Mr. KOHLER. They are down and out now; yes. But I will say this much, in a Chinese exclusion law case, where I made an argument in the case, and the Attorney General delivered in his brief one of his stump speeches on the Chinese, going outside of the record, I took the liberty of meeting his challenge, and spread some of this in my brief in the Supreme Court of the United States, and I challenged him, if he dared, to correct me from the Treasury records resulting in dismissals on charges, and he remained silent.

Mr. RAKER. You were both dehors the record.

Mr. KOHLER. We were both dehors the record, but the attitude of the Government has been that, and I have seen both sides of the question, and I believe there was a great deal of corruption in regard to the Chinese-exclusion cases on the part of Government officials themselves.

Mr. RAKER. While we are closing, I will just ask you this question: While we were making our examination of gentlemen from New York a few hours ago, Mr. Rosenberg and others claimed the Jewish people have practically all their people registered in the United States with cards. Is that true?

Mr. KOHLER. I think that is a wild assumption. As I stated then, I do not think we have any figures whatever to justify that conclusion, and on the practical side I think you will have to conclude, as I did, Mr. Raker, that Mr. Rosenberg's fund won't last very long, if anyone who comes there is going to get $50 benefit, is it?

The CHAIRMAN. $17 a week.

Mr. KOHLER. Whatever it is-they are well meaning, but those are not practical suggestions. I know, on the one hand, that practically every person in Poland, as I have said before, used to be called anyhow a potential emigrant to the United States. but we have been working right out there to try to better the conditions for them and to keep them there, and I do not think you have any figures at all on which you can base the number of persons who might be affected, excepting the figures gathered by the Government Immigration Commission of 1911, which astounded me by their size as to the number of persons in the United States with their wives still living abroad. There are comparatively few figures to base any conclusion on, chiefly those collected by the Immigration Commission.

With respect to estimating the number of married foreign-born husbands residing in the United States whose wives are abroad, the United States Immigration Commission estimated in 1910 that these averaged 22.7 per cent of the married foreign-born males here altogether; in the case of the Greeks, 74.7 per cent; of the Russian Hebrews, 12.5 per cent; in the south Italians, 36.9 per cent; of the Magyars. 43.3 per cent; and of the Poles, 23 per cent. (See Immigration Commission Reports, Vol. I, pp. 459-460.) This is based on reports concerning immigrants in manufacturing and mining, covering, in all, only 145,354 persons consulted. As these are average figures, these percentages should be applied to about 3,254,903 alien foreign-born white males of voting age in the United States, according to the census of 1920, deducting something for those unmarried. I estimated on behalf of the board of delegates of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations last September that hundreds of thousands of wives of still unnaturalized males residing in the United States still lived abroad. While, on the one hand, relatively fewer males came over here since 1914, on the other hand, the normal flow of wives and children wanting to join husbands and fathers here has been abnormally low since 1914, first, because of war conditions, and, laterally, because of the visé and quota law restrictions, which still continue, and this is particularly true of countries from which emigration has practically been wholly at a standstill since 1914, such as the Russian Jews.

In connection with the pending suggestion to exempt Armenian religious and political refugees, why not also the still worse afflicted Greek-Turkish exiles, for example? You may be interested in two papers of mine, one entitled "The Immigration Problem and the Right of Asylum for the Persecuted" (1913), which was reprinted in your committee's hearings of the Sixty-third Congress, second session. Part II, pages 199-210 (December, 1913), and the other entitled Right of Asylum, With Particular Reference to the Alien," in American Law Review, May-June, 1917, pages 381 et seq. The former deals particularly with the right of asylum for the persecuted in English and American legislation and the uselessness of the restricted language of the exemption on the subject later adopted in our literacy test act of 1917.

Mr. Box. You spoke about fraud in the administration of the Chinese exclusion laws. I presume that issue is pertinent in your mind?

Mr. KOHLER. Yes.

Mr. Box. I do not want to involve anybody employed by any administration; I have no partisan question in mind, but I want to know, if you think there is anything in the service, or that has been in the service during the last dozen years, that would justify any man, alien or citizen, in believing that, as a general system or to any serious extent, fraud is prevalent in the service? Mr. KOHLER. You have used the word "prevalent."

Mr. Box. Prevalent to a substantial extent.

Mr. KOHLER. There used to be a lot, and I fear there still is. For instance, are you familiar with the Pierce investigation commission of the State Department, some years ago?

Mr. Box. No, sir.

