and the South Nation 208 Kellor, Frances A. Needed a Domestic Immigration Policy North American Review 209 Abbott, Grace. Adjustment not Restriction Survey 216 Addams, Jane. Pen arid Book as Tests of Character. Survey 219 Illiteracy and Its Significance New York Times 221 Three Veto Messages: Grover Cleveland 222 William H. Taft 225 Woodrow Wilson 225 Harvey, George. Bogy of Alien Illiteracy North American Review 227 EUROPEAN WAR AND IMMIGRATION Kellor, Frances A. A Domestic Policy Immigrants in America Review 231 Wanted an Immigration Policy New Republic 231 Pasvolsky, Leo. Immigration from Russia after the War. Survey 234 Immigration of the Year Outlook 237 Howe, F. C. Immigration After the War Scribner's Magazine 238 Ward, R. DeC. Immigration and the War Scientific Monthly 244 8 CONTENTS PART II ASIATIC IMMIGRATION BRIEF 249 BIBLIOGRAPHY General References 253 Affirmative References 255 Negative References 257 GENERAL DISCUSSION United States. Immigration Commission. Japanese and Other Immigrant Races on the Pacific Coast 259 Regulation by Treaty and Legislation 267 AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION Oriental Immigration Outlook 271 Hayes, E. A. Japanese Exclusion.. ..Congressional Record 273 Dunn, Arthur. Keeping the Coast Clear Sunset 275 Nutting, H. C. Immigration from the Orient Nation 278 Brooks, Sydney. Real Pacific Question. ..Harper's Weekly 281 Kahn, Julius. Japanese Question from a Californian's Standpoint Independent 283 French, Burton L. Shall the U. S. Exclude Japanese and Korean Laborers ? Congressional Record 286 World's Most Menacing Problem Collier's 287 Phejan, James D. Japanese Question from a Californian Standpoint Independent 292 NEGATIVE DISCUSSION Hutchinson, Woods. Mongolian as a Workingman World's Work 29* California's Hurtling Japanese Literary Digest 301 Eliot, Thomas L. Interests Involved in Restricting Oriental Immigration Annals of the American Academy 303 Gulick, Sidney L. Responsibility of American Educators in the Solution of America's Oriental Problem National Education Association 306 Aoki, S. Japanese Immigration World's Work 308 Griffis, W. E. Our Honor and Shame with Japan North American Review 313 Maxey, Edwin. Japanese-American Relations Forum 314 Gulick, Sidney L. Problem of Oriental Immigration. Survey 318 PART I EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION BRIEF Resolved, That immigration to the United States from Europe should be further restricted and that the literacy test offers the best means of restriction. INTRODUCTION I. The character of immigration has changed. A. The number of immigrants coming from the northern European countries has decreased. B. The number of immigrants coming from the southern European countries has increased. II. Conditions in the United States have changed. A. The public lands have been taken up. B. Population is congested in cities. C. Our industrial system has developed so that class lines are more firmly fixed. III. In this debate certain questions rising out of the above considerations must be answered. A. Is the new immigration inferior to the old? B. Can it be assimilated? C. Is it desirable? D. Does the United States need more immigrants? E. Are the present laws adequate ? F. What new restrictions, if any, shall be imposed? IV. The Affirmative will take the stand that the new immi- gration is inferior; that we do not desire or need it; that it is already proving a detriment to the country; that the present laws are not adequate, and that new restrictions, chief of them a literacy test, should be imposed. V. The Negative will take the stand that the new immigration is different, but not necessarily inferior; that the new immigrants can be assimilated and that the country has a place for them; that they can be made into good 1 12 BRIEF citizens by wise direction and distribution; that the present laws are adequate, and that the imposition of a literacy test would be unwise. VI. When we speak of the old and the new immigration we shall make the year 1880 the date of division. AFFIRMATIVE I. The new immigration is inferior to the old. A. The new immigrants come from an inferior stock. 1. The Latin and Slav are inferior to the Teuton in physique. 2. They are less adapted to heavy labor. 3. They are more subject to infection and disease. B. They are illiterate. C. They are unskilled. D. They have a lower standard of living and a lower grade of morality. II. The new immigrants cannot be assimilated. A. The early immigrants (Germans, Scandinavians, etc.) belonged to the same race stock; they were easily amalgamated; the new immigrants will not mix with these nor with the native American stock. B. The new immigrants herd together in cities ano do not learn American ways. C. If we attempt to assimilate this crude mass one of two things will happen: 1. American stock will be replaced. a. The native birth rate tends to decline with immigration. 2. It will be deteriorated by the infusion of inferior blood. D. Many of these new immigrants have no intention of making homes in America. E. Most of the new immigrants have strong racial preju- dices and antipathies. III. The United States does not need more immigrants. A. The^ public lands are well taken up; those remaining BRIEF 13 call for a scientific skill not possessed by the new immigrants. B. The era of expansion when crude labor was needed in the building of railroads, etc., has passed. C. America is no longer called on to furnish an asylum for the oppressed. 1. Immigrants now come only to better their own economic condition. 2. Immigration is encouraged by steamship companies and other interested agencies. IV. The new immigration is undesirable ; its evil effects are : A. Social. 1. The standard of living is lowered. 2. The problems of organized charity are increased. 3. The numbers of the criminal and insane classes are increased. 4. The problems of the public school are complicated. 5. A caste system tends to become fixed. 6. The presence of large numbers of immigrant men living a non-family life lowers the moral tone of the community. B. Industrial and economic. 1. The labor market is overcrowded. 2. Wages are lowered or kept down. 3. The unemployment problem is aggravated. 4. Labor organization is weakened. 5. Large sums of money are sent out of the country annually or taken out by immigrants who re- turn to their European homes. C. Political. 1. The new immigrants coming from monarchial countries have no conception of the ideals of a democracy. 2. They lend themselves readily to political corrup- tion. 3. Home rule for cities and municipal reforms gen- erally have been delayed by the presence of large bodies of alien citizens withip a city's population. 4. Many have anarchistic ideas. 14 BRIEF V. Distribution and regulation will not solve the problem. A. Those who advocate distribution as a panacea hope to send incoming immigrants to agricultural dis- tricts, but 1. The present immigrants are not agricultural. 2. Those who have been accustomed to farm labor in their own country have worked under very dif- ferent conditions and are not fitted to meet the demands of an undeveloped country, especially in the arid regions of the West. 3. The demand for farm labor is seasonal. 4. American farmers do not want laborers of the new immigrant class. 5. The South does not want .them. 6. The immigrants will refuse to be distributed. They are gregarious and live in groups of their own kind thru choice. They will not consent to be isolated. VI. The present laws are not adequate. A. They let in the ignorant, illiterate and unskilled who are a detriment to the country. B. By making the country easy of access, they give foreigners a false impression of the opportunities offered here ; they come only to be disappointed. C. They give employers and steamship companies an op- portunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the immigrant VII. Of the proposed restrictions the Affirmative favors the literacy test, because A. It would restrict numbers. B. It would let in only the more desirable class. C. It would not materially affect the immigration from northern Europe. D. It could be effectively enforced. BRIEF 15 NEGATIVE I. The new immigration is different not necessarily inferior. A. The Latin and Slav races possess qualities that may enrich American life. 1. They, especially the former, have a love for beauty, color and music and an appreciation of the fine arts. 2. They are a social people and tend to dilute the extreme individualism of the Anglo-Saxon type. 3. They are more adaptable than are the stolid north- ern races. B. They come from lands of few opportunities. 1. Experience shows that under new conditions they tend to outgrow the effects of the old environ- ment. a. The second generation shows an increase in stature. b. The second generation readily adopts new standards of living, new ambitions and ideals. 2. Their illiteracy is due to lack of educational op- portunities. a. Our foreign residents are among the most en- thusiastic supporters of the public schools. b. Adults eagerly avail themselves of night school opportunities. II. The new immigrants can be assimilated. They readily learn American ways. Those returning to the old countries take American customs back with them and transform their old villages. They actually are assimilated by the time the second fc and third generations are reached. III. The United States still needs the immigrant. A. Great sections o'f country are still undeveloped. 1. The South, which is just beginning to realize her own resources, needs immigration. 2. Immigrants are needed in the West, which is still sparsely settled, and where new methods of farming have opened up great tracts of land before considered worthless. 16 BRIEF B. They are still needed as laborers in construction work, as well as in mills and mines. C. They are proving their value as intensive farmers on the abandoned farms of the East. IV. An examination of the so-called evils of the new immigra- tion shows that they are either exaggerated or non- existent. A. The social side. 1. Americans or earlier immigrants have never adopted the standards of an incoming people. The newcomers strive to emulate the native citizens, so it cannot be said that the standard of living is lowered by immigration. 2. The new immigrants have habits of economy and frugality and the ability to make a little go a long way that keeps them free from the aid of charity. 3. The help given by organized charity more often takes the form of advice than it does of alms. 4. In their patronage of the public schools, libraries, art galleries and concerts they may teach Ameri- cans a lesson. 5. All the charges against the new immigrants were once made against the old immigrants, i.e. the "wild Irish," the "Dutch," etc. 6. A few aliens have become public charges not be- cause they were immigrants but because of defects in our present social and industrial sys- tem which affect both American and foreign born alike. B. The immigrant as an economic factor. 1. Each succeeding wave of immigration has forced the preceding wave forward, driving first the native stock, then the Irish, the Germans, etc., higher in the economic scale. 2. The new immigration, which is a less fixed and stable force than the old, tends to equalize labor conditions. a. News now travels fast and they come to America only in years of promising condi- tions. BRIEF 17 b. They return in large numbers in years when times are bad. 3. Once converted to union principles they make ex- cellent union material and are not backward in demanding an American wage. 4. For the money which the immigrant sends home he gives a full return in labor. C. As a political factor. 1. As material for political corruption he is often equalled by the native born. 2. His so-called corruption is often due to ignorance and could be remedied by a more careful en- forcement of naturalization laws and by better educational opportunities for adults. 3. He often comes to America full of enthusiasm for democratic ideals; it is to our shame that he is sometimes disappointed. 4. From the ranks of immigrants have come many wise statesmen and political leaders. 5. Immigrants on the whole make intelligent, patri- otic citizens. V. The solution of the immigration problem requires a change in our attitude toward the immigrant and the adoption of a system of distribution. A. In our attitude toward the immigrant we have thought too much of the benefits he would derive from the mere privilege of living in America. B. We must consider the gifts and natural abilities he brings with him and make better use of them. C. We must cease to blame him for living in a slum and working under bad conditions; the slum and the conditions are ours. D. We must devise a scheme of distribution that will provide for: 1. The movement of this new mobile labor force to the parts of the country that need it. 2. The establishment of agricultural colonies where a. The new immigrants may find permanent homes. i8 BRIEF b. Their knowledge of intensive methods of farm- ing may become a valuable asset to the country. VI. The present laws are adequate. A. They keep out criminals, paupers, the physically unfit and all really undesirable classes. B. What is needed is a more careful administration of the laws we now have. VII. The Negative is opposed to the literacy test, because A. It would only restrict numbers; it would not select quality. 1. Literacy is not a test of quality or of intelligence. 2. Literacy is the result of opportunity. 3. The strong, willing, earnest worker, tho illiterate, may be the most desirable citizen. 4. There is less illiteracy among the children of foreign-born parentage in our country than among those of American parentage. B. It would not prove successful in operation. 1. It would be superficial and the clever rogue could easily prepare himself to pass it. 2. It would act in favor of the city-bred and against the immigrant from the country districts. C. To make lack of opportunity a punishable offence is contrary to American ideals. BIBLIOGRAPHY An asterisk (*) preceding a reference indicates that the entire article or a part of it has been reprinted in this volume. Many of the magazine articles and pamphlets listed here, as well as similar material that may be published after this volume is issued, may be secured at reasonable rates from the Wilson Package Library operated by the H. W. Wilson Company. GENERAL REFERENCES Bibliographies, Briefs and Debates Chicago. University. Literacy Test for Immigrants; a debate, pa. *$i. Delta Sigma Rho, Univ. of Chicago. (For sale by H. W. Wilson Co.) 1916. Edwards, Richard H. Immigration. (Studies in American So- cial Conditions.) pa. IDC. Author, 237 Langdon St., Madison, Wis. 1909. Independent. 85 : 234. F. 14, '16. Literacy Test for Immigrants ; debate. R. S. Fulton. Iowa, University. Constructive and Rebuttal Speeches of the Representatives of the State University of Iowa in the Inter- collegiate Debates, 1913-1914. *$i. Wilson, H. W. 1914. Question: Resolved that immigration be further restricted by a liter- acy test. Kansas. University. Restriction of Immigration, in Debating and Public Discussion, pp. 36-9. 1910. Library of Congress. List of Books with References to Peri- odicals on Immigration, comp. by A. P. C. Griffin. 3d issue. 1907. Mabie, E. C., ed. Restriction of Immigration by the Literacy Test, in University Debaters' Annual, pp. 206-38. *$i.8o. Wil- son, H. W. 1916. Sold separately at 750. Montana High School Debating League. Educational Test; Bibliog., in Univ. Extension Bui. p. 20-3. University of Montana, Missoula. 1914. Ray, Mary K. Immigration Problem; Bibliog. pa. 25c. Wis. Free Lib. Commission. 1909. 20 BIBLIOGRAPHY Ringwalt, R. C. Restriction of Immigration, in Briefs on Public Questions, pp. 31-41. Longmans, Green & Co. 1913. Robbins, E. C. Immigration, Further Restriction of ; Brief and bibliog., in High School Debate Book, pp. 100-8. A. C. Mc- Clurg. 1912. Shurter, E. D., and Taylor, C. C. Immigration; Brief and bibliog., in Both Sides of TOO Public Questions, pp. 16-7. Hinds, Noble & Eldredge. 1913. Texas, University of. Educational Test for Immigrants ; Bibliog., brief, and selected arguments ; ed. by E. D. Shurter and C. I. Francis. (Extension ser. no. 58.) Univ. of Texas, Austin. 1914. Texas, University of. Intercollegiate Debates. Report of debate on Illiteracy Test with bibliog. (Extension ser. no. 57.) Univ. of Texas, Austin. 1914. Washington, University of. Immigration; Brief and bibliog. Univ. of Washington, Seattle. 1913. Wisconsin, University of. Restriction of Immigration; Brief and bibliog. rev. ed. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. 1909. Books, Pamphlets, etc. Adams, T. S., and Sumner, H. L. Immigration, in Labor Prob- lems, pp. 68-99. Macmillan. 1908. American Jewish Committee. Recommendations Respecting the Revision of the Immigration Laws and Regulations. Am. Jewish Com. 1910. Balch, Emily Greene. Our Slavic Fellow Citizens. Charities Pub. Com. 1910. Bliss, W. P. D. New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, pp. 597- 600. Funk & Wagnalls. 1908. Boaz, Franz. Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immi- grants. Columbia Univ. Press. 1912. Reprinted from the U. S. Immigration Commission Reports. Brandenburg, B. Imported Americans. F. A. Stokes Co. 1904. Burgess, Thomas. Greeks in America. Sherman, French & Co. California. Commission of Immigration and Housing, ist and 2d Annual Reports. San Francisco. 1915, 1916. Carlton, F. T. Immigration, in History and Problems of Organ- ized Labor, pp. 322-58. D. C. Heath. 1911. BIBLIOGRAPHY 21 Commons, John R. Immigration and Its Economic Effects, in U. S. Industrial Commission Reports, v. 15. 1901. Commons, John R. Races and Immigrants in America. Mac- mil Ian. 1907. Grose, H. B. Aliens or Americans. Eaton & Main. 1906. Grose, H. B. Incoming Millions. F. H. Revell Co. 1906. Gulick, S. L. Comprehensive Immigration Policy and Program. pa. Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. (105 E. 22d St., N. Y.) 1916. Jenks, J. W., and Lauck, W. J. Immigration Problem. 3d ed. Funk & Wagnalls. 1913. Johnson, Stanley C. History of Immigration from the United Kingdom to North America. E. P. Button & Co. 1914. Joseph, Samuel. Jewish Immigration to the United States. Longmans, Green & Co. 1914. Kellor, Frances A., and Mayper, Joseph. Recommendations for a Federal Bureau of Distribution. No. Am. Civic League foi Immigrants. Marshall, L. C., and others, eds. Human Beings as Economic Factors, in Materials for the Study of Elementary Economics, PP- 137-56. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1913. Massachusetts. Commission on Immigration. Report on the Problem of Immigration in Massachusetts. Com. on Immi- gration, Boston. 1914. National Conference for Good City Government. 1910:375-84. Education of Foreigners in American Citizenship. G. Abbott. National Conference of Charities and Correction. 1913: 42-72. Report of Special Immigration Survey of the Pacific Coast. New International Encyclopedia, v. 12. pp. 8-19. new ed. Dodd. Mead & Co. 1915. New Jersey. Commission of Immigration. Report. MacCrelish & Quigley, state ptrs. 1914. *New York (State). Commission of Immigration. Report. 1909. Many of the conclusions of this Commission will be found favorable to the Negative. The Commission took a stand for regulation and dis- tribution rather than for restriction. New York (State). Bureau of Industries and Immigration Annual Reports, 1911- Peters, M. C. Jews in America. J. C. Winston Co. 1905. Roberts, Peter. Immigrant Races in North America. Y. M. C. A. 1910. 22 BIBLIOGRAPHY Roberts, Peter. Immigrant Wage-Earners, in Wage-Earning. Pittsburg, pp. 33-60. Survey Associates. 1914. Roberts, Peter. New Immigration. Macmillan. 1912. Steiner, Edward A. Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow. F. H. Revell Co. 1909. Steiner, Edward A. On the Trail of the Immigrant. 4th ed. F. H. Revell Co. 1906. United States. Bureau of Labor. Bui. 15 : 403-86. S. '07. Italian, Slavic and Hungarian Laborers in the United States. F. J. Sheridan. United States. Census Bureau. Illiteracy. [From I3th Census of United States, 1910.] Census Bureau. 1914. United States. Census Bureau. Mother Tongue of Foreign White Stock. [From I3th Census of United States, 1910.] Census Bureau. 1914. *United States. Immigration Commission. Abstracts of Reports. 2v. Govt. Ptg. Office. 1911. The Commission recommended further restriction of immigration. Their conclusions will be found favorable to the Affirmative. The complete report of the Commission is printed in forty volumes. These Abstracts give a very satisfactory summary, however. Warne, F. J. Immigrant Invasion. Dodd. 1913. Warne, F. J. Slav Invasion and the Mine Workers. Lippincott. 1904. Warne, F. J. Tide of Immigration. Appleton. 1916. ( Whelpley, J. D. Problem of the Immigrant. E. P. Button & Co. 1905. Woods, Robert A. Americans in Process. Houghton, Mifflin. 1902. Magazine Articles Annals of the American Academy. 48:66-77. Jl. '13. Immigra- tion and the Minimum Wage. Paul U. Kellogg. American Economic Review. 2: sup. 53-62. Mr. '12. Restriction of Immigration. Henry P. Fairchild. Affirmative and Negative Discussion, pp. 63-78. Same. American Journal of Sociology. 17: 637-46. Mr. '12. Atlantic Monthly. 100:401-7. S. '07. Immigrant Woman. Frances A. Kellor. *Atlantic Monthly. 102 : 745-59. D. '08. Races in the United States. W. Z. Ripley. Same cond. Review of Reviews. 39: 91-2. Ja. '09. BIBLIOGRAPHY 23 Century. 65 : 683-90. Mr. '03. Coming Race in America. Gustave Michaud. Fortnightly. 101:513-20. Mr. 'i\. Overtaxed Melting Pot. J. D. Whelpley. Same. Living Age. 281: 67-72. Ap. n. '14. Harper's Weekly. 59:364-6; 398. O. 17-24, '14. Nation's New Front Door. Frances A. Kellor. Shows how Pacific Coast states were prepared to handle immigrants that were expected after the opening of the canal. These expectations may be realized after the war. Immigrants in America Review. A quarterly published in the interests of immigrants in America. V. i, no. i was issued in March, 1915. Address, 20 W. 34th St., N. Y. City. Independent. 60:261-4. F. i, '06. Control Emigration rather than Immigration. J. D. Whelpley. NS Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 4 : 523-43. N. '13. Crime and Immigration. G. C. Speranza. Journal of Political Economy. 23:280-3. Mr. '15. Latest Defeat of the Literacy Test. Journal of Political Economy. 24 : 445-73. My. '16. Relation of the Literacy Test to a Constructive Immigration Problem. Homer Hoyt. Literary Digest. 46:442-4. Mr. i, '13. Admission of Illiterates. Literary Digest. 50:478-9. Mr. 6, '15. Our Illiterate Immigrants. Literary Digest.. 52 : 1133-4. Ap. 22, '16. Reading-test for Immi- grants. National Geographic Magazine. 26:265-71. S. '14. Foreign born of the United States. Statistics and tables. North American Review. 180 : 856-67. Je. '05. Control of Emi- gration in Europe. J. D. Whelpley. North American Review. 187 : 106-16. Ja. '08. What America Pays Europe for Immigrant Labor. Charles F. Speare. North American Review. 188:360-71. S. '08. Common Sense View of the Immigration Problem. W. S. Rossiter. North American Review. 200:18-22. Jl. '14.' Our Illiterates: Who and Why. George Harvey. Political Science Quarterly. 22:49-60. Mr. '07. Alien Contract Labor Law. S. P. Orth. Popular Science Monthly. 85 : 397-403. O. '14. Political Mind of Foreign Born. A. Lipsky. 24 BIBLIOGRAPHY Review of Reviews. 33:336-9. Mr. '06. Sane Methods of Regu- lating Immigration. Robert DeC. Ward. *Science, n. s. 39: 147-8. Ja. 23, '14. Results of the First Census of European Races in the United States. Daniel Folkmar. Sunset. 31:1144-9; 32:593-600; 33:97-105. D. '13, Mr., J!.., '14. Immigration. R. N. Lynch. A series of articles showing how California is profiting by the ex- perience of the East. Survey. 25:587-95. Ja. 7, 'n. Immigrant Rural Communities. Alexander E. Cance. Survey. 27:927-8. O. 7, 'n. Distribution of Agricultural Immi- grants. Survey. 31 : 466-8. Ja. 17, '14. Mental Examination of Immi- grants. E. K. Sprague. World's Work. 32:374-5. Ag. '16. Immigration Question Again. Gives a summary of Mr. ,S. L. Gulick's plan for restriction on a percentage basis. AFFIRMATIVE REFERENCES Books, Pamphlets, etc. Devine, Edward T. Immigration, in Principles of Relief, pp. 162- 170. Macmillan. 1904. This chapter was first printed in Charities. Fairchild, Henry P. Immigration; a World Movement. Mac- millan. 1913. Bibliography, pp. 439-49. Hall, Prescott F. Immigration and Its Effects upon the United States, new ed. Holt. 1908. Bibliographies, pp. 369-74. Haworth, Paul L. Blood of the Nation, in America in Ferment, pp. 67-114. Bobbs. 1915. Hunter, Robert. Immigrant, in Poverty, pp. 261-317. Macmillan. 1905. Jenks, J. W. Character and Influence of the Recent Immigration, in Questions of Public Policy. Yale Univ. Press. 1913. Mitchell, John. Immigrant and the Living Wage, in Organized Labor, pp. 176-85. Am. Bk. & Bible House, Philadelphia. 1903. Ross, Edward A. Old World in the New. Century. 1914. Chapters from this book appeared first in the Century. Some of them are listed with Magazine Articles. BIBLIOGRAPHY 25 Schultz, A. P. Race or Mongrel. Page. 1908. Walker, Francis A. Restriction of Immigration, in Economics and Statistics, v. 2, pp. 417-50. Holt. 1899. Magazine Articles * American Economic Review. 1:753-65. D. 'n. Immigration and Crises. Henry P. Fairchild. *American Economic Review. 3: sup. 5-19. Mr. '13. Population or Prosperity. Frank A. Fetter. American Journal of Sociology. 17:254-67. S. 'n. Paradox of Immigration. Henry P. Fairchild. Annals of the American Academy. 24: 169-84. Jl. '04. Selection of Immigration. Prescott F. Halh *Annals of the American Academy. 34 : 125-9. Jl. '09. Immigra- tion and the American Laboring Classes. John Mitchell. Annals of the American Academy. 52 : 169-76. Mr. '14. Alien in Relation to Our Laws. G. C. Speranza. Atlantic Monthly. 96:611-7. N. '05. Immigration and the South. Robert DeC. Ward. Atlantic Monthly. 110:388-93. S. '12. Real Myth. W. Jett Lauck. *Atlantic Monthly. 110:691-6. N. '12. Vanishing American Wage Earner. W. Jett Lauck. Century. 87 : 28-35. N. '13. Economic Consequences of Immigra- tion. E. A. Ross. Century. 87 : 225-32. D. '13. American and Immigrant Blood. E. A. Ross. *Century. 87: 392-8. Ja. '14. Immigrants in Politics. E. A. Ross. *Century. 87:615-22. F. '14. Racial Consequences of Immigra- tion. E. A. Ross. These articles from the Century are reprinted in Professor Ross's book "Old World in the New." *Charities. 12 : 129-33. F. 6, '04. Immigration as a Relief Problem. Edward T. Devine. Reprinted in the author's book "Principles of Relief." *Congressional Record. 46:4229-31. Mr. 3, 'n. [unbound]. Brief in Favor of the Illiteracy Test. John L. Burnett. Congressional Record. 48:3732-42. Mr. 18, '12. Regulation of Immigration. F. M. Simmons. *Congressional Record. 49 : 666-9. D. 14, '12. Immigration. Wil- liam Kent. 26 BIBLIOGRAPHY Congressional Record. 49:670-4. D. 14, '12. Immigration. Caleb Powers. Congressional Record. 52 : 3071-2. F. 4, '15. President's Veto of the Immigration Bill. J. D. Price. Congressional Record. 52:3053-9. F. 4, '15. President's Veto of the Immigration Bill. D. S. Church. Current Opinion. 57:340-1. N. '14. Social Deterioration of the United States from the Stream of Backward Immigrants. Forum. 51 : 866-77. Je. '14. New Immigration Law. A. W. Stockwell. Harper's Weekly. 56:9. O. 19, '12. Importing Our Insane. T. S. Dayton. Harper's Weekly. 57 : 10. Jl. 26, '13. Immigration and Democ- racy. H. S. Williams. * Journal of Education. 80:567-70. D. 10, '14. Literacy and the Immigrant. W. D. Parkinson. Journal of Political Economy. 21 : 735-51. O. '13. Recent History of Immigration and Immigration Restriction. Prescott F. Hall. *Nation. 98: 430-1. Ap. 16, '14. Problems of Immigration. H. P. Fairchild. National Geographic Magazine. 23 : 38-41. Ja. '12. Our Immigra- tion Laws from the Viewpoint of National Eugenics. Robert DeC. Ward. Same. Scientific American Supplement. 73: 287-8. My. 4, '12. North American Review. 165 : 393-402. O. '97. Immigration and the Educational Test. Prescott F. Hall. North American Review. 175 : 53-60. Jl. '02. Immigration's Men- ace to the National Health. T. V. Powderly. North American Review. 179:226-37, Ag. '04. Restriction of Immigration. Robert DeC. Ward. North American Review. 183:1262-71. D. 21, '06. Medico-Eco- nomic Aspect of the Immigration Problem. Thomas Darling- ton. *North American Review. 192:56-67. Jl. '10. National Eugenics in Relation to Immigration. Robert DeC. Ward. *North American Review. 195 : 94-102. Ja. '12. Future of Ameri- can Ideals. Prescott F. Hall. Reprinted in pamphlet form by the Immigration Restriction League. North American Review. 195:201-11. F. '12. Real Significance of Recent Immigration. W. Jett Lauck. BIBLIOGRAPHY 27 North American Review. 199:383-93. Mr. '14. Our National Fences. Huntington Wilson. Outlook. 87 : 913-23. D. 28, '07. Keepers of the Gate. Mary B. Sayles. Outlook. 93:65-9. S. n, '09. Protect the Workman. John Mitchell. Outlook. 93 : 495-500. O. 30, '09. How the United States Fosters the Black Hand. F. M. White. Outlook. 96: 1003-6. D. 31, '10. Shall We Restrict Immigration? Outlook. 97: 16-8. Ja. 7, '11. Selecting Our Immigrants. * Popular Science Monthly. 66:166-75. D. '04. Agricultural Dis- tribution of Immigrants. Robert DeC. Ward. Popular Science Monthly. 80:383-92. Ap. '12. Medical Side of Immigration. A. C. Reed. *Survey. 25:579-86. Ja. 7, 'u. Industrial Communities. W. Jett Lauck. *Survey. 25:715-6. F. 4, 'n. Selection of Immigrants. Edward T. Devine. Survey. 30:370-1. Je. 14, '13. Controlling Immigration by Num- ber Limitation. Prescott F. Hall. *Survey. 29:497-9. Ja. 18, '13. Democracy and the Illiteracy Test. Joseph Lee. Unpopular Review. 5:153-70. Ja. '16. Case for the Literacy Test. World To-Day. 10:418-24. Ap. '06. How Immigration Is Stimu- lated. Frederic A. Ogg. World To-Day. 11:803-7. Ag. '06. What an Immigrant Inspec- tor Found in Europe. Frederic A. Ogg. World's Work. 8:5254-9. S. '04. International Control of Immi- gration. James Davenport Whelpley. World's Work. 14:8879-86. My. '07. American Immigration at High Tide. Frederic A. Ogg. World's Work. 22: 14368-74. My. 'n. Urgent Immigration Prob- lem. Jeremiah W. Jenks. ^World's Work. 26:699-703. O. '13. Our Expensive Cheap Labor. Arno Dosch. World's Work. 32 : 303-5. Jl. '16. American Illiterate. Winthrop Talbot. Yale Review. 19:79-97. My. '10. Some Immigration Differences. Henry P. Fairchild. 28 BIBLIOGRAPHY NEGATIVE REFERENCES Books, Pamphlets, etc. Addams, Jane. Failure to Utilize Immigrants in City Govern- ment, in Newer Ideals of Peace, pp. 62-92. Macmillan. 1907. Antin, Mary. They Who Knock at Our Gates. Houghton, Mif- flin. 1914. Hourwich, Isaac A. Immigration and Labor. Putnam. 1912. *Hourwich, Isaac. Immigration : a Summary. Am. Jewish Com. Reprinted frpm "Immigration and Labor," Putnam. Kellor, Frances A. Immigration and Unemployment, in Out oi Work, pp. 111-56. rev. ed. Putnam. 1915. Kohler, Max J. Immigration Problem and the Right of Asylum for the Persecuted. Am. Jewish Com. Reprinted from Jewish Comment, Baltimore, Oct. 24-31, '13. Kohler, Max J. Injustice of a Literacy Test for Immigrants. 2d ed. Am. Jewish Com. *Low, A. Maurice. Influence of Immigration on American De- velopment, in American People, v. 2, pp. 360-429. Houghton, Mifflin. 1911. ^National Conference for Good City Government. 1909: 142-7. Effect of Immigration on Municipal Politics. W. S. Bennet. ^National Conference of Charities and Correction. 1912:239-49. Is Immigration a Menace? C. L. Sulzberger. Reprinted in pamphlet form. Am. Jewish. Com. National Conference of Charities and Correction. 1914 : 69-75. Family in the Community but not yet of the Community. Sophonisba P. Breckinridge. Sekely, B. A. Immigrant Labor and the Restriction of Immi- gration. National Liberal Immigration League. Magazine Articles *American Economic Review. 4:93-108. Mr. '14. Some Aspects of the Immigration Problem. Max J. Kohler. Reprinted in pamphlet form. Am. Jewish Com. American Journal of Sociology. 17:478-90. Ja. '12. Immigration and Crime. I. A. Hourwich. American Journal of Sociology. 18:342-51. N. '12. Walker's Theory of Immigration. E. A. Goldenweiser. *American Journal of Sociology. 18:391-7. N. '12. Bird of Passage. William B. Bailey. BIBLIOGRAPHY 29 Annals of the American Academy. 24: 187-205. Jl. '04. Immigra- tion in Its Relation to Pauperism. Kate H. Claghorn. Annals of the American Academy. 24 : 223-36. Jl. '04. Proposals Affecting Immigration. John J. D. Trenor. *Annals of the American Academy. 33 : 373-9. Mr. '09. Influence of Immigration on Agricultural Development. John L. Coul- ter. Annals of the American Academy. 52:159-68. Mr. '14. Justice for the Immigrant. Frances A. Kellor. Reprinted in pamphlet form. No. Am. Civic League for Immigrants. *Arena. 32: 596-602. D. '04. Immigration Bugbear. Ernest Crosby. * Atlantic Monthly. 86 : 535-48. O. 'oo. Our Immigrants and Our- selves. Kate H. Claghorn. *Century. 73 : 633-8. F. '07. Human Side of Immigration. John Graham Brooks. *Century. 74 : 474-80. Jl. '07. American of the Future. Brander Matthews. Congressional Record. 49 : 684-7. D. 14, '12. Immigration. Rich- ard Bartholdt. Congressional Record. 49:689-90. D. 14, '12. Immigration. Thomas Gallagher. Congressional Record. 52:3022-6. F. 4, '15. Report of a Hearing before President Wilson. *Congressional Record. 52: 3064. F. 4, '15. Three Veto Messages. Presidents Cleveland, Taft and Wilson. President Cleveland's Message is issued in pamphlet form by the Am. Jewish Com. President Wilson's message may be found in the daily papers of Feb. 4, 1915. Congressional Record. 52:3061-4. F. 4, '15. President's Veto of the Immigration Bill. A. J. Sabath. Congressional Record. 52 : 3073-6. F. 4, '15. President's Veto of the Immigration Bill. J. H. Moore. Educational Review. 29 : 245-63. Mr. '05. Recent Immigration. Jane Addams. Educational Review. 48:21-36. Je. '14. Education of the Immi- grant. Frances A. Kellor. Reprinted in pamphlet form. Am. Jewish Com. Forum. 53: 380-5. Mr. '15. Literacy Test. James A. O'Gorman. "Independent. 72 : 304-7. F. 8, '12. Popular Delusions About Immigration. W. F. Willcox. 30 BIBLIOGRAPHY Independent. 78:417. Je. I, '14. Foreign-born, Crime and Patriot- ism. Journal of Political Economy. 21 : 954-6. D. '13. Immigration and Insanity. H. L. Reed. Answer to an article by P. F. Hall in October number. *Nation. 82:398-9. My. 17, '06. Immigration and the South. Nation. 95 : 425-6. N. 7, '12. Metaphysical Standards of Living. New Republic. 2:8-9. F. 6, '15. Testing a Race by Its Literacy. New Republic. 6:254-5. Ap. 8, '16. Control of Immigration. *New York Times. Ja. 10, '12. Illiteracy and Its Significance. North American Review. 178: 558-70. Ap. '04. Is the New Immi- gration Dangerous to the Country? O. P. Austin. *North American Review. 195 : 513-25. Ap. '12. American Ideals and Race Mixture. Percy S. Grant. *North American Review. 193:561-73. Ap. 'n. Needed a Do- mestic Immigration Policy. Frances A. Kellor. Reprinted in pamphlet form. No. Am. Civic League for Immigrants. *North American Review. 199:866-78. Je. '14. Crux of the Im- migration Question. A. P. Andrew. *North American Review. 201 : 347-50. Mr. '15. Bogy of Alien Illiteracy. George Harvey. Outlook. 106:912-7. Ap. 25, '14. Who Is Responsible for the Immigrant? Frances A. Kellor. Reprinted in pamphlet form. No. Am. Civic League for Immigrants. Outlook. 106:380-1. F. 21, '14. Literacy Test for Immigrants. Outlook. 107:334-5. Je. 13, '14. Old Stock and the New. Political Science Quarterly. 19 : 32-49. Mr. '04. Some Aspects of the Immigration Problem. R. P. Falkner. Political Science Quarterly. 20:276-97. Je. '05. Immigration to the Southern States. Walter L. Fleming. Political Science Quarterly. 26:615-52. D. 'n. Economic Aspects of Immigration. I. A. Hourwich. Reprinted in pamphlet form by Ginn & Co. Supplied by Am. Jewish Com. Popular Science Monthly. 66 : 243-55. Ja. '05. Social and Po- litical Effects of Immigration. Allan McLaughlin. Review of Reviews. 35:319-28. Mr. '07. Why We Need the Immigrant. W. S. Rossiter. Review of Reviews. 44:697-704. D. '11. Ebb and Flow of the Immigration Tide. H. F. Sherwood. *Review of Reviews. 49 : 342-5. Mr. '14. Our Recent Immigrants as Farmers. Lajos Steiner. BIBLIOGRAPHY 31 Survey. 23:465-72. Ja. I, '10. Handicaps in America. G. C. Speranza. *Survey. 25:527-9. Ja. 7, 'u. Adjustment not Restriction. Grace Abbott. Survey. 25:596-602. Ja. 7, 'n. Immigrants in Cities. E. A. Goldenweiser. *Survey. 29:419-20. J'a. 4, '13. Pen and Book as Tests of Char- acter. Jane Addams. Survey. 30:369-70- Je. 14, '13. New Expedient for Restricting Immigration. M. J. Kohler. Survey. 31 : 766-7. Mr. 21, '14. Tie that Binds Immigration, Work and Citizenship. Frances A. Kellor. World To-day. 11:735-8. Jl. '06. Americans of the Future. Daniel T. Pierce. World's Work. 14 : 8959-60. Je. '07. Immigration to the South. EUROPEAN WAR AND IMMIGRATION Independent. 86:207-8. My. 8, '16. Coming Flood of Immigra- tion. Isaac D. Levine. Independent. 87 : 297-8. Ag. 28, '16. Wage-earner's Innings. Frederic C. Howe. Literary Digest. 53 : 46. Jl. I, '16. More Immigrants Coming in Spite of the War. ""Immigrants in America Review, i : 9-10. Mr. '15. Domestic Policy. Frances A. Kellor. *New Republic, i : 10-1. D. 26, '14. Wanted An Immigration Policy. North American Review. 201 : 667-70. My. '15. Effects of the War on Immigration. George Harvey. *Outlook. 113:1023-4. Ag. 30, '16. Immigration of the Year. Overland Monthly, n. s. 68: 138-40. Ag. '16. Great War's Effect on Immigration. F. B. Lenz. Review of Reviews. 52 : 598-602. N. '15. Immigration, Industry, and the War. Frederic C. Howe. ^Scientific Monthly. 2 : 438-52. My. '16. Immigration and the War. R. DeC. Ward. Same cond. Review of Reviews. 53: 735-6. Je. '16. *Scribner's Magazine. 58:635-9. N. '15. Immigration After the War. Frederic C. Howe. Same cond. Current Opinion. 59: 420-1. D. '15. 32 BIBLIOGRAPHY *Snrvey. 34:153-4. My. 15, '15. Immigration That May Conre from Russia after the War. Leo Pasvolsky. Survey. 35:524-5. Ja. 29, '16. Immigration's Ebbing Tide. Kate H. Claghorn. AMERICANIZATION Books, Pamphlets, etc. Dixon, Royal. Americanization. *5oc. Macmillan. 1916. Kellor, Frances A. American-made Citizens, in Straight Amer- ica. *5oc. Macmillan. 1916. Miller, Herbert A. School and the Immigrant. 25c. Cleveland Foundation ; Survey Committee, Russell Sage Foundation. 1916. United States. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916. 18:1-51.^ Public Facilities for Educating the Alien. F. E. Farrington. Magazine Articles American City. 14:164-6. F. '16. How to Americanize a City. Frances A. Kellor. Annals of the American Academy. 67:273-83. S. '16. United States Bureau of Education and the Immigrant. H. H. Wheaton. Atlantic Monthly. 117:59-65. Ja. '16. Lo, the Poor Immigrant! Frances A. Kellor. Same cond. Review of Reviews. 53: 241. F. '16. Atlantic Monthly. 118:86-97. Jl. '16. Trans-national America. Randolph S. Bourne. Century. 91 : 350-63. Ja. '16. Hopes of the Hyphenated. George Creel. Education. 36:357-61. F. '16. Evening Elementary Schools. William H. Dooley. Educational Review. 51 : 469-77. My. '16. Education of the Im- migrant. F. B. Lenz. Immigrants in America Review, 20 W. 34th St., New York City. The numbers of this quarterly are devoted wholly to the interests of the immigrant. Outlook. 112:439-48. F. 23, '16. Americanization Factory. Gregory Mason. An account of what the public schools of Rochester are doing to make Americans of foreigners. BIBLIOGRAPHY 33 Outlook. 114:193-201. S. 27, '16. Americans First. Gregory Mason. How the people of Detroit are making Americans of the foreigners in their city. Review of Reviews. 53 : 79-80. Ja. '16. Educating the Immigrant for Citizenship. Review of Reviews. 53:81-2. Ja. '16. Los Angeles' Example; Education of the Immigrant. Chester Ferris. School and Society. 3 : 613-17. Ap. 29, '16. Public School and the New American Spirit. J. G. Becht. School and Society. 3 : 570-2. Ap. 15, '16. How to Increase Night School Attendance Among the Foreign Born. Frances A. Kellor. Survey. 36:478-80. Ag. 5, '16. Democracy of Internationalism. Grace Abbott. Contributions which race groups in America can make to internation- alism. World's Work. 32:30-3. My. '16. Your Government of the United States; Making New Americans. Work of the United States Bureau of Naturalization. For material on this subject contained in this volume see Our Recent Immigrants as Farmers, by Lajos Steiner, p. 204; Needed A Domestic Immigration Policy, by Frances A. Kellor, p. 209; and Adjustment Not Restriction, by Grace Abbott, p. 216. The following societies issue reports, pamphlets, etc. American Jewish Committee, 356 2d Av., N. Y. City. Asiatic Exclusion League, 316 i4th St., San Francisco. Committee for Immigrants in America (Merged with National Amer- icanization Comm.). Immigration Restriction League, n Pemberton Sq., Boston, Mass. National Americanization Committee, 20 W. 34th St., N. Y. City. National Liberal Immigration League, 150 Nassau St., N. Y. City. North American Civic League for Immigrants (merged with National Americanization Comm.). Incoming and Outgoing Aliens, 1890-1915 r-IC^I COT^lrtCOt^OOOSOT-HC^fO^LOCOb- OS OS OS OS OS OS 03 OS OS OS OOOOOOOO OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OO OOCX) COOOOOOOOOOOOO OS osososoi 1,200,000 1,250,000 1,200,000 1,150,000 1,100,000 1,050,000 1,000,000 950,000 900,000 850,000 800,000 750,000 700,000 650,000 600,000 550,000 500,000 450,000 400,000 350,000 300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 Immigration Emigration Chart prepared by John B. 7. Gerety from Government Statistics Official reports of outgoing aliens have been kept only since 1907. The dates given signify in each case the year ending in June. Statistics for 1915 were available to the end of May only. The average monthly immigration for the year up to that date was 27,645. If that number be added to the eleven months' total, the approximate number for the year will be obtained. GENERAL DISCUSSION United States. Immigration Commission. Abstracts of Reports Conclusions and Recommendations Sources of Immigration and Character of Immigrants From 1820 to June 30, 1910, 27,918,992 immigrants were ad- mitted to the United States. Of this number 92.3 per cent came from European countries, which countries are the source of about 93.7 per cent of the present immigration movement. From 1820 to 1883 more than 95 per cent of the total immigrants from Europe originated in the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandi- navia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. In what follows the movement from these countries will be referred to as the "old immigration." Following 1883 there was a rapid change in the ethnical character of European immigration, and in recent years more than 70 per cent of the movement has originated in southern and eastern Europe. The change geo- graphically, however, has been somewhat greater than the change in the racial character of the immigration, this being due very largely to the number of Germans who have come from Austria- Hungary and Russia. The movement from southern and eastern Europe will be referred to as the "new immigration." In a single generation Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia have suc- ceeded the United Kingdom and Germany as the chief sources of immigration. In fact, each of the three countries first named furnished more immigrants to the United States in 1907 than came in the same year from the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland combined. The old immigration movement was essentially one of per- manent settlers. The new immigration is very largely one of individuals a considerable proportion of whom apparently have no intention of permanently changing their residence, their only purpose in coming to America being to temporarily take advant- 3 6 SELECTED ARTICLES age of the greater wages paid for industrial labor in this country. This, of course, is not true of all the new immigrants, but the practice is sufficiently common to warrant referring to it as a characteristic of them as a class. From all data that are avail- able it appears that nearly 40 per cent of the new immigration movement returns to Europe and that about two-thirds of those who go remain there. This does not mean that all of these immigrants have acquired a competence and returned to live on it. Among the immigrants who return permanently are those who have failed, as well as those who have succeeded. Thou- sands of those returning have, under unusual conditions of climate, work, and food, contracted tuberculosis and other diseases; others are injured in our industries; still others are the widows and children of aliens dying here. These, with the aged and temperamentally unfit, make up a large part of the aliens who return to their former homes to remain. /"The old immigration came to the United States during a period of general development and was an important factor in that development, while the new immigration has come during a period of great industrial expansion and has furnished a prac- tically unlimited supply of labor to that expansion. r As a class the new immigrants are largely unskitTed laborers coming from countries where their highest wage is small com- pared with the lowest wage in the United States. Nearly 75 per- cent of them are males. About 83 per cent are between the ages of 14 and 45 years, and consequently are producers rather than dependents. They bring little money into the country and send or take a considerable part of their earnings out. More than 35 per cent are illiterate, as compared with less than 3 per cent of the old immigration rlass.K Immigration prior to 1882 was practically unregulated, and consequently many were not self-supporting, so that the care of alien paupers in several states was a serious problem. The new immigration has for the most part been carefully regulated so far as health and likelihood of pauperism are concerned, and, although drawn from classes low in the economic scale, the new immigrants as a rule are the strongest, the most enterprising, and the best of their class. Causes of the Movement While social conditions affect the situation in some countries, the present immigration from Europe to the United States is in ON IMMIGRATION 37 the largest measure due_to_ecojiomic-caiise^-I It should be stated, however, that emigration from Europe is not now an absolute economic necessity, and as a rule those who emigrate to the United States are impelled by a desire for betterment rather than by the necessity of escaping intolerable conditions. This fact should largely modify the natural incentive to treat the immigra- tion movement from the standpoint of sentiment and permit its consideration primarily as an economic problem. In other words, the economic and social welfare of the United States should now ordinarily be the determining factor in the immigration pojicy of the Government. - [^Comparatively few immigrants come without some reason- ably definite assurance that employment awaits them, and it is probable that as a rule they know the nature of that employment and the rate of wages. A large number of immigrants are induced to come by quasi labor agents in this country, who combine the business of supplying laborers to large employers and contractors with the so-called immigrant banking business and the selling of steamship ticketsTj Another important agency in promoting emigration from Europe to the United States is the many thousands of steamship- ticket agents and subageiits operating in the emigrant-furnishing districts of southern and eastern Europe. Under the terms of the United States immigration law, as well as the laws of most European countries, the promotion of emigration is forbidden, but nevertheless the steamship-agent propaganda flourishes everywhere. It does not appear that the steamship lines as a rule openly direct the operations of these agents, but the exist- ence of the propaganda is a matter of common knowledge in the emigrant-furnishing countries and, it is fair to assume, is acquiesced in, if not stimulated, by the steamship lines as well. With the steamship lines the transportation of steerage passengers is purely a commercial matter; moreover, the steerage business which originates in southern and eastern Europe is peculiarly attractive to the companies, as many of the immigrants travel back and forth, thus insuring east-bound as well as west-bound traffic. I in migrants in Manufacturing and Mining A large proportion of the southern and eastern European immigrants of the past twenty-five years have entered the manu- 38 SELECTED ARTICLES factoring and mining industries of the eastern and middle western I states, mostly in the capacity of unskilled laborers. There is no I basic industry in which they are not largely represented, and in I many cases they compose more than 50 per cent of the total ; number of persons employed in such industries. Coincident with the advent of these millions of unskilled laborers, there has been an unprecedented expansion of the industries in which they have been employed. Whether this great immigration movement was caused by the industrial development or whether the fact that a practically unlimited and available supply of cheap labor existed in Europe was taken advantage of for the purpose of expanding / the industries, can not well be demonstrated. v Whatever may be the truth in this regard, it is certain that southern and eastern European immigrants have almost completely monopolized unskilled labor activities in many of the more important indus- tries. This phase of the industrial situation was made the most important and exhaustive feature of the Commission's investiga- tion, and the results show that while the competition of these immigrants has had. little, if any, effect on the highly skilled trades, nevertheless, through lack of industrial progress and by reason of large and constant reinforcement from abroad, it has kept conditions in the semiskilled and unskilled occupations from advancing. Like most of the immigration from southern and eastern Europe, those who entered the leading industries were largely single men or married men unaccompanied by their families. There is, of course, in practically, all industrial communities a large number of families of the various races, but the majority of the employees are men without families here and whose stand- ard of living is so far below that of the native American or older immigrant workman that it is impossible for the latter to successfully compete with them. They usually live in cooperative groups and crowd together. Consequently, they are able to save a great part of their earnings, much of which is sent or carried abroad. Moreover, there is a strong tendency on the part of these unaccompanied men to return to their native countries after a few years of labor here. These groups have little contact with American life, learn little of American institutions,- and aside from the wages earned profit little by their stay in this country. During their early years in the United States they usually rely for assistance and advice on some member of their ON IMMIGRATION 39 race, frequently a saloon keeper or grocer, and almost always a steamship ticket agent and "immigrant banker," who, because of superior intelligence and better knowledge of American ways, commands their confidence. Usually after a longer residence they become more self-reliant, but their progress toward assimi- lation is generally slow. Immigrant families in the industrial centers are more permanent and usually exhibit a stronger tend- ency toward advancement, although, in most cases, it is a long time before they even approach the ordinary standard of the American or the older immigrant families in the same grade of occupation. This description, of course, is not universally true, but it fairly represents a great part of the recent immigrant population in the United States. Their numbers are so great and the influx is so continuous that even with the remarkable expansion of industry during the past few years there has been created an over supply of unskilled labor, and in some of the industries this is reflected in a curtailed number of working days and a consequent yearly income among the unskilled workers which is very much less than is indicated by the daily wage rates paid ; and while it may not have lowered in a marked degree the American standard of living, it has introduced a lower standard which has become prevalent in the unskilled industry at large. Recent Immigrants in Agriculture According to the census of 1900, 21.7 per cent of all foreign- born male breadwinners in the United States were engaged in agricultural pursuits, but the great majority of these were of the old immigration races. Up to that time comparatively few of the immigrants from the south and east of Europe had gone on the land, and, while during the past ten years some of the races have shown a tendency in that direction, the proportion is still small. Among the races of recent immigration which have shown a more or less pronounced tendency toward agriculture in states east of the Rocky mountains are the Italians and Poles, while several Hebrew agricultural colonies have been established. A considerable number of the Italians are to be found in various parts of the East, the South, and the Southwest, where, as a rule, they have established communities, and on the whole have made good progress. In the East many have engaged in truck gardening in the vicinity of the largest cities, while in the South 40 SELECTED ARTICLES and Southwest they have entered fruit and berry raising and, to a lesser degree, general farming. The Poles have gone into general agriculture in many parts of the East and Middle West, while the H'ebrews are, as a rule, located in the more populous states and usually near large cities. The small number of Hebrews who have engaged in agricultural pursuits have not been conspicuously successful, although in some localities they have made fair progress. The Polish farmers, as a rule, have succeeded, particularly in some of the eastern localities where they have purchased worn-out lands and succeeded in making them productive and profitable. The Italians usually have been successful in general farming and especially so in truck garden- ing and small farming in the vicinity of large cities. While encouragement is to be found in the experiences of the past few years, it is clear that the tendency of the new immigra- tion is toward industrial and city pursuits rather than toward agriculture. Artificial Distribution of Immigrants In making the larger cities and industrial communities their place of residence, aliens composing the new immigration move- ment have continued to follow a tendency which originated with the advent of such immigrants in considerable numbers. This may be ascribed to various reasons. A large part of the immi- grants were agricultural laborers at home, and their immigration is due to a desire to escape the low economic conditions which attend agricultural pursuits in countries from which they come. With no knowledge of other conditions it is natural, therefore, that they should seek another line of activity in this country. The destination of these immigrants in the United States on arrival is controlled by the fact that they almost invariably join relatives or friends, and few of these, even among earlier immi- grants of the class, are engaged in agricultural pursuits. No satisfactory or permanent distribution of immigrants can be effected through any federal employment system, no matter how widespread, because the individual will seek such social and economic conditions as best suit him., no matter where sent. What is needed is a division of information which will cooperate with states desiring immigrant settlers. Information concerning the opportunities for settlement should then be brought to the attention of immigrants in industrial centers who have been ON IMMIGRATION 41 here for some time and who might thus be induced to invest their savings in this country and become permanent agricultural settlers. Such a division might also secure and furnish to all laborers alike information showing opportunities for permanent employment in various sections of the country, together with the economic conditions in such places. As a result of the investigation the commission is unanimously of the opinion that in framing legislation emphasis should be laid upon the following principles: 1. While the American people, as in the past, welcome the oppressed of other lands, care should be taken that immigration be such both in quality and quantity as not to make too difficult the process of assimilation. 2. Since the existing law and further special legislation recom- mended in this report deal with the physically and morally unfit, further general legislation concerning the admission of aliens should be based primarily upon economic or business considera- tions touching the prosperity and economic well-being of our people. 3. The measure of the rational, healthy development of a country is not the extent of its investment of capital, its output of products, or its exports and imports, unless there is a corre- sponding economic opportunity afforded to the citizen depend- ent upon employment for his material, mental, and moral development. 4. The development of business may be brought about by means which lower the standard of living of the wage-earners. A slow expansion of industry which would permit the adapta- tion and assimilation of the incoming labor supply is preferable to a very rapid industrial expansion which results in the immigra- tion of laborers of low standards and efficiency, who imperil the American standard of wages and conditions of employment. The commission agrees that: i. To protect the United States more effectively against the immigration of criminal and certain other debarred classes (a) Aliens convicted of serious crimes within a period of five years after admission should be deported in accordance with the provisions of House bill 20,980, Sixty-first Congress, second 42 SELECTED ARTICLES (b) Under the provisions of section 39 of the immigration act of February 20, 1907, the President should appoint commis- sioners to make arrangements with such countries as have adequate police records to supply emigrants with copies of such records, and that thereafter immigrants from such countries should be admitted to the United States only upon the production of. proper certificates showing an absence of convictions for excludable crimes. (c) So far as practicable the immigration laws should be so amended as to be made applicable to alien seamen. (d) Any alien who becomes a public charge within three years after his arrival in this country should be subject to deportation in the discretion of the secretary of commerce and labor. 2. Sufficient appropriation should be regularly made to enforce vigorously the provisions of the laws previously recommended by the commission and enacted by Congress regarding the impor- tation of women for immoral purposes. 3. As the new statute relative to steerage conditions took effect so recently as January i, 1909, and as the most modern steerage fully complies with all that is demanded under the law, the commission's only recommendation in this connection is that a statute be immediately enacted providing for the placing of government officials, both men and women, on vessels carrying third-class or steerage passengers for the enforcement of the law and the protection of the immigrant. The system inaugurated by the commission of sending investigators in the steerage in the guise of immigrants should be continued at intervals by the bureau of immigration. 4. To strengthen the certainty of just and humane decisions of doubtful cases at ports of entry it is recommended That section 25 of the immigration act of 1907 be amended to provide that boards of special inquiry should be appointed by the secretary of commerce and labor, and that they should be com- posed of men whose ability and training qualify them for the performance of judicial functions; that the provisions compelling their hearings to be separate and apart from the public should be repeated, and that the office of an additional assistant secre- tary of commerce and labor to assist in reviewing such appeals be created. 5. To protect the immigrant against exploitation; to dis- courage sending savings abroad ; to encourage permanent resi- ON IMMIGRATION 43 dence and naturalization; and to secure better distribution of alien immigrants throughout the country (a) The states should enact laws strictly regulating immi- grant banks. (b) Proper state legislation should be enacted for the regula- tion of employment agencies. (c) Since numerous aliens make it their business to keep immigrants from influences that may tend toward their assimi- lation and naturalization as American citizens, with the purpose of using their funds, of encouraging investment of their savings abroad, and their return to their home land, aliens who attempt to persuade immigrants not to become American citizens should be made subject to deportation. (d) Since the distribution of the thrifty immigrant to sections of the country where he may secure a permanent residence to the best advantage, and especially where he may invest his savings in farms or engage in agricultural pursuits, is most desirable, the division of information should be so conducted as to cooperate with states desiring 1 immigrant settlers ; and information concern- ing the opportunities for settlement should -be brought to the attention of immigrants in industrial centers who have been here for some time and who might be thus induced to invest their savings in this country and become permanent agricultural set- tlers. The division might also secure and furnish to all laborers alike information showing opportunities for permanent employ- ment in various sections of the country, together with the economic conditions in such places. 6. One of the provisions of section 2 of the act of 1907 reads as follows : "And provided further, That skilled labor may be imported if labor of like kind unemployed cannot be found in this country." Instances occasionally arise, especially in the establishment of new industries in the United States, where labor of the kind desired, unemployed, cannot be found in this country and it be- comes necessary to import such labor. Under the law the secre- tary of commerce and labor has no authority to determine the questions of the necessity for importing such labor in advance of the importation, and it is recommended that an amendment to the law be adopted by adding to the clause cited above a provision to the effect that the question of the necessity of importing such skilled labor in any particular instance may be determined by the 44 SELECTED ARTICLES secretary of commerce and labor upon the application of any person interested prior to any action in that direction by such person ; such determination by the secretary of commerce and labor to be reached after a full hearing and an investigation into the facts of the case. 7. The general policy adopted by Congress in 1882 of exclud- ing Chinese laborers should be continued. The question of Japanese and Korean immigration should be permitted to stand without further legislation so long as the present method of restriction proves to be effective. An understanding should be reached with the British govern- ment, whereby East Indian laborers would be effectively prevented from coming to the United States. 8. The investigations of the commission show an oversupply of unskilled labor in basic industries to an extent which indicates an oversupply of unskilled labor in the industries of the country as a whole, and therefore demand legislation which will at the present time restrict the further admission of such unskilled labor. It is desirable in making the restriction that (a) A sufficient number be debarred to produce a marked effect upon the present supply of unskilled labor. (b) As far as possible, the aliens excluded should be those who come to this country with no intention to become American citizens or even to maintain a permanent residence here, but merely to save enough, by the adoption, if necessary, of low standards of living, to return permanently to their home country. Such persons are usually men unaccompanied by wives or children. (c) As far as possible the aliens excluded should also be those who, by reason of their personal qualities or habits, would least readily be assimilated or would make the least desirable citizens. The following' methods of restricting immigration have been suggested : (a) The exclusion of those unable to read or write in some language. (b) The limitation of the number of each race arriving each year to a certain percentage of the average of that race arriving during a given period of years. (r) The exclusion of unskilled laborers unaccompanied by wives or families. ON IMMIGRATION 45 (d) The limitation of the number of immigrants arriving annually at any port. O) The material increase in the amount of money required to be in the possession of the immigrant at the port of arrival. (f) The material increase of the head tax. (g) The levy of the head tax so as to make a marked dis- crimination in favor of men with families. All these methods would be effective in one way or another in securing restrictions in a greater or less degree. A majority of the commission favor the reading and writing test as the most feasible single method of restricting the undesirable immigrant. 1 The commission as a whole recommends restriction, as de- manded by economic, moral, and social considerations, furnishes in its report reasons for such restriction, and points out methods by which Congress can attain the desired result if its judgment coincides with that of the commission. New York (State) Report of the Commission of Immigration, 1909 General Social Condition of Aliens The general social condition of the alien cannot be com- pletely portrayed by statistics and by formal statements, but must be shown at least partially in the more subtle effects upon him and his family by the environment into which he enters and which he also helps to create. >Tne alien's home, his children, his daily life, his recreation, his standard of life, his inevitable segregation, his relationship to his contemporaries; in short, all the elements that promote or retard assimilation are factors in determining his general social status and should not be omitted "in an investigation into the condition, welfare and industrial opportunities of aliens within the state." Exclusion of Aliens. The social condition and character of aliens who come to this country are partly determined by the immigration laws of the United States which forbid the admission of those likely to become a charge upon the community, or likely to endanger its citizens by physical contagion, vice or unfair competition. The following classes are debarred :_ Idiots^ irn- 1 "The educational test proposed is a selective test for which no logical argument can be based on the report." William S. Bennet in a minority report. 46 SELECTED ARTICLES beciles, feeble-minded, insane (including those who have been insane within the past five years, or who- have had two attacks of insanity), persons suffering from tuberculosis in any form; those with contagious or infectious diseases, such as trachoma, favus and the like ; professional beggars, paupers, persons likely to become a public charge, persons whom the surgeon certifies to as having mental or physical defects which may affect their ability to earn a living, laborers under contract, minors under sixteen years of age unaccompanied by their parents, persons assisted in their immigration, criminals, bigamists, avowed an- archists, prostitutes and females coming for any immoral pur- pose, or persons who procure or attempt to bring in prostitutes or females for any immoral purpose. While the total number of aliens debarred in 1908 was only 10,902 the actual number pre- vented from coming to the United States, as the result of the immigration law, was much larger. The steamship companies refuse passage to those manifestly likely to be debarred, and some aliens realizing the impossibility of passing the test, do not even apply for steamship tickets. These provisions of the Federal Immigration Law tend to enhance the physical, mental and moral standards of aliens coming to this country. A further protection is afforded by the provisions relative to deportation. Aliens who enter in violation of the law, and such as become public charges from causes existing prior to landing and within three years after the date of entry may be deported. During the year ending June 30, 1908, 2,069 aliens, a large pro- portion of whom were residents of New York, were ordered deported by the federal authorities acting in conjunction with the various penal and charitable authorities of the state. The extent to which New York may be relieved from the cost of supporting deportable aliens depends upon the efficiency of the cooperation between state, municipal and federal officials. Causes of Immigration. While the restrictions of the immi- gration law determine the character and to a certain extent the volume of immigration, the latter is influenced to a far greater degree by the economic and social conditions in America attract- ing aliens, and by the conditions in the countries from which aliens come. The expanding industries of the country in good times and the large demand for unskilled labor in mines, factories, work- shops and on farms, are the main causes of the extensive migra- ON IMMIGRATION 47 tion of Europeans to America. This demand is obviously not a fixed quantity and its variation is affected by the population and wealth, which the aliens themselves help to produce. Neverthe- less, the resources of the country and the superiority of con- ditions over those of Eastern and Southern Europe act per- manently and thousands of aliens who come with the intention of staying two or three years form new interests and ties in this country that keep them here. Some do return to their native country, and this number is affected by cheap transporta- tion and increased facilities for travel, and even of these many again return to the United States. From 1903 to 1907 inclusive, the immigration was greater than for any previous years in the history of the country. Ac- cording to a rough estimate made by the Commissioner-General of Immigration, during the ten years from July, 1899, to June 30, 1908, 8,515,889 aliens arrived and 3,275,589 aliens returned, the total immigration exceeding the emigration by 5,240,300. The fiscal year 1908 was an exceptional year, during which 924,695 aliens arrived, and 714,828 returned, the total immigration exceeding emigration by 209,867. During the year ending Decem- ber 31, 1908, a period of depression, the total migration of 588,447 aliens exceeded the total immigration of 557,585 by 30,862. The earlier immigration was from Great Britain, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavian countries and was influenced by economic conditions in those countries. They no longer send so large a number of aliens because of improved conditions, or be- cause there has been no special cause, such as the famine in Ire- land. The immigration is now from the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia Minor. From Austria-Hungary come Poles, Slovaks, Magyars, Germans, Croatians, Jews, Bohe- mians, Ruthenians, Roumanians, Bulgarians, Dalmatians and Italians; from Russia, Jews, Poles, Ruthenians, Finns, Germans and others. From other countries, Greeks, Turks, Syrians and many other peoples. Some of the motives influencing this immigration are the following : In countries of Southern Europe the political disabilities of great masses of the population, the weight of taxation and com- pulsory military service lead to dissatisfaction and to emigra- tion. Immigration is also stimulated by steamship agents abroad, and encouragement by relatives and friends who are already 48 SELECTED ARTICLES here, and the love of adventure sends many young men to seek their fortunes in the United States. The Jews in Russia are impelled to emigrate largely on account of religious persecution and the denial of political and civil rights. The Russian laws compel the mass of the Jewish population to live within certain prescribed areas, known as the Pale. They permit them to engage in few occupations, prohibit them from acquiring land ; withold from them the privilege of freely entering schools and universities; debar them from other essential rights accorded to other sections of the population. After massacres, such as those of Kishineff, Odessa, Bialystok, Siedlice, there is a flight of emigration toward America. The withdrawal from the Finns of the right of self-government led to a rapid increase in emigration by them to the United States. Unsuccessful attempts at revolution and reform during the last few years have also brought large numbers of aliens, including many cultured and liberty-loving men and women. From the earliest days this country has been a haven of refuge for the oppressed and a sanctuary for those who have striven unsuc- cessfully to better the conditions of their fellow-men. The United States has always protected the political refugees who have fled to this country, and has refused to surrender those whose extradition is sought for political offenses. Aliens when they land are generally poor, five-sixths showing less than $50, though they frequently possess much more. The majority are not educated, since 26 per cent of all over fourteen years of age are unable to write. As a rule they are not accus- tomed to the exercise of full political rights, the voting privilege in their native lands being ordinarily limited by property and educational qualifications. The vast majority of aliens, coming as they do from rural districts, are unskilled workers, and the main opportunity for them is as common laborers. Yet in many of the skilled trades are found trained artisans from other lands. Often, owing to inability to secure employment in their own trades, aliens enter occupations for which they are ill adapted. In immigration the rule is, men arrive first, and unmarried men first of all. In 1907, 72 per cent of all aliens arriving in the United States were male, and of these 89 per cent or over 64 per cent of all were above the age of fourteen. Only 4 per cent of all aliens were above the age of forty-five. After the alien has secured his foothold and learns something of American ways ON IMMIGRATION 49 and customs he brings over his wife and children, or if he is unmarried he often revisits his native land and returns a married man. The older the immigration, other things being equal, the larger is the percentage of women. Thus, in 1908, among the Irish, 51.1 per cent were females; of the Scandinavians, Germans and French, over 40 per cent were females ; while of the Greeks, who are among the recent aliens, only 6.9 per cent, were females, and of the Bulgarians, Servians and Montenegrins, 4.5 per cent were females. 1 The preponderance of young men accounts for the fluidity of the alien population. Being mainly unattached they are able to move forward or backward, toward America or from America, in answer to a rising or lowering demand for labor. They are also able to move rapidly to labor camps and to undertake work of a temporary or seasonal nature. There are drawbacks to this excess of unmarried men, among which are contentment with lower wages and bad living conditions, and the social disad- vantages incident to segregated groups of males. J Economic Conditions. The alien, though a rural worker at home, here to a large extent remains in the city. This perma- nency of urban residence is due to various causes, including ignorance of opportunities and resources in other parts of the country; lack of incentive, or the means to go elsewhere; reluc- tance to leave the small colony to which he first attaches himself, and where he can have association with his own nationality and race, especially those of his native province; the lack of protec- tion from the pitfalls which beset him when seeking to make his way alone among strangers ; and the self-interest of those who profit by his remaining in the city. As a consequence, although the alien works to a large extent in industries grouped about small towns and villages, he forms a large proportion of the city workers. The existence in New York and other cities of the state of large numbers of persons unable to seek their best economic advantage, leads to their employment in the so-called sweated trades. This term is used to denote industrial conditions involving hard-driven workers, who labor long hours for low wages, usually in their living quarters in tenements under unsanitary conditions. These trades 1 The Jews furnish an exception to this rule, and to certain other rules concerning immigration, owing to the fact that they come so largely on account of political and religious persecution, and as a consequence their migration is to a larger extent than among other nationalities a family migration. 50 SELECTED ARTICLES have developed with the increase of immigration, arid in this state during the last generation these workers have been most largely recruited from the most recent immigration. Wages are low and factory conditions, though much improved, are far from good. Men, women and children labor long hours under unsani- tary conditions, and earn wages in many cases materially below the current wages of the community. Whole families work in sleeping rooms temporarily converted into workshops, sometimes in the midst of filth and dirt. The work during certain seasons lasts until late at night, and sometimes long after the workers' reserve of physical strength and nervous energy is exhausted. Children are, in some sections 'of the city, kept at work to the injury of their health. The exclusion of aliens from many of the skilled trades and professions is due in part to their ignorance of the English language and of American traditions, to lack of previous training, or at least of a training similar to that required in America, and often to the mere fact of their alienage. Their wages are at first likely to be low because they are usually forced to take the first opportunity offered and ordinarily do not have the protection of trade unions in maintaining wages and limiting hours of labor, and their occupation is frequently restricted to what the padrone or labor agent may offer, who is not interested in raising their standard of living or acquainting them with the standards prevailing in this country. Furthermore, where the padrone is in charge of the commissary he sometimes sets a standard below that of aliens in their own country. Released from segregation and padrone control and brought into relationship with American workingmen, the tendency of the alien is to approximate to the standard of the American workingman. The very pressure of American industrial con- ditions, as well as climatic changes, makes it imperative that he be better fed and housed and clothed than he was in his native land. The poverty and low wages of the alien, especially during his first years in America, tend to force him, together with others receiving similar wages, into the least desirable sections of the city. His home must be near his work since he cannot afford carfare nor the time required to walk the intervening distance, and in his free time he desires to be near his fellow- countrymen. These racial, provincial and even local affiliations and feelings are so strong that the Italian, for instance, does not ON IMMIGRATION 51 easily or willingly live in districts inhabited by other nationalities, while the Calabrian desires to live apart from the Sicilian, and the alien from one part of a city seeks his residence in the neighborhood of others from the same section of the same city. In New York city all these forces have driven the alien into overcrowded districts and consequently rentals near the industrial centers of the city are enhanced. \J Moral Conditions. The alien is in more danger of moral con- tamination than the rest of the community. Unless specially protected, he is likely, through inability to discriminate, to locate in neighborhoods and houses which contain disorderly and im- moral persons, to apply to unsafe agencies for employment, and to frequent places of amusement which are injurious. In the case of the alien woman the danger is increased, especially where she must become a bread-winner immediately upon arrival. v Forces of Assimilation. Although city life increases the eco- nomic and moral dangers, there are compensations which are frequently more apparent than these dangers. The opportuni- ties for education, association and advancement are important to the alien. Association through workshop, societies, and with his own countrymen appeal strongly to him. The attractions of the crowd, the opportunities for amusement, his gregarious instincts, charm and hold him in the city. In the country regions association with his fellow-men is limited. While he may be familiar with farm labor he is not accustomed to the lack of personal sympathy, nor to the lack of association with those of his kind. Educational facilities and social intercourse are taken into consideration by him when he chooses his home. In the cities communities of different alien races constitute cities within cities, and, therefore, the normal assimilative process, through association, work, home life, and like causes, is not adequate, and many aliens do not come into contact with that element of our population which can understand them, or which can interpret to them the underlying principles of American institutions. Because of this need there have been organized groups and movements intended to more effectively Americanize the alien. Among these are settlements, institutional churches, educational associations, clubs, and recreation centers. Those connected with these movements believe that something is lost to the state if the alien fails to comprehend that America, Russia, Italy and Hungary and other countries hold many ideals 52 SELECTED ARTICLES in common, and that a Garibaldi, a Tolstoy, or a Kossuth are revered here as well as in the land of their origin. In the opinion of these friends of the alien, respect for his fine traditional qualities tends more rapidly to make of him a good American, and to understand the genius of our institutions than he would by attempts to instil American traditions and nothing else. Opportunities for service to the alien on the part of the organi- zations referred to are met by classes, lectures and clubs, but largely by personal association. / Within the past few years, religious organizations have taken a deeper interest in the alien. Some of them maintain immigrant homes, conduct study classes and issue publications for the Americanization of the alien. They have established centers in various neighborhoods in which are conducted classes in English, and where social opportunities are afforded the newly-arrived alien to meet those who have been in the country for longer periods, and where they can become acquainted with American traditions and customs. j As wages increase and aliens become more skilled with length of residence and with the improvement of transit facilities they remove from crowded districts to other parts of the city. 