NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS, REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, PRESENTED AT THE TWENTY-SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING, NEW YORK, MAY, 1921.

To the board of directors and members, National Association of Manufacturers: Your committee on immigration has endeavored to familiarize itself with the literature of its problem. Its members have each had first-hand contact with its economic and political circumstances. They have participated in assemblies, conventions, and conferences in which this vital question was considered from every viewpoint. They have, with the assistance of counsel, studied the existing regulations and the various forms of proposed legislation. We recognize our Nation to be composed of immigrants and the descendents of immigrants. We know the debt of the Republic to the contributions of many lands. We take pride in the refuge which America has provided for the politically oppressed. We are deeply sensible of the economic debt our people owe to the immigrant for his sturdy contribution to every phase of our development and our continuing dependence upon his service to maintain many forms of industry and develop many of our essential resources. But we realize also the perils of immigration, particularly in the present period of political disturbance and economic readjustment. The dangers to which any nation exposes itself by the admission of an alien population are magnified by the conditions of the hour. Against these our system of regulation is presumed to protect us, but neither its history nor experience under its administration justifies a belief that it adequately protects the national interest, fairly tests the admissibility of the immigrant, deals intelligently or sympathetically with his just concerns, informs or stimulates him toward economic or political assimilation, scientifically studies him for his own good or that of his country, and, either finding him fit, stimulates him toward citizenship, or, finding him unfit, rejects him as a social or political menace.

Your committee is of the opinion that there is pressing necessity for the stimulation of a constructive immigration program in which the general interest of the American people is the primary consideration. Such a proposal must not be dominated by the needs and desires, the prejudice or selfishness of any interest, group, or class. It must not present the wishes of merely the manufacturer, the agriculturist, the contractor or the engineer in terms of their needs as employers, nor should it express the prejudice of labor organizations, frightened by temporary unemployment or antagonistic to potential competitors. Neither is it to be fashioned to meet the wishes and desires of the prospective immigrant nor his sympathetic racial groups in this country. The numbers, character, control, and distribution of immigration must be determined by the needs and interest of America first.

We believe our immigration policy should therefore be one of selection and not prohibition. We should establish a high but intelligently discriminating and practical standard of admission, plainly distinguished, however, for obvious reasons, from requirements for naturalization. All tests of admissibility should be applied as far as practicable at points of embarkation. Existing technical regulation should be simplified and an intelligently humane administration of authority assured. An adequate racial inventory and analysis is essential to the scientific appraisement of the value and assimilability of our alien contributions. Private and public agencies should systematically cooperate to secure efficient distribution, economic assimilation, and political digestion of the new arrival. Exclusive Federal regulation and control of all antecedent conditions of naturalization is essential in the interest of both the Nation and the candidate for citizenship.

The administration of immigration is its most vital feature. It is too important to remain the bureau work of a department and should be lodged in a Federal board, including the Cabinet members representing the chief fields of economic interest, with a leaven of experienced and highly qualified lay membership, lessening the influence of partisan politics and tending toward a continuity of policy. Such a board should possess adequate authority and sufficient flexibility to meet the changing conditions with which it is likely to be confronted, but otherwise under standards established by Congress to control and direct admission, distribution, assimilation, naturalization, or deportation, possessing at all times the right to require such registration and reports during the period of alienage as may be necessary to locate and identify every unnaturalized person.

Your committee believes that both in itself and in the light of experience the literacy test is not of the slightest practical value. It is obviously not a standard of mental, moral, or physical worth. It can be met by every intellectual adventurer, it obviously bars many qualified by character, energy, and physical capacity, and in the present geographic and social reorganization of Europe its practical value becomes constantly less.

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Of the measures in the Sixty-sixth Congress, the Johnson bill (H. R. 14661 p the House, was reported to the Senate in an entirely new form, and accepted by t House as a substitute. It is true that it is merely temporary, but it is not a toward a more constructive proposal since it establishes an accidental standard u selective admission-the relation between racial groups here and the percenta to be admitted without reference to the quality of the immigration or any provin for scientific inquiry into it. The Sterling bill (S. 4594) and the Welty bill (H. R.14 A 66th Cong.) are constructive proposals, each of which represents an effort to form a complete program. Each of these presents a superior constructive plan in re admissibility to determined assimilability.

To summarize, your committee believes that certain substantial features should comprehended in any final plan. These, epitomized, in our opinion, should be 1. The recognition of the principle, so comprehensively stated by James Matsu in his report to the first Congress, that we should "welcome every person of good inthat really meant to incorporate himself into our society," but to repel all who wi not be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States."

