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OAK ST. HDSF

Abridged Debaters' Handbook Series

SELECTED ARTICLES

Restriction of Immigration

COMPILED BY
EDITH M. PHELPS

THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY
NEW YORK

1920

': .1

% EXPLANATORY NOTE

^ With the passage of the Burnett-Dillingham bill in Februar>'
1917, over President Wilson's second veto, there came an end to
the long struggle, waged since 1896, to incorporate the literacy
test into our immigration laws. But this did not prevent de-
mands for further restriction of immigration, as can be shown
by the number of bills introduced into Congress since that date.
Conditions resulting from the war and the uncertainty as to
future immigration have made the question of more importance
than ever. Many feel that the present temporary lull in immi-
gration is the time to shape our course for the future.

The question of prohibiting immigration entirely until condi-
tions approach a normal peace-time basis, is of very recent origin.

• The war has made evident that we have admitted to this country
a large number of people who, for various reasons, have not
become assimilated, and whose present situation is a menace to
our political, social and economic well-being. Some feel that
the remedy lies in further restriction of immigration; others,
rather in better assimilation and distribution of the immigrants.
The varying opinions are set forth in the following pages.

This Handbook conforms to the general plan of the Debat-
ers' Handbook Series in that it contains briefs for both sides of
the question, a selected bibliography, a discussion of the history
and present status of the immigration problem, and reprints of
articles both for and against the proposal to prohibit immigra-
tion for a term of jears. Since this phase of the subject is new,
the bibliography is meagre, but additional arguments can be
found in the older literature listed in the various bibliographies
mentioned.

Edith M. Phelps.
February 3, 1920.

V ^*>56Q

i:(;

BRIEF

Resolvep, That Congress should prohibit immigration into
the United States for four years.

Introduction

I. It is generally admitted that there is need of greater care in

admitting and assimilating the foreign-born who come to
our shores.

II. As part of a program for better assimilation, it is urged that

further immigration to the United States be prohibited
for four years.

III. The issues for debate are

A. Is this legislation necessar>'?

B. Is it advisable for other reasons?

C. Does it have the support of public opinion?

Affirmative

I. It is necessary that immigration into the United States be
prohibited for four 3'^ears.

A. There are alread}' in this countn,- large numbers of
aliens who have not been assimilated.

1. They have come much faster than the\- could be
cared for.

2. A large proportion of them have come from

countries with speech, laws and customs entirely
dissimilar to our own.

3. Many of them are still unfamiliar with our lan-
guage and laws.

B. As soon as ocean transportation is fully re-established,
there will be more immigrants than ever before.

1. Many will come from war-ruined countries to
better their social and economic condition.

2. The decrease in immigration during the war and
at present is purely temporary.

3. Many aliens now returning to Europe will come
back bringing their families and friends with
them.

C. This legislation is needed for economic reasons.

1. The low-skilled occupations into which most immi-

grants enter are considerably overstocked.

2. With the return of our men from Europe and the
closing of many war industries there is increasinia,

unemployrrient.

3. Standards of living and wages cannot be main-
tained in competition with immigrant-recruited re-
serves of unemployment.

D. This legislation is necessary to preserve our ideals
and institutions.

1. Democrac}- can only exist with the maintenance

of a certain standard of living.

2. Our government is threatened by those who do

not understand our ideals and institutions and
seek to overturn them.

II. Prohibition of immigration for four years is desirable for
other reasons.

A. It may serve to convince our middle-class people of
/ the dignity and worth of hand labor.

B. It will preserve the integrit}" of our free institutions.

C. Statistics would tend to show that immigration in
the past has acted as a check upon the birth-rate
among the native-born.

D. It is our duty to humanity to protect our standards
of living.

1. To serve as a model and a goal for striving

democracies in other lands.

2. So we ourselves may be in a position to help
those democracies to gain their ideals.

3. Free immigration of labor, as it is usually of a
lower class, tends to break down standards.

III. The American Federation of Labor and the four railroad
brotherhoods are in favor of this legislation.

Negative

I. Prohibition of immigration for four years is not necessar>'.

A. There is no danger of an over-supply of immigrants.

1. Immigration has failed to materialize since the

signing of the armistice.

2. Emigration is at present in large numbers not-
withstanding the fact that labor is scarce and well

paid.

3. Labor tends normally to fiow where it can get v
cheap land.

a. Practically all of the free land in this country
has been absorbed.

B. There is already a shortage of labor.

1. Household servants ar» difHcult to obtain.

2. There is a dearth of laborers for railroads, roads

and public works where large numbers of un-
skilled workers are needed.

3. More unskilled labor is needed in order to keep
work going for skilled laborers.

C. Present machinery for regulating immigration is
sufficient.

II. Prohibition of immigration is undesirable for other reasons.

A. Prohibition for four years will not keep out the un-
desirable element permanently.

B. The migratory instinct is inevitable.

I. It is better to seek to regulate it wisely than try
to crush it.

C. Prohibition of immigration is • unp'atriotic and am-
American. " -^

1. To be an American means to be actuated by the

highest motives of humanity.

D. The loss in population will not be offset as some
think, b}'' an increasing, birth-rate.

I. The birth-rate is controlled by the price of food.

2. Prices will not lower as long as there is a labor
shortage. '•'

E. Prohibition of immigration conllicts with the new idea
of internationalism.

I. Restriction is based on one or the other of the
following assumptions :

a. That a nation has the right to decide who
shall or shall not enter its territory and to
keep its economic and social life to itself,
b. That some races are inferior to others and
that differences of race are a barrier to eco-
nomic assimilation and social equality.
2. Either of these assumptions is inconsistent with
internationalism or the league of nations.

III. Many social and economic workers, also manufacturers and
employers of large numbers of laborers, are opposed to
this bill.

A. This legislation would create more problems than it
X would correct.

B. More laborers are needed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Articles starred (*) have been reprinted entirely or in part in this
Handbook.

Bibliographies

Immigration : Naturalization, citizenship, Chinese, Japanese,
Negroes, enlistment of aliens : List of publications relating to
above subjects for sale by Supt. of Doc. Wash, D.C (Price
list 67 — 3d Edition). I4p. pa. August, 1919.

Methodist Book Concern. Immigration : an annotated list of
the best available books. 5p. 150 5th av., New York. 1919.

Oregon. High School Debating League. Restriction of immi-
gration : bibliography. Mimeo. 6p. Oregon State Library.

Pittsburgh. Carnegie Library. Immigration : a reading list.
I2p. pa. 5c. 1918.

Reely, Mary Katharine, comp. Selected articles on immigration.
2d ed. rev. (Debaters' Handbook Series). Bibliography
P- 19-33- $1.25. H. W. Wilson Co. 1917.

Washington. State College. Library Bulletin. No. 8. N. '19.
Resolved, That the immigration of foreign laborers into the
United States should be prohibited for at least eight years.
Bibliography, p 3-6. loc.

General References

Books and Pamphlets

*Behar, M. F. Our national gates, shut, ajar or open? up. pa.

National Liberal Immigration League, 309 Broadway. New

York. 1916.
Commons, John R. Races and immigrants in America. Mac-

millan. 1907.
Jenks, Jeremiah W., and Lauck, William Jett. Immigration

problem : a study of American immigration conditions and

needs. 4th ed. rev. and enl. *$i.75. Funk. 1917.

National Coininlttrc for Constructive Immigration Legislation.
Proposed new laws for regulating- immigration and lor raising
the standards for naturalization. I2p. pa. 105 E. 22d st. New
York. 1920.

National Connnittee for Constructive Immigration Legislation.
Scientific regulation of immigration. I2p. pa. 105 E. 22d st.
New York. 1920.

National Institute of Social Sciences. 4 : 89-98. Ap. i, 'iS.
Problems of immigration and the foreign horn after the war.
Henry Pratt Fairchild.

Recly, Mary Katharine, comp. Selected articles on immigration.
2d ed. rev. (Debaters' Handbook Series). $1.25. H. \\ .
Wilson Co. 191 7.

United States. Labor, Department of. Bureau of Immigration.
Annual report, 1918. p. 160-76.

United States. 66th Congress, 1st session. House. Percenta.;4e
plans for restriction of immigration : Hearings before the
Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, June 12-14,
18-20 and September 25, 1919. 2o6p. pa. Ciovt. Ptg. OlT.
Wash. D.C. 1919.