'Trade organizations are important factors in assimilation. A number of them have membership among the aliens, whom they not only instruct in American standards of living and impress upon them the necessity for maintaining them, but in some instances, espe- cially among the women, maintain classes in English, and conduct social meetings. Conclusions. It is thus evident that the progress and devel- opment of the alien, and his assimilation, depend upon a multi- tude of influences, some subjective, others objective; some beneficent, others detrimental. While a continuance of the policy which has heretofore quite generally prevailed, of indifference to the welfare of the alien and that of the state in its relations to him, would, in the majority of instances, prove harmless, because of the innate moral strength and the plasticity of the alien, it is equally true that the state, as well as the alien, would derive incalculable advantage by the creation of a better environment for the alien, and by inculcating in him a feeling of trust and confidence in our institutions. ON IMMIGRATION 53 Atlantic Monthly. 102:745-59. December, 1908 Races in the United States. William Z. Ripley The population of Europe may, in a rough way, be divided into an east and a west. The contrast between the two may be best illustrated, perhaps, in geological terms. Everywhere these populations have been laid down originally in more or less distinct strata. In the Balkan States and Austria-Hungary, this stratification is recent and still distinct; while in western Europe the several layers have become metamorphosed by the fusing heat of nationality and the pressure of civilization. But in both instances these populations are what the geologist would term sedimentary. In the United States, an entirely distinct formation occurs ; which, in continuation of our geological figure, may best be characterized by the term eruptive. We havej:o do, not with the slow processes of growth by deposit or accretion, but with violent and _Koltffwio -dislocation. We are called upon to survey a lava-flow of population, suddenly cast fortfi from solely from the standpoint of numbers, the phe- nomenon of American immigration is stupendous. We have be- come so accustomed to it in the United States that we often lose sight of its numerical magnitude. /'About 25,000,000 people have come to the United States from alt over Europe since 1820. This is about equal to the entire population of the United Kingdom only fifty years ago, at the time of our Civil War. It is, again, more than the population of all Italy in the time of Garibaldi. Otherwise stated, this army of people would populate, as it stands to-day, all that most densely settled section of the United States north of Maryland and east of the Great Lakes, all New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in fact. This horde of immigrants, has mainly come since the Irish potato famine of the middle of the last century. The rapid in- crease year by year has taken the form, not of a steady growth, but of an intermittent flow. First came the people of the British Isles after the downfall of Napoleon, 2000 in 1815 and 35,000 in 1819. Thereafter the numbers remain about 75,000 yearly, until the Irish famine, when, in 1852, 368,000 immigrants from the British Isles landed on our shores. These were succeeded by the Germans, largely moved at first by the political events of 1848. By 1854 a million and a half Teutons, mainly from northern 54 SELECTED ARTICLES Germany, had settled in America. So many were there that am- bitious plans for the foundation of a German state in the new country were actually set on foot. The later German immigrants were recruited largely from the Rhine provinces, and have set- tled further to the northwest, in Wisconsin and Iowa ; the ear- liest wave having come from northern Germany to Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri. The Swedes began to come after the Civil War. Their immigration culminated in 1882 with the influx ofoaboilt 50,000 in that year. More recent still are the Italians, beginning with a modest 20,000 in 18/6, rising to over 200,000 arrivals in 1888, and constituting an army of 300,000 in the single year of 1907 : and accompanying the Italian has come the great horde of Slavs, Huns, and Jews. Wave has followed wave, each higher than the last, the ebb and flow being dependent upon economic conditions in large measure. It is the last great wave, ebbing since last fall, which has most alarmed us in America. This gathered force on the revival of prosperity about 1897, but it did not attain full measure until 1900. Since that year over six million people have landed on our shores, one-quarter of the total immigration since the beginning. The newcomers of these eight years alone would repopulate all the five older New Eng- land states as they stand today; or, if properly disseminated over the newer^ parts of the country, they would serve to popu- late no less thkn nineteen states of the Union as they stand. The new-comers of the last eight years could, if suitably seated in the land, elect thirty-eight out of the present ninety-two Senators of the United States. Is it any wonder that thoughtful political students stand somewhat aghast? In the last of these eight years 1907 there were one and one quarter million ar- rivals. This number would entirely populate both New Hamp- shire and Maine, two of our oldest states, with an aggregate territory approximately equal to Ireland and Wales. The arriv- als of this one year would found a state with more inhabitants than any one of twenty-one of our other existing common- Wealths which could, be named. J It is not alone the rapid increase in our immigration which merits attention. It is also the radical change in its character, in the source from whence it comes. Whereas, until about twenty years ago, our immigrants were drawn from the Anglo- Saxon or Teutonic populations of north-western Europe, they ON IMMIGRATION 55 have^swarmed over here in rapidly growing proportions since that time from Mediterranean, Slavic, and Oriental sources. A quarter of a century ago, two-thirds of our immigration was truly Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon in origin. At the present time, less than one-sixth comes from this source. The British Isles, Germany, Scandinavia, and Canada unitedly sent us 90 per cent of our immigrants in the decade to 1870; 82.8 per cent in 1870-80; 75.6 per cent in 1880-90; and only 41.8 per cent in 1890-1900. Since then, the proportion has been very much smaller still. Germany used to contribute one-third of our new-comers. In 1907 it sent barely one-seventh. On the other hand, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, which produced about I per cent of the total in 1860-70, jointly contributed 50.1 per cent in 1890- 1900. Of the million and a quarter arrivals in 1907, almost 900,000 came from these three countries alone. I have been at some pains to reclassify the immigration for 1907, in conform- ity with the racial groupings of the "Races of Europe"; disre- garding, that is to say, mere linguistic affiliations, and dividing on the basis of physical types. The total of about one and one- quarter million arrivals was distributed as follows: 330,000 Mediterranean Race (one-quarter) 194,000 Alpine Race (one-sixth) 330,000 Slavic Race (one-quarter) 194,000 Teutonic Race (one-sixth) 146,000 Jewish (mainly Russian) (one-eighth) In that year, 330,000 South Italians took the place of the 250,000 Germans who came in 1882, when the Teutonic immigra- tion was at its flood. One and one-half million Italians have come since 1900; over one million Russians; and a million and a half natives of Austria-Hungary. We have even tapped the political sinks of Europe, and are now drawing large numbers of Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians. No people is too mean or lowly to seek an asylum on our shores. The net result of this immigration has been to produce a congeries of human beings, unparalleled for ethnic diversity anywhere else on the face of the earth. The most complex populations of Europe, such as those of the British Isles, North- ern France, or even the Balkan States, seem ethnically pure by contrast. Our people have been diverse in origin from the start to a greater degree than is ordinarily supposed. Virginia and New 56 SELECTED ARTICLES England, to be sure, were for a long time Anglo-Saxon un- defiled ; but in the otber colonies there was much intermixture, such as the German in Pennsylvania, the Swedish along the Delaware, the Dutch in New York, and the Scotch High- lander and Huguenot in the Carolinas. Little centres of foreign inoculation in the early days are discoverable everywhere. Concerning New York City, Father Jognes states that the Director-General told him of eighteen languages spoken there in 1644. For the entire thirteen colonies at the time of the Revo- lution, we have it on good authority that one-fifth of the popu- lation could not speak English ; and that one-half at least was not Anglo-Saxon by descent. Upon such a stock, it is little wonder that the grafting of these twenty-five million imnllgrants promises to produce an extraordinary human product. For over half a century more than one-seventh of our aggre- gate population has been of actually foreign birth. This pro- portion of actual foreigners of all sorts varies greatly, however, as between the different states. In Minnesota and New York, for example, at the present time, the foreign-born, as we denote them statistically, constitute about a fourth of the whole popu- lation; in Massachusetts, the proportion is about one-third; oc- casionally, as in North Dakota in 1890, it approaches one-half (42 per cent). It is in the cities, of course, that this proportion of actual foreigners rises highest. In New York City there are over two million people born in Europe, who have come there hoping to better their lots in life. Boston has an even higher proportion of actual foreigners, but the relatively larger num- bers of those speaking English, such as the Irish, renders the phenomenon less striking. Nevertheless, within a few blocks, in a colony of 28,000 people, there are no less than twenty-five distinct nationalities. In this entire district, once the fashion- able quarter of Boston, out of the 28,000 inhabitants, only 1500 in 1895 had parents born in the United States. The full measure of our ethnic diversity is revealed only when one aggregates the actually foreign-born with their chil- dren born in America, totalizing, as we call it, the foreign-born and the native-born of foreign parentage. This group thus in- cludes only the first generation of American descent. Often- times even the second generation may remain ethnically as undefiled as the first; but our positive statistical data carry us no further. This group of foreign-born with its children con- ON IMMIGRATION 57 stittites to-day upwards of one-third of our total population ; and, excluding the negroes, it equals almost one-half (46 per cent) of the whole white population. This is for the country as a whole. Considered by states or cities, the proportion is, of course, much higher. Baltimore, one of our purest American cities, had 40 per cent of foreigners with their children in 1900. In Boston, the proportion leaps to 70 per cent; in New York to 80 per cent; and it reaches a maximum in Milwaukee, with 86 per cent thus constituted. Imagine an English city of the size of Edinburgh with only about one person in eight English by descent through only a modest two generations. To this condi- tion must be added the probability that not over one-half of that remnant of a rear-guard can trace its descent on American soil as far back as a third generation. Were we to eliminate these foreigners and their children from our city population, it has been estimated that Chicago, with today a population of over two millions, would dwindle to a city of not much over one hunched thousand inhabitants. i/One may select industries practically given over to for- eigners* -Over 90 ~p er cent -oi - the teilors- o f New York City are Jews, mainly Russian and Polish. In Massachusetts, the centre of our staple cotton manufacture, out of 98,000 employees, one finds that only 3900, or about 4 per cent, are native-born Americans ; and most of those are of Irish or Scotch-Irish de- scent two generations back. All of our day labor, once Irish, is now Italian ; our fruit-venders, once Italian, are now becoming Greek ; and our coal mines, once manned by people from the British Isles, are now worked by Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, or Finals. V A special study of the linguistic conditions in Chicago well illustrates our racial heterogeneity. Among^thc people of that great city, the second in size in the United States, fourteen languages are spoken by groups of not less than ten thousand persons each. Newspapers are regularly published in ten lan- guages ; and church services are conducted in twenty different tongues. Measured by the size of its foreign linguistic colonies, Chicago is the second Bohemian city in the world, the third Swedish, the fourth Polish, and the fifth German (New York being the fourth). There is one large factory in Chicago em- ploying over four thousand people, representing twenty-four distinct nationalities. Rules of the establishment are regularly 58 SELECTED ARTICLES printed in eight languages. In one block in New York, where friends of mine are engaged in college settlement work, there are 1400 people of twenty distinct nationalities. There are more than two-thirds as many native-born Irish in Boston as in the capital city, Dublin. With their children, mainly of pure Irish blood, they make Boston indubitably the leading Irish city in the world. New York is a larger Italian city today than Rome, having 500,000 Italian colonists. It contains no less than 800,000 Jews, mainly from Russia. Thus it is also the foremost Jewish city in the world. Pittsburg, the centre of our iron and steel industry, is another tower of Babel. It is said to contain more of that out-of-the-way people, the Servians, than the capital of Servia itself. Such being the ethnic diversity of our population, the primary and fundamental physical question is, whether these racial groups are to coalesce to form ultimately a more or less uni- form American type ; or whether they are to combine their sepa- rate existences within the confines of one political unit. Will the progress of time bring about intermixture of these diverse types? or will they remain separate, distinct, and perhaps dis- cordant, elements for an indefinite period, like the warring nationalities of Austria-Hungary and the Balkan States? Science, n. s. 39:147-8. January 23, 1914 Some Results of the First Census of European Races in the United States. 1 Daniel Folkrnar One of the most interesting facts disclosed in this report is the great numerical preponderance which is still held by the mother tongues of northwestern Europe, as a whole, notwith- standing the high rank numerically which has been gained by a few individual mother tongues from eastern and southern Europe especially the Italian, Polish and Yiddish. These three now stand third, fourth and fifth in rank. The English and Celtic mother tongues are by all odds the ones most largely represented 1 A new feature of the Thirteenth Census was the inclusion in its popu- lation schedule of an inquiry about mother tongue in addition to that about country of birth. As a result of this inquiry new light is thrown on the make up of our alien population. All persons born in Russia are not Russians. All persons coming from Germany are not Germans. It is of value therefore to know how many of them are Hebrew, how many Polish, Finnish, etc. Mother tongue is taken to mean the language of customary speech in the homes of immigrants before immigration. M. K. R. ON IMMIGRATION 59 in the foreign white stock of the United States. The number, 10,037,420, is considerably greater than that of the German mother tongue, which latter contributes more than one-fourth (27.3 per cent) of the total foreign white stock of the United States, as reported in 1910. Italian, Polish and Yiddish come next in rank, but none of them number as much as one-fourth of the German. To these three mother tongues, intermediate in rank but considerable in numbers, may be added the Swedish, French and Norwegian, all belonging to northwestern Europe, except a portion of the French. No other mother tongue than the eight thus far enumerated furnishes as much as 2 per cent of the total of the foreign white stock of the United States, or numbers as much as 1,000,000. The eight major mother-tongue stocks already named account for 87.5 per cent of the total foreign white stock. How small a factor the "new" immigration from southern and eastern Europe really is up to the present time, may be better shown by comparing it with the total white population of the United States. Taking as 100 per cent the total white population of the United States in 1910, numbering 81,731,957, the so-called "native stock" constitutes 60.5 per cent and the three great linguistic families of foreign stock from northwestern Europe constitute 27.1 per cent, making a total of 87.6 per cent. The elements from southern and eastern Europe constitute, therefore, less than 13 per cent of the total. Of this the two principal Latin mother tongues the French and the Italian contribute less than 5 per cent, and the two principal Slavic mother tongues the Polish and the Bohemian and the Hebrew, taken together, contribute also less than 5 per cent, leaving to all the remaining mother tongues another 5 per cent or less of the total. Of the total foreign white stock of the United States, 32,243,382, there are 8,817,271 persons who are of German stock when counted according to mother tongue, but a trifle under 8,500,000 (8,495,142) of German stock when counted by their country of origin, Germany. Immigrants from Austria are far more Slavic than Germanic. Russian immigration is shown to be far more Hebrew (52.3 per cent) than Russian (2.5 per cent) or even Slavic. Immigration from Turkey in Europe is not so much Turkish as Greek and Bulgarian. Both the first and the second generations of immi- gration from Russia show that over 50 per cent report Yiddish and Hebrew as their mother tongue. The returns for "Yiddish 6o SELECTED ARTICLES and Hebrew" reflect ethnic composition less satisfactorily than the returns for other mother tongues. A part how large a part there is no means of judging of those whose ancestral lan- ugage is Hebrew doubtless have reported German, English, Polish or other mother tongues. Of the total number of Yiddish- speaking people 838,193 came from Russia, 144,484 from Austria- Hungary, 41,342 from Roumania, 14,409 from the United King- dom, and 7,910 from Germany. The full list of mother tongues as reported at the Thirteenth Census is given for the total foreign white stock (which includes the foreign born and the natives of foreign or mixed parentage) and for the foreign-born whites separately, as follows : Total Foreign Foreign White born Mother Tongue Stock, 1910 White All mother tongues 32,243,382 13, 345, 545 English and Celtic" 10,037,420 3,363,792 Germanic : German 8,817,271 2,759,032 Dutch and Frisian 324,930 126,045 Flemish 44,806 25,780 Scandinavian: Swedish 1,445,869 683,218 Norwegian 1,009,854 402,587 Danish 446,473 186,345 Latin and Greek: Italian 2,151,422 1,365,110 French 1,357,169 528,842 Spanish 448,198 258,131 Portuguese 141,268 72,649 Roumanian 51,124 42,277 Greek 130,379 1 18,379 Slavic and Lettic: Polish 1,707,640 943,781 Bohemian and Moravian 539,392 228,738 Slovak 284,444 166,474 Russian 95, 137 57,926 Ruthenian 35,359 25,131 Slovenian 183,431 123,631 Serbo Croatian: Croatian 93,036 74,036 Dalmatian .. 5, 505 4,344 Servian 26,752 23,403 Montenegrin 3,961 3,886 Bulgarian 19,380 18,341 Slavic, n. s 35,195 21,012 Lithuanian and Lettish 211,235 140,963 Includes persons reporting Irish, Scotch or Welsh. ON IMMIGRATION 61 Total Foreign Foreign White born Mother Tongue Stock, 1910 White Miscellaneous: Yiddish and Hebrew 1,676,762 1,051,767 Magyar 320,893 229,094 Finnish 200,688 120,086 Armenian 30,021 23,938 Syrian and Arabic 46,727 32,868 Turkish 5,44* 4,709 Albanian 2,366 2,312 All other 790 646 Unknown 313,044 1 16,272 Immigration Legislation 1 Colonial Times to 1835 1819 A law was passed regulating the carriage of steerage passengers at sea and providing for the recording of statistics relative to immigration to the United States. ''Native American" and "Know Nothing" Period, 1835-1860 This period was characterized by active agitation, chiefly of an anti-Catholic nature, but practically no legislation resulted. 1836 The Secretary of State was directed to collect informa- tion relating to immigration of foreign paupers and criminals. 1838 The Committee on Judiciary in the House of Repre- sentatives was instructed to consider the expediency of revising the naturalization laws, and of providing by law against the introduction of vagabonds and paupers deported from foreign countries. No legislative action was taken. 1847-1848. Amendments to the law of 1819 in the interests of better steerage conditions were passed. 1855 Another attempt to regulate steerage conditions was made in the passage of a law providing for increased air space, better ventilation, etc. Unfortunately the wording of the act made these provisions practically inoperative. Period of State Control, 1861-1882 1864 A law was passed to encourage immigration for the purpose of meeting the anticipated demand for labor following the civil war. The law provided for the appointment of a Commissioner of Immigration. There was also a provision relat- 1 A summary based on the Report of the Immigration Commission. M. K. R. 62 SELECTED ARTICLES ing to contract labor, contracts entered on in foreign countries to be valid in the United States. 1866 An amendment to the foregoing law provided for additional commissioners of immigration to be stationed in cities on the Atlantic coast. In this year Congress also passed a resolution protesting against the practice of foreign countries of using the United States as a dumping ground for criminals, etc. 1868 The law of 1864 was repealed. 1875 A law was passed providing for the exclusion of pros- titutes. 1876 A decision of the Supreme Court rendered much of the state legislation relating to immigration invalid and the period of national control began. Period of National Control, 1882- 1882 The first g'eneral immigration law was passed with the following provisions: A head tax of 50 cents was imposed; convicts (except those convicted for political offence), lunatics, idiots and persons likely to become public charges were excluded ; the Secretary of the Treasury was given power of enforcement with the right to delegate powers to state authorities. The first effective law regulating steerage conditions was also passed in this year. 1885 A law forbidding the importation of contract labor was passed. It made no provision, however, for inspection or the deportation of contract laborers. 1887 JThe defect of the contract labor law was remedied by an amendment giving the Secretary of the Treasury the right to enforce its provisions. 1888 Another amendment provided for the deportation within a year of any immigrant landed contrary to the law of 1885. 1889 A Standing Committee on Immigration in the Senate and a Select Committee on Immigration in the House were estab- lished. . In 1890 these committees were authorized to make an investigation of immigration and the working of the various laws relating to it. 1891 On the recommendations of these committees a law was passed with the following provisions: The head tax of 50 cents was retained. Persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious ON IMMIGRATION 63 disease, and polygamists were added to the classes to be excluded. The encouragement of immigration through advertisements promising employment was forbidden, and transportation com- panies were forbidden to solicit or encourage immigration. The office of Superintendent of Immigration~wa~s~ authorized and federal control of immigration was fully established by the transference to federal authorities of those functions that had been delegated to the states. The commanding officer of any vessel bringing in alien immi- grants was required to make full reports as to name, nationality, etc., of such aliens: Examination on the borders of Canada and Mexico was pro- vided for. Provision was made for the return within a year of any alien landed in violation of the law, such return to be at the expense of the transportation company. 1892 A joint committee was appointed to make an investiga- tion of the workings of the various laws. 1893 An amendment raised the head tax from 50 cents to $i. 1897 A bill providing for an educational test passed both houses, but was vetoed by President Cleveland. 1898 An Industrial Commission was created with power to investigate questions pertaining to immigration and to suggest legislation. 1903 A law was passed, the principal object of which was to codify all previous legislation from the act of 1875 to the act of 1894. It also raised the head tax from $i to $2; debarred the following: epileptics, persons who had been insane within five years previous, or who had had two previous attacks of insanity at any time, professional beggars, anarchists ; and made it unlaw- ful for any person to assist in the unlawful entry or naturalization of an anarchist. The Department of Commerce and Labor was organized and the Commissioner-General of Immigration was placed under the jurisprudence and supervision of that depart- ment. 1906 A law was passed providing a uniform rule for natural- ization of aliens. The designation of the Bureau of Immigration was changed to Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. 1907 A number of bills relating to immigration were intro- duced in the sessions of the 59th Congress. After much dis- 64 SELECTED ARTICLES cussion and many amendments a law was passed, of which the following were the provisions : The head tax was placed at $4. The following classes were added to those excluded : Imbe- ciles, feeble-minded persons, unaccompanied children under 17, persons "who are found to be mentally and physically defective, such mental or physical defect being of the nature which may affect the ability of the alien to earn a living" ; "women and girls coming into the United States for the purpose of prostitution or any other immoral purpose." A Division of Distribution in the Bureau of Immigration was authorized. Steamship companies were required to furnish lists of outgoing passengers. The Immigration Commission was created. The President was empowered to call, at his discretion, an international conference, or to send commissioners to any foreign country for the purpose of regulating any matter relating to immigration by international agreement. The President was also empowered to revoke the passports of aliens when it should appear that such passports were use.d by the holders to enter United States territory "to the detriment of labor conditions therein." A section was added to the act of 1882 for the regulation of steerage conditions ; to go into effect in 1909. 1910 The section of the act of 1910 relating to prostitution was strengthened by provision for the punishment and deporta- tion of aliens who in any way profit from the proceeds of prostitution. This was followed by the interstate law prohibiting the transportation of persons from one state to another for purposes of prostitution. 1913 A bill providing for a literacy test passed both houses but was vetoed by President Taft. 1915 A similar bill was passed and vetoed by President Wilson. AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION North American Review. 195:94-102. January, 1912 Future of American Ideals. Prescott F. Hall This movement of peoples from the Old World to the New is on a scale unprecedented in history, and its effects cannot fail to be profound and far-reaching. What will they be? Americans have hitherto paid very little attention to this question : first, because they have not considered the difference between hostile and peaceful invasions in history; and second, . 'because they fail to observe that recent immigration is of an entirely different kind from that which our fathers knew. Tb earlier immigration having been of kindred races and having produced no profound changes, our people became used to the phenomenon and took it as a matter of course. At the present time, most of us consider that the movement now going on is similar to that which has been, and anticipate results no different from those previously observed. If the million people coming every year came not as peaceful travelers, but as an invading hostile army, public opinion would be very different to what it is ; and yet history shows that it has usually been the peaceful migrations and not the conquering armies which have undermined and changed the institutions of peoples. To take the classical error on this subject, we have been told repeatedly that, on the one hand, it was the conquering Goths and Vandals, and on the other hand, their own vice' and luxury, which cost the Romans their empire. The real cause of the fall of Rome was neither of these things. It was the con- stant infiltration into Roman citizenship of large numbers of "barbarians" that is, of races alien in instincts and habits of thought and action to the races which had built up the Roman Empire. The "barbarians" of the present time, however, do not come from the plateaus of central Asia or from the jungles of Africa; they are the defective and delinquent classes of Europe the 70 SELECTED ARTICLES individuals who have not been able to keep the pace at home and have fallen into the lower strata of its civilization. Formerly, America was a hard place to get to, and a hard life awaited those who came, although the free and fertile land offered rich prizes to those with the energy to grasp them. Today, the steamship agent is in every little town in Europe; fast steamers can bring thousands in a few days, and wages, often indeed not enough for an American to live decently on, but large in the eyes of the poor European peasants, await the immigrant on landing. There is f moreover abundanttestimony to the fact that much of the present immigration is not even a normal flow of population, but is artificially stimulated in every possible way by the transportation companies which have many millions invested in the traffic. Those who believe that we can assimilate all the aliens who may come usually qualify their belief by saying that, although we may not succeed entirely with the parents, we can succeed with the children, and that the salvation of the situation is the public school. They also point out that many immigrants have had little opportunity for improvement in their own countries and may develop rapidly in a new environment. Now just as the Latin races make a fetish of the State, we Americans are apt to make a fetish of education, and we constantly fail to dis- criminate between education as the molding of character and education as the imparting of information. Far the larger part of a child's education comes from his home and his com- panions, rather than from his schooling. Emulation and imi- tation are the two mainsprings of his growth. W_should_jieyer forget the somewhat hackneyed truth that education, in general, brings out what is in the man, be it good or bad, and seldom puts much there which was not there before. For this reason it is very questionable whether the small amount of schooling the children of most aliens receive plays a very large part in the total of influences brought to bear upon them; and it is still more debatable whether it appreciably alters their charac- ters, or does anything more than bring out their inherited instincts and tendencies. Undoubtedly immigrant children crowd our schools because it aids them in the struggle for existence, and is usually paid for by some one else. Undoubt- edly, also, many of them obtain high marks and show consid- erable capacity for storing up information. ON IMMIGRATION 71 Nevertheless, as has been said, schooling is but a small part of the influences to which the child is subject, and the tendency of recent immigrants to crowd into the cities and to settle in racial groups means that a very large part of the influences affecting the children will be those of their neighbors and co- workers of the same race. As in John Bunyan's parable, a small quantity of oil poured secretly and steadily upon a fire will cause it to withstand a large quantity of water poured upon it from all directions. Moreover, to a great extent this water of public-school education will fail to quench hereditary passions, because the latter are so strong that the former will be vaporized, so to speak, and pass off without closely touching them. Dr. Gustav LeBon, in his "Political Psychology," has thus expressed this phase of the matter: Education merely sums up the results of a civilization; the institutions and the beliefs representing the needs of such civilization. If, then, a civilization does not harmonize with the ideas and sentiments of a people, the education setting forth this civilization will remain without effect upon it; in the same way that institutions corresponding to certain needs will not correspond to different needs. The result in such a case will be, not a true amalgamation \ of races, but a mixture of peoples as in Austria-Hungary, living \ side by side, sharing certain interests in common, but never I wholly merging into a general national type. _an we not already see certain effects of the newer immigra- tion upon our social life? In many places the Continental Sunday, with its games and sports, its theatrical and musical performances, and its open bars, is taking the place of the Puritan Sabbath. In some of our factory towns there are many operatives living under the system of free marriage, and in at least one place the method of building tenements has been altered to correspond to this system. Professor Commons notes i that we have already begun to despotize our institutions in order \ to deal with large masses of citizens not capable of intelligently j supporting representative government. We have to contend not only with alien habits and ideals, and with the fact that these differences cannot be effaced by education in one or even two generations, but also with the fact that we are getting a great many immigrants who are below the. mental, moral, and physical average of both our country and their own. A recent writer in a leading German review has said : 72 SELECTED ARTICLES "The immigration of the last decade has increased the number of hands, but not the number of heads, in the United States." While this may be an extreme statement, there is the unanimous testimony of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, the Commissioner at the Port of New York, and the Immigration Commission, which has recently spent several years studying the matter, to the fact that for one immigrant whose defects are so marked as to put him in the classes excluded by law there are hundreds, if not thousands, who are below the average of our people, and who, as George William Curtis put it, are "watering 7" nation's life blood." Recent investigations in eugenics show that heredity is a | much more important factor than environment as regards social conditions in fact, that in most cases heredity is what makes the environment. This is confirmed by the practice of the insurance companies which attach the chief importance to the hereditary characteristics of an individual. If this position is sound, education and distribution can only palliate the evils and delay fundamental changes. As Professor Karl Pearson says: "You cannot change the leopard's spots, and you cannot change bad stock to good; you may dilute it, possibly spread it over a large area, spoiling good stock, but until it ceases to multiply it will not cease to be." Intelligent foreigners, like Bourget, H. G. Wells, and LeBon, are continually surprised that Americans pay so little regard to . these matters. Already our neighbor to the north has become I much more strict as to those she admits than we are ; and, in ' fact, the Dominion is now rejecting at the border many whom : we have admitted. Century. 87:615-22. February, 1914 Racial Consequences of Immigration. Edward A. Ross In the six or seven hundred thousand strangers that yearly join themselves to us for good and all, there are to be found, of course, every talent and every beauty. Out of the steerage come persons as fine and noble as any who have trodden Ameri- can soil. Any adverse characterization of an immigrant stream implies, then, only that the trait is relatively frequent, not that it is general. ON IMMIGRATION 73 In this sense it is fair to say that the blood now being injected into the veins of our people is "sub-common." To one accustomed to the aspect of the normal American population, the Caliban type shows up with a frequency that is startling. Observe immigrants not as they come travel-wan up the gang- plank, nor as they issue toil-begrimed from pit's mouth or mill gate, but in their gatherings, washed, combed, and in their Sun- day best. You are struck by the fact that from 10 to 20 per cent are hirsute, low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously low mentality. Not that they suggest evil. They simply look out of place in black clothes and stiff collar, since clearly they belong in skins, in wattled huts at the close of the great ice age. These oxlike men are descendants of those who always stayed behind. Those in whom the soul burns with the dull, smoky flame of the pine-knot stuck to the soil, and are now thick in the sluice- ways of immigration. Those in whom it burns with a clear, luminous flame have been attracted to the cities of the home land and, having prospects, have no motive to submit themselves to the hardships of the steerage. To the practised eye, the physiognomy of certain groups un- mistakably proclaims inferiority of. type. I have seen gatherings of the foreign-born in which narrow and sloping foreheads were the rule. The shortness and smallness of the crania were very noticeable. There was much facial asymmetry. Among the women, beauty, aside from the fleeting epidermal bloom of girl- hood, was quite lacking. In every face there was something wrong lips thick, mouth coarse, upper lip too long, cheekbones ton high, chin poorly formed, the bridge of the nose hollowed, the base of the nose tilted, or else the whole face prognathous. There were so many sugar-loaf heads, moon-faces, slit mouths, lantern-jaws, and goose-bill noses that one might imagine a malicious jinn had amused himself by casting human beings in a set of skew-molds discarded by the Creator. Our captains of industry give a crowbar to the immigrant with a number nine face on a number six head, make a dividend out of him, and imagine that is the end of the matter. They overlook that this man will beget children in his image, two or three times as many as the American, and that these children will in turn beget children. They chuckle at having opened an inexhaustible store of cheap tools and, lo ! the American people is being altered for all time by these tools. Once before captains 74 SELECTED ARTICLES of industry took a hand in making this people. Colonial planters imported Africans to hoe in the sun, to "develop" the tobacco, indigo, and rice plantations. Then, as now, business-minded men met with contempt the protests of a few idealists against their way of "building up the country." Those promoters of prosperity are dust, but they bequeathed a situation which in four years wiped out more wealth than two hundred years of slavery had built up, and which presents today the one unsolvable problem in this country. Without likening immigrants to negroes, one may point out how the latter-day employer resembles the old-time planter in his blindness to the effects of his labor policy upon the blood of the nation. It is reasonable to expect an early falling off in the frequency of good looks in the American people. It is unthinkable that so many persons with crooked faces, coarse mouths, bad noses, heavy jaws, and low foreheads can mingle their heredity with ours without making personal beauty yet more rare among us than it actually is. So much ugliness is at last bound to work to the surface. One ought to see the horror on the face of a fine-looking Italian or Hungarian consul when one asks him innocently, "Is the physiognomy of these immigrants typical of your people?" That the new immigrants are inferior in looks to the old immigrants may be seen by comparing 1 , in a Labor- day parade, the faces of the cigar-makers and the garment- workers with those of the teamsters, piano-movers, and steam- fitters. Although the Slavs stand up well, our southern Europeans run to low stature. A gang of Italian navvies filing along the street present, by their dwarfishness, a curious contrast to other people. The Portuguese, the Greeks, and Syrians are, from our point of view, undersized. The Hebrew immigrants are very poor in physique. The average of Hebrew women in New York is just over five feet, and the young women in the garment factories, although well developed, appear to be no taller than native girls of thirteen. That the Mediterranean peoples are morally below the races of northern Europe is as certain as any social fact. Even when they were dirty, ferocious barbarians, these bjonds_were truth- tellers^ Be it pride or awkwardness or lack of imagination or fair-play sense, something has held them back from the nimble lying of the southern races. Immigration officials find that the ON IMMIGRATION 75 different peoples are as day and night in point of veracity, and report vast trouble in extracting the truth from certain brunnette nationalities. Some champions of immigration have become broad-minded enough to think small of the cardinal virtues. The Syrians, on Boston testimony, took "great pains to cheat the charitable societies" and are "extremely untrustworthy and unreliable." Their defender, however, after admitting their untruthfulness, explains that their lying is altruistic. If, at the fork of a road, you ask a Syrian your way, he will, in sheer transport of sym- pathy, study you to discover what answer will most please you. "The Anglo-Saxon variety of truthfulness," she adds, "is not a Syrian characteristic" ; but, ''if truthfulness includes loyalty, ready self-denial to promote a cause that seems right, the Syrian is to that extent truthful." Quoting a Syrian's admission that his fellow-merchants pay their debts for their credit's sake, but will cheat the customer, she comments, "This, however, does not seem to be exclusively a Syrian vice." To such paltering does a sickly sentimentality lead. In respect to the value it contains, a stream of immigrants may be representative, superrepresentative, or subrepresentative of the home people. When it is a fair sample, it is representa- tive ; when it is richer in wheat and poorer in chaff, it is super- representative ; when the reverse is the case, it is subrepresenta- tive. What counts here, of course, is not the value the immi- grants may have acquired by education or experience, but that fundamental worth which does not depend on opportunity, and which may be transmitted to one's descendants. Now, in the present state of our knowledge, it is perhaps risky to make a value comparison between the races which contributed the old immigration and those which are supplying the new immigration. Though backward, the latter may contain as good stuff. But it is fair to assume that a superrepresentative immigration from one stock is worth more to us than a subrepresentative immi- gration from another stock, and that an influx which subrepre- sents a European people will thin the blood of the American people. Many things have decided whether Europe should send America cream or skimmed milk. Religious or political oppres sion is apt to drive out the better elements. Racial oppression cannot be evaded by mere conformity ; hence the emigration it *nd i es- I ion \ 76 SELECTED ARTICLES sets up is apt to be representative. An unsubdued and perilous land attracts the more bold and enterprising. -Thf homesteads include men of better stuff than the job-seekers attracted by high wages for unskilled labor. Only economic motives set in motion the sub-common people, but even in an economic emigration the early stage brings more people of initi- ative than the later. The deeper and smoother the channels of migration, the lower the stratum they can tap. It is not easy to value the early elements that were wrought into the American people. Often a stream of immigration that started with the best drained from the lower levels after it had worn itself a bed. It is therefore only in a broad way that I venture to classify the principal colonial migrations as follows : Superrepresentative : English Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, Scotch Covenanters, French Huguenots, German sectaries. Representative : English of Virginia, Maryland, and the Caro- linas, Scotch-Irish, Scotch Highlanders, Dutch, and Swedes. Subrepresentative : English of early Georgia, transported English, eighteenth-century Germans. In our national period the Germans of 1848 stand out as a superrepresentative flow. The Irish stream has been representa- tive, as was also the early German migration. The German inflow since 1870 has brought us very few of the elite of their people, and I have already given reasons for believing 'that the Scandinavian stream is not altogether representative. Our immi- gration from Great Britain has distinctly fallen off in grade since the chances in America came to be less attractive than those in the British Empire. However, no less an authority than Sir Richard Cartwright thinks that "between 1866 and 1896 one- third at least of the whole male adult population of Canada between the ages of twenty and forty found their way to the United States," and this "included an immense percentage of the most intelligent and adventurous." Today we reciprocate by sending western farmers with capital into the Canadian North- west. Our loss has amounted to as many as 100,000 ina^jjingle year. Oppression is now out of fashion over most of Europe, and our public lands are gone. Economic motives more and more bring us immigrants, and such motives will not uproot the educated, the propertied, the established, the well connected. ON IMMIGRATION 77 The children of success are not migrating, which means that we get few scions from families of proved capacity. Europe retains most of her brains, but sends multitudes of the common and the sub-common. There is little sign of an intellectual element among the Magyars, Russians, southern Slavs, Italians, Greeks, or Portuguese. This does not hold, however, for cur- rents created by race discrimination or oppression. The Arme- nian, Syrian, Finnish, and Russo-Hebrew streams seem repre- sentative, and the first wave of Hebrews out of Russia in the eighties was superior. The Slovaks, German Poles, Lithuanians, Esthonians, and other restive subject groups probably send us a fair sample of their quality. American Economic Review. 3: sup. 5-19, March, 1913 Population or Prosperity. Frank A. Fetter Students of American economic conditions are familiar with the series of shaded charts in the census volumes on population showing by decades the extension of the settled area since 1790 and its gradually increasing density. As one studies the earlier of these cha-rts one can see how the blank spaces on the maps of that day must have aroused the imagination and the hopes of men. There lay whole empires of land almost untenanted and calling to be used. Decade by decade for a hundred years the frontier extended at a hardly slackening rate while the density increased on the settled area, until abruptly, about 1890, the process ended or changed its nature. The chart for 1900 shows little alteration in its outline from that for a decade earlier. The increase of population in the decade had been thirteen millions, but of these, eight millions had been added to the urban and only five millions to the rural population. In the following decade, from 1900 to 1910, the increase was sixteen millions, of which twelve millions were added to the urban and but four millions to the rural population. Dividing our national history since 1790 into four periods, each of thirty years, it is seen that in the first the density per mile increased .7 of an inhabitant, in the second 2.4 inhabitants, in the third 9, and in the fourth 14. Thus the increase in the number per square mile has gone on at an accelerating rate, and was twenty times as fast in the last as in the first period. As an index of the demands which 78 SELECTED ARTICLES increasing population makes upon resources, these figures are more truly significant than are the absolute numbers of people or the percentage of increase by decades ; for they show how many additional inhabitants must find employment, materials, and food on the available area. This means greater intensiveness of utilization. The cumulative additions are now made on an area nearing, or already past, the point of maximum advantage to the masses of the nation. By 1890 the habitable agricultural area of the United States had not been completely occupied, but the frontier of fertile lands ready for man's use had at length been all but attained. Sud- denly was unmasked the true character of those great, uncolored areas shown on the map. Deserts they are, for the most part, deserts they must ever remain. Nature had no more free gifts to distribute to the prodigal children of America. She would grant still some new arable fields, but only for the price of toil and patient art. Our increasing population must thenceforth find its livelihood in the more intensive cultivation of the settled areas. We had been rapidly losing those economic advantages which had distinguished us from the older, more densely settled countries. A new economic situation confronted our people. Economic results did not long delay their appearance. In the nineties of the last century the wave of popular prosperity at length attained its crest. Some great forces lifting wages throughout Christendom despite any counteracting effects from increasing population seem at last to have spent themselves. Cheap food from America had been a boon to the European workman as well as to the American. The year 1896 marked the lowest American prices in recent decades for food and for farm products. The year 1898 was that of maximum export of foodstuffs from the United States. Since 1896 food and other farm products have almost steadily advanced in price at a more rapid rate than general prices; since 1898 exports of foodstuffs from the United States have less steadily, but none the less surelv, declined. In the past twenty years the general progress in science and the technical arts has been phenomenal. It is the accepted economic belief that the trend and effect of such changes is favorable to the real wages of labor. The last twenty years, therefore, should have been a period of rapidly rising wages had not this technical progress been offset by some powerful opposing forces. Why have real wages risen so ON IMMIGRATION 79 slowly or even fallen? In part no doubt the explanation may be found in the fact that when the general scale of prices is rising wages move more tardily. In large part the explanation must be found in the fact that we have passed the point of diminishing returns in the relation of our population to our resources. The growth of population is serving to neutralize for the masses of the people the gains of technical progress. It is high time to revise the optimistic American doctrine of population. The hope is ever with us that improvements in agricultural methods will offset the influence of the increase of population. We rightly speak of the wonders of the new agriculture ; but these improvements fast crowding upon each other in the past two decades have not even kept the cost of food from increasing in terms of the common man's wage. Shall we then base an economic policy on the assumption of much greater improvements which as yet are only in the realm of imagination? Undoubtedly the development of water power will retard the trend toward higher prices of coal ; forestry will eventually grow lumber enough to meet the greatly curtailed demand at higher prices; but, given a population steadily increasing at anything like the present rate, and real wages in America must decrease in terms of food, clothing and fuel, and all the commodities depend- ent on wood, iron, copper, and other primary materials. The steady increase alone of population will offset the popular benefits of the new miracles of industrial progress. In the decade ending 1910, but for immigration, the rate of increase of the total population would have been much less instead of somewhat greater than that of the preceding decade. But in 1910 there were over three million more foreign-born persons in the country than were here ten years earlier. One- fifth of. the increase in population consisted in foreign-born, and another fifth of their children born in America. The current objections to immigration are mainly based on the alleged evil effects to the political, social, and moral standards of the community. It is often asserted that present immigration is inferior in racial quality to that of the past. Whatever be the truth and error mingled in these views, we are not now dis- cussing them. Our view is wholly impersonal and without race prejudice. If the present immigration were all of the Anglo- Saxon race, were able to speak, read and write English, and had the same political sentiments and capacities as the earlier popu- 8o SELECTED ARTICLES lation, the validity of our present conclusions would be unaffected. When our policy of unrestricted immigration is thus opposed to the interests of the mass of the people, its continuation in a democracy where universal manhood suffrage prevails, is possible only because of a remarkable complexity of ideas, sentiments, and interests, neutralizing each other and paralyzing action. The American sentiment in favor of the open door to the oppressed of all lands is a part of our national heritage. The wish to share with others the blessings of freedom and of economic plenty is the product of many generations of American experi- ence. The open door policy had partly a political basis: a growing population in a young and sparsely settled country gave greater security on the frontier of settlement and greater strength against foreign enemies. The policy had, however, mainly an economic basis: land was here a free good on the margin of a vast frontier. Most citizens benefited by a growing population. Let it not be accounted cynicism to recognize in this national self-interest the source of a generous sentiment toward the incoming stranger. That sentiment, truly generous, now lingers after its real cause has disappeared. It impels to an unthinking liberality to the alien while sacrificing the heritage of the workers of America ; it makes the citizen with humane ideals the misguided ally of commercial greed. The open door policy is vain to relieve the condition of the masses of other lands. Emigration from overcrowded countries, with the rarest exceptions, leaves no permanent gaps. Natural increase quickly fills the ranks of an impoverished peasantry. If America with futile hospitality continues to welcome great numbers from countries with low standards of living, she can but reduce the level of her own prosperity while affording no permanent relief to the overcrowded lands. Nations under bad governments must find relief through the reform of their own political conditions. Lands whose people are in economic misery must improve their own industrial organization, elevate their standards of living, and limit their numbers. If they go on breeding multitudes which find an unhindered outlet in continuous migration to more fortunate lands, they can at last but drag others down to their own unhappy economic level. The pride of immigrants and of their children, sometimes to the second and third generations, is another strong force oppos- ing restriction. Immigrants, having become citizens, are proud ON IMMIGRATION 81 of the race of their origin, and resent restriction as a reflection upon themselves and their people. One may admire the loyalty and idealism here manifested, while regretting that these senti- ments and arguments serve to distract attention from the real problem to minor and irrelevant incidents. North American Review. 192 : 56-67. July, 1910 National Eugenics in Relation to Immigration. Robert DeC. Ward \jJ How far do our present immigration laws enable us to keep v\ y< out those who are physically, mentally and morally undesirable for parenthood; whose coming here will tend to produce an inferior rather than a superior American race; who are eugen ically unfit for race culture? We in the United States have an * opportunity which is unique in history for the practice of eugenic principles. Our Country jiaa^ founded and deyeloned , bv picked men and ^vyomen. And to-day, by selecting our im- migrants through proper immigration legislation, we have the power to pick out the best specimens of each race to be the parents of our future citizens. But we have left the choice almost altogether to the selfish interests which do not care whether we want the immigrants they bring, or whether the immigrants will be the better for coming. Steamship agents and brokers all over Europe and western Asia are today deciding for us the character of the American race of the future. It is no argument against practising eugenic ideas in the selection of our alien immigrants to say that our New England country towns are full of hopelessly degenerate native Ameri- cans who are inferior, mentally, morally and physically, to the "sturdy peasants of Europe/' It will not help to reduce the number of our native degenerates if we admit alien degenerates. National eugenics means the prevention of the breeding of the unfit native, no less than the prevention of the admission, and of the breeding after admission, of the unfit alien. Should we not exercise the same care in admitting human beings as we exercise in relation to animals or insect pests or disease germs? Yet it is true that we have actually been taking more care in the selection, and in the examination for soundness and for health, of a Hereford bull or a Southdown ewe, imported 82 SELECTED ARTICLES for the improvement of our cattle and sheep, than we have taken in the selection of the alien men and women who are coming here to be the fathers and mothers of future American children. We do not hesitate to prohibit the importation of cattle from a foreign country where the foot and mouth disease is prevalent. It is only in very extreme cases that we have ever taken such a step in the case of the importation of aliens, yet there are certain parts of Europe from which it would be better for the American race if no aliens at all were admitted. Our present laws are intended to exclude some twenty or more classes of mentally, physically, morally and economically undesir- able aliens. The list is formidable and seems abundantly suffi- cient to accomplish adequate eugenic selection. But careful and unprejudiced students of immigration agree that these laws do not keep out the unfit so as to preserve the status quo, and certainly do not promote eugenic improvement. We already have an army of not less than 150,000 feeble-minded in the United States, of whom only a very small percentage are in institutions, the rest being free to propagate their kind. And of those in institutions the large proportion are there only temporarily, being at liberty for much of the time during their reproductive period. Further, there are over 150,000 insane in the institutions of this country, and of these many have already left offspring to perpetuate their insanity. In spite of these appalling facts, appalling from the standpoint of mere senti- ment and of mere philanthropy, doubly appalling from the stand- point of eugenics, we have been admitting alien insane, and alien imbeciles, and alien epileptics, and alien habitual criminals, partly because of a lax enforcement of the law under past administrations, partly because the law is incapable, under ex- isting conditions, of effective enforcement. Parenthood on the part of the insane, the imbecile, the feeble-minded, the heredit- ary criminal, and those afflicted with hereditary disease, is a crime against the future. To admit such persons into this country is no less a crime against the future. The ideal selection of our immigrants, from the eugenic point of view, would be possible only if we could have a fairly com- plete family history, running back a few generations, showing the hereditary tendencies of each alien. The results of eugenic investigation already reached have given us enough definite ON IMMIGRATION 83 knowledge to enable us to exclude, if we had these pedigrees, the larger number of aliens who would themselves be undesirable, or would have defective or delinquent offspring. This ideal selection is obviously impossible to carry out. The next best plan, which has the advantage of being feasible, although it would require legislation and considerable expenditure of public money (yet would not almost any expenditure, even on a huge scale, be a wise national policy in so important a matter?) would be to insist that each alien, on landing here, should undergo a very thorough mental and physical examination at the hands of our public health and marine hospital service surgeons. These examinations would involve a stripping to the skin of each alien ; the usual physical and mental examination ; tests for syphilis and similar precautions. Is this too much to demand when the welfare of a whole new race is concerned? The eugenist is ready with his answer; he says, emphatically, No. We cer- tainly ought to begin at once to segregate, far more than we now do, all our native and foreign-born population which is unfit for parenthood. They must be prevented from breeding. But the biggest, the most effective, the most immediate way in which we can further national eugenics is at the ports where this year over half a million alien immigrants will land. Our immi- gration officials are doing all in their power, under existing con- ditions, to select our immigrants. Our surgeons are doing a wonderful work, under tremendous disadvantages, in trying to detect the physical and mental disabilities which by law debar the aliens who have them. But it is nothing short of a crime to admit people, as often happens in a rush season, at the rate of 3,000, 4,000 or 5.000 in one day. On April n last, according to press reports, 7,931 aliens were landed at Ellis Island. We ought to limit the number of aliens who shall be landed in one day to a certain maximum which could reasonably well be care- fully examined. We have a perfect right to do that, just as we have a perfect right to prohibit immigration entirely. The steam- ship companies, the foreign societies, and others interested in one way or another in foreign immigration, would vigorously object. But those who are seriously and unselfishly concerned for the future of this race would welcome such a move. We ought to increase the number of the surgeons detailed for the most important duty of inspecting arriving aliens. We might have to 84 SELECTED ARTICLES enlarge the accommodations at our immigration stations. But can there be anything more vital than this if we are to do our duty to the unborn Americans of future generations? In addition to the steps which we should take at once to accomplish the more effective exclusion of the insane, imbecile, idiot, tuberculous, those afflicted with loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases, etc., we ought to amend our immigration laws so that it will be possible to exclude more aliens of such low vitality and poor physique that they are eugenically undesir- able for parenthood. Nation. 98:430-1, April 16, 1914 Problems of Immigration. Henry P. Fairchild To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION : Sir : May I be permitted to give expression to my surprise on reading, in your editorial on "The Irish in Our Public Life," in the Nation for March 26, the following sentences : "For ex- ample he (Professor Ross) has previously given expression to the serious disquietude which many Americans feel today in connection with the new-comers from South European countries. But their grandfathers were just as acutely concerned over the Irish emigrants. These were, sixty and seventy years ago, as much disliked and even dreaded as are, by some, Slav and Italian today. ... It may be asked, however, if the large immigra- tion of today will not, half a century hence, look as harmless and even desirable as does now the Irish immigrants of 1845- 55." The argument that it is wrong to object to the "new immi- gration" because our forefathers objected just as strongly to the "old immigration," which we now regard as innocuous or even desirable, has four distinct weaknesses, any one of which is sufficient to condemn it. The first is a question of fact. Often as we hear this statement repeated, it is not at all certain that our grandfathers disliked and dreaded the Irish as much as we fear the Slavs and Italians. I have had occasion to examine with great care the evidence on this point furnished by the contemporary writings and discussions, and I have failed to find any widespread sentiment against the Irish comparable to the restrictionist agitation of today. In the second place, such objections to immigration as there ON IMMIGRATION 85 were rested on wholly different grounds from those of the present. The antipathy felt in the middle of the nineteenth cen- tury was not against the Irish as such, nor was it against a degrading competition in the economic field. It was against paupers, criminals, diseased persons, and Roman Catholics. To treat the opposition to immigration of the twentieth century as if it were analogous to that of this earlier period misses the point completely. An excellent illustration is furnished by the fact that whereas we fear that our present immigrants will not avail them- selves of the blessings of American citizenship and will fail to become naturalized, our grandfathers feared that they would become naturalized too easily, and wanted to extend the period of residence required for citizenship to twenty or twenty-five years, or to refuse naturalization altogether. In the third place, this argument always assumes that none of the evils which our forebears dreaded in connection with the Irish immigration has, in fact, materialized. This assumption is open to serious question. It is, of course, a difficult and hazard- ous undertaking 1 to assign any of our present-day problems to any specific foreign race. But there is evidence that the Irish are responsible for more than their share of some of our troubles. On the same day in which I read your editorial, my attention was attracted by an editorial in the New York Times, which spoke thus of the Irish attitude towards the repeal of the tolls exemption law : "The opposition of the Irish- American organi- zations is characteristically open and vociferous. The motive is far from creditable. . . . [They] have been prompted thereto by their hatred of England. They act on an American question from considerations wholly un-American, which is pretty bad citizenship." The fact that one of our great dailies can speak thus of the Irish after two-thirds of a century of Americanization is at least disquieting. If we turn to more concrete matters, we find that the number of Irish paupers in this country is out of all proportion to their percentage of the total population 46.4 per cent of the total number of foreign-born paupers in the alms- houses in 1903, over one-third (including native-born of Irish fathers) of the total number of charity cases of all nationalities in Bellevue and allied hospitals, etc. Among criminals, also, the Irish stand at the head of the foreign-born as regards the total number of offences. Furthermore, it is most significant that in the one aspect of life in which, as your editorial points 86 SELECTED ARTICLES out, the Irish have displayed the most marked ability, viz., public affairs, the record which they have made as you also point out has not been such as wholly to discredit the sagacity of our forefathers when they were uneasy as to the effect of the Irish on American politics. The fact is that we have become accustomed to those evils of American life which are traceable to the early immigration, and take them for granted. We even go so far as to use them as a means of forestalling unfavorable comparisons between south- eastern Europeans and Americans. An excellent illustration of this is afforded by [Dr. PeterJRoberts'") in his book, 'JXheJiew immigration/' when, in an effort to extenuate the drunkenness and lawlessness of the newcomers, or at least to divide the responsibility, he points out that "with very rare exceptions the men on the bench, in the brewery business, and in politics," who help to create these conditions, "are native-born." He does not stop to consider how many of them are the sons of the Irish and German immigrants of the nineteenth century, whom Dr. Roberts, along with others, regards as so desirable. Finally, the most significant fact of all is that the one reason why the evil effects of the Irish and German immigration of the forties and fifties are not much more widespread and prominent than they are, is that this very agitation of our forefathers, which we deride, had its effect. To be sure, some of it, par- ticularly that based on religious prejudice, was misguided and unjustifiable according to our lights. But the great agitation against the indiscriminate dumping of foreign paupers and criminals on our shores, and against the horrible shipping con- ditions which landed swarms of miserable wretches on our docks who had to be hauled away in carts to the hospitals and alms- houses, rested on a solid foundation. For decades the wiser spirits of the time fought for laws which would protect the com- munities of this country against an intolerable burden of expense in the support of indigent foreigners. We of today are reaping the benefit of this agitation, and it ill becomes us to ridicule it from the vantage point of our security. It is doubtful if a half or even a quarter of the Irish immigrants who made up the great migration of 1845-55 would be allowed even to embark from the shores of Ireland, to say nothing of being admitted to the United States, in the year 1914. If we were confronted with an immigration of the sort that our grandfathers had to deal with ON IMMIGRATION 87 we should be much more vociferous in our protests than they were. The immigration problem of the twentieth century is in many ways a wholly new one. No arguments concerning' it are more fallacious than those which compare it, without discrimination, with that of the middle of the nineteenth century, and draw conclusions from parallels. And there is no more complete justification for a sober and well-considered protest against the immigration of the present than that afforded by a contemplation of the debt we owe to the agitators of an earlier period. Charities. 12:129-33. February 6, 1904 Immigration as a Relief Problem. Edward T. Devine The relief problem of the American seaboard cities is greatly affected by immigration. The immigrant of the twentieth century offers little resemblance to the colonist of the early days of the republic. The colonist was establishing new outposts of civiliza- tion; he was one who was capable of making his way in the face of adverse circumstances ; he was influenced by some strong reli- gious or political or economic motive, and felt within himself a daring and strength of character sufficient to overcome the dan- gers, the loneliness, and the privations of the frontier. Coloniza- tion is, in short, one of those differentiating agencies leading to the selection and survival of those who have initiative and excep- tional capacity. Immigration, on the other hand, is a compara- tively easy escape from hard conditions. The immigrant is one who follows in a path already made easy. He goes where his friends or relatives have gone, and settles in the spot where they have settled. He yields to the artifices of transportation agents, or may even be assisted by the public authorities of his own community to emigrate for his country's good. Until legal inter- ference is interposed he comes under a contract to work at occupations and under industrial conditions about which he may be entirely ignorant, thus lending himself readily to a lowering of the standard both of living and of wages. He is scarcely con- scious even of the handicap of speaking a foreign language, since he is worked and lodged with others of his own nationality, and under foremen who can speak to him in his own language. The immigrant who goes under tempting circumstances to a 88 SELECTED ARTICLES place literally prepared for his arrival, has therefore rather less than the average initiative, independence and courage, the quali- ties which are so predominant in the original settlers of a new country. This is, of course, by no means a correct description of all immigrants. There may be little difference between the best immigrant and the best colonist, or even between the majority of immigrants and the majority of colonists. The description applies rather to the marginal colonist and immigrant respectively to the least efficient class who are nevertheless represented in each in considerable numbers. In the frontier colony the minimum wage- earning capacity and industrial efficiency is necessarily high, in the immigrant it may be very low, and it is with these marginal immigrants that relief agencies have chiefly to deal. Recognition of the family, even in its collateral branches, and the placing of burdens upon those who are their blood kindred is one of the first principles of organized relief. When, however, all inquiries run quickly to the ocean's edge, the chances of any effective recognition of family responsibility are greatly lessened. A vague statement that one's parents or other kindred in Syria, in Poland, in Southern Italy or in Ireland have all that they can do to support themselves, is not easily disproved, even if it is not always true. Correspondence with relief agencies throughout the European continent is difficult, and even when it has been estab- lished, is often inconclusive because of the different points of view and the differences in language, customs and standards. When one has lost employment and has but a few acquaintances, and these perhaps hastily formed, it is, of course, more difficult for him to give those evidences of character and fitness which would be available in his native land, but which are not readily imported among the immigrant's assets. It is beyond reasonable expectation also, that when one has through old age or infirmity become a public charge, there should be quite the same degree of tenderness and consideration for an immigrant as the same indi- vidual might have experienced in a similar adverse fate in the home of his ancestors. I am not apologizing for any indifference to the necessities of those who are in distress, but pointing out that absence from those upon whom they have the strongest claim for the offices prompted by ties of kindred and of intimate association through generations, is a deprivation of that for which there is no ready substitute. This, however, increases rather than lessens the re- ON IMMIGRATION 89 sponsibility of those who in public or in private charities admin- ister relief. Those who have been in the country but a short time may wisely be returned to their homes, but others who may remain after the lapse of years essentially immigrants, may be in distress and it may be possible to relieve them, or necessary to support them in the dependent condition. It is not by withholding relief from individuals or from families who may be wisely aided, that the evil consequences of unrestricted immigration are 'to be /'"'met. The strengthening of existing laws, an additional clause excluding illiterate adults, and by providing more efficient means for the deportation of those who have been admitted through misrepresentation or fraud is advisable, and the uniform and equitable administration of existing laws is essential. The arguments in favor of unrestricted immigration are that cheap labor is needed in the building of railways and in many other undertakings in which the directive intelligence can be separated from the physical labor required ; and that any practical test such as ability to read or write, possession of a given sum of money, or even a certificate of good character from the place of departure will operate to exclude many who nevertheless under new conditions, in a new land, might prove to be very useful and entirely self-supporting citizens. While it is true that cheap labor may be made profitable from the employer's point of view, it does not follow that those who are considering the interests of the community as a whole can look with favor upon it. The superintendent of a mill, which had within a few years replaced efficient, but highly paid American laborers by Hungarians, analyzed the results of the change in conversation with the author as follows : The new laborers could do less work in a given time, but they were willing to work at less wages, and they were willing to work more hours in the week. Being less efficient and having less initiative it had been necessary to increase the number of foremen and to pay them somewhat higher wages, holding them responsible to a greater extent than before for the correction of mistakes and for driving the men under them at their maximum capacity. As the men worked for longer hours the machinery was idle for a smaller part of the time and the total product was increased at less expense. This illustration is not presented as typical. In many instances the product would doubtless be diminished rather than increased by such a substitution, and the cost increased so that QO SELECTED ARTICLES the net result would be a diminution of profits. Within reason- able limits the general principle is that high-priced labor is eco- nomic labor, the condition being that it shall be as intelligent, as trustworthy and as efficient as it is well-paid. Nevertheless the exploitation of cheap labor, as is illustrated in the instance above cited, is not infrequent, and whether in the long run it is dis- astrous or beneficial in a given industry, there is no doubt that for individuals in charge of particular industries at particular times, it will offer an opportunity for pecuniary profit and that such an opportunity will be seized. With the consequences to the industry in the long run, the employer of the moment may have little concern. Tfop effectof utilizing underpaid immigrant labor under conditions which, in order to afford a living at all, makes excessive demands upon adult men, and leads irresistibly to the employment of women and children, is directly^ to in- crease the number who sooner or later require relief. To pro- duce stray instances or even a goodly number of persons who have struggled through such adverse conditions without becom- ing dependent upon others, is not to offer evidence to the con- trary. The plain tendency is to augment the number of those who break down prematurely; of those who in advanced years have made no provision for their own maintenance ; of the children whose support must be supplied by others than their own parents, and of those who, meeting with unexpected mis- fortune of any kind, have no resources except the generosity of strangers. * Survey. 