2. We should recognize our economic debt as a Nation to past immigration and our economic need for its selective continuance. This under normal conditions alone insures the necessary development of our natural resources and the performnace of our rough labor in mining, road building, and general construction. It is also ou sa tribution to the relief of overcrowded European states to the extent that we may accept of their socially and politically desirable surplus. We are underboned underconstructed, and underdeveloped. Far from being overcrowded. Texas Litt could contain the present population of France and Germany with a smaller percent of population per square mile than is possessed by Italy. A national policy of immo tion prohibition would be morally, politically, and economically wrong and ultimate react to our national injury.

3. So far as is physically and politically practicable the admissibility of the mo migrant should be determined at the port of embarkation. All necessary inform I respecting his character, trade, physical and economic condition, and other qualify circumstances can be ascertained best in cooperation with the country from which ha comes, through its accessible records. It rationally protects our own interest at TOH source, of most reliable information and safeguards the immigrant against exploitanu ultimate disappointment to himself and family, and the waste of time and expenditure attendant upon his rejection at our ports of entry.

4. The United States should assert, and effectuate through its own law and 1 treaties as are necessary, the determination to fix the number and character of ann! admissible aliens in terms of race, trade, and character, control their distribusine location, identity, and registration during alienage, recognizing a distinction between those seeking permanent residence and citizenship and those seeking temporary occupation with the purpose of returning to their own country.

5. Requirements for admission should be clearly distinguished from those fr naturalization. The first permits entrance to our household: the latter election our political family. The first should test the physical, moral, and political qualify tion of the applicant, rejecting the diseased, the criminal, the nonproductive, izt enemies of social order, or those who would change our own form of government by force. Naturalization should require a knowledge of our language, assurance progress in economic and political assimilation, and an evidence of understandar and attachment to our institutions of government. Under varying State laws thor demonstrably qualified for citizenship may, through changes of residence due t economic necessity, have naturalization unfairly delayed. It should therefore be controlled through exclusive Federal regulation and the reception of citizens invested with the appropriate ceremonial calculated to impress the recipient with t dignity and worth of his privilege. The value of citizenship must be expressed b those who bestow it.

6. The administration of the immigration policy of the Republic should be lodge in a commission composed of the Secretaries of Agriculture. of Commerce, and of Labor representing the departments chiedy interested in and charged with the problem. and obligated to compile, analyze, and distribute the information which, if coordinated would be reciprocally useful to the immigrant and the communities and industries which most desire his presence. Such a board should be reenforced by the adding of highly qualified persons of demonstrated capacity and experience for the tast Such an organization would tend to lessen the influence of partisan politics, although operated under the direct responsibility of the Chief Executive. Such a board she be empowered to ascertain from all sources the nature and extent of our national immigration requirements from appropriate officials in the various States in cooperant with private sources of information. It should be authorized to fix, if necessary, the

numbers that may be annually admitted in terms of race, occupation, or other essentially demonstrated qualifications, their distribution and location, and, when necessary, secure deportation of demonstrated undesirables under just and expeditious procedure. It should be authorized to cooperate with private and public authority for the economic and political assimilation of the immigrant, the protection of his savings, the regulation of his registration, and sympathetically aid in supplying accurate, timely, and helpful information.

Practical and progressive assimilation is securable only through cooperation of all who sustain permanent relationship with the alien and by whom his judgment of American thought, life, and law is fashioned. Courts can make citizens but only the influence of those with whom they live transforms them into Americans.

Your committee has dealt with essentials, recognizing that detail is neither pertinent nor desirable.

Respectfully submitted.

Mr. RAKER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that according to a newspaper statement I have seen there are 2,500,000 skilled and unskilled laborers out of employment in England.

I would like to have the privilege of inserting in the record a statement regarding the proposed amendment by the Immigration Restriction League of New York. (Said statement follows:)

'Resolved, That the Immigration Restriction League favors the enactment by Congress of an amendment to the immigration laws effecting a reduction in the immigration from southern and eastern Europe, which in the last fiscal year constituted 61 per cent of the total immigration under the per cent limit act of May 1, 1921, and amounted in actual numbers to 150,774, as compared with 91,862 from northern and western Europe. The league believes that the reduction referred to could best be accomplished by an amendment to the per cent limit act providing that the quotas should be based on an earlier census than that of 1910, preferably on the census of 1890, and by fixing the percentage so that the total immigration from Europe permitted per annum should not exceed the total permitted at present."

