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Survey. 25:715-16. February 4, 1911

Selection of Immigrants. Edward T. Devine

On the main subject the Immigration Commission has spoken clearly and its recommendation should become law. There must be effective restriction and selection for the purpose of maintaining American standards of living. In reply to the demand for a more rigorous selection of immigrants we hear two mutually contradictory assertions. One is that there are not enough immigrants to do any harm-after allowance is made for those who return. The other is that we have no standards anyway,at least that there is no one who has a right to speak for them, as we are all immigrants of a first, or a later, generation. Both assertions are untenable. There are, in fact, American standards, transplanted in part by those who founded our republic, developed in part on our own soil, influenced by the reaction of other standards in other nations, and yet distinctively American:-standards moral, political, and economic; standards unique and precious, worth fighting for; worth, if need be, dying for; worth preserving at all hazards for ourselves and our children, and yet not selfishly for our sake and theirs only, but also as a sacred duty towards mankind; and these standards are gravely imperilled by the annual addition of an unsifted million of newcomers whose standards are different from ours.

We do have a right to assert vigorously the value of our national heritage, and, though it may seem old-fashioned to say it, we do have a sacred duty to transmit it unimpaired-which is not to say unchanged-to our posterity. To some extent this heritage is one of race. Its creators gave it to us with their blood. It has been enriched by many crossings of races, but biologists tell us that mingling within limits is beneficial, beyond those limits productive only of a mongrel and degenerate breed. Let no one read into this expression of national responsibility for American standards a shred of bigotry or prejudice against any of the peoples of the earth. Modern social ideals are neither provincial nor sectarian. It is precisely because of a passionate attachment to the true interests of humanity that social workers may look with profound distrust upon the demand for cheap immigrant labor. Genuine humane sentiment is not inconsistent with the maintenance of community and national standards.

Employers of the exploiting type make no mistake, from their own point of view, when they demand cheap immigrant labor. They can figure it out with great precision. They know that as a rule this labor is less skillful, less intelligent, less efficient, less inherently desirable, than the native labor or the earlier immigrant labor from more closely related peoples. But there are great compensations. It is the very best labor in one particular. It can be exploited. That is the whole disagreeable truth in a nutshell. Lower wages, longer hours, crowded living quarters, fewer claimants in case of death or injury from accidents, less trade union "nonsense," fewer trade disputes, less sympathy from the disinterested public for the laborer's side when there is a dispute, less public concern generally as to what is happening in the mill when the laborers are foreigners— such are some of the considerations which throw the balance in favor of immigrant labor. The wages demanded are enough lower to give an ample margin for more effective supervision. The general tendency of improved machinery is to decrease relatively the demand for skilled labor, thus permitting the profitable employment of fresh supplies of entirely unskilled, but physically strong, immigrants. Out on the railways of the Northwest the first object for which immigrants will strike is for the privilege of working twelve hours instead of ten, and the next is for the privilege of working on Sunday. In this instance employers, paying by the hour and not having expensive mills in operation, resist the demand, for the labor of the eleventh and twelfth hours is relatively unproductive. The men are already exhausted. To laborers of a higher standard the leisure for physical recuperation would be worth more than the small addition to their wages. To these men the money is more important. Here we have a simple, but perfect, illustration of that conflict of standards to which the nation as a whole cannot afford to be indifferent.

It is then in the ultimate and in the very immediate interests of the oppressed and struggling everywhere that America should maintain her standards. She may give generously from her surplus. She may enlighten by her example. She may throw her influence and if necessary exert her might against oppression. But one thing she may not do: extinguish the light with which she is to enlighten the world. To lower our own standards is the only treason. To reduce the position of our workingmen to that of the communities from which our immigration

is coming is to destroy, perhaps forever, the very power to

serve.

There should be no opposition or rivalry between the policy of selection and the policy of distribution and assimilation by every practicable device. Both are essential. No restriction which is at all likely to be adopted will sensibly diminish the need for such aid both by philanthropy and by government. Good hard thinking as to how best to assimilate those whom we already have and those who are certain to come even under a policy of much more strict selection is of the utmost importance. Except for the Educational Alliance, the Industrial Removal Society, and the Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants, there has been almost no instructive experiment and scarcely any clear thinking on this subject. Let these experiments by all means be greatly extended, but let us be modest about calling any of them as yet a "true solution of the immigration question." Under the conditions of actual life we shall have to deal in partial solutions, among which, as we have intimated, the recommendation of the Immigrant Commission as to restriction deserves prompt and favorable consideration.