L^nitcd States. 66th Congress. 1st session. House. Proposed
changes in naturalization laws: Hearings before the Com-
mittee on Immigration and Naturalization. Pts 1-6. 222p. iia.
Govt. Ptg. Off. Wash. D.C. 1919.

W'arnc, F. J. Immigrant invasion. *$2.50. Dodd. 1913.

W'arne, F. j. Tide of immigration. *$2.50. Appleton. New
York. 1916.

Periodicals

Atlantic Monthly. 110:388-93. S. '12. Real myth. W. Jett
labor supply. Don D. Lescohier.

Catholic World. 104 : 289-302. I). '16. Restriction of immigra-
tion: a medley of arguments. Frank O'Hara.

♦Economic World, n.s. 18:86. jl. 19, '19. Return movement
of immigrants to their home countries.

♦Economic World. 18:232. Ag. 16, '19. Movement of immi-
grant and emigrant aliens.

*Forum. 61 : 343-8. Mr. '19. Need we fear immigration?
Anthony Caminetti.

Independent. 90 : 159, 163. .^g. 2, '19. New melting pot.
Sidne\ L. Gulick.

Describes the immiijration plan of the National Committee for Con-
structive Immigration Legislation.

*Iron Trade Review. 65 : 761-3. S, 18, '19. Suspend immigra-
tion? What of industry? A. J. Hain.

journal of Heredity. 10 : 125-7. Mr. '19. Immigration restric-
tion and world eugenics. Prescott F. Hall.

♦Literary Digest. 60 : 17-18. F. 8, '19. To halt immigration.

*Literary Digest. 61 : 66, 70. M}. 24, '19. Millions of war-
weary Europeans, says F. C. Howe, will come to America.

Literary Digest. 61 : 131. My. 24, '19. Outlook for immigration
and lower wages.

^^Literary Digest. 62 : 28-9. Jl. 5, '19. To clap the lid on the
melting-pot.

*Monthly Labor Review. 9 : 1645-6. X. '19. Immigration in
August, 1919.

North American Review. 209 : 199-208. F. '19. Inmiigration in
reconstruction. Frances A. Kellor.

Public. 22 : 368-70. Ap. 12, '19. Xcw immigration policy.
Sidney L. Gulick.

'''Review of Reviews. 60 : 196-8. Ag. '19. Canada to restrict
immigration. Owen E. McGillicuddy.

*Scientific Monthly. 6 : 214-23. Mr. '18. A comprehensive im-
migration policy and program. Sidney L. Gulick.

Scribner's. 58 : 635-9. ^- '^5- Immigration after the war.
Frederic C. Howe.

*Scribner's. 61 : 542-6. ' My. '17. Our future immigration policy.
Frederic C. Howe.

Affirmative References

Books and F'aiiipJilcts

Faircliild, Henry Pratt. Immigration; a world mo\ ement and

its American significance. *$i.75. Macmillan. 1913.
jenks, Jeremiah W. Questions of public policy, p. 1-40. *$i.25.

Yale University Press. 1913.
*MacIver, R. M. Labor in the changing world, p. 183-96. $2.

Dutton. 1919.
Mitchell, John. Organized labor: its problems, purpose and

ideals, j). 176-85. $1.75. American Book and Bible House.

Philadelphia. 1903.
Ross, E. A. Old w(jrkl in the new. *?52._|o. rciitury. 1914.
*LInited States. 65th Congress, 3d Session. House. Committee

on Immigration and Naturalization: Hearings on Bills If. R.

13325, 13669, 14577, L3904- Pt. 2, p. 33-i-\S. Statements of

Frank Morrison and P. J. McNamara. Govt. Ptg. Office.

1919.

Periodicals

American Economic Review 3 : sup. 5-19. Mr. '13. Population

or prosperity. F. A. Fetter.
Annals of the American Academy. 61 : 30-9. S. '15. W ar and

immigration. F. J. Warne.
*Annals of the American Academy. 81 : 73-9. Ja. '19. Immi-
gration standards after the war. Henry Pratt Fairchild.
Atlantic Monthly. 110:388-93. S. '12. Real myth. \\ . Jctt
Lauck.
/^Atlantic Monthly. 110:691-6. N. '12. Vanishing American

wage-earner. W. Jett Lauck.
-^■^Literary Digest. 62 : 08-100. J 1. 26, '19. Aliens leaving oni
shores in large nuniEers. ^
North American Review. 175 : 53-60. Jl. 02. Immigration's
menace to the national health. T. V. Powderly.
^^eview of Reviews. 59:512-16. My. '19. Americanization and

immigration. Robert De C. Ward.
^^Cnited States Immigration Service Bulletin, i : 9-12. F. i, 19,
Proposed immigration legislation.

Negative References
Books and Painplilcts

Hourwich, Isaac A. Immigration and labor. *$2.50. Titnani.

1912.
Kellor, Frances A. Out of work. Rev. ed. *$i.50. p. 111-56.

Putnam. 1915.
Low, A. Maurice. American people, v. 2. p. 360-429. ^$2.25.

Houghton, Mifflin. 191 1.
National Liberal Immigration League. Immigration literature.

30 pamphlets, pa. gratis. 309 Broadwa3\ New York.
President Wilson's Veto of the Burnett immigration bill. Tarn.

no. s.^< P"b. 197. National Liberal Immigration League. 300

Broadway. New York. 1915.
Sekely, Bela. Immigration after the war. up. pa. National Im-
migration League, 309 Broadway. New York. 1916.

Periodicals

*American Industries. 19 : 7- F, '10. Proposal to suspend im-
migration. Stephen C. Mason.

American Journal of Sociolog}-. 17 : 478-90. Ja. '12. Immigra-
tion and crime. I. A. Hourwich.

♦Everybody's. 41 :48-53. Jl. '19. Human currents of the war.
Herbert Adams Gibbons.

♦Jewish Immigration Bulletin. 9:5. Je '19. \\ h}- I oppose re-
striction of immigration. I. L. Bril.

♦Jewish Immigration Bulletin. 9 : 6-7, 9-10. Je '19. What re-
striction means. Mark Sullivan.
Reprinted from Colliers.

Nation. 108 : 185. F. 8 '19. Immigration bill.

♦Nation. 108 : 540. Ap. 12, '19. Immigration and international-
ism.

North American Review. 193:561-73. Ap. '11. Needed— a
domestic immigration polic}'. F. A. Kellor.

Outlook. 106 : 912-17. Ap. 25, '14. Who is responsible for the
immigrant ? F. A. Kellor.

Scientific American. 121 : 108. Ag. 2, '19. Who shall do the
work. R. D, La Guardia.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

A COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION POLICY

AND PROGRAM^

The need of adequate and wise immigration and American-
ization legislation is imperative. Now, while war suspends the
tide of newcomers to our shores, is the time for enacting the
new laws to regulate the coming of fresh aliens.

No one can foretell how large or small will be the immigra-
tion from the war-ravaged countries of Europe when the war
ceases. Wages in America will be high and the demand for
cheap labor will be urgent. Immigration companies and steam-
ship lines will seek for fresh sources of cheap labor to bring to'
America.

The influx of foreigners in recent years has produced a seri-
ous situation. Our laws have not adequately grappled with the
many kinds of problems which have arisen. Present laws afford
no method of control either of the numbers or of the race types
that may be admitted. We have reason to expect a large immi-
gration of peoples that will prove extremely difficult of Ameri-
canization.

Vast masses of aliens in our midst are not Americanized and
we have no effective provision for their Americanization. We
give them citizenship with verj^ inadequate preparation for it.
The procedure in naturalization is needlessly hampered b}' red
tape. We allow serious congestion of race groups. Free immi-
gration from Europe constantly threatens standards of living of
American workmen. Differential treatment of, and legislation
against, Asiatics produces international irritation. Lack of laws
makes it impossible for the United States to keep its treaty
obligations for the adequate protection of aliens.

These varied dangers threaten the success of our democracy.

We now need a comprehensive and constructive policy for

* By Sidney L. Gulick, Secretary of the Commission on Relations with
the Orient, of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America.
In Scientific Monthly. 6:214-23. March, 1918.

the regulation of all immigration, and the Americanization of all
whom we admit, a policy that is based on sound economic,
eugenic, political and ethical principles, and a program worked
out in detail for incorporating that policy into practice.

