Representative SHATTUC. Not to make an examination, but to see how other governments conducted it.

The CHAIRMAN. I will ask Mr. Campbell to prepare an amendment in that direction, and I will submit it to the committee, because that is a very important matter.

Senator MASON. How many men have you upon your force on the Canadian border now?

Mr. WATCHORN. I could not quite answer that question. Some have been added since I came away; but the number does not exceed sev enty. You will notice from these figures that there is a steady increase in the number of rejections, and that corresponds to the increased force we have been able to employ.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you at the head of the whole Canadian border inspection?

Mr. WATCHORN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you go clear west to the Pacific slope?

Mr. WATCHORN. From the Pacific to the very farthest east.

The CHAIRMAN. At the western end is the border being sufficiently guarded now?

Mr. WATCHORN. All I have said applies solely to that portion of the territory east of Sault Ste. Marie, because it is very recently that west of the Sault has been added to my territory. During the month of October there went over the borders of Dakota more European immigrants without medical examination than went over the whole border east of the Sault with examination, showing that as fast as you tighten it up in the east they go west and find a way around. But now we are putting on a force to guard it all. The commissioner who has charge of the work at Vancouver and Puget Sound points is here, and he could enlighten you a great deal better as to what prevails in the western end of it than I can at present. But we purpose putting it all on a uniform basis and making it equally difficult for a European to enter the United States at any point, no matter where it is.

Representative SHATTUC. Does your work give rise to any complaints on the part of the traveling public?

Mr. WATCHORN. None whatever. We have had just one complaint in the eighteen months I have been there, and then it was found on investigation that the inspector was at fault, and he was dismissed the service.

Representative SHATTUC. Do you find it necessary to delay the trains any?

Mr. WATCHORN. We have never delayed the trains a moment. Representative SHATTUC. Under the operation of the bill as it passed the House, in your opinion, taking the measures necessary to protect the Canadian border, would the execution of the law make it inconvenient for travelers or the railroad people?

Mr. WATCHORN. Not any more so than now, and we have never had a single complaint to my knowledge, except once, as I have stated.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand that it is a matter of discretion with your men, and that they do not molest a man who is not obviously subject to an investigation?

Mr. WATCHORN. That is correct, and that is why we should have the very best kind of men, men of tact and discretion, and men who can endure long hours of service, because we can not have any regular system of hours; we must be governed by the schedules of the trains.

The CHAIRMAN. While this proposed law might read on its face as though it would be a great hardship to the traveling public, that is S. Doc. 62-29

practically not the case, because it will be carried out in the discretion of the officers in the immigration service?

Mr. WATCHORN. It is not a hardship, Senator. There has never been a single complaint except the one I have mentioned.

Representative SHATTUC. There is nothing in the proposed law that would be burdensome to the railroad people or that would work to the disadvantage of the traveling public?

Mr. WATCHORN. No, sir; there is not.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that all you wish to say?

Mr. WATCHORN. Unless there are some more questions to be asked me, I think I have said all I desire.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM B. SHATTUC.

Representative SHATTUC. Mr. Chairman, I should like to make a statement. I will not take more than two or three minutes.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed, Mr. Shattuc.

Representative SHATTUC. I wish to state the reason why it will be quite impossible to carry out the amendment which was introduced by the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Foraker, making the head tax apply only to alien immigrants.

On the steamers coming to this country they have only three classes of rates, first, second, and third. Every immigrant, whether he is an alien immigrant or any other kind of an immigrant, if he is a poor man at all, will come in the third class.

The passage rate for the tickets of all classes always includes the head tax, whatever you make it. There is no extra charge by the steamship company for the head tax. The steamship companies pay the Government the head tax, but do not collect it from the passenger or immigrant. So if you relieve by law all others than alien immigrants from the burden of this head tax you relieve all, because the steamship companies can not tell who should pay the tax and who should not. The transportation companies will all have to rely entirely on the honor of the immigrants, and an immigrant can easily say he does not intend to become a citizen of the United States or to remain here, in which case there is no head tax due from the steamship or transportation company. Senator FAIRBANKS. What has the Government to do with the classification if the head tax is imposed upon each and every alien immigrant?