25:579-86. January 7, 1911 Industrial Communities. W. Jett Lauck. The widespread existence of immigrant communities or col- onies in the United States at the present time may be realized, when it is stated that in the territory east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers there is no town or city of industrial importance, with the exception of the lead and zinc mining localities of Missouri, which does not have its immigrant colony or section composed of Slavs, Magyars, north and south Italians, or members of other races of recent immi- gration from southern and eastern Europe. In the South and Southwest, because of the large areas devoted almost exclusively ON IMMIGRATION 91 to agriculture, the immigrant community is less frequently met than in the middle West or East. In the bituminous coal mining territory of West Virginia, Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma, immigrant colonies in large numbers have been devel- oped in the same way as those in the coal mining regions of Pennsylvania and the middle West. Southern and eastern Europeans have also attached themselves to the iron and steel producing communities of the Birmingham district in Alabama ; and a large Italian colony, as is well known, exists in New Orleans, a considerable number of whose members are employed in the cotton mills of the city and in the manufacture of cigars and cigarettes. South Italians, Cubans, and Spaniards have entered the cigar manufacturing establishments of Tampa and Key West, Fla., and have built up colonies in these cities. Out- side New Orleans, however, no recent immigrants in the South are cotton mill operatives. Southern mill owners have fre- quently tried to introduce southern and eastern, as well as northern, European and British immigrants into their operating forces, but all attempts have resulted in failure because of the refusal of the present cotton mill workers, recruited from isolated farm and mountain sections, to work alongside recent immi- grants. This same intense race prejudice on the part of southern wage-earners of native birth has rendered impossible the extensive employment of southern and eastern Europeans in other branches of manutacturing in the South, and has con- sequently prevented the development of immigrant industrial colonies, except in the instances already mentioned, and in the case of a number of agricultural communities, principally located in the Mississippi Valley. Between the immigrant colonies which have affixed themselves to industrial centers such as the New England textile manufac- turing cities or the iron and steel manufacturing localities of Pennsylvania, and the older native-born portion of the towns or cities there is little contact or association beyond that rendered necessary by business or working relations. Immigrant work- men and their households not only live in sections or colonies according to race, but, as has already been stated, attend and support their own churches, maintain their own business institu- tions and places of recreation, and have their own fraternal and beneficial organizations. Even in the mines and manufacturing plants, there is a sharp line of division in the occupations or the 92 SELECTED ARTICLES departments in which recent immigrants and persons of native birth are engaged, and in the case of unskilled labor the immi- grant workmen are, as a rule, brought together in gangs com- posed of one race or closely related races. In those industrial localities which are strongly unionized, the affiliation of im- migrant workmen with native Americans is small. A considerable proportion of the children of foreign-born parents are also segregated in the parochial schools. Women of recent immi- grant races, beyond the small degree of contact which they obtain in factories or as domestic servants, practically live entirely re- moved from Americanizing influences. As a consequence of this general isolation of immigrant colonies, the tendencies toward assimilation exhibited by the recent immigrant population are small, and the maintenance of old customs and standards leads to congestion and insanitary housing and living conditions. The native-born element in the population of industrial communities of the type under discussion is in most cases ignorant of condi- tions which prevail in immigrant sections; but even when ac- quainted with them, natives are usually indifferent so long as they do not become too pronounced a menace to the public health and welfare. Under normal conditions there is no antipathy to the immigrant population, beyond the feeling uniformly met with in all sections, that a certain stigma or reproach attaches to working with recent arrivals or in the same occupations. This aversion of the native American, which is psychological in its nature and arises from race prejudice or ignorance, is, however, one of the most effective forces in racial segregation and displacement. In the case of the immigrant industrial communities which have recently come into existence through industrial development, and which are almost entirely composed of foreign-born persons, or in which foreign-born elements are predominant, a situation exists of alien colonies being established on American soil, often composed of a large number of races living according to their own standards, largely under their own systems of control and practically isolated from all direct contact with American life and institutions. The Americanization of such communities, as compared with the immigrant colonies of old established indus- trial towns and cities, must necessarily be slow. It is to be ex- pected, also, that before these communities are assimilated they will have a pronounced effect upon American life, for the reason that the slowness of the process will result in the establishment, ON IMMIGRATION 93 perhaps in a modified form, of many Old World standards and institutions. The standards of living of industrial workers who have come to our mining and manufacturing communities from the south and east of Europe are also low. Recent immigrant males, being usually single or, if married, having left their wives abroad, have been able to adopt in large measure a group instead of a family living arrangement, thereby reducing their cost of living to a point far below that of the American or the older immigrant in the same industry or on the same level of occupation. Another salient fact exhibited by recent immigrants who have sought work in American industries and who have settled in in- /flustrial communities has been that as a whole they have mani- fested but a small degree of permanent interest in their employ- ment or in the community. They have constituted a mobile, migratory, wage-earning class, constrained mainly by their eco- nomic interest, and moving readily from place to place according to changes in working conditions or fluctuations in the demand for labor. The recent immigrant ordinarily has no property or other restraining interests which attach him to a community, and a large proportion being unaccompanied by wives or children, and having their accumulations in a cash or convertible form, are free to follow the best industrial inducements. The transitory characteristic developed as a result of these conditions is best illustrated by the racial movements from the larger industries into railroad construction, seasonal and other temporary work, by the floating immigrant labor supply handled through labor agencies and padrones, and by the remarkable falling off in the population of immigrant communities in times of industrial depression. ^ In general it may be said that the menace in the presence of the recent immigrant in our industrial communities, so far as the native American and older foreign wage-earners from Great Britain and northern Europe are concerned, consists in the low standard of living, the illiteracy, the absence of industrial training, and the tractability and lack of aggressiveness of the southern and eastern Europeans. As regards the recent immigrants them- selves, their general, as well as their industrial, progress and as- similation are retarded by their segregation in colonies and communities where they have little contact with American life and small opportunity to acquire the English language. The 94 SELECTED ARTICLES sudden transplanting of such an, agricultural class of the Old World to the conditions and environments of American industrial communities renders the recent immigrant liable to serious moral and physical deterioration. Annals of the American Academy. 34: 125-29. July, 1909 Immigration and the American Laboring Classes. John Mitchell In discussing the subject of The Relationship of Immigra- tion to the Condition of the Laboring Classes in the United States, I want to present the matter from the standpoint of a workman. I have spent all my life either as a workingman or as an employee of workingmen ; hence I have had an unusual opportunity to observe the influence of immigration upon the standards of living among workingmen. At the outset I wish to lay down the fundamental proposition that a low standard of living is not compatible with a high race development. I have absolutely no prejudice against the immi- grant ; I have no sympathy with the spirit that has made a slogan of the words, "America for the Americans." While I am an American in all that the word implies, I believe that we should welcome to our country all the white races from every part of the earth; provided, however, that in coming here these immi- grants do not lower our American standard of living ; and provided further, that they be admitted only in such numbers as will make it possible to assimilate them and bring them up, within a reasonable time, to the standards of life and labor which have been established here. Those who are familiar with the migration of races from one country to another know that in the early history of this republic every healthy immigrant arriving upon our shores was an asset to us ; but during the past ten or fifteen years immi- gration has increased so rapidly and has reached such stupendous proportions that many of these immigrants, instead of being assets, are in reality liabilities. A man is of value to this country only so long as his presence here makes for the better- ment of the people and the institutions of the country. If more immigrants are admitted than are required to fill unoccupied positions, and if, as a consequence, they are compelled by their ON IMMIGRATION 95 necessities to compete with Americans for positions, and if as a result of such competition the standard of living is lowered, then such immigration will not make for either the commejcial or the moral advancement of the people of our country. During, the past ten years 8,525,000 immigrants have been admitted to the United Stages. More people have come to America in the past ten years than have gone from one country to another heretofore during any one hundred years. In ten x , years the net gain in our population from immigration alone has been nearly 6,000,000. I submit that notwithstanding the unprecedented development of this country and the unusual opportunities existing here, we cannot assimilate five or six million people every ten years. Last December, as a result of the most careful investigation, it was ascertained that in the United States there were some 2,000,000 men out of work. At ; the present time it is safe to say that there are still approxi- mately 2,000,000 persons in enforced idleness. Yet, in the face of this, during the past three months the emigration to this country has been at the rate of 1,000,000 annually. About 200,000 immigrants have been admitted during this period. They have come at a time when 2,000,000 persons, principally Americans, on the streets looking for work. Surely these immigrants, arriving vnder such conditions, contribute nothing to the com- mercial, intellectual, or moral advancement of our country or its people. We Americans are prone to speak with disrespect of the tramp ; we characterize him as a "hobo," and frequently we call him a criminal. When I was quite a young boy, I, with many others, was thrown out of employment, our places having been given to immigrants who would work cheaper. Being unable to secure work at a living wage nearer home, I was compelled to travel, walking most of the way, nearly 1,500 miles in search of employment. During this journey I saw hundreds of men walking from place to place looking for work, and I have seen them forced to ask for bread. In no case did I ever see a man ask for bread without observing that the effect upon him was most degrading and demoralizing. In begging for food a man's sense of pride and shame suffers a most serious shock, and in time it is entirely destroyed. Finally he becomes accustomed to the new environment and often joins permanently the army of tramps and mendicants. k 96 SELECTED ARTICLES It may not be uninteresting to observe that while looking for work myself and during the many years of my activity as a leader of workingmen, I have never seen a newly-arrived immi- grant tramping the highways seeking employment. On the surface, this statement may seem to be a tribute to the immi- grant ; but, as a matter of fact, properly interpreted it means * that the newly-arrived immigrant has underbid the American workman and secured his job. /He has sent the American work- man "on the road" by taking the place he held at a rate of wages lower than the American would accept. It may be 'said in answer that the American should work for as low wages as the immigrant; that half a loaf is better than no bread. But there is a standard of ethics among American workmen which deters them from working for less than the established rate; they would rather tramp than reduce the wage scale or lower the standard of living. In this position they are right, because if they reduced the wage scale to keep themselves employed, it would be a question of only a short time before the entire wage scale would be lowered and the standard of life and labor among all workingmen would deteriorate. Conditions in America are not so favorable now for a large immigration as they were years ago. In the early times immi- grants could be so distributed throughout our cities and rural communities that the Americans and those with American stan- dards remained in such ascendency that they were able to assimi- late the immigrants, thus maintaining the standard of living, and harm was done. Butrxiuring the past twenty years the immigrant has not been distributed promiscuously throughout the country ; on the contrary, he has been colonized, and there are many communities in which scarcely a word of English is now spoken. We find in our large cities, districts called "Little Hungary," "Little Italy," the "Ghetto," and in these colonies the people live practically as they lived in the countries from which they came. In the coal fields of Pennsylvania, in which mining was for- merly carried on by Americans, or by English-speaking immi- grants, an entire transformation has taken place. About thirty- five years ago emigrations were started from southern Europe and these men were put to work mining coal at one end of the great anthracite valley. /^Those of you who have read the history of the Huns and the Vandals and how they overran the countries ON IMMIGRATION 97 of Europe, can see in Pennsylvania a peaceful repetition of that ' invasion. Slowly but surely these men from southern Europe, coming year by year in ever-increasing numbers, drove before them the miners and mine workers who preceded them as workmen in the coal fields. Not a violent blow was struck ; not an unlawful act committed; but just as surely as, in the history of nations, one race ever over-ran another, these people from southern Europe over-ran the English-speaking people of the coal fields. They drove them from town to town and from district to district, until the English-speaking miners made their last stand at the upper end of the valley, where mining ceases and the coal out-crops. In a few years more they will have disappeared altogether. They have been driven entirely from their homes and the homes of their ancestors. The whole region is now populated by non-English-speaking people. Cities with a population of 20,000 are just the same as are some of the cities in southern Europe. Children are being reared amidst sur- roundings which will retard for two or three generations their assimilation and their development into real Americans. Years ago the child born of foreign parents in this country y lost all characteristics of, even the resemblance to, the race whence he came ; he took on the type of the American ; but such is not the case in communities where immigrants are colonized. True, their children are required to go to school and they learn to read and write. Under proper conditions and given a fair chance, they would develop rapidly, but the absence of the American standard of living and the American ideals renders it impossible that children in these districts shall make progress rapidly. The parents of these children grew up in their own countries under conditions dissimilar to the conditions estab- lished here; they started to work when they were five or six or seven years of age. It is difficult for them to understand the necessity of having their children remain in school until they are fourteen years of age; yet we Americans would regard it as an outrage if our children were compelled to work in the mines, the mills or the factories before they were fourteen years of age. The system of colonizing 1 immigrants is not only destructive of the standard of living of wage earners, but it is a menace to American ideals. The American workingmen and this in- cludes, generally speaking, the immigrants now in our country v favor legislation which will reduce the number of immigrants 98 SELECTED ARTICLES ^--seeking admission and raise the standard of those who gain admission. This legislation is calculated not only to benefit the American workingman, but it is equally in the interest of the immigrant already here. We propose that the head tax of $4 which an immigrant must now pay as a condition of being admitted to our country shall be increased to $20, and that it shall be required of a prospective immigrant that he be able to read or write some section of the constitution of the United States, either in our language, or in some other language. A law of this kind would not evade or violate our treaty obliga- tions with other nations, because it would affect all nations alike. I feel sure that a provision of this character would not be regarded as revolutionary or radical, and yet it would have the effect of excluding 33 per cent of those who under the present laws seek and secure admission at our ports. I believe that we could with safety to ourselves and with broad-minded justice to the people of other countries, admit and assimilate from 150,000 to 200,000 immigrants each year; but we cannot continue, without injury to ourselves, to admit a million people every year. Cosmopolitanism, like charity, begins at home ; and while we must continue, within proper limitations, to be an asylum for the oppressed and persecuted people of the world, yet in doing this we must be mindful of our obligation to maintain a high standard of life, labor, and civilization in our own country. Atlantic Monthly. 110:691-6. November, 1912 Vanishing American Wage-Earner. W. Jett Lauck The native American wage-earner is rapidly disappearing. Along with him have also gone his working companions of for- mer years, the English, Irish, Scotch, Swedes, Norwegians and Germans. In their places have appeared the representatives of almost two score alien races from the south and east of Europe, and the Orient. Only one fifth of the workers in our mines and manufacturing plants today are native Americans. About one tenth of our wage-earners are the native-born children of parents from Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, and the Scan- dinavian countries. More than three .fifths of our great body of industrial workers are southern or eastern Europeans. There is scarcely a city or town of any industrial importance ON IMMIGRATION 99 east of the Mississippi, and north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers, which has not its immigrant colony, composed of members of the Italian, Magyar, and Slavic races. Practically the same situation exists in the mining states of the West. The Pacific coast, in addition to its Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos, has also received its contingent of southern and eastern Europeans. Wherever there has been any industrial development in the coal mines of Kansas and Oklahoma, the iron-ore mines of the Mesabi and Vermilion ranges of Minnesota, the furnaces and mills at Pueblo, Colorado, and Birmingham, Alabama, the packing-houses in Kansas City, South Omaha, and Fort Worth, the copper mines of Tennessee, the coal mines of Virginia, as well as in the mines and mills of the East the Slav, the Hungarian, and the Italian have found a lodgment in the operating forces. As a rule, the extent of their employment decreases as industry moves west- ward, but even in the West these races are rapidly becoming pre- dominant among the industrial workers. The southern and eastern European immigrant who has so extensively found employment fn our mines and factories has had no industrial training abroad. He has also brought with him a low standard of living, and has been tractable and subservient. As a result, his competition has exposed the native American and older immigrant employees to unsafe or unsanitary working con- ditions, and has led to or continued the imposition of conditions of employments which the Americans and older immigrants have considered unsatisfactory and, in many cases, unbearable. Where the older employees have found unsafe or unsanitary working conditions prevailing, and have protested, the recent immigrant wage-earners, usually through ignorance of mining or other working methods, have manifested a willingness to accept the alleged unsatisfactory working conditions. j The southern and eastern European also, because of his tract- ability, necessitous condition, and low standards, has been in- clined, as a rule, to acquiesce in the demand on the part of the employers for extra work or longer hours. The industrial workers have also accepted without protest the system of so- called company stores -and houses, which prevails extensively in bituminous and anthracite coal, iron-ore, and copper mining, and other industrial localities. The presence of the recent immigrant industrial worker has also brought about living conditions or a standard of life with ioo SELECTED ARTICLES which the native American and older immigrant employees have been unwilling, or have found it extremely difficult, to compete. Trie southern and eastern European wage-earner is usually single, or, if married, has left his wife and children abroad. He has no permanent interest in the community in which he lives or the in- \ dustry in which he is employed. His main purpose is to live as cheaply as possible, and to save as much as he can. Consequently, he has adopted a group method of living known as the "boarding- boss" system. Under this plan, from eight to twenty men usually crowd together in a small apartment or house in order to reduce the per capita outlay for rent, and buy their own food and do their own cooking. The total cost of living ranges from eight to fifteen dollars per month for each member of the group. The impossibility of competition by the native American with such standards of living needs no discussion. In addition to these conditions, brought about by the influx of southern and eastern European industrial workers, another factor, mainly psychological in its nature, but no less powerful in its effect, has been operative in ijie displacement of native Amer- icans and older immigrant employees. In all industries, and in all industrial communities, a certain reproach has come to be associ- ated with native American or older immigrant workmen who are engaged in the same occupations as the southern and eastern Europeans. This feeling on the part of the older employees is mainly due to the habits of life and conduct of recent immigrants, and to their ready acceptance of conditions ; but it is also largely attributable to the conscious or unconscious antipathy, often aris- ing from ignorance or prejudice, toward races of alien customs, institutions, and manner of thought. The same psychological effect was produced upon the native Americans in all branches of industrial enterprise who first came into working contact with the older immigrants from Great Britain and northern Europe. In the decade 1840-1850, when the Irish immigrant girls were first employed in the New England cotton mills, the native women who had previously been the tex- tile operatives protested ; twenty years later the Irish girls, after they had become firmly fixed in the industry, rebelled because of the employment of French-Canadian girls in the spinning rooms, just as the French-Canadian women refuse to be brought into close working relations with the Polish and Italian women who are entering the cotton mills at the present time. Whatever may ON IMMIGRATION 101 be the cause of this aversion of older employees to working by the side of the newer arrivals, the existence of the feeling has become one of the most potent causes of racial substitution in manufac- turing and mining occupations. It is obvious that the advent within recent years of the south- ern and eastern European into American industrial life has been a matter of most serious consequence to the American workman, and Ahe present-day competition of the same racial elements is of the greatest significance to the native-born and older immigrant wage-earners. The labor unions of the original employees, which should have been among the greatest factors in assimilating in- dustrially the recent immigrant, and in educating him to Ameri- can standards, in some industries as for example bituminous coal mining in western Pennsylvania, or the cotton mills of New England have been completely inundated, and wholly or par- tially destroyed by the sudden and overwhelming influx of south- ern and eastern Europeans. In other industries, where the compe- tition of the immigrant of recent years has not been so directly felt, as in the glass industry, where skilled workmen were for- merly necessary, the labor organizations are being weakened and undermined indirectly in other ways. Everywhere improved machinery and mechanical processes are eliminating the element of skill formerly required of employees, and are making it possible for the unskilled foreign-born work- man to enter occupations which have hitherto been beyond his qualifications, because they required previous training or an ex- tended apprenticeship. Formerly, in order to be pick- or hand- miner a number of years of training was necessary. Now a machine does the work and unskilled workmen attend it. By means of the automatic loom and ring-spinning-frame an un- skilled immigrant from the south or east of Europe may now become a proficient weaver or spinner within a few months. The former highly skilled work of blowing glass bottles, as well as window and plate glass, may now be done by machinery manned by foreign-born employees who have been in the United States less than three months and who, before their employment, had never seen a glass factory. In all industries, the immigrant wage-earner, through the elinv ination of the requirements of skill and experience, is being brought directly into contact and working competition with the native American and older British or northern European wage- 102 SELECTED ARTICLES earner. Unless the latter can do something to elevate the stand- ards of the recent immigrants, their competition in the higher occupations will be followed by as serious results as have already attended their invasion of the lower grades of the industrial scale. Much has been written in the past decade relative to the social and political effects of recent immigration. The recent exhaus- tive investigation of the Federal Commission, however, has revealed the fact that these phases of the problem are compara- tively of little import. The actual problem is found in the indus- trial effects of the recent alien influx. Existing legislation cannot settle this problem. Its solution is dependent upon a change in our present immigration policy. World's Work. 26:699-703. October, 1913 Our Expensive Cheap Labor. Arno Dosch A new aspect of the immigration problem is opened by some remarkable facts that recent industrial investigations have brought to light. These investigations seem to prove two startling propositions : (1) That the immigrants who now come to this country in the largest numbers are not being assimilated but are being "lumped" in undigested foreign quarters at the great centres of industry. (2) That "cheap foreign labor" is not cheap, even to the manufacturers who have eagerly encouraged the importation of unskilled foreigners to do the "muckers' " work. This class of eastern European peasant lacks the intelligence and initiative either to avoid the ordinary dangers of rough labor or to keep in efficient health; and their employers have to pay the bills for teaching them. Of forty cases of lead-poisoning found in the lead mills of New York City last year by the partial survey of the Factory Investigating Commission, the disease had in thirty-eight cases attacked men of foreign birth. Of these, twenty-nine were immi- grants from eastern Europe. Considering the large recent Slavish immigration, this may not at first glance seem remark- able, but it takes on its real significance when it is understood that half the employees of the mills are of American birth and have worked in the lead industries for years. Among them ON IMMIGRATION 103 occurred only one-twentieth of the cases of lead-poisoning. The explanation for this disparity is significant. The Americans 'know how to take care of themselves. Most important of all, they wash their hands and faces when they stop work. The immigrants from eastern Europe do not, unless some one stands over them and makes them do it. As the dangerous trades in this country are rapidly falling into the hands of immigrants of this type, it is easy to see why industrial poisoning, and industrial disease in general, presents a pressing national problem. The victims are chiefly among the most ignorant and helpless people. The danger is there for the others, but they usually have sufficient initiative to escape it. Take lead-poisoning, which we hear most about. Twenty years ago in the lead mills the work was far more dangerous than it is today, but the amount of lead-poisoning was apparently less. This was because, so the old lead workers say, the. class of men formerly employed understood the danger and took precautions to escape it. These men were western Europeans or Americans. Negroes also did much of the dangerous work in some of the old mills and were looked upon as practically immune because they could see the white poisonous flecks on their dark skins and wash them off. I have cited the case of lead-poisoning because it is the least complicated of industrial diseases. It finds its victims among otherwise healthy men in the prime of life. But the same racial disparity holds true in all the dangerous trades. Those who are the worst sufferers from all industrial diseases in this country are immigrants from eastern Europe. If it were not for the difficulty of making them look out for themselves, industrial disease would be very much easier to handle. This gives the problem a new angle from which it has not previously been considered. It shows that, without letting up in the fight for better preventive measures, the immigration aspect must not be neglected: A million of these people are entering the United States every year to be mistreated and exploited, to become helpless victims of industrial accident and industrial disease. x lf they come through their experience and develop into American citi- zens it is through no effort of their own, but through the enlightened self-interest of their employers. Comparatively few of these people ever get more than a glimmering of American 104 SELECTED ARTICLES ideals. It is almost too much to expect that they should. Their children are quick to learn, but they, children themselves, are slow to rise. The fact that they are in this country means nothing in itself. A Slav village in northern Michigan can be just as benighted as it was in Roumania. Its people have to be made to eat right and sleep right. Mothers must be taught the simplest measures for protecting the health of their babies. Grown men have to be forced to wash their hands to prevent them from poisoning themselves. Welfare work of this kind can be done, and is being done. But it cannot be done for half a million of these people a year. The task is too great. The result is that the American people are not absorbing these immigrants from eastern Europe. To borrow a figure from cookery, they are lumping. They have lumped in the mines, in the steel mills, in all the dangerous trades. And the lumps grow larger by half a million a year. Whole sections of the United States have become essentially foreign. The melting-pot is not assimilating the raw material that is being dumped into it. In these unassimilated lumps the individuals are forever shifting, though the lumps remain hopelessly un-American. Dr. Alice Hamilton, who surveyed the lead industries for the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases, found that from 10 to 40 per cent changed their employers every pay-day. Usually they went to other mills for similar or equally dangerous work. One lead mill with a pay-roll of eighty had had 500 men in its employ during the year. There was no knowing how many of these men became lead-poisoned. There was hardly an oppor- tunity to teach them care. Many of them went from one lead mill to another and became "leaded" before any symptoms were discovered. It frequently happens in the lead industries that one of these men who has been discharged for his own good because he has shown early symptoms of lead poisoning has gone on to the next mill without explaining why he was discharged from the last one, and, when discovered there to be a lead victim, has sought employment at the third or fourth mill until hopelessly poisoned. To discharge a man when lead-poisoning begins to show on him may not be the right way to meet the difficulty, but it is at least better than to keep him at work that will soon paralyze him. He accepts his fate with animal-like resignation, ON IMMIGRATION 105 ignores the warnings of the company's doctor, and heads straight for the next lead mill. He does it because he does not know what else to do. There is no advantage in either blaming or pitying him. He belongs to one of the great unassimilated lumps in American life. The work of philanthropic surveys, examinations into the con- dition of workmen by large corporations, and, particularly, the spread of welfare work has shown the urgent necessity for dis- solving these lumps before they get any larger. It means restriction of immigration down to the point where it will not lump. Two forces oppose this large employers of common labor and all those who, believing that liberty should be denied none, offer strong sentimental objections to restriction in any form. But the country as a whole is waking to the fact that immigrants from eastern Europe and southern Europe must for their own protection be admitted into this country in smaller numbers. The chief difficulty in the way of restricting immigration lies in the need for common labor. The United States Steel Cor- poration could have used last year 10,000 more Slavonians than it was able to get. Every other big mining and milling concern is in the same predicament. But, from the national point of view, it is better that they should be. They are devoting their energies toward the production of raw material, much of which is shipped out of' the country raw or in only the first stages of manufacture. The less raw material leaving the country the better. Common labor is used almost exclusively to handle it, so the less common labor the better we are off as a nation. Compare the industrial condition of the United States with that of Germany. The exports that leave our ports show only one- fourth the skill and workmanship and consequent value of the exports that leave Germany. In Germany common labor is becoming steadily scarcer. In ten years, it is said, there will be not an untrained man in the German Empire. This is prac- tically true today of Bavaria. Common labor is much less of a necessity than it is supposed to be. But it has always been plentiful in this country, so industry has come to count on it. But it could get along better with less. Scarcity of labor inevit- ably necessitates the use of labor-saving devices. If common labor had not been so plentiful occupational dis- ease would never have become so serious a problem. In the 106 SELECTED ARTICLES first place, when men are scarce employers take care not to lose any, but, more important still, machinery is then substituted for men in the dangerous trades. The lead industry has given an example of this. It began, for reasons of economy, substituting enclosed machinery for the dangerous work of separating white lead from the scraps of metallic lead which had failed to corrode. This proved such a saving both in labor and material that in the best mills entirely enclosed machinery handles the lead in all the formerly dangerous transitions from the drying pans to the lead- in-oil paste. This has done away with more labor susceptible to industrial disease. The latest labor-saving device is a crane which has eliminated the dusty wheel-barrows that counted their victims by the hundreds. This has also proved such an economy that the lead companies are experimenting with mechanical means for stripping the beds where the white lead is formed. Portable exhausts are in use in some lead mills, but the whole operation is still dangerous and clumsy. When that problem is solved, lead will be produced much more cheaply, lead mills will be perfectly safe, and the amount of common labor will be cut at least in two. The devices already in use by the National Lead Company have in the last ten years cut down the necessary common labor by 25 per cent. At least an equal saving could be made in industry as a whole by labor-saving devices now in existence. But so long as men can be had to do the work as cheaply as machinery there is no incentive to make the investment. If immigration were checked sufficiently to make common labor less available, this incentive would then bring about so rapid a substitution of labor-saving machinery that the demand for common labor would fall off and, in its place, there would arise a greater demand for skilled labor. American Economic Review. 1:753-65. December, 1911 Immigration and Crises. Henry P. Fairchild Amid all the diverse views on the various aspects of the immigration problem, there is coming to be a practical unanimity of opinion on one fundamental proposition namely, that im- migration today is essentially an economic phenomenon. How- ever strongly the desire for political or religious liberty, or the ON IMMIGRATION 107 escape from tyranny, may have operated in the past to stimu- late emigration from foreign countries, the one great motive of the present immigrant is the desire to better his enonomic situa- tion. Even in cases where political and religious oppression still persists, it usually expresses itself through economic disabilities. The great attraction of the United States for the modern im- migrant lies in the economic advantages which it has to offer. The latest authoritative recognition of this fact is that given by the Immigration Commission, which emphasizes it in numerous places in its report. If, then, immigration is so closely bound up with the industrial situation in this country, it would seem that there should be some relation between immigration and the industrial depressions or crises which are such a charac- terestic feature of our economic life. It is the purpose of this paper to seek to determine what this relation is. One aspect of the matter is perfectly obvious and has been thoroughly re- cognized for a long time, namely, that the volume of the im- migration current is regulated by the industrial prosperity of this country. A period of good times brings with it a large volume of immigration, while hard times reduce the current to a minimum. Another fact which is equally obvious, and which has been given much prominence in recent years, is that a period of de- pression in this country is followed by a large exodus of aliens. The popular interpretation of this fact is that this emigration movement serves to mitigate the evils of the crisis by removing a large part of the surplus laborers, until returning prosperity creates a demand for them again. The Italian, who displays the greatest mobility in this regard, has been called the safety valve of our labor market. Thus the movements of our alien population are supposed to be an alleviating force as regards crises. Up till 1907 no official records were kept of departing aliens, and no exact information as to their number was avail- able. But beginning with July of that year, the reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration have furnished these figures, and the recent reports contain tables almost as com- plete for departing as for arriving aliens. Futhermore, within this period the United States has experienced, and recovered from, a severe depression, so that the material is at hand for a concrete study of the matter in question. The monthly average of arrivals during the first six months io8 SELECTED ARTICLES of 1907 was a high one. Following a large immigration during the last six months of the preceding year, this made the fiscal year ending June 30, 1907, the record for immigration in the history of the country. For the next four months the stream of immigration continued high, considering the season, and the number of departures was moderate. Early in October, how- ever, there were signs of disturbance in the New York Stock Exchange. On the i6th there was a crash in the market, and within a week the panic had become general. It reached its height on October 24, and continued for many weeks after. The response of the alien population to this disturbance was al- most immediate, and manifested itself first in the emigration movement. In November the number of departures almost doubled. But the immigrants who were on the way could not be stopped, and in spite of the large exodus, there was a net gain of 38,207 during the month. The next month, December, however, saw a marked decrease in the stream of arrivals, which, accom- panied by a departure of aliens almost as great as in November, resulted in a net decrease in population of 11,325 for the month. During the first six months of 1908 the number of arrivals was small, and the departures numerous, so that, with the exception of March, each month shows a net loss in population. During July the number of departures began to approach the normal (compare the months in 1908 with 1907 and 1910), but the arrivals were so few that there was still a decrease for the months of July and August. In September, 1908, the balance swung the other way, and from that time to the present every month has shown a substantial increase in population through the movement of aliens. Thus we see that the period during which the number of alien laborers in the United States was decreasing was confined to the months December 1907 to August 1908 inclusive. By the end of July, 1908, the effects of the crisis were practically over as far as departures are concerned. It is evident, then, that the effects of the crisis on emigration were immediate, but not of very long duration. During the months of November and December, 1907, when the distress was the keenest, there were still large numbers of aliens arriving. But when the stream of immigration was once checked, it remained low for some time, and it was not until about January, 1909, that it returned to what may be considered a normal figure. The ON IMMIGRATION 109 reasons for this are obvious. The stream of immigration is a long one, and its sources are remote. It takes a long time for retarding influences in America to be thoroughly felt on the other side. The principal agency in checking immigration at its source is the returning immigrant himself, who brings personal information of the unfortunate conditions in the United States. This takes some time. But when the potential immigrants are once discouraged as to the outlook across the ocean, they require some positive assurance of better times before they will start out again. Now what catches the public eye in such an epoch as this, is the large number of departures. We are accustomed to immense numbers of arrivals and we think little about that side of it. But heavy emigration is a phenomenon, and ac- cordingly we hear much about how acceptably our alien popu- lation serves to accommodate the supply of labor to the demand. But if we stop to add up the monthly figures, we find that for the entire period after the crisis of 1907, when emigration exceeded immigration, the total decrease in alien population was only 124,124 scarcely equal to the immigration of a single month during a fairly busy season. This figure 'is almost infinitesimal compared to the total mass of the American work- ing people, or to the amount of unemployment at a normal time, to say nothing of a crisis. 1 It is thus evident that the importance of our alien population as an alleviating force at the time of a crisis has been vastly exaggerated. The most that can be said for it is that it has a very trifling palliative effect. The really important relation between immigration and crises is much less conspicuous but much more far-reaching. It rests upon the nature and underlying causes of crises in this country. These are fairly well understood at the present time. A typical crisis may be said to be caused by speculative over-production, or over-speculative production. Some prefer to call the trouble under-consumption, which is much the same thing looked at from another point of view. Professor Irving Fisher has furnished a convenient and logical outline of the ordinary course of affairs. 2 In a normal business period some slight disturbance, such as an 1 Mr. F. H. Streightoff shows that at the time the census of 1900 was taken, 2,634,336, or n.i per cent of all males over ten years of age who were engaged in gainful occupations in the United States were unemployed three months or more during the year. See "Standard of Living," p. 35. - Fisher, "The Purchasing Power of Money," p. 58 seq. i io SELECTED ARTICLES increase in the quantity of gold, causes prices to rise. A rise in prices is accompanied by increased profits for business men, because the rate of interest on the borrowed capital which they use in their business fails to increase at a corresponding ratio. If prices are rising at the rate of 2 per cent annually, a nominal rate of interest of 6 per cent is equivalent to an actual rate of only about 4 per cent. Hence, doing business on borrowed capital becomes very profitable, and there is an increased demand for loans. This results in an increase of the deposit currency, which is accompanied by a further rise in prices. The nominal rate of interest rises somewhat, but not sufficiently, and prices tend to outstrip it still further. Thus the process is repeated, until the large profits of business lead to a disproportionate production of goods for anticipated future demand, and a vast over-extension of credit. But this cycle cannot repeat itself indefinitely. Though the rate of interest rises tardily, it rises progressively, and eventually catches up with the rise in prices, owing to the necessity which banks feel of maintaining 1 a reasonable ratio between loans and reserves. Other causes operate with this to produce the same result. The consequence is that business men find themselves unable to renew their loans at the old rate, and hence some of them are unable to meet their obligations, and fail. The failure of a few firms dispels the atmosphere of public confidence which is essential to extended credit. Creditors begin to demand cash payment for their loans ; there is a growing demand for currency; the rate of interest soars; and the old familiar symptoms of a panic appear. In this entire process the blame falls, according to Professor Fisher, primarily upon the failure of the rate of interest to rise promptly in proportion to the rise in prices. If the forces which give inertia to the rate of interest were removed, so that the rate of interest would fluctuate readily with prices, the great temptation to expand business unduly during a period of rising prices would be removed. It may well be conceived that there are other factors, besides the discrepancy between the nominal and real rates of interest, that give to business a temporary or specious profit- ableness, and tend to encourage speculative over-production. But the influence of the rate of interest resembles so closely that resulting trom immigration, that Professor Fisher's explanation is of especial service in the present discussion. ON IMMIGRATION in The rate of interest represents the payment which the entre- preneur makes for one of the great factors of productions capital. The failure of this remuneration to keep pace with the pric.e of commodities in general leads to excessive profits and over-production. The payment which the entrepreneur makes for one of the other factors of production labor is represented by wages. If wages fail to rise along with prices the effect on business, while not strictly analogous, is very similar to that produced by the slowly rising rate of interest. The entrepreneur is relieved of the necessity of sharing any of his excessive profits with labor, just as in the other case he is relieved from sharing them with capital. It would probably be hard to prove that the increased demand for labor results in further raising prices in general, as an increased demand for capital results in raising prices by increasing the deposit currency. But if the demand for labor results in increasing the number of laborers in the country, thereby increasing the demand for commodities, it may very well result in raising the prices of commodities as distinguished from labor, which is just as satisfactory to the entrepreneur. This is exaetly what is accomplished when unlimited immigra- tion is allowed. As soon as the conditions of business produce an increased demand for labor, this demand is met by an increased number of laborers, produced by immigration. Whether or not money wages rose as fast as prices in the years from 1900 to 1907, one thing is certain, they did not rise any faster. That is to say, if real wages did not actually fall, they assuredly did not rise. But the welfare of the country requires that, in the years when business is moving toward a crisis, wages should rise ; not only money wages, but real wages. What is needed is some check on the unwarranted activity of the entrepreneurs, which will make them stop and consider whether the apparently bright business outlook rests on sound and per- manent conditions, or is illusory and transient. If their large profits are legitimate and enduring, they should be forced to share a part of them with the laborer. If not, the fact should be impressed upon them. We have seen that the rate of interest fails to act as an efficient check. Then the rate of wages should do it. And if the entrepreneurs were compelled to rely on the existing labor supply in their own country, the rate of wages would do it. Business expands by increasing the amount of labor utilized, as well as the amount of capital. If the increased ii2 SELECTED ARTICLES labor supply could be secured only from the people already resident in the country, the increased demand would have to express itself in an increased wage, and the entrepreneur would be forced to pause and reflect. But in the United States we have adopted the opposite policy. In the vast peasant population of Europe there is an inexhaustible reservoir of labor, only waiting a signal from this side to enter the labor market to enter it, not with a demand for the high wage that the business situation justifies, but ready to take any wage that will be offered, just so it is a little higher than the pittance to which they are accustomed at home. And we allow them to come, without any restrictions whatever as to numbers. Thus wages are kept from rising, and immigration becomes a powerful factor, tending to intensify and augment the unhealthy, oscilla- tory character of our industrial life. It was not by mere chance that the panic year of 1907 was the record year in immigration. Against this point of view it may be argued that tlie legiti- mate expansion of business in this country requires the presence of the immigrant. But if business expansion is legitimate and permanent, resting on lasting favorable conditions, it .will express itself in a high wage scale, persisting over a long period of time. And the demand so expressed, will be met by an increase of native offspring, whose parents are reaping the benefit of the high standard of living. A permanent shortage of the labor supply is as abhorrent to nature as a vacuum. Expansion of any other kind than this ought to be hampered, not gratified. There is one other way in which immigration, as it exists at present, influences crises. In considering this, it will be well to regard the crisis from the other point of view as a phe- nomenon of under-consumption. Practically all production at the present day is to supply an anticipated future demand. There can be no over-production unless the actual demand fails to equal that anticipated. This is under-consumption. Now the great mass of consumers in the United States is composed of wage earners. Their consuming power depends upon their wages. In so far as immigration lowers wages in the United States, or prevents them from rising, it reduces consuming power, and hence is favorable to the recurrence of periods of under- consumption. It is not probable, to be sure, that a high wage scale in itself could prevent crises, as the entrepreneurs would base their calculations on the corresponding consuming 1 power, ON IMMIGRATION 113 just as they do at present. But a high wage scale carries with it the possibility of saving, and an increase of accumulations among the common people. It is estimated at the present time that half of the industrial people of the United States are unable to save anything. This increase in saving would almost inevitably have some effect upon the results of crises, though it must be con- fessed that it is very difficult to predict just what this effect would be. One result that might naturally be expected to follow would be that the laboring classes would take the opportunity of the period of low prices immediately following the crisis to invest some of their savings in luxuries which hitherto they had not felt able to afford. This would increase the demand 'for the goods which manufacturers are eager to dispose of at almost any price, and would thereby mitigate the evils of the depressed market. It is probably true that the immigrant, under the same conditions, will save more out of a given wage, than the native, so that it might seem that an alien laboring body would have more surplus available for use at the time of a crisis than a native class. But the immigrant sends a very large proportion of his savings to friends and relatives in the old country, or deposits it in foreign institutions, so that it is not available at such a time. Moreover, our laboring class is not as yet wholly foreign, and the native has to share approximately the same wage as the alien. Without the immense body of alien labor, we should have a class of native workers with a considerably higher wage scale, and a large amount of savings accumulated in this country, and available when needed. Congressional Record. 49:666-9. December 14, 1912 Immigration. William Kent It is my desire to submit to this body, in short measure, some of the means whereby the introduction of a vast number of aliens tends to prevent our progress toward real democracy. When we consider the question of Oriental immigration we find our people practically united at the present time as against the introduction of any more race problems into our country. Entirely outside of any economic argument we are convinced that those whose blood may not mingle with ours should not be admitted, for this must necessarily upset our democratic ii 4 SELECTED ARTICLES scheme. Races that can not intermingle must necessarily find themselves in strata, with the superior race superimposed on the inferior. There can be no complete democracy under such conditions, as has been amply proven in the South. Let us consider the economic side of the question, as apart from the vastly important social questions. We have heard a great deal about protected American industries that are being protected for the benefit of American labor, the utter fallacy of which claim has been proven by the facts produced in the steel inquiry and in the investigation of the strike at Lawrence, not to mention the story of the continuing breakdown of livable con- ditions in the coal-mining industry of Pennsylvania and other states. The industries most highly protected have been the most prompt to avail themselves of free trade in labor and the result has been the creation of many industrial hells. History goes to show that it was to overcome the "benevo- lent" assimilation of continually lower grades of foreign labor by protected industries that the contract-labor law was passed. Mr. Carnegie and his protection compeers were rapidly getting to the bottom of the human scale, were getting workmen who would accept lower and lower standards of living, and who through illiteracy were slow to realize why and how they were abused. Just as' fast as the American atmosphere caused a demand for more humane conditions, men of growing intelligence were replaced by others who lacked the enlightenment to demand of a great and prosperous country a fair share of the product of their toil. The necessity for the contract-labor law is the same necessity that confronts us in the general question of exclusion of immigration at the present moment. At a time when labor is struggling through organization and agitation to increase the welfare of the workers in the various trades, a continuing influx of people who do not understand the language nor appreciate nor demand the standard that we are trying to reach, comes in to break down the structure as fast as it is erected. We arc constantly told of the ever-increasing demand for cheap or common labor. Our industrial corporations and our railroads are continually pointing out the need of obtaining people who will work at wages that will not support an American family on any rational basis. While we are striving to raise all the people of the country to a plane where they may live under reasonable American conditions, the work is broken down ON IMMIGRATION 115 by continuing immigration. Here is a conflict that can not be reconciled. Either we must abandon democratic ideals, or else we must stop the influx of those who make the accomplishment of these ideals impossible. We are always hearing and telling of the good old pioneer times when people attended to their own wants. Whoever heard about the dirty work of those days? The work that had to be done was done by the best people in the community and was not regarded as dirty work. We never heard of vast armies of private servants in those days, nor of butlers nor buttons, nor footmen. If every one in the community had not been profit- ably engaged, the result would have been hunger and suffering. Just as long as we can import footmen and butlers and buttons, occupations which no pioneer would accept, some of us insist upon so doing and would bewail the exclusion of persons willing to take up unnecessary tasks. In passing it is well to take note of the fact that some of this work that Americans will not do is really dirty work which ought not to be done ; that there is a vast amount of personal service which ought to' be obviated, and that persons employed in such unnecessary labors must be supported by those produc- tively employed. There is no reason why the work of railway building and track laying, the work of section hands, of street laying, or sewer building should be considered dirty work or below an American standard. These tasks are certainly not harder or more disagreeable than that of the mining of precious metals, in which thousands of native Americans are engaged. If, first of all, employers insist upon an inadequate wage scale, and then the work is called dirty work and deemed socially beneath any but newly arrived immigrants, we may be sure that it is we who have created a demand for conditions that go to destroy democracy conditions that call for continuing importations of people willing to live below what we consider an American standard and, with this constant influx, all our efforts to estab- lish social and economic justice come to naught. The protected sugar industry in the western part of our country and also in the Hawaiian Islands is a remarkable example of this insistence upon an inadequate wage scale as a prerequisite to employment. We find here that the tariff privilege works social damage as well as economic injustice. ii6 SELECTED ARTICLES In whose interest, from our own American standpoint, is the cry raised for ever-increasing multitudes of people that do not understand our institutions, that can not learn nor appreciate their own rights until a vast amount of unpaid labor is extorted from them ? First of all, we find the trans- Atlantic steamship companies making their rake-off from the transportation business. It has jDeen abundantly shown how vigorous they are in their campaign for assisted immigration. There follow the railroads, who can hardly be brought to realize that track laying can be done by the inhabitants already in the country if only adequate wages are paid. I have already noted the wails of the protected sugar industry for any sort of labor that will work cheap. Those holding land for speculation have an obvious interest in filling the country up as rapidly as possible. Everywhere we cast our eyes it is the privileged that have an interest in obtaining cheap labor in forcing the increase in popu- lation. We must ultimately define privilege as any system whereby one man may secure an unfair proportion of the product of another's toil. The argument I have heard on the floor of this house, the argument that I have heard from my earliest recollections of the discussions of this immigration question, is that the for- eigners who come in to accept the so-called menial occupations, to do the so-called dirty work, and thereby displace the Ameri- cans engaged in these pursuits, force their predecessors into higher positions of employment. This may be well upheld as an aristocratic argument but never as a democratic one. We are striving to establish justice all down the scale. All of us can not be statesmen, nor capitalists, superintendents, nor even section foremen, nor mine bosses. If this proposition of pushing our own people up be analyzed clear through it will be shown that it has pushed out at the financial top the parasites known as the idle rich ; that all along the line it has provided an existence for those that prey upon the unpaid toil of the immigrants, whether he be capitalist, padrone, or employment-agency shark. It should be our aim to make every necessary employment a fit employment for our own people, one which we would not feel that our own children were disgraced in pursuing any more than our pioneer ancestors felt disgraced by the tasks they were forced to perform in simpler times. ON IMMIGRATION 117 Taking the question from another angle, no one can doubt but that the relative welfare of our country has been due to its natural resources, that our opportunites have largely come from the possibility of our people scattering out into pioneer conditions and taking up lands in the West. The energetic have usually been able to better their condition by taking on the pioneer life. There was a time when, as a nation with too much land for the popula- tion and weak from our smallness of numbers, we did well to invite the able and energetic to share with us. But the situ- ation is largely changed in this respect. It is hard to find good public land where homesteads may be established, and if the unwholesome congestion of our cities were relieved by placing the surplus population on the land the accommodations would prove still narrower. The time has come when under existing conditions increasing our population is simply watering the capital stock of the nation, granting to each person less and not more of the common wealth. I have no doubt that under different social and economic con- ditions our country could support vastly more people in a higher average of social well-being than it does at the present time, but until we provide conditions different from those that now obtain increases of population simply lead to greater privilege on one side and greater want on the other. Century. 87:392-8. January, 1914 Immigrants in Politics. Edward A. Ross It is in the cities with many naturalized foreigners or en- franchised negroes that the vice interests have had the freest hand in exploiting and degrading the people. These foreigners have no love for vice, but unwittingly they become the corner- stone of the system that supports it. The city that has had the most and the rawest foreign-born voters is the city of the longest and closest partnership of the police with vice. Tammany Hall first gained power by its "voting gangs" of foreigners, and ever since its old guard has been the ignorant, naturalized immigrants. Exposed again and again, and thought to be shattered, Tam- many has survived all shocks, because its supply of raw material has never been cut off. Not the loss of its friends has ever defeated it; only the union of its foes. The only things it fears n8 SELECTED ARTICLES are those that bore from within social settlements, social centers, the quick intelligence of the immigrant Hebrew, stricter naturalization, and restriction of immigration. In every American city with a large, pliant foreign vote have appeared the boss, the machine, and the Tammany way. Once the machine gets a grip on the situation, it broadens and intrenches its power by intimidation at the polls, ballot frauds, vote purchase, saloon influence, and the support of the vicious and criminal. But its tap-root is the simple-minded foreigner or negro, and without them no lasting vicious political control has shown itself in any of our cities. The machine in power uses the foreigner to keep in power. The Italian who opens an ice-cream parlor has to have a victual- er's license, and he can keep this license only by delivering Italian votes. The Polish saloon-keeper loses his liquor license if he fails to line up his fellow-countrymen for the local machine. The politician who can get dispensations for the foreigners who want their beer on a Sunday picnic is the man who attracts the foreign vote. Thus, until they get their eyes open and see how they are being used, the foreigners constitute an asset of the established political machine, neutralizing the anti-machine bal- lots of an equal number of indignant American voters. The saloon is often an independent swayer of the foreign vote. The saloon-keeper is interested in fighting all legal regula- tion of his own business, and of other businesses gambling, dance-halls, and prostitution which stimulate drinking. If "blue" laws are on the statute-book, these interests may combine to seat in the mayor's chair a man pledged not to enforce them. Even if the saloon-keeper has no political ax of his own to grind, his masters, the brewers, will insist that he get out the vote for the benefit of themselves or their friends. Since liberal plying with beer is a standard means of getting out the foreign vote, the immigrant saloon-keeper is obliged to become the debaucher and betrayer of his fellow-countrymen. In Chicago the worthy Germans and Bohemians are marshaled in the "United Societies," ostensibly social organizations along nationality lines, but really the machinery through which the brewers and liquor-dealers may sway a foreign-born vote not only in defense of liquor, but also in defense of other corrupt and affiliated interests. The foreign press is another means of misleading the natural- ized voters. These newspapers Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Greek, ON IMMIGRATION 119 Yiddish, etc., while they have no small influence with their readers, are poorly supported, and often in financial straits. Many of them, therefore, can be tempted to sell their political influence to the highest bidder, which is, of course, the party representing the special interests. Thus the innocent foreign- born readers are led like sheep to the shambles, and privilege gains another intrenching-tool. If the immigrant is neither debauched nor misled, but votes his opinions, is he then an element of strength to us? When a people has reached such a degree of political like- mindedness that fundamentals are taken for granted, it is free to tackle new questions as they come up. But if it admits to citizenship myriads of strangers who have not yet passed the civic kindergarten, questions that were supposed to be settled are reopened. The citizens are made to thresh over again old straw the relation of church to state, of church to school, of state to parent, of law to the liquor trade. Meanwhile, ripe sheaves ready to yield the wheat of wisdom under^the flails of discussion lie untouched. Pressing questions public hygiene, conservation, the control of monopoly, the protection of labor, go to the foot of the docket, and public interests suffer. Some are quite cheerful about the confusion, cross-purposes, and delay that come with heterogeneity, because they think the variety of views introduced by immigration is a fine thing, "keeps us from getting into a rut." The plain truth is, that rarely does an immigrant bring in his intellectual baggage any- thing of use to us. The music of Mascagni and Debussy, the plays of Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the poetry of Rostand and Hauptmann, the fiction of Jokai and Sienkiewicz were not brought to us by way of Ellis Island. What we want is not ideas merely, but fruitful ideas, fructifying ideas. By debating the ideas of Nietzsche, Ostwald, Bergson, Metchnikoff or Ellen Key, American thought is stimulated. But should we gain from the introduction of old Asiatic points of view, which would reopen such questions as withcraft, child-marriage, and suttee? The clashings that arise from the presence among us of many voters with medieval minds are sheer waste of energy. While we Americans wrangle over the old issues of clericalism, separ- ate schools, and "personal liberty," the little homogeneous peoples are forging ahead of us in rational politics and learning to look pityingly upon us as a chaos rather than a people. 120 SELECTED ARTICLES If you should ask an Englishman whether the tone of political life in his country would remain unaffected by the admission to the electorate of a couple of million Cypriotes, Vlachs, and Bessarabians after five years' residence, he would take you for a madman. Suggest to the German that the plane of political intelligence in reading and thinking Germany would not be lowered by the access to the ballot-box of multitudes of Serbs, Georgians, and Druses of Lebanon, and he will consign you to bedlam. Assure the son of Norway that the vote of the Persian or Yemenite, of sixty months' residence in Norway, will be as often wise and right as his own, and he will be insulted. It is only we Americans who assume that the voting of the middle Atlantic states, with their million naturalized citizens, or of the east north central states with their million, is as sane, discriminating, and forward-looking 1 as it would be without them. The Italian historian and sociologist Ferrero, after reviewing our immigration policy, concludes that the Americans, far from being "practical," are really the mystics of the modern world. He says: "To confer citizenship each year upon great numbers of men born and educated in foreign countries ,men who come with ideas and sympathies totally out of spirit with the diverse conditions in the new country ; to grant them political rights they do not want, and of which they have never thought; to compel them to declare allegiance to a political constitution which they often do not understand; to try to transform sub- jects of old European monarchies into free citizens of young American republics over night is not all this to do violence to common sense?" Popular Science Monthly. 66: 166-75. December, 1904 Agricultural Distribution of Immigrants. Robert DeC. Ward Many of the evils resulting from the enormous immigration of aliens into this country during recent years have been much aggravated by the congestion of these aliens in the slums of our large northern cities. For this reason, most of those who have studied the immigration problem seriously have come to the conclusion that if these immigrants could be removed from the slums, and distributed over the agricultural districts of the west and south, all the difficulties which are now met with in ON IMMIGRATION 121 educating and Americanizing these foreigners could easily be disposed of. The vastness of the problem of the city slum, and the impossibility, even with unlimited resources of men and money, of permanently raising the standards of living of many of our immigrants as long as they are crowded together, and as long as the stream of newer immigrants pours into these same slums, has naturally forced itself upon the minds of thinking persons. This note was struck in the last annual report of the Boston Associated Charities in the following words : "With an immigration as unrestrained as at present, we can have little hope of permanent gain in the struggle for uplifting the poor of our cities, since newcomers are always at hand, ignorant of American standards." And in a recent study of the Chicago stock yards strike, in which the miserable conditions are described under which the newer immigrants employed in the yards live, we learn that "from the poorest parts of Bohemia, Poland, Lithuania, and Slavonia, these immigrant* have poured in great overlapping waves into the stock yards. J The standard of living of each wave rises slowly, constantly sucked down by the lower standards of the waves behind." 1 } The only remedies for such conditions are : a considerable restriction of immigration, and (not or) the distribution of the slum population through the agricultural districts of the country. Although congress has repeatedly been asked, in the strongest terms, by very influential bodies of citizens all over the country, to enact further restrictive legislation, no laws at all adequate to .meet the situation have been put upon the statute books. The powerful influences of railroad and steamship companies, and of large employers who want ''cheap" labor, have been able to turn the scale against what the majority of Americans without question believe to be the best for the country. The first of the two remedies above referred to not having been secured, there has been a decided swing of opinion in favor of the second. Any one who reads over recent literature on immigration will find constant reference to the "solution of the immigration prob- lem by the agricultural distribution of our immigrants." That charity workers should have been so long finding out this (sup- posedly) excellent and effective remedy, which is lauded as if it alone were to be the panacea for all the ills resulting from immigration, is much more surprising than that the steamship 1 The italics are the present writer's. 122 SELECTED ARTICLES and railroad interests of this country should be doing their utmost to "boom" it as the one solution of the immigration problem, always carefully concealing their own interest in the matter, which is to increase their receipts through the trans- portation of all these thousands of immigrants, to secure cheaper labor, and to turn public attention away from the need of further restrictive legislation. The advocacy of the distribution plan by those having affiliations with transportation interests, or with enterprises which desire "cheap" labor, especially in the less thickly settled parts of our country, will bear careful watching. The relief which a distribution of the inhabitants of our city slums seems sure to bring to the charity workers and the philan- thropists of our large northern cities, and the fact that such distribution is also being systematically, though not openly, advo- cated by powerful transportation and capitalistic interests, have caused this new idea to be welcomed with great enthusiasm, the selfish and unselfish interests working along the same lines, as is seldom the case in immigration matters. In all this enthusiasm for the new remedy it is natural that there is danger of going too fast and too far; there is a likelihood that we are urging distribution from our congested districts without caring suffi- ciently where the people whom we are anxious to get off our hands go to ; whether the removal will accomplish as much as is expected of it ; whether the people among whom these foreigners are scattered really want them; whether removal on a wholesale scale will not develop new agricultural colonies of aliens in which some of the evils of the slums will be reproduced anew ; -whether the effects of such dispersion on the communities among which the new settlers are located will be for the best of those com- munities in the long run; whether and this is perhaps the most important point of all wholesale distribution will really relieve the city's burden. It is because the writer realizes that distribu- tion is a remedy for existing evils which may well be added to the more fundamental one of a further restriction of immigra- tion, and because he realizes that many persons have advocated the distribution idea without giving it careful thought, that the writer desires to call attention to a few points which need discussion before we go any further in the matter. i. Expense. To scatter the city slum populations on any scale large enough to be at all effective would require vast sums of money, if the thing is done intelligently. It is not enough ON IMMIGRATION 123 simply to pay the fares of hundreds of thousands of persons from the cities to distant points in the west or south, but provision should be made for the new arrivals when they reach their destination, and they usually need care and oversight for a good many years. It is obvious that if immigrants who have just landed can be persuaded, or forced, to go at once into the country districts at their own expense, or at the expense of some railroad or capitalist desiring ''cheap" labor, philanthropic per- sons would be saved the immediate cost of the transportation. It must be remembered, however, that wholesale distribution by railroads or capitalists is not likely to be controlled by a* desire to do what is best for the immigrants, nor for the people among whom they are scattered, but rather by purely selfish interests. Furthermore, the natural tendency of most of our immigrants is to remain in the larger cities, because of their desire to be with large numbers of their fellow-countrymen, because .the majority of the newcomers have very little money and because the cities are the centers for manufacturing and mechanical industries, which are on the whole more remunerative than agriculture. 