"A similar argument is advanced by the Nowing Polskie, of Milwaukee, Wis., the same month, as follows:

*

* *

"It is the duty of every Pole to obtain his second naturalization papers as quickly as possible, so as to be able to vote this fall. Let us remember there are many Chauvinistic and foolish (American) persons who are trying by various means to suppress the use of foreign languages and other personal liberties. Every Pole in America should acquire the right to vote and vote for men who are not in favor of limiting personal freedom.'

"And so forth.

"The Glos Barodu, of Jersey City, has an editorial the same month calling attention to the fact that

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"We pride ourselves on having a Polish judge here and there a Polish clerk.'

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And then lambasts Poles for not organizing and voting solidly as Poles for Poles and Polish notions.

"The Obrena, of Scranton, Pa., characterizes the demand for restriction and better naturalization laws as selfish.' 'prejudice,' 'hatred,' and announces that there is room and work for 100,000,000 aliens in the United States of America, while the Amerika Magyar Nepszava boasts that Hungarians alone sent back $40,000,000 to friends and relatives last year, and the other paper declares foreigners will not take jobs from Americans, because the nativists won't work.'

"And the various hyphenates are urged, exhorted, and browbeaten in long editorials and articles, almost as long as the foreign steamship advertisements in these foreign-language papers, to write and vote against and to telegraph Congressmen, Senators, and the President against the Johnson immigration and naturalization bills."

Since this question was first presented to the chamber, the executive committee has kept in close touch with the situation. The committee has consistently recommended the drafting of constructive legislation; it has held that the proper place to examine a prospective immigrant is abroad; that advance notice of intention to settle permanently within our borders is a reasonable and proper requirement; and that the adoption of such a policy would unquestionably tend to prevent hardship and disappointment on the part of those selling their homes and crossing the sea only to find they can not comply with the requirements of admission.

The executive committee is not convinced that the objections to these suggestions which have been raised by congressional committees are altogether valid or at any rate insuperable. The executive committee further has felt that the test of fitness to make an immigrant eligible for entry into the United States should be prescribed in greater detail and with more scientific precision than in the past. Even supposing a reorganization of our system of examination should be accomplished by the coming Congress, there are certain facts which must not be lost sight of by any citizen who desires to assure posterity the maintenance of our republican institutions intact.

Furthermore, the executive committee urges upon your attention the fact that our natural resources, far from being inexhaustible, are in some important commodities reaching a point where the end of the visible supply is actually in sight; nor can the committee take the view that it is "an international crime to deny to civilization the opportunity to support itself on our undeveloped land." The committee does not believe it is economically or politically desirable that an unregulated influx of immigrants should descend upon this country, as it threatens to do. It is undeniable that it is as uneconomical and unsocial for us to exclude the teeming people of the Orient hovering on the brink of famine as it is to call a halt on the inrush of people from devastated Europe and the Near East. The executive committee refers to these considrations in order that the chamber may appreciate that there is a great deal to be said for the position taken by Mr. Johnson, that while the quota law is far from ideal it has nevertheless rendered a great service to the country.

For this reason the executive committee believes that the best interests of the Nation will be subserved by a gradual and progressive amendment of the present statute rather than by attempting to recast at one time all the legislation bearing on this difficult and intricate subject. In pursuance of this thought, the executive committee recommends the following resolutions for adoption. Be it therefore

"Resolved, That the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York approves the above report and authorizes and directs the president and the executive committee to continue a close observation of the immigration legislation; and be it further

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Resolved, That the president and the executive committee are authorized and directed to make suggestions and to render such aid as may be practicable to the Immigration Committees of Congress for the amendment and development of the statutes in accord with the principles herein before expressed and in the reports adopted by the chamber on January 20, 1921, January 5, 1922, and March 2, 1922.

