In section 1 the head tax upon alien passengers, which constitutes a permanent appropriation for the enforcement of the immigration laws, is increased to $3 from the $1 now charged. Since the proposed law includes the provisions of what is known as the alien contract labor laws, the cost of administering which is now defrayed by a special annual appropriation from the funds in the Treasury, it is claimed that some such increase is necessary. The adoption of an educational test, furthermore, which is provided for in section 3, will involve an increased expenditure for the employment of additional officers, etc., on the one hand, while on the other its application will, by reducing considerably the number of alien arrivals, lesson the collections from that source. The amount of increase, therefore, seems not unreasonable.

The exemption from the payment of a head tax on citizens of Canada and Mexico coming into the United States, adopted obviously for the purpose of avoiding any unnecessary obstacles to free intercourse between peoples who, by reason of close proximity and intimate commercial and social relations, have reciprocal interests in maintaining the privilege of unobstructed passage to and fro across our land boundaries is extended in section 1 to bona fide residents of those countries for a continuous period of one year, such residence being assumed as evidence of permanent location therein, and the same reasoning against the payment of a head tax by citizens being applicable to such payment by actual residents therein. The same exemption is also extended to citizens and similar residents of the Republic of Cuba, a country to which the United States bears peculiar relations and to whose people it is under those obligations, self-imposed, which arise out of its avowed purposes in regard to the establishment of that new-born nation in the enjoyment of constitutional liberty.

Provision is also made in the same section for the payment by land transportation companies upon alien passengers, other than those excepted, brought by said companies over our land boundaries, of the head tax imposed upon vessels bringing such passengers to our seaports, thus equalizing the burdens imposed in this respect.upon both agencies of migration into the United States. The section concludes with a proviso which will enable the Secretary of the Treasury, if such a plan is desirable, to collect, as is now done, at the seaport of arrival in foreign contiguous countries, the head tax upon aliens coming directly from such seaports to the United States, instead of at the place of crossing on our land boundaries.

In section 2 there are added to the classes of aliens already excluded by law from admission to the United States epileptics, persons who have been insane within five years previous to seeking such admission, persons who have had two or more attacks of insanity at any time previously, anarchists or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of all government or of all forms of law or the assassination of public officials, prostitutes and persons who procure or attempt to bring in prostitutes or women for the purpose of prostitution. It seems unnecessary to offer any justification for adding such aliens to the excluded classes, since they either become public charges within a short time, constitute a menace to our social and political order, or conduce to the moral and physical degradation of the American people. It appears singular that these classes should not have been in terms heretofore barred entry to the United States,

!

thus relieving administrative officers of the necessity of refusing them as likely to become public charges, upon the theory that the mental or moral obliquity of such persons will bring them sooner or later to pauperism.

This section also enlarges the definition of what is known as the alien contract labor class so as to include, with those who migrate to this country in pursuance of the terms of an actual enforceable contract, such aliens as are induced to come here in response to solicitations or promises of work, the evil to be equally met in the case of all such immigration being not the character of the contract or agreement under which an alien seeks our shores, but the fact that he was induced so to come by some one who proposed to utilize his services to the detriment of native or resident labor, which, though equally competent and accessible, may not be so compliant, either as respects compensation or hours of daily work. The provision in the existing law which permits the importation of aliens under contract to perform labor in this country "in and upon any new industry not at present established in the United States, provided that skilled labor for that purpose can not be otherwise obtained," is also amended by eliminating all reference to the stage of development of the industry upon which such imported alien labor is to work.

The eliminated portion has been productive of much embarrassment, both as regards the time referred to by the words "at present" and as to how long an industry may be deemed to be in process of development, and therefore not fully "established." It is clear, too, that it serves no practical purpose. If the labor imported does not displace American labor, whatever use it may be put to it does not come within the purpose of the law for the protection of Americans from unfair competition, but, on the other hand, its exclusion, by retarding the growth and multiplication of our industries, would choke the opening of new avenues to American thrift, industry, and adaptability. This section provides, therefore, that alien labor may always be imported under contract to work in the United States "if labor of like kind unemployed can not be found in this country."

