The total number of seamen shipped and discharged on American vessels (including repeated shipments) before shipping commissioners was 218,031. Of the seamen shipped 37,098 were native Americans, 22,511 naturalized Americans, and 61,026 were foreigners. The shipping commissioners' service was maintained at a cost of $59,282.67, plus an expenditure well within the appropriation of $7,000 for rent and equipment of offices. The precise amount can not be stated, as all outstanding claims have not been settled.

When the revised international rules for preventing collisions at sea were promulgated by the President on December 31, 1896, article 9, relating to lights, etc., on fishing vessels, was held for further consideration by the maritime powers. The matter has been under consideration for some years, and in September the British Government submitted a draft of an article covering the subject and completing the revised international rules. The Department is engaged in ascertaining the sentiment of the maritime interests of the country upon the proposed new rule. If it prove favorable, a bill embodying the rule will be transmitted to Congress, and the work undertaken by the

Washington International Marine Conference of 1889 will have been completed.

The revised Canadian rules for preventing collisions of vessels on the Great Lakes and connecting and tributary waters as far east as Montreal went into effect last April. These rules are substantially the same as the American rules approved February 8, 1895, for the same waters. The desirability of uniform American and Canadian rules for the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence to the head of ocean navigation is manifest. To further the interests of international uniformity in maritime legal conditions, a conference, at which the United States was represented, met in October at Brussels to consider especially the division of damages in cases of collision, and salvage. The report of the conference has not yet been received.

The many laws imposing fines, penalties, and forfeitures for violations of the navigation laws and laws relating to vessels, their owners, crews, etc., could with advantage be revised. These laws, it should be recalled, begin with the earliest and end with the latest acts of Congress. Covering over one hundred years and passed under varying conditions, they carry penalties often quite disproportionate to the gravity of offenses and inconsistent with one another. Thus, for example, with modern means of cable communication and the thoroughness of modern quarantine inspection, the penalty of $5,000 for failure to produce duplicate consular bills of health is concededly excessive. Congress, to be sure, has already provided a remedy for injustice by empowering the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to mitigate or remit these penalties, but a more equitable adjustment of punishment for violations of the statutes is deemed desirable. The report of the Commissioner of Navigation gives details of fines, penalties, and forfeitures considered by the Department during the past fiscal year.

The annual message of the President transmitted to Congress on December 7, 1903, recommended the establishment of a Commission, comprising the Secretary of the Navy, the Postmaster-General, and the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, associated with a proper representation from the Senate and the House of Representatives, to investigate and report upon the legislative needs of the American merchant marine. Congress, however, deemed it wise to omit the three executive officers from the Commission, and the bill reported by the Commission and subsequently by the appropriate committees of Congress was not referred to this Department. The Department stands ready, however, to furnish all the information at its command. The report of the Commissioner of Navigation necessarily contains, as usual, information bearing upon some phases of the subject. Pursuant to statute, it also contains recommendations for changes in the laws relative to navigation, to which attention is invited.

BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION.

The number of aliens who applied for admission during the year1,026,499-is in excess by 237,507 of the number reported for 1882, the arrivals during which year were in excess of those during any year prior to 1903, and 213,629 in excess of the arrivals in 1904. With respect to the sources from which these immigrants are derived, it is interesting to note that, compared with the corresponding figures for the last year, the quota from Russia increased by 39,756; from Italy 28,183, and from the United Kingdom 49,544. This and much other information of practical value upon the subject of alien immigration is shown in the annual report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, to which attention is directed.

The important feature is that more than a million aliens have been added to our population in the course of twelve months, a fact that suggests the necessity of considering whether some adequate measure should not be adopted so to limit the number of arrivals as to lessen the obvious dangers from our alien population increasing more rapidly than it can be assimilated. Various suggestions have been made with this end in view, but there is none which promises so effectively to control the actual number of arrivals as the suggestion of the Commissioner-General that the number brought on any vessel should be limited so as to bear a fixed ratio to the tonnage of such vessel. Such a plan would furthermore have the additional advantage that it would remove the temptation to bring aliens of whose admissibility there could be any question, as well as avoid the unsanitary conditions resulting from overcrowding in the steerage.

Of the total arrivals, it is shown that 175,624 had resided in the United States before, thus indicating a net increase in our population of about $50,000, a number which is further reduced by the 11,480 persons rejected during the year. These figures, however, are not entirely reliable, because the only information as to the former residence of aliens in this country is that given by the aliens themselves. The actual annual increase from immigration is a matter of such importance as to justify legislation requiring the transportation lines to furnish complete manifests of aliens departing from the United States on their vessels.

