of certain of his ideas that they did not fit into an immigration bill. They belonged in legislation dealing with seamen, from the seaman's point of view rather than the immigration point of view. I explained that to Mr. Furuseth, and he said, “All right; let us leave them alone." I took the rest of them and put them into the shape in which you now find them.

Now, I have had a great deal of experience with the application of the immigration law to seamen. I had particular charge of that, as I had of all the legal matters throughout the country during the time when I was law officer of the bureau. We all realized when the act of 1917 was being passed, coming right on top of the La Follette bill, that there was going to be a great deal of difficulty with that question. There was not time at the time that that bill was being considered to go into it. In fact, we had no experience on which to go into it.

So those provisions of the 1917 act were passed in such shape as to leave it to the Secretary of Labor to make regulations, it being specified, however, that the regulations should be of such a character as not to interfere with the operation of the seamen's act. Then we proceeded, in the spring of 1917, to do the best we could with the regulations. One of the provisions that we adopted was this idea with regard to seamen's cards. That was not altogether a new idea. It followed along the general lines of the practice in England of furnishing the seamen with what they called a continuous discharge tag, in which the seamen is identified and described and which he carries with him always. Then the war came along and all kinds of additional problems arose with regard to seamen. We had to devise plans by cooperation with the Department of Justice, the State Department and other departments under which we could handle the seamen's business in such a way as not to allow alien enemies to get into the country. I think we did pretty well with it. I mention this as showing the evolution of the card proposition.

it

Sometime ago, two and one-half or three years, the department abandoned that system of cards. I think the excuse for doing so was the lack of appropriation, which the department is always up against more or less. So that the situation to-day, as I see it now, more from the outside than from the inside, is simply that any system of immigration control that you gentlemen may devise is going, seems to me, to be largely ineffective if the side door is left open, as Mr. Furuseth aptly terms it. You have got coming right into our ports, right through doors where they can step right in, about a million of these people every year. Some years there are more and some years there are less. Now, as the thing stands to-day, those men to a very large extent are examined rather cursorily on medical questions. Beyond that, they can go through. I am speaking now of European seamen. With regard to Asiatic seamen, the department has endeavored to exact a bond, which they fixed at the amount of $500. The upshot of that is that the Chinaman pays the $500 head tax and gets into the United States.

That kind of a system, if carried on, ought to be carried on frankly. Exact your head tax and get your Chinamen. Canada has been doing that, with the result that Canada has gotten the money and we have gotten most of the Chinamen.

Now, as a lawyer who has handled a good many Chinese questions, and I am speaking now of a bona fide case, I know that any Chinaman is willing to pay $1,000 to get his son into the United States. It usually costs him that before he gets through with his medical examinations and treatments and then pays his attorneys for drawing up the papers. Now, under the arrangement that exists to-day with regard to Chinese seamen the man signs on the ship, he pays no fare, and he works his way to Seattle or San Francisco. Then a $500 bond is put up for him, and he can skip. Paying $500 is a cheap way of getting into the United States.

Now, these are some of the problems you have to deal with. Another one is the difficulty Mr. Furuseth spoke of, one that I tried my best to prevent while I was in the Immigration Bureau, that of bringing over these Chinese crews, carrying them to New York and holding them there on the vessel until the vessel was ready to go out. The CHAIRMAN. Have you any idea what proportion of the seamen you spoke of would be oriental?

Mr. PARKER. I could only make a very rough guess. Certainly not over 25 per cent.

Mr. FURUSETH. About 22 to 25 per cent.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, how do the others get in?

Mr. PARKER. They are examined medically; there is no bond required, and they go through under the La Follette Seamen's Act. They have a right to go through, ostensibly for the purpose of reshipping again, and a great many of the regular seamen do. They look for some other ship that suits them better.

The CHAIRMAN. Under what conditions do they go ashore?
Mr. PARKER. No conditions whatever.