2. Success thus far attained not altogether encouraging. The attempts which have already been made along the line of the distribution of recent immigrants from our city slums, admir- able as they are, and much as they deserve support, have on the whole been sadly ineffective. The Jewish Industrial Removal Society of New York, with the aid of the Hirsch fund, has distributed many Jewish families in the country, partly in agri- culture, but usually in trade. Last year this society sent more than 3,000 persons to forty-five states, 3 - per cent being on record as having already drifted back into cities. Similar societies are at work in Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston, and the Italian societies are doing the same sort of work. Although in most cases the individuals thus removed have fared better in their new homes than in the slums, yet taken as a whole, the success thus far attained is not so encouraging as to lead thoughtful persons to be sanguine about the entire practicability of carrying 1 out a successful scheme of wholesale distribution along similar lines. And while there have been successes in the past, there have also been many dismal failures, and in almost all such attempts very great difficulties have been met. 3. Most of our neiver immigrants not adapted to an agricul- tural life. It is a mistake to suppose that all immigrants can be i2 4 SELECTED ARTICLES turned into successful farmers simply by sending them into the country. The commissioner of immigration at the port of New York says in his last annual report (1903) : "Thousands of foreigners keep pouring into our cities, declining to go where they might be wanted because they are neither physically nor mentally fitted to go to these undeveloped parts of our country, and do as did the early settlers from northern Europe," and this is especially true of most of the immigrants who, because of the steamship rate war, have been coming over to this country during the summer of 1904 for less than $10 a head. Such a rate makes it possible for the most ignorant and the most depraved inhabit- ants of Europe's slums to come here. Would a railroad fare of say $5 from Chicago to southern California induce the best or the least desirable of Chicago's residents to take advantage of the opportunity to go west? Long residence of successive gen- erations in the ghettoes or Europe has unfitted most of the Jews to be independent farmers ; the Syrians and Armenians take naturally to non-agricultural occupations, and so it is with others. To transform ignorant laborers, with but a few dollars in their possession, into landowners, is not a matter of a day or a year. It involves an expenditure of time and money. It is a matter of the assimilation of the immigrant and of the elevation of his standards of living. Thus, neither the interests of those states which desire immigrants who shall at once buy their land, nor the best interests of the Italian immigrants themselves are met in a wholesale distribution of ignorant farm laborers. 4. Do the country districts want the kind of immigrants zvliom it is proposed to send to them? No distribution of our immigrants should be thought of if the states to which they are to be sent do not welcome them. A few years ago, the U. S. Immigration Investigating Commission asked the governors of the different states what nationalities of immigrants they desired, and in only two cases was any desire expressed for Slavs, Latins, Jews or Asiatics, and both of these two cases related to Italian farmers, with money, intending to become permanent settlers. A canvass of the same kind, made within six months by some gentlemen who are interested in the distribution scheme, showed that these preferences have undergone no appreciable change. In every case, in this recent canvass, the officials protested against the shipment of southern and eastern Europeans from the city slums into their states. In the south today, owing to the lessened ON IMMIGRATION 125 efficiency of the negro, the greater demand for field laborers, and the movement from the country into the towns, the need of pickers in the cotton fields is very great in some sections, and the demand for vast hordes of any kind of laborers even the most ignorant of newly-arrived aliens is referred to in the news- papers. But this demand for the cheapest labor without regard to the effects which the importation of such laborers will have upon the community, apparently comes from a comparatively limited number of capitalists, and from the southern railroads. The majority of the thinking people of the south, if they know something about the evils which have come in the train of the newer alien immigration in the north, will not look with favor upon the wholesale importation of cheap and ignorant alien labor. Several of the southern states have emphatically stated what nationalities of immigrants they want, and their preferences are for people from the northern United States and for nothern Europeans. Thus, South Carolina, concerning which a leading authority on the south has said that there is no state in the Union in which "there is a more general desire for more white men who are willing to work with their hands," has, through its legislature, recently voted that its new commissioner of agri- culture, commerce and immigration must confine his activities in securing new immigrants to ''white citizens of the United States, citizens of Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, France and all other foreigners of Saxon origin." The general demand in the south and west is for the intelligent "settler who has means of pur- chase," not for the newly-arrived, ignorant and penniless immi- grant, who "would require the fostering care of government or of wealthy private societies." The land companies and large private owners of land are in search of purchasers who have resided in the United States for some years and are familiar with American customs, or else of immigrants with some money, coming from northern Europe. To send out to other states thousands of aliens who are not really desired there, simply because we think we can thus relieve ourselves of an unpleasant burden, is much like throwing our weeds over our neighbor's fence, into our neighbor's garden. There doubtless is need of labor in the south today; the Italian is unquestionably well fitted to do much of the work which needs doing ; and in those parts of the southern country where Italians have settled, they have proved their ability and 126 SELECTED ARTICLES willingness to do work at least equal to that of the negro in the cotton-fields ; they are praised as industrious, thrifty, good citizens, frugal, and as having increased land values. On some railroads, also, they are reported as being satisfactory laborers. On the other hand, it must be noted that the most successful settlements have been those of northern Italians ; that the greater desirability of the northern Italian is generally recognized wherever experience has been had with both northern and south- ern Italians, and that thus far the number of Italians in the south has been small and practically none of the less happy consequences of the congestion of separate nationalities have been noted. The favorable reports which have recently been made by Chevaliers Rossi and Rossati as to the conditions and prospects of Italian immigrants in the Mississippi delta; the plans which are being formed for the transportation of tens of thousands of Italians to the southern states, either by the new direct steamship line from Italy to New Orleans or by the train- load from the slums of New York and of other northern cities or direct from Ellis Island it all sounds like an attractive program for the Italians. But does the scheme sound altogether as attractive to those southerners who have the best interests of their own country at heart, and who fully appreciate how grave are the social and political responsibilities which already weigh upon their fair land? The South should think twice before it allows its capitalists and its railroads to flood the country with "cheap"' and ignorant alien laborers. A leading newspaper of the South has recently said that the southern states want no such immigrants as have crowded the east side of New York and the factories of New England. Unless steps are taken by the South to prevent it, much the same conditions may be devel- oped there within a few years. 5. Wholesale distribution soon involves foreign "colonies." One of the objects of the agricultural distribution of our recent immigrants is to prevent the congestion of the different nation- alities in colonies, by scattering these people, as it is said, "among the native population." Now while distribution in country dis- tricts does, of course, in all cases, prevent such congestion as is characteristic of city slums, the tendency for recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe to herd together in settle- ments of their own is almost as marked in the country as in the cities. Moreover, this unfortunate tendency unfortunate because ON IMMIGRATION 127 it retards assimilation is in many cases fostered by philanthropic societies and by railroad and land companies. The following headings, clipped at random from newspapers of recent dates, show how distinctly the much talked of "agricultural distribu- tion" of our newer immigration tends towards the formation of alien colonies. "Poles going to Michigan. The Milwaukee branch of the Polish National Alliance of America has pur- chased 50,000 acres. It is planned to establish other large colonies." "The latest phase of the New Zion problem is to purchase a large tract of land in Wisconsin for the immigrant Jews from Roumania and from Russia." "Jewish colony for Michigan. Russian and Polish refugees to settle on the line of the Escanaba and Lake Superior R. R. They are brought by a committee in New York." "Hungarians coming to Texas. About 500 families from southern Austria to settle on line of Southern Pacific." "Hungarian colony planned. A $200,000 company to establish town sites in Jackson Co., Arkansas. E. E. Barclay, Immigration Agent of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and South- ern R. R., is the chief stockholder." (The last sentence is significant of the moving spirit behind many of these new colonies.) "Russian Jew colony in Alabama. The colony will consist of forty Russian Jew families, and they propose to establish a manufacturing settlement, principally for the making of clothes." And so on, ad libitum. It is obvious that the establishment of such alien colonies is not conducive to thorough and rapid assimilation, and that, if this is the tendency of "agri- cultural distribution," the benefits to be derived from such distribution are certain to be much lessened. 6. Effects upon the sections in which the distribution takes place not always good. To scatter among our rural communities large numbers of aliens whose standards of living are such that they are willing to work for the lowest possible wage, is to expose our native farming population to a competition which is distinctly undesirable. In the corn belt of the west, as Professor T. N. Carver has recently shown, the newer immigrants, because of their lower standards of living, have been able to put more money into land, buildings and equipment than the native American farmer ; and hence have an advantage in the struggle for existence. Scattering our alien population of the more ignorant races simply spreads more widely the evils which result from exposing our own people to competition with the lower 128 SELECTED ARTICLES classes of foreigners. Again, in the case of the agricultural distribution of Italian and other alien laborers through the South, while it is perfectly true that these aliens will supplant the negroes in many probably in most occupations, the effect will undoubtedly be to cause a migration of the negroes to the cities a result which those familiar with the conditions of negroes now congested in cities can not fail to view with the greatest alarm. Lastly, the more widely we scatter the newer immigrants, the more widespread will be the effect of the competition with the lower grades of aliens in causing a decrease in the birth rate among the older portion of our population. American fathers and mothers, as the late Gen. Francis A. Walker first pointed out, and as leading authorities have since reiterated, naturally shrink from exposing their sons and daughters to competition with those who are contented with lower wages and lower standards of living; and therefore these sons and daughters are never born. The agricultural distribution of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and from Asia, will hasten still more the replacement of the native by foreign stock. 7. Agricultural distribution of immigrants will not solve the immigration problem. But few of those who are now urging the necessity of relieving the city slum burden by distributing the slum population realize that such distribution will not, and can not, of itself, lead to any relief, as long as the tide of new immigration flows on unchecked. As Professor John R. Commons, one of the leading authorities on immigration in the United States, has recently said : x To relieve the pressure in the cities without restricting the number admitted only opens the way for a still larger immigration; for, strangely enough, emigration has not relieved the pressure of population in Europe. In no period of their history, with the exception of Ireland, have the popu- lations of Europe increased at a greater rate than during the last half century of migration to America. As a relief for current immigration, agricultural distribution is not promising. 1 The Chautauquan, May, 1904, 224. ON IMMIGRATION 129 Survey. 25:715-16. February 4, 1911 Selection of Immigrants. Edward T. Devine On the main subject the Immigration Commission has spoken clearly and its recommendation should become law. There must be effective restriction and selection for the purpose of main- taining American standards of living. In reply to the demand for a more rigorous selection of immigrants we hear two mutu- ally contradictory assertions. One is that there are not enough immigrants to do any harm after allowance is made for those who return. The other is that we have no standards anyway, [ at least that there is no one who has a right to speak for them, as we are all immigrants of a first, or a later, generation. Both 1 assertions are untenable. There are, in fact, American stand- ards, transplanted in part by those who founded our republic, developed in part on our own soil, influenced by the reaction of other standards in other nations, and yet distinctively Ameri- can : standards moral, political, and economic ; standards unique and precious, worth fighting for; worth, if need be, dying for; worth preserving at all hazards for ourselves and our children, and yet not selfishly for our sake and theirs only, but also as a sacred duty towards mankind; and these standards are gravely imperilled by the annual addition of an unsifted million of new- comers whose standards are different from ours. We do have a right to assert vigorously the value of our national heritage, and, though it may seem old-fashioned to say it, we do have a sacred duty to transmit it unimpaired which is not to say unchanged to our posterity. To some extent this heritage is one of race. Its creators gave it to us with their blood. It has been enriched by many crossings of races, but biologists tell us that mingling within limits is beneficial, beyond those limits productive only of a mongrel and degenerate breed. Let no one read into this expression of national responsibility for American standards a shred of bigotry or prejudice against any of the peoples of the earth. Modern social ideals are neither provincial nor sectarian. It is precisely because of a passionate attachment to the true interests of humanity that social workers may look with profound distrust upon the demand for cheap immigrant labor. Genuine humane sentiment is not inconsistent with the maintenance of community and national standards. 130 SELECTED ARTICLES Employers of the exploiting type make no mistake, from their own point of view, when they demand cheap immigrant labor. They can figure it out with great precision. They know that as a rule this labor is less skillful, less intelligent, less efficient, less inherently desirable, than the native labor or the earlier immigrant labor from more closely related peoples. But there are great compensations. It is the very best labor in one parti- cular. It can be exploited. That is the whole disagreeable truth in a nutshell. Lower wages, longer hours, crowded living quarters, fewer claimants in case of death or injury from acci- dents, less trade union "nonsense," fewer trade disputes, less sympathy from the disinterested public for the laborer's side when there is a dispute, less public concern generally as to what is happening in the mill when the laborers are foreigners such are some of "the considerations which throw the balance in favor of immigrant labor. The wages demanded are enough lower to give an ample margin for more effective supervision. The general tendency of improved machinery is to decrease relatively the demand for skilled labor, thus permitting the profitable employment of fresh supplies of entirely unskilled, but physically strong, immigrants. Out on the railways of the Northwest the first object for which immigrants will strike is for the privilege of working twelve hours instead of ten, and the next is for the privilege of working on Sunday. In this instance employers, paying by the hour and not having expensive mills in operation, resist the demand, for the labor of the eleventh and twelfth hours is relatively unproductive. The men are already exhausted. To laborers of a higher standard the leisure for physical recuperation would be worth more than the small addition to their wages. To these men the money is more important. Here we have a simple, but perfect, illustration of that conflict of standards to which the nation as a whole cannot afford to be indifferent. It is then in the ultimate and in the very immediate inter- ests of the oppressed and struggling everywhere that America should maintain her standards. She may give generously from her surplus. She may enlighterr by her example. She may throw her influence and if necessary exert her might against oppres- sion. But one thing she may not do : extinguish the light with which she is to enlighten the world. To lower our own stand- ards is the only treason. To reduce the position of our work- ingmen to that of the communities from which our immigration ON IMMIGRATION 131 is coming is to destroy, perhaps forever, the very power to serve. There should be no opposition or rivalry between the policy of selection and the policy of. distribution and assimilation by every practicable device. Both are essential. No restriction which is at all likely to be adopted will sensibly diminish the need for such aid both by philanthropy and by government. Good hard thinking as to how best to assimilate those whom we already have and those who are certain to come even under a policy of much more strict selection is of the utmost import- ance. Except for the Educational Alliance, the Industrial Re- moval Society, and the Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants, there has been almost no instructive experiment and scarcely any clear thinking on this subject. Let these ex- periments by all means be greatly extended, but let us be modest about calling any of them as yet a "true solution of the immigra- tion question." Under the conditions of actual life we shall have to deal in partial solutions, among which, as we have intimated, the recommendation of the Immigrant Commission as to restriction deserves prompt and favorable consideration. The illiteracy test is crude and unsatisfactory but it is prac- ticable and humane. As a rule ambitious illiterates desiring to migrate can overcome this disqualification and the fact of their having done so will augur well for their future success in the land of their adoption. Survey. 29:497-9. January 18, 1913 Democracy and the Illiteracy Test. Joseph Lee We shall never have true social and political democracy until the lower standard of living and of wages can be raised far above the present level. It is not a question of a bare living wage but of wages on which not only physical existence but real life can be carried on. I believe the thing can be done. I think we can attain a far higher standard than we have so far even learned to aim at. And I believe it is going to be done. But this end will not be attained by simple legislative fiat. We are not going to get high wages simply by decreeing that wages shall be high. That sort of legislation began, so far as English- speaking countries are concerned, with the Statute of Laborers, back in the time of Edward III of England. The object of that 132 SELECTED ARTICLES statute was not to keep wages up but to keep them down. But with all the prestige and power of the governing classes of those days behind it, it utterly failed because the French wars had so cut down the supply of* labor that the economic laws worked against it. The same has been the history of laws fixing com- modity prices. If the thing could be accomplished so easily it would have been done long ago ; and we should not stop with a living wage but provide that everyone should have comfort and even luxury while we were about it. But we can get the desired result by working in accordance with economic laws. One of these is the law of supply and de- mand. There are limits in any country, at any given time, to the demand for unskilled labor. The wages such workers com- mand will depend largely on the supply of them. So long as every rise of wages in this country operates simply to draw in unskilled labor from the inexhaustible supply at starvation level in the Old World, we shall never raise wages in this country very high. It is like trying to bail out the boat without first plugging up the leak, or rather when the leak is as big as the steamship companies now make it it is like trying to dig a hole in the surface of the ocean itself. In fact, the argument most commonly used for unrestricted immigration is that it is necessary for the development of our industries, that is, to keep wages down and to encourage enterprises dependent on low-priced labor. Secondly, restriction is necessary because it is impossible to assimilate foreign populations in unlimited quantities, and is be- coming increasingly so, as each new layer of immigration comes in contact with American ideals at a constantly greater remove from the original. The net immigration in the past dozen years has probably been about six million or nearly twice as large as the number of people in this country at the time of the Revolution. Restriction of immigration is necessary to the establishing of a democratic standard of wages and of living and to the permeation of the mass by American ideals. The illiteracy test is the best method of restriction that has been suggested. A head tax has the disadvantage of partly im- poverishing the immigrant. To wholly exclude any European race would be a poor method because there is no European race of which the best are not desirable. The critics of the illiteracy test have never suggested or attempted to suggest an efficient substitute. ON IMMIGRATION 133 A very curious argument, perhaps the commonest against the illiteracy test, is that it lets in some undesirables that some had men can read and write. This argument overlooks the fact that the adoption of this test does not exclude the retention or adoption of other tests. We restrictionists have succeeded in having certain of the least desirable classes excluded, such as the insane, the feeble-minded, convicted criminals, white slaves, the physically unfit to a limited extent, and persons likely to become a public charge. The present Senate bill contains clauses to make these exclusions more effective by stopping some of the holes that our liberal immigration friends have found, or made, in present laws. We shall be glad to help in any further practicable exclusion of the least desirable. Mean- time 1 it seems clear that if the illiteracy test is in other respects a good thing, it is not an argument against it that there are some evils which it does not prevent. It might similarly be argued against the prevention of tuberculosis that it is not also a cure for cancer. Indeed, the same argument might be used against the enactment of any law on any other subject. Secondly it is argued that the illiteracy test will keep out some good people. So undoubtedly would any test. That result is unavoidable unless we are to face the alternative evil of the surrender once for all of American standards and Ameri- can ideals. So also the African slave trade brought in some good people. Booker Washington is a product of it. Upon the whole the illiteracy test does exclude the less de- sirable and admit the more desirable. It would be justified as a selective measure even if positive restriction were not necessary to the preservation and advance of American standards. Illiteracy itself is an evil in a democracy. I suppose that is why we teach our own children to read and write. At all events we in Massachusetts have been made to feel by recent events that people who cannot read a newspaper, or be reached by ideas through any channel except by words spoken in their native language, are thereby rendered less amenable to public opinion and less easy of assimilation. And illiteracy among those over school age is a handicap which usually lasts for life. The illiteracy test excludes, upon the whole, those elements of Old World society that are the more backward and the less favorable material for democracy. Education and democracy have always gone hand in hand. It is the more forward and more democratic communities in the Old World that have es- 134 SELECTED ARTICLES tablished education, the more backward and less democratic communities that have not done so. It may not be the fault of the individual in the latter kind of community that he has never learned to read ; but it is the fault of the community itself and an indication of the amount of progress its people have made through all the centuries in democratic government. Italy affords an instance of the sort of selection that will be made. The illiteracy test will exclude only some 5.6 per cent, of the north Italians, the race that produced Columbus, Dante, Michael Angelo, Garibaldi, Mazzini and Cavour. It will, on the other hand, exclude about 42.8 per cent of the very different race of southern Italy, the race that, whatever its merits in other respects, has made, or submitted to, the successive governments of Sicily and Naples, and whose most notable political and social institution of the present day is the Camorra. The illiteracy test, again, will exclude only from I to 2 per cent of the Germans, the Scandinavians, and the inhabitants of the British Isles ; while on the other hand it will exclude some 32 per cent of the people of southern and eastern Europe whose most stable and characteristic political achievement has been the Russian Empire. Which of these two classes would the reader choose if he were starting out to select material for a democracy the people of Florence, Genoa and Lombardy, or those of Sicily and Naples; the German burgher or the Russian peasant? And what will be the effect of the exclusion upon the American stock as it was transmitted to us? Longfellow wrote of the settlement of New England that "God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting." The old stock, North and South, was largely of the cream of the English nation, drawn off at its greatest period. I cannot believe that the average unlettered citizen of Sicily or Naples is its equal in the matter of carrying on successful democracy. ' Congressional Record. 46:4229-31. March 3, 1911 Brief in Favor of the Illiteracy Test. John L. Burnett (a) The illiteracy test would largely cut down the number of undesirable immigrants, thus promoting the assimilation of other immigrants. (&) It would improve the quality of immigration. (c) It is a certain and definite test, easily applied. ON IMMIGRATION 135 (d) Elementary education on the part of immigrants is desir- able. (e) The illiteracy test is demanded by intelligent public opinion. (a) The Illiteracy Test Would Exclude Undesirables 1. It is generally admitted that a large proportion of the aliens coming to us today are not as desirable as the former immigration, which settled the middle and western states. (See report of Commissioner-general, 1909, p. 111-112.) 2. The illiteracy of the various races of immigrants in 1909 was as follows: NORTHERN AND WESTERN EUROPE (CHIEFLY TEUTONIC AND CELTIC) Per cent. Scandinavian 0.2 Scotch 5 Finnish _. 5 English 7 Bohemian and Moravian 1.5 Irish 1.5 Dutch and Flemish 2.6 German 6.3 French 8.0 Italian (North) 8.4 Average of above 3.5 SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE (CHIEFLY SLAVIC AND IBERIC) Per cent. Spanish 10.6 Magyar 10.8 Slovak 19.7 Greek 26. i Croatian and Slovenian 28.7 Hebrew 29.2 Polish 39.9 Russian 41.7 Portuguese 42.3 Bulgarian, Servian, and Montenegrin 46.5 Ruthenian 51.3 Roumanian 52.3 Italian (South) 56.9 Lithuanian 58.2 Average of above 42. i 136 SELECTED ARTICLES OTHER RACES Per cent. Cuban 2.4 African (black) 22.4 Armenian 22.5 Japanese 28.7 Syrian 52.5 Mexican 64.6 Average of above 42.4 From this appears that the illiteracy of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe is over twelve times as great as that of aliens from northwestern Europe, and that the illiteracy of Armenians, Japanese, and Syrians is also high. In 1909 over three-fifths of the total immigration was of these illiterate races. 3. Ignorance of a trade goes hand in hand with illiteracy. Of one group of illiterate aliens arriving in 1909 less than 5 per cent had any skilled occupation, and 94 per cent of those having occupations were common laborers, and of another group 90 per cent were laborers. 4. The illiterate races now coming do not distribute them- selves over the country, but settle in a few states. Thus, of 165,248 south Italians arriving in 1909, 125,139 were destined for Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania; and of 77,565 Poles, 52,375 were destined for the same states. Of 57,551 Hebrews, 46,889 had the same destination. 5. These races not merely tend to congregate in certain states, but in the large cities of those states. The census of 1900, Population, Part I, page 176, shows that, while immigrants of these races which came to us formerly in large numbers settle in the country, immigrants of races now coming herd together in the cities. Thus only one-fourth to one- third of the Scandinavians live in our cities and one-half of the British and Germans. On the other hand, three-fifths of the Italians and Poles and three-fourths of the Russian Jews live in cities. Further, Chicago contained 91 per cent of all the Poles in Illinois and 84 per cent of all the Italians. New York City contained 47 per cent of all the Poles in the state, 80 per cent of all the Italians, and 94 per cent of all the Russian Jews. 6. And even within the large cities the illiterate races tend to herd together in the slum districts. ON IMMIGRATION 137 The seventh special report of the United States Commissioner of Labor (1894, p. 44) showed that natives of Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Russia constituted six times their normal proportion in the slums of Baltimore, seven times in Chicago, five times in New York, and twenty-six times in Philadelphia. It appears also (pp. 160-163) that of every 100 aliens, forty were illiterates in the slums of Baltimore, forty-seven in Chicago, fifty- nine in New York, and fifty-one in Philadelphia, and that the illiteracy of southeastern Europeans in these slums was 54.5 per cent, as compared with 25.5 per cent for northwestern Europeans and 7.4 per cent for native Americans in the same slums. In other words, if an illiteracy test had been in operation since 1882, these slums would now be of insignificant proportions instead of being hotbeds of crime, disease, and pauperism a menace to the immigrants and to the community at large. 7. In part, this tendency to slum life is directly due to ignor- ance of gainful trades. In part, it is due to lack of thrift. That the illiterate races are less thrifty than others appears from the fact that the amount of money brought by immigrants is in inverse ratio to their illiteracy. The report of the Industrial Commission (p. 284) shows that in i goo, while the British and Germans brought from $30 to $40 per capita, the north Italians $22, the Scandinavians $17, the Poles, southern Italians, and Hebrews brought less than $10, although the latter races were mostly single men, and the former brought many children. 8. The illiterate aliens do not have a permanent interest in our country, and seek not liberty but the dollar. This is shown by the absence of naturalization among them. The census of 1900 shows that, of males of voting age, only one-tenth of the British, Germans, and Scandinavians were aliens, as compared with over one-half of Italians and Poles. (b) The Illiteracy Test Would Improve the Quality of Immigration The illiterate races are generally inferior in physique, as appears from the fact many more of them are sent to the hospital on arrival. The census of 1904 shows that an illiteracy test would have excluded 18 per cent of the foreign-born insane over ten years of age and 30 per cent of the foreign-born paupers. The report of the Commissioner-General for 1904 shows that 42 per cent of the alien murderers and 57 per cent of aliens attempt- I 3 8 . SELECTED ARTICLES ing to murder in 1904 were of the relatively illiterate Slavic and Iberic races. The Slavic and Iberic alien criminals constituted, in 1904, 64 per cent of all aliens detained in penal, reformatory, and charitable institutions, and 87 per cent of the alien inmates of such institutions arrived within five years. The recent alarm- ing increase in insanity in New York State is attributed by the State Lunacy Commission to recent immigration. In the state prisons of New York State the number of Italians and Russian inmates doubled from 1906 to 1909. It is not claimed that an illiteracy test would exclude all criminals, for many of them are well educated. But that it would exclude a considerable number appears from the fact that over one-fifth of all foreign-born prisoners in the United States are illiterate. In view of the fact that the present provisions of law specifically excluding criminals are almost impossible to enforce, an illiter- acy test would be of distinct value in this regard. (c) It Is a Certain and Definite Test Easily Applied The Illiterr acy Test Would Save Hardship About 44 per cent of those now excluded are debarred as being "liable to become public charges." In a considerable num- ber of cases the alien can not tell until he arrives here whether he will be debarred on this ground or not. The phrase itself is very elastic. The fact often is determined by evidence obtainable only when the immigrant arrives, such as ability of relatives to support him, pregnancy of immigrant women, and other circum- stances. If an immigrant is debarred, it means often great hardship to him and to his relatives. It is not proposed to abolish the present requirements as to economic sufficiency, but in a very large number of cases those debarred for this cause are also illiterate, and to this extent an illiteracy test would save hardship, and often the separation of families. At present this hardship tends to relax inspection on the part of sympathetic officials. THE ILLITERACY TEST IS DEFINITE One defect in the present law is its vagueness and elasticity, especially as to the class of persons "liable to become a public charge." Ninety per cent of all immigrants are admitted by a primary inspector without further inquiry. When any officials, especially superior ones, conscientiously or otherwise favor a lax ON IMMIGRATION 139 interpretation of the law, its existing provisions are but a small protection to our people. Any change from a lax to a strict interpretation, or vice versa, is unjust to the immigrant. A reading test in any language or dialect the immigrant may prefer is perfectly simple and definite, and can be evaded neither by the immigrant nor by the inspector. An illiteracy test would diminish the work of the boards of special inquiry and give them time for more thorough examina- tion of other cases. THE ILLITERACY TEST CAN BE EASILY AND EFFICIENTLY APPLIED When commissioner at New York, Dr. J. H. Senner, volun- tarily applied the test for three months, and reported that there was no difficulty in using it and no appreciable delay by reason of it. The theory of our immigration laws is that, in the first instance, the steamship companies, for their own protection, will not sell tickets to aliens who they know are inadmissible. Although the steamship companies are prone to take chances on the admissi- bility of an immigrant, and although it has been found necessary to fine them for bringing inadmissible immigrants where such inadmissibility could have been detected before embarkation, yet most of the trouble arises in cases where neither the immigrant nor the steamship company can be certain of the result. With the illiteracy test a part of the law the steamship agents would have no excuse for bringing illiterates, as it would be perfectly simple for them to ascertain the fact of illiteracy at the time of selling the ticket, and the companies could justly be fined if they brought any aliens found to be illiterate. This would probably result not in any great diminution of the numbers of immigrants, but in a great improvement in the quality. If the steamship companies can not bring illiterates, they will seek immigrants who can read. The falling off in the desirable immigration from northwestern Europe has been ascribed by competent authorities to the unwillingness to com- pete with the kind of immigration we are now chiefly getting. One effect of the test would be to improve the sources as well as the quality of our immigration. Further, it is the very ignorant peasants who are now most easily induced to emigrate by unscru- pulous steamship agents by false and misleading statements as to- conditions of employment in this country. 140 SELECTED ARTICLES (d) Elementary Education Desirable in Immigrants Ability to read is now required for naturalization. But the ballot is only one way in which a foreign-born resident affects the community at infrequent intervals. In countless other and more important ways he is affecting the community all the time. The newspapers are the chief source of information as to social, political, and industrial conditions. An immigrant who can not read, unless in very favorable environment, will be assimilated, if at all, much less rapidly than one who can. The ability to read is essential not merely for citizenship but for residence in a democratic state. It helps the understanding of labor conditions and the obtaining of employment under proper environment. Then, again, how can one obey the laws and ordinances, whether penal or sanitary, unless he can read them? One diffi- culty experienced today in our large cities in enforcing sanitary regulations and preventing epidemics is the illiteracy of large masses of the immigrant population. At the present day even manual employment is conducted in a manner which makes the ability to read desirable, if not indis- pensable. Time slips, records of all kinds, are more and more used in factories and shops, and the ability to read and write is necessary for all but the lowest grades of labor. (c) Tlie Illiteracy Test Is Demanded by the People No single proposed addition to our immigration laws has received the indorsement accorded to the illiteracy test. Bills to enact it into law have passed one or the other House of Congress seven times since 1894, usually by very large votes. It has been advocated in party platforms and presidential messages ; by the Farmers' Educational and Cooperative Union, representing some 3,000,000 farmers of the country, who do not want as farm help the kind of immigrants we are now receiving; by the American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor, by the patriotic societies, by the boards of associated charities, and by thousands of other organizations and individuals in all parts of the country. Four thousand five hundred petitions in its favor were sent to the Fifty-seventh Congress. A recent canvass of leading citizens, whose opinion was not known before- hand, showed that 93.1 per cent favored further selection of immigration, and 81 per cent advocated the illiteracy test. ON IMMIGRATION 141 The Immigration Commission, which has been studying the question for nearly four years, says in the statement of its con- clusions (p. 40) : "The commission as a whole recommends restriction as demanded by economic, moral, and social consid- erations. ... A majority of the commission favor the read- ing and writing test as the most feasible single method of restricting undesirable immigration." The majority in this case consisted of eight out of nine members of the commission. (f) General Remarks It is often said, "A man is not a better man because he can read or write." It is not claimed that ability to read is a test of moral worth or even in some cases of industrial value. But, in framing law for selecting immigrants, as in framing any law of classification, we have to consider classes, not individuals. Taking the world as it is, we find, on a broad view, that the illiterate races, and especially the illiterate individuals of those races, are the ones who are undesirable, not merely for illiteracy, but for other reasons. Those who are ignorant of language are, in general, those who are ignorant of a trade, are of po'or physique, are less thrifty, tend to settle in the cities and to create city slums, tend to become dependent upon public or private charity, even if not actual criminals and paupers, have little permanent interest in the country, and are unfitted for citizenship in a free and enlightened democracy. An illiteracy test would undoubtedly shut out some unobjec- tionable individuals, but the absence of it is causing untold hard- ships to thousands already in the country. Let the immigrant who seeks to throw in his lot here take at least the trouble to acquire the slight amount of training necessary to satisfy this requirement, and thus show that he appreciates the advantages he seeks to share. Journal of Education. 80:567-70. December 10, 1914 Literacy and the Immigrant. W. D. Parkinson Some degree of restriction we are all agreed upon. At any rate, the nation has already set up restrictions and there is little prospect that it will ever venture to remove them without sub- stituting others. Some basis must be sought that is not incon- 142 SELECTED ARTICLES sistent with the spirit of the great experiment itself. Any accep- table check must, too, be capable of ready application, and it must also be in some degree a test of qualification. That is, it must tend in the main to admit those who possess in a superior degree desirable qualifications for promoting our main experiment, and it must in the main tend to include those who possess those quali- fications in inferior degree. No test will ever be found which will admit only the fit and exclude only the unfit. No human inge- nuity has ever devised such a perfectly discriminating line as that. All that can be hoped is that the test shall operate in general to admit desirables and to exclude undesirables. There are two kinds of qualification for immigration both of which are of vital concern to this country. One is the kind which it is possible to impart after arrival. The other is the kind that must either be brought with the immigrant or be permanently waived in his case. Racial qualifications are of the latter kind. So are physical qualifications and mental qualifications, generally speaking. No one objects to the exclusion of the feeble-minded and of those afflicted with transmissible disease or with infirmity that disqualifies for self-support, or of those known to be morally delinquent. But to exclude these does not meet the main question. The ability to use a written language has been proposed as an available test. The proposal has called forth many sentimental protests, but its practical effect has received little attention. It, like all other tests, will admit some undesirables and exclude some desirables. The determining question should be whether in the main it would discriminate favorably to a safer class of immigrants. It is said that literacy is not a test of ability and this is true. It is said it is not a test of ability to earn a living. This also is true. It is not even a sure test of intelligence. It is, however, a test of certain serious obstructions in the way of success of our great experiment, so serious that our states are just awakening to the necessity of attempting at very large expense to remove them. Is it best to invite those who bring us burdens that must be re- moved, equally with those who are glad to come without them? We in America have had our seasons of over-valuing the ability to read and write. Our schools are in process of reaction from an excessive emphasis upon it. Nevertheless written language is itself a useful tool, and the ability to use one of some sort or other does signify something ON IMMIGRATION 143 in civilized society ; and recent developments ought to awaken the country to the fact that these affairs are of considerable moment to the success of our great experiment. No one questions that ability to read and write our own language constitutes a qualification for American citizenship, but this is a qualification that can be acquired after arrival. It is, however, a much easier and a much less expensive task to impart that ability to those who are already familiar with another written language than to begin at the beginning. The difference of cost in dollars and cents between the task of teaching the English language to tens of thousands of immigrants who know nothing of written language and that of teaching the same language to similar numbers of those who do, and the difference in the success of the undertaking in the two cases, are enough to count for something in making our choice between the two classes of immigrants. But the ability to read and write constitutes a qualification for assimilation in a much larger sense than this. The revelations of disorder in our mining regions, of anarchy in some of our manu- facturing cities, of uncivilized conditions in constructive camps, and of degradation in city slums and in those rural districts which the immigration population has inundated, have led several states to appoint commissions to study the conditions of the immigrant population and the methods being employed to introduce them to American institutions. That there is need of some more intelli- gent and adequate method of making these people understand us and our ways and our disposition towards them, and of making us understand them and their disposition toward ourselves and our institutions and laws, is the invariable report of such com- missions and the universal verdict of those who have given atten- tion to the question. We were going on our way rejoicing, assum- ing that our free air was transforming fugitives from all the nations of the earth into full grown Americans, when we sud- denly discovered that there were in our midst destructive forces threatening to overthrow our institutions. Whole populations from backward portions of the old world, bringing with them their own standards of living, their own social customs, their in- grained suspicions of government, have settled themselves like a swarm of flies upon communities unprepared to receive them. Unaccquainted with our institutions, trespassing in their ignor- ance, bewildered by the measures employed to guard against their tendencies, often misjudged, often exploited, unable to under- 144 SELECTED ARTICLES stand and equally unable to make themselves understood, they are thrown back upon their old-world methods of self-preservation. Communities thus awake suddenly to find themselves powerless to enforce American standards. The residents who have given character to the community move out and leave the field to the element that exploits the ignorant. Mary Antin moves from Dover Street to Roxbury and is troubled that her new neighbor, helpless to meet the changing conditions, herself moves from Roxbury to some section a little farther up the line. The marvelous stories of Riis and Steiner and Mary Antin and Rihbany, inspiring as they are, yet make it plain not only that we are treating masses of adult and illiterate immigrants with abominable cruelty because we have not the means of protecting them, but that by inviting their presence under such conditions we are giving free reign to a corrupt and corrupting element in our own population. Why these conditions? Because the immi- grants coming in such masses have not understood us nor we them; because our institutions have been misinterpreted to them. Because, indeed, we have left the interpretation to those who chose to undertake the task, who had means of communicating with them that we had not, and that we disdain ; and because the self-appointed interpreters have not themselves appreciated our democracy. In the next few years, there will be great endeavor upon the part of our states and municipalities to devise means for doing systematically and intelligently this work of interpretation. The day of haphazard policy is past. And when the task is seri- ously undertaken, it will be found that the problem is a vastly different and more difficult one in the case of peoples who can be reached by writing and print than in the case of those who can be reached only by word of mouth. Given two. distinct masses of strangers to our ways and our purposes, one of which cannot be reached by printed matter, to the individuals of which mails do not carry, circular letters mean nothing, printed warnings, posted notices, directions, proclamations and laws, even street signs and inscriptions have no significance, and the other of which can be reached individually and collectively by writing or by print, and it must be evident to anyone that the two present to the nation in its attempt to assimilate them and to make them safe recruits to our social system two very different problems, one vastly more difficult than the other. Some humorist has defined a pessimist as a person who being ON IMMIGRATION 145 offered the choice of two evils, takes both. Having thrust upon it these two difficult problems, shall the nation choose between them or shall it undertake them both? To choose the easier one and refuse the other would simplify the task. It would, at the same time, limit to a degree the already too rapid influx of im- migration with its attendant evils of lowered standards of living and racial antagonisms. Even if we have resources to spare for solving just such problems, might we not better employ them with complete efficiency upon one of these two, and if there is any surplus, devote it to improving conditions in the benighted re- gions of our own land, instead of inviting other millions to come and be experimented upon while we continue to neglect our own? The literacy test is not a sure test of character. It is not even a sure test of industrial efficiency, or of economic stability. But it does determine better than any other test yet proposed a certain qualification of the immigrant for socialization and Americaniza- tion in the mass. It does this without throwing the balance the wrong way as regards the moral, industrial, or economic factors. For whatever doubt there may be as to the inferiority in these particulars of the illiterate masses, no one has yet been heard to claim for them a superiority over the literate. The literacy test has, moreover, the great advantage of being readily applicable at the point of departure as well as at arrival, and of being equally applicable to all, independently of other considerations of condi- tion or fortune or race or caste. NEGATIVE DISCUSSION North American Review. 199:866-78. June, 1914 Crux of the Immigration Question. A. Piatt Andrew It is easy to echo the cry of prejudice if you happen to be of Anglo-Saxon descent, and to assume an air of superiority and denounce the Italians, Greeks, Poles, Bohemians, and Russian Jews, as if they ranked somewhere between man and the beast, but were not yet wholly human. The same intolerant attitude of mind among the Anglo-Saxon Puritan settlers of early colonial days led to the whipping, imprisonment, banishment, and even hanging of Quakers and others of unlike religious beliefs. If you share these prejudices today, walk some Sunday afternoon through the galleries of the art-museums in our large cities and note who are the people most interested in their treasures ; inquire at the public libraries who are their most appreciative patrons ; visit the night schools and observe who constitute their most eager classes; study the lineage of the ranking students in our universities and you will find that our libraries, art-galleries, universities, and schools often find their best patrons among the offspring of these despised races of southern and eastern Europe. There is no evidence that the newer immigrants are inferior i to the old. It is only the recurrence of a groundless prejudice which makes some people feel so. But even if the new immigra- tion is not inferior in character to the old, we have still to ask whether there is not a menace in the very numbers of the immi- grants now coming in. We hear a great deal these days about the alarming increase in immigration. We are told that more than a million foreign-born are coming into this country every year, that the number is increasing as never before, and that the country cannot absorb so great an influx. What are the facts in this regard? As to the amount of recent immigration, the tide ebbs and flows with the alternating advances and recessions of business, and the tendency is for each successive wave to reach a higher 10 148 SELECTED ARTICLES level than its predecessors. In 1854 a record of 428,000 arrivals was established; then there was a great recession, and in 1873 a new high level of 460,000 was reached. The next wave cul- minated in 1882 with 789,000, and in 1907 the highest of all immigrant records was reached, 1,285,000. During the last ten years the average number of immigrants arriving in this country has not fallen much short of a million per year, and this figure considered by itself does look portentious. One must bear in mind, however, that it represents only one side of the ledger and is subject to very heavy deductions. If you are Teekbning the extent to which your property has increased during a given period, it does not suffice merely to count up the income. You must also deduct the outgo. f And if you are reckoning the actual addition to our population which results from immigration, if you would have in mind the actual number of immigrants that we have had to absorb, you must take account of both sides of the ledger, of the outgo as well as of the income. During the last six years the number of departing aliens has been carefully collated, and it appears that from 400,000 to 700,000 aliens depart from the United States every year. This leaves a net balance of arriving aliens of only about 550,000 per year, or only about one- half of the total that is commonly cited as representing the annual influx. Even this figure may look precarious, however, until we have considered it in its appropriate relations and com- parisons. The capacity of the country to assimilate the incoming thou- sands without any serious modification of our institutions or standards depends in part upon two conditions : first,, upon the proportion which the aliens bear to the resident population by which they are to be absorbed, and, second, upon whether the country is already approaching the saturation point as regards the density of its population. Now the proportion of foreign- born in our total population has not varied much in recent decades, 1 and even in the record year of 1907 the percentage of immigrants to population was lower than it has been on several other occasions during the past sixty years. As compared with the population of the country the immigration of recent years 1 PERCENTAGE OF FOREIGN-BORN IN TOTAL POPULATION 1860 13-2 1890 14.7 1870 14-4 JQOO 13.6 1880 .' 13.3 iQio 14-7 Thirteenth Census of the United States. Abstract, page 80. ON IMMIGRATION 149 has not bulked as large as the immigration of the early fifties, 1 and if we consider only the net immigration, it makes today an addition to the total population of the country of only a little more than one-half of i per cent per year. Nor need one fear that we are reaching the point in this country where population presses upon the means of subsistence. The number of our people will have to be multiplied sixfold to equal the density of the population of France, to be multiplied tenfold to equal that of Germany or that of Italy, and to be multiplied eighteenfold to equal that of England. If the present population of the whole United States were located in the State of Texas alone, there would still not be two-thirds as many inhabitants per square mile in that state as there are today in England. One must, indeed, have little faith in the future of the United States who, in the face of such comparisons, believes that the population of this country as a whole is approaching the saturation point, or that from the standpoint of the country as a whole we need be terrified by the dimensions of present immi- gration. It amounts in annual net to little more than one-half of i per cent of our present population, and that population will have to increase many hundred per cent before we have reached a density remotely approaching that of any of the leading countries of Europe. There will, of course, always be timid Americans who will wonder how we can possibly hope to assimilate foreigners to the extent of as much as one-half of i per cent of our population per year and who would prefer to see the country relatively weak and undeveloped than run the risk of continuing the experiment. When Jefferson proposed to purchase all of the great territory west of the Mississippi known as Louisiana, the citizens of Boston organized a public meeting to protest against the project. They thought it would destroy the relative influence of New England in the country's affairs, and they thought that the United States could not assimilate so vast a territory; and though their fears have been proven not only groundless but absurd by subsequent history, there are many still in Boston and elsewhere in the country who feel that our powers of assimila- i PERCENTAGE OF INCREASE OF FOREIGN-BORN DECENIALLY 1850-1860 84.4 1880-1890 38.5 1860-1870 34.5 1890-1900 ii. 8 1870-1880 20.0 I900-I9IO 30.7 Thirteenth Census of the United States. Abstract, page 80. 150 SELECTED ARTICLES tion have now reached their limit of capacity and ought not to be further taxed. There will, of course, always be Americans absorbed in history arid genealogy who will sigh for the good old days when America was only a sparsely settled fringe of seaboard states, and who will wish that the population of the country might still consist of the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution, the Colonial Dames, and the Sons of the Colonial Wars. This might, indeed, have been a pleasant condition from certain points of view, but of one thing we may be certain : this country today would not be settled from coast to coast; our cities would not be a fifth of their present size ; our powers as a nation and our prosperity $ as individuals would only have been a fraction of what they are . had immigration been prevented. American Economic Review. 4:93-108. March, 1914 Some Aspects of the Immigration Problem. Max J. Kohler Professor Henry P. Fairchild, in his newly published work on "Immigration" unlike most other recent restrictionist writers who have commonly followed in the wake of the Immigration Commission, out-heroding Gen. Walker, argues that until our Revolutionary War, we had practically no "immigration" at all, the arrivals being substantially all "colonists" of English or allied stock, Protestant in creed, and therefore homogeneous and Eng- lish; that then our American institutions were established, and the immigrants who have since come over, being of other race or creed, have jeopardized our American institutions, economic, political, and social ; and have merely prevented a corresponding or even greater native growth, which, presumably, because of the "superior" English stock, would have accomplished far more than even the old immigration accomplished. From historical investigations, however, we learn a different story. Bancroft, many years ago, said : "The United States were severally colonized by men in origin, religious faith, and purposes as varied as their climes." Differences in language, customs, education, and views, on the one hand, and lack of assimilative agencies here, on the other, made the Germans, Swiss, Swedes, Dutch, and Irish immigrants coming over before 1881 no whit less easy to assimilate than are the new immigrants ON IMMIGRATION 151 in our own day : and the extent and degree of these differences Vnd difficulties were emphasized again and again, about sixty years ago, by Know-nothings and their predecessors, in substan- tially the same terms used by the restrictionists, in our own day. In the former period the "Teutonic stock theory" was not available as a test of desirability of immigrants, because mem- bers of this great stock were then being abused by the provin- cialists, but today, consistency presumably requires that the Irish be placed in the Teutonic class. The period from 1820 to 1881 was marked by a continuance of the same stream of immigrants that had characterized the earlier period, except that the numbers became somewhat greater, by reason of financial depression abroad, famines, and occasional political and religious unrest, on the one hand, and superior in- dustrial and political opportunity here, on the other. Kapp, writing as far back as 1870, well said that "the territory which constitutes the present United States owes its wonderful develop- ment mainly to the influx of the poor and outcast of Europe;" and he noted a fact which could be fully recognized only since we began to collate accurate statistics of emigration from the United States in 1907 that "bad times in Europe regularly increase, and bad times in America invariably decrease, immi- gration." The figures he presents as to the illiteracy of the immigrants of 1868, made up almost wholly of German, Swiss, Irish, Scotch, and English, are interesting as being substantially the same as prevail today; 7,397 immigrants for whom positions were secured, out of 31,143, could neither read nor write, there being 3,096 illiterate males out of 18,114, and 4,301 females out of 13,029. There were 2,714 Irish, Scotch, and English illiterates out of 9,269; and out of 23,315 Irish, Scotch, and English female servants 7,682 could neither read nor write. During the period from 1821 to 1881 over 10,000,000 immi- grants came to this country, and in the period from 1881 through 1910 over 17,000,000 more, these figures making no allowance for returning immigrants or immigrants coming again. The average of 13,802 per year for the decade 1820 to 1830 rose to 59,913 per year for the following decade, and to 171,235 per year be- tween 1841 and 1850, 259,524 per year the next decade, then fell to 231,482 to rise again in successive decades to 281,219, 524,661, 368,756, and to 879,539 per year for the last decade.- In 1842 the hundred-thousand mark was passed, and in 1905 the 152 SELECTED ARTICLES million mark. The reports of the Commissioner General of Im- migration show that from 1820 to 1912 the various countries sent us immigrants in the following numbers : 1820-1912 Since 1881 Netherlands 190,954 143,746 France 487,504 171,262 Switzerland 244,364 155,052 Scandinavia 2,014,245 1,603,178 Italy 3,426,377 3,345,096 Germany ' 5,411,444 2,359,469 Great Britain and Ireland 7,95 1,671 3,410,049 Austria 3,5 io,379 a 3,429,634 Russia 2,712,316 2,704,815 Other countries 3,661,000 a Since 1861 These figures show that although the countries of northern and western Europe no longer furnish the same percentage of immigrants as before 1881, they continue sending appreciable numbers ; and, on the other hand, they indicate that the coun- tries of southern and eastern Europe had sent us some immi- grants long before 1881. They reflect also the great economic development of the countries of western and northern Europe, which accounts for decrease of immigration from there, and the economic backwardness and religious and political per- secution of the southern and eastern countries. Of the immigrants of the period 1899-1910, 26.7 per cent of those fourteen years old or over could not read or write (35.8 per cent of the new immigrants and 2.7 per cent of the old). The percentage of illiteracy in each group was as follows : South Italians 53.9 Bohemians and Moravians .... 1.7 Hebrews 26. English i. Polish 35.4 French 6.3 Lithuanians 48.9 Germans 5.2 Croatians and Slovenians 36.1 North Italians 1 1.5 Greeks 26.4 Irish 2.6 Russian 38.4 Welsh 34.9 The government figures for the fiscal year of 1912 show that 63 per cent of the immigrants for that year were males, and that 21 per cent of the males over 14 years old were illiterate, and nearly 25 per cent of the females. The Immigration Com- .mission, in its report on "Emigration Conditions Abroad" shows, however, that the percentage of literacy among the immigrants ON IMMIGRATION 153 from southern and eastern Europe is very much higher, in general, than that for those foreign countries at large, indicating that we still get the more intelligent and enterprising of such races. Even in these countries, people are now reasonably familiar in practice with the exercise of the suffrage and repre- sentative government. It is time that we turned to authorities who are familiar with the new immigrants in our midst, their past experiences here, and the agencies open to Americanize them, for light on this problem. Immigrants from nearly all of the various races from southern and eastern Europe have been settled here for many years, and we learn almost uniformly that there has been little difficulty in Americanizing and assimilating them. When we turn, to a study of the genesis and potency of the agencies provided for the assimilation of the immigrant, his Americanization and improvement, we notice that nearly all have been developed during the past few decades, and were unavail- able to the old immigrant. Even educational facilities for the immigrant were formerly most elementary and inadequate, while we have today night schools with special immigrant classes, social settlements and educational alliances, industrial, trade and vocational schools, instruction in civics, improved foreign news- papers, and public lectures in foreign language. Federal and state bureaus of information for immigrants and resident laborers, employment bureaus, immigrant aid societies, immigrant service of the Young Men's Christian Association and of other church organizations, and such organizations as the Italian Immigrant Bureau, the Industrial Removal Office, the HeWw Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, the Baron de Hirsch Fund, and other similar organizations throughout the land, do effective work in Americanizing the immigrant, finding employ- ment for him at good wages, overcoming tendencies towards con- gestion, effecting distribution, and promoting acquisition of American standards of living and thinking. Of course, such agencies deserve and require unlimited extension and develop- ment; and in a number of our states, regulative legislation is badly needed, especially as applying to mining and labor camps. In the light of these agencies the unbiased student cannot but conclude that the assimilative process today, even among the newer races in question, is far more potent than it was in the 154 SELECTED ARTICLES old immigration. Mr. Bryce, in the new edition of his "Ameri- can Commonwealth" sums up the philosophy of this process : The point in which the present case of race fusion most differs from all preceding cases, is in the immense assimilative potency of the environment. The effigy and device, so to speak, which the American die impresses on every kind of metal placed beneath the stamp, is sharp and clear. The schools, the newspapers, the political institutions, the methods of business, the social usages, the general spirit in which things are done, all grasp and mould and remake a newcomer from the first day of his arrival, and turn out an American far more quickly and more completely than the like influences transform a stranger into a citizen in any other country. These things strengthen the assimilative force of American civil- ization, because here the ties that held the stranger to the land of his birth are quickly broken and soon forgotten. His transformation is all the swifter and more thorough because it is a willing transformation. William D. Howells has said: "I believe we have been the better, we have really been the more American, for each succes- sive assimilation in the past, and I believe we shall be the better, the more American, for that which seems the next in order." Mr. Bryce also suggests that nearly all "the instreaming races are equal in intelligence to the present inhabitants;" that a blending of races tends to stimulate intellectual fertility ; and that the Jews, Poles, and Italians are likely to "carry the creative power of the country to a higher level of production" than it has yet reached. He also notes that "today, most of the hard, rough toil of the country is everywhere done by recent inhabitants from central or southern Europe. The Irish and the urban part of the German population have risen in the scale, and no longer form the bottom stratum." As to attempted compara- tive valuations of races, we should not forget Professor Royce's^ scathing analysis of the phenomenon in his "Race Questions and Provincialism and Other American Problems." It is in initiat- ing and developing salutary public and private agencies for distributing and Americanizing aliens, that a true solution of the immigration problem can be found. ON IMMIGRATION 155 Century. 73:633-8. February, 1907 Human Side of Immigration. John Graham Brooks Let me first put my thesis into the form of a personal experi- ence a day's tramp in southern Italy to see the peasantry at work in the poorer farming districts. In Naples I was encour- aged to do this by an Italian who had come back after seven years of successful fruit-vending 1 in Boston. In one of the lower suburbs he had restored the poor shanty of his boyhood to something like luxury. His father, mother, and a crippled sister lived there amid comforts that were like the chink of gold to a local emigrant agent, who had only to point to this household as the most persuasive of object-lessons. "I can sell more tickets," he said, "by showing such homes as that than by all my other advertisements put together. From his commission business in Naples Nello comes out here once a week, and is always ready to tell them what he did in Boston, arid what his two sisters earn in the market gardens at Arlington. These restored homes, together with the money and letters pouring in from the States, are filling the ships with emigrants." Nello was eager for the tramp into the country. He wished to show me the contrasts between the life of the farm laborer there and that of the Italian immigrant in America. We both had in mind the wages, clothing, food, and housing of Italian men and women at work upon the soil and in fruit industries about Boston. Less than an hour by rail from Naples, we found the workers at their tasks. In no tested case was the day's wage more than a third of what is paid with us ; in others it was not a fourth, and in extreme cases, a fifth. The contrast in food and clothing was sharper still. If we include the huts in which they slept, we have the measure of the "standard of living" there and here. It seems to me an understatement to say that the standard is three times as high with us. Indeed, if one were to select an Italian colony in some of the California fruit regions, the contrast can have no statistical expression whatever. The lower estate is, as upon the farm to which I went, essentially that of slaves toiling on the bare outer margin of physical existence. The higher estate (as in Sonoma county) is that of almost boisterous suc- cess. The courage, hope, gaiety of the Italian in that charmed 156 SELECTED ARTICLES western valley are fairly flaunting. On a large farm east of Rome, yet so near that I could see St. Peter's dome^ the field hands had every mark of half-fed and over-weighted animals. Listless, heavy-footed, they were drudging for their 30 cents with no more interest than that of the ox which one of them goaded on. Here, too, were living several families released from debt, mortgages, and rents by fathers and children in America. One home had become the envy of the little village, restored by the father, who had come back to stay. More than the dollars, he had brought back ideas about sanitation, about the school, about gardening, and specially about methods of marketing fruit that made him a power in the community. If we multiply the influ- ence of this man in Europe by many thousands, we have a glimpse at least of the neglected side of immigration problems. Simple as these incidents are, they gave me, eight years ago, the first hint of what I had never heard discussed the reactions of our immigration on other countries. Pro and con, for half my life, I had heard the dispute over the immigrant, as if his values were alone determined within our national bounds. By a chance meeting in the streets of Naples, I was led to see the human or world-side of this influence. A friend who has journeyed much in eastern Europe, from which increasing numbers of our immigrants have come during the last fifteen years, tells me that no single influence in those countries has so much hope in it as the "rebound of the emi- grant," not alone the cash remittance, but the steady current of cheering messages which the mail also brings. Here, too, an increasing number return to stay; and Mr. Watchorn, traveling on government service a dozen years in Europe before he was given charge at Ellis Island, tells me that one never sees what the problem means for humanity until he looks upon the com- munities that are helped and uplifted on the other side. "It is, if taken as a whole," he says, "the greatest influence for civili- zation among men." A fact so momentous for good is surely not to be omitted in any discussion of immigration. An ardent student of this subject to whom I went for light said to me : "Of course that larger side is important, but we cannot consider it practically, because American interests alone must influence us." I knew this answer would come. It is drearily familiar, and it is also embarrassing, because there is so much truth in it. But are we never to out- grow it, are we not even to modify it? The ethics of the tribe ON IMMIGRATION 157 and the village are far behind us ; even the ethics of the state no longer satisfy us. Two years ago, in a southern city, I heard a scholar applauded by Virginians for saying, "The state-line must no longer limit our sense of citizenship. Greater than the state is the nation. We shall not love Virginia less for loving the nation more." A gentleman of the South, sitting behind me, whispered: "It marks a great change to hear this audience respond to a speech like that." We should delight in the direction of the change, but the larger national boundaries do not set the limit of sympathies. We are still reveling in the ethics of nationalism; yet that, too, must some day appear as narrowly provincial as tribal ethics now seem. That immigration is slowly preparing us for that larger citizenship seems to me assured. By sneer contact it is wearing away the very superstitions that have I made peoples hate and despise one another. Maeterlinck has /said it well, "Hells are made out of our human misunderstandings." I am far from suggesting that we have outgrown national ethics, much less that we hasten to act primarily from the world point of view. The manageable good of the United States will rightly be our first and chief concern. But why should we accept this flinty assump- tion that in this or that particular our national well-being so necessarily conflicts with a good larger than our own? This assumption, acted upon, has been the main check in the world's civilizing. Nothing is easier than to show that most of the historic fears of immigration into this country have been mistaken. It was assumed as early and by as enlightened a man as Governor Win- throp that our own development would be endangered by the coming of "strangers." More definitely still, since 1787, we have had one varying succession of forebodings as to the coming evils of immigration. They never really arrive, but they are always lurking there in the future. I asked several genuine restrictionists among the delegates at the recent Immigration Conference in this city why they feared immigration. They agreed that they could point to no observable evil thus far, but it certainly would arrive, if we did not put up the bars. It was admitted that enormous undertakings were everywhere waiting for more labor, and were quite dependent upon it. "But think of a million coming in a single year!" Here is the ghost that for a century and a half has worked on our imagination. When 20,000 came in a single year, many wise people were 158 SELECTED ARTICLES alarmed, and for precisely the same reason that the people are now alarmed. "How could we assimilate such masses?" "How could the American standard be maintained in the face of these multitudes?" "What will become of the wages of the laborer?" So many immigrants came without their wives, they would send their money back to Europe." "Bred under other political and religious systems, how could harmony be long preserved?" Before the nineteenth century came in, Washington and the Federalists generally were afraid of immigration. In 1812, at the Hartford Convention, many of the ablest men thought we had inhabitants enough of our own. Even Jefferson was pretty nearly hysterical in his fears of immigration. Coming down to 1826, when the foreign observers I have mentioned begin to come, there is a successive chronic alarm reported among our most thoughtful people because of this swelling tide of foreigners. "What can we do with 55,ooo people a year?" As we look back upon the tempest of savage prejudice in the middle of the century against the Irish and the Catholics, riots, a convent and two churches burned to the ground, we feel that the "Know-Nothing" fury was appropriately named. They were as bat-blind to their own interests as to the interests of foreigners. What prejudice, too, against the Germans who flocked here after the revolution of '48! Would they not subvert the very principles of our government? What a light is thrown on these fears when we look today at the German city of Milwaukee and the American city of Philadelphia, not forgetting that such political shame as Milwaukee has had was under an American boss, and not under a German. In the earlier years, moreover, there was no effective attempt made to exclude the unfit in any sense. A steady stream of criminals and physically unfit poured into the country, and doubt- less brought us much harm, yet the absorbing power of this country has been beyond the wildest calculation. Our immigra- tion, taken as a whole, has been rapidly assimilated, and has probably raised the standard of living rather than lowered it. If the exception be made to certain choked conditions in the larger cities, I do not believe that we assimilated our immigrants more easily in those earlier days than we are now doing, for the reason that the number and variety of industries has so enor- mously increased. Think of the assimilation power of 8,000 ON IMMIGRATION 159 industries at present, as against three or four hundred industries in those days! Barring, again, exceptional centers into which unskilled labor has dropped, our standard of living wages, hours, and conditions has been improved by immigration to the present moment ; again, for the plain reason that these new- comers have added so much to that general wealth from which wages are paid. Indeed, the whole study of race migrations has gone far enough to bring out the dominant fact that economic causes are at the heart of these movements. Adventure has played its part, and war (with plunder for its aim) a still greater part; but plunder was the economics of the barbarian, while the lode-star guiding 1 the world's most romantic adventure was the glitter of precious metals. It is even a little chilling to learn that the most gallant of these explorers, from Columbus down, did not for a moment forget that they were out for "the dust of the gods." If, for simplicity, we exclude the war element in migrations, we have the main fact that some millions of people yearly change their habitations on the planet wholly for economic rea- sons. They believe that they can raise the standard of living through migration, and so far as our own immigration problem is concerned, this is too clear to require proof. If, for a moment, we look at the results of this migration into the United States look at it strictly from the human or world point of view, who would question for an instant that it stood for results that enlarge opportunity and progress? The world has been the gainer. Let us cling to this big and cheering fact. We will hold to it until our fearsome opponents show us far better evidence than they have yet given that the world's good is our ill. Let them convince us that the good of Sweden, Italy, Greece, and Hungary, in respect of immigration, is set over against our own good. We see the incalculable benefit to them. Let the alarmists make clear to us the consequent injury to this country. They have thus far done two things. They have created out of the imagination a thousand evils that have not arrived ; they have, secondly, fixed attention upon various accidental ills which never fail to shadow every great human activity. What a swarm of mischiefs beset trade and democracy ! Yet we do not propose to discontinue trade or give up democracy. The moral and social problem is rather the oldest one of the world that of separating abuses from uses. The opponents point to city congestion, to 160 SELECTED ARTICLES heightened insanity, and to certain forms of crime. They are all present, and they have been increased by immigration; yet they are exceptional, and should be dealt with strictly as such, and quite apart from the totality of the movement. It is this large human side of immigration, through which we are related to the whole realm of ideal values that connect themselves with the free and friendly movement, which brings races long enough into contact to know one another and to tolerate differences. The supreme world question is that of races learning the highest and most difficult art of civilization; that of living together with good will and intelligence living together so that they may help one another rather than exploit or despoil one another. The United States is helping to solve that problem in the only conceivable way ; namely, by giving the races a chance to live together long enough to substitute human and social habits for mere clannish and tribal habits. What is now the mother-mischief in our race relationships? Obviously the shadow of an extremely vulgar ignorance and prejudice, one race against another. Think of two nations as advanced as England and France living century after century hard by each other, and, until the most recent years, having merely contempt for each other the average Englishman hon- estly thinking that a Frenchman was a kind of monkey with clothes on, and that chiefly because he had a different manner and speech from the English ! By what plummet, then, are we likely to measure the depths of ignorance that separate the white from the yellow races? Japan has already done something to show us the density of our prejudice about a portion of the East. China has doubtless quite as startling surprises for us. An Australian prime minister, who knows the Chinese, opposed their admission not because they were a low race, but because of their ability. They are a "superior set of people," he said, belonging "to an old, deep- rooted civilization. We know how wonderful are their powers of imagination, their endurance, and their patient labor." Where- ever they have been fairly dealt with in this country, their standards of living very rapidly have adjusted themselves to those about them. I am not here arguing the removal of all barriers to their ON IMMIGRATION 161 incoming, but rather for the overcoming of the most primary evil of our own ignorance an ignorance that is probably the main obstacle to the world's civilizing. National Conference of Charities and Correction. 