Representative SHATTUC. A man is not an aliea immigrant, as defined by law, who does not come here for the purpose of living in this country, and the alien immigrant is the only person charged with the head tax; other immigrants come in free. Here stands a man who comes here an alien immigrant. Here comes in a brother of his who is not an alien immigrant, both buying the same class of ticket. One is an alien immigrant because he tells the inspectors that he intends to become a citizen of this country. His brother is not an alien immigrant because he tells the inspectors he does not intend to remain. The steamship company pays the head tax for one only. One ticket should be $3 lower than the other, but both will be sold at the same rate.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean to say that it does not benefit in any way the passenger or the tourist coming over here to adopt the amendment of the Senate changing the word "passenger" to "alien immigrant?” Representative SHATTUC. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. I can see that. Representative SHATTUC. It does not lessen the cost to the passenger and never will.

The CHAIRMAN. Because the steamship company sells the tickets at a uniform rate?

Representative SHATTUC. At a uniform rate.

The CHAIRMAN. So the only persons affected will be the steamship companies?

Representative SHATTUC. Only the steamship companies will get the benefit of any exception in those who are exempted from the payment of the head tax. The immigrants or passengers-that is, those who come here from abroad by steamers-will receive no benefit at all.

Senator FAIRBANKS. That was made perfectly clear. It was stated by Mr. Anderson that the steamship companies pay this tax. There has been no dispute about that. The only question, it seems to me, is whether the tax is a reasonable one or not. It is a dollar a head now. It was raised to a dollar and a half in the House, and the Senate committee has reported a tax of $3.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand General Shattuc's point. He, in his bill, put the head tax on passengers coming into the United States. The Senate has put it only on alien immigrants. General Shattuc maintains that it does not benefit or help the passenger, because the steamship company will not sell tickets at a uniform rate which includes the head tax.

Senator FAIRBANKS. I understand it perfectly.

Representative SHATTUC. The question as to what the tax shall be is another matter entirely. This is a question as to whether we shall get anything at all from collections on the head tax. I assume to say that you will not collect much of anything from the steamship companies if you change the law so that the head tax applies only to alien immigrants. Most of the immigrants will say they are not alien immigrants, and there is and can be no way of disproving this statement. If you charge alien immigrants-those coming here with a view of becoming citizens-and do not charge the head tax for immigrants who will say they are not alien immigrants, because they do not intend to settle here and intend to return to their own countries, you will be specially favoring those who come here as birds of passage to work against our wage earners for a while and theu return to their old homes to spend their savings.

Senator FAIRBANKS. Then you recommend that the word "immigrant" be stricken out?

Representative SHATTUC. Undoubtedly, and we should provide that "all passengers" shall be charged a head tax. I regard that as

the most important feature of the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the present law?

Representative SHATTUC. It is the present law. I do not think this matter is clearly understood in the Senate. The bill as it was reported to the House bore the written and signed approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, who has charge of the Department which will administer it, and it may be added that the bill is substantially in accord with the conclusions of a conference of experts in the employ of the United States Industrial Commission, some of the greatest alienists in the country, the Commissioner General of Immigration, and the attorney of that department, Mr. R. R. Campbell. It may be said, therefore, to embody the best expert suggestions obtainable.

STATEMENT OF DAVID HEALY.

The CHAIRMAN. State your position, Mr. Healy.

Mr. HEALY. I am commissioner of immigration at Vancouver, British Columbia.

The CHAIRMAN. While we are on the question of the Canadian border you may testify as to the Western border.

Mr. HEALY. Mr. Chairman and honorable members of the committee, I shall occupy your time but a few moments to corroborate what Special Inspector Watchorn has said and to point out a few of the particular conditions prevailing in Puget Sound. All the difficulties of the immigration that we have to contend with in the East and all the dangers to which we are exposed there are liable to be precipitated upon us on the Pacific coast and along the border of the Western States in just as great a proportion, according to the population.

In the spring of 1900, after the Hawaiian act had gone into practical operation, the current of Japanese cooly labor, which had been directed to Hawaii, was for a time diverted to Puget Sound and the American coast. During two months of that year there were more Japanese immigrants of the most undesirable class brought in through the Strait of Juan de Fuca past Victoria and Vancouver and into Puget Sound ports than have been admitted during any fiscal year since. The streets of Tacoma, Seattle, and other American ports and of Vancouver and boundary line ports were filled with those people-strangers looking for employment, and the offices of the Commissioner-General and the honorable Secretary of the Treasury were being flooded with protests and notes of alarm as to the danger of allowing this immigration to continue.