Mr. KOHLER. Mr. Pierce, as I recall it, was Assistant Secretary of State. They sent him abroad to examine the consular officers in China, where passports were supposed to be viséed, and they found a whole slew of United States consuls and deputy consuls who were corrupt and whom they removed on account of that.

Mr. RAKER. Those were abroad?

Mr. KOHLER. They were abroad, and that is the difficulty with almost any effort to examine people abroad, much as I am in sympathy with it, because ! here you can watch the fellows and there you can not, nor can you satisfactorily review their rulings on appeal.

(Mr. Kohler was given permission to file a supplemental statement, which follows; after which the committee adjourned.)

As to charges of misconduct against Chinese exclusion law officials, note the partial list of criminal prosecutions, in Mrs. Coolidge's very able book on "Chinese Immigration" (1909) (p. 315; compare p. 308), prepared with the assistance of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The Pierce State commission report I have already referred to. In almost every city in this country having substantial Chinese residents wholesale raids were attempted at one time or another, in which every Chinaman without a registration or other certificate was arbitrarily arrested, though an enormous percentage of Chinese residents (merchants, teachers, students, United States citizens, etc.) are here lawfully without certificates, and though the Government itself for years, under general regulations of the Secretary, illegally impounded section 6 certificates of privileged persons, which the statute provided they might retain for their protection. (Toy Tong v. United States, 146, F. R. 343, at 350 C. C. A.) (See further as to this, Mrs. Coolidge's book, pages 323 et seq., and the official protests of the former Chinese ministers to the United States.) I was counsel in a group of New York Chinese deportation cases before United States Commissioner Hitchcock in New York in 1902, where the defendants were all designated merely as "John Doe No. 1," No. 2, etc., but all described as "identifiable by the complaining Chinese inspector." I cross-examined the inspector at the start, and, to the amazement of commissioner and United States attorney, brought out the fact that he had no particular persons in mind when he swore out these warrants, alleging illegal presence of the defendants in the United States, and hadn't investigated any of the cases, but had assured commissioner and United States attorney directly to the contrary beforehand, as blanket warrants are illegal. My motion to dismiss all the complaints on this preliminary objection, as secured by a gross fraud on the court and misrepresentation, was granted. Later I ascertained from high Government officials that the inspector in charge at the time had offered the United States marshal extra compensation out of his own pocket if he would blindly follow his directions in making the arrests, so great was his personal, secret interest. Not a single one of the defendants was even rearrested.

Almost simultaneously a batch of arrests were made by the same inspectors in Brooklyn, and Black, Olcott, Gruber & Bonynge (ex-Governor Black's and ex-District Attorney Olcott's firm) secured affidavits showing that simultaneously a Chinese Government interpreter of these inspectors advised all the Chinese in the vicinity, to avoid trouble, to buy bogus certificates from him. Upon this evidence the inspector in charge was removed by the Treasury Department, and his junior sent off to an unimportant district in the interior, but reasons of supposed "public policy" prevented their prosecution. This batch included the cases decided in 193 U. S. 65 and 517, in which I specified

the facts in my brief. Soon after similar wholesale raids of substantially all Boston's Chinese residents took place, and they were crowded together into a new "Black Hole of Calcutta" under circumstances graphically described by ex-Secretary of State Foster in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1906. There defendant's counsel were not permitted to go into the irregularities underlying the warrants, and every case had to be tried on its merits, at heavy expense to the defendants. I read a year or two ago, however, that the Chinese inspector responsible for these arrests was at last removed for misconduct. Again and again Chinese inspectors have pretended to be smugglers, brought Chinese persons over the border to friends they inveigled into receiving them, and then arrested the friends and the men they had themselves smuggled over the border. Also note Chief Justice Taft's views, quoted in the -appendix in my article on "Un-American Character of Race Legislation,” near the end.

When I was in office a Chinese inspector would arrest sometimes 50 Chinamen at a time coming down on the New York Central from the Canadian border station, Malone, and claimed his associates up there used to admit them irregularly; he said he wanted to investigate each case carefully himself, after the arrest, before any trial, and ultimately requested the discharge of nearly all the defendants, which was granted. After I was out of office. reputable Chinese persons told me that his interpreter collected so much per head for nearly every man thus discharged. In fact, at the time of registratration in 1894, the Government officers reported in writing to their chief that substantially all the Chinese in the United States had registered, but prosecutions have continued merrily ever since, at least till Secretary Straus's day and the Chinese boycott in reprisal, ensued, and the burden of proof was on the defendants, to prove almost impossible matters, often solely by white witnesses, and the courts held that on other points they need not credit the evidence of the Chinese defendants, for instance, that they were sick at the time of registration. In one of these cases a reputable merchant in New York incidentally was deprived of hundreds of dollars in his store. These are only samples and involved some of the possible 100,000 Chinese residents of the country, while there are 7,000.000 aliens here that can be similarly treated under the proposed laws.