1912:239-49 Is Immigration a Menace? C. L. Sttlzberger If wild assertion were argument and its reiteration proof, the case against immigration would be definitely closed. On no subject before the American people, has there been more loose talk and less information, more general statement and less specific fact. Until quite lately we had to deal only with the generalizations of the professional restrictionists. More recently the unwarranted conclusions of the Immigration Commission have also been brought into play. These conclusions are called unwarranted because they utterly fail to tally with the evidence which has been presented in the forty odd volumes published and to be published, as the result of the commission's investiga- tions. That they do so fail is shown not alone in the summary of the volumes which has been published by the commission but in the book that has been issued by one of its members, Prof. Jeremiah W. Jenks, in conjunction with Mr. W. Jett Lauck, expert in charge of the industrial investigations of that com- mission. The only accurate generalization made by the restric-l tionists on the subject of immigration is that the nationality of! the immigrants has changed ; that whereas in former years the* bulk o'f the immigration came from northern and western Europe, it has latterly been coming from southern and eastern Europe. This is obviously true, but it is not true as is so often asserted, that while the so-called older immigration was desirable the newer is undesirable. By every statistical test that can be applied, the statement utterly fails of corroboration ; nor should it be forgotten that at the time that the older immigration, the so-called desirable people, was coming, the immigration restric- tionists of those days considered them as undesirable as the new-comers of today are considered by the same class of critics. Nearly a century ago the same arguments were used regarding the bad habits of the immigrants, their tendency to congest the cities, to reduce wages and to depreciate the American standard 162 SELECTED ARTICLES of living. The report of the Industrial Commission quotes from Nile's Register of 1817: The immigrants should press into the interior. In the present state of the time, we seem too thick on the maritime frontier already. The same document quotes from the second annual report of the managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism in New York City, 1819: As to the emigrants from foreign countries, the managers are com- pelled to speak of them in the language of astonishment and apprehension. Through this inlet pauperism threatens us with the most overwhelming consequences. An almost innumerable population beyond the ocean is out of employment and this has the effect of increasing the usual want of employ. This country is the resort of vast numbers of those needy and wretched beings. Many of these foreigners have found employment; some may have passed into the interior; but thousands will remain among us. They are frequently found destitute in our streets; they seek employment at our doors; they are found in our almshouses and in our hospitals; they are found at the bar of criminal tribunals, in our Bridewell, our peni- tentiary, and our state prison, and we lament to say that they are too often led by want, by vice, and by habit to form a phalanx of plunder and depredations, rendering our city more liable to increase of crime and our houses of correction more crowded with convicts and felons. The same report urged the importance of transporting the foreigner into the interior so that ''instead of bringing up his children in idleness, temptation and crime, he would see them amalgamated with the general mass of our population, deriving benefits from our school systems, our moral institutions, and our habits of industry." In 1835 it would seem that the doleful predictions made in 1819, had not materialized, and the restric- tionists then regarded the earlier immigrants as desirable but the then-incoming foreigners as a menace. In a paper entitled "Imminent Dangers to the Institutions of the United States of America through Foreign Immigration," etc., published in 1835, the author speaks of the immigration of previous years as com- pared with that of the day, and says: Then we were few, feeble and scattered. Now, we are numerous, strong and concentrated. Then our accessions of immigration were real accessions of strength from the ranks of the learned and the good, from enlightened mechanic and artisan and intelligent husbandman. Now, immi- gration is the accession of weakness, from the ignorant and vicious, or the priest-ridden slaves of Ireland and Germany, or the. outcast tenants of the poorhouses and prisons of Europe. In 1845 the delegates of the Native American National Con- ON IMMIGRATION 163 vention, meeting at Philadelphia on July 4 of that year, published an address in which occurs the following : It is an incontrovertible truth that the civil institutions of the United States of America have been seriously affected and that they now stand in imminent peril from the rapid and enormous increase in the body of resi- dents of foreign birth, imbued with foreign feelings and of an ignorant and immoral character. The almshouses of Europe are emptied upon our coast, and this by our own invitation not casually, or to a trivial extent but systematically and upon a constantly increasing scale. All this is about that class of immigrants which we now call desirable, the fact being that, as at one time in our history, only the dead Indian was regarded as a good Indian, so at all times, to the restrictionists, only the immigrant who did not come was regarded as a good immigrant. Century. 74:474-80. July, 1907 American of the Future. Brander Matthews It is the testimony of most of the intelligent Europeans who have come here to study us in recent years, that we Americans are less insular than our kin across the sea, less set in our ways, more open-minded. Sefior Juan Valera, sometime Spanish Minister in Washington, in the preface to his delightful tale of "Pepita Ximenes," declared that the American public reads a great deal, is indulgent, and "differs from the British public which is eminently exclusive in its tastes by its cosmopolitan spirit." It may be said that this is one of the variances between the Americans and the British due to the influence exerted by those elements in our population which are not Anglo-Saxon and not even Teutonic. Cecil Rhodes once scornfully commented on the "unctuous rectitude" of the British, and Lowell once declared that "England seems to be the incarnation of the 'Kingdom of this world.' " Neither of these accusations will lie against us Americans, open as we may be in other respects to the conviction of sin. Perhaps the reason is to be found in the influence of the Celt of the Huguenot and of the Irish. To this same Celtic softening of Teutonic harshness we may ascribe also the broader development here of that social instinct which is deficient in Great Britain and dominant in France. This social II 164 SELECTED ARTICLES instinct manifests itself in manifold forms in a wider sympathy, in a friendlier good nature, in a more thorough toleration, both religious and political. It has contributed its share to the core of idealism which sustains the American character, but which is often veiled from view by sordid externals. It finds fit expres- sion in lavish giving to public service, and it leads also to the preservation of natural beauty and of the sacred places of our brief history. When we consider all these things carefully, we cannot help wondering whether we have not been guilty of flagrant conceit in our assumption that we could not possibly profit by any infusion of other bloods than the Teutonic. We find ourselves face to face with the question whether the so-called Anglo-Saxon stock is of a truth so near to perfection that any admixture is certain to be harmful. All that the New Englanders could bring over from Great Britain was a British standard; and if the American standard now differs from the British standard, this must be due, more or less, to the pressure exerted in America by a contribution other than English. If we today prefer, as we do undoubtedly, the existing American standards and ideals and tendencies, we must recognize the various foreign elements in the United States as having exerted an influence satisfactory to us now, however much our forefathers may once have dreaded it. We must recognize that the commingling of stocks which has been going on here in die past has been beneficial or at least that its results are accept- able to us at present. And in all probability our children will admit also that the commingling that is going on in the present, and which will go on in the future, is likely also to be beneficial or at least acceptable. The strength of the founders of the American republic lay chiefly in character. It is not by brilliancy, by intellect, or even by genius that Washington and Jay and John Adams impressed themselves on their fellow-citizens in Virginia, in New York, and in Massachusetts. Ability they had in abundance, no doubt; but it was by character that they conquered, by their moral individuality. And it is the grossest conceit for us to assume that character is the privilege or the prerogative of any single stock. We have a right to hope and even to believe that what- ever we may lose by the commingling of the future, by the admix- ture of other racial types than the Teutonic and the Celtic, will ON IMMIGRATION 165 be made up to us by what we shall thereby gain. Our type may be a little transformed,- but it is not at all likely to be deteri- orated. There is really very little danger indeed that the preach- ing of the Puritans will ever be superseded here by the practices of the Impuritans. It is true that the later new-comers are not altogether Teu- tonic or even Celtic; they are Latin and Slav and Semitic. But it is only a stubborn pride, singularly out of place in an American of the twentieth century, which makes us dread evil consequences from this admixture. The Teuton here has been suppled by the Celt; but the resulting race may profit still by attributes of the Latin and of the Slav. The suave manner of the Italian may modify in time the careless discourtesy which discredits us now in the eyes of foreign visitors. The ardor of the Slav may quicken our appreciation of music and of the fine arts. Possibly these gains may have to be paid for by a little relaxing of the unresting energy which is our marked characteristic today. It 'may be that when milder strains are commingled with the harsher Teutonic stock, there will be other modifications, some of them seemingly less satisfactory. But there is no reason to suppose that in the future we shall not make our profit out of the best that every contributing blood can bring to us, since this is exactly what we have been doing in the past. We need not fear any weakening of the Teutonic framework of our social order. Beyond all question, we shall preserve the common law of England and the English language; for these are priceless possessions in which the welcome invaders are glad to be allowed to share. The good old timbers of the ship of state are still solid, and the sturdy vessel is steered by the same compass. One of the best equipped observers of American life, and one of the shrewdest, also, Professor Giddings, faces the future fearlessly. He holds that in the coming years a mixture of elements not Anglo-Teuton "will soften the emotional nature" and "quicken the poetic and artistic nature" of the American people; it will make us "gentler in our thoughts and feelings because of the Alpine strain" (and this includes the Slav). We shall find ourselves "with a higher power to enjoy the beautiful things of life because of the Celtic and the Latin blood." And as if this prophecy of emotional benefit was not heartening enough, Professor Giddings holds up to us the high hope of an 166 SELECTED ARTICLES intellectual benefit, probably through the commingling of bloods. "We shall become more clearly and more fearlessly rational,-- in a word more scientific." Arena. 32:596-602. December, 1904 Immigration Bugbear. Ernest Crosby Let us think less of the evil which the immigrant may do to us and more of the good which we might get from him and yet fail to get. We are still a people in the making. It is the all- sufficient excuse for our defects that we are not yet the finished product, and that we do not yet know what we shall be. America is a great caldron into which the raw material from Europe is poured, and the ultimate outcome depends as legitimately upon the Italian and Roumanian immigration of today as upon that of the early Puritan and Quaker. But for some reason or other .we look upon the pilgrims of the twentieth century m a very different light from those of the seventeenth. We boast of the good we have derived from the first settlers, English and Dutch. Is there nothing to be obtained in like manner from those who cross the water now ? Do the thousands who come yearly from Germany and Italy bring no valuable contribution with them to our national character, that we should be in such haste to turn them all into indistinguishable Yankees? It is a fine thing to assimilate our new citizens rapidly ; but there are two sides tc assimilation, the disappearance of the thing assimilated in its original form on the one hand, and the appropriation of all that is good in it by the assimilator on the other. Are we not too prone to forget the latter half? I hold it against our German fellow-citizens that after over half a century of influence they have failed to turn us into a musical nation. Is there any reason why the children of parents who were brought up on the Wacht am Rhein and Luther's Hymn and who naturally sing chorals with their friends for amusement when they meet, should talk through their noses, have no ear for music, and cherish no musical ideals beyond the "coon-song"? And the Italians who are now coming with their inherited eye for beauty, does it never enter into their heads or ours that they might in time transform our national taste and create a genuine American art and architecture? NO, the one engrossing effort on both sides is. ON IMMIGRATION 167 to Yankify the "dago" as speedily as possible and to make him two-fold more a child of Uncle San than ourselves. But these wanderers are the spice for our pudding. Let us be careful how we waste the seasoning which we may never be able to produce for ourselves. And why this craze to make all men and all things alike? It is doing its sad work all over the world, making another Liverpool of Calcutta and packing the flowing skirts of the picturesque Orientals into awkward trousers. But in America it does its worst. A dozen years and more ago a friend of mine visited Havana, long before we had begun to Americanize the town and he was delighted with its quaint and romantic beauty. Returning he landed in some part of Florida, territory reclaimed not so long ago from the same Spaniard, and he assured me with tears in his voice that the first town that he saw in the home country looked exactly like Hoboken. And so do they all. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the great lakes to the gulf, we have nothing but countless Hobokens, and we are rejoicing in the prospecfol recasting in the same mould the tropical cities pf Panama, Porto Rico and the Philippines. For my part I 'cannot understand this enthusiasm, for I would travel many a long mile to see an American city which should not look exactly like Hoboken, and to discover an American citizen not altogether like myself. The whole trouble lies in the too great emphasis which we lay upon the comparative value of our own virtues, to which, with a good deal of freedom of language, we have affixed the term "Anglo-Saxon." I am in some respects an Anglo-maniac, and I am proud of my English blood and speech. I like the energy and all-sufficiency of the stock, and I would not exchange my forebears for a good deal. Still I cannot in justice overlook our faults nor be blind to the fact that the good points of other races supply our deficiencies, and I have already hinted at some of them. In the great century of music, none of our blood pro- duced a work of even the third class. We have never had a painter who could rank among the first score or two of great artists. We must go to Germany for our highest philosophy and to France for the most finished elegance of thought and man- ners. We know little of the joy of living. We take our holidays sadly, and laugh with mental reservations. The European comes to us with a new capacity for mirth, a genius for joviality and 16S SELECTED ARTICLES sociability. Are these ingredients to be despised? For a few years he may navigate our streets with his hand-organ or his plaster-casts and frequent his genial cafe, but before long he must fit himself to our procrustean bed, and at last we find him at work in the regulation store or at rest before the rigid bar or at the taciturn dairy-lunch counter. Is it desirable that we should compass sea and land in this way to make a proselyte ? Should we reduce the whole world to one dead level? And not content with stifling the originality of the immigrant, we must needs carry our missionary zeal for uniformity to foreign lands in the hope of destroying all individuality. In Anglo-Saxonizing India and Japan we are crushing out the most wonderful of arts beyond a possibility of resurrection. We are the Goths and Vandals of the day. We are the Tartars and the Turks. And the countries which we overrun have each its own priceless heritage of art and legend which we ruthlessly stamp under foot. I admire the Anglo-Saxon, just as I admire his feathered prototype, the English house-sparrow. He is a fine, sturdy, plain, self-satisfied bird, a good fighter, an admirable colonist, fit for all climates, with no sense of art or music, and a little too fond of rehearsing his many virtues in a hoarse chorus. But so long as he minds his own business I like him, and I do not care to quarrel with him, even when he considers himself a better bird than the blue-bird or the oriole. He has a right to his own opinions. But when he begins to try to make the bobolink adopt his song, and to drive the wrens and buntings out of their haunts, and to break their eggs and tear their nests to pieces, why, then I must cry out against his arrogance We do not want a bird world composed of nothing but sparrows. We will not have it, and if the sparrows themselves had any sense they would protest against it ; for do not the thrushes sing for them too, and may they not enjoy the plumage of the scarlet-tanager, if they will? Let us hope that the sparrow may learn some day to appreciate the good points of other fowl, even to the point of cherishing them and learning from them. What wasted opportunities of improvement for ourselves Ellis Island affords ! We are careful to assure ourselves that each immigrant has in his pocket so much money which will find its way into the general circulation, but he bears a greater wealth in his heart, and this we disregard. If the energy which we expend upon ON IMMIGRATION 169 keeping him out were devoted to the task of investing this spiritual wealth of his to the greatest advantage for all, the problem of immigration would cease to vex us, for we would all soon learn to hail his advent with gratitude. North American Review. 195:513-25. April, 1912 American Ideals and Race Mixture. Percy Stickney Grant The rapidity with which the democratic ideas are taken on by immigrants under the influence of our institutions is remark- able. I have personally had experiences with French-Canadians, Portuguese, Hebrews, and Italians. These races have certainly taken advantage of their opportunities among us in a fashion to promise well for their final effect upon this country. The French-Canadian has become a sufficiently good American to have given up his earlier programme of turning New England into a new France that is, into a Catholic province or of return- ing to the Province of Quebec. He is seeing something better than a racial or religious ideal in the freedom of American citizenship; and on one or two occasions, when he had political power in two municipalities, he refrained from exercising it to the detriment of the pubic-school system. He has added a gracious manner and a new feeling for beauty to New England traits. The Portuguese have taken up neglected or abandoned New England agricultural land and have turned it to productive and valuable use. Both the French-Canadian and the Portuguese have come to us by way of the New England textile mills. The actual physical machinery of civilization cotton-mills, woolen-mills, iron-mills, etc. lock up a great deal of human energy physical and mental, just as one hundred years ago the farms did, from which later sprang most of the members of our dominant industrial class. A better organization of society, by which machinery would do still more and afford a freer play for mental and physical energy and organization, would find a response from classes that are now looked upon as not contributing to our American culture ; would unlock the high potentialities in the laboring classes, now unguessed and unexpended. The intellectual problems and the advanced thinking of the i;o SELECTED ARTICLES Hebrew, his fondness for study, and his freedom on the whole from wasteful forms of dissipation, sport, and mental stagnation, constitute him a more fortunate acquisition for this country than are thousands of the descendants of colonial settlers. In short, we must reconstruct our idea of democracy of American democ- racy. This done, we must construct a new picture of citizenship. If we do these things we shall welcome the rugged strength of the peasant or the subtle thought of the man of the Ghetto in our reconsidered American ideals. After all, what are these American ideals we boast so much about? Shall we say public schools, the ballot, freedom? The American stock use private schools when they can afford them; they too often leave town on election day ; as for freedom, competent observers believe it is disappearing. The conservators and believers in American ideals seem to be our immigrants. To the Russian Jew, Abraham Lincoln is a god. If American ideals are such as pay honor to the intellectual and to the spiritual or foster human brotherhood or love culture and promote liberty, then they are safe with our new citizens who are eager for these things. Not only do these races bring with them most desirable qualities, but they themselves are subjected to new enviroment and strongly influential conditions. Just here arise duties for the present masters of America. Ought they not to create an indus- trial, social, and educational environment of the most uplifting sort for our foreign-born citizens? If working-people are obliged to live in unhealthful tenements situated in slums or marsh land, if the saloon is allowed to be their only social center, if they are fought by the rich in every effort to improve their condition, we may expect any misfortune to happen to them and also any fate to befall the state. What improved milieu can do to improve the physique is easily seen on all sides. The increase in the height and weight of Americans in the last few decades is conspicuous. Even the size of American girls and boys has increased, and this increase in size is commonly attributed to the more comfort- able conditions of life, to better food, and especially to the popularity of all forms of athletics, and the extension, as in the last twenty-five or thirty years, of the out-of-door and country life. If these factors have made so marked and visible a change in the physique of the children of native-born Americans, why may not the same conditions also contribute an improvement to the more recent immigrant stock? ON IMMIGRATION 171 Our question, then, as to the effect of race mixture is not the rather supercilious one : What are we admitting into America that may possibly injure American ideals? but, What are the old American races doing to perpetuate these ideals? And is not our future as a race, largely by our own fault, in the hands of the peasant races of Europe? Indifference, prejudice, illiteracy, segregation of recent immi- grants by parochial schools, by a native colonial press, bad physical and social environment, and the low American ideals of citizenship held by those the immigrant sees or hears most about, obstruct race assimilation; but all these can be changed. Yes, it is the keeping up of difference and class isolation that destroys and deteriorates. Fusion is a law of progress. Every act of religious or civil tyranny, every economic wrong done to races in all the world, becomes the burden of the nation to which the oppressed flee for relief and opportunity. And the beauty of democracy is that it is a method by which these needs may freely express themselves and bring about what the op- pressed have prayed for and have been denied. Let us be careful not to put America into the class of the oppressors. Let us rise to an eminence higher than that occupied by Washington or Lincoln, to a new Americanism which is not afraid of the blend- ing in the western world of races seeking freedom. Our present problem is the greatest in our history. Not colonial independence, not federal unity, but racial amalgamation is the heroic problem of the present, with all it implies in purification and revision of old social, religious, and political ideals, with all it demands in new sympathy outside of blood and race, and in a willingness to forego old-time privileges. Atlantic Monthly. 86:535-48. October, 1900 Our Immigrants and Ourselves. Kate Halladay Claghorn As a type of the southern Europeans that are coming among us the Italians may be taken, though of course, strictly speaking, no one race can represent another in all details. Those who 'know them familiarly as they are found in large cities workers for the charities, the missions, and the settlements say that they are a much misunderstood people. As a class, and when Tn normal family relations, they are gentle, industrious, frugal, and temperate ; but they are looked upon by the public generally as a 172 SELECTED ARTICLES lot of idle, dissipated cutthroats. On our records of crime they do not, it is true, make a good showing, but there is a special reason for that, as will be indicated presently, which removes a great part of the blame from them as a race. There is little pauperism among the Italians. It is a matter of every-day obser- vation among charity agents that in the so-called "Italian quar- ters" in great cities most of the applicants for relief are Irish. The poorest Italian family manages in some way to make pro- vision for a rainy day, and it is seldom indeed that it is found a habitual dependent on charity. The Italians, like the Jews, are eager for improvement, although not, perhaps, in so striking a degree. They have been reproached with denying advantages to their children for the sake of the money to be got by the chil- dren's labor, but a special investigation made some years ago by a committee of sociological specialists shows that this charge, when made a general one, is without foundation. The commit- tee testified in the plainest terms to the fact that the Italian family, even in circumstances of the greatest destitution, showed a least the normal amount of interest in the education of their children, and in many cases made .especial sacrifices to secure it. So far as individual race traits are concerned, it would seem that there is no especial trouble to be apprehended from the mass of our newest immigrants. But beyond race traits we must look at certain general processes at work, as they are to be seen in the history of immigration as a whole, to understand the question more fully, and to judge more fairly as to the good or evil of immigration. These processes may be depicted something in this fashion: We must regard our country as a land traversed by successive waves of population passing from east to west, each marking in its progress an ever advancing coast line, which, in the case of the first great wave, we have known as the frontier. The crest of such a wave is made up of the most mobile elements in a population, drawing after them, in due proportion of time and distance, the less and less mobile elements. First to get in motion in any normally developing community are the men, in an age period roughly to be defined as between early youth on the one hand and later middle life on the other, who proceed on their way unencumbered by wives and children, either having itbne, or leaving them behind. So there is to be found, or until ON IMMIGRATION 173 recently was to be found, on our frontier, as the crest of the first great wave of immigration, the movement of the American branch of the Anglo-Saxon race to the Pacific, a predominantly male population, young, active, unfettered by family ties, fired with energy, driven to the necessity of self-help, cast loose from all the bonds of society, from all law, religion, and morality as a long-established social body understands these things; on the eastern edge of the wave a population containing more women than men, a settled family life, quiet, order, and the sway of public opinion. On the western edge are poverty for the day- enriched by unlimited hopes of wealth on the morrow, a freedom that has not as yet developed into inequality, and a general simplicity of life ; on the eastern edge, more wealth but less hope, more training but less versatility, greater inequality but greater possibilities through cooperation and control, in short, the complexities of civilization instead of the simplicities of a primitive life. The immigration of the fifties may be regarded as a second great wave, repeating the processes of the first, modified by the fact that it did not pour in on dry ground, like the first, but upon the heels of another. It, as well as the other, pushed before it a "frontier." It may seem a little strange to call our great cities, with their crowds of people, their masses of buildings, their various para- phernalia of a modern civilization, in any sense a frontier. But such they are in certain vital respects for the immigrant, when he arrives on these shores. The movement across the sea to us is headed by the same class that led our own march across the plains, and, like the early frontiersman, the later immigrant, on arriving at the end of his journey, finds himself freed from the restraint of a public opinion that he has felt in the com- munity where he was known. This may be as strictly the case in the crowded city as on the wide plains. Nowhere can one be more really alone than among strangers. The sudden relaxation of effort to keep up to a standard, moral or otherwise, when social boundaries are changed, is a familiar sensation to every one. And this is especially true when no great effort is made by the environing strangers to impress themselves and their opin- ions on the newcomers. To the immigrant, then, our people, with their thoughts and ideas, their social and governmental J74 SELECTED ARTICLES schemes, are, at first, of as Vittle pertinence as the thoughts and institutions of the Indian or the buffalo are to the cowboy. So it is not surprising to see in him some of the characteristics of the cowboy, the brawling, swearing, and drunkenness, the violence and profligacy that Inaturally arise when a male popula- tion is herded together, an-earners and the concentration of immigrants in a few eastern and central states have been interpreted as the "displace- ment" of the English-speaking workmen from the mills and mines of the East by the new immigration. An examination of the figures shows, however, that during the past thirty years mining and manufacturing grew much faster in the West and South than in the East and drew some of the native workers and earlier immigrants from the older manufacturing states. But the demand for labor grew in the old states as well. The places left vacant by the old employees who had gone westward had to be filled by new immigrants. The desertion of mills and factories by native American girls has also been explained as their "displacement" by immigrants. The motive assigned is not economic, but racial: it is the social prejudice against the immigrant that has forced the American girl to quit. It seems, however, that this explanation mistakes cause for effect: the social stigma attaching to working associ- ation with immigrants is not the cause but the effect of the desertion of the mills and factories by native American women. The psychological interpretation overlooks one of the greatest economic changes that has taken place in the United States since the civil war : the admission of women to most of the pursuits which were formerly regarded as peculiarly masculine. For every native woman of American parentage who left the mill or cloth- ing factory there were forty women of the same nativity who found new openings. The increase of the number of native American professional women was nearly five times as great as ON IMMIGRATION 193 the decrease of the number of native American factory girls. The marvelous progress of the American educational system has fitted the native American woman for other work than manual labor and has at the same time opened to her a new field in which she does not meet the competition of the immigrant. There is absolutely no statistical proof of an oversupply of unskilled labor resulting in the displacement of native by immigrant laborers. No decrease of the number of common laborers among the native white of native or foreign parentage appears in any of the great states which serve as receptacles for immigration. The same is true of miners. In none of the states affected by the new immigration has there been a decrease in the number of native miners. Such states as Pennsylvania and Illinois showed large increases in the number of native miners, both of foreign and native parentage. The iron and steel mills are another industry from which the recent immigrants are popularly believed to have forced out the native workmen and older English-speaking immigrants. The fact is, that in the earlier period of the industry, when immigration from southern and eastern Europe was negligible, the number of American employees increased very slowly; during the recent period, on the contrary, since the immigrants from southern and eastern Europe have been coming in large numbers, the number of American-born employees of every nativity has more than doubled. The increased employment of native Americans is recorded in the figures for every important iron- and steel- producing state, as well as for every city holding a' leading place in the iron and steel industry. The effect of immigration upon the occupational distribution of the industrial wage-earners has been the elevation of the English-speaking workmen to the status of an aristocracy of labor, while the immigrants have been employed to perform the rough work of all industries. Though the introduction of ma- chinery has had the tendency to reduce the relative number of skilled mechanics, yet the rapid pace of industrial expansion has increased the number of skilled and supervisory positions so fast that practically all the English-speaking employees have had the opportunity to rise on the scale of occupations. This oppor- tunity, however, was conditioned upon a corresponding increase of the total operating force. It is only because the new immigra- tion has furnished the class of unskilled laborers that the native 194 SELECTED ARTICLES workmen and older' immigrants have been raised to the plane of an aristocracy of labor. Yet, while the number of native American workmen in all industries has increased, it is true that in some occupations there has been an actual decrease of the number of English, Welsh, Irish, and German workers, which has been construed as "displacement" of Americanized workers by immigrants from southern and eastern Europe with a lower standard of living. This interpretation overlooks the fact that native workers of native parentage, presumably with as high a standard of living as the Irish, are found in the same occupations in larger num- bers than formerly. Another fact that contradicts the popular view is the increase of the number of Scotch immigrants in those very occupations which show a decline in the number of English and Irish. Judged by any standard, the Scotch are not inferior to other immigrants from the United Kingdom. The increased employment of the Scotch in the principal occupations, including even common laborers, warrants the conclusion that the decline in the numbers of English and Irish must have been due to other causes than the competition of recent immigrants with lower standards of living. A further fact that must be considered in this connection is that the English, Welsh, and Irish farmers exhibit a greater decrease, both absolute and rela- tive, than any other occupational group among the same nation- alities. Evidently no new farmers came to fill the places of their countrymen who were carried off by death, although the aliens from southern and eastern Europe kept away from the farming sections and left the field open for English, Welsh, and Irish immigrants. The real explanation of the decrease in the number of immi- grants from northern and western Europe in the occupations which rank lowest in the social scale is that the earlier immi- grants have worked their way upward. Among the breadwinners born in northern and western Europe, farmers, business men, professional men, and skilled mechanics outnumber those who are employed in the coarser grades of labor. The latter have been left to immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. But it is argued that the newly arrived immigrant must have work at once and is therefore glad to accept any terms. The Immigration Commission after a study of the earnings of more than half a million employees in mines and manufactures, has ON IMMIGRATION 195 discovered no evidence that immigrants have been hired for less than the prevailing rates of wages. The primary cause which has determined the movement of wages in the United States during the past thirty years has been the introduction of labor-saving machinery. The effect of the substitution of mechanical devices for human skill is the displacement of the skilled mechanic by the unskilled laborer. This tendency has been counteracted in the United States by the expansion of industry: while the ratio of skilled mechanics to the total operating force was decreasing, the increasing scale of operations prevented an actual reduction in numbers. Of course this adjustment did not proceed without friction. While, in the long run, there has been no displacement of skilled mechanics by unskilled laborers in the industrial field as a whole, yet at certain times and places individual skilled mechanics were doubtless dispensed with and had to seek new employment. The unskilled laborers who replaced them were naturally engaged at lower wages. The fact that most of these unskilled laborers were immigrants disguised the substance of the change the sub- stitution of unskilled for skilled labor and made it appear as the displacement of highly-paid native by cheap immigrant labor. To prove that immigration has virtually lowered the rates of wages, would require a comparative study of wages paid for the same class of labor in various occupations before and after the great influx of immigration. This, however, has never been attempted by the advocates of restriction. In fact, the chaotic state of our wage statistics precludes any but a fragmentary comparison for different periods. In a general way, however, all available data for the period of "the old immigration" agree in that the wages of unskilled laborers, and even of some of the skilled mechanics, did not fully provide for the support of the wage-earner and his family in accordance with their usual stand- ards of living. The shortage had to be made up by the labor of the wife and children. If the tendency of the new immigration were to lower the rate of wages or to retard the advance of wages, it should be expected that wages would be lower in great cities where the recent immigrants are concentrated, than in rural districts where the population is mostly of native birth. All wage statistics, concur, however, in the opposite conclusion. Since the United States has become a manufacturing country average earnings per 13 196 SELECTED ARTICLES worker have been higher in the cities than in the country. The same difference exists within the same trades between the large and the small cities. Country competition of native Americans often acts as a depressing factor upon the wages of recent immigrants. This fact has been demonstrated in the clothing industry, in the cotton mills, in the coal mines, etc. Furthermore, if immigration tends to depress wages, this tendency must manifest itself in lower average earnings in states with a large immigrant population than in states with a predominant native population. No such tendency, however, is discernible from wage statistics. As a rule, annual earnings are higher in states with a higher percentage of foreign-born workers. The conditions in some of the leading industries employing large numbers of recent immigrants point to the same conclu- sions. In the Pittsburgh steel mills the rates of wages of various grades of employees have varied directly with the proportion of recent immigrants. The wages of the aristocrats of labor, none of whom are southern or eastern Europeans, have been reduced in some cases as much as 40 per cent; the money wages of the skilled and semi-skilled workers, two-thirds of whom are natives or old immigrants, have not advanced notwithstanding the in- creased cost of living 1 , while the wages of the unskilled laborers, the bulk of whom are immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, have been going up. Another typical immigrant industry is the manufacture of clothing. The clothing industry has become associated in the public mind with the sweating system, and since the employees are, with few exceptions, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, the conclusion is readily reached that the root of the sweating system is in the character of the new immigration. Yet the origin of the sweating system preceded the Jewish cloth- ing workers by more than half a century. Throughout the second quarter of the past century native American and Irish women worked in the sweat shops of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia for only board and lodging, or even for board alone, depending upon their families for other necessities, whereas the Jewish factory girls of the present day are at least self- supporting. In the cotton mills of New England the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the operatives were practically all of ON IMMIGRATION 197 the English-speaking races, was a period of intermittent advances and reductions in wages ; on the whole, wages remained station- ary. The first years of the present century, up to the crisis of 1908, were marked by the advent of the southern and eastern Europeans into the cotton mills, and by an uninterrupted upward* movement of wages. The competition of the cheap American labor of the Southern cotton mills, however, tends to keep down the wages of the southern and eastern European, Armenian, and Syrian immigrants employed in the New England mills. As a general rule, the employment of large numbers of recent immigrants has gone together with substantial advances in wages. This correlation between the movements of wages and immigra- tion is not the manifestation of some mysterious racial trait, but the plain working of the law of supply and demand. The employ- ment of a high percentage of immigrants in any section, industry, or occupation, is an indication of an active demand for labor in excess of the native supply. Absence of immigrants is a sign of a dull labor market. National Conference for Good City Government. 109: 142-7 Effect of Immigration on Municipal Politics. William S. Bennet Properly, I presume, the subject of this paper ought to be the narrower one "the effect of recent immigration on elections in large cities," as I intend confining myself as strictly as the subject permits, to that field. The effort to measure the effect of a particular class on so complex a question as that of the usual election in a large city, largely and naturally fails, through the fact that a class, large enough in itself to definitely influence an election result, is itself subject to so many differing exterior and contending influences that it is practically impossible ever to say didactically : this thing these particular people of themselves did because of themselves. I think we are Beginning, too, to realize more and more the futility of attempting to say of any foreign people among us, that as a class they are wholly bad or wholly worthy, but to incline to judge them not as of a particular race or people, but as indi- viduals, each with a separate responsibility. Nevertheless, there are two great elementary questions as to recent immigrants that persist, that are legitimate, and that to an appreciable extent can be answered : 198 SELECTED ARTICLES First How is our country preparing its city election machin- ery in relation to the present immigration? and Second How are our more recent immigrants adapting them- selves to and availing themselves of our election situations as they find them? The first is rarely asked, but is more important. Those who have read Mr. Steiner's description of the gang of newly-arrived aliens led to illegally to vote by the working boss, recall his simple and vivid delineation of the contempt of our institutions instilled by that wrongful act. Much of our trouble in the past has sprung from the belief amongst newly-made citizens, justified by far too much evidence, that we ourselves have regarded elec- tions as contentions to be decided not at all by argument, per- suasion or reason, but by trickery, treachery, bribery, perjury, assault, forgery, deceit and even murder. It is not difficult to recall how recently the ordinary election was accompanied invari- ably by drunkenness and usually by riot ; the partisan boards, in New York state at least; the polling places, practically in places where liquor was sold and the open, shameless buying and selling of votes. The new and impressionable citizen of even but twenty years ago had held out to him at election inducements to all that was worst in his character. If he held our elections and insti- tutions lightly, we had ourselves to blame for it. Along the lines of better elections we have improved immensely. In our great city the election boards are bi-partisan. The secret ballot has made the buying of votes precarious merchandising; no polling place ; public sentiment frowns on election-law violation; the average citizen resents electioneering,. particularly on election day and near the polls; the workers therefore are fewer, there is rarely disorder and the day is relatively as peaceful as a Sunday. This is as it should be, the responsibilty of the election, great on every individual, should be exercised amid surroundings which are at least respectable, serious and dignified. The second question is partly answered by the answer to the first. Man moves much along lines of the least resistance, and the stranger adapts himself to conditions as he finds them. Make your elections riotous and corrupt and your new-made, foreign- born citizen riots and sells his vote with the native born ; make the election day what it should be, the rigidly guarded place of the legal and formal expression of opinions formed on delibera.- ON IMMIGRATION 199 tion elsewhere, and you train your new citizen to thought and reason. Our most recent citizens of foreign birth are, in great cities, our most independent voters. This is quite natural. Many of us inherit both our politics and our religion. A very keen rep- resentative in Congress said to me recently, that when a man in his district deserted his father's politics or his mother's religion, it was regarded as the first sign of insanity and that actually it frequently was. We have been trained also in partisanship through great discussions on real issues of the past. We may not entirely approve our own party in every detail, but we have a thorough conviction based on by-gone days that there is much that is worse in the other this whether we are Democrats or Republicans. The new citizen has neither political inheritance, prejudice nor scars of conflict. He votes always in the present, sometimes for the future, but never in the past. Being poor, it is quite true that when there is corruption, he is among those approached. Being ambitious, the lure of minor place sometimes weighs with him more than principle. But in the main he thinks. By our own progress we have done more for him than he will ever know. We have taught him that elections are properly approached through thought, and by making them fair, we are teaching him that thought and the expression of it are the most valuable pos- sessions of the elector. The thinking voter necessitates the fit, or at least acceptable, candidate. Our recent New York City elec- tion gives us room for thoughtful study of the new citizen. In connection with this, it should be carefully borne in mind that in no great city is the naturalized voter a newly-arrived immi- grant. Four or five of our states still permit aliens to vote, some immediately on filing declarations of intention, some on as short residence as six months, but none of these states contain one of our largest cities. In cities, then, the newly-made voter is a resident in this country, certainly for five and usually for more years, before he votes even for the first time. Candidates in foreign-speaking localities frequently address audiences, the ma- jority of whom either by age or alienage are unable to vote. This has a distinct educational value for the future but advances a present election very little. The 644,000 electors who had the right to participate in our recent election were, thus, either native born or having five years or more residence. Of the 644,000 who registered about 590,000 200 SELECTED ARTICLES voted. These divided their votes roughly as follows : Gaynor, Tammany and Democrat, 250,000; Bannard, Republican and Fusion, 175,000; tJearst, 150,000. Four years ago the vote was Tammany 226,000, Hearst 224,000, Republican 137,000. There- fore this year both the Tammany and Republican candidates gained at the expense of Hearst. The exact significance of this is immaterial and accounted for readily by a variety of causes. The important fact remains, that 150,000 voters, without par- ticular leadership or organization, left party ranks and voted for an individual of their choice. Annals of the American Academy. 33:373-9. March, 1909 Influence of Immigration on Agricultural Development. John Lee Coulter It is not enough to encourage one class of immigrants and discourage or prohibit others. The immigrants must not only come from rural districts in their mother country; if they are to succeed, they must be properly located here. Probably the most important single condition is that immigrants should be directed toward and urged to locate where their physical environment will correspond as nearly as may be to that of their mother country. By that I mean that not only should the climate be nearly the same, but the precipitation, the soils and the topog- raphy should approach that of their former home, if possible. Failure to satisfy these preliminary requirements has resulted in almost complete failure or a long period of suffering, while attention to these factors has- produced unpredicted successes. The next consideration of singular importance is that the social environment should be acceptable. If the agricultural operations are not close to a city where others of the same nationality are employed in other industries, it is desirable almost necessary that a considerable number be allowed, even induced, if need be, to settle in a community. At first, they will live as a world apart, but they give off ideas and take on others and at the end of a generation or two a few intermarriages will have broken down the hard and fast wall between settlements. Common markets, interchange of labor supply, contests between settlements, political and other conflicts, and back of it all the ON IMMIGRATION 201 common school system, soon result in an amalgamated, assimi- lated race. The next consideration which should be held in mind in deter- mining upon the distribution of immigrants among the different branches of the agricultural industry is the economic status of the people to be distributed and their plans or ambitions for the future. Thus, some are independent laborers, others ready to become tenants and still others to be land owners. Some plan to be employees as long as they stay; some of these would plan to save a snug fortune in a few years and return to the mother country, others to earn and use the returns from year to year. Some plan to step up to the position of tenant and employer, others are ready to enter that state at once, borne are ready to become land owners and independent farmers by purchase of land in settled districts, others with less capital would go to the frontier with poorer markets and grow up with the country, enduring hardships but accumulating wealth. There is room for all of these classes of people in nearly all parts of the country. The large Swiss settlement in Green County, Wisconsin, illus- trates success in the introduction of a new sub-industry of great importance. Having struggled for years trying to farm in the American way, these immigrants finally turned to the great indus- try of their home country. They had settled in a physical environment which was very much like what they left abroad. Now several hundred cheese factories are prospering and millions of pounds of cheese are annually placed upon our markets. A study of that particular case shows that about 99 per cent of the cheese made is of fancy or foreign varieties. Most of it is the famous Swiss cheese. It should also be noted that nearly all of those engaged in making this cheese and in buying and selling it are Swiss or of Swiss origin. The writer feels that this colony is a great success, is the kind of thing this country wants, is the basis of prosperity in our agriculture and must not be condemned because of the fact that broad Swiss is sometimes spoken or because the thousands of members of the district are not assimi- lated -during the first generation. The writer has found indi- viduals and small groups of settlers from this colony and from "the old country" moving far up into the Northwest carrying with them the information and ambition to start other colonies as prosperous as the old one. The acquisition of such an industry is as valuable to this country as the introduction of a 202 SELECTED ARTICLES new plant that may have required the expenditure of a hundred thousand dollars. Turning from this prosperous Swiss district, we may direct our attention to a Bohemian center in northwestern Minnesota. The Swiss had sent explorers ahead to find a desirable location before coming to this country and settling down. The Bohemians were in no greater financial straits in their home country than the Swiss had been, but they were brought in and located by great transportation companies. The soil where the Bohemians were "dumped" is very good ; precipitation and topography are good; but the country needs an expensive drainage system. The poor immigrants are not in a position to establish it. The result is that for some fifteen years we have had before our eyes a Bohemian colony numbering hundreds of people, unable to estab- lish a prosperous community because of unfavorable natural conditions. These people are efficient and willing. The state was at fault in allowing the mistake to take place, and it con- tinues open to blame for not taking more active steps toward improvement. In passing from house to house in that district, an interpreter was often necessary, but not because the people did not wish to learn the English. Each year sees the children mingling more with the outside neighborhood and learning our language, customs and laws. These people will succeed in time, despite obstacles, but some common-sense assistance would hasten the day of their prosperity. In other parts of the United States large settlements of Bohe- mians of no higher standard are prosperous and happy. As an illustration of the status that should obtain the writer would refer to some of the very prosperous communities of Poles and Icelanders in North Dakota and elsewhere. No class of citizens, whether immigrants or descended from immigrants half a dozen steps removed, could ask for greater material progress, better buildings homes, churches, schools and town buildings than the Polish settlement around Warsaw, Poland, Minto, and Ardock in Walsh County, North Dakota. The writer's knowledge of this and other communties of like character leads him to say that to encourage such settlements is to foster prosperity and frugality as well as to place the stamp of approval upon a home- loving, land-loving class of farmers. If we pass on to settle- ments of Russians we may say nearly the same as above. With a love for land and home which is almost beyond our under- ON IMMIGRATION 203 standing, these people are too often frugal to a fault. They come with a low standard of living and during the first generation the standard does not rise much. But the change soon comes. The children, or at least the grandchildren, become thoroughly Amer- ican unless the immigrants have been located in an environment where success is impossible. In this connection we might refer to such concrete cases as the settlements in central and western North Dakota, or the large prosperous colony in Ellis County, Kansas, or the newer settlement in the Southwest. Nor need we stop with the Swiss, Bohemians, Polanders, Ice- landers and Russians. If we turn our attention to the Italians coming into the South we find them filling the various places demanding attention. There is a large demand for white labor, and the mass of Italians who do not intend to make this their life home more and more fill a long-felt need. With the great numbers of Mexicans coming across the line for part of a season this demand may gradually be better and better satisfied. There is also a large demand for tenants, and this cry is being answered by Italians. These newcomers are not only fitting into the cotton-growing industry in competition with the colored people, but are proving their efficiency in vegetable and fruit farming. Of late years such settlements as that of Italians at Tontitown, Arkansas, in the Ozark Mountains, show also that the Italians can bring their home industry with them and succeed here. They not only settle down as dignified farmers, but actu- ally teach our farmers many things. Vegetables, apples, plums, grapes and other fruits are successfully grown. If the colony located at Sunnyside, Arkansas, at an earlier date was a failure at first, it is no sign that Italians cannot succeed in agriculture. Immigrants, largely from other industries, placed in competition with negroes in production of a crop that they knew absolutely nothing about, under foremen accustomed to drive slaves, in a swamp country hot and sickly to newcomers attacked by malarial fever and losing a large number of the first settlers, it is not to be wondered at that failure was threatened. But success has come even in that case, where failure at first stared all in the face. With colonies like the Brandsville Swiss settlement in Mis- souri, with the Italians and Russians coming even into old New England, with Mexicans pushing up into the Southwest, and with other nationalities gradually finding their own, we may 204 SELECTED ARTICLES indeed turn our attention toward the agricultural industry as a much neglected field. The cry of "back to the land" will not go unheeded by immigrants who have come from farms in their mother country if any reasonable amount of effort is put forth to "assist them to find themselves." Review of Reviews. 49:342-5. March, 1914 Our Recent Immigrants as Farmers. Lajos Steiner Most of our recent immigrants were tillers of the soil in their native countries. They are good farmers. The soil which they farmed in Europe has been under cultivation for over a thousand years and is still fertile and productive. These new residents are land-hungry, and save all that can be saved out of their wages for the purpose of purchasing land. The ambition of our peasant immigrants is to save enough by industrial wage-earning to enable them to buy land. They consider the status of the owner of a farm even of a very small farm far above that of the industrial employee. The social and financial status of a farm-owner is deemed to be the most desirable one, excepting probably that of the owner of a saloon. All their present hard- ships are forgotten for this cause, all their energies are expended for this end, all their visions of happiness in old age are pictures of the yearned-for farm. Besides the "immigrant bankers," who stimulate the exporta- tion of the immigrant's savings and the re-migration of the immi- grant himself, the agents of certain foreign governments, financial institutions, agricultural concerns, and a large number of other parties cooperate in keeping our peasant immigrants in ignorance of American opportunities. This very ignorance is the source of the income of many employment offices, unscrupulous lawyers, politicians, notaries public, large numbers of foreign-language newspapers, certain town-lot sharks, speculators in land and foodstuffs, and an army of other auxiliaries. They all live on the inexperienced and credulous immigrant. The masses of peasant immigrants are, practically, kept from learning 1 about American institutions, methods, and ideals. Agricultural oppor- tunities in the United States of which these types of settlers might avail themselves are secrets for them, sealed with seven seals. They desire' to discontinue industrial employment as soon ON IMMIGRATION 205 as possible and .reengage in agriculture on land of their own. Knowing nothing of farming in this country, they are easily influenced by the exploiters, and are induced to re-migrate to Europe when they have saved enough money to buy a little land. In a great many instances total and irreparable ruin is the result of such re-migration. Great numbers of re-migrants lose all, or the greater part, of their savings in their native lands, and they find themselves farther away from the yearned-for farm than ever. The lot of such people is exceedingly distressing. Is there relief in sight? Up to the present time our peasant immigrants have had no choice ; their exploitation gave immense profits to the exploiters. The latter are numerous, omnipresent, influential; they have political "pull" and connections, and are unmolested in their practices. About 40 per cent of our peasant immigrants re- migrate ; they export perhaps $300,000,000 each normal year. During industrial depressions or panics these figures become larger. Re-migration and the influx of the savings have made bad conditions only worse in the respective European countries. Available land is insufficient over there and prices are driven up to yet more unreasonable heights. Lands which were sold abroad some twenty years ago for about $40 an acre are now purchased by re-migrants for $500 an acre, and even more. It seems to be urgently necessary to inaugurate a compre- hensive economic policy for the utilization of our idle agricul- tural land. During six years 6,230,257 immigrants arrived, and 2,652,250 departed. During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1913, the Bureau of Immigration reports a total of 611,924 departed. This is over 40 per cent of all arrivals, the number of the latter being 1,427,227. The thrifty among our peasant immigrants re- migrate to Europe, although farm land is more abundant and cheaper here. They, unfortunately, do not know this to be so. If we kept them, they would materially aid in producing food- stuffs and therewith reduce our high cost of living. What a change for the better it would be if these land-hungry, useful people would invest their savings in our farming, make our millions of idle acres bear and grow farm produce, create wealth, and contribute to public resources ! On farms the Ameri- canization of this sturdy, healthy people would follow as a mat- ter of course, their descendants would become as patriotic and loyal citizens of the United States as the descendants of the 206 SELECTED ARTICLES earlier arrivals. None of our other industries would be harmed, only those would leave industrial occupations who do so at the present time. The change for the better would be called forth by having the funds now exported, and their departing owners, engage in farming in this country. These new agricultural set- tlements would furnish opportunities to tradesmen, merchants, banks, hotels, druggists, physicians, and a multitude of others to thrive by living and transacting business amongst them. The beauties of farm life need not be preached to the peasant immigrant. He does not have to be urged. He has not to be taught farming. He does not need financial aid. From the first day he landed he has been saving with the sole view of becoming a farm owner. Our resident peasant immigrants have the desire, the ability, and the cash funds. All they need is a friendly hand to guide them aright. Unfortunately, while there are many influences at work to make them export their savings and to have them re-migrate, not enough is being done to counteract these influences. A national organization is needed. It should be formed by public-spirited men and women. The cooperation of our federal and state governments should be secured, and of those social, educational, and religious factors in the environment which are in a position to cooperate. The objects of this organization should be the encouragement, assistance, and direction of quali- fied residents to purchase and cultivate farms in the United States, instead of emigrating to foreign countries to engage there in agriculture. The scope of work of this organization should include the preparation of a survey of available farm lands, data of the precise location, climate, quality of soil, size of farm, price, terms, title, improvements, building material, transportation facilities, roads, crops, markets, churches, schools, etc. This information should be published in various languages and disseminated among the people who would be benefited by it. Local committees should be formed to look after the welfare of the new settlers, to prevent their exploitation and to make it possible for them to thrive. Instructors should visit and advise the new settlers of the methods of production so that they may succeed on American soil with American methods. Each county should maintain a demonstration farm and teach scientific farming and the use of farm machinery. On the other ON IMMIGRATION 207 hand, settlers with their European training would furnish object- lessons in the rotation of crops, in intensive farming methods, the preservation of the fertility of the soil, and such other procedure as may prove worthy of adoption. Propaganda for farming in the United States should be made. Meetings and lectures should be arranged for prospective set- tlers. Trustworthy and detailed information of available agri- cultural opportunities should be disseminated in the respective languages by pamphlets, circulars, views, maps, pocket geog- raphies, histories, and articles in those newspapers which are read by the immigrants. This organization should assist in the selection of the locality and the farm, in the arrangement of the terms of purchase, in securing clear title, in obtaining seed, stock, and implements. The new settlers should be located according to race in groups and with special care regarding their agricultural training. The marketing of their crops, the establishment of creameries, co- operative laundries, agricultural credit systems, farmers' associ- ations, and the improvement of rural life in general should be facilitated. The example of the successful pioneers would attract follow- ers in ever-increasing numbers and counteract the influence of the immigrant bankers and the other exploiters. At the time of our high cost of living 1 , of the tide from the farms to the cities, of social unrest, and agricultural decadence, so valuable an asset as our qualified farmer residents should not be wastefully squandered away to our irreparable loss. Peasant proprietors, unlike tenants, take interest in preserving the fertility of the soil and improving the farm. As owners and taxpayers they are interested in lasting progress and welfare. The proper colonization of our qualified immigrants on farms in the United States would certainly result in better conditions, in the increase of food supplies, in the augmentation f the general welfare, and the lasting prosperity of the United States. 208 SELECTED ARTICLES Nation. 82:398-9. May 17, 1906 Immigration and the South. When we remember that the entire peninsula of Italy, exclud- ing the Alps and the Apennines, is but little larger than the State of Georgia, and that it supports, chiefly by agriculture, a popula- tion of 36,000,000 we can see why newcomers from the south of Europe, trained to methods of careful and intensive cultivation, should get ahead in a region where the farming methods are among the loosest and most wasteful in the world. Many instances could be given of the achievements of adventurous immigrants who have disregarded all warnings, and have found comfortable homes, hospitable friends, and a freedom which they could not have hoped for in the over-crowded cities. A colony at Ladson, South Carolina, has found silk-raising profitable. Prosperous Italian and Bohemian truck farmers are now living along the seaboard from Norfolk to Jacksonville. An experiment in Alabama, where a colony was set at work in the cotton fields, has been wholly successful, and has shown that the cultivation of cotton can be performed by white labor as well as by black. In the South more than one "model" farm, demonstrating the effect of intensive methods and hard work, is in the hands of men who, though industrious and intelligent, have been in this country hardly long enough to make themselves understood. These examples of adaptability, as they become more widely known among immigrants, cannot but have the effect of turning attention to the South. The importance of immigration to the South can hardly be overestimated. The population in many districts is very sparse, and the opportunities for development of agricultural and mineral resources are boundless. For this work there must be both men and money; but if the South can once turn the tide of immigra- tion, the capital will be forthcoming in abundance. A question often raised is the effect of foreign labor upon the negro. If the South carries out its plan of drawing the best foreign labor, the effect upon the negro should be beneficial. If he is to hold his own in competition, he will be forced to improve himself, and he will be stimulated intellectually and morally. One reason why he is lazy and irresponsible is that he often regards himself as not a direct competitor of the white ; and he measures himself ON IMMIGRATION 209 by no standard of achievement except that of the shiftless and ignorant of his own race. The coming of the immigrant should open the eyes of his mind and soul. Placed side by side with earnest, steady workmen, he himself should reach a higher degree of skill and trustworthiness. From every point of view, it is the South's plain duty to itself and to the rest of the country to correct the evil impressions that have gone abroad as to its conditions of life and the oppor- tunities for tranquil, profitable, livelihood. In order to set forth its manifold advantages the South must employ such businesslike methods as have been used in advertising our own Western States and the Canadian Northwest. Keen, alert agents at home and abroad will doubtless obtain desirable settlers in growing numbers. North American Review. 193:561-73. April, 1911 Needed A Domestic Immigration Policy. Frances A. Kellor Officials charged with either formulating or enforcing the Government's policy recognize that it has two distinct phases, no matter how closely related are causes and results, which call for a different method of treatment. One is negative, national and international in scope, and deals with the admission or exclusion of aliens. It is determined by international agreements, treaties, economic conditions and expansion of trades. So far as expressed in regulations, these are definite and comprehensive and adequate machinery is provided for their enforcement. That they are not wholly practical and humane is nowhere better shown than that for the year ending June 30, 1910, 24,270 persons under this system were allowed to break up their homes and come to our shores, only to be deported, a hardship of travel both ways that should not be tolerated. With this policy of exclusion of admis- sion of aliens the commission has apparently adequately dealt. The second phase is the assimilation of the immigrant after arrival constituting our domestic policy. This necessarily includes distribution, protection and education after he is admitted to residence. This is an ever-pressing question, regard- less of the number and nationality, which may increase or de- crease the volume and character of the problem, but which in no wise changes the essential features of the policy to be adopted. 