If we are to attain the best results we should have a series of
bills that deal with all phases of the immigrant question, in a
systematic, comprehensive and well-coordinated plan in place of
the patchwork, incomplete and disconnected legislation that now
exists. Our new comprehensive policy, moreover, must take into
consideration not merely the relations of America with Europe,
Africa and West Asia, but also with China, Japan and India.
The world has become so small and travel has become so easy
that economic pressure and opportunity are now bringing all the
races into inevitable contact and increasing intermixture. To
avoid the disastrous consequences of such contacts and inter-
mixtures, and to enable the United States not only to provide for
her own prosperity, but also to make to the whole world her best
contribution for human betterment, we need policies that are
based upon justice and goodwill, no less than upon economic and
eugenic c6nsiderations.

OUR FUTURE IMMIGRATION POLICY'

The outstanding feature of our immigration polic}' has been
its negative character. The immigrant is expected to look out
for himself. Up to the present time legislation has been guided
by conditions which prevailed in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. We have permitted the immigrant to come ; only re-
cently has he been examined for physical, mental, and moral
defects at the port of debarkation, and then he has been per-
il mitted to land and go where he willed. This was the practice in
colonial days. It has been continued without essential change
down to the present time. It was a policy which worked reason-
ably well in earlier times, when the immigrant passed from the
ship to land to be had from the Indians, or in later generations
from the government.

And from generation to generation the immigrant moved
westward, just beyond the line of settlement, where he found
a homestead awaiting his labor. These were the years of Anglo-
Saxon, of German, of Scandinavian, of north European settle-

1 By Frederic C. Howe, Former Commissioner of Immigration at the
Port of New York. In Scribner's. 61:542-6. May, 1917.

mcnt, when the iiiimigiation to this country was almost exclu-
sively from the same stock. And so long as land was to be had
for the asking there was no immigration problem. The individual
states were eager for settlers to develop their resources. There
were few large cities. Industry was just beginning. There was
relatively little poverty, while the tenements and slums of our
cities and mining districts had not yet* appeared. This was the
period of the "old immigration," as it is called; the immigration
from the north of Europe, from the same stock that had made
the original settlements in New England, New York, Pennsyl-
vania, Virginia, and the South; it was the same stock that set-
tled Ohio and the Middle West, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Da-
kotas.

The "old immigration" from northern Europe ceased to be
predominant in the closing years of the last century-. Then the
tide shifted to southern Europe, to Italy, Austria-Hungary, Rus-
sia, Poland, and the Balkans. A new strain was being added to
our Anglo-Saxon, Germanic stock. The "new immigration" did
not speak our language. It was unfamiliar with self-govern-
ment. It was largely illiterate. And with this shift from the
"old immigration" to the "new," immigration increased in vol-
ume. In 1892 the total immigration was 579.663 ; in 1894 it fell
to 285,631. As late as 1900 it was but 448.572. Then it began to
rise. In 1903 it was 857,046 ; in 1905 it reached the million mark ;
and from that time down to the outbreak of the war the total
immigration averaged close on to a million a A'ear, the total ar-
rivals in 1914 being 1,218,480. Almost all of the increase came
from southern Europe, over 70 per cent of the total being from
the Latin and Slavic countries. In 1914 Austria contributed 134,-
831 people; Hungary 143,321; Italy 283,734; Russia 255,660;
while the United Kingdom contributed 73,417; Germany 35,734;
Norway 8,329; and Sweden 14,800.

For twenty years the predominant immigration has been from
south and central Europe. And it is this "new immigration," so
called, that has created the "immigration problem." It is largely
responsible for the agitation for restrictive legislation on the
part of persons fearful of the admixture of races, of the difficul-
ties of assimilation, of the high ilHteracy'of the southern group;
and most of all for the opposition on the part of organized labor
to the competition of the unskilled army of men who settle 'in the
cities, who go to the mines, and who struggle for,^ the "existing
jobs in competition with those already here. For' the newcomer
has to find work quickly. He has exhausted what little resources

lie had in transportation. In the great majority of cases his
transportation has been advanced by friends and relatives already
here, \vho have lured him to this counti-y by descriptions of bet-
ter economic conditions, greater opportunities for himself, and
especially the new life which opens up to his children. And this
overseas competition is a serious problem to American labor,
especially in the iron and' steel industries, in the mining districts,
in railroad and other construction work, into which employments
the foreigners largely go.

How seriously the workers and our cities are burdened with
this new immigration from south and central F-urope is in-
dicated by the fact that 56 per cent of the foreign-born popula-
tion in this country is in the States to the east of the Mississippi
and north of the Ohio Rivers, to which at least 80 per cent of
the present incoming immigrants are destined. In the larger
cities between 70 and 80 per cent of the population is either for-
eign born or immediately descended from persons of foreign
birth. In New York City 78.6 per cent of the people are of for-
eign birth or immediate foreign extraction. In Boston the per-
centage is 74.2, in Cleveland 75.8, and in Chicago 77.5. In the
mining districts the percentage is even higher. In other words,
almost all of the immigration of the last twenty years has gone
to the cities, to industry, to mining. Here the immigrant com-
petes with organized labor. He burdens our inadequate housing
accommodations. He congests the tenements. He is at least a
problem for democracy'.

But the effect of immigration on our life is not as simple as
the advocates of restriction insist. It is probable that the strug-
gle of the working classes to improve their conditions is rendered
more difficult by the incoming tide of unskilled labor. It is prob'
able too that wages are kept down in certain occupations and thai
employers are desirous of keeping open the gate as a means of
securing cheap labor and labor that is difficult to organize. It is
also probably true that the immigrant is a tem.porary burden to
democrac>' and especialK' to our cities. But the subject is not
nearly as simple as this. The immigrant is a consumer as well as
a producer. He creates a market for the products of labor even
while he competes with' labor. And he creates new trades and
new industries, like the clothing trades of New York, Chicago,
and Cleveland, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers.
And a large part of the immigrants assimilate rapidly.

In addition, the new stock from southern and central Europe
brings to this country qualities of mind and of temperament that

may in time greatly enrich tlic more severe and practical-minded
races of northern Europe.

OUR NATIONAL GATES— SHUT, AJAR. OR

OPEN?^

When the House of Representatives failed to pass the Bur-
nett Literacy Test bill over President Wilson's veto last year,
another chapter was ended in the history of a long and bitter
controversy about our national gates. The first began with the
settlement of this land and was terminated by the War of Inde--
pendence; the second was closed by the disappearance of the
Know-Xothing party shortly before the Civil War, the third by
President Cleveland's veto of the Lodge literacy test bill, the
fourth b}- the creation of an immigration commission in 1907.
The fifth was closed by President Taft's veto of the Dillingham-
Burnett bill rtwo years ago,! whereupon began the sixth, which
culminated as told above. An interesting seventh chapter is now
being enacted.

Rise of Anti-Alien Feeling

Of anti-alien feeling in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies little need be said. Those were still the dark days of
l)igotry'. Nor is this the place for a long description of the sec-
ond chapter of exclusionism — Know-Nothingism. The country
was j^oung. Universities were few, and higher education meant
little more than the humanities. Men of enlightenment were
scarce.

During the Civil War and subsequent period of reconstruc-
tion, anti-alien feeling existed in a latent state. It smouldered
along until the early eighties, when immigration from Italy, *
Russia and Austria-Hungary increased. Then the sentiment
broke out anew. In Xew England especially it became pro-
nounced, and in 1893 the Immigration Restriction League was
founded, ^

That same year Senator Lodge introduced the first literacy
test bill, which, reintroduced three years later, was passed by
Congress early in 1897. Its supporters thought their triumph had
come, as there had been no systematic opposition to it. That it
v.-as objected to, hov.evcr, was evidenced when President Cle\e-

^ By Manoel F. Behar. Reprinted from the New York Evening Post
by the National Liberal Immigration League, May, 19 16.

iV'[

land vetoed it as an unjustified "radical departure from our na-
tional policy." The House promptly passed it over the veto by
193 votes to 2>7y but it failed in the Senate, which had previously
passed it by 52 votes to 10.

*****

How came the Lodge bill to receive so many votes ? How is it
that various exclusion bills are introduced session after session,
and have come near becoming law? There are, of course, active in-
dividual exponents, and also private citizens, unaffiliated with
the exclusionist movement, who believe that immigration is
largely responsible for pauperism, insanitj^ crime, unemploy-
ment, and other evils. All these are the Restrictionists.