66

I find that my collection of citations of references under the alien and sedition laws was contained chiefly in another paper of mine, than that in the appendix, entitled "The Right of Asylum, with Particular Reference to the Alien," in the May-June, 1911, issue of the American Law Review, page 403. They include Elliott's Debates (vol. 4, pp. 528–554); F. M. Anderson's papers, Contemporary Opinion on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions" (in Am. Hist. Review, vol. 5, pp. 45 et seq., 225 et seq.), and his paper, "Enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Laws (American Historical Association Reports for 1912; Ford's Jefferson's Writings, VII, 245 et seq., particularly p. 291, note, and Hunt's Madison's Writings, VI, 320 et seq.), Professor McMaster's able paper, "The Riotous Career of the Know Nothings," is to be found in his book, "With the Fathers." I have already stated that the alien act of 1798 (June 18, 1798, printed in Laws of United States, from 1789 to 1815, Vol. III, pp. 62-64), and of June 25, 1798 (Idem, pp. 66-68), required all aliens to register. They did this, but the penalty for failure was only $2; but imprisonment in default of bonding was also authorized; and, in addition, masters of ships were required to report particulars about all aliens brought over by them; but, in addition, the President was empowered to order deported arbitrarily any alien he might deem dangerous, and also to have them imprisoned by his warrant meantime. All this is in addition to the act of that year regarding alien enemies, approved July 6, 1798 (Idem., pp. 74-75).

Moreover, if you start in with registration of aliens, it will be only an opening wedge, as President Arthur predicted in 1882, as to the Chinese exclusion law machinery. Under plea of making the law more "effective" and stopping alleged "alien's frauds," a mild law will become a harsh and oppressive one very soon.

Moreover, it seems absurb to have the Labor Department, charged with deportation of aliens, suddenly become our agency for educating and Americanizing the aliens, instead of the United States Commissioner of Education being vested with authority to supervise local State educational agencies, as in the Kenyon bill, which passed the Senate a few years ago. The inadequacy and impropriety of having Americanization work done by the Labor Department was very re

66

cently well emphasized by able and disinterested specialists in two books in the important Americanization Series," prepared for the Carnegie Corporation of New York, entitled, Schooling of the Immigrant," edited by F. V. Thompson and "Americans by Choice," by John P. Gavit.

66

Such men as ex-President Roosevelt, John G. Brooks, Dr. Talcott Williams, and Raymond B. Fosdick were on the committee in charge of the preparation of this series. If any registration should take place for educational purposes, the registration certificates should go only to the United States Commissioner of Education, or the various State educational agencies, and there should be no substantial penalty whatever.

But somebody has misled the President, by giving him erroneous and misleading statistics as to the illiteracy here and abroad, in his annual message. His figures startled me, and I looked into them. He refers to "illiteracy estimated at from two-tenths of 1 per cent to less than 2 per cent in 10 of the foremost nations of Europe "in contrast to a "6 per cent illiteracy in the United States." These European statistics are taken, directly or indirectly, from the source employed by the World Almanac of 1922 (p. 724). The low European percentages he named relate to specially selected persons, nearly all males, from marriage records and generally the Army recruiting figures of 1914, and males show a much higher literacy than females, and approximately of age, and at a time when pretty high standards of recruiting still prevailed in those countries. Much higher illiteracy than ours, when figured like ours on the basis of illiteracy of children over 11 years old, prevail in Europe generally, and particularly in such highly civilized countries as France, Belgium, and Austria. On the other hand, his American illiteracy figures (World Almanac, p. 721) embraces all persons over 10 years old, and exists chiefly in the Southern States, the negro illiteracy exceeding the foreign-born totals.

Of course, substantially all the negro illiterates are native-born United States citizens, and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Naturalization in the Labor Department for educational purposes, as distinguished from the United States Commissioner of Education and the local State educational authorities.