210 SELECTED ARTICLES On this matter of domestic policy the commission is singularly and disappointingly silent. Whatever study it has made of con- ditions in the country is apparently largely used in recommenda- tions for exclusion. No matter how strict these laws are made, they will not solve the problem already confronting the nation and states. ( What are the obligations and requirements exacted from the alien on admission to this country by our foreign policy? He must possess a sound body, a minimum amount of money, the assumption being that he is to earn his living as a laborer. He must possess fair intelligence and a good record. Generally, upon arrival, he must measure up in obedience to a most complex enactment of federal, state and municipal regulations, unher- alded by soldiers or other familiar exponents of government. The regulations for admission also admit aliens without indus- trial, and frequently without any school, training, and women and children wholly unfamiliar with the freedom, rights and protection accorded to such in this country. / The very conditions of entrance impose on the Government at once the imperative necessity for distribution, education and protection if the domestic policy is to be assimilation. They are strangers and must find homes ; they are unemployed and must find work ; they are ignorant and of great faith in the new country and must find protection ; they do not know our lan- guage, which is essential to industrial progress ; there are children to enter our schools and women entitled to rights and privileges as yet unknown to them ; when savings begin, safe depositories must be found ; because the families of many immigrants are still in the home country, savings must be shared and a safe means of communication found. Assuming that our domestic policy is assimilation, which is strengthening in the immigrant that inheritance which will enrich our national life, as well as bringing to him what America now holds of freedom, justice, opportunity and benevolence, what are the means adopted by the Government to accomplish this? The essentials of such a policy obviously do not lie in regulations, repressions and negation, because these characterize our foreign policy. They must, therefore, lie in fair industrial opportunity, distribution, protection, education and equal protection of the laws. First, industrial opportunity and distribution. Upon the main ON IMMIGRATION 211 facts of fair industrial opportunity there is agreement that too many unskilled workers, among them many peasants, women and children, crowd the cities, increase the evils of home work and child labor and imperil the health and lives of children by over- crowding. It is also known that in smaller communities, labor camps, colonies, and in some industries, notably the steel-mills and canneries, aliens are underpaid, wretchedly housed and, as one woman said, "a blight on our civilization that some people should be allowed or compelled to live as they do in some of our small communities." Distribution is no solution for the prevail- ing standards of living without other effort on the part of the Government. What, then, constitutes wise and efficient distribu- tion, and what are the results of the artificial distribution already attempted? In 1907, there was established by the Federal Government a Division of Information for the purpose of promoting a beneficial distribution of aliens by pub- lishing information gathered from several states regarding the sources, products and physical characteristics and to publish such information in different languages, this to be distributed to admitted aliens who may ask for such information at immigrant stations. States may have representatives at these stations for the purpose of presenting special inducements to immigrants to settle in the respective states. This bureau has but a small appropriation. It has collected information regarding labor in various parts of the country and its chief work has been in finding employment. Its work for a considerable time was limited to furnishing farm laborers and domestics only, and it was prohibited from distributing informa- tion on board ship or at ports of entry. The provision that information should be furnished on request only has resulted in a very limited distribution of information, as most aliens are ignorant of its existence. The average number of persons fur- nished employment per year is about 4000, while information is given to three or four times this number. This bureau is not popular and each year its abolition is recommended. A bill introduced in February, 1910, providing for the establishment of branches in various parts of the country and for the regulation of private employment agencies doing an interstate business, failed of passage. With one or two exceptions the states have not availed themselves of the privilege of having representatives at immigration ports. 14 212 SELECTED ARTICLES The restrictions upon the activities of the bureau are due to the fear that immigration would be encouraged and laborers directed to places where there was an over-supply of labor. Had the opposition concerned itself with directing and constructing the work of this bureau, with developing a domestic policy while endeavoring to fortify the external policy of exclusion, in other words, judicially balancing the two, a memorable beginning in our domestic policy would have been made. A wise and comprehensive distribution scheme, as a part of the process of assimilation, would make this Division some- thing more than a labor agency. It would invest it with powers to study the problem of congestion and distribution, to issue publications regarding opportunities in the whole country, and enable it to become the clearing-house not only in actual distri- bution, but in education. Here should be worked out the prin- ciples and methods of establishing uniform state agencies to be recommended to states and cities. Here states should be able to turn for suggestions and cooperation. The establishment of a series of federal employment agencies may indeed be one very important part of the work of distribution, but furnishing men with a needed job today is not more important than knowing how and under what conditions other jobs are furnished and what opportunities there are for fitting the man into a place of progression. This is especially true when the work of such a bureau represents less than i per cent of the total number of persons placed through employment agencies. Regardless of the number of branches the Government may establish, private agencies will never cease to need control. A number of the states have adopted a somewhat uniform policy with reference to the distribution of the unemployed in the establishment of free employment agencies. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, the establishment of these bureaus has not been accompanied by a corresponding wise regulation of private agencies, and they have suffered because of insufficient appropriations and excessive competition. The principle of state bureaus has not yet been intelligently applied as a remedy for the immigrant unemployed. The extension of such state agencies cooperating with federal bureaus and of state regulation of private agencies supplementing federal action is a sound domestic policy. No system of distribution can be deemed a good one which ON IMMIGRATION 213 is but temporary concentrating men in seasonal employments in summer and forcing them to crowd the cities for the winter months ; no system can be a good one which sends men away from cities with their advantages to communities or districts where they live like animals, with no opportunities for education, religion or culture; nor can it be a good one where men are segregated and families discouraged or where aliens concentrate in colonies and are cut off from Americanizing influences. Under our immigration regulations and by contract with the Government, we have insisted that aliens at Ellis Island shall be rated and routed directly from the island and shall not be detained in New York to be exploited. We have also insisted that they shall be sent to their destinations by the most direct route. We still leave the second-cabin alien to the mercy of runners, boarding-house arid other agents to be detained and exploited as long as they see fit. How can we possibly expect an alien to be law-abiding, property respecting and honest, when his first experiences in this country are robbery, overcharging, neglect and frequently instructions to evade the law? We furnish the alien with no information whatever about our resources, conditions, laws, obligations, rights and duties, leaving that to his own countrymen or to business and political interests that crowd the foreign newspapers with exaggerations and misrepresentations, of which practices the Government itself is ignorant. Is it unreasonable, or, more dreadful still, unconstitutional, to require that a part of our domestic policy shall be first the establishment of the principle and the necessary machinery for protecting newly arrived aliens on their way to their final destination ? Is it unreasonable to require that nat'ion and state shall prepare, in languages which he can understand, information which will be of service to the alien? It may be contended that he will not read it, that the word of his friend counts for more. This is true at first. But it opens his mind, sets him thinking, gives him the feeling that the new country is interested in him as an individual, and later, when the need comes, he has more than one source from which to draw. Such information educates his own countrymen who assume to educate him and he is less in their power. There are other matters which fall more particularly within 214 SELECTED ARTICLES the province of the state, but upon which there has been little agreement and action. The alien workman is the poorest protected of all humanity in this country and is even worse off than the children. Two illustrations show this : In labor camps, the working and living conditions of men are the worst known in the country and the children are the most neglected. In home work, the women are the most exploited. Both industries depend largely upon aliens. We cannot build up a sound country until protection is afforded aliens in the industries which they largely constitute. Every progressive state now has a child-labor law as a part of its policy. No state has any kind of an alien labor law. Every progressive state should add regulation of condi- tions in labor camps, elimination of home work and the estab- lishment of minimum wage schedules below which it is agreed no person can maintain a decent standard of living. Unless this is done the restrictionists will find ample arguments in our economic treatment of aliens to force a higher wage rate and standard of living by limiting the supply of alien labor. No domestic policy would be complete without some educa- tional program. Recognizing the limitations of the powers of the Federal Department of Education, there still appears to be no sound reason why it should not be interested in the education of aliens to the extent of studying the facilities now offered for both adults and children. The Federal Immigration Commission made a study of the children of immigrants in schools, but there exists no central organization to put whatever recommendations it may make into practice. The subjects of adult education in English and civics remain untouched by the commission and there are no data showing the progress or methods in use in various states which could be nationalized, as is our public school system. One of the illustrations of this anomaly is that the Bureau of Naturalization requires a knowl- edge of English and American institutions, but in no way provides any such instruction. It leaves this entirely to the politician or to the philanthropist, with the result that the examinations are a farce and the process of citizenship undignified and superficial. It is conceivable that the time will come when a part of the immigration policy of the states will be the establishment of schools of citizenship and regular and graded courses in both English and civics not only to meet naturalization requirements, but to meet industrial requirements. There is no reason why ON IMMIGRATION 215 the work of the courts should not be dignified and simplified by the acceptance of certificates from such established schools under boards of education, attesting qualifications for the granting of the various papers, nor is there any reason why such schools should not provide instruction corresponding to the requirements for first, second and third papers. Furthermore, the tendency of legislation is to restrict many occupations to citizens, and trade instruction showing what occupations require citizenship as well as instruction in the requirement of such business would prove highly important to assimilation and to progress. Night schools for teaching English in various districts with as many different systems as there are teachers; no system of compulsory attendance or truancy officers ; miscellaneous lectures on citizenship all coming at the end of the day, when men and women are fatigued, will not answer the need. It is also con- ceivable that employers may find the introduction of English classes during work hours not impossible as a means of obtain- ing greater efficiency and decreasing the cost of industrial accidents, so often due to ignorance of the English language in which orders are given. It is quite possible that state depart- ments of education may take an interest in the working out of school methods and text-books to suit the needs of aliens and that state legislatures may see the necessity for an appropriation for schools in camps, and a fund to be applied to localities where numbers of alien families are suddenly placed at work tempo- rarily on contracts. These emergency families not only test the resources of the local school, but impair its efficiency for American children in matters of grading, and so forth. Such a fund might well include transportation where it is necessary and take small children in such communities to school during the severe winter months. Increasing the library facilities for aliens, providing American history in the languages of immigrants these are but illustrations of what must constitute a wise educational policy. As nation and states we can scarcely be said to have any educa- tional policy whatever at the present time with reference to adult immigrants, and yet for the year ending June 30, 1910, there were admitted 868,310 persons between the ages of four- teen and forty-four, or 83 per cent of the total. Studies and encouragement of education among alien adults on the part of the Federal Government will not interfere with municipal and state educational work among aliens. The great 2i6 SELECTED ARTICLES need is that the Government representatives federal and state should get together and enumerate clearly the principles of a domestic policy and then set about patiently and courageously 'to work it out each state according to its needs, and as fast as it can enlighten its communities and bring the vision to Americans who now think assimilation to be entirely a process affecting the alien and that the labor asset is the only one which the alien brings. Survey. 25:527-9. January 7, 1911 Adjustment not Restriction. Grace Abbott The commission has recommended that the Division of In- formation and Distribution shall be developed ; that steamship lines shall be required to improve steerage conditions; that the exploitation of the immigrant shall be reduced by better federal supervision of existing agencies and the enactment of more effective legislation by the states; and finally, that because of the character of the "new immigration," and because of the over- supply of the kind of labor it furnishes, immigration should be considerably restricted by means of a literacy test. Public attention will probably be focused on this last recommendation and it is necessary, therefore, to consider with some care the reasons on which it is based. Regarding the character of our recent immigrants the report says that conviction for crime is not more common among them than among the native born ; that they are not diseased and are rarely found among the victims of alcoholism ; that pauperism is "relatively at a minimum" among them; that their homes are in "reasonably good or fair condition"; and that their children attend school in such large numbers as to indicate that the advantages of an education are appreciated by immigrant parents. But all of these facts are outweighed in the eyes of the com- mission because it believes that the "new immigrants" do not intend to remain here permanently ; that they come only to take advantage of the higher wages paid for industrial labor in this country and expect to return in a few years. While admit- ting this is not true of them all, the report says it is sufficiently common to justify "referring to it as characteristic of them as a class." This is the usual argument advanced against the immi- ON IMMIGRATION 217 grant of today and it has done service against those of every generation. Admitting that it is true, it might be urged in the immigrant's defense that he has never been known to take back with him the railroads, canals, and subways he has built, or the great industries that have been developed through his labor. But, as a matter of fact, it cannot be shown that these new immi- grants will not remain in this country. The commission finds that 40 per cent return to Europe and 30 per cent remain there. Moreover, among the 30 per cent who remain are many who have not acquired a competence, for among those who return, according to the report, are the victims of disease and industrial accidents, the aged, the temperamentally unfit, and the widows and children of immigrants who have died here. What 30, per cent do is usually not regarded as indicating the motives of the whole group and if the 30 per cent is made up very largely of the unfortunate victims of American indus- trial life, is it reasonable to say that even 30 per cent intended when they came to remain only temporarily in the United States ? The reason for emigrating, the commission finds, is no longer a desire to escape "intolerable conditions," and the public is therefore warned not to consider the immigration movement from the "standpoint of sentiment," but to look upon it as, an "economic problem." When . from among the many stories of Russian atrocities, that of the young Russian Jewish mother who saw her baby's eyes burned out and her husband killed in one of the "pogroms," and who is saving enough to bring over the remainder of her family to America so that they may know some years of peace, is contrasted with the very mild persecution suffered by those Puritan ancestors whose courage we have been taught to respect, it would seem that an entirely new standard of "intolerable conditions" has been adopted by the commission. As a matter of fact the causes of immigration today are not really different in principle from those in the seventeenth or in the nineteenth century. The Letts, Lithuanians, Finns, Poles, and Russians who are coming from all parts of the Czar's dominions are fired with the same political idealism which the German revolutionists con- tributed to American life; the Jews from Russia and Roumania, the various racial groups that come from Turkey, and the Spanish Protestants are seeking a religious asylum, just as the 218 SELECTED ARTICLES Puritans, the Huguenots, the English Catholics, and the Quakers did so many years ago ; the south Italian, like the Irish immi- grant, comes to escape a landlordism which keeps him and his children in abject poverty; others, better situated, are coming from all parts of Europe because they have decided that the only hope of real economic and social independence lies in a newer country; still others are plain adventurers, and it is probably safe to say that about the same per cent of these are succeeding today as have succeeded in every century since the time of Columbus. ( With regard to the argument that the immigrant is responsible for the introduction of a lower standard of living in the United States and the commission does not show that he is it should be pointed out that the immigrant prima facie would never intentionally underbid in the labor market. No one is more eager than he to raise the standard of living, for it is the hope of accomplishing this that has been a determining factor in his decision to leave home. Unwittingly he may accept wages below the market rate if he falls into the hands of disreputable labor agents and unscrupulous employers, who take every advantage of his ignorance of American conditions. Protective measures could, of course, be devised to prevent these practices, but the public unfortunately continues to be more interested in restriction than in means by which these immigrants may be saved from industrial exploitation. ^ Certain classes of immigrants are, in the opinion of the com- mission, to be regarded as peculiarly undesirable. It is especially recommended, for example, that men who come unaccompanied by their families should be excluded. While those who are familiar with the immigrant question realize that large groups of men living together present a problem with peculiar difficul- ties, they are none the less convinced that our efforts should be directed to a solution of these difficulties, rather than to devising some test by which some of the men will be excluded. As a matter of fact the best men, that is the best husbands and fathers, usually emigrate before their families. The man who seriously considers the welfare of his wife and children and is not driven by immediate persecution will precede them to America, learn something of the country, secure employment, and have a little home ready for them when they come to join him. To discour- age this practice would seem to be wholly undesirable. ON IMMIGRATION 219 As for the literacy test, it is difficult to find anything to recommend it as the best means, or even as a good means, of selecting our future citizens. What we desire is a character test, and the ability to read and write has never been regarded as a means of determining honesty or thrift. It is not even a test of ambition, for the immigrants come without this meager edu- cational equipment because they have been given no opportunity to attend school in the countries from which they come. There is nothing which is so much the result of conditions over which the immigrant has no control as his ability to read and write, and no deficiency which we are so well equipped to supply. As for the other tests considered by the commission an in- creased head tax or the requirement that an immigrant bring $25, $50 or a $100 they fail also as tests of a man's "economic fitness." The man who comes with several hundred or thousand dollars may be much less "desirable" than the intelligent and adaptable man who emigrates while he is still young and begins his industry in his new home. Survey. 29:419-20. January 4, 1913 Pen and Book as Tests of Character. Jane Addams Much of the discussion in the House and in the press was particularly objectionable because of the emphasis placed upon racial differences. The old and new immigration were fre- quently contrasted with the traditional odiousness resulting from comparisons. The epithet of "inferior races" was constantly applied to certain peasant groups who, as the result of isolation and lack of opportunity are doubtless backward, but who do not therefore belong to an inferior stock, and who exhibit no greater differences to other groups of their own race than those which often obtain between branches of the same family. Striking differences are certainly found between certain family groups in America, one of which has remained for five generations stranded in the mountains of Virginia or Tennessee, in contrast to their cousins whose forefathers crossed over the mountains into fertile valleys. Many mountain whites of America are illiterate and totally unacquainted with the advances of civilization, but they do not thereby change their race nor their capacity for develop- ment. 220 SELECTED ARTICLES After all, literacy is neither a test of character nor of ability ; it is merely an index of the educational system of the community in which a man has been reared. The literacy test will always work in favor of the man from the city and discriminate against the man from the country. On the face of it, it would seem safer to admit a sturdy peasant from the mountains of Calabria than a sophisticated Neopolitan, familiar with the refined methods of police graft which have made the Camorra famous. In addition to that, the peasant finds work waiting for him, the educated man "above manual labor" often has a pitiful struggle to keep himself from starvation. Our experience at Hull House is similar to that of the friends of the immigrant everywhere. We recall an Italian editor, a Greek professor, a Russian medical student, an Armenian Master of Arts, for whom it was impos- sible to obtain anything but manual work which they finally undertook in bitterness of spirit and with insufficiency of muscle. A settlement constantly sees the deterioration of highly educated foreigners under the strain of maladjustment, in marked con- trast to the often rapid rise of the families of illiterate immi- grants. One of the most gifted boys ever connected with Hull House, who is now a rising man in his profession and in the civic life of Chicago, is the son of immigrant parents who can neither read nor write, while one of our most baffling cases is the refined and educated son of a Greek clergyman who can find no work which he does not consider beneath his educational qualifications. The only service America is universally eager to render to the immigrant and his children, and moreover the only one it is thoroughly equipped to offer, is free education. By the same token, so eager are the immigrants to avail themselves of Ameri- ca's educational opportunities for their children, that the census figures show greater illiteracy among native whites of native parentage than among native whites of foreign parentage. The average illiteracy of native white of native parentage is 5.7 per cent and of native white of foreign parents 1.6 per cent. In the light of these figures it would seem clear that illiteracy is the one defect most easily remedied and that American experience does not justify the use of literacy as a fair test for entrance. Throughout the discussion concerning the literacy test the "oversupply of unskilled labor" was constantly referred to, although no comprehensive inquiry has ever been undertaken ON IMMIGRATION 221 which could demonstrate this. We have no national system of labor exchanges which might show how much of the apparent unemployment is maladjustment of the supply to the demand and how much is oversupply. Certainly underemployment, casual work, long hours, poor wages, unsanitary shops, are found in industries in which the "unskilled immigrant man" is not em- ployed. Limiting the supply by restricting immigration will cure none of these, and it merely confuses the issue to claim that it will. Until industrial conditions in America are faced, the immi- grant will continue to be blamed for conditions for which the community is responsible. There is no doubt that America has failed to make legislative provisions against those evils as other countries have done, partly b.ecause the average citizen holds a contemptuous attitude toward the "foreigner" and is not stirred to action on his behalf. New York Times. January 10, 1912 Illiteracy and Its Significance In the innumerable discussions of immigration and the neces- sity for restricting it the question of illiteracy comes up again and again. Nobody denies that the man who cannot read may have in him the making of a citizen good as well as useful, or that the man to whom the world of letters is open may be worse than useless, the worst possible addition to our population. Nevertheless, while nobody denies these things and they are often asserted, the impulse to bar the illiterate is still widely felt, and it is not infrequently suggested as either necessary or judicious. Always, or a least much more than usually, illiteracy is treated in these discussions as if it were an absolute thing, to be observed and condemned as such, and even those who would let in the illiterate admit his essential inferiority to the man who has been to school. As a matter of fact, inability to read, standing alone, tells nothing whatever about a man except that he cannot read. It gains significance only when we know why he cannot read. If born and brought up in a country, or a part of a country, where the opportunities to acquire the elements of education are good, cheap, and open to all, the illiterate is a very different per- son from him whose early years were passed where there are no schools or where there are only a few, accessible only to a small 222 SELECTED ARTICLES or favored class. In the one case the man who cannot read is almost or quite certainly an imbecile, abnormal, and degenerate to a degree that warrants his exclusion by that one test. In the other case he may be perfectly normal, of fair or even high intelligence, and eminently eligible for adoption as a citizen. It must not be forgotten, either, that some countries that once sent us good though illiterate immigrants have so increased their school facilities in recent years that they no longer do so that the illiterates now coming from them should be, and in perfect justice can be, sent back whence they came by descend- ants of ancestors who were themselves illiterate when they reached these shores. There is, therefore, nothing at all in that often offered argument. Real undesirability in an immigrant consists much less in what he is than in what his children will be. No individual can hurt us appreciably when he has only remedial faults and curable diseases. If he be the predestined progenitor of a Jukes family, he should be excluded, no matter how well he is, how glibly he can read, or how large his fortune. Congressional Record. 52:3064. February 4, 1915 Three Veto Messages 1897 I herewith return without approval House bill No. 7864, entitled "An act to amend the immigration laws of the United States." By the first section of this bill it is proposed to amend section i of the act of March 3, 1891, relating to immigration by adding to the classes of aliens thereby excluded from admission to the United States the following: All persons physically capable and over 16 years of. age who cannot read and write the English language or some other language; but a person not so able to read and write who is over 50 years of age and is the parent or grandparent of a qualified immigrant over 21 years of age and capable of supporting such parent or grandparent may accompany such immigrant, or such a parent or grandparent may be sent for and come to join the family of a child or grandchild over 21 years of age similarly qualified and capable, and a wife or minor child not so able to read and write may accompany or be sent for and come and join the husband or parent similarly qualified and capable. ON IMMIGRATION 223 A radical departure from our national policy relating to immigration is here presented. Heretofore we have welcomed all who came to us from other lands except those whose moral or physical condition or history threatened danger to our national welfare and safety. Relying upon the zealous watchfulness of our people to prevent injury to our political and social fabric, we have encouraged those coming from foreign countries to cast their lot with us and join in the development of our vast domain, securing in return a share in the blessings of American citizen- ship. A century's stupendous growth, largely due to the assimilation and thrift of millions of sturdy and patriotic adopted citizens, attests the success of this generous and free-handed policy which, while guarding the people's interests, exacts from our immigrants only physical and moral soundness and a willingness and ability to work. A contemplation of the grand results of this policy cannot fail to arouse a sentiment in its defense, for however it might have been regarded as an original proposition and viewed as an experiment, its accomplishments are such that if it is to be uprooted at this late day its disadvantages should be plainly apparent, and the substitute adopted should be just and adequate, free from uncertainties, and guarded against difficult or oppressive administration. It is not claimed. I believe, that the time has come for the further restriction of immigration on the ground that an excess of population overcrowds our land. It is said, however, that the quality of recent immigration is undesirable. The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens. It is said that too many immigrants settle in our cities, thus dangerously increasing their idle and vicious population. This is certainly a disadvantage. It cannot be shown, however, that it affects all our cities, nor that it is permanent ; nor does it appear that this condition where it exists demands as its remedy the reversal of our present immigration policy. The claim is also made that the influx of foreign laborers deprives of the opportunity to work those who are better entitled than they to the privilege of earning their livelihood by daily toil. An unfortunate condition is certainly presented when any who 224 SELECTED ARTICLES are willing to labor are unemployed, but so far as this condition now exists among our people it must be conceded to be a result of phenomenal business depression and the stagnation of all enterprises in which labor is a factor. With the advent of settled and wholesome financial and economic governmental policies and consequent encouragement to the activity of capital the misfor- tunes of unemployed labor should, to a great extent at least, be remedied. If it continues, its natural consequences must be to check the further immigration to our cities of foreign laborers and to deplete the ranks of those already there. In the meantime those most willing and best entitled ought to be abfe to secure the advantages of such work as there is to do. It is proposed by the bill under consideration to meet the alleged difficulties of the situation by establishing an educational test by which the right of a foreigner to make his home with us shall be determined. Its general scheme is to prohibit from admission to our country all immigrants "physically capable and over sixteen years of age who cannot read and write the English language or some other language," and it is provided that this test shall be applied by requiring immigrants seeking admission to read and afterwards to write not less than twenty nor more than twenty-five words of the Constitution of the United States in some language, and that any immigrant failing in this shall not be admitted, but shall be returned to the country from whence he came at the expense of the steamship or railroad company which brought him. The best reason that could be given for this radical restriction of immigration is the necessity of protecting our population against degeneration and saving our national peace and quiet from imported turbulence and disorder. I cannot believe that we would be protected against these evils by limiting immigration to those who can read and write in any language twenty-five words of our Constitution. In my opinion, it is infinitely more safe to admit a hundred thousand immigrants who, though unable to read and write, seek among us only a home and opportunity to work than to admit one of those unruly agitators and enemies of governmental control who cannot only read and write, but delights in arousing by inflamma- tory speech the illiterate and peacefully inclined to discontent and tumult. Violence and disorder do not originate with illiterate laborers. They are, rather, the victims of the educated agitator. The ability to read and write, as required in this bill, in and of ON IMMIGRATION 225 itself, affords, in my opinion, a misleading test of contented industry and supplies unsatisfactory evidence of desirable citizen- ship or a proper apprehension of the benefits of our institutions. If any particular element of our illiterate immigration is to be feared for other causes than illiteracy, these causes should be dealt with directly, instead of making illiteracy the pretext for exclusion, to the detriment of other illiterate immigrants against whom the real cause of complaint cannot be alleged. A careful examination of this bill has convinced me that for the reasons given and others not specifically stated its provisions are unnecessarily harsh and oppressive and that its defects in construction would cause vexation and its operation would result in harm to our citizens. GROVER CLEVELAND. I return herewith, without my approval, S. 31/5. I do this with great reluctance. The bill contains many valuable amendments to the present immigration law which will insure greater certainty in excluding undesirable immigrants. The bill received strong support in both Houses and was recommended by an able commission after an extended investi- gation and carefully drawn conclusions. But I cannot make up my mind to sign a bill which in its chief provision violates a principle that ought, in my opinion, to be upheld in dealing with our immigration. I refer to the literacy test. For the reasons stated in Secretary Nagel's letter to me, I cannot approve that test. WILLIAM H. TAFT. 1915 It is with unaffected regret that I find myself constrained by clear conviction to return this bill (H. R. 6060, an act to regulate the immigration of aliens to and the residence of aliens in the United States), without my signature. Not only do I feel it to be a serious matter to exercise the power of veto in any case, because it involves opposing the single judgment of the president to the judgment of a majority of both houses of the Congress, a step which no man who realizes his own liability to error can take without great hesitation, but also because this particular bill is in so many important respects admirably well-conceived and desirable. Its enactment into law would undoubtedly enhance the en> 226 SELECTED ARTICLES ciency and improve the methods of handling the important branch of the public service to which it relates, but candor and a sense of duty with regard to the responsibility so clearly imposed upon me by the constitution in matters of legislation, leave me no choice but to dissent. In two particulars of vital consequence this bill embodies a radical departure from the traditional and long-established policy of this country, a policy in which our people have conceived the very character of their government to be expressed, the very mission and spirit of the nation in respect of its relations to the peoples of the world outside their borders. It seeks to all but close entirely the gates of asylum which have always been open to those who could find nowhere else the right and opportunity of constitutional agitation for what they conceived to be the natural and inalienable rights of men ; and it excludes those to whom the opportunities of elementary edu- cation have been denied without regard to their character, their purposes or their natural capacity. Restrictions like these adopted earlier in our history as a nation would very materially have altered the course and cooled the humane ardors of our politics. The right of political asylum has brought to this country many a man of noble character and elevated purpose who was marked as an outlaw in his own less fortunate land and who has yet become an ornament to our citizenship and to our public councils. The children and the compatriots of these illustrious Ameri- cans must stand amazed to see the representatives of their nation now resolved, in the fulness of our national strength and at the maturity of our great institutions, to risk turning such men back from our shores without test of quality or of purpose. It is difficult for me to believe that the full effect of this feature of the bill was realized when it was framed and adopted, and it is impossible for me to assent to it in the form in which it is here cast. The literacy test and the tests and restrictions which accom- pany it constitute an even more radical change in the policy of the nation. Hitherto we have generously kept our borders open to all who were not unfitted by reason of disease or incapacity for self-support, or such personal records and antecedents as were likely to make them a menace to our peace and order or to the wholesome and essential relationships of life. In this bill ON IMMIGRATION 227 it is proposed to turn away from tests of character and of quality and to impose tests which exclude and restrict; for the new. tests here embodied are not tests of quality or of character or of personal fitness, but tests of opportunity. Those who come seeking opportunity are not to be admitted unless they have already had one of the chief of the opportunities they seek the opportunity of education. The object of such provisions is restriction, not selection. If the people of this country have made up their minds to limit the number of immigrants by arbitrary tests and so reverse the policy of all the generations of Americans that have gone before them, it is their right to do so. I am their servant and have no license to stand in their way. But I do not believe that they have. I respectfully submit that no one can quote their mandate to that effect. Has any political party ever avowed a policy of restriction in this fundamental matter, gone to the country on it, and then been commissioned to control its legis- lation? Does this bill rest upon the conscious and universal assent and desire of the American people? I doubt it. It is because I doubt it that I make bold to dissent from it. I am willing to abide by the verdict, but not until it has been rendered. Let the platforms of parties speak out upon this policy and the people pronounce their wish. The matter is too fundamental to be settled otherwise. I have no pride of opinion on this question. I am not foolish enough to profess to know the wishes and ideals of America better than the body of her chosen representatives know them. I only want instruction direct from those whose fortunes with ours and all men's are involved. WOODROW WILSON. North American Review. 201:347-50. March, 1915 Bogy of Alien Illiteracy. George Harvey The President's veto of the immigration bill, happily effective, should serve a double purpose. It should put an end to the mistaken effort to debar from this country otherwise acceptable immigrants on the sole ground of illiteracy, and it should lead to a general recognition of the unjust and unreasonable character of that effort. We may unhesitatingly concede that illiteracy is an evil, and that unrestricted immigration is or would be an 15 228 SELECTED ARTICLES evil. But the evil of illiteracy is not to be abolished by excluding immigrants who cannot read and write, and the worst evils of promiscuous immigration are not to be corrected by making literacy the test for admission. The illiterates are not, per se, the worst class of undesirables. The most serious evil lies in the entrance to this country of wastrels, of degenerates, of the physically and mentally infirm ; above all, of the morally corrupt. No rational man should object to the strictest possible exclusion of these. But there should be no hesitation in preferring an immigrant who is technically illiterate, yet actually intelligent, honest, and industrious, to one who is stupid, dishonest, and lazy, though gifted with all the technical scholarship of the academic curriculum. It should be borne in mind, too, that illiteracy is not merely an imported thing. It bears the stamp "Made in America," too. Indeed, there is vastly more native than naturalized illiteracy, if we take our whole population into the reckoning; and there is nearly as much native as naturalized if we have regard to only the white race. According to the census of 1910 the numbers of illiterates above the age of ten years were as follows: Negroes, American born 2,227,731 Whites, American born 1,534,272 Whites, foreign born 1,650,361 Thus there were almost as many white native Americans illiterate as there were illiterate immigrants. True, the propor- tion of the former to the whole was far less than of the latter. Yet in at least one state the percentage of illiterate native white people was considerably greater than the percentage of illiterate immigrants in the whole country. In Louisiana no fewer than 15 per cent of the native whites above the age of ten were illiterate, while in the whole United States only 12.7 per cent of immigrants suffered that disability. Of course, it might be argued that if we have so many illiterates of our own, there is the more cause for excluding those of other lands who seek to come thither. But there would be to this the ready and effective reply that we are sorely disqualified for casting contumelious and condemnatory stones at the unfortunate of other countries. There is the more force in this latter contention because of the fact that native illiteracy is commonly self-propagating, while alien illiteracy is not. Our native illiterates too often bring up their children as illiterates, while illiterate immigrants do not. ON IMMIGRATION 229 That is indeed one of the most impressive circumstances of the whole case. The average native illiterate is the child of an illiter- ate. But the illiterate immigrant almost invariably takes pains to have his children educated. The result is that the children of immigrants are the most generally literate class of our entire population. Here are the percentages of illiteracy among adults in 1910: Negroes, American born 30.4 Whites, foreign born 12.7 Whites, American born of American parents 3.7 Whites, American born of immigrant parents i.i Thus the illiterate children of immigrants were less than one-third as many, proportionately, as the illiterate children of native Americans. What is the natural and inevitable deduction ? Why, that illiterate immigration, while a present evil, assures a much greater future good. It increases for the present the sum total of illiteracy in the nation, but promises in the next gen- eration to decrease its proportion. It means a present generation of illiterates, but a coming generation of literates. THE EUROPEAN WAR AND IMMIGRATION Immigrants in America Review. 1:9-10. March, 1915 A Domestic Policy. Frances Kellor For the first time in many years this country is free from the absorbing demand made by the entrance of hundreds of thou- sands of immigrants yearly. Now is the time to take up the conditions of the nearly thirteen million foreign born in this country and to formulate and execute the measures necessary for the welfare of the country. Now is the time to establish adequate machinery for dealing intelligently and efficiently with increased immigration after the war. In the meantime, the unguided child-workers, the children out of school, the illiterate parents, the thousands of unnaturalized, the unemployed, the congested cities and deserted farms, the isolated colonies, the padroni, the precarious institutions for savings and investments, these and many other matters require national consideration and action. New Republic, i: 10-1. December 26, 1914 Wanted An Immigration Policy The theory of an automatic drying up of the sources of immigration has been emphasized more strongly than ever since the outbreak of the war. Already the westward tide ebbs, and in October only 30,000 immigrant aliens arrived as compared with 134,000 in October of last year. If the war lasts a year or more, millions will be killed by wounds, famine and disease, and other millions will be permanently incapacitated. But even though population does decline, it does not follow that the emigrating impulse will be lessened. The rapid decrease in the Irish population during the half century after the famine did not retard but actually accelerated the emigration. It is not from countries with lessened populations but from countries with lessened economic opportunities that emigration proceeds. And 232 SELECTED ARTICLES it is exactly this lessening of economic opportunities that we have to fear as a result of the war. The delicate, intricate indus- trial system by which we all live will be deranged. Capital will be dissipated, credit shattered, and whole trades, the learning of which has cost years of arduous labor, will be for the time discontinued. The system will accommodate itself only slowly to the sudden withdrawal, and later the sudden replacement of millions of wage-earners. If then, as is to be feared, new armies of ragged and unem- ployed men are to be enrolled as soon as the armies in uniform are disbanded, if wages fall and life becomes insecure, the out- ward pressure upon the huge wage-earning populations of Europe will be overwhelming, and those ,who have the means will seek to emigrate. There will be restless millions of former wage- earners in whom the fierce emotions of war have made an end to all those industrial ambitions and acquiescences so habitually ignored or disesteemed, and yet vitally essential to the mere existence of society. Others, having lost their farms or their little shops and houses, or their wives and families, and still others who have had their country and their patriotism swept away from under their feet, in fact all who have had the thin thread of custom snapped, will be discontented and mobile. The world will be full of foot-loose adventurers, good and bad, filled with romantic illusions or else utterly disenchanted, and to these broken lives America will appeal with a freshness of attraction such as she has not possessed since the days of '48, when the defeated revolutionists of Germany turned westward to a land which to them embodied the liberal principles for which they had struggled, the land of freedom, the refuge of the oppressed and the defeated of all the world. And recalling, as we must, this high reverence for the America of that day, and this ideal picture of her which may still be found in the hearts of boys risking their lives in the cold trenches recalling this, does it seem sinister to close the doors upon this misery, to make the wretchedness of the European our excuse for debarring him? It may be sinister. Yet what else has been or can be the justification of that policy of self- defense which we seek to express in some adequate restriction or regulation of a swelling immigration? Wretchedness is infectious, and no contagion is more deadly than that of poverty. It is the poverty and the resourcelessness of the immigrant, which, hand- ing him over to the exploiter, renders him so dangerous to him- ON IMMIGRATION 233 self and others. We need not enter upon the enumeration of that long calendar of social diseases ignorance, congestion, low wages, long hours, political corruption, divided counsels and so many, many others, to the propagation of which the alien, espe- cially when impoverished, so innocently contributes. To justify a policy of regulation we need only oppose the wisdom of facing problems concretely and courageously to the folly of leaving things as they are. If we are to protect ourselves and the immi- grant from exploitation, impoverishment and a fierceness and lawlessness of economic struggle, which too often brands the victor with an indelible brand and leaves the victim crushed and demoralized, if not actually dead, we must work out a states- manlike policy of immigration, and end our listless method of sitting grandiloquently at the gate and letting all enter, irre- spective of their needs or ours, provided only they have $30 and ungranulated eyelids. Survey. 34: 153-4, May 15, 1915 Immigration That May Come from Russia After the War. Leo Pasvolsky Suppose the European war were to be brought to an end next week or next month. What would be the state of affairs in Europe, especially as emigration to the United States would be affected? What course would the influx of human material into this country, forcibly interrupted by the war, take, should this interruption be removed? As far as future emigration to America is concerned, Europe may be considered as three divisions. The first would include the neutral .countries, which have succeeded in avoiding the war. The second would include those belligerents, who, for certain reasons, will do everything in their power to keep every unit of their population at home, and the third, the rest of the belliger- ents. The countries of southern Europe, with the unimportant ex- ceptions of Servia and Montenegro (Turkey being left altogether out of account in this connection) as well as the Scandinavian countries of the north, have so far remained neutral. If they continue to remain so, then the re-establishment of peace will find them in fairly normal conditions. The one problem will be the large part of the industrial population which had been diverted 234 SELECTED ARTICLES into the mobilized army. However, no section of these countries has suffered actual disaster, and the resumption of normal activities will not be very difficult. Therefore, the emigration from these countries will be practically the same as before the war, if it is not less. The countries which will seek to restrain emigration will include England, France and Germany. Under normal conditions these countries are not over-populated and, in addition, are well organized industrially. Before the war, they contributed little to the ranks of immigrants that came to the United States ; after the war, they may be expected to contribute nothing at all. These countries will need every man of their population to bring their industrial systems back to their usual efficiency, and government regulation will probably be brought into play, should any noticeable movement for emigration begin. Of the other belligerents, Austria-Hungary and Russia have a large population, and both are poorly organized industrially. These two conditions were largely responsible for the heavy emigration from these countries before the war. While our chief concern, in this connection, is with Russia, it may be noted, in passing, that the government of the dual monarchy is even now attempting to improve the industrial situation by protecting the money standards of the country. This fact may serve as a portent of the future attitude, if war does not change materially the status of the empire. As far as Russia is concerned, her industrial life has never been well organized, and the war showed that such organization as existed was almost exclusively in the hands of the Germans. Actual war operations have affected some of the most highly efficient manufacturing centers of Russia, viz., Poland, and has disorganized the economic life of the whole southern part of the country. But the war also made evident the part Germany played in the industrial life of Russia. When trade with Germany ceased and when, as a result of the state of war that existed between the two countries, German subjects were compelled to leave Russia, it suddenly became apparent that practically all industries were in the hands of the Germans. Even now, after eight months of the war, the indications are that the industries of Russia are still thoroughly disorganized. Unemployment in Russia is acute. It has been calculated that the mere suspension of the distilling industry has left about a ON IMMIGRATION 235 hundred thousand men out of work in Petrograd alone. Part of this is, of course, accounted for by the prohibition of the sale of intoxicants. The introduction of temperance is, undoubtedly, a splendid thing, but there are grave economic problems connected with it; one of these is the necessity of diverting the men employed in the suspended industry to other channels. It has never been the policy of the Russian government to encourage or aid the indus- trial development of the country. As an example of this may be cited the actions of the ministry of finance in 1901-02, when the government deliberately wrecked the metallurgical industries of southern Russia. There are no indications that this policy has changed. At present the cotton goods industry, whose product is used in immense quantities in Russia, is practically at a standstill, because the importation of raw materials has almost ceased. The removal of this obstacle lies in the hands of the government, as its chief cause is the lack of credits abroad and the lack of foreign specie in Russia, which renders the international import deals so un- profitable as to make them almost impossible. Several requests for foreign specie have come from the cotton goods manufactur- ers, the amount needed having been calculated to be approxi- mately 70,000,000 roubles, but the government has refused prac- tically every request. The last refusal was made quite recently. In order even to resume the nation's industrial life, the Russian government would have to grant additional rights to those people who are capable of organizing the industries on a commercial basis, especially to the Jews. But the government has, as yet, given no indication of its intention to change its Jewish policy. Thus, it is more than likely that the Russian government itself will eliminate the Russian factors that might be working for the industrial development of Russia. Germans and other Europeans will undoubtedly be too busy at home reorganizing their own industries to consider Russian problems. In this event, if even the Russian government should consent to having the Germans resume control of Russian indus- tries, of which they had full sway before the war, the Germans themselves will scarcely be either able or willing to do so. This, of course, opens an opportunity to American capital. Generally, however, Americans know so little about Russia that there will scarcely be an extensive movement of American capital 236 SELECTED ARTICLES to Russia. It is more likely that Americans will prefer to remain at home and have Russian labor come over. This would mean that after the war Russian emigration to America will become more Ixtensive than before. The Russian government will be confronted after the war with unemployment of such wide prevalence as to make all other out-of-work problems we know of sink into insignificance. And it certainly will not be a paying proposition to keep this huge army of the unemployed within the empire, awaiting the slow industrial development characteristic of Russia. It is probable that the government will throw no obstacle in the way of emigration, as it threw no obstacle in its way after the Russo-Japanese war and during the years that followed. The Russian population is enormous in comparison with the utterly inefficient industrial organization of the country. This state of affairs must produce, after the war, a large unemployed surplus of population that will either have to starve or emigrate. The latter course is more likely than the first. A peculiar feature of this war is the fact that there is pre- sumably no desertion in the Russian army, while during the Russo-Japanese war, there was a great deal of desertion. This is partly because the war is "nearer home" now than it was ten years ago, and therefore patriotism is stronger, but mostly be- cause Russia is so bottled up that there is no path open for escaping abroad. Ten years ago, the deserters crossed the Ger- man border and went to America through Hamburg, Bremen and the other great German ports. Today, this is obviously impos- sible. However, if the allied fleet succeeds in forcing the Darda- nelles, things will probably begin to assume a new aspect. Unless Rumania is forced into the war, it will not be very difficult for Russian deserters to cross the Rumanian border and thence make their way to the Greek or Italian ports, from which the way to America would be open. Moreover, the opening of the Darda- nelles will undoubtedly bring about direct commercial relations between American ports and Odessa. It would be very easy to divert to this service some of the English liners, as well as the boats of the Russian-American line. , The establishment of such a direct communication route through a very convenient, as far as railroad connections are ON IMMIGRATION 23? concerned, Russian port, will make it possible for many persons to leave the country, if they so desire. These predictions, while partly theoretical and speculative, are thoroughly in keeping with what we know of Russia in the past and the information we get about her in the present. All signs seem to indicate that in a very short time the Ellis Island officials will have to resume some of their work, and that the cessation of hostilities will bring on a new flood of immigra- tion, the bulk of which will come from Russia. Outlook. 113: 1023-4. August 30, 1916 Immigration of the Year Two years have now passed since the beginning of the war. Immigration still is drastically curtailed. While the net immigration in the year which closed July I was 125,941, as compared with 50,070 in 1915, the actual number of aliens who applied for admission, 366,748, was smaller than in the previous year by approximately 70,000. The reason for the greater actual increase in the alien population is due to the smaller number of those returning home. Immigration, of course, was largely from countries having access to the Atlantic Ocean. Nine racial groups Dutch, Flemish, English, French, Irish, Finnish, Scandinavian, Scotch, and German furnished nearly one-half of the immigrants, the remainder being scattered through thirty-one racial classifications. The chief contributions, aside from those of northwestern Europe, were Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, and Mexican. With the exception of the Italian, the totals of these nationalities were relatively high. Never before in a single year have so many Portuguese emi- grated to the United States. There were about 13,000 of them, which was also the number of Spaniards. There were more than 22,000 Mexicans. VThe effect of the continued curtailment of immigration has been felt particularly in the labor market. Unskilled workers have been in such demand that they have been able to get em- ployment at wages ranging from $2.25 to $2.50 for an eight-hour day, while available household servants have been asking and receiving a fifty per cent increase over the wages paid a year agoK 238 SELECTED ARTICLES Some railway companies have been employing Southern Negroes and Mexicans in place of the Italian and Polish track hands who have left them to fight for their native country or to secure higher wages. Farm labor has gone up fifty per cent. The ap- plications for help received by social relief organizations in New York City have fallen to less than half the total of a year ago. Most of the requests for relief have been due to illness, acci- dents, and for the care of alien widows. American steamship agents are forecasting an exodus of at least 1,000,000 Hungarians, Poles, Austrians, Lithuanians, Bohe- mians, Germans, and other natives of Central Europe as soon as peace is declared. Their estimate is based on reports from sub- agents in different parts of the country, who say that many are making deposits and saving money for the purchase of tickets. These prospective emigrant aliens are anxious to see relatives and friends from whom they have heard little since the war broke out, and to look after property. Many of them one-half, it is estimated will remain to help rebuild their native coun- tries. For this reason it is believed that, with the exception of the harassed Jews of the Pale and Poland, there will be a small emigration to America. Scribner's Magazine. 58:635-9. November, 1915 Immigration After the War. Frederic C. Howe The results of the war are a subject of conjecture. It is claimed by some that, irrespective of the outcome, European nations will gird their loins to repair the ravages of the war. They will prohibit emigration in so far as they can. By others it is claimed that millions will flee the Old World to avoid militaristic conditions ; they will seek to escape the bur- dens of taxation ; they will be driven by want and despair to find a freer home in a new land. Both of these conjectures are probably in part correct: Im- migration from some countries will cease, while immigration from other countries will be accelerated. New currents will be set in motion that will change the character of immigration, as well as its volume. New social necessities will change the func- tions of government, while the war itself will profoundly alter human psychology, which, in turn, will profoundly affect the new ON IMMIGRATION 239 Volkerwanderung which for at least twenty centuries has been moving steadily toward the west. It is safe to assume that Germany will permit as few of her people to migrate as possible. Germany is the most socialized state in the modern world. The traditions of the state are those of paternalism, which the war has carried to far greater ex- tremes than prevailed in time of peace. UnctoJ)tedly, when the war is over, the existing militaristic organization will be applied to reconstruction, and every effort will be bent to recapture the trade that has been lost, to regain a position on the seas, and to rebuild the fatherland. The same forces will be set in motion in England. The war has changed the old individualism which has dominated English thought since the time of Napoleon. It has altered the negative philosophy of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Herbert Spencer, who have insisted that the state should keep out of industry and inter- fere with its operations as little as possible. Great Britain will find it impossible to go back to the individualism of former days when the war is over. Her necessities will be as great as those of Germany. She, too, will direct her energies to an industrial rehabilitation, in which she will have the backing of the large labor group in the nation. 'Great Britain, like Germany, will seek to keep her people at home. State socialism on an unprecedented scale will undoubtedly be one of the by-products of the war all over Europe. In addition to the efforts of the state, the loss of from 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 able-bodied men will create a labor vacuum. Mills, mines, and* factories will find difficulty in secur- ing employees ; the farms will be denuded of men. Eastern Europe has been overrun by armies, as has northern France. This shortage of labor, together 'with the efforts of the nations to quickly rebuild their industries, will lead to an increase in wages, an increase that is inevitable. In addition to this, all life has been disorganized, and men will return to their work with old traditions destroyed and a new sense of individual power. Under these conditions wages may rise very rapidly. They may rise to something like a parity with wages in the United States. This will keep men at home. It may bring about a reversal of the immigration current and lure workers to these countries from America. For along with the stream of incom- 240 SELECTED ARTICLES ing aliens there is always a counter-current of outgoing ones. Between 300,000 and 400,000 aliens leave America each year to return to their native lands. They take with them their accumu- lations. They acquire small holdings, they open shops, and spend the balance of their life in their old home surroundings. There is no indissoluble affection on the part of many foreigners for America. And, with wage conditions improved, there is no rea- son why hundreds of thousands of the more recent arrivals, who have not taken root in this country, should not return to their native lands under more favorable economic and social condi- tions. These are some of the forces which will tend to check immi- gration, and the most desirable immigration. It will keep the able-bodied, the well and strong, at home, who have always been welcome to America and who have contributed so much to our industrial development. But while state action, the re-establishment of industry, and a labor vacuum will keep many men and women at home, other forces will be set in motion which will drive them to this coun- try. They may come in such numbers as to create the most serious immigration problem we have ever had, and one that will tax our sympathies and emotions far more than the individual cases that now present themselves to the immigration authorities. In the first place, there will probably be from 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 widows or dependent women left husbandless, father- less, and destitute by the war. Possibly twice as many children will be bereft of their providers. Many of them will have lost their homes ; they will not be wanted by any of the contending nations. They will be an additional burden in the period of reconstruction. Millions of these women and children have friends and relatives in the United States to whom they will extend appealing arms. This is especially true of Russia, Aus- tria-Hungary, Poland, Italy, and the Balkans. All of these nations, in addition, with the exception of Italy, have been rav- ished by the war; in some parts the entire country has been laid waste. War is always hardest on the Jews. They have no voice in the government. They are subjects of personal and official per- secution. And the centres of Jewish emigration are in the east- ern war zone. Jewish immigration to this country is assisted, as is that of other nations, by friends already in the country, ON IMMIGRATION 241 who give generously to the oppressed of their race and have organized agencies for the distribution of incoming Jews and the finding of places of employment for them. The stories of Jewish outrages have quickened the ready sympathies of the American Jew, and undoubtedly when the censorship is raised and the stories of atrocities find their way to this country Jew- ish immigration will be stimulated at a more rapid rate than ever before. Immigration from southern Europe will probably continue to predominate and will probably increase in volume. Italy, Austria- Hungary, Russia, and the Balkan states are not as efficiently organized as are Germany, England, and France. They are not experienced in state or socialized effort. These are peasant coun- tries with but few large cities. A great majority of the people live upon the land, much of which has been fought over and from which the horses and live stock and growing crops have been requisitioned, so that it will be almost impossible to re- establish agriculture for many years to come. Hope in these countries will be at a low ebb, while a large part of the able- bodied population will be gone. Already in many sections only old women and children remain. There will undoubtedly be a heavy immigration from these countries. The immigration of women and children will also undoubt- edly reach large proportions. This change is already manifest. They, too, will be assisted to come. Not by foreign governments seeking to dump their undesirables, but by relatives in this coun- try who send money, who write about conditions in America, who lure old neighbors by stories of high wages, improved social and political conditions, by tales of achievement on the part of their children, and who advance the cost of transportation and sufficient "show-money" to enable the alien to pass the immi- gration inspector. From seventy to eighty per cent of the immi- gration from the south of Europe is probably assisted in this way, and fully eighty per cent of the incoming immigrants are ticketed to some friend in this country, who "grub-stakes" them, finds employment, and cares for them until they secure a footing. Other influences will stimulate immigration from all of the contending nations. From 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 men have been taken from the factories, the mines, the mills, and from agri- cultural labor. They have experienced a freedom they have never before enjoyed. They have been thrown upon their own 242 SELECTED ARTICLES resources and have lived their own -lives with their fellows in the trenches. A spirit of independence will have been created; and with it a restless, roving disinclination to the old humdrum life of the farm or the mill. A kind of freedom and resource- fulness will be created and the psychology of all Europe will be changed. A new spirit of independence will probably take the place of the feudalistic life previously accepted as inevitable. Many of these restless millions will resent their former condi- tion. They will prize their newly experienced freedom. In ad- dition, home ties will have been broken. Old connections will have been destroyed. Many will have acquired the tramp and vagrant spirit. Hundreds of thousands of these men may be led to migrate by a restless, roving, unsettled instinct, and this, too, will increase the flow to America. Added to these are the weakened and enfeebled men; those who have been unbalanced, possibly crazed, by their experiences at the front. There will be millions of diseased, wounded, and crippled who will have to be pensioned at home or supported by public relief. Many of these have friends in America and they, too, will turn their faces toward the land of hope that has lured their friends and neighbors in previous generations. Millions are living in conquered territory under a foreign flag. What will happen to them? Will the conquering or the defeated nations absorb them, or will they be thrown upon the world to find a new resting-place as best they may? Finally, every man, woman, and child of the four hundred million people living in the warring countries has suffered from it. The great majority were living close to the margin of pov- erty prior to the war ; they have been suffering untold privations during it. And the years which follow will be even worse, be- cause of the devastation which has taken place, the result of which will only be realized in the years to follow when the workers are again thrown on their own resources. This is par- ticularly true of agriculture, in which pursuit the majority of the people were engaged. Taxation in half of Europe was at the limit of human endurance before the war broke out, and the burdens of debt charges, of future army maintenance, of pen- sions, of national rebuilding will be almost if not quite unsup- portable. Exhausting as universal military service is, the ex- haustion of universal tax service may be almost equally unsup- portable. ON IMMIGRATION 243 A population four times that of the United States is in a state of industrial and social chaos. The old order can never be re-established. Millions of men are in movement, and tens of millions more are destitute, disabled, and close to poverty. Mil- lions will never take up their old life again. Millions more will be unable to do so. Women and children will be a burden, and taxation and public needs will tax the resources of the nation to the limit. National boundaries may change. Some countries may never emerge from the war. Great stretches may become barren waste. Under such conditions as these all Europe may turn wistful glances to a country that is free from war and the hazards of war; to a land of political liberty and low taxation; and mil- lions in Europe may clamor at the ports of embarkation in the hope of a new chance in a new world. What shall we do about it? How shall we face this human appeal, the most pathetic that has ever confronted us; an appeal, too, that will be repeated from among the 13,000,000 foreign-born already in America and the 18,000,000 immediate descendants of those of foreign birth? Shall we tighten our laws and close our doors to those who, for three centuries, have found an asylum from religious and political oppression, or shall our traditional policy of an open door to the fit and able-bodied be maintained? Fortunately no legislation is necessary to meet the problem of the physically unfit, for the present immigration laws are selec- tive, L e., they refuse to admit the weak and the infirm, those afflicted with contagious or infectious diseases, those who have a criminal record behind them, and those who are likely to become a public charge. And under these laws -16,588 persons were de- nied admission in 1914, or 1.64 per cent of those who sought admission. Enforcement of existing laws involves indescribable hardships to those who come to us in hope of an asylum. And these adverse decisions will undoubtedly be increased many times when the war is over. There is no likelihood of these restraints being weakened, for there are none who would open our doors to those who are likely to become a public charge or those who will add a strain of feeble-mindedness, imbecility, or insanity to our population. The laws that now exist are adequate to protect us from the classes enumerated, with the possible exception of those who, moved by restless discontent, are unwilling to return to their old 16 244 SELECTED ARTICLES associations and employments. The test will come if Europe fails to find work for its people, for its millions of returning soldiers. In that event we may be faced with the most serious immigration problem that has ever confronted us, a problem, too, confused by sympathy and a profound desire to aid, as best we can, in the rehabilitation of the world. Scientific Monthly. 2:438-52. May, 1916 Immigration and the War. Robert DeC. Ward It is easy to see what use the steamship agents will make of the conditions following the war, in order to stimulate emigra- tion from abroad. "Fly from the horrors of war; escape your taxes; go to a country where there are no wars; where there is no standing army; where wages are high and work is plenty; go to America." A considerable proportion of our immigration even in normal times is thus artificially stimulated. What will happen after the war it is easy to guess. Already, plans are being made by foreign companies for the establishment of new steamship lines, to bring emigrants from Europe and Asia to the United States. All th?s is not mere idle speculation. Our statistics show that recent wars have in no case been followed by any perma- nent decrease in emigration from the countries involved. On the contrary, as Professor J. W. Jenks has pointed out, these wars have usually resulted in a large and almost immediate in- crease. After the Franco-Prussian war, immigration to this country from Germany and France increased, and attained its maximum not many years after the war. Greek immigration increased steadily after the last Turco-Grecian war. The more recent Balkan war was followed by increased immigration from the Balkan states. The numbers from Serbia, Bulgaria, Mon- tenegro and Greece in the year after that war were nearly double those of the year preceding the war. Those who may maintain that immigration will decrease permanently after the present war is over have no statistics on which to base their claim. No one who has at heart the future of the American race can fail to view with concern the probable effects of the war upon the physical, mental and moral condition of our immi- grants. The introduction of pestilential war diseases, such as cholera, typhus, typhoid fever and the like, is not greatly to be ON IMMIGRATION 245 feared, although some of our medical men are already viewing this problem with much concern. On the other hand, the more subtle and much less easily detected venereal diseases, which are always rampant in great armies in war time, and the mental breakdowns, of which there are so many thousands of cases among the soldiers at the front, present another aspect of the health problem which is far more serious. Great numbers of soldiers, although not actually afflicted with any specific disease, will eventually come to the United States, maimed, crippled, wounded, enfeebled by illness or exposure, or mentally unstable. The fittest, mentally and physically; those who in the past have had the initiative and the courage to emigrate, will be dead, at the prime of life, or will be needed at home to carry on the work of rebuilding and reorganization. These are the men whom Europe will do its utmost to keep at home. The least fit are likely to emigrate. Many of those who, because of mental or physical disability, will find themselves least able to earn a living abroad, will be the very ones most likely to be "assisted" by relatives and friends in this country to "come to America." Against the emigration of such persons the European govern- ments will not set up any barriers. There are good grounds, therefore, for expecting, with reasonable certainty, that our im- migration in the next few decades after the war will be of a lower physical and mental standard than it has been in the past. Our future immigration is sure' to contain a large proportion of disturbed, restless, irresponsible men; less amenable to law and order; less disposed to conform to our conditions of life; less easily assimilable, than has been the case in the past. The interruption of the education of multitudes of young men who have been called on for military service, and who will never take up again their scholastic or vocational training, is a serious phase of our general problem. This group will go forth into the world insufficiently and unsatisfactorily prepared for the business of life. For years to come, our immigration will include large numbers of youths and of men whose standards of education will be lower than would have been the case had there been no war. And what of the more distant future? What of the effects upon the unborn generations? This question is obviously a diffi- cult one. Opinions vary greatly in regard to it. As a rather extreme representative of one side, we may turn to Dr. David Starr Jordan's latest book, whose title clearly indicates the mes- 246 SELECTED ARTICLES sage which its author seeks to bring, "War and the Breed: the Relation of War to the Downfall of Nations" (1915). War, as Dr. Jordan strikingly puts it, "impoverishes the breed." The strongest and best men are the ones who are killed or injured, and who leave few or no children. The weaklings live, marry and continue the race. The result is an inevitable impoverish- ment of the stock. This "impoverishment of the breed," in Dr. Jordan's opinion, is an inevitable result of war. The longer the conflict con- tinues, the more serious will be the effects upon future genera- tions. The weakling fathers too young, too old, or too feeble to fight and the improperly nourished, overworked and harassed mothers of Europe, are handing on to their children who are now being born an inheritance of physical and mental unfitness which will mark not only this generation but future generations, through the long vista of the time to come. An increase in the number of defective children, now and hereafter, is a condition which Europe must face, and which, because it will affect the character of our immigrants, vitally concerns the United States. PART II ASIATIC IMMIGRATION BRIEF Resolved, That the present Chinese exclusion law should remain in force and that similar legislation should be enacted to apply to Japanese and other Asiatics. INTRODUCTION I. The facts in the case are these : A. The Chinese have been excluded since 1882. B. Japanese immigration has been held in check since 1907 by means of an international agreement. C. Other Asiatic immigration, Korean, East Indian, etc., is at present negligible but may increase. D. There is no national law restricting Asiatic immigra- tion other than Chinese. E. States cannot enact restrictive legislation, but Cali- fornia has tried other means of discouraging Japan- ese immigration: 1. Segregation of Japanese in schools, 1907. 