Action was taken. Mr. Inspector Watchorn was sent out there in the name of the Department to assist in examining into the difficulty and providing a remedy for it. He brought to bear with us in that emergency an abundance of good sense and his usual cyclone of fearless personal energy, and inside of two months we had been deporting from those ports on the same ships that brought them in as large a propor tion of the excluded classes as he is now deporting from the port of Montreal. Those whom we deported were found to be suffering from peculiarly loathsome and contagious diseases--largely syphilis, trachoma, and scurvy--physical deformity, and idiotic persons. Senator MASON. Trachoma is an eye disease?

Mr. HEALY. It is an eye disease.

The result was that it created a sensation. The Japanese consul at Vancouver came to me in distress upon the matter. He said, "what am I going to do with our people in this emergency? The agents of the steamship companies go into the country from every port, from Yokohoma, Toyama, Tokio, and Nagasaki, into the agricultural regions; they tell our people that they can better their conditions in America, and they induce men to sell and pledge their little belongings and raise enough money to come here, and as soon as they have the money raised they are being bled from that moment, until after being robbed of all they have raised they are excluded and deported by you and your agents.

"They are bled by the man who secures for them their passport to come to the United States; they are bled by the agent who secures their passage upon the boat; they are bled by the man who gets berths for them; they are bled by the man who finds a boarding place for them when

they land on American soil; they are bled by the men who promise to furnish them employment; and here I come to you: I advise my men to ask you for certificates, and they tell me that if they tell you they have no friends in America and no promise of employment, you will deport them, as liable to become a public charge; if they do tell you that they have promise of employment, you will send them back as contract laborers; and if they do not come up to your standard of what an American citizen should be, you report them on general principles as suffering from some disease that we do not understand."

I tried to explain to him the object of our law, which was to protect our citizens and not in spirit to antagonize the Japanese Government. He, inside of a few weeks, reported to me that he had cabled to his Government and that there was an imperial edict issued limiting to an extent the immigration from Japan to the United States.

During the following year it was quite small, but last year it was nearly three times the amount that it was the year before, and when this report of the Commissioner-General is read by the Japanese minister he will find that the people of Japan, who number more than half the population of the great Empire of Russia, and are crowded into territory no bigger than the single State of Montana, are deprived by their own imperial edict of the privileges of bettering their condition in the United States which are accorded to the people of Russia.

They have a greater population than Italy, a greater population than Austria-Hungary, and when they see from the report that 170,000 came from Austria-Hungary and 180,000 from Italy, what can be more logical or natural for the Japanese Government than to say, "We will accord to our people the same privileges that are obtained by the people of all other nations." What would this bring in a single year? There is liable to be opened upon the incoming of the next ship a tide of immigration of the most undesirable class of Japanese, with their unlimited population and the easy mode of arriving in United States ports. Those people, as I said before, and as Mr. Watchorn understands from personal examination, are subject to disease in as large a proportion and of as contagious and loathsome a class as those that come from the European ports.

Now, we have had charge recently in a large measure of the enforcement of the Chinese exclusion act. On that boundary line the great majority of all the Chinese who come into the Canadian ports destined for Canada, as well as those who are destined for the United States, find their way into the United States. Those who are destined only for Canada after being there for a few months or weeks vanish into the thinnest kind of air. All sorts of devices are adopted for the purpose of smuggling unlawfully across the line contract laborers and Chinese and Japanese women of ill fame.

We have had difficulties in offsetting this, and I should like to recommend to the committee, by way of suggestion, that the word "willfully," in section 9, page 9, line 7, be left out of the bill, as it is an interpolation, I believe, in the original bill.

Senator MASON. Would you leave in the word "knowingly?"
Mr. HEALY. No; it says "who shall willfully."

The CHAIRMAN. It would then read: "That any person, including the master, agent, owner, or consignee of any vessel, who shall bring into or land in the United States," etc., "an alien unlawfully shall be fined not exceeding $1,000."

Senator MASON. There are two sides to that question. It is hard to convict a man for an offense, for instance, for importing a prostitute