I cite these four resolutions and reports, disclosing a quite intelligent and consistent study of the question, in order to show that while some of the leaders of the manufacturing interests argue for a modification of the 3 per cent quota restriction law, the business and commercial interests, familiar with conditions in States like New York and Massachusetts, represented by State bodies such as the New York Chamber of Commerce, take a different view. So does an expert statistician like Roger W. Babson when he writes, under date of December 29, 1922, in an elaborate article reviewing industrial and commercial conditions for the entire year:

"The shortage of labor is one of the worst features of the 1923 outlook. The immigration law is largely the cause of this shortage. This law restricts the number of immigrants in a single year to 3 per cent of the total number of respective nationalities already in the United States. Before the war we had an addition of a million immigrants a year. I doubt if the repeal of this 3 per cent immigration law is the proper solution of the present labor shortage.

"The real solution is not the repeal of the present immigration law but rather the repeal of the contract labor law for as long a period as the 3 per cent law remains in force."

In addition there are two lines of criticism of the attitude of those leaders who would modify the existing law.

Perhaps the most widely read and unquestionably the most influential publication, free from any possible taint or selfish interest, is the Saturday Evening Post. Its issue of December 23, 1922, contains the following editorial:

66 A WORD TO THE WISE.

"There is discontent among some of the manufacturers and the big corporations of America. They want more immigrants from whom to draw the cheap labor. When corporations and manufacturers emit deafening bellows to the effect that they can't get along without more immigrants, they usually mean that they are unwilling to adjust their businesses to the well-being of the country.

"This is the most wasteful and shortsighted Nation and the most wasteful and shortsighted age that the world has ever known. We exterminated the buffalo for the sake of a plentiful supply of buffalo robes, which have now worn out; and some corporations and manufacturers are willing to waste our national characteristics by importing aliens by the million, and to waste our national resources by forcing the country to support the labor surplus at times when the manufacturers and corporations find it inconvenient to do so; in other words, to store laborers for them when the demand is slack. In the coal industry alone there are 200,000 extra men. At times the 200,000 and their families-half a million people, as a guess-must go into storage. The country may think that these people pay for their own storage. Actually the country and everyone in it pays for it.

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'It's about time that all corporations and manufacturers made an end of their stupid attitude on cheap labor and the immigration question. When they

stop employing labor in a manner as reminiscent of reckless waste as the slaughter of passenger pigeons they may be able to show reason why their demands should be treated with respect by the House and the Senate Immigra tion Committees. But while they employ their laborers on seasonal work during part of the year, and waste their labors entirely for the remainder of the time. the House and the Senate Immigration Committees should accord them about the same respectful consideration that is usually accorded the scapegrace son who wastes his inheritance on special automobile bodies and gold diggers."

In the same column of the same issue of the Saturday Evening Post, in an editorial entitled "Civic club studies," is the following:

“An admirable example of the large-city group for civic study is found in San Francisco's Commonwealth Club, of California. This organization, whose object as defined by its constitution is to investigate and discuss problems affecting the welfare of the Commonwealth, and to aid in their solution,' and whose by-laws require it to maintain itself in an impartial position as an open forum for the discussion of disputed questions,' long ago proved its ability to attack current issues in a big way and with the assistance of men of international reputation. Its printed transactions already fill 17 sizable volumes. We have before us the club's issue for October, a clean-cut report on immigration and population, prepared by Mr. E. A. Walcott, executive secretary of the club. In 16 pages he is able to present the essentials of our alien problem. Beginning with the little-understood proposition that immigration does not increase the population of a nation, and citing Givernment reports and writers or unassailable repute, he arrives at conclusions so definite, so justifiable, and so brief that they may here be quoted in full:

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The law of population that has led to a decline in the American birth rate substantially equal to the number of immigrants admitted is in operation to-day just as rigidly as in the past. It will govern the century to come just as it has governed the century that has gone.

"The question for the American people to decide is whether the land shall be peopled by the descendants of those now here or shall pass in large part to those who will come from other lands.

"Except for brief periods, immigration will not increase the population above the figure it will reach without immigration. The influences that determine population are inexorable; and if we admit those from other lands we shall decrease by a like number those who will be born of those now here.

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'The question for cold-blooded consideration by the American of to-day is this: Do you want the soil inherited by your son or by the son of one who now toils in a foreign land?'