I conclude by reiterating that, however, unintended, you are proposing a registration of alien machinery on the pattern of our Chinese exclusive laws, which will challenge the rights of millions of inoffensive alien residents, cause them to be viewed with suspicion, dislike, and hatred, and in fact, do them no good, but only harm, and expose them to deportation, and boundless extortion, blackmail, and other injuries. Let us rather remember President Roosevelt's noble words, expressed in his message of 1906: "Not only must we treat all nations fairly, but we must treat with justice and good will all immigrants who come over here under the law. Whether they are Catholics or Protestants, Jews or Gentile, whether they come from England or Germany, Russia, Japan, or Italy, matters nothing."

COMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Monday, January 22, 1923.

The committee this day met, Hon. Albert Johnson (chairman) presiding. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order. Mr. Wallace, representing the American Federation of Labor, desires to be heard. It was impossible to find time to hear him any day last week.

I believe Judge Box had some statement that he desired to insert in the record. Mr. Box. I have not yet prepared it but I can prepare it and get it into the record. It is in connection with foreign inspection, you remember, which is a matter that has developed before the committee from time to time. I want to put it in the record for the benefit of the public and the House.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee, I believe, asked Judge Box to look into certain phases of immigration, as indicated by him in his statement just now, and without objection he will have authority to insert it in the record. It might be well to have the insertion made at the conclusion of Mr. Wallace's statement. Mr. J. H. Patten also expressed a desire to be heard for the presentation of certain statements regarding the continued restriction of immigration, and unless there is objection he will have authority to place his matter in the record following Mr. Wallace's testimony.

The National Contractors' Association also expressed a desire to be heard, but I received a letter from them two or three days ago in which they expressed the belief that the time is now so short until the final adjournment of the Sixtyseventh Congress that they will not care to be heard on any of the measures now pending, so that after having heard Mr. Wallace these hearings will be closed as quickly as possible.

STATEMENT OF MR. EDGAR WALLACE, LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wallace, you have been present more or less during the hearings that have been running for the last 10 or 15 days, the basic matter being the appearance of witnesses who appealed for a relaxation of the present restrictive immigration legislation in order that labor might be admitted to the country. There has also been an appeal for the relaxation of these laws in order that refugees might be admitted from certain restricted countries, and also numerous appeals to the committee for the relaxation of that legislation so that relatives of aliens now in the country and naturalized aliens now in the country might be admitted. I presume you prefer to discuss the labor phases of it.

Mr. WALLACE. I believe that every phase you have mentioned relates to labor in some respect. We have seen gentlemen come here openly representing their own interests, men who want different labor and cheaper labor than they now employ in the United States. We have seen others come here with the best motives, men and women with the best motives and apparently on a humanitarian mission, but always behind those good people we can see the urging of the men who want their own selfish interests supplied, men who want cheap labor.

Gentlemen have appeared before this committee representing the manufacturers and merchant tailors; some pretending to represent the farmers, tinplate workers, and steel operators.

M. Box. As well as the coal and copper interests.

Mr. WALLACE. Yes. I remember the copper interests being represented, but I do not think anyone mentioned coal. However, I have no doubt the chairman knows whether there was a representative of the coal operators present. If there was I was not here at the time, but I was here at the time the man representing the copper interests of Michigan made his statement, and I know something about that situation.

The first ones to appear were the merchant tailors of New York, They explained to the committee that the American worker is not fit to make our clothes. The fact of the matter is, he said, in Europe they have children who begin their training at 9 years of age, and that by the time they reach 20 or 21-which is about the time they would like to admit them here-they are fullfledged artisans in the making of clothes. Now, what would be the difference between admitting these men who were put to work at 9 years of age in Europe and having our children go to work at 9 years of age? Is that the desire of those gentlemen-that men shall be admitted who as children 9 years of age had to go to work in the factories and who have become skilled clothing makers there, and have them replace men in this country who as children are supposed to have gone to school and developed some degree of education? They say our people will not work at that trade.

The reason is that they can not work at that trade in competition with the ever inflowing stream of men raised in an environment different from ours. There are factories where to-day the workers are the sons and daughters of American workers, and I have in mind a factory in Indianapolis which manufactures overalls. The girls who work there are American girls; they get a decent wage; they have a decent environment and decent surroundings. They are not compelled to compete with the everinflowing tide of crude foreign labor. You take that very factory in Indianapolis, where I lived for years, and place in that factory 50 or 75 per cent of newly entered immigrants and the other 25 per cent of Americans would leave. They would have to leave, because they will not compete, and can not compete, not that they can not do as much, but because they can not do without as much. The others are used to a lower standard of living.

We heard that the merchant tailors were going to come to this committee and ask for a relaxation of the immigration laws, in order that they might be