The foregoing resolution was unanimously adopted at a meeting of the Immigration Restriction League (Inc.), held on December 22, 1922.

A. R. WEBSTER, Secretary.

The CHAIRMAN. Several persons who are unable to appear before the committee have asked permission to file statements. One request comes from Mr. John Franklin Crowell, of 30 Church Street, New York.

(The statement referred to follows:)

STATEMENT RELATING TO RELIEF OF LABOR SHORTAGE BY LARGER QUOTA OF IMMIGRANT

Hon. ALBERT JOHNSON,

ADMISSIONS.

NEW YORK, December 30, 1922.

Chairman House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization,

Washington, D. C.:

In keeping with your suggestion that I send a written statement, if not able to be present at the hearings on this subject January 3 and 4, I take the liberty of submitting the following:

1. I do not believe that it were at all advisable at this time to materially increase the admissions of immigrants to the United States, either under the existing pressure for more labor in the domestic industries or because of any favoring influence from foreign sources, except under such conditions of distribution among the industries suffering from labor shortage as would be practically out of the question under our domestic methods of control of person and place.

2. Our domestic labor problem is in no small part one of a more equable distribution, and it would be far wiser to devote some time and effort to the study of the conditions, principles, and possibilities of a more even distribution of labor power among the needing industries than to inject a larger quota of foreign labor in a purely haphazard fashion into the industrial population, leaving each one to find his own place. It may be wise later to add a larger quota yearly, but under the conditions now pre

vailing, it is doubtful whether it would solve the labor shortage problem; and it is certain that it would complicate still further the task of absorbing into our American civilization those who are here presumably to stay. As between the interest of the body politic and the special industries, the good of the former must be allowed to prevail, especially so as long as there are other remedies within reach for the alleged short age of labor in industries.

3. It would seem to me that a thorough inquiry into the alleged labor shortage situation could be undertaken in such a way as to cover the following essential points vital to the understanding of the needs of industry:

(a) Has the full measure of unemployment of something between 3,500,000 and 5,000,000 of a little over a year ago been actually removed from the labor situation, and if so has the adjustment by which this disposal was effected been of a temporary or of a permanent character, and in what proportions? If of a temporary character to any large extent, is there not likely to be a general shifting back from the temporary placings of labor into the occupations where their earning power will be more nearly their maximum as soon as conditions in their normal lines of employment justify? Has, for instance, there not been a large reutrn to farms and other extractive industries for seasonal or temporary employment, which will as the demands of transportation, trade, and industry advance, be drawn away thither?

(b) To what extent has the rise in costs of travel and of transportation of household effects reduced the mobility of labor supply from market to market, thus preventing workmen from responding to demands more or less distant from home? The conditions in the real estate market whereby workmen were obliged to purchase homes, rather than to rent as formerly, have they affected seriously the inability or indisposi tion of the laborer by deterring him from seeking the job and then moving his family to it?

4. If it should be found that the labor situation is marked by shortage either from shortage of supply or by conspiring control in monopolistic efforts amounting to restraint of industry and trade, then there are remedies within reach that might be applied to correct the maladjustment of supply and demand. One of these remedies is prosecution in the courts. Another of these remedies is to be found in the study of the possibilities of labor conservation by the introduction of mechanical appliances, thus releasing an appreciable quantity wherever practicable for much needed employment where no such solution can readily be found. Another remedy for shortage maintained by monopolistic organizations is to have the industries themselves and the educational institutions unite, or to work separately, at the training of youth for trades in which by intensive training the mechanical trades can be learned in half the time ordinarily taken under union apprenticeship rules. This has proven an advantageous method of relief on the Pacific coast, where the employers have taken the matter into hand. If organized labor persists in maintaining a monopolistic attitude permanently toward the problem of costs in such occupations as our building trades and others, in due time it will reap the penalty of its shortsightedness, because no private monopoly can live permanently in the free American atmosphere, and any such a false position persisted in is simply the same as a man sawing off the limb on which he has climbed to.

Give the monopolizers of labor all the time necessary to set their house in order; but if they will not heed the warnings of nature and history, then let in the horde of helpers as a means of preventing the arrest of American development. By that time the Nation can take care of a few millions more without any greater moral hazards than to submit the country to the dictation of a domineering unionism, which utilizes the liberty of association for a tyranny by a minority. As matters stand now, in not a few trades it is violence that rules the lives of the community, not law or liberty. As a Nation we can not afford to restrict immigration permanently at such a fatal price.

