punish the line, in this case the French line, and I forget which was the other line--the Italian and Hungarian. I can not punish the line for bringing those people in here. I can send them back and make them pay hospital charges while the people are here, but it was a wicked thing to bring those patients here. It was wicked to them, wicked to the fellow-passengers, and wicked to the United States Government.

Now, this proposed law will not impose a penalty upon a line in the case of a disease breaking out on the vessel. Cases of that kind can not be guarded against, and there is to be no penalty for that sort of a thing. But I wish to have a provision which will cover such miserable cases as I have described. I discovered the other day how helpless I am under the present law.

Will you kindly turn to section 17, line 23. I should like to ask General Shattuc if this appeals to him. I noticed it only this morning. Perhaps I am hypercritical. It reads:

"From any of the obligations which, in case such aliens remain on board, would, under the provisions of this act, bind the said transportation lines."

That could be made much broader by saying "from any of the obligations, including those covered by this act, which, in case such aliens remain on board, would bind the said transportation companies."

Representative SHATTUC. We went on the theory that the old law, which had stood for twenty years the ulings of the courts and everything, was a very good law to leave alone.

Mr. WILLIAMS. All right.

Senator FAIRBANKS. The language you have incorporated in section 17, at this point, is in the existing law.

Representative SHATTUC. Yes, sir.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Then, perhaps, my remarks about section 20 will not appeal to you as that section now reads.

Representative SHATTUC. The theory we went on all the way in the House was that unless we deemed it necessary to change the phraseology to accomplish the purpose in view, it was better to leave the law alone rather than to put in some new provision which would have to be passed on again by the courts. Of course I am not a lawyer, but that appeared to me, as a buiness man, to be good business sense.

Mr. WILLIAMS. But of course sometimes an old law needs to be changed.

Representative SHATTUC. It has stood for twenty-five years, as you

know.

Senator FAIRBANKS. Is there any embarrassment in the execution of the law as it stands?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Just in this particular feature I did not happen to notice it-I have been there such a short time; but if I may be pardoned for saying so, General Shattuc's remarks might make it unnecessary to place the provision in we have just been talking about, because it is not in the old law.

Representative SHATTUC. No; you misunderstand me.

Wherever

we thought it was necessary to change the old law we have done it. Senator FAIRBANKS. As I understand, where there has been no objection to the law as it stands, and where it has not been shown to be inadequate, it has been embodied in the bill without change.

Representative SHATTUC. That is right. That is the only way I got my bill through the House. I am not a lawyer, and that is the only thing I could tell the lawyers.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Then I will not say what I had to say about the first four lines of section 20. I think it is too narrow.

Senator FAIRBANKS. Is that your judgment of it from the experience of the Department, or is it just your impression from a casual examination?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I am afraid section 20, after it has been the law for a year or two, will come home to bother the Department.

Senator FAIRBANKS. If you have any suggestion to make about it, we will be glad to take it into account.

Mr. WILLIAMS. All I meant to say was that aliens brought into this country in violation of law ought to be sent back, and, if practicable, they ought to go back in the vessel by which they came, but they ought in any event to be sent back. You will get the point. The language is not quite apt.

Representative SHATTUC. May I be allowed a word?
Senator FAIRBANKS. Certainly.

Representative SHATTUC. There is a separate section somewhere in the bill which authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to send any one back for any cause whatever who is in the United States illegally. It covers the whole thing. It is a blanket clause.

Mr. WILLIAMS. All right. If found in the United States illegally he is to send them back within three years.

Senator FAIRBANKS. Is that the existing law?

Representative SHATTUC. No; it is amended by giving the Government two years' jurisdiction beyond the one year under the present law.

Senator FAIRBANKS. You increase it two years?
Representative SHATTUC. Two years.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Do the committee care to hear the sale of beer at Ellis Island, or do you not? as mine, probably.

me on the subject of Your views are just

Senator DILLINGHAM. We would be very glad to hear you on that subject.

Senator FAIRBANKS. We shall be glad to hear any suggestion you may have to make on the sale of beer there.