Section 3 of the measure is a substitute for the same section in the act (H. R. 12199) as passed by the House of Representatives, substantially making the same provisions, but drawn with more care and with a due regard to other legislation, as well as to the preservation, without unnecessary interference, of the freedom of our commercial intercourse with other countries. It is new legislation both as regards the establishment of an educational qualification for aliens seeking admission to our country and as to the control of alien immigration across our land boundaries. No thoughtful student of the ever-increasing tide of aliens sweeping into our country, under the combined inducements of a natural desire to profit by the stability and prosperity of our industrial, social, and political life, with its boundless opportunities for the development of the individual, of oppression, class and race legislation in foreign countries, and of thrift and enterprise_on the part of vast investments in the transportation business, can view the subject of immigration without grave concern as to its ultimate results. There is no point where a rest may be made and a balance struck in the account, so that in the light of such balance measures may be adopted to avoid the risks of altering completely the complexion of our population by admixture with another, which, be it

remembered, with but slight and formal restrictions, under our naturalization laws, can be, and usually is, in a few short years clothed with all the rights, privileges, and immunities of American citizenship. Who can feel assured that in a brief generation or two those traits of personal character-the love of constitutional freedom, the willing obedience to constituted law and authority, the sturdy self-reliance, the veneration for the sanctities of our domestic, moral, and religious institutions, to which every battlefield of our country has been an altar of voluntary human sacrifice-upon which the stability of our existence as a free people depends, may not become so adulterated that those other traits, borne of ages of oppression and social and political heresy, may not become predominant? Such a contingency may be remote, but that there should be such a contingency, with all the dangers entailed thereupon, must give check to the most thoughtless and vainglorious advocates of the doctrine that our country is, without regard to our own interests, an open "asylum for the oppressed of all nations.

The above table will show that although we have legislated to keep back the physically and mentally unsound, the financially and industrially undesirable, the morally perverted, the tide of alien immigration is increasing. With the inducements referred to hereinbefore, there is no reasonable prospect of any but a transient change in this respect. Our very prosperity as a people constitutes in this regard our chief danger. There is yet one undesirable characteristic of human nature, conspicuous among the alien accessions to our population which remains for us to proscribe. It is a characteristic which costs this country millions annually to eradicate from its own citizens. It is in this of all countries on the earth, an acknowledged evil, and yet our gates are open to it wide and unobstructed. It is the ignorance of illiteracy. The knowlege of letters or of anything else, it may be frankly admitted, is not a guaranty of good character any more than a lack of such knowledge is a proof of vice. But it is beyond question the basis of all training for mental and moral elevation.

The fact that it has been put to an evil use by some of those who possess it, as well as that some who are ignorant prove upright and useful citizens, in no degree affects the merit of the proposition that in a large sense the human race has been raised to intelligence, so far as it has been raised, by education, and fundamentally by acquiring the power to read, and intelligence, it seems hardly necessary to say, affords the means to its possessor of becoming useful. From this point of view, the desirability of excluding those aliens who can not read, who have not even so much of the elementary knowledge to constitute intelligent and therefore useful citizenship, seems obvious to require further argument.

Section 3 also establishes certain exclusive ports of entry for aliens, not citizens or bona fide residents of Canada or Mexico, along the boundary lines between those countries and the United States. Such a provision has been recommended for years by the CommissionerGeneral of Immigration, who has adduced strong practical reasons in support of such recommendation. It has also been urged by the transportation lines whose vessels ply directly from trans-Oceanic points to ports of this country, claiming, with abundant show of reason, that the absence of such legislation has operated as a discrimination against them and in favor of the vessels running to the ports of Canada. The reports of the administrative officers of the Government show that the result of increased efficiency in the enforcement of the law at seaports of the United States has been a proportionate increase of immigration through Canadian ports.