"Decidedly, this is the sort of investigation and report that carry conviction and form a basis for logical opinion. The methods of the Commonwealth Club are well worthy of study by organizations with similar aims that do not quite know how to carry on most effectively."

This editorial describes a club functioning precisely as the Patriotic Order Sons of America functions. It performs a splendid public service.

I have here the leading editorial of the Saturday Evening Post of November 18, 1922, in which a suggestion is made and argued that is of great interest. The editorial reads as follows:

66 BACK TO. 1890.

"Mr. Roy L. Garis. of Venderbilt University, sponsors a plan for the rational restriction of immigration that is so admirably simple and equitable, and yet holds such large promise of effectiveness, that it is hard to understand why it was not long ago threshed out in Congress.

"Even the most superficial student of immigration matters know that between the years 1870 and 1910 the racial proportions of incoming aliens underwent the most sweeping changes. Those 40 years marked the transition from the socalled old immigration to the new. During the first of the four intervening decades rather more than 2,000,000 immigrants came to us from western Europe. For the most part they were of strains that can be assimilated. Dur ing the same period the inflow from southern and eastern Europe was a scant 200,000. Three decades later-that is to say, from 1901 to 1910-the arrivals from western Europe were about the same. but the immigration from southern and eastern Europe increased more than thirtyfold, or to a figure in excess of

6,000,000. It was the introduction of these refractory strains which began to overwhelm us in the 1890's that bore in upon the fact that we had an immigration problem, and one not to be solved by the melting-pot process, in which we had come to put so much faith.

"Our existing law of May 19, 1921, that was to expire by limitation on June 30 of the present year and was later extended to June 30, 1924, provides that 'the number of aliens of any nationality who may be admitted under the immigration laws to the United States in any fiscal year shall be limited to 3 per cent of the number of foreign-born persons of such nationality resident in the United States, as determined by the United States Census of 1910.'

“As a temporary measure, this law has been of inestimable value in meeting a grave emergency; but even its friends are free to admit that it is unscientific legislation, in that it establishes the numbers that may be admitted without setting up acceptable standards of quality for the persons so favored. Indeed, it was realized before the passage of the act that its logical operation would make it inevitable that a considerable proportion of its beneficiaries would be persons that America does not need and does not want, aliens that would almost certainly prove national liabilities rather than national assets.

'Mr. Garis ingeniously proposes to remedy the weaknesses of the present law by the passage of a new act in which the percentage rule shall be applied to the body of aliens in the country at the time of the census of 1890. The merits of this proposal are obvious. In the year 1890 our population was still com paratively homogeneous; the immigrants living here at that time were for the most part of sound, assimilable stock. Taken by and large, they were the stuff of which Americans have been successfully made for the past 100 years. Given the same material, we can go on for another century making the sort of citizens we used to make 30 years ago. Measured in terms of racial values, any given percentage of our alien element of 1890 bears about the same relationship to a like percentage of our foreign population of 1910 as a bushel of dollar bills bears to the same bulk of ruble notes. Automatically such a law as Mr. Garis suggests sets a high standard rather than a low one, and at the same time fixes those definite numerical limitations that instincts of national self-preservation dictate.

"The comparative remoteness of the year 1890 can not be made the basis of any valid argument against adopting the racial values of that period. A practical advantage of going back to 1890 for our definitions and specifications for a really useful and beneficent inflow of foreigners is that such a measure may fairly claim the support of those who formed their opinion on immigration matters some 30 or 40 years ago and have never seen the necessity of altering it to conform to utterly changed conditions. Then, too, such a law, in addition to being eminently fair and equitable, would be a fine and well-deserved tribute to those immigrants of a past generation to whom the country owes so much. would be a fitting recognition of the sterling qualities of the Scandinavian peoples, who have done so much to build up the Northwest; of the Germans of the Carl Schurz type, who came to us in such numbers before the Civil War; of the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, who, perhaps more than any other races, take to Americanism as a duck takes to water and are perfectly assimilated in a single decade; and of still other peoples who have materially contributed to our national health and vigor.

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"There is every reason to suppose that a measure drawn along the lines indicated by Mr. Garis would raise a storm of protest among the nationals whose quotas it would reduce. This is the invariable effect of any legislative proposals that are frankly framed for the benefit of America and Americans rather than for that of Europe and Europeans. And yet, as in the case of any bill, the character of the opposition may be the strongest kind of evidence of intrinsic merit.

"During the past two or or three years national sentiment upon immigration matters has undergone radical changes. From coast to coast many large employers have come to see the light; and to their credit be it said, many of them have materially modified their views as to the necessity for the sort of foreign labor that is cheap in dollars and ruinously dear in everything else. They have had the courage to swing around to Gen. Leonard Wood's belief that 'the American cement has about all the sand it will stand.'

"The best thing that can possibly happen to American business is full employment for all labor at good wages.

Another phase of the quota question is pointedly discussed in the New York Tribune, January 7, 1923, as follows:

OPENING THE IMMIGRATION BARS.

"An ingenious device for nullifying the effectiveness of the immigration restriction law has been recently advocated by The Evening Post. According to this scheme, the annual quota of immigrants from any nation is to be interpreted to mean the number that may be admitted in excess of the number that have left the country during the twelvemonth. This means that the annual quota for Greece, instead of being 3,821, would be 11,570, in view of the fact that last year 7,649 Greeks left the country. For Italy it would be 93,970, instead of 40,319, owing to the large number of Italians who returned home. In other words, the more that go out the more that may come in. A premium is placed on those races which are the least inclined to settle permanently in this country.

"The Post, by way of justification of its proposal, makes the statement that 'it can not have been the intent of the law to reduce the number of persons of any nationality living in the country.' A reading of the law makes it clear that the purpose of the law is not to reduce the number of any but of all nationalities living here. Its aim is to limit the number of aliens entering the country because of the widely held belief that we already have more than we can assimilate readily and that a breathing spell is needed during which the alien problem can be settled. Incidently, one of its objects is to limit just those races which are most mobile, not so much because of any hostility to these particular stocks as because the very fact that they are so anxious to leave shows that they have little desire to become identified with our national life. "As the purpose of the immigration law is to restrict, why riddle it with devices smoothly calculated to defeat its object?"

Another and the other line of criticism of the attitude of those employers who would modify our immigration laws instead of change their business methods is in an article in the Troy (N. Y.) Times of December 21, 1922, as follows:

"Demand for labor in some lines of industry, which has already come with reviving prosperity, is being used in certain quarters as an argument for breaking down all limits to the quantity of immigration. This is a mistake both from an industrial and economic as well as from a civic and political point of view. Because we need men in certain lines of production is no reason for importing, as we are now doing, a lot of people who are not capable of work on those lines, but only add to the class of peddlers and traders which produces nothing and increases the numbers who have to be fed and clothed by our productive industry. Letting down the bars would increase this importation tenfold, but would not give us what we want.

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'If, instead of letting down the bars, we should shift labor from the coal industry, for instance, where there are too many mines and miners, into kindred industries where there is complaint of a shortage of labor, we would be able to save the expense of a standing army of the partially employed, beside which the cost of our military establishment is a mere trifle. If we could get rid of seasonal employment in certain trades, as certain industries are now studying to do, there is another still larger standing army of the partially employed which could be taken off our backs without the import of a single immigrant. If the bars are not up, our employers will not put their ability into solving these problems, for they can then turn to Ellis Island whenever they need more hands.

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By proper selection, within the numerical limit which now exists, we could no doubt bring in an amply sufficient supply of the kind of laborers we may really need, for the desirable kind comes only in answer to a real demand. In that way we would admit only those whom we really want for future fellow-citizens.

"The policy of limiting numbers and selecting carefully, if we can now establish it, bids fair in the long run to give us a contented population, with steady employment, with American traditions and an American standard of living."

The answer here seems to be that when large employers have stabilized their labor employment situation, and have put their plants on an efficient basis as regards steady employment of laborers, there will be plenty of time to ask