Mr. WILLIAMS. I do not know that I can add anything to the letter that I wrote on the 2d of May, which General Shattuc read in the House, to the effect that we should have regard to the fact that the people who drink beer there have always been drinking it at home; that there is no drunkenness on the island, and that if there ever should be any it would be very easy to punish it severely. I do not see any reason for stopping the sale of beer there any more than in New York City. The fact that it is United States territory does not appeal to me as a reason for stopping it there. That is my only point. Personally I should never want to touch a drop of beer during the heat of the day down there, but there are lots of the people who come in who want to use it, and they feed their babies on it. They put those bottles of beer into their mouths just as an American mother would put a bottle of milk into her baby's mouth.

Senator DILLINGHAM. Can the immigrants buy milk there?

Mr. WILLIAMS. They can, indeed, buy milk at every counter, and at a lower rate than they could before.

Senator DILLINGHAM. It has been stated that they could not be furnished with milk.

Mr. WILLIAMS. That was before I came into office. I have remedied that. I will say that it was more difficult for them to get milk before I came into office than it is now, and the price of milk has been reduced to 4 cents a glass.

In section 32, page 23, line 4, there is a provision that steamship companies shall file a certificate to the effect that they have instructed their agents to call the attention of all persons contemplating, etc., to this law. My own view would be to make that section very much stronger. I do not think that is a very effective provision.

Senator FAIRBANKS. How would you strengthen it?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I assume that we want to stop assisted immigration. I have not drafted any wording for it, but in a general way it might be provided that responsible managers of the lines should file affidavits to the effect that the matters prohibited in this section have not been violated by their agents so far as they know, stating the sources of their information, and if they are violated that then a severe penalty shall be imposed. I merely call attention to the fact that the words are not very strong just now.

This is all I have to say on the subject.

STATEMENT OF R. DeC. WARD.

Senator FAIRBANKS. Mr. Ward, you represent the Immigration Restriction League?

Mr. WARD. Yes, sir.

Senator FAIRBANKS. What is your official connection with the league? Mr. WARD. I am chairman of the executive committee.

Senator FAIRBANKS. We are prepared to hear you, Mr. Ward.

Mr. WARD. Mr. Chairman, the Immigration Restriction League has long felt the need of an act codifying and perfecting the existing immigration laws, and therefore urges the prompt passage of the bill (H. R. 12199), which embodies the recommendations of the United States Industrial Commission and the United States immigration officials on this matter.

The league desires to call especial attention to the section of this bill which embodies the educational test for immigrants, and to urge the immediate passage of the bill with this section included.

The league does not wish on this occasion to present any argument for the restriction of immigration in general. It offers no statistics of the numbers, nationalities, or characteristics of recent immigrants. It does not at this time discuss the relations of immigration to population, etc. Nor does it propose to give any lengthy statement of the reasons for adopting the educational test. These matters have all been discussed in the publications of the league, numbered 30, 31, and 34, which are herewith submitted.

An excellent general summary of the case for the educational test will be found on page 23 of Senate Report 290, Fifty-fourth Congress, first session, from Senator Lodge, chairman of the Senate Committee on Immigration. This summary reads thus:

"The results of all the tables given above may be summarized as follows: They show that the illiteracy test will affect almost entirely those races whose immigration to the United States has begun in very recent times, and which are most alien in language and origin to the people who founded the thirteen colonies and have built up the United States; that it would tell most heavily against those classes of immigrants which now furnish the paupers, diseased, and criminals, excluded by existing law, and is therefore a continuance of the present policy of the United States which has met with general acceptance; that the immigrants who would be excluded by the illiteracy test do not go out into the Western and Southern States, where immigration is needed, and become an agricultural population, but remain almost entirely in the Atlantic States, and in the great centers of population where the labor market is already overcrowded; that the illiterate immigrants who would be excluded by the bill proposed by the committee are largely congested in great cities and furnish a large proportion of the slum population; that the illiteracy test would shut out those classes of immigrants which statistics show contribute most heavily to pauperism, crime, and juvenile delinquents, and that with two exceptions none of the excluded races, as is shown by the letters of the governors of the different States, are desired in twenty-six States of the Union from which reports have been received. In one word, it may be said that this measure will exclude a larger number of undesirable immigrants and a smaller number of desirable immigrants, so far as statistics can be relied upon, than any restriction which could be devised."