Evidence has accumulated in such abundance as to leave no reasonable doubt that agents in Europe find their profit in sending by the Canadian routes many who would be promptly rejected if examined at an American port, representing to them that, once landed in Canada as their ostensible destination, they can readily gain access to the United States at any point along the boundary line. By this means many of the pauper class, but still more of those who are afflicted with contagious diseases, gain unlawful admission. Under the authority of an agreement between the Canadian transportation lines and the Secretary of the Treasury, officers are now stationed at Montreal, who detect such cases and report them to the railway lines crossing the border, the latter on receipt of such notice refusing to sell tickets to such aliens. This plan, however, has proved only partially successful, as the rejected aliens, with the aid of experienced smugglers, succeed in effecting a crossing at some unguarded point from places near our border to which they can purchase transportation.

If captured, in such instances the administrative officers under the laws now in force can only return them to Canada, whence they can repeat, with the precautions suggested by adverse experience, their attempt to enter this country. To this endless chain" the proposed law opposes a provision for the deportation to the transoceanic port of embarkation of all aliens who enter the United States at other than the specified ports, which represent all the principal railway and steamship crossings on the frontier. Such a device, once in operation, will both remove such aliens beyond the chance of making a second attempt to violate the law when once apprehended, and at the same time refute the representations of foreign ticket agents by which aliens of the prohibited classes are induced to ship for Canada as a means of successfully escaping the rejection which would await them at an American

port. To omit such legislation in view of past experience would be to virtually abrogate the immigration laws by challenging the ingenuity of smugglers to pass forbidden aliens through Mexico and Canada into this country.

Notwithstanding the explicit prohibition of the present law, it has been found impossible to prevent the steamship companies from bringing diseased aliens to our ports. Once on this side, every argument and influence that can be used is resorted to either to effect the landing of such aliens or their treatment in hospital as a preliminary to such landing. Expert medical testimony is secured to attack the diagnosis of the examining surgeons, and even to question the contagious nature of the disease. Pitiable stories are told of the separation of parents from young children to induce officers to relax in the discharge of their plain duty. Great charitable organizations intervene, and even political influence is invoked for the same purpose, the steamship companies themselves even, either covertly or openly, displaying a spirit of resistance to the law. If all these obstacles to the execution of the law fail of their purpose and the alien, afflicted with tuberculosis, favus, or trachoma, is sent back, still by the willful or indifferent defiance of this sanitary law, the design sought by its passage is defeated, for hundreds may possibly have been, indeed almost certainly have been, exposed to the disease in the steerage on the way over, may have been infected by it, and landed before it has reached a stage of development sufficiently advanced to be detected by medical inspection.

Section 10 of the measure under consideration therefore imposes a penalty of $100 to be imposed by the Secretary of the Treasury for each case brought to an American port, provided that in his judgment the disease might have been detected by means of medical examination at the port of embarkation. This sufficiently guards the transportation lines from an unjust and hasty imposition of the penalty, assures a careful observance of the law, and leaves in their own hands the power to escape even a risk of the fine being imposed, since they can refuse to take on board even the most doubtful case until certified by competent medical authority to be entirely cured. Sections 11 and 12 provide, respectively, for the return with helpless aliens who are refused admission their accompanying guardians, and deprives of the right of appeal to the Treasury Department those aliens whose rejection is based upon the certificate of medical officers.

Section 17 holds the transportation companies liable, where aliens brought by them are temporarily landed for examination, for the expense of their maintenance but relieves such companies of the responsibility or the safeguarding of such aliens while the latter are held in suitable buildings by the immigration officers pending consideration of their right to land.

Section 18 prescribes the qualifications of the medical examiners, to insure both the thorough enforcement of the law and the protection of the transportation companies and the aliens from the hardships of incompetent medical examinations.

To the penalty imposed for improper or unlawful landing of any alien, section 19 adds a provision for the deportation of the alien so landed.

Authority is given in section 20 for the detention, at the expense of the immigrant fund, of aliens found ineligible to land as contract