In addition, there have sprung up during the last quarter-
century a number of organizations, secret of nature, invidious in
their workings, and powerful enough to merit at least a passing
mention even in a brief description of the exclusionist move-
ment. The}^ generall}' assume a patriotic guise, and flaunt such
terms as "Freedom," "America," or "Libert}^" of which they style
themselves children or custodians. They conduct a continuous
campaign throughout the countiy. They maintain a lobby at
Washington. The}' publish newspapers. They have well-paid
organizers, who, to show efficiency, often prepare their field In-
spreading misconceptions. Whenever a vote on an immigration
bill impends, they flood Congress with appeals, the tone of which
at times reaches extraordinary ferv'or. These forces constitute
the New Know-Nothingism.

However, the most powerful advocates of exclusion speak
for a class of citizens who, according to some economists, have
profited by immigration and would suffer from its stoppage —
the skilled laboring class. The executive council of the Ameri-
can Federation has exerted eveiy effort to secure arbitrary
checks on immigration, as have the Knights of Labor, the United
Mine Workers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, and
other unions. However, this attitude may be dictated from
above. Indeed, labor organizations with hundreds of thousands
of members have gone on record as opposed to further restric-
tion.

The anti-immigration movement is thus composed of the Re-
strictionists, the Know-Nothings, and Organized Labor.

Attempts at Exclusions

Ten years ago there came a new move. Representative Gard-
ner introduced a bill raising the head-tax on every immigrant,

which was then two dollars, to fort}- dollars. For the first time
in the histon,- of the nation it became necessary for opponents
of exclusion to organize. Their movement started, fittingly
enough, in Boston. Some time later headquarters were estab-
lished in Xew York, and the National Liberal Immigration
League was launched, with President Eliot, Andrew Carnegie,
Bishop Potter, Gen. Trac}'', and William Lloyd Garrison among
the committeemen. In W'ashington its formation was felt. The
$40 head tax bill was shelved, and the exclusionists centered their
efforts on the educational test.

Congress remained, however, impressed by the votes con-
trolled by organized labor and other exclusionist influences, and
in 1906 a bill providing for the educational test was passed by
the Senate almost unanimously. President Roosevelt supported
it, and a canvass of the House showed a large majority there in
favor of it. Speaker Cannon and Representatives Bennet,
Moore, Goldfogle, and Sabath fought it tooth and nail. The
newl}' organized liberals also surprised the House, when delega-
tions representing various nationalities proceeded to Washington
at their behest. The bill failed in the House.

Iniuiigration Commission FovDied

In Januar}-, 1907, the National Liberal Immigration League,
seeing its opportunity, petitioned President Roosevelt and Con-
gress to create a commission to investigate the subject. This
was accepted as a substitute for the literacy test, and was in-
cluded in the Immigration bill, from which the literacy test was
dropped. Thus freed from a vexatious issue, ■• the bill was
quickly passed by Congress, and signed by President Roosevelt
on Februar\- 20. In two other particulars the enactment of the
law of 1907, which ended our fourth chapter, was a compro-
mise. One was that the head-tax w^as doubled, although the $2 tax
had already yielded a surplus of millions above all the expenses
of the immigration sers'ice. This was of some satisfaction to
the exclusionists. The liberals gained a desired point in that
the new law created a division of information "to promote a
beneficial distribution of aliens."

The creation of a commission v;as expected to aft'ord both
sides a two-year breathing spell, needed by the liberals to per-
fect their organization. This respite was soon interrupted by
new moves on the part of the exclusionists, so that the fifth stage
of the controversy began before the Commission had made its
report. Attempts were first made to railroad restrictive bills,

but, these failing, the exclusionists tried new tacks. One was to
suppress the Federal Distribution Bureau. They said it could be
used for strike-breaking, and on the whole did more harm than
good. The liberals on the other hand, claimed that "the problem
of immigration is mainly one of distribution," and asked that
the scheme be given a trial. The upshot was that the division
remained, but its appropriation was cut down and its scope lim-
ited.

In December, 1910, the Immigration Commission brought in
to Congress a preliminary report, finally adopted by its members
"within a half-hour of the time when under the law it had to l)e
filed." Commenting on it, Prof, H. Parker Willis, editorial ad-
viser of the Commission, made the following admission :

"It is a fact that much of the Commission's information is
still undigested, and is presented in a form which affords no
more than a foundation for the work of future inquiries. * * *
The result has been, instead of a small and finished study, a
large and uncompleted body of data." (The Survey, January 7,
1911.)

The Commission, nevertheless, held that further restriction
was "demanded by economic, moral, and social considerations,"
and eight of its nine members — Bennet dissenting — said: "We
favor the reading and writing test as the most feasible single
method of restricting undesirable immigration."

Months afterwards, the information gathered appeared in
forty-one octavo volumes.

Taft's Veto of Dillingham Bill

Embodying the recommendations of the Commission, a bill
was prepared under the direction of its chairman. Senator Dil-
lingham, who introduced it in August, 191 1. It codified the ex-
isting law and contained, besides the educational test, provisions
which would have required for their enforcement the promulga-
tion of regulations scarcely in keeping with American traditions.
All immigrants, for instance, were to provide themselves with
certificates of admission and identity, as well as return certificates
upon leaving the country. The Dillingham bill had a lively history,
and disagreements between House and Senate and their commit-
tees furnished several times an occasion for a vote, which was
invariably in favor of restriction by a large majority. It v»as
finally passed by the House on January 31, 1913, and by the
Senate on February 4, without division in either case.

On February 6, President Taft adopted the unusual procedure

of giving a hearing on the bill, which was attended by about 80
restrictionists, about 150 liberals, and a delegation from medical
societies. Under the Constitution, the President has ten days in
which either to sign a bill or return it to Congress without his
approval. After that period, should he not veto it, it becomes
law. Mr. Taft did not even express his view one way or the
other until the evening of the tenth day, February 14, when, the
W hite House stenographers having gone home, he wrote with his
own hand a brief veto message, giving the educational test as
the sole reason for his disapproval. On February 18, the Senate
passed the bill over the President's veto, by a vote of 72 to 9.
The following day it failed of passage in the House by 213 votes
to 114.

Several days afterwards, Woodrow Wilson was installed as
President. His opposition to further restriction was known ; but
the immigration service was placed in the new Department of
Labor, whose head. Secretary B. W. Wilson, was known as an
exclusionist. About twenty bills relating to immigration have
been introduced most of which — including one introduced by
Representative Burnett identical with that vetoed by President
Taft — were restrictive.

Schemes For Restriction

Here are some of these schemes :

(i.) The educational or literacy test. (In the Burnett bill
the immigrant was required to read; in others, to write as
well.)

(2.) The increase of the head-tax from lour to eight dol-
lars in the Burnett bill, to more in others. This tax has already
yielded a surplus of some $11,000,000, all of which, in the words
of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, "has come out of
the pockets, not of the taxpayer of this country, but of aliens
who are applying for admission." The immigration service re-
quires about $2,000,000 yearly.

(3.) The extension of the Contract Labor law to "mental"
laborers, a provision aimed at skilled artisans, musicians, and the
like.

(4.) The exclusion of "persons of constitutional psycho-
pathic inferiorit}'," a proposal which provoked humorous com-
ments, because its advocates never could agree as to its definition.
The existing law bars out "idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded per-
sons, epileptics, insane persons," and the like.

(5.) Although the existing law keeps out beggars, paupers,
and persons likely to become a public charge, Mr. Burnett and
others in their bills added "vagrants."

(6.) The "percentage scheme," i.e., that immigration from
any country during any one year be summarily restricted to a
certain percentage of the number of immigrants from that coun-
try in the United States.

(7.) That male laborers must produce certificates showing
that during one year immediately preceding their emigration
the}' have earned a certain wage, which must be a stated per-
centage of the average wage paid in America for the same kind
of labor.

(8.) That adult males be subjected to a physical examina-
tion and strength test equivalent to that for Army recruits.

The Burnett bill, after a hot debate, passed the House on
February 4, 1914, by a vote of 252 to 126, or exactly two to one,
and found its way to the Senate Committee on Immigration. Its
Chairman, Senator Smith, reported it favorabh' on March 19,
not only with the Burnett and other House restrictive proposals,
but with additional ones, such as the "psjxhopathic inferiority"
clause.

Several months later the war broke out, and friends and foes
of immigration dragged it into the Burnett bill discussion. As
was to be expected, restrictionists, exclusionists, and Know-
Nothings found reasons for closing the gates. Prof. J. W. Jenks
declared that the war "would undoubtedly force the United
States to make changes in its Immigration law to prevent this
country being flooded with Europeans after peace has come," and
favored our making treaties with European nations to limit the
post-war influx. The American Federation of Labor, anticipat-
ing a great rush, urged Congress to enact the exclusion of
illiterates.

That most liberals minimized this sentiment was indicated by
the scarcity of reassuring utterances, until the Liberal Immigra-
tion league, in December, refuted the contentions of the restric-
tionists. It issued its arguments shortly before the Senate took
up the Burnett bill, that there is really no valid reason for fear-
ing the prospect of a large post-war immigration, if properly
handled.

The liberals' reply was well timed. The Senate practically
avoided the subject; but its desire to enact a law checking im-
migration was unalterable. After little discussion it passed the

lUiriK'tt bill on January 2 by 50 votes to 7, with the literacy test
uHvl several amendments which necessitated a conference. The
conferees reported on January 9 a bill from which several of the
"fancy exclusion schemes" had been struck out. The literacy
test, the exclusion of political refugees, and the "constitutional
i)sychopathic inferiority" provision were retained. In this final
form the bill was passed by the Senate on January 14, without
division, and by the House on January 15 (227 to 94). Mr. Wil-
son not only followed Mr. Taft's precedent in holding a hearing
— but he, too, waited until the tenth day before he issued his veto
message. In it he stated: "If the people of this country have
made up their minds to limit the number of immigrants by arbi-
trary test * * * it is their privilege to do so. I am their servant
and have no license to stand in their wa}-. * * * Let the plat-
forms of parties speak out on this policy, and the people pro-
nounce their wish,"

This places the question squarely in the hands of the elec-
torate and introduces it as an important issue of the presidential
campaign.

As soon as this message had been read before the House,
Burnett moved to pass his bill over the veto. It was agreed to
have this motion discussed one week later. Exclusion bitterness
v.as not lacking during that period, and it was urged that the
liberals wanted to "flood the country with cheap labor." The
American Federation of Labor came out with scarehead, muck-
raking bulletins. In the end, the Burnett motion failed to re-
ceive the necessary two-thirds vote.

For all that, the vote in the House was one of the largest in
the history of Congress. There were 261 ayes and 136 na3's, or no
less than 397 Representatives voting out of 423. This is but one
fact among many indicating that the controversy over immigra-
tion restriction is one actively participated in b}' a much greater
proportion of the American people than is generally believed —
even by some of those engaged in it !

Mr. Burnett and the exclusionists did not lose heart. When
the Sixty-fourth Congress convened in December, 191 5, the same
bill was re-introduced, and on March 30, the House passed it by
308 votes to 87. The liberals put up a strong fight, but there were
new phases of the immigration problem which had taken hold of
the public mind without being understood — questions of pre-
paredness, "hyphenates," etc. As if the drastic restrictions ot

the Burnett bill would increase the loyalty oi our foreign-born
population !

[This bill was finally passed by Congress in February 191 7
over the second veto of President Wilson. It contains provi-
sions for a literacy test. — Ed.]

NEED WE FEAR IMMIGRATION?

All prophecy right now can consist of little more than con-
jecture, and by the nature of conditions must be largely futile.
This is particularly true of prophecies as to immigration, for we
do not know what the policies of governments, including our
own, will be, nor, more important still, what effect the war and
its aftermath will have on the instincts and inclinations of those
people who might be classed as potential immigrants to our coun-
try.

Shall our pre-war record of immigration be re-established or
exceeded, or will, as some predict, the tide turn the other way
and America become an emigrant instead of an immigrant na-
tion? There is but one concrete, non-conjectural answer which
is, "We do not know\"

No doubt the effect of the war on the migration and distribu-
tion of people will be far-reaching but just how no one can in
detail tell with any degree of precision.

One would have thought naturally that many Europeans
would have endeavored to escape the actual fires of war by
emigrating to America or other countries far from the war zone.
Of course shipping and other conditions made emigration diffi-
cult. How^ever, it would seem that the war tended to depress
rather than to stimulate the instinct of migration among the
peoples most vitally affected by the violence of the conflict.

Immigration to this country from Europe fell off tremendous-
ly as soon as the war began in 1914, and continued to decline
more or less steadily until, during the fiscal year ending June 30,
1918, there was but little net gain in our population from that
source. In fact durmg_that year onIy„iKx6iS4mmigrant aliens
entered the Ijmted Stales From all sources, while 9j,585_yjTn"''~
j^r'SnT alieTiTleft the country during the same period. This left a
net gam of less than~i8,ooo. "^

1 By AntEony CaminettT; Commissioner general of Immigration. In
the Forum. 61:343-8. March, 1919.

The decade preceding the opening of the European war gave
us annually an average immigration exceeding one million and
the net increase in population from immigration sources in the
fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, was 769,276.

What Influences Immigration

SPEAKING broadly two considerations underlie nearly all
alien immigration :

1. Social conditions.

2, Economic conditions.

The first brought about the founding and original develop-
ment of our country.

The second accounted largely for the phenomenal growth in
population characterizing the last fifty years of our history and
upon which was builded our modern-day industrial greatness.

Whatever changes the war will cause, it may be assumed that
the migration of peoples wall continue to be influenced as hereto-
fore by social and economic conditions, barring, of course, arti-
ficial restraints or inducements.

Therefore, immigration to the United States or emigration
from the United States in coming 3'ears is apt to depend sub-
stantiall}' on the social and economic conditions existing in this
and those other countries whose citizens are admissable as im-
migrants.

Thus the eflfect of the war on immigration wall be to a large
extent, for some 3'ears, influenced by the political and economic
changes caused or produced b}^ the war.

Social Improvements Abroad Due to the War

It is probable that the war will produce great social improve-
ments throughout most of Europe. The many reforms projected
and the promise of land distribution to the masses in many coun-
tries where hitherto it has been held by the privileged few may
retard the current that has been flowing towards us for genera-
tions ; and yet, with all that, the average European is likely to
continue to look upon our country as the great haven of free-
dom. And there is no doubt in my mind that many thousands
will continue to seek refuge here for the same reasons, though
they may not be so potent, as inspired the bulk of our early im-
migration.

Nothing but pure conjecture can be ventured as to the future

operation of the other chief moving force in the tide of immigra-
tion, i.e., economic conditions.

If European countries maintain the validity of their war ob-
Hgations, taxes will in future years demand a tribute which lew
persons until lately believed any people could bear. Those bur-
dens ma}' be reduced somewhat through lessened expenditures on
military establishments, more economical governments and more
equitable distribution of the taxes, but that they will be far be-
yond those of anti-bellum days, then considered highly oppres-
sive, is certain.

Yet we must realize that the citizens of a number of Euro-
pean countries, England of course is included in this statement,
bore, during the past four years, burdens far weightier than any
they can expect for the future ; and that those burdens w ere
accompanied in some ways by a degree of individual prosperity
among the masses exceeding any they had ever enjoyed in peace
times. That such prosperity was economically false, may be
true ; but the fact is that, despite the tremendous tax of active
war, workmen in nearly all the countries involved enjoyed better
wages, and more favorable wage margins, than the}- had been
accustomed to.

While food conditions in Europe lor the present are distres-
sing and threaten much suffering, such is only a temporary or
passing factor which will be removed as peace-time production
gets under way.

We must remember also that the four years of war had great
adverse effect on the populations of European countries. W hile
emigration all but ceased, millions were killed or died from dis-
ease or wounds at the front, millions were incapacitated, millions
oF civilians died or were broken by the strains and privations of
war, and the birth-rate dropped almost universally.

Then, also, it may be estimated that there is more work at
hand in Europe for those who survive, or rather more work
needing to be done than was the case before. All the vast
destruction of war calls, at least potentially, for replacement and
the deficits in the implements of peace-time commerce caused
l)y the deflection of energies into the activities of war need to be
replenished. Indeed, the outlook for the European w^orkingman
of the peasant class, barring the period of adjustment from war
to peace, may be much better than it was before the war.

Despite the tremendous destruction caused by the war and the

huge debts incurred by the governments involved, and the conse-
(juent possible increase in taxation, it is not extravagant to
imagine a post-war Europe offering to the potential immigrant
attractions superior to those he had prior to 1914.

It is also true that the experience of war intensified the love
of most Europeans for their native lands and gave added
potency to the feeling of Auld Lang Syne. Many thousands whc
othenvise would have sought new lands will now find it difficult
to break the bonds of blood and suffering which the war has
added to the usual ties binding them to the environment of their
fathers.

Large Immigration of Soldiery Possible

CONVERSELY, the conditions mentioned may inspire many
to seek new scenes in which to try and forget the experiences
they have known and witnessed; and this may also affect the mil-
lions of soldiers, most of whom — despite the heavy casualty lists
— are strong and virile, and will be released from the armies to find
new life niches wherever they can. The migratory spirit has
ever been strong among veterans of wars. And the veterans
of the Allied armies are likely to feel a veneration and respect
for America even exceeding that always felt by the masses in
Europe. Contact with our soldiers no doubt has enhanced their
visions of American liberty, freedom and economic well-being
even beyond the reports of fact and fancy which have ever
made America a fairyland of promise to the peasantry of the
Old World.

Of course immigrants will come.

Events only will indicate the comparative extent and duration
of the movement. No doubt considerable more will come as soon
as travel facilities are provided than arrived during the active
war years, when as stated the net additions to our population
from that source were negligible. Whether the tide will reach
former proportions depends upon circumstances in this country
and abroad.

Whatever may happen in the matter of volume, we may be
assured that under existing laws there will be such an inspection
that will cause to be debarred all those who cannot pass the pre-
scribed tests. These wall include not only all of those physically,
mentally and morally not entitled to admission, but also that
still m.ore undesirable type commonly referred to as anarchists,
who come for license rather than freedom.

■ Will the United States Become an Emigrant Nation?

The statement recently given public attention that the United
States is in danger of becoming an emigrant nation, should not
be taken seriously. No doubt many residents of this country of
foreign nativity whose kin have suffered from the privations and
horrors of war may visit the place of their birth to give comfort
and aid to their loved ones; but in my opinion a large majority
of them will return to the places in which they have prospered.
No valid foundation has been found upon which to base the
radical change predicted. Such statements have encouraged plans
to bring in laborers, now prohibited by law, to fill the places oL
those who w^ould become part of the emigrating classes.

Without novv taking up the claim that more laborers will l>c
needed, whether or not the prediction is verified, I desire to call
attention to the fact that a supply exists in abundance in Porto
Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Philippines. What better way
could be found to build up these possessions or what more suit-
able plan be devised to bind them to us, to obtain their confidence,
to secure their trade, and aid their development, than to engage
a portion of their people in our industries on the mainland? \\'e
would benefit them immensely and also avoid the reappearance
of a disturbing problem that it has been our hope, from economic
and other viewpoints, had been settled more than a quarter of a
century ago.

MILLIONS OF WAR-WEARY EUROPEANS,

SAYS F. C. HOWE, WILL COME

TO AMERICA '

Two months ago, Commissioner Howe admits, he held the
opinion that, for a considerable time after the war, the United
States would have to face problems of emigration rather than
immigration. But the fact is beginning to become apparent, in
his opinion, that Europe is on the verge of economic exhaustion.
"She has lost her power to come back," temporarily at least, he
says, and offers this analysis of the situation as it affects emigra-
tion:

"Europe can not now make loans for purposes of restoration
and reconstruction. One feels almost inclined to say that she

* Literary Digest. 61:66-70. May 24, 1919.

can not even make plans toward these ends. The plans that are
being made are falling entirely short of the means they should
afford, I think that certainly in France, and quite probably in
England, the programs that are being outlined work definitely, in-
escapably, toward reaction.

"This would mean, of course, that not only would conditions
become what they were before, but they would wipe out much of
the progress of recent years. That is a thing that the men who
have waged this war would never stand for.

'"The line of the record of immigration to this country- follows
with barometric fidelity the record of economic conditions here
and abroad. You may tell b}^ looking at this line when times are
hard in Europe and good in America; when they are bad here
and good, or comparatively good, there.

"I should say that a very small percentage of the immigrants
of recent years, at least, have come here to find the political or
religious freedom they were denied at home.

"Not fewer than 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 Europeans are eagerly
looking toward America in these first after-the-war days for the
economic freedom that seems impossible of achievement at home.
If conditions w^ere favorable the number might be found to be
very much greater than this, but in spite of everything it is quite
certainl}' not smaller.

"Conditions," he declared, "are not favorable. It is not pos-
sible for an immigrant to enter this countr}' unless his passport
has been viseed by the Government of the land he has left. It is
extremely improbable that the Government of Europe will grant
such approvals at his time, or for a considerable time to come.
The reasons for this are numerous and varied. No European
country has, as yet, put up the bars against emigration. What
they may do is, of course, another thing. General Petain's re-
mark to me, ... is suggestive of the attitude that may be taken.
In my opinion it is not likely that there will be legislation until
some significant movement becomes apparent. Legislative bars
are not needed now. Means of transportation are so lacking
that little else is required. The world's tonnage is at a desper-
ately low mark. What is available must be used for a long time
to come by the military authorities. What is not taken by them,
and much of the rest as military demands decrease, v/ill be
needed for the transportation of foodstuffs and of raw materials.

"Only those who can show the best of reasons will be able to
travel for months to come. This will be quite as true of east-

bound as of west-bound travel. It is only as conditions come
back to normal, or as they reach some new basis of stability,
that this situation will change. In the meantime the most un-
happy of men, the most eager to find new homes, will have to
possess their souls in what patience they may.

"My judgment is," he said, "that the situation will remain
much as it is now for the next twelve months, if not for the
next two years. The year 1921 may see the shitting under way,
but until that time it is improbable that there will be any positive
developments. In the meantime there will be an easing-off in
this country. This is alread}- under way, as a matter of fact. To
begin with, the bars have been up against the homegoers for the
past four years. Normally the number that returns to Europe
from the United States each year is 300,000. This means that
there are now 1,200,000 awaiting their chance. The uncertainties
of war have undoubtedly increased this number very largely.
Those who came from the subject lands of Austria and Hun-
gary, for instance, have been shut off from practically all com-
munication with their homes and their kin since the war began.
Very naturally they are anxious to know what has transpired
during these years of silence.

"Free Poland and free Bohemia," he said, "will call to thous-
ands now in this country. Russia, in spite of all that has hap-
pened there to make it, as we see it, anything but a welcoming
land, will call to many more. It is a curiosity of the Russian
mind that to so many all that was needed to make Russia ideal
was the removal of the Czar. He has been removed, and Russia
the ideal awaits !

"There must be considered in addition the thousands who
have been drawing war-time wages for so long. It has always
been a factor in our alien problem that a certain number of those
who come in may be counted upon to go back when they have
amassed a satisfactory amount of money. This number is
greater now than ever before. This is partly due to the fact that
the homeward tide has been dammed up for so long — longer
than it ever was before in our history. It is partly due to the
fact that these people have earned such wages as they never
dreamed of, even in America. It is partly due to the fact that
such wages were earned by people who never before had the way
opened to them.

"The combination of causes has resulted in a large altho in-
determinate increase in these, homegoers. I have been told ofli-
cially that there are three thousand Italians alone gathered in

Xcw York irom other cities awaiting passage abroad. One of
the recent liners on which it was possible to obtain steerage pas-
sage could have, it is said, sold its entire space three times over,
and actually did carry a company enormously greater than it had
ever before taken on board."

It is possible, in Dr. Howe's opinion, that more than the
usual number of these homegoers will remain in Europe, if it is
possible for them to do so. Among most of them the desire is
strong to buy a little piece of land and settle down upon it for
the remainder of their lives. This land-hunger is fed by the ex-
pectation that much land in Europe will be nationalized, says
the Commissioner:

"The feeling is prevalent that nationalization of the land is to
be one of the sure results of this war. Even where there is not
to be nationalization, the expectation is strong that the great
estates will be broken up so that small holdings will become
available, either through the necessity of the former owners or
through governmental action. This is having its influence on
hundreds, if not thousands. No one can say, of course, how
many there are in this country now awaiting a chance to return
to Europe, or how many more there may be when travel becomes
easy. With the 1,200,000 that may be assumed to be ready, it is
perhaps reasonable to believe that the number is not less than
2,000,000."

"But ever3thing," Dr. Howe said again, "depends upon de-
velopments of the next twelve months. If Europe finds the
means of reconstruction her men will stay with her very largely,
for the work that must be done will mean such heavy demands
that there will be nothing short of a labor vacuum. Her men will
stay with her because, if necessary, they will be kept there. So
far, hovv^ever, Europe has neither found these means of recon-
struction nor shown any convincing indications that she can find
them. Her own people seem to be strongly of the opinion that
she can not, and so they are turning their eyes toward the United
States."

IMMIGRATION IN AUGUST, 1919^

The following table, prepared by the Bureau of Immigration
of the Department of Labor, shows the total number of immi-
grant aliens admitted into the United States in each fiscal year,

1 MoHthly Labor Review. 9:1645-6. November, 1919.

I0I5 to 1918, and in August, i<>i9, l>y nationality. The total de-
partures of emigrant aliens in August, 1919, numbered 28,934.

Classified by nationality, the number of immigrant aliens ad-
mitted into the United States during specified periods and in
August, 1919, was as follows:

IMMIGRANT ALIENS ADMITTED INTO THE UNITED STATES
DURING SPECIFIED PERIODS AND IN AUGUST, 19 19,

BY N.\TIONAHTY.

Year ending June 30 —
Nationality.

1915 1916 1917 1918

African (black) 5,660 4,576 7,97' 5, 706

Armenian 932 964 1,221 321

Bohemian and Moravian 1,651 642 327 74
Bulgarian, Serbian,

Montenegrin 3,So6 3.146 i,i34 150

Chinese 2,469 2,239 1.843 i,576

Croatian and Slovenian 1,912 791 305 33

Cuban 3.402 3.442 3.428 1,179

Dalmatian, Bosnian,

Hcrzegovinian 305 114 94 15

Dutch and Flemish . . . 6,675 6,433 5,393 2,200

East Indian 82 80 69 61

English 38,662 36,168 32,246 12,980

Finnish 3.472 5.649 5, 900 1,867

French 12,636 19,518 24,405 6,840

German 20,729 11, 555 9,682 1,992

Greek 15,187 2(),T(i2 25,919 2,002

Hebrew 26,497 15.108 17.342 3,672

Irish 23,503 20,636 17,462 4,657

Italian (north) 10,660 4,905 3,796 1,074

Italian (south) 46,557 33,909 35.154 5,234

Japanese 8,609 8,711 8,925 10,168

Korean 146 154 194 149

Lithuanian 2,638 599 479 135

Magyar 3,604 981 434 2,^

Mexican 10,993 17,198 16,438 17,602

Pacific Islander 6 5 10 17

Polish 9,065 4,502 3,109 668

Portuguese 4,376 12,208 10,194 2,319

Roumanian 1,200 053 522 155

Russian 4,459 4,858 3,711 1,513

Ruthenian (Russniak).. 2,933 1,365 1,211 49

Scandinavian 24,263 19,172 19,596 8,7.11

Scotch 14.310 13,515 13,350 5,204

Slovak 2.069 577 244 35

Spanish 5,705 9.259 15,019 7,909

Spanish-American .... 1,667 1,881 2,587 2,231

Syrian 1,767 676 976 210

Turkish 273 216 454 24

Welsh 1,390 983 793 278

West Indian

(except Cuban) .... 823 948 1,369 732

Other peoples 1,877 3,388 2,097 314

Total 326,700 298,826 295,403 110,618

August

1919

5,823

663

282

105

205

1,697

1,169

195

2,735

468

26,889

3,801

968

12,598

2,240

1,837

259

8.3

148

3,055

444

7.910

i,o^r^

1.236

424

2,137

1,766

10,056

616

160

28,844

4,621

732

100

1,574

184

1,532

172

103

8,261

685

10,364

1,210

4,224

474

3,092

399

231

608

1,223

247

141,132 20,597

THE MOVEMENT OF IMMIGRANT AND
EMIGRANT ALIENS^

Owing to the emphasis which the public press has recently
been laying upon the return movement of alien immigrants to
their home countries, and the unfavorable effect of this move-
ment upon the labor situation in the United States — to say
nothing of the enormous sum-total of money which the home-
going aliens are reported to be taking with them — the recently
issued official figures of the United States Immigration Service,
of nico:ning and outgoing immigrant and non-immigrant aliejis
during the month of M^' and during the eleven months oi the
past fiscal year ended wdth May, possess unusual interest. The
figures are given in the following table

Inward — May, 19 19.

Immigrant aliens admitted 15,093

Non-immigrant aliens admitted 1 1,677

United States citizens arrived 8,949

Total 35,719

Year before 63,973

Outward — May, 1919.

Emigrant aliens departed 17,800

Non-emigrant aliens departed 9,303

United States citizens departed 10,883

Total 37,986

Year before 50,458

Inward — Eleven Months Ending May 31.

Immigrant aliens admitted 123,145

Non-immigrant aliens admitted 82,703

United States citizens arrived 84,546

xr ^°^^} r 290,394

Year before 255,075

Outward — Eleven Months Ending May 31.

Emigrant aliens departed 08,1 17

Non-emigrant aliens departed 8:;, 785

United States citizens departed 208,084

Total 389,016

Year before 371,316

It W'ill be noted in this table that the total number of emigrant
aliens that actually departed, — i.e. returned permanently to their
native countries,— from the United States during the month of
May was onh- 17,800, as against 15,093 immigrant aliens admitted

^Economic World, n. s. 18:232. August 16, 19 19.

to the United States — a net loss of 2,707 aliens to the countiy.
For the eleven months ended May 31 the total number of de-
partures of aliens returning to their home countries was 98,147
as contrasted with admissions of immigrant aliens to the United
States to the number of 123,145 — giving a balance of immigrant
aliens admitted over returning aliens departed to the number of
24,998. In comparison with the pre-war years, of course, this
net immigration of aliens into the United States is very small ;
but it is scarceh- small enough to justify the extreme deductions
that many have drawn from the natural return movement to the
belligerent European countries especially, which has been chiefly
induced by the long inability to visit parents and relatives and the
long ignorance of the circumstances which such parents and
relatives are compelled to face, now that the war is over.

THE RETURN MOVEMENT OF IMMIGRANTS
TO THEIR HOME COUNTRIES '

That an unprecedentedly extensive return movement of alien
immigrants in the United States to their home countries has been
under way since shortly after the armistice was signed, and still
continues in full flood, is a matter of undeniable fact. On the
other hand, it is difficult to obtain as yet really convincing in-
formation as to the lengths to which the movement will go.
Some official estimates on the subject have been mnd'^ public, but
these are after all hardly more than guesses. At the same time,
the economic importance of the migration, from the point of
view of the industry and agriculture of this country, gives inter-
est to all observations about it coming from public officials who
are in the way of obtaining first-hand data. In its "Economic
and Financial Circular" for July, The National City Bank of
New York summarizes the latest available information of this
character, saying:

The return movement of immigrants is assuming large pro-
portions, and is held in check onl}- by want of steamer accom-
modations. Five thousand persons sailed from New York for
Italy upon three steamers on one day of last week In the month
of May the total departures was 26,812, and in June they have
lieen averaging 1,000 per day.

By the provisions of a law passed last year no alien or citi;^en

^ Economic World, n.s. 18:86. July 19, 19 19.

is allowed to leave the country without permission from the State
Department, and they must pay their income taxes i£ they ow^e
any. Over $r, 000,000 of these taxes have been collected as a re-
sult of the enforcement of the law^ Director Stewart of the
Investigation and Inspection Services of the Department of
Labor states that the number of aliens planning to leave the
I'nited States for their own country' as soon as conditions will
permit, number approximately 1,300,000, and that they will carry
with them an average of $3,000 cash, which would give a grand
total of nearly $4,000,000,000 to be carried out of the United
States by departing aliens during the coming year. This is prob-
ably an over-estimate of the average amount, if not of the num-
ber, but it indicates that the movement is at least of large conse-
quence in the exchanges.

The statements made b}- Director Stewart are based upon in-
\estigations made up to June i, in the sections where large for-
eign elements are found, notably the mining regions of Pennsyl-
Aania, the steel district of Illinois and Pennsylvania, the manu-
facturing district of New England and the great cities, notably
New York and Chicago. He estimates that 35 per cent of the
Russians are seeking to return to their countr}', 34 per cent of the
Slovaks, 28 per cent of the Austro-Hungarians, 22 per cent of the
Croatians, 15 per cent of the Poles and 11 per cent of the Italians-
and Greeks. These aliens seeking to return to their native coun-
try are actuated in part b}^ a desire to find and aid lost friends
and relatives, also in the belief that they will find land cheaper
than formerl}-, and that they will also find emplo^^ment in re-
establishing industries.