2. Alien land legislation, 1913. II. The Affirmative will stand for rigid exclusion of all Asiatics by means of a law enacted by Congress, and will show that in the absence of such legislation states are driven to take other measures in self-protection. III. The Negative will take a more liberal attitude toward Asiatics; show that fears concerning them are un- founded; that the present agreement between nations is satisfactory, and will take the stand that California has acted unwisely. AFFIRMATIVE I. Asiatic immigration brings with it all the evils of other immigration. A. Social. i. Lower standard of living. 250 BRIEF 2. Different standard of morals. B. Economic. 1. Lowering of wages. 2. Displacement of American labor. 3. Appropriation of land that should be settled by white men. C. Political. i. Asiatics if admitted will demand naturalization rights, leading to even greater political corrup- tion than at present. II. In addition it brings the evil of a complicated race problem. A. The United States already has one race problem which it has been unable to settle. B. Race prejudice is real, not imaginary. 1. The white and yellow races dislike and distrust one another. 2. White men will not work with yellow. 3. Race riots are inevitable. III. Immediate congressional action is called for. A. A treaty or international agreement is not sufficient guarantee of strict exclusion. B. If Asiatics are allowed to come trouble will result involving serious international complications, i. The further apart the two races can be kept, the less likelihood there will be of friction. C. The present Chinese exclusion law has proved suc- cessful and could easily be applied to others. IV. Without action on the part of Congress certain states are driven to take measures in their own protection. NEGATIVE I. The evil effects of Asiatic immigration have been exag- gerated. A. The Chinese and Japanese in this country have proved to be 1. Industrious. 2. Temperate and of good habits. 3. Peace loving. B. They fill a distinct place in the community life. i. They do work which white men will not do. BRIEF 251 2. They are good farmers, in many cases* having re- claimed land thought to be worthless. C. They have not lowered wages. II. Race prejudice is based on ignorance. A. Members of different races can live side by side peaceably. B. Race feeling is stirred up by unwise agitation. III. Congressional action is not called for. A. The present arrangement is satisfactory. B. Rigid exclusion would lead to bad feeling on the part of Japan and to possible international trouble. C. An international agreement is the best means of pre- serving friendly relations. IV. Action on the part of states is unwise and unnecessary. A. California's action stirred up unnecessary ill feeling. B. Conditions at the time did not call for such action. BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL REFERENCES Bibliographies, Briefs, etc. Bulletin of Bibliography. 8:94-8. O. '14. Japanese in the United States. Ina T. Firkins. Cowan, R. E., and Dunlap, B., comps. Bibliography of the Chinese Question in the United States. *$i.4O. Robertson. 1909. Independent. 76:141. O. 16, '13. California Anti-Alien Land Law ; Brief and bibliog. Edith M. Phelps. Oregon High School Debating League. Asiatic Immigration, in Announcements for the Year, 1910-11. Univ. of Oregon, Eugene. 1910. Shurter, E. D., and Taylor, C. C. Chinese Immigration; Brief and bibliog., in Both Sides of 100 Public Questions, pp. 16-7. Hinds, Noble & Eldredge. 1913. Ringwalt, R. C. Chinese Immigration ; Brief and bibliog., in Briefs on Public Questions, pp. 31-41. Longmans, Green & Co. 1913. Books, Pamphlets, etc. Abbott, James Francis. "Yellow Peril," in Japanese Expansion and American Policies, pp. 143-93. Macmillan. 1916. Adams, T. S., and Sumner, H. L. Chinese and Japanese Immi- gration, in Labor Problems, pp. 99-111. Macmillan. 1908. Blakeslee, G. H., ed. Japan and Japanese- American Relations. G. E. Stechert & Co. 1912. Bancroft, Hubert H. Race Problems, in New Pacific, pp. 403-35. new ed. Bancroft Co. 1912. Coolidge, Mary Roberts. Chinese Immigration. Holt. 1909. Mrs. Coolidge's conclusions are favorable to the Chinese, but the book is listed here because it contains valuable material for both sides in a debate. Crow, Carl. Japan and America, pp. 190-9. McBride. 1916. Hall, P. F. Chinese Immigration, in Immigration, pp. 327-35. 2d ed. Holt. 1908. 254 BIBLIOGRAPHY J'enks, J. W., and Lauck, W. J. Oriental Immigration to the Pacific Coast States, in Immigration Problem, pp. 231-60. Funk & Wagnalls. 1913. Mabie, H. W. Japan To-day and To-morrow. Macmillan. 1914. Mayo-Smith, R. Chinese Immigration, in Emigration and Immi- gration, pp. 227-65. Scribner. 1898. Masaoka, Naoichi, ed. Japan to America. Putnam. 1914. Millard, Thomas F. Japan and the United States, in Our East- ern Question, pp. 252-71. Century. 1916. Millis, H. A. Japanese Problem in the United States. Macmil- lan. 1915. Russell, Lindsay, ed. America to Japan. Putnam. 1915. Scherer, James A. B. Japanese Crisis. Stokes. 1916. Sparks, Edwin E. Chinese Immigration, in National Develop- ment, 1877-85. Harper. 1907. United States. Census Bureau. Chinese and Japanese in the United States. Bui. 127. isc. Supt. of Doc. 1914. *United States. Immigration Commission. Abstracts of Re- ports, pp. 654-76. 2v. Govt. Ptg. 1911. Magazine Articles Annals of the American Academy. 24: 209-20. JL '04. Australian Methods of Dealing with Immigration. Frank Parsons. Annals of the American Academy. 34 : S. '09. Chinese and Jap- anese in America. This entire number is devoted to a discussion of the question. Annals of the American Academy. 45 : 99-130. Ja. '13. Canada and the Chinese; a comparison with the U. S. P. H. Clem- ents. Annals of the American Academy. 54:245-50. Jl. '14. Policy of" the United States in the Pacific. E. C. Stowell. Century. 88: 105-8. My. '14. Are We Honest with Japan? J. D. Whelpley. Collier's. 40: 13-5, 13-5, 17, S. 28, O. 12, O. 19, '07. Japanese and the Pacific Coast. Will Irwin. Everybody's. 32 : 587-600. My. '15. Snarl of Waking Asia. G. Garrett. Fortnightly. 101 : 885-92. My. '14. Japan and the United States J. D. Whelpley. Same. Living Age. 281: 707-12. Je. 20, '14. Independent. 61 : 1425-6. D. 13, '06. Japanese Exclusion. David S. Jordan. BIBLIOGRAPHY 255 Literary Digest. 46:991-4. My. 3, '13. Issue between Japan and California. Literary Digest. 46: 1107-9. My. 17, '13. California's Solution of Her Japanese Problem. Living Age. 277 : 564-6. My. 31, '13. Japanese in California. Living Age. 282:387-92. Ag. 15, '14. Asiatic Emigration; a World Problem. S. N. Singh. North American Review. 183 : 1225-8. D. 21, '06. American Schools and Japanese Pupils. C. W. Fulton. North American Review. 187 : 481-5. Ap. '08. Spirit and Letter of Exclusion. Oscar S. Straus. Same cond. Review of Reviews. 37: 603-4. My. '08. Outlook. 36:101-5. My. 18, '07. Japanese in America. John Foord. Outlook. 104:61-5. My. 10, '13. White and Yellow in California. Walter V. Woehlke. Outlook. 105:477-80. N. i, '13. California and the Japanese: Symposium. Popular Science Monthly. 80:151-7. F. '12. Relations of Japan and the United States. David S. Jordan. Review of Reviews. 23:207-8. F. '01. Japanese Immigration. Review of Reviews. 35 : 259-65. Mr. '07. Japan and America. Review of Reviews. 47 : 738-40. Je. '13. What the Japanese do in California. Review of Reviews. 48: 103-5. Jl- ' r 3- Case of California versus Japan. World To-day, u : 1310-3. D. '06. San Francisco and the Japan- ese. W. H. Thomson. World's Work. 13 : 8690-3. Mr. '07. Oriental Problem as the Coast Sees It. Jerome A. Hart. AFFIRMATIVE REFERENCES Books, Pamphlets, etc. Asiatic Exclusion League. Reports, etc. San Francisco. 1906. Formerly Japanese and Korean Exclusion League. Organized in 1905. Name changed in 1907. May '06 is the date of the first report issued after the fire. Earlier issues are practically unobtainable. Benham, G. B. Asiatic Problem and American Opinions. Asi- atic Exclusion League. 1908. Rea, George Bronson. Japan's Place in the Sun; the Menace to America, gratis. W. L. Bass, Washington, D. C. 1916. 256 BIBLIOGRAPHY Magazine Articles ^Collier's. 51 : 12. My. 31, '13. World's Most Menacing Problem. Collier's. 51 : 5-6. Je. 7. '13. Japan in California. P. C. Mac- farlane. ""Congressional Record. 40 : 3749-53. Mr. 13, '06. Japanese Ex- clusion. E. A. Hayes. Congressional Record. 41 : 1579-85. Ja. 23, '07. Treaty-making Power of Government and the Japanese Question. E. A. Hayes. *Congressional Record. 42 : 3494-8. Mr. 17, '08. Shall the United States Exclude the Immigration of Japanese and Korean Laborers? Burton L. French. Cosmopolitan. 43 : 604-7. O. '07. World-Menace of Japan. Gold- win Smith. *Harper's Weekly. 51 : 1484. O. 12, '07. Real Pacific Question. Sydney Brooks. ""Independent. 62 : 26-33. Ja. 3, '07. Japanese Question from a Californian's Standpoint. Julius Kahn. ^Independent. 74: 1439-40. Je. 26, '13. Japanese Question from a Californian Standpoint. James D. Phelan. Literary Digest. 46:1215-6. My. 31, '13. Japan's Ally [Great Britain] on California. *Nation. 08 : 724-5. J'l. 18, '14. Immigration from the Orient. H. C. Nutting. Outlook. 87 : 455-7. O. 26, '07. Oriental Immigration. *Outlook. 97:63-4. Ja. 14, 'n. Oriental Immigration. Outlook. 97: 151-4. Ja. 28, 'n. Japanese Immigration. Outlook. 104: 14-6. My. 3, '13. Japan, California and the United States. Outlook. 104:739-41. Ag. 2, '13. Japan and the United States. Outlook. 106:340-1. F. 14, '14. Immigration of Asiatics. E. A. Hayes. *Sunset. 31 : 122-7. Jl. 'i3- Keeping the Coast Clear. Arthur Dunn. Sunset. 34:346. F. '15. Japanese Conceptions of America. World To-Day. 9:899-901. Ag. '05. Japanese Invasion. J'. M. Scanland. World To-Day. 20:464-72. Ap. 'H. Orient in California. John T. Bramhall. World's Work. 17:10989-91. D. '08. Western View of the Jap- anese, W. T. Prosser, BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 World's Work. 26:195-201. Je. '13. Japanese in California. Chester H. Rowell. World's Work. 27 : 74-8. N. '13. Health Menace of Alien Races. Charles T. Nesbitt. NEGATIVE REFERENCES Books, Pamphlets, etc. Dickinson, G. Lowes. Japan and America, in Appearances, pp. 126-31. Doubleday, Page. 1914. Gulick, Sidney L. American-Japanese Problem. Scribner. 1914. ^National Education Association. 1914:35-40. Responsibility of American Educators in the Solution of America's Oriental Problem. S. L. Gulick. lyenaga, Toyokichi, ed. Japan's Real Attitude Toward America. Putnam. 1916. A reply to G. B. Rea's "Japan's Place in the Sun." Wu Ting Fang. America and China, in America through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat, pp. 40-53. F. A. Stokes. 1914. Magazine Articles American Economic Review. 5 : 787-804. D. '15. Some of the Economic Aspects of Japanese Immigration. H. A. Millis. Annals of the American Academy. 34 : 275-93. S. '09. Un-Ameri- can Character of Race Legislation. M. J. Kohler. Annals of the American Academy. 34 : 294-9. S. '09. Reasons for Encouraging Japanese Immigration. J. P. Irish. *Annals of the American Academy. 34 : 300-5. S. '09. Moral and Social Interests Involved in Restricting Oriental Immigra- tion. Thomas L. Eliot. Arena. 37: n-6. Ja. '07. Our Insult to Japan. C. V. Holman. Collier's. 57:5-6. Mr. 25, '16. California and the Japanese. Lin- coln Steffens. *Forum. 50:66-76. Jl. '13. Japanese- American Relations. Edwin Maxey. Forum. 50:82-93. Jl. '13. Japanese on Our Farms. K. K. Kawa- kami. Harper's Weekly. 57 : 7. My. 3, '13. Playing with Dynamite. William Inglis, 258 BIBLIOGRAPHY Independent. 59:961-7. O. 26, '05. Japanese on American Farms. K. K. Kawakami. Independent. 61 : 1260-5. N. 29, '06. Japanese in California. K. K. Kawakami. Independent. 74:975-8. My. i, 1913. Straining an Historic Friendship. Hamilton Holt. Independent. 74:1019-22. My. 8, '13. How California Treats the Japanese. K. K. Kawakami. Independent. 75 : 138-42. Jl. 17, '13. Inter-racial Amity in Cali- fornia. N. Marquis. *Literary Digest 47:67+. Jl. 12, '13. California's Hustling Japanese. Nation. 88:194-5. F. 25, '09. Cause of Immigration. North American Review. 184:29-34. Ja. 4, '07. What Japanese Exclusion Would Mean. Osborne Howes. North American Review. 185 : 394-402. Je. 21, '07. Naturalization of Japanese. K. K. Kawakami. North American Review. 198 : 332-40. S. '13. Nagging the Jap- anese. Francis G. Peabody. *North American Review. 200: 566-75. O. '14. Our Honor and Shame jvith Japan. William E. Griffis. Outlook. 104:754-7. Ag. 2, '13. Americans and the Far East. H. W. Mabie. Outlook. 104:757-8. Ag. 2, '13. Situation in Japan. J. I. Bryan. Overland, n. s. 55 : 204-10. F. '10. Orientals and Portola. B. Glynn. Overland, n. s. 57:491-5. My. 'n. Why the Chinese Exclusion Law Should Be Modified. T. B. Wilson. Overland, n. s. 57:577. My. 'n. Chinese on the Pacific Coast. H. Davis. Survey. 30: 332-6. Je. 7, '13. California and the Japanese. H. A. Millis. *Survey. 31 : 720-2. Mr. 7, '14. Problem of Oriental Immigration. Sidney L. Gulick. * World's Work. 4 : 9372-6. S. '07. Mongolian as a Working- man. Woods Hutchinson. *World's Work. 15 : 10041-4. Mr. '08. Japanese Immigration. S. Aoki. GENERAL DISCUSSION United States. Immigration Commission. Abstracts of Reports Japanese and Other Immigrant Races in the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain States The immigration problem of the West takes a form somewhat different from that of the eastern and middle states, principally because nf differences in location with reference to sources of immigration, comparative sparsity of population, and extent of resources remaining to be developed and exploited. The expense involved in direct immigration to the West from Europe is so great that European immigrants are secured chiefly as a part of the general westward movement. On the other hand, the location and climate of New Mexico, Arizona, and California are such as to cause them to share with Texas most of the immigrants from Mexico, while the location of the three Pacific coasts states, California, Oregon, and Washington, is such as to bring to them practically the whole of the eastern Asiatic immigration and the secondary movement from the Hawaiian Islands. According to the census, the number of Chinese in the continental United States in 1900 was 93,283. Of these, 88,758 were males and 4525 were females. In all probability the number of adult males was somewhat larger than the figure reported, as it is almost impossible to enumerate all but a negligible percentage of the foreign-born males living under such conditions as were at that time found among the Chinese. It is impossible to estimate the number of persons of that race now in the United States, as many have died or returned to China since 1900, while others have returned from China to this country, and men, women, and children of eligible classes to the number of 19,182 have been admitted to the United States between July i, 1899, and June 30, 1909. Moreover, it is acknowledged by those familiar with the administration of the law that some foreign- born have secured admission as "native sons" while others have 17 26o SELECTED ARTICLES been smuggled across the Canadian or the Mexican boundary. However, it. has become evident from the investigation conducted by the commission that the number of Chinese in all of the cities of the West, and the number engaged in the different industries in which they have found employment in the past, have materially decrease'd within the last decade or so. The immigration of Chinese laborers to this country may be said to date from the rush to California in search of gold sixty years ago. Within ten years a relatively large number of persons of that race, more than 45,000 in fact, found a place in the population of that state. Before the close of the decade of the sixties, they had engaged in a variety of occupations, as the absence of cheap labor from any other source, their industry and organization, and the rapid growth of the country placed a premium upon their employment. The ease with which the Chinese found employment and the place they came to occupy in the West is explained by several facts. First of all, they were the cheapest laborers available for unskilled work. The white population previous to the eighties was drawn almost entirely from the eastern states and from north European countries, and, as in all rapidly developing com- munities, the number of women and children was comparatively small. According to the census of 1870, of 238,648 persons engaged in gainful occupations in California, 46 per cent were native-born, 13 per cent were born in Ireland, 8 per cent in Germany, 4.8 per cent in England and Wales, 2 per cent in France, and 1.4 per cent in Italy. The Chinese, with 14 per cent of the total, were more numerous than the Irish. The Chinese worked for lower wages than the white men in the fields and orchards, in the shoe factories, the cigar factories, the woolen mills, and later in most of the other industries in which the two classes were represented. As a result of this, a division of labor grew up in which the Chinese were very generally employed in certain occupations while white persons were employed in other occupations requiring skill, a knowledge of English, and other qualities not possessed by the Asiatics, and sufficiently agreeable in character and surroundings to attract white persons of the type at that time found in the population of the West. It has been estimated that the number of Chinese in the United States at the time the first exclusion act went into effect (1882) was 132,300. The number of Chinese laborers did not ON IMMIGRATION 261 diminish perceptibly for several years after this. More recently, because of the wider distribution of the Chinese among the states, the decreasing number in the country, the large percentage who have grown old, a strong sentiment against employing Asiatics in manufacture, and the appearance of the Japanese, a change has taken place in the occupations in which the Chinese engage. The assessment roll for 1908 shows 20 cigar factories, 3 broom factories, I shoe factory, and 5 overall factories conducted by Chinese in San Francisco. By far the largest number of Chinese, however, some 1000, are employed in the 100 Chinese laundries. The otl^er branches of business are of comparatively little importance save the art and curio stores, which are con- ducted by business men from China. Of the Chinese in other cities much the same may be said, except that they occupy no important place in manufacture and that they frequently conduct cheap restaurants, patronized largely by workingmen. In Port- land they also conduct numerous tailor shops. On the whole, the Chinese have not shown the same progressiveness and competitive ability either in industry or in business for themselves as the Japanese. They have, however, occupied a more important place in manufacture, especially in San Francisco, where, until within the last twenty years, little cheap labor has been available from other sources. The Japanese laborers have fallen heir to much of the work and the occupational and social position of the Chinese, whose diminishing numbers in the western states since 1890 have been mentioned. The history of the Japanese in this country can be understood in certain respects only when connected with that of the Chinese whose immigration was earlier and who, in de- creasing numbers, have continued to work along with the members of the newer race. Until 1898 the number of Japanese immigrating to the conti- nental United States had never reached 2,000 in any one year. In 1900 the total number in the continental United States, excluding Alaska, was reported by the census as 24,326. From 1899-1900 to 1906-7 the number arriving from Japan, Mexico, and Canada varied between 4,319 (in 1905) and 12,626 (in 1900), while between January i, 1902, and December 31, 1907, 37,000, at- tracted by the higher wages, better conditions, and better oppor- tunities to establish themselves as farmers or as business men, came from the Hawaiian Islands to the mainland. 262 SELECTED ARTICLES Since 1905 there has been a general and organized demand on the Pacific coast, and particularly in California, for the exclusion of Japanese laborers from the continental territory of the United States. The separation of Japanese from white chil- dren in the public schools of San Francisco, and other manifesta- tions of anti-Japanese sentiment, together with a number of anti-Japanese measures under consideration by the legislature of California, precipitated an acute situation in 1^06 and 1907. On the other hand it developed that the Japanese government had for some time looked with disfavor on the emigration of its working population to distant countries, and an understanding was therefore reached between the Japanese and the United States governments that the former should thenceforth issue passports to only such members of the laboring class as had been residents of this country and were returning here, were parents, wives, or children of residents of this country, or had an already possessed right to agricultural land. During the year 1907-8 the number of Japanese who were admitted to the continental United States was 9544, and among them there were many of the class not presumed under the agreement to receive passports, but, as explained by the Com- missioner-General of Immigration, "the system did not begin to work smoothly in all of its details until the last month of the fiscal year." During the two years which have since elapsed, however, the numbers admitted have been very much smaller 2432 and 1552 for the two years, respectively. Of the 2432 admitted in 1908-9, 768 were former residents, leaving 1664 who came for the first time. A comparatively small number who were admitted came with passports to which, according to the understanding of the Bureau of Immigration, they were not entitled, while some were admitted who did not possess passports to this country properly made out. The great majority of the much-reduced number admitted, however, have been of the non- laboring class 1719 of the 2432 admitted in 1908-9. Though a large percentage of the nonlaborers take work as wage laborers upon their arrival in this country, and the class excluded are not just the same as under the Chinese exclusion law, the regulation is undoubtedly effective at present in preventing any "detriment to labor conditions." A large percentage of those who have come recently have been the wives and children of Japanese already in this country. ON IMMIGRATION 263 The number of Japanese males of the laboring class departing from the United States is in excess of the number who are admitted at the ports. Like the earlier immigration of the Chinese and the present ^_jmmigration of most of the south and east European races, V the majority of the Japanese immigrants have been of the ^Agricultural class small farmers, farmers' sons, and a few farm laborers. The number of industrial wage-earners, clerks, profes- sional men, and shopkeepers has been much smaller, while the number of men coming with capital has been very small indeed. Moreover, the majority have left their native land for Hawaii or continental United States when young men, say under twenty-five, though the number who have been engaged in farm- ing or in business on their own account and have reached maturer years before emigrating is not small. The great majority of the Japanese in this country have been employed in railroad and general construction work, as agricul- tural laborers, cannery hands, lumber-mill and logging-camp laborers, in the various branches of domestic service and in busi- ness establishments conducted by their countrymen. Smaller numbers have been employed in coal and ore mining, smelting, meat packing, and salt making. In the building trades they have done little save in making repairs and in doing cabinet work for their countrymen. They have found little place in manufactur- ing establishments in cities. In contrast to the Chinese, they have found little employment in shoe, clothing, and cigar fac- tories. That they have seldom been considered for "inside" work of the kind in which the Chinese were formerly extensively employed, is explained by a number of facts. . A hostile public sentiment, with the boycott in the background, was sufficient to cause many of the employers to discharge their Chinese em- ployees. This experience with Chinese labor has caused most employers to look elsewhere than to the Japanese, for laborers needed in such industries. More important, perhaps, is the fact that, coincident with the immigration of the Japanese, cheap labor of other kinds has become available in the large number of Italians, Russians, Porto Ricans, Spaniards, and others finding places in the population of San Francisco, where most of the manufacturing is conducted. The labor of these classes, and especially of the women and children, has been cheaper than that of the Japanese for the making of cigars and work of that char- 264 SELECTED ARTICLES acter. Finally, in machine shops, foundries, and similar places, they have seldom been given employment, for these trades are well organized and there has been strong opposition by union men , to the employment of Asiatics as helpers or as common laborers^ In 1909 it is probable that not far from 30,000 Japanese were engaged in agricultural pursuits in California during the summer months. As laborers they occupy a dominant position in most of the intensive, specialized agriculture which has come to pre- vail, and especially in that which involves much hand work and is seasonal in character. They occupy substantially the position held by the Chinese twenty years ago in the same and similar industries. Among other things shown by the investigation of Japanese farming were the following : (1) That because of the convenience of the tenant system and the difficulty farmers have experienced at times in securing laborers, there has been a strong inducement to lease land to a member of the race most prominent in the labor supply ; (2) That a further inducement has been found in the fact that both Chinese and Japanese, and the latter particularly, in their anxiety to establish themselves as farmers, had offered such high rents that leasing his land gave the owner the best returns, allowance being made for the diminished risk; (3) That with the exception of one or two localities, the (Japanese have been the most effective bidders for land and have overbid Ihe Chinese, the Italians, and native white men, and, moreover, have sometimes been effective bidders because they would reduce land to cultivation which white men would not lease on such terms ; (4) That much of the leasing is closely related to a labor contract in which the tenant does certain stipulated kinds of work in return for a share of the crop, but that there has been a strong tendency for the Japanese to work for a greater degree of independence until they became cash tenants or landowners; (5) That little capital has been required for a Japanese to become a tenant farmer, because (i) of the formation of part- nerships among them, (2) of the provision of necessary equip- ment by the land-owner for the use of share tenants, and (3) of the advancing of money by shippers and others in competing for the control of the crop, the result being that many of the Japanese farmers have required little or no capital to begin with ; ON IMMIGRATION 265 (6) That the leasing of land to Japanese, as to Chinese and Italians, has resulted in a displacement of laborers of other, races because, on account of the disinclination of white persons to work for them or their own favoritism, they employ persons of their own race almost exclusively; (7) That the Japanese farmers usually pay their Japanese laborers more than the local rate, but these wages are for a longer work day and for the better men they are usually in a position to select from those available ; (8) That in growing strawberries, asparagus, and certain vegetables the Japanese farmers have increased the acreage in some instances until the industry has become unprofitable for them as well as others ; (9) That because of the strong desire to remain independent of the wage relation and the limitations placed upon the occupa- tions in which they may engage, the Japanese farmers in some instances appear not to have been discouraged in gaining control of land as long as there was a prospect of a small profit to be realized. O s^^i^a^ ^Though in^many localmes the Japanese laborers were at first received with great favor, widespread dissatisfaction with them is now found and they are almost always disparagingly compared with the Chinese, who, because they are careful workmen, faithful to the employer, uncomplaining, easily satisfied with regard to living quarters, and not ambitious to learn new processes and to establish themselves as independent farmers, are used in the older agricultural district as the standard by which others are meas- ured/ Indeed, while the largest number of Japanese were arriv- ing 'and there was no great question of an insufficiency of num- bers, there was a demand for a limited immigration of Chinese. Though many ranchers think that for social reasons it would be a mistaken policy to readmit the Chinese, they generally regard Asiatic laborers as indispensible to the prosperity and expansion of the agricultural industries which have become predominant in the state, and their almost unanimous preference is for Chinese rather than any other Asiatic race. Perhaps between 12,000 and 15,000 Japanese are employed in the eleven states and territories comprising the western division, as domestic servants in private families, and as help in restaurants, hotels, barrooms, clubs, offices, and stores conducted by members of the white races, while some 10,000 or 11,000 more are engaged 266 SELECTED ARTICLES in business for themselves or are employed by those who are thus occupied, or are professional men and craftsmen working on their own account. In certain respects the Japanese have shown a great capacity for assimilation, and very much more than the Chinese and the Mexicans of the peon class. In fact, they are extremely anxious to learn western ways and methods and conform at least to the externals of the civilization into which they have come. They have organized more schools for the acquirement of knowledge of English than any other race, and in spite of their general colony life and slight association with other races they have made more rapid progress in learning our language than the majority of the south and east Europeans, and much more than the Mexicans and Chinese, who have shown little interest in such matters. In dress and all superficial matters they conform to American ways, and though the majority adhere to the Buddhist faith, a large number, especially of the younger student class, are professed Christians and the missions are usually well supported. Yet there are race characteristics which may be firmly rooted how firmly only time and longer association with other races will tell. But whatever their capacities for assimilation, the general conditions have been, and are, unfavorable to Japanese laborers because of race feeling growing out of difference in color, char- acteristics, and ideals, because of the economic conflict which has taken place, especially in California, and (this being not least in importance) because these laborers came from the same quarter of the world as the Chinese and fell heir to their industrial position and general mode of life. The Japanese, along with the Chinese, are regarded as differing greatly from the white races they have lived among, and a strong public sentiment has segre- gated them, if not in their work in other details of their living. This practically forbids, when not expressed in law, marriage between them and persons of the white races, and where a con- siderable number of Japanese have appeared in a community race conflicts have frequently resulted. With the exception of those who belong to the business classes, the Chinese native-born have found limitations placed upon them so that, regardless of any capacity they may have for Americanization, they do not differ materially from and are treated as if foreign-born. It is not unlikely that, with large numbers of laborers, similar limitations ON IMMIGRATION 267 with similar results would be placed upon the native-born Japanese, none of whom has yet arrived at mature age. Regulation by Treaty and Legislation* The Chinese began to come to California in the early so's. At. first they were welcomed, but when their competition began to be felt restrictive legislation was demanded. Various state laws were passed. In 1853 a law was passed taxing all foreign miners which in practice was applied only to the Chinese. In 1855 a tax of $55 was imposed on every Chinese immigrant. In 1858 a state law prohibited all Chinese or Mongolians from entering the state. This continued until 1876 when a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States rendered all state legisla- tion unconstitutional and made the regulation of immigration a national function. National Legislation 1862. Congress passed a law prohibiting the coolie tnade. 1868. The Burlingame treaty between the United States and China declared that Chinese subjects visiting or residing in the United States shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities, and exemptions in respect to travel or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nations. By the terms of this treaty the rights of naturalization were denied the Chinese. 1875. The general immigration law of 1875 prohibited the importation of Chinese women for purposes of prostitution and the immigration of convicts. The importation of Chinese or Japa- nese without free and voluntary consent for the purpose of holding them to a term of service was made punishable by imprisonment or a heavy fine. The importation of coolie labor was made a felony. 1877. The report of a joint special committee sent to Cali- fornia to study the question was made to Congress. The report consisted of a denunciation of the Chinese. 1879. President Hayes vetoed a bill limiting the number of Chinese to be brought in by any one vessel on the ground that it was an abrogation of the Burlingame treaty. * A summary based on the Report of the Immigration Commission. M. K. R. 268 SELECTED ARTICLES 1880. The failure of the above bill led to a new treaty, con- taining the following : Whenever in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States or their residence therein, affects or threatens to affect the interests of that country, or to endanger the good order of the said country, or of any locality within the territory thereof, the Government of China agrees that the Govern- ment of the United States may regulate, limit, or suspend such coming or residence, but may not absolutely prohibit it. The limitation or sus- pension shall be reasonable, and shall apply only to Chinese who may go to the United States as laborers, other classes not being included in the limitations. Legislation taken in regard to Chinese laborers will be of such a character only as is necessary to enforce the regulation, limi- tation, or suspension of immigration, and immigrants shall not be subject to personal maltreatment or abuse. 1882. A Chinese exclusion law was passed providing that immigration of Chinese laborers should be suspended for twenty years. It was vetoed by President Arthur, but in an amended form, making the period of exclusion ten years, it was approved and became i. law. 1884. Amendments were made tightening the above exclusion provisions for the purpose of making evas/ons less possible. 1888. China took the initiative in proposing a new treaty prohibiting the emigration of Chinese laborers to the United States. Such a treaty was drawn up but was not ratified. When the treaty failed Congress passed a bill providing for exclusion. President Cleveland recommended that it should not be made to apply to Chinese then on the way, but this recommendation was not heeded. 1892. A law was passed continuing the law of 1882 for another ten years. It declared also that all Chinese in the United States must take out certificates so that authorities could know their whereabouts. They were made liable to deportation if found without such certificates within a year. 1894. A new treaty was agreed to at the request of China. It provided for exclusion of all Chinese laborers for a term of ten years. Those going back were allowed to return here provided they had a wife, child, or parent, or property worth $1000 in the United States. Registration was still required. This treaty covered practically the same ground as existing legislation. 1902. A law was passed providing that all existing laws be reenacted, to continue in force until a new treaty should be nego- tiated. ON IMMIGRATION 269 1904. Upon the refusal of China to continue the treaty of 1894, Congress passed legislation extending and continuing all laws then in force. All legislation was extended to insular pos- sessions. Certificates of residence in insular possession were required. 1907. In 1906 the question of similar legislation against the immigration of Japanese came up. Bills introduced into Congress providing for an extension of Chinese exclusion act to embrace the Japanese failed to pass. The matter was finally settled by the passport provision in the general immigration law of 1907. This provision declares That whenever the president shall be satisfied that passports issued by any foreign government to its citizens to go to any country other than the United States or to any insular possession of the United States or to the Canal Zone are being used for the purpose of enabling the holders to come to the continental territory of the United States to the detriment of labor conditions therein, the President may refuse to per- mit such citizens of the country issuing such passports to enter th,e con- tinental territory of the United States from such other country or from such insular possessions or from the Canal Zone. By means of an understanding reached with Japan at this time it was agreed That the Japanese Government shall issue passports to continental United States only to such of its subjects as are nonlaborers, or are laborers who, in coming to the continent, seek to resume a formerly acquired domicile, to join a parent, wife, or children residing there, or to assume active control of an already possessed interest in a farming enterprise in this country. 1911. A treaty of commerce and navigation was entered into with Japan, of which the first article reads as follows : The subjects or citizens of each of the high contracting parties shall have liberty to enter, travel, and reside in the territories of the other, to carry on trade, wholesale and retail, to own or lease and occupy houses, manufactories, warehouses, and shops, to employ agents of their choice, to lease land for residential and commercial purposes, and gen- erally to do anything incident to or necessary for trade, upon the same terms as native subjects or citizens,- submitting themselves ^to the laws and regulations there established. They shall not be compelled, under any pretext whatever, to pay any charges or taxes other or higher than those that are or may be paid by native subjects or citizens. The subjects or citizens of each of the high contracting parties shall receive, in the territories of the other, the most constant protection and security for their persons and property and shall enjoy in this respect the same rights and privileges as are or may be granted to native sub- 270 SELECTED ARTICLES jects or citizens, on their submitting themselves to the conditions imposed upon the native subjects and citizens. 1 1913. California passed a law relating to the ownership of land by aliens. Aliens eligible to citizenship are given the same rights as citizens. Other aliens May acquire, possess, enjoy and transfer real property, or any interest therein, in this state, in the manner and to the extent and for the purposes prescribed by any treaty 2 now existing between the govern- ment of the United States and the nation or country of which such alien is a citizen or subject and not otherwise, and may in addition thereto lease lands in this State for agricultural purposes for a term not exceed- ing three years. 3 Canada Chinese are kept out by means of a high head tax. Every Chinaman entering, except those belonging to a limited exempt class, is required to pay $500. An agreement with Japan, similar to that existing between Japan and the United States, puts a check on Japanese immi- gration. Hindus are excluded by means of a provision in the Canadian immigration law which requires that immigrants must come to the Dominion by a continuous journey from the country of which they are natives and upon through tickets purchased in that country. There are no steamship lines operating between India and Canada. 1 Millis. Japanese Problem in the United States, p. 313 2 Note that the ownership of land is not specifically mentioned in the Article quoted from the treaty. 3 Millis. Japanese Problem in the United States, p. 316. AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION Outlook. 97:63-4. January 14, 191 1 Oriental Immigration A great popular conviction may be false, but it must always be taken seriously in a democracy. There is a great popular conviction on the Pacific coast that Oriental immigration is perilous to American institutions. This is not merely a class prejudice of laborers against competing laborers. In 1879 the Legislature of California ordered a test vote to be taken for and against Chinese immigration. The result was that out of 162,000 votes there were but 638 for such immigration. The ballot was secret; the conclusion is certain: the people of the state were then practically a unit against such immigration. There is no reason to think that any change in the public sentiment of the Pacific coast has taken place since that time. There is very good reason to believe that it now extends to Japanese as well as to Chinese immigration. This is not a passing passion ; it is not a class prejudice; it is a permanent conviction. Various reasons are given for this conviction, but they are not the real, certainly not the fundamental, reasons. The real reason for the opposition to Oriental immigration is its effect on the future of America. Zangwill says that God is throwing all European races into the melting-pot and forming out of them the America of the future. The opponents of Orien- tal immigration believe that the Oriental in America will always remain an alien element, unassimilated and unassimilable. The objection is well put by a philosophic student who is at least without local prejudice, Herbert Spencer: I have, for the reasons indicated, entirely approved of the regulations which have been established in America for restricting Chinese immigration, and had I the power would restrict them to the smallest possible amount; my reason for this decision being that one of two things must happen. If the Chinese are allowed to settle extensively in America, they must either, if they remain unmixed, form a subjective race standing in the position, if not of slaves, yet of a class approaching slaves; or, if they mix, they must form a bad hybrid. In either case, supposing the immi- gration to be large, immense social mischief must arise, and eventually 272 SELECTED ARTICLES social disorganization. The same thing would happen if there should be any considerable mixture of a European race with the Japanese. This peril seems to the Atlantic coast dweller remote, but this is because, to him, the problem is remote. The peril is serious, or would be if steps had not already been taken tc guard against it. It is the negro problem over again, made more perilous because back of the Oriental immigration are two great nations, one in the process of formation, the other already one of the great world powers. In the judgment of The Outlook Mr. C. H. Rowell, of the Fresno "Republican," is absolutely right; ''The Pacific coast is the frontier of the white man's world, the culmination of the westward immigration which is the white man's whole history. It will remain the frontier so long as we guard it as such ; no longer. Unless it is maintained there, there is no other line at which it can be maintained without more effort than American government and American civilization are able to sustain." We do not agree with him that "there is no right way to solve a race problem except to stop it before it begins." But if this is not the only way, it is the simplest, the easiest, and the best way. In the case of the European races education solves the problem. The educated German, Scandi- navian, or Italian, if not the educated Slav, becomes in the second or third generation an American. But the educated Oriental remains an Oriental. Lafcadio Hearn had certainly no anti-Japanese prejudice; and it is Lafcadio Hearn who says: "The Japanese child is as close to you as the European child perhaps cleaner and sweeter, because infinitely more natural and refined. Cultivate his mind, and the more it is cultivated, the farther you push him from you. . . . As the Oriental thinks naturally to the left where we think to the right, the more you cultivate him, the more he will think in the opposite direction from you." It is not that the Chinese and the Japanese are inferior races ; it is that they are different; and it is better that different men, though frankly recognizing one another as equals in the majoi qualities of civilization, should have different homes. It is an old adage that no house is large enough for two families. No nation is large enough for two races. -The East for the Oriental, the West for the Occidental, with no attempt to keep house together but free intermingling in international trade is the true solution of the Oriental problem. This is the solution which ON IMMIGRATION 273 the democratic instinct on the Pacific coast has hit upon. And the democratic instinct is right. Congressional Record. 40:3749-53. March 13, 1906 Japanese Exclusion. E. A. Hayes In discussing at this time the question of the exclusion of certain classes of the Japanese from our shores, and particularly those of the cooly class, I am undertaking a not altogether pleasant duty. All men admire courage. The valorous achieve- ments of any nation have in all ages challenged the admiration of the world. And when a weaker nation, making up for its lack of numbers by its energy, courage, and discipline, emerges from a contest with a nation numerically much stronger with the triumphant success which has recently attended the arms of Japan in its contest with Russia we, in common with the rest of the world, shout our bravos to the plucky little island nation. In what I shall say upon this question I wish not to be understood as detracting in the least from the credit due the Japanese people for what in the past half century they have accomplished in war and peace. Their achievements, which are not small, are the com- mon heritage of mankind, and for that reason I glory in them. I would not that the United States should put one obstacle in the way of the progress of our sister nation. Rather I would help her in her upward and onward march all that we can without injury to ourselves. [The question raised by the bill to which I have referred is in no sense an international one. It is purely local in character. The right of every nation to regulate without interference the coming of aliens into its territory has been universally recog- nized in every age of the world's history.* It is a right that we as a nation have claimed and exercised in the past and still claim and exercise. The question of Japanese exclusion should there- fore be settled not as a question of international law, but solely as a question of domestic policy. As it better for this nation that the Japanese people should be allowed to come and settle among us as we allow aliens of the Caucasian race to come, or is it better for the whole people of our country that they should be wholly or partly excluded? This question answered and the whole matter should be regarded as settled. \ 274 SELECTED ARTICLES The Japanese have made such strides and have been out- wardly so transformed in the past fifty years that those of our fellow-citizens who only know them from a distance are apt to be filled with unmixed admiration. A personal contact close enough and long enough to pierce the outside veneer gives one an entirely different impression, however. A close acquaintance shows one that unblushing lying is so universal among the Jap- anese as 10 be one of the leading national traits ; that commercial honor, even among her commercial classes, is so rare as to be only the exception that proves the reverse rule, and that the vast majority of the Japanese people do not understand the meaning of the word "morality," but are given up to practice of licentiousness more generally than any nation in the world justly making any pretense to civilization. I am told by those who have lived in Japan and understand its language that there is no word in Japanese corresponding to "sin," because there is in the ordinary Japanese mind no conception of its meaning. There is no word corresponding to our word "home," because there is nothing in the Japanese domestic life corresponding to the home as we know it. "The Japanese language has no term for 'privacy.' They lack the term and the clear idea because they lack the practice." As showing the Japanese as we have him in California, let me quote a few eminent authorities in support of what I have said and shall say of some of his leading characteristics. Prof. James A. B. Scherer, now president of Newberry Col- lege, South Carolina, and for many years a teacher in the gov- ernment schools of Japan, says: The Japanese have changed in outward appearance so thoroughly that many have been deceived into believing the change complete, and that a nation can be really born in a day. . . . Certainly there has been no inner transformation commensurate with the outward. Japan has a renaissance, but not a reformation. Over the hot and still active fires of traditional sentiment, ethic emotions, and hereditary customs a thin crust of modern western civilization has been laid. The crust is the appearance the unassuaged but concealed interior fires are the dominant reality. Deceived travelers, sometimes with the best of intentions, con- fuse manners with morals, outward refinement with religion, and civiliza- tion with Christian conduct. Because they see outward polish they argue to a change of heart. . . . There could be no greater mistake. And again: Let us, for the present, pass by the fact that commercial integrity is ON IMMIGRATION 275 almost unknown among the majority of Japanese merchants; that it is a rare thing for native dealers to keep their contracts, and go on to the deeper things of the heart and life. When the laborer with American ideals with a home to maintain, a family to support, and children to educate sees his job taken by a man wholly alien in race, with no family ties or responsibilities, and who, by the laws of our country, can never be admitted to the responsibilities of citizenship, he would not be worthy of the name of freeman if he did not fight for his home, his wife, and his children with every weapon at his com- mand. He would be far from the intelligent laborer that he is reputed to be if he did not organize and join with his fellows to more effectually fight the common enemy. The white people of the Pacific coast have no relations of a social nature with the Japanese now there, and it is not desirable that they should have. There is no mingling or fraternizing between the two races, while in the hearts of the white laborers this natural antagonism is rapidly growing into a feeling of enmity and hatred for the race which is taking away their means of subsistence by greatly underbidding them in the labor market. If the present influx of Asiatics continues, the race question will soon be more acute on the Pacific coast than it has been in the states of the South. We already have one race, problem on our hands, the solution of which no man can see, and I aver that this is enough without importing another one. Sunset. 31:122-7. July 1913 Keeping the Coast Clear. Arthur Dunn Captain Togo later the Japanese admiral who swept Russia off the sea steamed a cruiser belonging to his imperial majesty's navy to Honolulu, and dropped anchor just outside the little harbor. Hawaiian officialdom of that day had good reason to believe that Captain Togo was under very positive orders from his government to take a hand in the administration of the affairs of the islands, then torn by internal dissensions and strife. But the American flag floated from the staff of the government building, for possession of which Liliuokalani, the dethroned queen, was making urgent appeals to Washington. The Ameri- can flag was up because John L. Stevens, the United States 18 276 SELECTED ARTICLES minister, felt justified in granting a temporary protectorate to the provisional government. That was February 28, 1893 the beginning of the Japanese question which has lately occupied the attention of diplomatists in Japan and the United States. Had the American flag not been up; had there been no protectorate; had Uncle Sam's marines not been ashore ; well, Minister Stevens would not have been reprimanded, two presidents of the United States perplexed, the Congress vexed and the Sandwich islands, truly named, would have been absorbed, in a single bite, by his imperial majesty, the Emperor of Japan. Incidentally, there would be no Japanese question agitating California and the Pacific coast, nor concerning the statesmen of the United States and of Japan, each particular as to the possession of respective rights, and all full of pride and patriot- ism. But the flag was there. When the strenuous history of '93 was in the making, Japanese in the Hawaiian Islands numbered only 12,360. In 1910, the census enumerators discovered there were 79,674 Japanese on ,the islands, the total population of which is 191,909, so it will be seen that the Japanese are very rapidly approaching numerical dominance in the Hawaiian Islands. As it is, they are making rapid incursions into the com- mercial life of the islands; indeed, sugar planters, in their propaganda designed to defeat the adoption of the free-sugar tariff, insist that the Japanese will dominate absolutely that industry in the event of free sugar and all because the Japanese, to a large extent, can and do control the labor market of Hawaii. Japanese are making headway in the pineapple industry, both as growers and canners ; Japanese have stores and shops of all characters ; Japanese virtually do the provisioning and victualizing of the entire population, in many instances including the United States troops stationed on the islands. They are servants or skilled artisans as occasion requires ; no station too high for them to aspire to it, no place too lowly for them to occupy. They are ingenious as well as industrious I discovered only one Japanese convicted of vagrancy. They attend the public schools and sing our songs, play our games but they remain Japanese, always. They are not assimilable. That is the vision that California and all the Pacific see ON IMMIGRATION 277 upon the western horizon, and it is the vivid picture of the future, rather than the living present, that has startled. It must not be thought, because Japanese own 12,726 acres of California lands and have under lease-hold 20,294 acres, that California is in possession of the Japanese. She is not. California never will be, any more than it would have been possible for the Chinese to have predominated in the days when the Asiatic exclusion discussion was most intense. But California does not purpose inviting an economic struggle with the Japanese, for manifestly, the West cannot meet the Far East on the same level the standards of living are not and never can be even remotely similar. California's opposition is not because of race hatred there is no racial problem involved in the determination to eliminate the Japanese from economic consideration. Candidly California ac- knowledges that Japanese, given free rein within her borders, would become commercial competitors against whom the white man could not hope to struggle successfully, for the Japanese, through sacrificial effort, are capable of accomplishing greater results than the white man, ever eager for his own personal pleasures and comforts. One is willing to work, work, work the other insists upon varying his industry with a little honk- honking along the highway of joy; one will pillow his head upon a rock, if need be, and rest content; the other insists upon the maintenance of a standard which refuses the rock. Tokyo may assert that her national pride has been pricked, but never- theless she knows that the real cause of the tempest is that her subjects figuratively have been picking California's pockets of profits and rapidly are attaining complete mastery of the com- munities in which they have settled. Jingoes in the United States and in Japan have been dis- cussing the relative fighting strength of both countries, as if either was spoiling for a fight. In Hawaii, which frankly is pro- Japanese, it has been common talk that the Japanese could take possession of the Philippines and the Hawaiian group. People whisper stories of the utter unpreparedness of the United States, so far as Hawaii is concerned. The Diamond Head fortifica- tions are weak, big guns are lacking at Fort De Russy, Pearl Harbor dock has collapsed these and a thousand other asser- tions are drooled out by the jingoes. But there will be no war with Japan because of California's 278 SELECTED ARTICLES attitude on the ownership by aliens of agricultural lands. Japan is not anxious to fight, any more than California is seeking to provoke a conflict. The Spirit of the West is positively opposed to all aliens who cannot be assimilated. It has been so since the pioneers dared the dangers of the plains, and penetrated the unknown to build that vast empire that is producing more than one-half of the nation's wealth. There is no alternative for the West as between Japanization and Americanization. The attitude of the West is best exemplified in the story of a sportsman, hunting in California. His companion was a youth, the son of an emigrant, whose name was almost unpronounceable, so recently had it been transplanted here. The hunters wandered from the trail, and after a time the youth came upon a hut. He went to inquire the proper road, but came back disappointed. "They're a bunch of foreigners and don't know nothin'," he complained. The second generation is thoroughly American nine times out of ten the tenth it is Japanese. Nation. 98: 724-5. June 18, 1914 Immigration from the Orient. H. C. Nutting To THE EDITOR OF THE NATION : SIR : The problem of Oriental immigration is so complex that it will be a misfortune of the first magnitude if this question is allowed to go by default, or any attempt is made to settle it without thorough, painstaking, and sympathetic investigation. The writer is a native and long resident of New York, but for some years has been an "adopted" Californian. Realizing how hard it is for people who live at a distance to appreciate fully this great problem, it has seemed to me worth while to present my views, which are those of an easterner on the ground. The first point that needs to be made clear is the matter of relative density of population. People know, of course, in a general way, that the Atlantic seaboard is more densely popu- lated than the Pacific ; but few actually realize that the combined census returns for the great States of Washington, Oregon, and California show a population only a little larger than one-half that of the city of New York, Without further argument, it ON IMMIGRATION 279 will be at once evident to any thoughtful reader that the Pacific states are not in a position to desire any considerable alien population. The eastern states may be able to welcome, by the hundred thousand, foreigners of a type that cannot be assimil- ated; but at present the Pacific states cannot with safety assume such a burden. For any real understanding of the situation, it should be noted, in the second place, that the people of the coast states are in a measure isolated from the thickly populated districts of the United States. To the east lies Nevada, with an area exceeding that of New York State and Pennsylvania combined, yet support- ing a population of only about fifty thousand in all; and adjoining it on the south is the vast State of Arizona, with approximately three times as many inhabitants. It thus happens that the three million people who thinly fringe the Pacific slope are separated from the more densely populated centres by hundreds of miles of mountain and desert, spanned at great intervals by long stretches of lonely, single-track railway. / Over against this somewhat isolated outpost of Caucasian civilization lies China with a population of 450,000,000 crowded into an area but little larger than that of the United States, and Japan, supporting its 50,000,000 inhabitants upon a territory about the size of California. That these prolific eastern nations greatly need an outlet for surplus population is obvious ; and it is equally clear that they would ultimately overflow our inviting \shores in great waves were there no barriers to prevent. A careful investigation could not fail to discredit the offhand judgment (now, doubtless, prevalent in some quarters) that the restiveness of the people of the coast is the result of race preju- dice merely. Some race prejudice there no doubt is; but that is not the factor which has brought the immigration question to an issue. The Chinese have long been on the coast; but their retiring ways and the fact that their business activity is limited for the most part to a few special fields has made their presence little felt. The coming of the Japanese has put an entirely new face upon the matter. At least four factors have contributed to this result: (i) The numbers in which the Japanese have come; (2) the fact that immigration from Japan is not controlled by our federal government ; (3) the economic disturbance caused by this immigration, and (4) the attitude taken by the Japanese themselves. 2&o SELECTED ARTICLES The thing of prime importance in this whole question is that a definite understanding regarding Oriental immigration be reached while matters are yet in the incipient stage. Now is the time to settle the matter, while the situation is well within our control. If it is allowed to drift along, there is grave danger that we shall bequeath to the next generation a problem which they will be unable to handle. The Chinese alone could repeople the United States two or three times over without depopulating their own country. And those who have seen at first hand conditions in the southern states, where two races come into daily contact and yet may not amalgamate, will surely agree that it would be little short of a crime to allow an analogous situation to develop in another large section of our country a situation which in this case would be further complicated by the attitude of the home governments of the alien peoples. Dr. S. L. Gulick, who has recently been lecturing in the United States in the interest of the Japanese, has described in an interesting way the elaborate bureau of information maintained by the Japanese, whereby agents in every country gather accurate information bearing on all important questions for the use of the home government. It is very probable, therefore, that conditions on the Pacific coast are better known in Tokio than in Wash- ington. If this be a fact, the moral is obvious. In conclusion I would add a suggestion or two: (i) That it ought not to be regarded as an evidence of ill-will towards any nation that the people of the United States desire that the Pacific coast shall remain in the unquestioned possession of Caucasians, and (2) that it is not by any means inevitable that a righteous solution of this question can be reached only through an adjustment which requires a wholesale sacrifice of the well-being of our own citizens. It would not be unnatural, of course, that the nations of the Orient, as they develop and push forward to places in the world family, should at first fail to realize that manhood's estate brings with it responsibilities and restraints as well as honors and privileges. But it may ulti- mately become clear to all that, in questions such as the one now under discussion, it may be the duty of an Oriental people to submit cheerfully to restrictions that are essential to the social and economic well-being of a friendly neighbor. ON IMMIGRATION 281 Harper's Weekly. 51:1484. October 12, 1907 Real Pacific Question. Sydney Brooks The parallel between the conditions in the American state and in the Canadian province, is, indeed, singularly close. In both districts you find a comparatively small English-speaking community scattered over a beautiful and bountiful country. Both front upon the Pacific, and are equally exposed to emigra- tion from the Orient. Both are only in the first stage of their material development, and both suffer from a chronic shortage of labor. Each has experimented with the Chinese coolie, and each for deeper reasons than mere local trade-union jealousy has felt compelled to bring the experiment to an end. Even the minor circumstances and expediencies of the two dilemmas are curiously similar. The immediate interest of both California and British Columbia is to import all the labor they can lay hands on. Such material progress as they have already compassed would unquestionably have been beyond their capacity to produce had it not been for the coolies of the Asiatic main- land. On both sides of the boundary-line the capitalists, there can be little question, would favor a reasonable, and even a lib- eral influx of Asiatic coolies, would even, I think, be prepared to evolve a community based upon a system of indentured and semi-servile labor. But the masses both in California and British Columbia, with a sounder though not necessarily a less selfish instinct, reject any such plan with unanimous ferocity. It still, however, remains the fact that the Asiatic colonies in and around San Francisco and Vancouver contribute vitally to the economic and industrial fabric of the communities in which they have settled; that the Japanese especially make cheery, industrious, peaceable immigrants, not meddling with politics, rarely if ever becoming a charge on the local treasury, but living simply and innocuously though without a trace of Chinese squalor, supporting their own churches, publishing their own papers, and providing the unskilled labor of which neither the railroads, nor the farm- ers, not the fruit-growers, nor the mines, nor the canneries can ever have enough. But the question, it is rightly felt, is not one to be settled on merely utilitarian grounds. Admitting to the full the service- ableness and the virtues of the Japanese coolies, it is still pro- foundly true that their unrestricted immigration means the 282 SELECTED ARTICLES planting in California and British Columbia of a vast alien colony, exclusive, inscrutable, unassimilative, bound together -in an offensive and defensive organization, with fewer wants and a lower standard of living than their neighbors, maintaining intact their peculiar customs and characteristics, morals, and ideals of home and family life, with neither the wish nor the capacity to amalgamate, or even conform, with the civilization upon which they have intruded, and gradually, by the mere pressure of num- bers, undermining the very foundations of the white man's well- _being. To such a visitation California and British Columbia may well object; from such a prospect they may well shrink. Their industries may be retarded, their crops go unharvested, the yield of their vineyards and fruit-farms may rot away through sheer lack of the indispensable labor, their whole progress may be checked these are but the passing exigencies of a day. What they have to safeguard is the future and the distinctiveness of their race and civilization, and in their passionate and unalterable conviction they cannot be protected unless the free ingress of Orientals is restricted and regulated. This is the real Pacific question not a question of naval or commercial supremacy, but of the social and economic relations that are to obtain between the white and yellow peoples. Among the English-speaking communities that border the Pacific, whether they live under the Union Jack or under the Stars and Stripes, there exists a deep instinctive popular determination one of those irresistible movements of opinion which the highest states- manship may possible succeed in guiding, but which no states- manship can hope to stem to exclude from their sparsely-settled territories the concentrated masses of China and Japan. It is a determination ministered to by the jealousy of trade-unionism, and by all the ugly instincts of racial antipathy. But it has also its better side. The English-speaking peoples and the type of civilization, manners, morals, and beliefs which they represent, stand for a cause that demands and deserves the last support that can be given it. California, British Columbia, New Zealand, and Australia know this and feel it already. It will not be long before Great Britain and the whole of America know it and feel it, too. There is no more urgent need than that the problem of Asiatic immigration into English-speaking countries should be taken out of the hands of mobs and vested in those of statesmen. ON IMMIGRATION 283 Independent. 62:26-33. January 3, 1907 Japanese Question from a Californian's Standpoint. Julius Kahn Now any one who is at all familiar with the two races, realizes fully, and will state unhesitatingly, that Occidental and Oriental civilizations will never mix. And the people of California, after an experience of over half a century with Orientals, feel that they understand this Asiatic immigration question just a little better than many of their well-meaning countrymen who live about three thousand miles away from us, and who have beau- tiful theories on the subject, which, however, do not work out well in practice. We first learned to know the Chinese coolie in the early so's. He was brought to our shores, in those pioneer days, to work in our gold mines. That was only three or four years after the discovery of the yellow metal in this "New Eldorado" had been heralded to the world. He was a cheap workman, his wages averaging considerably lower than those of Caucasians employed in similar vocations. And because he was a cheap workman he was brought from China in increasing numbers as the years rolled on. There is no denying the fact that he was a docile, untiring workman. As Kipling truly says, he seems to come into the world with "a devil-born capacity for doing more work than he ought." From daybreak to midnight, in season and out of season, weekdays and Sundays, more like a machine than a human being, he toiled away in his stuffy quarters, where light and air were at a premium. As he worked for a mere pittance, he rapidly drove out the white mechanic from many fields of indus- try. Finally race riots occurred, and California appealed to Congress for relief. After several years of agitation . laws excluding Chinese laborers from the United States were placed upon our statute books, and altho sporadic attempts have been made to modify or repeal those laws, they have remained prac- tically intact up to the present day. And now, once more California is threatened with an Oriental invasion. Since the great disaster which overwhelmed the city of San Francisco in April last, Japanese laborers to the number, practically, of 1000 per month, have been swarming thru the 284 SELECTED ARTICLES Golden Gate; and I think that I am not stating the facts too strongly when I say that the people of California regard these Japanese coolies with greater abhorrence, aye, with greater fear, than they did the coolies from China. We feel that the former have all the vices of the Chinese, with few or none of their virtues. In business they are absolutely devoid of the stern sense of honor of the Chinaman. The latter invariably lives up to the letter of his obligation, while the Japanese never hesitates to break that obligation if it suits his purpose so to do. Why, even in Japan all the principal banks and commercial houses employ Chinese in the two important positions of compradore and shroff. The compradore is the purchasing and selling agent who acts as the go-between between his employer and the firms with which he does business. The shroff is the exchange expert, a necessary adjunct to all large business houses in a land where the value of silver, which is the common medium of exchange, fluctuates from hour to hour. As a rule foreign firms doing business in Japan place full reliance on the word of the Chinese compradore, even tho they have little faith in the integrity of the Japanese proprietor. And if the bankers and business men are not to be relied on, what reliance is to be placed on the lower classes of Japanese society? But the people of California have never made objection to merchants, bankers and professional men from Japan. It is the coolie against whom they protest. And just one word in this connection. It has long been the policy of our government to protect the products of our farms, our factories and our workshops from the products of the pauper labor of Japan and all other countries. Then why not protect the work- man himself the man who creates those products of our farms, our factories and our workshops, from that very pauper laborer? Much has been said in recent discussions to the effect that the Japanese have been denied their treaty rights in California. The people of that state deny this assertion most emphatically. But in speaking of treaty rights, Californians freely express the belief that the existing treaty, under which Japanese coolies come to our shores at the present rate of 1000 per month, is not an altogether equitable instrument. They contend, on the contrary, that the treaty is altogether one-sided. True, it guarantees to the citizens of either country full right of entrance into and residence in the territory of the other. But who ever heard of American laborers, or American mechanics, going to Japan in large numbers? Why, ON IMMIGRATION 285 industrial conditions in the "Land of the Rising Sun" are absolutely prohibitive, so far as the emigration of the American workman to that country is concerned. The latter receives from $2.50 to $7.00 a day in his own land. It would be an insult to his intelligence to assume that he would want to sail to far-off Nippon for the privilege of working there at the prevailing rate of wages paid to mechanics, to wit, 30, 40, 50 or 60 cents a day. It is the high wage that prevails here that is attracting thousands of the little brown men to our shores. Unless prohibited by legislation they will come in still greater number, while the number of Americans who expatriate themselves in Japan, by reason of the conditions that prevail there, must, necessarily, always remain limited. And for these reasons Californians feel that the treaty with Japan is entirely one-sided. Congressional Record. 