The CHAIRMAN. No regulations?

Mr. PARKER. None that really amount to anything. He is not even furnished with an identification card.

The CHAIRMAN. You say the landing card has been abandoned? Mr. PARKER. Yes; except where a man is signing out of the foreign trade and going into the coastwise trade. Then they furnish that man with a card. However, as far as these thousands who are coming ashore in the regular pursuit of their calling-some of them bona fide seamen whom we do not need to fear at all as long as they are examined medically, but others merely pretending to be examined there is no control of it, and there is no record of the man kept in such way as will locate and identify him.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that not due to the absence of regulations which the department has power to make under the act of 1917?

Mr. PARKER. I think they have power to make regulations of the kind we had before. Those regulations required a card.

Senator KING. Are there now effective administrative methods for the purpose of detecting and barring those who may come ashore and who do not reship in other vessels?

Mr. PARKER. No. You see, you have no basis for a follow-up system on them. If you have a duplicate of his card, with his photograph, in your files I will give an illustration of a case I know about. One of the inspectors from the Bureau of Immigration not so long ago was sent up into northern Pennsylvania to make an investigation of a suspected violation of the alien contract labor laws. He

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ran across a number of people there, some of them orientals and some of them from the Near East, that seemed to him probably to have no business being there, and he commenced to examine them.

Practically all of them stood out on the proposition that they had been here for a number of years, and finally in one or two cases he developed the fact that the men had been seamen and that they had come in during a certain year before these cards had been abolished. He immediately send down to Ellis Island and had the cards examined, and he found the records of these men. By that means, he broke down the whole crowd of these fellows, and they were deported. They had no right in the country at all. They had come as seamen deserters and had gone up there to work in some industry. That illustrates the use of that card, and it also illustrates what a man is up against if he has not the card. If he has not the card, he has nothing to go by. If a man stands up and says he came into the United States five and one-half years ago you have no way of successfully disputing that.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. I notice that one of the sections of this amendment provides that no ships may enter one of our ports except in distress carrying Chinese seamen. Under the La Follette law, it could come in with 40 per cent of its crew Chinese, could it not?

Mr. PARKER. Yes, sir.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. So that to that extent this would amend the La Follette law?

Mr. PARKER. To that extent it changes the operation of the La Follette law.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. Under the La Follette law, you could come in with a crew that was 100 per cent Lascar if they could all understand the English language?

Mr. PARKER. Yes.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. And to that extent that would amend the La Follette law?

Mr. PARKER. Yes.

Senator WILLIS. Suppose that is a Chinese ship. Then they could come in with all Chinamen?

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. So far as this provision is concerned, a Chinese ship could come in with a Chinese crew, but a Japanese ship could not bring a Chinese crew.

Senator WILLIS. What I am getting at is this: Would not section (f) discriminate very seriously as against American ships?

Mr. PARKER. The discrimination would be general. The discrimination there would not be against American ships. It would be against British and Scandanavian ships and, of course, to some extent theoretically against American ships, but not nearly to the extent that it would against other ships.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. Let us put it this way: The Japanese Pacific liners would have to dismiss all of these Chinese seamen?

Mr. PARKER. Yes, sir.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. And they carry a considerable number now?

Mr. PARKER. They do.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. The British ships on the Pacific would have to drop all their Lascars, would they not?

Mr. PARKER. Yes, sir.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. And they use a good many now? Mr. PARKER. I do not know whether they are using so many now. They did at one time use a great many.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. Almost all of the boats that go to India and the Straits Settlements carry them?

Mr. FURUSET. The majority of them have white men now.

Senator WILLIS. I can not see why section (e) does not accomplish the thing you want to accomplish.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. It occurs to me that this is a rather comprehensive provision of the provisions of the La Follette bill. I do not feel competent to pass on it.

Mr. FURUSETH. It does not change the law at all. It stops the violations of it.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. Oh, no. At present it is no violation of law for an American ship to come to a Pacific port with 40 per cent of its crew non-English speaking Chinese, is it?"

