for more labor. To admit hundreds of thousands of cheap alien workers now, if there is the implied inefficiency of management, the 200,000 surplus coal miners Government officials report, after a searching investigation, would be to put a premium on inefficient management and organization, just as a surplus of ignorant foreign, servile labor, checks inventive genius and blocks the introduction of labor-saving devices. Inefficiency should not be the cause of admitting an unlimited supply of cheap foreign labor, employed only when industry is at the peak of production, and which would have to be taken care of by the rest of us when the pendulum swings back and we have the cyclical unemployment which recurs periodically. The Christian Science Monitor (Boston, Mass., January 11, 1923) well states the whole situation, as follows:

"There are convincing evidences that many of the employers of labor in the United States are marshaling their forces to compel, if possible, a radical modification of the existing laws limiting immigration. Apparently, in lieu of the present restrictions, which provide for the admission of established quotas of immigrants, based upon the totals of such nationals already in the United States, and upon intelligence or educational tests provided, they would substitute what may be termed emergency regulations.

"Thus it seems certain that during the present session of Congress the perplexing question of immigration restriction is to be reopened. The law as it is written at present has not been acceptable to the employers of so-called cheap labor. The floodgate which has filled the ranks of sweatshop workers has not been open wide enough to supply that excess of labor which heretofore has created deplorable conditions in the needle trades in New York and other cities where the cheaper grades of clothing are manufactured. It is not easy to recruit skilled workers within that industry, because Europe has always been looked to to supply apprentices who have eventually been advancd from lower to higher wage standards.

"The National Association of Manufacturers also has served notice that it will appeal to the committee of Congress which is considering the immigration problem for a modification of the present restrictions. One might reasonably inquire how these employers of labor reconcile their claim of the incidental protection which it is declared a protective tariff offers to the skilled worker in the industries, with their demand that immigrant labor be permitted to compete on equal terms with those already employed.

"It may be reasonably determined that some modification of the present immigration law is advisable. It has never been claimed for it that it is perfect or that it does not work hardships and inequalities. The established quotas are being filled by some nationals and left open by others. Post-war conditions in northern Europe have not induced immigration. From the southern countries of Europe there continue to come thousands who must be turned back. "Thus it must appear that as a selective method the one in force is not ideal. But it is doubtful if conditions would be greatly improved by relaxing the restrictions so as to admit an indefinite and indeterminable number of such workers as the employing industries now so insistent upon a change claim to require. The adoption of truly conservative policies in these industries, methods which would insure, in the needle and building trades for instance, the continuous training of apprentices, no doubt would, in the course of a few years, solve their problems. It has not been made to appear that there is a dearth of workers in the United States. The difficulty seems to be that there is not that proper readjustment which might insure a desired level. Perhaps in the bituminous coal fields, there is a surplus of labor, while on the farms and in the factories there may be periodical shortages. Until the problems of unemployment have been solved, it would not be wise to invite any considerable increase in immigration."

Other leading city dailies take high ground in discussing the need of continued restriction. In its issue of January 3, 1923, the New York Tribune says editorially:

"The National Manufacturers' Association points out the most striking defect in the per cent immigration law. The United States is making a false count of the immigrants. It figures the gross but not the net.

"The immigration from Italy is an example of this particular error in our statute. In the last fiscal year 42,000 Italians were admitted to this country under the 3 per cent quota provision of the law. In the same period 53,000 Italian laborers went back from this country to their own. Instead of having added 42,000 laborers to its forces the United States actually lost 11,000."

There is in that statement and in the argument of the association's antirestrictionist leaders here the implied statistical fact that only 309,556 aliens entered the United States last year. The Commissioner General of Immigration reports in his annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1922. that 309,556 immigrant aliens were admitted, and also that 122 949 nonimmigrant aliens were admitted, and in addition 973,804 alien seamen were examined and admitted, making a total number of aliens accorded immigration inspection for the year of 1,420,040."

66

*

*

*

With reference to this almost 1,000,000 aliens who got into the country as "" seamen through a "wide-open doorway," to use the exact words of the official report, and as result of which the commissioner general also says there were at one time in the port of New York from three to five thousand the presence of so many idle in New York being a matter of grave concern not only to the bureau but to local, State, and city authorities," and further on he explains that "our destitute alien seamen problem was not confined to the port of New York," constituting an "aggravation of the unemployment problem," the New York Tribune senses the truth in a very recent editorial (January 9, 1923), as follows:

"The present discussion about lessening the restrictions upon immigration seems to overlook the fact that the main purpose of limitation is to give the country time to assimilate its enormous numbers of foreign born.

"Since 1860 nearly 4,000,000 Germans, more than the same number of Italians, about 3,500,000 Russians, and about 3,000,000 Austro-Hungarians have come into this country. There have been besides many millions of other foreigners. With the growing tendency on the part of the newcomers to settle in colonies, the contact with American life and institutions has necessarily been less and the process of assimilation correspondingly slower. Unfortunately, the attitude of the native Americans has only too often made assimilation more difficult. Their dislike of "foreigners," which goes back a century or more, has helped keep the aliens apart from the native born.

"The contention of the restrictionists is that even the present percentage of foreign born in the country (13.2 per cent of the total population and 14.4 per cent of the total white population) is formidable. Instead of adding more foreigners unfamiliar with American ways, they say it is better to absorb more of those we already have.

66

America needs time in which to accomplish this absorption. It is for this reason that stringent limitation, at least for a decade, is needed. The present percentage basis, although not necessarily final, presents the fairest plan of limitation so far offered. It should certainly receive a longer and fuller tryout before amendments other than those calculated to ease its operation are seriously considered."

It is idle to argue about "net immigration" in the face of the official statements and facts contained in the annual report of the Bureau of Immigration. With 14,000,000 foreign born, with 20,000,000 born of foreign parentage, with over 7,000,000 unable to speak and read our language, with over 2000 foreignlanguage newspapers, with whole colonies and foreign communities like Monessen, Pa., 95 per cent of whose population is foreign born and where murders and hold-ups occur weekly, with the statement of the Secretary of Labor, Hon. James J. Davis, November 18, 1922, that " we have 3,000,000 men out of work right now in the United States, why should we allow foreigners to come to add to the burden," what should it matter how much our emigration is or how many aliens are leaving this country with their parsimonious savings? Our concern is with the overflowing melting pot. Why admit more new raw material? We already have too many for our forces of assimilation and Americanization to function. As well stated by the Chicago Daily Tribune. Uncle Sam already has a fit of indigestion from which he should be relieved by emigration and by the suspension of immigration for a long time to come. Secretary of Labor Davis, whose department has charge of the enforcement of the immigration laws, and who is the highest governmental authority dealing with the whole immigration question, being foreign born himself, sums

up the whole matter in the following article from the Washington Post of December 5, 1922:

DAVIS REBUKES DEMAND TO LET DOWN ALIEN BAR-NATION'S GATES NOW WIDE OPEN TO PEOPLE WHICH HAVE MADE IT GREAT, HE POINTS OUT.

Secretary Davis, of the Labor Department, on his return yesterday from a two-month trip through the West, issued a statement assailing arguments advanced by proponents of the proposal to let down the immigration bars.

"In traveling about the country during the last two months," said the Secretary, "I have found a constant agitation which apparently seeks to let down all of the bars against immigration. The argument is put forward that because we have reached industrial prosperity in the United States after one of the greatest depressions we have ever known, we must open wide our gates to European immigration to provide labor for our industries. "This argument is entirely fallacious for several reasons. There is an impression that the 3 per cent law has operated arbitrarily to limit our immigration from all European countries. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who are now opposing the law forget that the law would have permitted the admission of thousands of immigrants during the past two years if they had sought admission.

"At any time since the law was put into effect workmen for our industries of the racial strains which have made America great, which have up to the past two decades made up the bulk of our immigration, could have been admitted by the thousands. They did not seek admission. They are not coming to America.

"In the last fiscal year only less than one-half of the quotas that could be admitted under the law have come from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, from Norway, Sweden, Holland, Denmark, and Germany. The percentages of quotas fulfilled during the last fiscal year are: Denmark, 57.6 per cent; United Kingdom, including England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, 55.2 per cent; Norway, 48.7 per cent; Sweden, 45.8 per cent; Germany, 28 per cent."

In commending the high stand taken by Secretary Davis, the Washington (D. C.) Post recently said editorially:

SUPERVISING IMMIGRATION.

"The stand taken on immigration by the administration, through the Department of Labor, has found remarkable confirmation in a report submitted this week by the Rev. Henry Allen Tupper. Doctor Tupper, as a special agent for the department, has made an inspection in Syria. Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, and several sections of central Europe, and the conclusion he arrives at is that no law can be too drastic in barring undesirable aliens from the United States. He is convinced that a careful examination of immigrants applying for passports to this country should be made along physical, mental, and moral lines, not on arrival, but at the port of embarkation. Hitherto, in practice, it has been foreign Governments that made the selection. This they were enabled to do by their systems of passport and visé, and the net result was that they kept desirable citizens at home and gave the necessary exeat to those who belonged to the other category.

"A better class of immigrants is sought, because by securing them better citizenship and better institutions will be more easily promoted. It is understood that the Department of Labor has ready for presentation to the next session of Congress a bill which embodies this view. A cardinal feature of it is that it is the United States, and not foreign nations, that will be the directing power in the tests to which intending immigrants are to be submitted, and that these tests shall be made before the immigrants leave the country of their origin. From the adoption of such a method it will follow that a record of each individual will be available on which a program for Americanization and education can be intelligently based.

"A supplementary bill already before Congress provides for the enrollment and education of the alien after arrival. An important provision of this latter bill is that immigrants are to be taught the English language when they do not know it, so that the United States will eventually become, what it is not now, a Nation with a common language.

"The enactment of these two bills, providing for the selection of immigrants with the necessary qualifications by representatives of the United States Government on the one hand and providing on the other hand for their education in the extent of their duties and privileges after arrival, promises to afford a common sense and practical solution of a vexed problem and to provide an effectual safeguard against the dangers which admittedly lurk in the present system of immigration."

Of similar import is a recent editorial in the Lincoln (Nebr.) Journal, as follows:

"The experience of limiting immigration is evidently to have a thorough trial. and the prospects are that the policy will be permanent. The war disclosed the necessity of receiving no more immigrants than the country can assimilate within a reasonable time. The new immigration law was passed tentatively with a view to feeling out an Americanization and immigration policy. A total shutting off of immigration was not expedient. That would have forced a permanent division of families living partly here and partly in the old country. Hence the 3 per cent experiment.

"There are other reasons to this policy. It helps with the problem of oriental immigration by virtually excluding yellow men without an offensive discrimination against them. It is coming to be understood, moreover, that America is not now suffering for an increase in numbers. The people of crowded countries are poor by reason of the great demand of large populations upon their natural resources. In no great while America will reach a point where further increase in population means a corresponding increase in poverty. Why should we hasten that unpleasant day? Why should we wish to be in the position of Japan, where a crowded population creates pressure for territorial expansion, which makes Japan a menace to the peace of the world?

"America has long maintained a setimental welcome to unrestrained immigration. Our free land should be open to all, we have said. One may suspect that this sentiment was sponsored not a little by the millions of Americans with 'free lands' to sell; and not less by American employers anxious for keen competition in the labor market. Common sense now calls upon us to take a more practical view of the problem. If nations with the fecundity of guinea pigs are crowded, let them restrain their birth rate instead of visiting their overcrowdedness upon us. What America needs to work for now is not numbers but quality."

The Minneapolis (Minn.) Journal is quoted approvingly by the Boston (Mass.) Transcript, December 26, 1922, as follows:

66 THE PRESSURE FOR MORE IMMIGRATION.

"Pressure against immigration restriction increases as the shortage in labor increases. Manufacturers, great and small, experience actual shortage in labor. in addition they would welcome relief from the present labor-union rule, which prescribes maximum wages and minimum service. No doubt copious immigration would end the labor shortage and release industry from the grip of the unions. Such would be the more immediate beneficial consequences. "What would be the less immediate or ultimate consequence?