42:3494-8. March 17, 1908 Shall the United States Exclude the Immigration of Japanese and Korean Laborers? Burton L. French Nations are organized and perpetuated for the benefit of the people who make up the nation, and as people individually have problems to solve that have to do with their course of life, so nations have problems to solve which bear upon their perpetual well-being, and we must proudly assume that our nation's life is perpetual. Many acts of a nation are merely transitory and have but a passing effect upon the current events and development of the nation ; other policies of the nation go to the very basic principles upon which the nation rests. A tariff law operates indifferently and may be repealed or continued with slight effect upon the ultimate character of the nation; a financial policy may be changed by each succeeding administration ; great government improvements have to do with the facility with which business is handled, but not one of these questions strikes vitally at the highest good of any country. The question involved with respect to the immigration of people to our shores has to do with the character of our population, of our institutions, of our religious, ethical, social, and political life. Our country is going through a great formative period, and it is the duty of our nation to have a guard for not only our com- mercial and industrial well-being, but our people as well. More 286 SELECTED ARTICLES important than the construction of railways, the building of cities, or the reclamation of arid lands is the safeguarding of our population, and in safeguarding our population one of the primal things to which our minds must be directed is the blood that flows in our people's veins. Peoples of different color and widely separated racial tendencies do not live side by side under the same flag in peace and harmony. It matters not the relative development of the races; it matters not that they are equal in all that makes for highest manhood and for purest womanhood; it matters only that their social characteristics are separated by a chasm so deep that it cannot be bridged at the marriage altar, and their folklore stories mingled by a common fireside. Such is the chasm that separates the American people today from the people of the Orient. It is upon this ground that I believe they should be excluded from our shores in such a manner as will prevent any considerable number from ever claiming this their home. This can be done, I believe, by the exclusion of the laboring classes of the Oriental countries. On the other hand, realizing the vigor, attainments, and traditions of these ancient people, realizing that they have broken the spell that has bound them as recluse nations during the centuries gone by, we may well afford to admit their scholars that we may learn from them, their students that they may learn from us, their merchants, if this can be done without abuse, that we may buy from them the product of their genius, and through whom we may in turn exploit the fruits of our own industrial thrift. The relations between the United States and the nations of the Orient should be such that the utmost good will may prevail. We should ask nothing from them that we would not as cheer- fully concede. As the years go by we will become more and more interdependent. Notwithstanding this, our growth should be side by side and not by mingling the population of America on the continent of Asia and the population of Asia upon the continent of America. It may be laid down as a cardinal principle that the greatest internal peace belongs to that nation whose people are homogeneous, while, on the other hand, distrust, unrest, and internal strife are the undoubted portion of the nation whose people do not blend. Every year that passes will bring additionally embarrassing political questions to the states which have Oriental voters. It ON IMMIGRATION 287 is not to be supposed that these voters could get the point of view that the American would have. It is not to be supposed that they would fail to use their ballot to produce practical results for themselves. Every year that passes will bring in- creased difficulties because of the public school situation. Every year will heighten the difference between the Oriental laborer and the white laborer, and the white laborer cannot be blamed for standing for the welfare of his own fireside. Last of all, every year that goes by without positive legislation looking to the checking of Oriental immigration means the introduction into our midst of a people of a strange blood who throughout the centuries to come will retain their individuality and serve as the slumbering embers that will in the sometime burst into flames of international wars involving our own country and the nations of the Orient. We may talk of friendly understanding and the willingness of the Oriental nations to prevent the immigration of their people to our shores. I respect the sincerity of those who urge this course, but I have n'o confidence in the merits of such a policy. We cannot leave this question to Japan and to Korea any more than thirty years ago we could have left the question of Chinese immigration to the Chinese government. The present ministry may favor the policy, the succeeding one may oppose it, or if it favors it, the ministry may not prove itself efficient. During the last few days the people of Japan, by their votes, have asked for a new ministry. Who can tell the policy of the political leaders who will now assume control? Aye, if they have declared their policy, who can tell how faithfully that policy will be executed or what will be the policy in ten years from now? Collier's. 51:12. May 31, 1913 World's Most Menacing Problem The question involved in the California anti-alien land law is not for today alone. It is for generations to come. It is not a Japanese question alone. It is a Chinese question, a Hindu question, a Korean question, a Syrian and Armenian question. It is not a matter of the United States alone. It is a Canadian question, an Australian question, a South American question, a Mexican question, a South African question, a New Zealand question. 288 SELECTED ARTICLES It is a world question. It is a problem for all time. It is the local outcropping of the greatest of world problems the riddle of the intermingling of races. It cannot be settled on the narrow basis of any treaty with Japan, nor on the local basis of opinion in California, nor the feelings of the people of all the states on the Pacific coast. It ought not to be adjusted by the people of the United States in ignorance, nor prejudice, nor with reference to political plat- forms, nor the demand for cheap labor. It cannot be lightly slighted off. It is an irrepressible struggle. It will persist for ages. Its complexities and its menace are bound to become nearer and more menacing as every invention in transportation and every advance in commerce brings white men and brown men and yellow men into closer and closer contact with each other. i The Wrong Way to Approach the Question Let us consider the attitude of Japan in the premises. The Japanese are a fine and strong people. They are very proud, just as we are very proud. They have just as much reason to be proud as we have. They have a very ancient and splendid civili- zation. They are poets and artists and scientists. They have a fine system of ethics, and some virtues which they can teach us. In patriotism, in enterprise, in efficiency, all along the line of modern life, they compare favorably with all other peoples. They are not inferior to us let that be admitted at the outset. So long as we act with reference to them on the theory that they are inferior, we shall be in the wrong. They think them- selves superior to us. We think ourselves superior to them. That is the natural attitude of the mass of the people of every land. But in the last analysis the Japanese will be entitled to the verdict that they are just as able, just as efficient, and just as good as we are. 2 The Necessity for Homogeneity in a Democracy What reason can we find, then, for making laws which will tend to keep the Japanese out? Let us see what our destiny is and how it must be worked out, determine what our problems are, and see what effect the incoming of the Orientals would have on our affairs : We of the great Caucasian nations, especially the English- speaking nations, have unreservedly committed ourselves to the ON IMMIGRATION 289 theory of democracy. We are more and more accepting democ- racy as the natural order of things. We have very dreadful problems to work out through the instrument of the ballot. The ballot rests on equality of rights, of more or less common views and common interests among the people. Voting is a species of conference. Minds meet and settle questions in elections no less than in town meetings. A democracy is a people who -reason together and express their decisions by their votes. If they do not speak the same language, if there exists a great body of matters on which they cannot come to a mutual understanding, if the mental gap be- tween great factions among them is too great to be bridged, if for any reason there exists any irreconcilable antagonism among them, if great bodies of them are in economic warfare, the democracy cannot exist. That is why we are already in such deep difficulties with our democracy. We have many antagonistic classes. We have trying times ahead. It is sure to be hard for us to weather the storms which these problems will generate. The labor question, the trust question, the growing problem of farm tenantry, the amalgamation of the millions of European immigrants, the re- demption of our backward population in the Appalachian Moun- tains all these are hard things to solve. But the people of our own antagonistic classes look alike and feel alike toward each other under like circumstances. They can and do mix. Remove the reasons for enmity, and the enmity vanishes. Nobody can tell a northerner from a southerner, or a Bohemian from a Scotchman, or the progeny of an old New York anti-renter from the descendant of a patroon, or a whisky insurrectionist's progeny from the descendant of a soldier sent to put down the insurrection, so far as looks are concerned. After all, our contending forces, except for the negro, belong to the same basic race, and are unable to tell each other apart in a few years after any struggle takes place. They have more intel- lectual and spiritual similarities than they have of any sort of differences. They. mix. 3 The Presence of the Jap Is Inconsistent with Democracy It is different with the Oriental. His color sets him off from the rest of us so far as to make of him a marked man. It may be urged that this ought not to make any difference, that a man is a man, no matter what the tint of his skin. Granted 2QO SELECTED ARTICLES but this is a democracy, and people must be taken as they are. We cannot fraternize with colored peoples as we do with each other. They feel just as we do about it. We cannot do the business of a democracy with people so strongly set off from us in racial character. Their presence among us in great num- bers raises the most explosive questions questions of sex, marriage, school life, church life, business life, traveling prob- lems, questions of all sorts of mingling. Perhaps these questions ought not to come up, but to urge that is silly they will come up. The nation every nation must keep out peoples whose pres- ence will complicate this matter of democratic solidarity. They must be kept out, not because they are inferior, but in many cases because they are so different. For these reasons California is right in her effort to keep out the Japanese. For similar reasons the Japanese are right in all the laws they may have enacted, or may enact, to prevent the domestication of large numbers of Americans there. They can vote us out of their club with perfect propriety. We can and must vote them out of our club. They are not clubbable with the great masses of the greatest Caucasian club in the world, the United States. 4 We Must Exclude any Race which We Cannot Assimilate The Japanese are not pioneers. If they were they could find a great deal of new land in the northern island of their own em- pire, in Sakhalin, and in Manchuria. But they are not pioneers. They prefer tense competition with men in settled countries to the competition with nature in new lands. So they like to emigrate to establish societies, like that of California. In these societies they can compete successfully with anyone. Their presence here, therefore sets up an economic strife which is em- phasized and embittered by their racial dissimilarity to us. If they came here only as they became enamored of the American people, the American flag, and the Caucasian civilization, we might say to all: "Welcome!" But they do not so come. They do not like us any better than we like them. They do not understand us any better than we understand them. They cling to whatever differences there may be between their moral standards and ours. They see the many respects in which they are our superiors, and fail to understand or appreciate the many respects in which we are ON IMMIGRATION 291 their superiors. They do not mix. They are hurled into our midst like javelins by the expulsive force of their poverty. This is as fundamental an objection to their domestication among us as their marked difference in looks. Their presence among us in large numbers would raise a race issue far worse than the negro problem. For while the negro and the white have failed to cooperate in working out our prob- lem of democracy, while we have great difficulty in being just to the negro, and while the negro problem is recognized as our greatest one, it would be worse if the negroes were Japanese. For the negroes have no home government to which they can appeal a government armed and inspired with the fine race pride of the Japanese. If Santo Domingo and Hayti contained 50,000,000 of well-organized negroes, our present race question would be one of war. We must not have war with Japan or China or a freed and independent Hindustan. Therefore we must settle this matter now before it is too late. We must settle it now on the basis of our right to exclude a\ny peoples whom we do not think we can take into our work of perfecting democracy. We must settle it before an alien nation is established in our midst a nation of marked people, proud of their race, and ready to appeal to their ancient and powerful empire for aid in every quarrel with us. Half a million Japanese in this country would embroil us in war with Japan within half a decade. Let us stop the influx while the numbers are small and their interests still capable of being adjusted. 292 SELECTED ARTICLES Independent. 74: 1437-8. June 26, 1913 Japanese Question from a Californian Standpoint. James D. Phelan. The Japanese problem is peculiarly one on which California has a right to speak and to be heard. According to the lasi census, the Japanese population in the United States was 71,722, of which 55,100 were in California; and I claim that notwith- standing the "gentlemen's agreement" their number is increas- ing. Japanese are smuggled into the United States from Mexico and British Columbia. They swarm our richest valleys, and have invaded our cities and towns. They are skilled agricul- turists and unassimilable, and therein is the menace of their presence. All the white man's countries fronting the Pacific have the same problem, and have, in different ways, attempted its solution Australia, New Zealand, and British Columbia. Now, there must be some reason for this widespread opposition to the Jap- anese. It is this, stated in the terms of experience: they have driven the white man out of employment in his own country ; they are capable of exterminating him if unrestrained. The Japanese have, for instance, taken possession of the fisheries of the Fraser River, British Columbia, and have actually displaced the English and Canadian fishermen. In Vaca Valley, and in parts of the Sacramento and Santa Clara valleys, and elsewhere in Califor- nia, they have in a like manner exterminated the white settler. Their method is this: They first take employment as laborers and learn the business; they then underbid the white tenant and take a lease ; then they demand a share of the crop, and finally acquire the fee of the land itself. Here we find the salient fact that the man who has pioneered the country, reared his family, and created all the evidences of our Western civilization the church, the school, the theater, the social life and the higher aspirations exprest in a happy home, is suddenly thrown in competition for existence with an alien who respects neither holidays nor hours of labor, and who owes no duties either to society or to the state, but who may be regarded as a perfect human machine, given to ceaseless and unremitting toil. As such he is a success. In the place of a sturdy white population assimilable and ON IMMIGRATION 293 homogeneous we have an alien, incapable of assimilation, loyal to his home government, and hence composing a permanent foreign element in our midst. In other words, we have cre- ated a race question, against which all history has warned us; where two races are endeavoring to live side by side, one must take the inferior place, or an irrepressible conflict is precipitated. Just as a foreign substance will derange the human system unless it is expelled or encysted, even so is it with the body-politic. The Japanese will not go, and will not be absorbed. There is the problem. In the lower Santa Clara Valley a visitor recently one Sun- day morning beheld a large number of Portuguese and Italian families surrounded by their children and friends enjoying, in a rational way, their holiday the day of rest. These peo- ple who soon lose their racial characteristics, at any rate in one or two generations, and become a part of the American population, participating in the political and social life of their country in order to survive, will have to get down to the level of the Japanese, and pursue the same methods. In this same district, the visitor also saw, on this Sabbath morning, large numbers of Japanese working in the fields, where intensive farming is carried on (in which also the Portuguese are adepts), and by their side working were their women, and on the backs of the women were strapped their babes. They work thus fourteen to sixteen hours a day eat little and play not at all and already thru their associations have substan- tially control of the potato market, berry market, and the cut flower market, and generally, garden truck. The alien land law is enacted to prevent this class of immigrants getting a footing on American soil, because so soon as they get a footing, they are capable of unconsciously 'undermining the structure which the Fathers have erected under the flag of the United States for the perpetuation of the life, liberty and happiness of their own people and those who become a homogeneous part of the country's population. Of course, the naturalization laws were addrest to Europeans and did not contemplate Orientals, who, even in the earliest days, were regarded, in the American sense, as indigestible. The men who originally opposed the introduction of negro laborers took the same ground, that being essentially foreign and unassimilable, the negro would create a race classifica- 294 SELECTED ARTICLES tion, which would be repugnant to American institutions and would destroy the idea of equality. It is, therefore, a ques- tion of preserving California as a white man's country, up- holding American standards and civilization, or abandoning it to an alien people capable, in this fierce competition, of either exterminating the whites or of reducing them to a hopelessly lower economic, social and political plane. The con- test would be a human machine against a human machine, without any consideration for the spiritual, intellectual and political betterment of humanity. A free government such as ours depends upon the intelligence, patriotism and prosperity of the people. It would be fatal to impoverish and destroy the men and women on whom we depend. In this view, we have to eliminate any question of in- creased production, or pride in statistical tables of great wealth. They are of minor importance. It is the proper dis- tribution of wealth among the people that concerns us most. Amicable relations with a foreign government must yield to a proper regard for the welfare of our own people. The alien land act might well be described as an act of self-preser- vation. NEGATIVE DISCUSSION World's Work. 14:9373-6. September, 1907 Mongolian as a Workingman. Woods Hutchinson Having lived along the Pacific Coast from Vancouver Is- land-to Los Angeles for nearly seven years, I have had time enough to observe the situation without remaining in any one place long enough to absorb local prejudices. Being neither a day-laborer nor an employer of labor, my point of view has not been obscured by personal interest. First of all, no class on the Pacific Coast desires an un- limited, or even a very large, immigration of Mongolians, whether coolies or merchants, Chinese, Japanese, or Koreans. The people want to keep this Coast a white man's country. Many of us are keenly alive to the complications arising from the permanent presence of an inferior race with which it is not suit- able to intermarry. Yet in these seven years I have found the consensus of intelligent opinion in the community farmers, mer- chants, professional men, lumbermen, housewives, in fact all grades and conditions of people except the labor unions, the "hoodlums," and the politicians and editors who truckle to such classes strongly in favor of a limited Mongolian immigration. They believe that the Chinese and the Japanese up to, say, a quarter or a half a million would be of enormous com- mercial value to the Coast and of little or no social or moral disadvantage. They do not say much about it in public, for intelligent opinion goes about in fear of the noisier and more prejudiced expressions and of the newspapers which echo them. Our politicians take their cue from the shoutings of the mob and misrepresent us on this question. A false impression has grown up in the East with regard to the real attitude of Oregon and California toward the Oriental problem. The considerations that lead many intelligent people to favor Chinese and Japanese immigration ar these: . First, there is an utter absence on the Coast of any native- born or American white day-laboring class below the artisan 296 SELECTED ARTICLES or skilled mechanic. I have never yet met on this coast an American white man who was willing to regard himself as a day-laborer by profession, who expected to pass his life in that capacity. American laborers are too intelligent and too ambitious for that. The native-born men and boys who cultivate our ranches, pick our fruit, build our railroads, and man our lumber crews, are simply "working for a stake." As soon as they have earned one or two hundred dollars, off they go to the mines, the fisheries, the timber and homestead claims, to set up for themselves. They are the finest labor on earth, as long as you can hold them, but the moment they have "made their stake" they leave. A new find at Bull- frog, Tonopah, or Rhyolite will empty the bunk-houses in a week. There is only a small supply of Italians, Poles, Hungar- ians, and Russians. These immigrants come by way of New York and stop off along the whole breadth of the continent, so the handful which reaches us is wholly inadequate for our needs. Moreover, we prefer the Chinese to any of these or to the Mexicans with their dirt, laziness, and stupidity. The Chinaman is the most industrious worker that walks the earth in human form. He doesn't seem to know how to get tired. All you need to do is to show him what he has to do, and set him at it; he will stay by it as long as he can see to work, seven days out of the week. There is some- thing positively uncanny about his affection for work. No class of white men will work with the unremitting persis- tency of the Chinese. The Japanese is^nore_human. He will quiet of his own accord occasionally, but he also is a tireless, cheerful worker. Apart from these merely commercial or mechanical vir- tues, both Japanese and Chinese have an excellent personal reputation all up and down the Coast. Not only are they honest and industrious, but they are kindly, cheerful, grateful for good treatment, devoted to the children of the families in which they work, faithful to their friends, kind to their families, to one another, and to everyone in trouble. They give liberally, not only to their own poor, but to Christian missions and charities. "As fat as a Chinaman's horse" has passed into a proverb. The dislike of them is racial and class, not personal. ON IMMIGRATION 297 The terrors of the "Yellow Peril" exist chiefly in the imaginations of walking delegates and Congressmen. "Chinese cheap labor" has not to date "ruined" any white man, for the v, simple reason that it does not compete with him. It fills a / gap which no white man or woman on the Pacific Coast is willing to fill, except temporarily under stress of circum- stance. It is not a question of wages. The fact of the mat- ter is that we cannot get, at any price, more than half the white labor that we need here now to build and keep in re- pair our railroads, man our mines, work our farms, pick our fruit, our hops, our nuts, grow our vegetables, and do our household work. A good general servant in California for instance, commands from $30 to $40 a month, -wrtfr~thlf~wash- ing "put out," and few are to be had at that price. To speak of "Chinese cheap labor" provokes a smile on the Coast, for the Chinese laborer gets at least as high a wage as the white man of the same class, and usually a little higher on account of his superior industry, honesty, and trustworthi- ness. Chinese workingmen earn from $2 to $4 a day in the orchards, the mines, and the canneries, while a fair Chinese servant gets $40 a month and board, and a good cook or steward receives from $50 to $100. One such cook, with a helper, will provide meals in a lumber or mining camp for forty or fifty men. Nor does the great mass of Japanese interfere with any class of white labor. Certain of them are more enterprising and versatile, however, and are beginning to enter the lower grades of skilled manual labor. Hence their unpopularity with the labor unions, and the recent agitation for their exclusion. The . chief trouble with the Japanese is that he is a little too much A like ourselves. The Oriental influence upon our social or political life need give little concern, since both races come here with the fixed intention of returning to the Orient the Chinese after he has made some money, the Japanese after he has learned some par- ticular thing. They show not the slightest desire to intermarry with the white race, even if this were permitted ; they take no more interest in politics or in any form of social life outside of their own colonies and tongs or guilds than so many horses. As to the nameless Oriental vices and diseases about which we hear so much, I think I may be allowed to speak with some positiveness. For two years I was state health officer of Ore- 298 SELECTED ARTICLES gon, and one of my first duties was a thorough investigation of the Chinatowns of San Francisco and Portland with ref- erence to the bubonic plague, which was at that time smolder- ing in the former city. If there was anything in these colonies that I did not see, it was my own fault, as I was always cour- teously accompanied by Federal, state or municipal officers. When in search of a suspected case of plague, every door which was not promptly opened on demand was smashed in with an axe. In addition, I have been for years keenly interested both in tropical diseases and in the forms assumed by Euro- pean diseases in Oriental races. I have no hesitation in saying that neither the Chinese nor the Japanese has a single disease or vice which does not exist among white men, except certain geographical infections like beri-beri, nor is he subject to them in any higher degree than white men of his grade of intelligence. Leprosy, for instance, is no more prevalent among them than it was in Norway and Sweden fifty years ago, and in Scotland and Ireland 150 years ago. More lepers have actually come into the United States from northern Europe than from all Asia, and since the United States Marine Hospital Service began inspecting intending immi- grants in Chinese ports, scarcely a single case has entered by any pacific port. Whatever danger threatened from this disease is already abolished. The same may be said of any further danger from the bubonic plague. While both Chinese and Japanese suffer severely from tuberculosis, this is little more prevalent among them than among Irish, Scandinavians, Italians, Russians, or Hungarians, and can with equal readiness be absolutely excluded by compe- tent sanitary inspection and quarantine regulations. Diseases peculiar to men are neither more frequent nor more virulent among them than among the white men of the same class. Most cases have been contracted since coming to this country. The sanitary (or, more properly, insanitary) conditions of Chinatowns are only such as result from overcrowding. The chief difficulty in the way of their complete removal is the shameful opposition of the white owners of the property, many of them pillars of society and of the church, whose enormous revenues from the rookeries are in direct ratio to the number of tenants they can crowd into them. Money greed and the dishonesty of politicians and police who blackmail its vices and ON IMMIGRATION 299 necessities are the sole hindrance to the cleansing of these "Oriental plague-spots." The Chinese contribute to the situation simply by their patient submission to overcrowding and their willingness to pay rent for space in which a white man would suffocate. Con- trary to popular impression, they are not dirty in their personal habits. I have physically examined scores of Chinese and Jap- anese, and they strip cleaner than any European immigrantsT of their class. Their bedrooms are neatly kept and their kitchens j are cleaner than those of the average restaurant. In fact, they / must be clean, as a matter of stern survival necessity. I have / frequently seen inside rooms fifteen feet square, without win- dows or airshafts, their only opening being a door into a dark, - narrow passage, in which cooked, ate, and slept ten to twelve Chinese; and yet there was little or no offensive odor. Chinese and Japanese servants are models of neatness and j cleanliness and usually report for duty in white duck jackets. They keep both kitchens and bedrooms far cleaner than the average foreign-born hired girl. Any Chinatown can be kept in good sanitary condition, merely by a little energetic and honest health-policing and by en- forcing the building and lodging-house laws already in existence. Make the owners of the property pay a special license-tax out of their enormous rentals, use this to provide a special sanitary inspector, and the thing is done. Chinese stand in holy fear of the law and its officers, and one or two lessons would be enough. They take very kindly to overcrowding; if permitted they will take a room or floor, "split" it into two stories, if the ceilings are more than twelve feet high, by putting in an extra floor six feet above the original one. If the ceiling is lower, they build tiers of bunks clear to the top, with per- haps a gallery four feet below it. These quarters are then sublet to a dozen or a score of sub-tenants. But a few arrests and a tearing out of these "improvements" would soon stop all this. They do not love overcrowding and dirt for their own sake, but merely put up with them to save money; the rooms of the more intelligent and wealthy Chinese are often light, airy, and spotlessly clean. Many disgusting things are to be seen in our Chinatowns, but nothing that cannot be matched in any city slum or "tender- loin." The worst "joints" are those which are run for the 360 SELECTED ARTICLES benefit of white visitors and white patrons. We pay too high a compliment to Chinese intelligence when we imagine that he can devise anything more ingenious or complicated in the way of vice than we. He gambles, of course, but fan-tan is his only substitute for the race-course and Wall Street. In the absence, of family life, he invents all sorts of ingenious deviltry just like New York or London clubmen. He smokes a good deal of opium and probably shortens his life considerably by so doing, but for some strange racial reason it seldom makes the abject physical and moral wreck of him that morphine does of the white man. So far as I can learn, only about 50 per cent, of the Chinese and scarcely 20 per cent, of the Japanese "hit the pipe" at all. Of these probably not more than a third do so to excess, and even they "carry it" surprisingly well. Unless thoroughly familiar with the symptoms, you might see a Chi- nese every day and never suspect that he was an opium habitue. Unlike Mark Twain's prospector who "never let his business interfere with his drinking," the Chinese never lets his pipe interfere with his work until the last few weeks, or months before the end. He smokes only out of business hours, or at the end of his week or month, when he can get a day or two off. It is not a handsome nor attractive vice, and the only whites who are led to indulge in it are of the lowest class. On the other hand, the great majority of Orientals either abstain from alcohol or take it in strict moderation. There are a few saloons in each Chinatown and they can generally be picked out by the group of white men hanging about the door. Of late, the Japanese is showing a little tendency to take kindly to whiskey as a substitute for his native sake (rice brandy). Occasionally he will even take enough to become boisterous and come in contact with the police, which occasions much shaking of heads and wagging of beards over "steins." Managers of canneries which have to handle promptly and | regularly every day of the season large amounts of valuable raw material or have it spoil on their hands, "will tell you frankly that they prefer Chinese or Japanese to white labor, because they never get drunk or go on sprees at critical periods and require no holidays or days off. In fine, while the Chinese and the Japanese have their defects, and the Coast has no desire to "gush" over them or urge them to become citizens, we regard them as a valuable commercial fac- ON IMMIGRATION 361 tor, and as a race as free from vice or other drawbacks as can reasonably be expected of mortals. Literary Digest. 47:67+. July 12, 1913 California's Hustling Japanese You can not hire white men in California to wade through the tule dust in the Sacramento and San Joaquin deltas and thin onions, dig potatoes and onions, harvest beans, and cut asparagus, with a temperature of about 120 degrees in the shade or 130 in the sun. Tule dust is an acrid powder that is about as pleasant to inhale as sulfur fumes. To pull your feet through it is like dragging leaden weights. The white man will drive a sulky plow or cultivator where it is possible to drive them, he will man the gasoline tractors and other big machinery, but he will not toil on foot under that scorching sun between the rows of growing things that must be cultivated and dug. Nor will he pick raisins and grapes and berries on the big farms that lie outside the delta. Nor yet will he band with his kind in nomadic groups and be avail- able here, there, and everywhere for the harvesting. The white man simply refused to fill this economic vacuum. The Oriental yielded to the magnetic influence and was drawn into it. Now that he is in and is regarded by high and low authorities as undesirable, the vexing problem is how to get him out. Here is the way the situation sizes up to J. P. Irish, Jr., of the Middle River Experiment Farm, who is also on the staff of Secretary Houston, of the United States Department of Agri- culture : Just so long as truck farming is carried on in California on a gigantic scale, and just so long as grapes and fruits are grown on the one-crop basis, we shall be absolutely dependent upon Oriental labor. If we were to drive every Jap, China- man, and Hindu out of the State the beet-sugar industry would instantly cease. So would a great section of all our agriculture stop with a bang. We have developed our agriculture in recent years on the basis of a big nomadic population of labor which exists by means of short-term jobs. We are farming on a basis of an immediately available supply of nomadic labor. The 302 SELECTED ARTICLES nomadic white labor that can be recruited is utterly worthless; wherefore we are prest by necessity to depend upon the Japa- nese. We started out with the Chinese, and he was the best type of laborer we ever had. His habits were his own ; his vices were his own. He minded his own business. But a howl was raised against him and the fear grew that the country would be swamped by pigtails. Hence the Exclusion Act. We shut the Chinese out, which created the opportunity for the Japanese invasion. The Jap rushed in to fill the demand. Where the Chinaman was complacent and passive the Jap has become stubborn and recalcitrant. He demanded and got a pass- port system. He resisted the pressure against him every inch of the way. But with all his stubbornness and his persistence in coming in, there were not enough of him. Wherefore the Hindu, who from the point of efficiency is less desirable than either the Chinaman or the Jap. The Hindu came not because he could furnish as good labor as the Chinaman or Japanese, but simply because he was nomadic. Until the landholding in California and other Pacific coast states similarly situated reduce themselves to a point where a man and his family can handle a sub-division, we are going to be ridden and bothered and vexed by these nomadic hordes from the Orient. In my opinion it would have been a great deal better if California had kept on taking the Chinamen until the density of population automatically excluded them. People here are counting now on throwing open our door to Southern Europe. They expect an inpouring of field laborers. But such has not been the history of immigration from that section. The masses attach themselves to the cities and only a scattered few seek the country. This is not so true of the Portuguese as of the other peoples of Southern Europe, but the Portuguese are comparatively limited in number. The great cry in California has been that the Japanese are taking the white men's jobs. But that has been a false cry so far as the actual job is concerned. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the white man would not have the Oriental's job as a gift, with a bonus thrown in for extra inducement. Nor will the American negro take it. Several years ago a big planter of Fresno County brought a trainload of colored men to California to work in his fields. They remained on the job less ON IMMIGRATION 303 than a week, and inside of a fortnight, so the report goes, the entire North Carolina shipment was shooting craps or shining shoes or driving ice-wagons in the city of Fresno. Annals of the American Academy. 34:80-5. September, 1909 Moral and Social Interests Involved in Restricting Oriental Immigration. Thomas L. Eliot The one undeniable fact which seems to be emerging is that a certain growing number of Orientals is to be on our shores, partly floating, and partly to stay. It is almost equally certain that exclusion is frankly impossible, deportation impracticable, and the lines of restriction are more and more difficult to define. Others will discuss what may and ought to be done in order to regulate the quantity and quality of the immigration. No doubt careful legislation is necessary both east and west, and in the west, at least, labor immigration should be made the subject of more and more careful treaties and comities with China and Japan. But in the outcome, there will be an accumulation of these peoples, determined to be here by economic principles, and attaching themselves to the soil according to the industrial demands of city and country life. To the present writer it seems a fairly open question whether the ratio of Orientals to the rest of the white population will increase. Except for limited areas, there are with us on this coast no such conditions historically and economically as in the Hawaiian Islands that is a problem to itself. A few checks and balances added to the present restric- tion laws ought to suffice for the maintenance of the present ratio on the basis of the entire coast. At the same time the quality of the immigration might be advanced. The real problem lies with the hosts rather than the guests ; as a problem of resourcefulness, adaptation and character. Shall these immigrants be antagonized, solidified into a caste, driven in upon themselves, compelled by our very treatment of them to herd vilely, and live viciously, or shall there grow up among us in the interest of moral and social sanity a determination to minimize crass race-prejudice, to dissipate the superstitions and ignorances of both whites and non-whites, and to set up assimilating processes as far as possible along the levels of indi- vidual merit and higher efficiencies? Shall we foster the very 304 SELECTED ARTICLES evil we dread, or shall we somehow foster the germs of good will? Shall our legislation be panicky and steady-by-jerks, or shall it be enlightened and progressive ; shall the laws be admin- istered evasively, or evenly, in the interest of peace and progress or of race and class conflict? Even admitting that Orientals are in a different class, what real reason is there for prophesying that they and white races cannot live upon the same soil, use the same language, and in time share each other's mental and social ideals? The process of co-operation will not be difficult when once the alternative course is fairly faced and its consequences fully realized in imagination. For the alternatives are sanguinary and brutaliz- ing. It takes but little imagination to depict the future if the Chinese and Japanese are given over to mobs, and are refused justice; if they are traduced, denied education and civic rights; if they are treated as animals, and are barred all humanities and amenities. For such abuses, both soon and late, there will be a fearful reckoning. A complete estrangement from us o& eastern nations, with all that it involved of commercial loss, and the possibility of war, are the least of the evils thus invoked. The greater evil would be visited upon our national character, for in shutting our doors and persecuting inoffensive immigrants, we would have surrendered to mob power, and the mob yielded to always means increasing inhumanity and injustice poured back full measure into the bosoms of those who were their in- structors. All the more would such retributions heap up for us, when the chief charge we can bring upon the Oriental, is that, class for class, he is cleaner, thriftier, more industrious, and docile, better bred, better trained, and better mannered than his white neighbor in the world of labor and life. These views will be called academic, and whoever holds them ought frankly to admit his own limitations. The exclusionist and high restrictionist have the apparent advantage of figures and experience, and can always plead "the present distress." They seem on solid ground when they appeal to the instincts of race purity and of self-preservation. They alone, perhaps, realize the hardships and strains put upon communities and individuals, when the competition of labor seems to drive the better men to the wall. But it must be repeated, those who are mixed up with a problem do not always see the best way out. They can- not understand the need of sacrificing a nearer benefit, to the ON IMMIGRATION 305 larger principle. Theirs is the shortsighted view perhaps in this very case, which once drove the Moors out of Spain to the lasting injury of peninsular civilization, which blinded all Southern France in the silk weavers' riot to fight the newly- invented loom; and which united the squireocracy and agricul- tural laborers of England against the first steam railroads. Economic history is full of such hardships of progress and sufferings of adjustment. The peril is always a great one, that sympathy with those who suffer, may blind rulers and peoples to greater coming good for greater numbers, including it may be even the present sufferers. In the very nature of society, if progressive, there is always a fighting line where the unskilled labor of society is to be done, and another fighting line where the highest leadership is to be achieved, where the greatest prin- ciples of civilization are trying to win out. Over this conflict and friction, the will of the whole people as expressed in good government, in wise legislation, in impartial enforcement of the laws, in enlightened study of conditions should insure civili- zation against retrogressive steps. The problem of immigration, especially in the shape in which it is presented to Western America, should be placed in charge of an expert governmental commission of the highest class, with ample powers, capable of patience and detachment from pre- judice, in order to formulate all the facts and propose the practicable solution of how the civilization of the west and the east may meet, and how they may mingle since mingle on some terms they must with advancing good will and the mutual attainment of material, moral and social good. This is the challenge that the situation presents to united America. The East as well as the West is concerned in an- swering it upon the highest lines of national and international harmony. When we ask ourselves what grounds of encourage- ment there are to hope that an honorable solution will be reached, it needs but to rehearse some of the achievements, over equally stubborn problems lying all about us, and to measure up the new pace which is set for education, for enlightenment, for solidarity of national sentiment, for new evaluations of human lives, and above all for the obligations of society towards its weaker members. 306 SELECTED ARTICLES National Education Association. 1914: 35-40 Responsibility of American Educators in the Solution of Amer- ica's Oriental Problem. Sidney L. Gtilick. The attitude which the United States takes to Japan and China in this and the next few decades promises to be epochal in the history of man. And the responsibility for the attain- ment of the right attitude depends in no small measure on our educators and our institutions of learning. The general attitude of our people is today one that is based on profound ignorance. It expresses itself in disdain, scorn, misrepresen- tation. Asiatics are regarded as inferior in race, degraded in character, and unassimilable in nature. We allow no Asiatics to become citizens of America, whatever their personal quali- fication. This refusal of rights of naturalization is made the ground of differential race legislation by several states. Such legislation, however, is regarded by Japanese as invidious and humiliating, contrary to the treaties, and in conflict with their national dignity and self-respect. This is the crux of the so-called Japanese question. This is what is causing the Japanese people so much pain and indig- nation at the recent anti-Asiatic legislation of California. Japan does not ask for an open door for labor immigration. She is widely misunderstood at this point. She does ask for a square deal on the basis of manhood equality with other races. Her people are not willing to be regarded or treated as an inferior race or as intrinsically undesirable. When China awakes to the situation, she will unquestionably develop the same feelings and make the same appeals as Japan is making today. It is impossible, however, for America to respond to this appeal of the Asiatic for equality of treatment, good will, and friendship so long as the present conception of the Asiatic and his civilization prevails among us. To admit him to our citi- zenship is regarded by many as intolerable. We might as well admit baboons or chimpanzees some are openly saying. Good American citizens, and even Christians who believe in sending missionaries to Asiatics in their own land, regard them with disdain and scorn, holding that they are intrinsically different from us so different that it is impossible for them ever to enter into our life, understand our civilization, or share with ON IMMIGRATION 307 us in this great American experiment in democracy. Such indi- viduals are fond of Kipling's famous ballad: Oh, East is East and West is West And never the twain shall meet Till Earth and Sky stand presently At God's great judgment seat. That is to say, East and West are so different that, entirely regardless of the question of inferiority or superiority, these two great sections of the human race cannot possibly mix. The effort to provide for their mingling, they hold, will inevitably end in turmoil and finally in disaster. They forget, however, that Kipling did not stop with the lines they love to quote. Tho he well recognized the differences between East and West, he also saw deeper and beyond. For he added in the lines imme- diately following: But there is neither J;^st nor West Border, nor breed, nor birth When two strong men stand face to face, Tho they come from the ends of the earth. The fact is that the unities underlying all branches of the human race are far deeper and more real than first appear. The differences are relatively superficial. Now one of the outstanding duties of our educators is to study these pressing problems of international life and the new relations necessarily arising thru man's recent mastery of nature and the relative collapse of space. We need to know the facts. Our entire people should be educated on these matters. We must be led by a sane and kindly attitude toward those great civilizations of the Orient and their peoples, not by ignorance and race prejudice. Our popular attitude toward Asiatics today is based on ignor- ance of the peoples, their history, and their attainments. It is based on a tradition that has come down from the past, a tradi- tion, however, which better knowledge does not justify. Educa- tors should lead in the overthrow of these race misunderstand- ings and prejudices which threaten to bring enormous and dis- astrous consequences to both the East and the West. The popular view that Asiatics are undesirable because of their absolute non-assimilability is based on assumptions which modern biology, psychology, and sociology as well as actual ex- 20 308 SELECTED ARTICLES perience, show to be quite erroneous. Our institutions of learn- ing should promptly set to work instructing our people on these matters, for they are of highest international importance. The rank and file of our people should no longer be misled by be- lated conceptions which, tho long regarded as scientific, are now seen to be baseless. We are in great danger lest mediaeval views of race nature and race relations shall plunge us into serious yet needless difficulties. Modern education has overthrown, to a large degree, the mediaeval dogmas of theology, rendering thereby an inestimable service to religion. There is crying need that it render the same service to our international life by overthrowing similarly mediaeval dogmatism as to race nature and race relations. World's Work. 15: 10041-4. March, 1908 Japanese Immigration. Viscount S. Aoki What would the American people say if any of their race should be prohibited from entering Canada or Mexico or a far- off country? I ask this question at the beginning of this article because I want to bring home to those who read the natural attitude which every Japanese must adopt when contemplating the agi- tation in progress in certain sections of the United States for the enactment of an exclusion law against his countrymen. You are an expanding people. Your emigrants are entering the Dominion to the north in droves. They are entering and remaining in Mexico, Cuba, and South American countries. In those countries, especially in Canada, many of them have become farmers. They are trying to live economically, to gain as much profit as they can, to observe the law and to become honest, decent, law-abiding citizens. They are succeeding, and they are reflecting credit upon their native land, upon their adopted country, and upon themselves. Now take the situation of the Japanese. We, too, are an expanding people. Our population, according to the last census, is 50,400,000. Our total area, including Formosa and the south- ern extremity of the Liao Tung Peninsula, upon which Port Arthur is situated, is 176,386 square miles. The population of the United States is almost 90,000,000, excluding your insular ON IMMIGRATION 309 possessions. Your area is 3,755,6o8 square miles. The density of your population is 24 per square mile ; ours is 286. In spite of the relatively small number of persons per mile in your country, thousands depart annually for other lands. These are not merely professional men, merchants, and students, but men who work with their hands and who go in the hope of bettering their condition. Yet in the United States you have vast areas of land which are uncultivated ; you have an abounding prosperity; your per capita circulation amounts to the large sum of $32, and there is an abundance of opportunity for those will- ing to work. Compare the situation with what it is in my country. The amount of land available for agricultural pur- poses is so small that we cannot farm on a large scale but must confine ourselves to gardening. Instead of sweeping plains we have hills and valleys. In our northernmost island the climate is rigorous, the amount of snow-fall being much greater than in the United States. We are a comparatively poor people. Our per capita circulation is only $8. The opportunities afforded to us are few when compared with yours. You say : There is Korea and Manchuria. But Korea is a very mountainous country and Manchuria suffers from a very severe climate. No capital can be found in either ; and industry, consequently, is at a standstill. How long could your farmers exist without capital ? What could they do about moving their crops to market? Without capital, what portion of the crops would be purchased by the consumers, and would not the portion unsold remain on the hands of the producers and contribute to their ruin? Apply this situation to Korea and Manchuria. In the present condition of our finances, we have no capital to invest in either of those countries. Consequently, there are no indus- tries of any importance, except those which the Koreans have pursued for generations and which suffice for their simple needs ; Japanese who settle in the Hermit Kingdom cannot gain a liveli- hood. We are not an agricultural people as you are. We have not the immense amount of capital that you have. In the old days, the people added to their rice fare by the results of fishing and hunting. Now, with the introduction of modern industrial plants, requiring a changed diet in order to fit the hands to perform their work, meat is being eaten. Modern sanitation has lengthened life. There is no decrease in the birth-rate. We recognize that pur future is as a manufacturing nation, ancl 310 SELECTED ARTICLES our people are laboring industriously in our mills and factories. Competition naturally has become keen. These are the conditions which are responsible for the move- ment of Japanese to the Pacific Islands and to the western hemisphere. The government has never encouraged emigration. It was begun by individuals craving a better opportunity. The industry, intelligence, and strength of the Japanese appealed to their employers, and the latter, including Americans, Hawaiians, and others, came to Japan to induce immigration to their re- spective countries. Such emigrants were without protection from brutality and hardships inflicted upon them by their masters. Unwilling to interfere the government approved the organiza- tion of emigration companies. These companies are required to watch over all emigrants, to provide them with funds when with- out money or work, to furnish them with medical attendance when ill, and to return them home to prevent them from be- coming a charge upon the foreign community in which they have settled. The few Japanese who emigrated to Hawaii have always enjoyed the most satisfactory relations with the Hawaiian people. They made excellent laborers. They have been law- abiding. Without them, the Hawaiian Islands would not be so prosperous as they are. In Hawaii, they learned of the oppor- tunities existing on the Pacific Coast. They came to Califor- nia, to Oregon, to Washington. Some were voluntary emi- grants, others- were induced by your railroads and other indus- tries needing labor. Those that remained in San Francisco were herded in a quarter where they had practically no opportunity to learn American customs or to appreciate the character or value of American ideals. They resembled the colonies of Amer- icans, Englishmen, Germans, French, and other nationalities which to-day are found in "settlements" in Shanghai, Tien Tsin, and other Chinese ports, and which, until I negotiated the treaties abolishing extraterritoriality, existed in my own country. When Commodore Perry first penetrated feudal Japan, he found an obstinate objection to the admission of foreigners to Japanese soil. The masses of Japan wanted nothing to do with foreign- ers. They were unwilling even to treat with them. Eventually, as a great concession, foreigners were permitted to establish "settlements," and were vested with extraterritorial rights. This was done, not for the benefit of the foreigners, but to relieve ON IMMIGRATION 311 the Japanese of any contact whatever with them. It was the adoption in Japan of the old Turkish policy of using the for- eigners for the advantage of the country and limiting the rela- tions of the people with them. It took nearly half a century to convince us that the policy was wrong ; that, instead of gaining by the policy of extraterritoriality, we really suffered by it, and that our interests required the distribution of foreigners through our territory rather than their segregation. For by this they constituted a grave embarrassment and a real menace. It has been said that the Japanese cannot assimilate with men of Caucasian blood, has the experiment had a fair trial? It is unnecessary for me to point out the achievements of the Japa- nese, which have given them recognized equality in all lands, including America. Those men are welcomed and, of course, there is no suggestion that they should be excluded. I am refer- ring to the laboring class. They are frugal and industrious. They make law-abiding citizens. They educate their children. They become acquainted with your institutions. They want to embrace American citizenship, but your laws do not permit their naturalization. This shows then, that the question is not a racial one pri- marily. It is economic, and from it have grown the political and racial phases. Now let us see what remedy exists for its removal. To my mind, the solution lies in the distribution of the Japanese. Any so-called Japanese quarter should be abolished. The men and women residing therein should be encouraged to live wherever they desire. The Bible says that every laborer is worthy of his hire. No one will work for less than he can get. The Japanese certainly will demand the wages of his white competitor if he knows what those wages are and has a chance to obtain them. Living among the whites, the moral pressure of his neighbors will cause him to act as they do. In other words, he will be assimilated, and with his assimilation the economic and other questions will disappear. Since the time when Perry came to Japan the relations of the United States and my country have been based upon senti- ment. The immigration question is the first of any importance to arise between us. We have identical interests in the Pacific Ocean and in the Far East. You want freedom of trade; so do we. We welcomed you to the Philippines. We have 312 SELECTED ARTICLES no desire whatever for them. Indeed, we want you to remain in the Far East, for, with your power and prestige, and with your unselfish aims, you can be depended upon to uphold those principles which are as important to us as they are to you. The integrity of China and the open door in that Empire were prin- ciples first enunciated by your Secretary of State. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, I accepted those principles, and as heartily approve them to-day as I did in 1899. If the LTnited States were to withdraw from the Far East, the upholding of those principles would be a matter of great difficulty. As we have no designs upon the Philippines, so we have no designs upon Hawaii or your other Pacific possessions. You, on your part, we are convinced, entertain no intention to seek Formosa or other islands or territory belonging to us. There is no point at which our boundaries come in contact; consequently, there is no cause for friction in this respect. You were the first to recognize our preponderance in Korea, an act of friendship which no intelli- gent Japanese can forget. More than this, you gave us moral countenance in our trying time. These are the reasons why, to every Japanese, the idea of even strained relations with the United States is abhorrent; why we want and have earnestly endeavored to arrange the immigration question to your satis- faction and to ours. That one question is insufficient to disturb a close friendship of nearly sixty years. But, to prevent it from doing so, the American people should recognize our position in the matter. They should understand that we, too, are a proud people. They should appreciate that an Exclusion Act would be a slap in the face which no first-class power could permit to pass unnoticed. I say this in a spirit of the greatest friendliness. I have always been a strong admirer of American energy and of the American institutions. And it is because of this admira- tion and of the affectionate respect I feel for the American people that I speak plainly, believing that my words will be interpreted in the friendly way in which they are intended. ON IMMIGRATION 313 North American Review. 200:566-75. October, 1914 Our Honor and Shame with Japan. William E. Griffis. It is not the business of a foreign nation making a treaty with the United States to inquire into the actual workings of federalism, its defects or advantages; or whether our national government it is too weak, morally or physically, to enforce, a treaty obligation within a certain geographical area. No ques- tion is raised as to whether any nation or government has, or has not, the right to keep out of her borders undesirable per- sons ; or who shall or shall not become citizens. It is no matter whether Japan is pleased or displeased with our social or poli- tical system, or we with hers. As sovereign parties covenanting together, according to the laws of nations, the only question is that of good faith. To violate a treaty is to break the supreme law of the land and trample on the Constitution of the United States, which reads, in Article VI. : This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. In that august document no provision is more strongly safe- guarded against any and all theories of federalism and state rights, and none is so immune from alteration, or the effects of attempted nullification, or secession, by states, judges, courts, legislators, and politicians. A diligent perusal of the sectional speeches and writings of statesmen so called, and of the Proceedings of the Asiatic Exclu- sion League, fails to reveal any sound reason why one state should nullify a national obligation. Such perusal has shown, however, that gentlemen, dependent upon votes and in the labor- unions (many members of which, Huns, Russians, etc., have more "Mongolian" blood in their veins than has the average Japanese) may be blinded by race hatred and colorphobia, especially when dominated by fears rather than facts. When racial antipathies rule, reason flies. The "history" so often appealed to and the ethnology expounded in California seem to be of a peculiarly local output. On this "hem of the handkerchief," between the Rockies and the Pacific, it is prejudice, animal instinct, and 314 SELECTED ARTICLES surmises, not reality, that control the situation. The student of the situation feels bound to challenge the truth of nine-tenths of the statements and the validity of most of these local argu- ments. We Americans dragged Japan out of her enjoyable her- mitage. As zealous as Macedonians were we in our cry, first to the Chinese, to "come over and help us." We wanted the Jap- anese badly and we invited them here. Alas, they have turned out to be so unlike the Christians we get from the most othodox part of Christian Europe ! These "very respectable and full- handed farmers," as George Washington would have called them, do not patronize our liquor-saloons, or fill our almshouses and prisons, or buy our guns and pistols to kill, nor imitate our abominable manners and vulgar extravagance. On the contrary they are so wickedly zealous in reclaiming our waste land, so offensively industrious, and so shamefully eager to learn our language, read newspapers, patronize libraries and life-insurance companies, become builders and supporters of Christian churches (over fifty of which they have organized on the Pacific coast) that we are on the brink of ruin through their cheap labor ! Verily, with fewer than seventy thousand Japanese in the con- tinental United States, "the hordes of Asia" are precipitating themselves on us to the overwhelming of free institutions ! Forum. 50:66-76. July, 1913 Japanese-American Relations. Edwin Maxey Given a traditional friendship resting on the recollection of of kindness shown and an admiration for achievements, added to a community of interests resting on mutually advantageous trade relations due to a difference in resources and emphasized by the fact of geographical location, it would be most unfortu- nate if these relations were to be disturbed by hostile legisla- tion and unfair discrimination by a state legislature. But the recent act passed by the California legislature and signed by the governor raises substantially the same question as that raised six years ago by the order of the San Francisco school board in excluding the Japanese children from the public schools of San Francisco. Now as then there is no emergency which calls for drastic action by the local unit. At that time the local unit ON IMMIGRATION 315 attempted a discrimination against aliens whose rights were protected by a treaty between the United States and their gov- ernment containing a "most favored nation" clause. That the federal government had a right to negotiate such a treaty there is not now and has not for a century been any doubt. The treaty-making power is by the constitution conferred upon the federal government, without limitation. The federal government had therefore the same power to make treaties as had the gov- ernment of other independent states at that time. And at that time, and for a long time previously other independent states had been making treaties containing the "most favored nation" clause. This power has never been taken away from the federal government and has been frequently exercised without any ques- tion as to the legal right to exercise it, when considered expe- dient to do so. Nor is there any doubt that when a treaty con- taining such a clause is made it becomes, in accordance with the constitution, "the supreme law of the land." It may be unwise for the federal government to insert such a provision in its treaties but of this the federal government and not a state legislature is to be the judge. In the school case the matter was finally settled not by the local authorities but by the federal government to whom it should have been referred in the first place. The intervention by the local authorities settled nothing. It served merely to cause useless irritation to a friendly state, to embarrass our own government and to show that the question was one to be dealt with by the federal government, not by the local authori- ties. If the rights of California, in respect to matters governed by a valid treaty, were interfered with they had the undoubted right of appealing to the federal government for protection, which, if merited, would no doubt have been accorded. But this method was far too tame and prosaic for Californians. They chose rather to make what political capital they could by inde- pendent action which would inevitably cause irritation and make the question more difficult of handling; and then, having secured what advertising they could get out of it, they turned the ques- tion over to the federal government for adjustment. One would suppose that the above experience would have taught the Californians something. But it did not. At the begin- ning of the present session of the legislature a whole crop of bills, thirty-four in number, was introduced for the purpose of gain- 316 SELECTED ARTICLES ing immortal fame and votes for their authors, by insulting the citizens of a friendly state. One of these was a bill to increase the license to Japanese from ten dollars to one hundred dollars. Another was to place a special poll tax on Japanese, notwith- standing the fact that the treaty of 1911 between the United States and Japan contains the following provision : "They shall not be compelled under any pretext whatever to pay any charges or taxes other or higher than those that are or may be paid by native citizens or subjects." Another was a bill to prevent Japanese from owning power engines, the purpose of this being to drive them out of the steam laundry business. If such legis- lation is valid, then any state' can make it impossible for aliens to make a living within it, regardless of "most favored nation" clauses in our treaties with governments of said aliens. In matters affecting foreign relations, if there is doubt as to the right of the local political unit to act, such authority owes it to the federal government to proceed slowly, rather, than has- ten to act lest its excuse for action should be removed by a friendly and diplomatic adjustment of the question by the branch of the government having charge of foreign relations. True, the act of the legislature may be tested in the federal courts and, if in violation of the treaty, its enforcement may be en- joined. This would arrest the mischief at that point, but a part of it would have been completed. The irritation would al- ready have been caused ; so that while the state would have derived no benefit, needless embarrassment and annoyance to the federal government would have resulted. It is not clear to the lay mind why a state should display such over-anxiety to place itself in such position. If, after diplomatic means have failed, it should have recourse to this as a last resort, its act could be justified, provided there was a reasonable hope of accomplishing some good by it. By virtue of its position as a state in the Union, California, in common with every other state in the Union, is under some obligations to the federal government. And among these obligations one is to refrain from making it unnecessarily difficult for the federal government to conduct its foreign relations, particularly where there is doubt as to the legality of action contemplated by the state. The true explanation of this epidemic of anti-Japanese legis- lation in California is not to be found in any real fear that the Japanese will monopolize the agricultural lands of California or ON IMMIGRATION 31? that the ownership of a part of them by Japanese will depreciate the -value of adjoining lands, for it does not, as would be the case if they were slovenly farmers. As a matter of fact the Japanese increase the productiveness of lands owned by them, which tends to increase the value of adjoining lands. Neither are the Japanese laborers what can be styled cheap laborers. The Commissioner of Labor for California, Mr. Mackenzie, in his report for 1911 admits that the immigration of more Japanese would be a benefit to the state. It may as well be admitted frankly that the real explanation of the present outburst of anti- Japanese legislation is to be found in race prejudice. That this prejudice has not a sufficient reason upon which to rest matters not. ) Prejudices do not rest upon reason, they rest -upon pas- sion. I It you ask one inoculated with the virus of race prejudice for an explanation of his action you are met with the statement that it is natural. This I deny. If it were natural we should find it in children from one to ten years old, as children at that age are far more natural than older persons. Children do not draw the color line. They play as readily with children of another race as with those of their own. It is only after their conduct is governed by the conventionalities of society that they draw the color line. Race prejudice is a form of bigotry much less defensible or rational than that which afflicted the Pharisee, for the latter based his claim to superiority upon acts, not upon the accident of birth or the color of his ancestors. A due respect for the rights and feelings of others and usefulness in promoting a larger and more perfect life among those influenced by our thoughts and acts, rather than color or pedigree, con- stitute the only valid claim to superiority among men. Race prejudice is therefore too dim and fitful a light to guide the course of states in their relations with each other. Not to be given free rein in dealing with the Japanese may be irksome to California. The presence of Japanese among them may be disagreeable, may be so disagreeable that their impulse would be to proceed at once to a general deportation. It was also disagreeable for South Carolina to pay tariff duties in 1832. But while a state continues to be a member of the Union it may as well expect to bear the burdens as well as reap the advantages of that relation. By far the major part of the sympathy which California now receives comes from a section having an exalted notion of states' rights and what in the Ian- 3 i8 SELECTED ARTICLES guage of art would be called an over-emphasis of the importance of the color scheme. Equally uncalled-for and equally unwise with the outburst of anti-Japanese feeling in California are the intemperate pre- dictions of war with Japan. War between the United States and Japan is unnecessary and unlikely. The surest guarantee against it is the good sense of the two states. Neither wants war and neither can afford it. Notwithstanding sporadic outbursts on both sides, each still has confidence in the other, which makes it easy to adjust differ- ences. It is to be hoped that the lesson taught by the present strain on international friendships will not be lost and that it will lead to a readjustment of powers between our state and federal governments which will prevent a recurrence of such unfortunate and awkward situations. Survey. 31 : 720-2. March, 7, 1914 Problem of Oriental Immigration. Sidney L. Gulick. The new American Oriental policy must hold as its major premise the principles announced by President Wilson in that notable address at Mobile. He was speaking, it is true, with the South American nations in view, but the principles he announced apply equally to the nations of the Orient. As reported, he said : We must prove ourselves their friends and champions upon terms of equality and honor. You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality. You cannot be friends at all except upon the terms of honor; and we must show ourselves friends by comprehending their interests, whether is squares with out interests or not. Upon such principles consistently applied, would I found America's new Oriental policy. America should treat the Oriental on a basis of complete equality with the citizens of other races, granting to them as to the most favored nation, treatment even as we give it to others and demand it for ourselves. The policy needed is one that shall conserve all the perma- nent interests of California and of the entire United States, shall do so in harmony with the dignity of the peoples of the Orient, and shall provide likewise for their permanent welfare. ON IMMIGRATION 319 A new general immigration law is needed which shall apply impartially to all races. We must abandon all differential Asiatic treatment, even as regards immigration. The danger of an over- whelming Oriental immigration can be obviated by a general law allowing as the maximum annual immigration from any land, a certain fixed percentage of those from that land already here and naturalized. The valid principle on which such a law would rest is the fact that newcomers from any land enter and become assimilated to our life chiefly through the agency of those from that land already here. These know the languages, customs and ideals of both nations. Consequently, the larger the number already assimilated, the larger the number of those who can be wisely admitted year by year. The same percentage rate would permit of great differences in actual numbers from different lands. By way of illustrating this suggestion, consider the follow- ing outline of a general immigration law. The maximum number of immigrants in a single year from any nation, race or group having a single "mother tongue" shall be: Five per cent of those from that land already naturalized American citizens including their American-born children. In addition to these there shall also be admitted from any land all who are returning to America, having at some previous time had a residence here of not less than three years. All immediate dependent relatives of those who have had a residence here of not less than three years. All who have had an education in their own land equivalent to the American high school, with not less than three years' study of some foreign tongue. In the application of these provisions, individuals who come as bona fide travelers, government officials, students ; in a word, all who are provided for by funds from their native land, should not be counted as immigrants ; but merchants, professionals, students, and all others who, even though not technically labor- ers, yet depend on their own efforts in this land for a living, should be so reckoned. Applied to Germany this 5 per cent rate would admit as many as 405,000 immigrants, whereas only 27,788 entered in 1912. From Great Britain 363,500 might enter, whereas 82,979 came in that year. Russian immigration would be diminished from 320 SELECTED ARTICLES 162,395 in 1912 to a possible maximum of 94,000; while immi- gration from Italy would fall from 157,134 to 54,850. From Japan 220 immigrants would be admitted and from China 738. I am not particularly concerned, however, with defending the 5 per cent rate here suggested. I merely use it by way of illus- tration. Those better acquainted with the facts of immigration and the speed of social assimilation must determine just what percentage would be wise. The present contention centers on the point that whatever the wise rate may be it should be applied equally to all races. This principle alone avoids the difficulty of invidious races discrimination. To some it may perhaps seem a misnomer to call this plan a new Oriental policy, for it advocates nothing distinctive regard- ing Orientals. True ! And this exactly is the reason' for calling it our new Oriental policy. It is a policy which does not dis- criminate against Asiatics, and, therefore, it is new. It is new both in its spirit and in its concrete elements. The early adoption of some such policy as this is important. Unless something is done promptly there is every reason to anticipate further aggressive anti-Japanese legislation in Cali- fornia when the next session of its legislature meets (1915). Further discriminative legislation, however, would still further alienate the friendly feeling of Japan and render still more complicated and difficult of solution the international situa- tion. The early adoption of the main features of this policy would assure California on the one hand that no swamping Asiatic immigration is to be allowed, thus securing what she demands. It would also satisfy and even please Japan, granting the substance of what she urges. In regard to the Chinese, also, the situation would be much improved. The fairness, yet, the generosity of our policy, adopted by us with no pressure from her side would serve to strengthen and deepen the spirit of friendship for America and render still more effective American influence in guiding that new republic through the troublous times that are surely ahead. If America can permanently hold the friendship and trust of Japan and China through just, courteous and kindly treat- ment, she will thereby destroy the anti-white Asiatic solidarity. If America proves to Asia that one white people at least does not despise the Asiatics as such nor seek to exploit them, but rather, on a basis pf mutual respect and justice seeks their reaj ON IMMIGRATION 321 prosperity, Asia will discover that the "white peril" is in fact an inestimable benefit. And that change of feeling will bring to naught the "ydl w peril" now dreaded by the whites. Even from the lower standpoint of commercial economic interests the policy of justice toward and friendship with the Orient is beyond question the right one. Armed conflict, or even merely sullen hostility, mightily hampers trade success. Rapid internal development in China and a rising standard of life among her millions means enormous trade with America, if we are friendly and just. And unselfish friendship and justice on our side will hasten the uplift of China's millions. Our own highest prosperity is inseparable from that of all Asia. So long as friendship is maintained and peace based on just international relations, the military yellow peril will be impossible. In propor- tion as the scale of living among Asia's working millions rises to the level of our own is the danger of an economic yellow peril diminished. Every consideration, therefore, of justice, humanity and self- interest demands the early adoption of the general principles of this new Oriental policy. It conserves all the interests of the East and the West and is in harmony with the new era of uni- versal evolution of mankind. ; RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date DUE AS STAMPED BELOW - MAR 9 1994 I Q i y 7 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES