CHAPTER III.

THE END OF STATE LEGISLATION.

(1860-1882.)

Aside from the coolie and the homestead acts of 1862, the first of which was chiefly to keep Americans from carrying on a business in coolies between China and the West Indies, and the second of which affected immigration only in that it permitted aliens who had declared their intention of becoming citizens to enjoy the provisions of the act, the principal immigrant legislation of this period was the law of July 4, 1864, to encourage immigration. This is the only time that the National Government has attempted to encourage immigration by direct legislation, although the States have frequently done so.

President Lincoln in his annual message to the 37th Congress, 1st session, recommended a colonization scheme for taking care of liberated negroes. This, he said, would leave "additional room for white men remaining or coming here." He also favored a scheme of the Territories for encouraging immigration. In a subsequent message, December 8, 1863, he strongly recommended legislation which would encourage immigration, saying:

I again submit to your consideration the expediency of establishing a system for the encouragement of immigration. Although this source of national wealth and strength is again flowing with greater freedom than for several years before the insurrection occurred, there is still a great deficiency of laborers in every field of industry, especially in agriculture and in our mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals. While the demand for labor is thus increased here, tens of thousands of persons destitute of remunerative occupation are thronging our foreign consulates and offering to emigrate to the United States if essential but very cheap assistance can be afforded them. It is very easy to see that under the sharp discipline of civil war the Nation is beginning a new life. This noble effort demands the aid and ought to receive the attention and support of the Government.

In the House of Representatives December 15, 1863, the above part of President Lincoln's message was referred to a select committee of five members, Messrs. Washburne of Illinois, Grinnell, Law, and Baldwin of Massachusetts, and Rollins of Missouri.

In the following April the committee brought in a bill to encourage immigration. The committee in recommending the passage of the bill said that the vast number of laboring men, estimated at nearly one million and a quarter, who had left their peaceful pursuits and gone forth in defense of the Government, had created a vacuum which was becoming seriously felt in every portion of the country. Never before in our history had there existed such a demand for labor.

a H. R. 411, Thirty-eighth Congress, first session.

House Report No. 56, Thirty-eighth Congress, first session.

In view of the fact that the industrial population of the United States had been reduced more than 1,000,000 men, a large proportion of the able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 35, it became a matter of the highest importance that their loss should be supplied and that the labor which they had performed and which had added so much to the aggregate wealth of the Nation should be replaced. The committee concluded that the demand for labor could be supplied only by immigration.

This bill passed the House April 21, 1864. In the Senate it was referred to the Committee on Agriculture, which reported back Senate bill No. 125 as a substitute.

While the House in the second section of its bill provided that contracts could be made whereby emigrants should pledge the wages of their labor to repay the expenses of their emigration and also provided for the enforcement of these contracts, the Senate committee felt that it could not recommend such radical legislation, even though they deemed the encouragement of foreign immigration of the highest importance. The rapid growth of our country they accredited to three equal causes: First, the extent of unoccupied soil, with a climate and fertility not surpassed in any portion of the world; second, a native population, free, hardy, and industrious, improved by a mixture of the blood of all European nations; and, third, the annual addition to, and adoption into, our population of a large number of immigrants, whose labor added to our annual production an amount increasing at a compound ratio.

Though stronger in their approval of the immigrant than the House, the Senate did not go to such extremes in its bill. It provided that authentic information of the inducements to immigrate to this country be disseminated in Europe; that the immigrant be protected from the impositions then generally practiced upon him by immigrant runners and the like; and that his transportation from New York to the place of his destination, or to the place where his labor and skill would be most productive, be facilitated in every way possible.

On June 27, 1864, this bill passed the Senate. The conference report on it was made on July 2, 1864, and quickly agreed to on the same day by both the Senate and the House. It received the approval of the President July 4, 1864."

LAW TO ENCOURAGE IMMIGRATION.

The law enacted resembled the bill originally introduced in the House. It provided for the appointment by the President of a commissioner of immigration, to be under the direction of the Department of State, and that all contracts that should be made by emigrants to the United States in foreign countries, in conformity to regulations that might be established by the said commissioner, whereby emigrants pledged the wages of their labor for a term not exceeding 12 months to repay the expenses of emigration, should be held to be valid in law and might be enforced in the courts of the United States or of the several States and Territories, and no such

"Appendix B, p. 95 (13 Stat. L., p. 385).

contract could in any way be considered as creating the condition of slavery or servitude. It also provided that no emigrant could be compulsorily enrolled for military service unless he should voluntarily renounce allegiance to the country of his birth and declare his intention of becoming a citizen of the United States. An immigration office was to be established in New York City in charge of a superintendent of immigration, who should arrange for transportation for immigrants to their final destination and protect them from imposition and fraud. The appropriation carried by the bill was $25,000.

This policy of encouragement was approved by the Republican Party in its convention of June 7, 1864, in the following provision:

Resolved, That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources, and increase of power to the Nation-the asylum of the oppressed of all nations-should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.

In a message to Congress at the following session President Lincoln referred to the law of 1864 and recommended that it be amended to prevent immigrants from being imposed upon during the passage and after arriving here, so that they might secure a free choice of avocations and places of settlement. The select committee in the House appointed to consider immigration reported a bill (H. R. 746) aiming to correct the faults of the law. It passed the House February 24, 1865, but was not acted upon in the Senate. A similar bill was presented in the Senate, but no agreement was reached.

Following the enactment of the law of 1864, several companies were established to deal in immigrant contract labor. They were not satisfied with the law and wanted its scope enlarged. The American Emigrant Society, one of these companies, recommended to Congress" that foreign laborers breaking their contracts forfeit double the amount remaining unpaid of the expenses advanced by the employer, and that contracts with foreign minors and married women be validated, as many of their contracts were made with these two classes. These demands received some attention in Congress, and on May 1, 1866, the House passed a bill amending the act of 1864. Its principal provision sought to increase the number of commissioners of immigration, putting them in several cities along the Atlantic coast. Some provisions were also made for the safety of passengers in transit. The Senate, however, would not agree to any such additions. The original bill was even declared impolitic, if not unconstitutional, and it came near being repealed. The workings of the Bureau of Immigration in New York were attacked, and especially its connection with the American Emigrant Company. Senator Morrill, of Maine, in reviewing the results of the law of 1864, said:

All on earth that this Bureau of Immigration has done since 1864 is to act in harmony and in subordination to that emigration society or company incorporated by the State of New York and doing business at the city of New York. The Commissioner or Superintendent of Immigration has held his office in their office. He has cooperated with them. They have made the contracts, and he has sanctioned the contracts. They have made the contracts for foreign labor and sent out for foreign immigrants, and he has ratified those contracts.

Senate Mis. Doc. 13, Thirty-eighth Congress, second session. Congressional Globe, July 22, 1866, Thirty-ninth Congress, first session.

* He, then, paid by the Government of the United States, has done nothing else and the report shows that fact-but to cooperate with the immigrant company in New York, to render that company efficient, and enable them, through the power of the Central Government, to enforce the contracts which they make in foreign countries for the importation of this labor.

Although generally admitting its defects and refusing to extend its provisions to other cities, as proposed by the House, by passing the amending act, the Senate refused to repeal the law.

About this time one of the first official protests against using the United States as a "dumping ground" for criminals by foreign governments was entered by Congress, the following joint resolution being passed and approved by the President April 17, 1866:

Whereas it appears from official correspondence that the authorities of Baseland, a Canton of Switzerland, have recently undertaken to pardon a person convicted of murder on the condition that he would emigrate to the United States, and there is reason to believe that similar pardons of persons convicted of infamous offenses have been granted in other countries: Now, therefore,

Resolved by the Senate, etc., That the Congress of the United States protests against such acts as unfriendly and inconsistent with the comity of nations, and hereby requests the President of the United States to cause a copy of this protest to be communicated to the representatives of the United States in foreign countries, with instructions to present to the governments where they are accredited, respectively, and to insist that no such acts shall under any circumstances be repeated.

In the Fortieth Congress two bills were introduced providing for agencies for the promotion of immigration to be located in Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. For these two bills was substituted one which provided that the work to be done by these special agents be done instead by United States consuls. No favorable action was taken, however, and the brief period of national encouragement to immigration was over when, on March 4, 1868, the law of 1864 was repealed by a clause in the consular and diplomatic act. Its repeal was but a natural result of the close of the war. Though the platform of the Republican Party in its convention of that year reiterated its views in regard to encouraging immigration, the country evidently felt that the radical measures adopted in 1864 were not necessary in a time of peace.

OPPOSITION TO CONTRACT LABOR.

In the Forty-first Congress the campaign against contracting for foreign labor first began. House bill 563 of this Congress, introduced by Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, being an exact opposite of the law of 1864 encouraging immigration. This bill, which was not acted upon, provided that any contract made in foreign countries whereby immigrants pledged service or labor to be performed upon arrival in the United States should not be enforced in any federal or state court. Proceedings in Congress for the next few years, while showing a general sentiment against the importation of contract labor, although in favor of the immigration of worthy foreigners, are interesting chiefly as showing the circumstances which led to the change of control of immigration from the various States to the National Government.

a 15 Stat. L., p. 58.