"The Mussolini ministry offers to furnish the United States half a million Italians picked for such purposes as Washington shall designate-farms, factories, railways; what not? And the Greek statesman, Venizelos, says at Lausanne that the United States in the interests of humanity must relax its restrictions sufficiently to admit half a million Greeks.

"We can let down the bars and have rushing in for years a European flood, whose first energy would help our farms and industries, provide cooks and maids for housewives, accord gangs that wouldn't ask top-notch wages for inferior work, would puddle steel, mine ore, cut lumber, do everything for reasonable wages in return for diligent and faithful work.

66

Fine, immediately.

"These Italians are good, steady laborers. They excel in certain forms of work. Economically they would be an asset. These Greeks are shrewd traders and good vendors. Yet Italians have developed so little political capacity and so much proclivity for anarchy that their society has just saved itself by the beneficent violence of Fascismo and the political distatorship of Mussolini. Greeks have shown innate incompetence to succeed as a democracy by their sanginary vengeance upon public servants.

"Yet we are called upon to admit these people to the service of our economy and to participate in our politics. And the responsibility is not theirs but that of those American business men who have no notion of anything but business, who do not regard seriously political and social matters, who take for granted that flourishing business is good substitute for sound national life and can of itself support the Republic. If these business men, instead of neglecting politics as they do, participate in politics as part of the community life, they would, perhaps, be listened to with more respect, because their views would then be social and political as well as economic.

"When we import human bodies we import with them human psychos. It is racial as well as individual. Sound bodies coupled with willingness to work constitute a boon, but there is more than that in what we let in from Europe. There is political habit and aptitude. There is social proclivity and liability to fits. Dynamite is good for certain purposes, but no one who uses it is unaware of its destructive potentiality.

*

**

What are 10 years of intensified prosperity as compared with the gradual disintegration of American social life and the waxing political degeneration of American citizenship?"

And on December 31, 1922, the Chicago (Ill.) Tribune had the following strong editorial, one of a series, clearly reflecting public sentiment:

44

66

66 NATIONAL INDIGESTION.

Strong pressure is being brought to bear upon the President, it is reported, by large employers of common labor to lower or loosen the bars which are now holding back a flood of such potential labor. Equally strong pressure is being exerted by the organized labor of this country against any such relaxation. 'In this matter, we believe, organized labor has the best of the argument. The view it represents is a selfish one, but the end which would be attained should be of direct benefit to this country as a whole. Labor opposes unrestricted immigration because it would tend to flood the labor market and bring down wages and weaken unionism. Large employers favor it because they want a supply of cheap labor, regardless of affiliations. We do not see that the maintenance of high wages because of heavy demand for labor will do this country any harm as long as industry is still able to operate at a profit. On the contrary, it will do some good by improving the standard of living and citizenship of the worker and maintaining our domestic purchasing power at an effective level.

"In so far as the sentiment in Congress favors an arbitrary action to lift the bars to the hundreds of thousands of refugees now being crowded out of Asia Minor and Greece by political and economic conditions, there seems absolutely no defense. There are other lands which could provide for these people as well as the United States, and in which they could much more easily maintain themselves. It is nothing but sentimentalism which would invite them to this country to compete with our workers and depress our standards. The refugees from the Near East, especially, would not fit into our life. If we need anything we need rural workers and, for the moment, intelligent and able-bodied factory hands. We do not want peddlers.

The fact is that we have swallowed such great numbers of immigrants in recent years that we have developed national indigestion. It is a primary rule of good health that one meal shall be assimilated before another is taken. That applies with equal accuracy to the body politic. We have so many aliens in this country that we are having great difficulty in assimilating them. We want them to become part of our body politic. We want them to become Americans. But when they are imported in vast numbers and left to herd in their own racial centers in our cities they do not become Americanized. They retain their old habits, traditions, and loyalties. These groups must be scattered by time and economic pressure, and Americanized by education, before it is safe to bring in more. That may requ're years, but until it is accomplished no selfish or sentimental reasons should be allowed to add to this undigested mass of aliens."

The Chicago Tribune on January 9, 1923, published a letter characteristic of many communications that have appeared in the newspapers of the country as a result of the press dispatches announcing January 5, 1923, that a farm organization had protested before this congressional committee against existing restric