Those denied admission, 11,480, represent only about 1 per cent of the total. That they do not represent all, however, who should be refused admission is clear from the fact that many of those admitted in previous years have become public charges or have been found to be here in violation of law after admission. Of such, 845 were discovered during the year, and after a hearing as to their right to be in the United States were deported. Many are not discovered, and many who are not within the excluding provisions of the law are neverthe

less a detriment to the United States. Among these may be reckoned the large number of children, whose parents have been left behind, who seek admission, professedly to go to school.

These children are in many instances, it has been learned, brought here under the padrone system to be used as bootblacks and in other capacities for the profit of those who deal in child labor. In view of this condition, it is urged that there be added to the classes of aliens now excluded from admission to the United States all children under 17 years of age unaccompanied by their parents, unless coming to join parents already resident in this country who are able to support them. I desire also to urge upon Congress, as recommended by the Commissioner-General, the necessity of locating at foreign ports of embarkation, medical and immigrant inspectors as a means of preventing the departure for the United States of those who are excluded by law. Such an arrangement promises a more effective enforcement of the law, since it establishes officers of this Government nearer to the sources of information, by which means diseased or mentally unsound aliens, and those who have been convicted of some moral offense, will be prevented from embarking for this country upon the chance of eluding the vigilance of inspection officers at our ports.

With respect to the present provision of law in regard to the aliens upon whose account the head tax is collectible, it is important that the law which existed from 1882 to 1903 be restored by repealing that provision in the last immigration act which exempted the transportation lines from the payment of head tax on aliens in transit. The effort to administer this feature of the law and at the same time prevent its evasion upon the pretense that aliens really intend to pass through the United States has been productive of much embarrassment, and is obviously of no benefit to the alien so exempted. Such transits during the year under consideration reached a total of 33,256, or 5,412 more than the preceding year.

There should also be an amendment placing aliens who have resided in foreign contiguous territory for more than one year upon the same footing as the citizens of such territory in regard to the payment of head tax, such residence being within the reason which it is understood occasioned the exemption of citizens, namely to avoid a restriction of intercourse with neighboring nations.

In addition to the foregoing changes in regard to the payment of the head tax, it is recommended that diplomatic officers of foreign countries coming to the United States across our land boundaries should not be subject to the collection of the head tax.

CHINESE EXCLUSION.

Of the exempt classes of Chinese applying for admission for the first time, 800 out of 1,084 were admitted and 284 deported during the

year; while of 618 applying for readmission as domiciled merchants, 548 were allowed to land and 70 were deported. During the same period all but 57 of 680 returning laborers were allowed to enter. There were also allowed to enter the United States during the year 634 Chinese persons who were found to be citizens of this country, having been born here. Thus the number of Chinese persons who entered the United States for the first time during the past year was 800. The total number of Chinese admitted to the United States during the past year was 2,605.

The agitation of the subject of Chinese exclusion during the past year suggests the necessity of a critical consideration of our laws. We can not expect to establish close commercial relations with a country against whose people alone we have an exclusion law, unless that law is so framed as to do no more than is necessary for the protection of the United States. It is assumed that the exclusion of those Chinese persons whose coming both China and the United States avowedly desire to prevent is a settled policy, but such policy should be so enforced as to endanger neither the commercial intercourse of the two countries nor the reputation of this Government for acting justly and in good faith.

China offers a fertile field for American products and American manufactures, but if the price to be paid for trade with China is the unrestricted immigration of Chinese of all classes, then, in the interest of American labor and American citizenship, we had better forego entirely that trade. I believe that there are amendments which can and properly should be made in the present laws-amendments which will in no wise weaken them, but will remove the injustice and hardship, apparent or actual, incident to their administration. One of the chief sources of such injustice has been the rejection, after arrival at our ports, of those Chinese persons possessed of certification of their right to enter, both from their own and our Government.

The denials were necessarily made because these persons, according to their own statements, had imposed upon the two Governments and secured certificates by misrepresentation. None the less it was a hardship, after so much expenditure and such a long journey, to be returned. To obviate this difficulty I have to urge, as has been recommended by the Commissioner-General also, that suitable provision be made for the issuance of certificates to persons of the exempt classes in China by agents of the Department of Commerce and Labor, and that the action of these agents be based solely upon the permission of the Chinese Government to each member of an exempt class desiring to go to the United States, leaving the agents to ascertain whether the person thus permitted is entitled to come to this country. Every Chinese person furnished with a certificate in the manner described above should be