The illiteracy test is crude and unsatisfactory but it is practicable and humane. As a rule ambitious illiterates desiring to migrate can overcome this disqualification and the fact of their having done so will augur well for their future success in the land of their adoption.

Survey. 29: 497-9. January 18, 1913

Democracy and the Illiteracy Test. Joseph Lee

We shall never have true social and political democracy until the lower standard of living and of wages can be raised far above the present level. It is not a question of a bare living wage but of wages on which not only physical existence but real life can be carried on. I believe the thing can be done. I think we can attain a far higher standard than we have so far even learned to aim at. And I believe it is going to be done. But this end will not be attained by simple legislative fiat. We are not going to get high wages simply by decreeing that wages shall be high. That sort of legislation began, so far as Englishspeaking countries are concerned, with the Statute of Laborers, back in the time of Edward III of England. The object of that

statute was not to keep wages up but to keep them down. But with all the prestige and power of the governing classes of those days behind it, it utterly failed because the French wars had so cut down the supply of labor that the economic laws worked against it. The same has been the history of laws fixing commodity prices. If the thing could be accomplished so easily it would have been done long ago; and we should not stop with a living wage but provide that everyone should have comfort and even luxury while we were about it.

But we can get the desired result by working in accordance with economic laws. One of these is the law of supply and demand. There are limits in any country, at any given time, to the demand for unskilled labor. The wages such workers command will depend largely on the supply of them. So long as every rise of wages in this country operates simply to draw in unskilled labor from the inexhaustible supply at starvation level in the Old World, we shall never raise wages in this country very high. It is like trying to bail out the boat without first plugging up the leak, or rather-when the leak is as big as the steamship companies now make it-it is like trying to dig a hole in the surface of the ocean itself. In fact, the argument most commonly used for unrestricted immigration is that it is necessary for the development of our industries, that is, to keep wages down and to encourage enterprises dependent on low-priced labor.

Secondly, restriction is necessary because it is impossible to assimilate foreign populations in unlimited quantities, and is becoming increasingly so, as each new layer of immigration comes in contact with American ideals at a constantly greater remove from the original. The net immigration in the past dozen years has probably been about six million or nearly twice as large as the number of people in this country at the time of the Revolution.

Restriction of immigration is necessary to the establishing of a democratic standard of wages and of living and to the permeation of the mass by American ideals.

The illiteracy test is the best method of restriction that has been suggested. A head tax has the disadvantage of partly impoverishing the immigrant. To wholly exclude any European race would be a poor method because there is no European race of which the best are not desirable. The critics of the illiteracy test have never suggested or attempted to suggest an efficient substitute.

A very curious argument, perhaps the commonest against the illiteracy test, is that it lets in some undesirables-that some bad men can read and write. This argument overlooks the fact that the adoption of this test does not exclude the retention or adoption of other tests. We restrictionists have succeeded in having certain of the least desirable classes excluded, such as the insane, the feeble-minded, convicted criminals, white slaves, the physically unfit to a limited extent, and persons likely to become a public charge. The present Senate bill contains clauses to make these exclusions more effective by stopping some of the holes that our liberal immigration friends have found, or made, in present laws. We shall be glad to help in any further practicable exclusion of the least desirable. Meantime it seems clear that if the illiteracy test is in other respects a good thing, it is not an argument against it that there are some evils which it does not prevent. It might similarly be argued against the prevention of tuberculosis that it is not also a cure for cancer. Indeed, the same argument might be used against the enactment of any law on any other subject.

Secondly it is argued that the illiteracy test will keep out some good people. So undoubtedly would any test. That result is unavoidable unless we are to face the alternative evil of the surrender once for all of American standards and American ideals. So also the African slave trade brought in some good people. Booker Washington is a product of it.

Upon the whole the illiteracy test does exclude the less desirable and admit the more desirable. It would be justified as a selective measure even if positive restriction were not necessary to the preservation and advance of American standards.

Illiteracy itself is an evil in a democracy. I suppose that is why we teach our own children to read and write. At all events we in Massachusetts have been made to feel by recent events that people who cannot read a newspaper, or be reached by ideas through any channel except by words spoken in their native language, are thereby rendered less amenable to public opinion and less easy of assimilation. And illiteracy among those over school age is a handicap which usually lasts for life.

The illiteracy test excludes, upon the whole, those elements of Old World society that are the more backward and the less favorable material for democracy. Education and democracy have always gone hand in hand. It is the more forward and more democratic communities in the Old World that have es