5. Is it for the permanent good of the country to confine and restrict the foreign accessions of man power to as small a proportion as one-half of 1 per cent of the entire population? If not, then how long will or should it take before the national process of alien assimilation will have gone so far as to justify the raising of the gates for larger accessions? If it be a question of having the machinery and the methods for assimilation to citizenship, that is, of the rate of absorption, had we not better so enlarge our assimilating machinery and our agencies of educative capacity as to admit such a quota of man power month by month, year by year, as will effectively enable us to man our farms, our mines, our manufacturing plants, our transportation agencies, and our public utilities so as to meet the gradually expanding demands on them of a colossal domestic commerce and an enormous foreign trade?

In this connection it is futile to try to put the American industrial situation back into the pre-war shell from which it was hatched nearly 10 years ago. As a Nation we have expanded enormously in every essential respect, and it behooves the employers

and the employees to take due regard of these facts, because the great, long-suffering, consuming public is, in the last resort, the court of final judgment in these matters. In deciding the question of an immigration policy, more for the future than for the immediate present desirable restrictive system, remember

(a) That our domestic commerce which has a value larger than the entire international trade of the world is already undermanned, under equipped with facilities and terminals, and under capitalized because of a doubtful and hesitating policy in which management and men are playing off their differences to the detriment of the public interest.

(b) That the larger part of the available surplus capital for the development of the foreign world, so far as international marketing of funds is concerned, is going from the United States, not from London nor from the Continent of Europe. And this will probably continue.

(c) That the demands of the world market on the suplus capital funds of America are such as to oblige us for our domestic development to compete dollar for dollar with every other and all other countries where they are ready to pay twice or three times the interest we are willing to allow our railroads and our public utilities to earn in peace. (d) That this distribution of investment capital all over the globe will tend to have the effect of employing millions of labor once available for the pushing of our domestic progress along the path of expansion in economic power; but which, when employed in other lands, tends more and more to make them competitors of our farms, our mines, our forests, our mills. This will be the battle between the American and the foreign standards of living, and its tendency will be, if our labor costs and our capital costs are too high, to make it ever more difficult to compete for our position in the foreign markets of the world.

6. Finally, it is respectfully submitted that some serious thought be given to the advisability and the practicability of a policy of selective immigration; selective both with regard to the quantity needed for seasonal demands of our industries and agriculture by the admission of as many as may be wanted to save and market the crops; and as to quality of admissions, to select any one grade of talent in industry, in commerce, and in finance, that may be necessary, instead of the arbitrary system now in vogue of making it illegal to bring a teacher of youth from foreign lands, however beneficial would be the bargain to us. Such a policy would injure no one. It would enable us to profit by enjoying the pick of the earth. It would be consistent with both our traditions and our ideals, of affording an opportunity to the aspiring of all lands in the future as in the past to cast in their lot with America. provided America needs them.

At best we must admit that the policy of percentage restrictions on the basis now in effect is more to get a breathing spell and keep undesirables out than a finality in our relations with the outside world. Until the world knows the mind of Russia to have changed we can not recede from a hard-and-fast system of exclusion. But ultimately, possibly before we are many years older, the present-day negative policy must give place to one more positively in keeping with the genius of America for keeping open house with the other members of the family of nations. But we shall have rules for admission. We should begin now to think them out. to anticipate the real and permanent needs of the Nation, confident that there is no national problem which can not be solved and solved rightly and to the advantage of all, if we but tackle it in time. intelligently stick to it, and resolutely insist that nothing but a commonsense solution shall be accepted.

JOHN FRANKLIN CROWELL.

The CHAIRMAN. I have asked Capt. John B. Trevor, of New York, for permission to publish a statement prepared by him, which, if there is no objection, will be incorporated in the record at this point.

(The statement referred to follows:)

MIGRATION AND ITS RELATION TO THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE UNITED

STATES.

In view of the complexity of the subject of this paper, it seems advisable to say, by way of introduction, a few words in regard to the scheme of its construction and scope. It is impossible to separate the American immigration question from the basic principles which in the past and present impel men to leave their homes, often their families, and start life anew in another environment, hence I have commenced with a brief historical comment on migration and its relation to the world's economic situation to-day.

Next, I have compared in some detail the conditions in certain European countries over a period in which they passed from self-supporting entities, at least to a great