Mr. FURUSETH. No; that is to say, all of the men who are not officers. They can come with anybody if they can understand the English language. As a matter of fact, here is what takes place when it comes to examining them on the language clause. In one examination the man said he would "coil the smokestack into the engineroom," and yet he was passed as knowing enough to be on board the ship. Now, the language clause of the seamen's act is as dead as Cæsar as it stands to-day. It was intended not to deal with the question of raises, but the question of safety. Notoriously, a man who can not understand the language of the officers is of no use on board a ship in case of disaster.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. Section (f) would resurrect Cæsar, so to speak?

Mr. FURUSETH. It will help too, to some extent; however, that is not the purpose of it here. The question here is, do you want to exclude them? If you want to exclude them, that is the way to do it.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Parker, could you not explain in a general way the necessity for the provisions contained in the King amendment? I mean, what the provisions are, generally, and the necessity for passing them.

Mr. PARKER. Well, Senator, I think I have pretty well covered the card proposition. I expect every one will agree with that, that a card, for identification purposes, if you are going to have a law that deals with seamen, is a useful thing.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there not the power now to provide regulations as to a card?

Mr. PARKER, Yes; I think there is, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the necessity for legislating on it, if you have all the power now under the present law?

Mr. PARKER. Of course, I no longer have anything to do with the passage of the regulations.

The CHAIRMAN. If the department already has this power of requiring a card, under the law of 1917, why are you asking us to do that?

Mr. FURUSETH. May I answer that question? I have appealed to the department for three years, in every way that it was possible for me to appeal to anybody, and they refused to do it.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, you have answered it exactly.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. The present law says they can; this says they must. That is the difference.

Mr. PARKER. That is the difference. There is some difference of opinion, I imagine, among the officers in the department. Some of them might say to me, "Parker, of course there is chance for a difference of opinion there." But I think they have the power now to do it, but the law does not say they must do it. This provision would make it obligatory upon them, and would lay the foundation for them to say to the appropriation committees of the two Houses that they must have the money to do it. That is the advantage of that. That is the reason we put it here, to round this thing out.

Senator KING. Now, passing to the other provisions of the bill, state what they are and how they would interfere, if at all, with the rights of seamen of other countries.

Mr. PARKER. You asked a question a while ago with regard to paragraph (e) [reading]:

All vessels entering ports of the United States manned with crews engaged and taken on at foreign ports shall when departing from the United States ports carry a crew of at least equal number, and any such vessel which falls to comply with this requirement shall be refused clearance,

Now, the object there is simply to keep this seamen business from increasing the alien population of the country.

Senator REED of Pennsylvania. This does not require them to take out alien seamen. If they take out Americans they are all right. Mr. Furuseth, we did not consider that we could require them to take out alien seamen. As a practical proposition, however, it would work out that the vast majority that they would take out would be alien seamen. There would be some Americans, but the number of them would be negligible.

Mr. FURUSETH. The number of Americans that sail on foreign ships is so insignificant that you could count them on your fingers. The number of Americans who used to sail on British ships prior to the La Follette Act was a large number. Those who sailed there came back to their own country. As a result of this, if it is adopted, the shipowners are going to fill up their vessels with the cheapest men they can get, and they are going to take some of the rubbish that they brought in.

Mr. PARKER. In discussing this with Mr. Furuseth, I repeatedly asked him the question as to how this would operate internationally; that is, as to whether this thing would be inequitable and wrong from the international point of view; in other words, as to what other countries were doing along the same lines. He brought me this volume of the marine act and I looked into the question quite a bit. I was surprised to find that practically all of the foreign countries in effect require that their vessels shall bring back to those countries the men they carried away; so that as far as any inequity on that score is concerned, I satisfied myself that there was none. When a ship sails out of Great Britain, under the regulations of