PRESENT DEMAND FOR RESTRICTION.

Mr. Shattuc, chairman of the House Committee on Immigration, in the House of Representatives, May 21, said regarding the present demand for the further restriction of immigration:

"With almost unanimous voice the labor interests of the country have asked from Congress legislation for further and more effective restriction of immigration. Nor is this demand confined to one division of the people. It is sustained by the press, urged by economists and publicists, and indorsed by the platforms of political parties. All unite upon the need of immediate action. * Organized labor stands as a unit in demands upon Congress for further restriction. * * * The demand for effective restriction is universal and imperative."

*

This demand, which is so strong and so universal, is overwhelmingly in favor of an educational test, as is shown by the fact that while about 650 petitions in favor of restriction in general have been sent to the present Congress, there have been over 4,000 petitions in favor of the educational test.

This demand gives the bill the right to immediate consideration.

EDUCATIONAL TEST NO NEW THING.

Bills embodying the educational test in substantially the same form as that in which it appears in the present bill were passed by the Fiftyfourth Congress, as follows: House of Representatives, May 20, 1896, by a vote of 195 to 26; Senate, December 17, 1896, by a vote of 52 to 10. The conference report passed the House of Representatives Feb

ruary 9, 1897, by a vote of 217 to 37, and passed the Senate February 17, 1897, by a vote of 34 to 31. The bill was vetoed by President Cleveland March 2, 1897, and was passed over the veto by the House of Representatives March 3, 1897, by a vote of 193 to 37.

In the Fifty-fifth Congress an educational test bill passed the Senate January 17, 1898, by a vote of 45 to 28.

In the present House of Representatives the educational test amendment to H. R. 12199 was adopted by a vote of 86 to 7.

This, therefore, is no new measure. It has the weight of many heavy, non partisan majorities behind it.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE EDUCATIONAL TEST.

We desire to comment briefly on a few of the arguments which are commonly urged against the educational test.

I. It is urged that we need illiterate immigrants to do the lower forms of hard, manual labor.

In this connection we quote the late Gen. Francis A. Walker, superintendent of the censuses of 1870 and 1880, and one of the ablest of American economists and statisticians.

66

We have of late had a very curious demonstration of the entire fallacy of the popular mode of reasoning on this subject, due to the arrival of a still lower laboring class. Within a few years, Harper's Weekly had an article in which the editor, after admitting that the Italians who have recently come in such vast numbers to our shores do not constitute a desirable element of the population, either socially or politically, yet claimed that it was a highly providential arrangement, since the Irish, who formerly did all the work of the country in the way of ditching and trenching, were now standing aside. We have only to meet the argument thus in its second generation, so to speak, to see the complete fallacy of such reasoning. Does the Italian come because the Irishman refuses to work in ditches and trenches, in gangs; or has the Irishman taken this position because the Italian has come? The latter is undoubtedly the truth."

* * *

"If the present immigration of the less and less desirable races continues," General Walker goes on to say, "we shall soon find the Italians standing on their dignity, and deeming themselves too good to work on streets and sewers and railroads. But meanwhile, What of the Republic? What of the American standard of living? What of the American rate of wages?

"All that sort of reasoning about the necessity of having a mean kind of man to do a mean kind of work is greatly to be suspected. It is not possible to have a man who is too good to do any kind of work which the welfare of his family and of the community requires to be done. So long as we were left to increase out of the loins of our people, such a sentiment as that we are now commenting upon made no appearance in American life. It is much to be doubted whether any material growth which is to be secured only by the degradation of our citizenship is a national gain, even from the most materialistic point of view."

Furthermore, admitting that many of the present illiterate immigrants can be put to work at once at low wages in our present extraordinary prosperity, it must be remembered that those who do this hard manual labor do not comprise nearly all of our immigrants who are illiterate. Thus, while the southern Italians, and the Poles, and