SUSPEND IMMIGRATION? WHAT OF

INDUSTRY ? '

EMPLOYERS and civic bodies are likely to be heard on the
subject of suspending immigration when the house committee on
immigration begins consideration of the bills now pending.
Local chambers of commerce have been making surveys and
forwarding data to the Chamber of -Commerce of the United
States. That body has not taken action in regard to any of the
bills introduced in the house, but it is understood that the con-
sensus of opinion among the members is that the legislation

^ By A. J. Hain. Iron Trade Review. 65:757-63. September 18,
1919.

should be limited to the exclusion of undesirables. This opinion,
it is said, is not based on any selfish grounds and does not pro-
ceed from any purpose to antagonize the American Federation
of Labor, \vhich is seeking to erect a barrier against foreign labor,
but is based on the conclusion that if we are to increase our in-
dustrial operations we must have more men with which to do so
and that it is contrary to American principles to shut out the
honest law-abiding alien who seeks to establish his home in this
country.

The National Federation ol Construction Industries, Phila-
delphia, is now taking a poll of its members to determine their
attitude on the question. The questions set forth on its l)allots
are :

Do you believe that the present immigration laws, as amended
at the last session of Congress, with provisions for stringent lit-
eracy tests, ought to be given an opportunity for trial before
further legislation is enacted?

Do you feel that with the marked emigration of labor, which
has been going on during the past few months, it would be de-
sirable to amend existing legislation to eliminate, or make less
stringent, literacy tests?

Do you feel that it would be desirable for legislation to be
enacted which would stop all immigration for a period of three
or four years?

Are you now experiencing a labor shortage, either skilled or
unskilled?

Do you expect that you will have a shortage of labor in the
near future?

Compromise Measure Submitted

The last bill introduced in the house, Aur. 20, by Representa-
tive Johnson, of Washington, chairman of the House Committee
on immigration, was prepared as a compromise, to represent the
composite views of the members of the committee. It bars for
two years all aliens except travelers, students, professional men,
skilled labor and aliens who departed to aid the allies. Those
who are admitted must make affidavits and procure passports.
After the termination of the period of suspension an alien will
be admitted when he has sworn to a statement :

That he is coming to the United States for the bona fide pur-
pose of becoming a citizen.

That at the earliest possible moment he will learn the English
language and become acciuaintcd with the form of government

and the iustilulious oT this country, and that he will obey the
laws.

That he will register once each year until he becomes a citizen
with the county clerk of the county wherein he may reside, or
with an immigration officer designated.

That he understands and agrees that he may be deported for
failure to register or to take the necessary steps to become a citi-
zen of the United States.

An alien will not be entitled to citizenship unless he has con-
tinuously resided in the United States five years. If within one
year from the date when he is first entitled to the privilege he
fails to become a citizen he will be deported. An alien who fails
to register is also subject to deportation.

On May 19, Representative Johnson introduced his original
bill to suspend immigration for two years and to deport "any
alien who believes in, practices, advocates, teaches, sanctions, or
encourages the extortion of mone}^ or property or avenging
grievances through threats of bodily injury or injury to property,
or is a member affiliated with any organization that so prac-
tices . . ."

Would Require Registration

This bill proposed that v.ithin one month after it became
effective all aliens be compelled to register. They would be re-
quired to register thereafter semiannualh" and renew their cer-
tificates of identification for four 3'ears. It v.as proposed to
charge a fee for registration and the issuing of certificates, the
fees to be reduced as the registrant submitted proof of his abilit}'
to read and write the English language and the acquirement of
a "fair knowledge" of the American form of government. No
fee would be charged after the alien became naturalized. The
bill also provided for the provisional admission under bond o\
certain aliens whose records the government might desire to in-
vestigate.

Proposes to Limit Iniinigration

A bill was introduced by Representative Dillingham, Aug. 15,
limiting the admission of aliens to 5 per cent of the number of
their nationality already resident in the United States.

Representatives Raker and Lufkin introduced bills proposing
to suspend immigration for four years, and Representative Har-
rison submitted a bill increasing this to five years. Other bills
have been introduced to deport those aliens who proved disloyal

to the United States during the war, or who refused to fight for
the United States on the ground of noncitizenship.

From the number of bills introduced it is evident that the
United States is going to be more particular in the future as to
what goes into the "melting pot." The literacy test, it is said,
has not safeguarded the interests of the United States as fully as
present demands require. The drawback to that legislation is
that it has served to keep industrious men out of the country
while offering no barrier to those of limited intelligence Init in-
finite capacity for doing wrong.

So far as concerns the suspension of immigration, President
Wilson has not expressed himself to Congress, but he has most
emphatically declared in favor of continuing war-time restric-
tions against the admission of aliens with evil purposes. The
exclusion of the criminal classes has been adopted as a national
policy, but on the question of suspending all immigration there
is much difference of opinion.

"Two versions of the immigration situation have been pre-
sented to our committee," says Representative Knutson, Republ-
ican whip, and a member of the immigration committee.

"One was that European countries, especially those in which
fighting took place, will need the service of every able-bodied
man in the task of rehabilitating the devastated regions. This
demand should create working conditions and such attractive
wages as to induce the workers to remain in their native lands.

"The second theory was that because of unsatisfactory living
conditions in Europe there will be a tremendous exodus as soon
as transportation facilities make it possible.

"Commissioner Howe originally took the first view of the
situation. According to some of his more recent articles, how-
ever, he has revised his opinion and now expects to see our immi-
gration stations jammed with applicants unless Congress decides
to impose restrictions.

"As to the attitude of our committee, the majority members
take the view that it is up to us to report out legislation that will
prevent a glutting of the American labor market. I think a
temporary period of suspension of immigration will be the in-
evitable result. This period may be fixed at two to four years."

A double barrier may be erected against the Europeans who
may wish to come to the United States. England, France, Italy
and Germany have taken measures to keep their workmen home.
Laws, either proposed or in process of enactment, have been sup-
plemented with associations to procure work and induce men to

rciiaain. In Ma}- tliere was started in Germany the ReicliastelU
fur deutsche Answandrung und Ruckwanderuny to work for the
return of Germans now in other countries. All of these efforts
combined with the increasing amount of work provided in for-
eign countries will have some effect in limiting immigration at
least within the next few years, regardless of what action Con-
gress may take.

CANADA TO RESTRICT IMMIGRATION '

The old open-door policy in regard to immigration which has
hitherto prevailed in the Dominion of Canada is now a thing of
the past. The amendment to the Immigration Act, which was
passed at the recent session of the Canadian House of Commons,
provides the machinery for effectually putting up the bars against
undesirable immigrants to the Dominion, and this legislation will
go into effect before the end of the year.

The nine important changes in the immigration policy provide
for:

(i) Extension of the prohibitant clauses to all, including
Britishers— to exclude those suffering from diseases or bad hab-
its, criminalism, folk of low mentality, etc.

(2) To establish such machinery as will see this exclusion
ciTiciently and sufficiently applied.

(3) To extend the time for deporting aliens, if found to be
undesirable, from three to five years.

(4) Greater responsibility in connection with the transporta-
tion of immigrants and increased penalties for not giving these
facilities.

(5) The barring of all skilled and unskilled labor from Asia.

(6) To admit only such people as can be readily absorbed
and assimilated.

(7) To secure farmers with some capital and farm help,
male and female.

(.8) To secure later settlers from among Imperial soldiers.

(9) To abolish, possibl}', the head tax on Chinese and enter
ir.to an agreement with the Chinese Government to admit only
limited numbers.

The announced policy of the government has been heartily
approved by organized labor and the Great War Veterans, who

1 By Owen E. McGillicuddy. Review of Reviews. 60:196. August,
1919.

contend that wliile the financial, transportation, and industrial
problems demand an increase in population, the government
should protect the welfare of the countr}- and the future gen-
erations b}- making the present laws more stringent.

TO CLAP THE LID ON TLIE MELTIXG-POT '

The most elaborate and most widely discust plan lor regula-
ting immigration is that sponsored by the National Committee
for Constructive Immigration Legislation and advocated by Dr.
Sidney L. Gulick l)erorc the House Committee on Immigration.
The Manchester Union, Boston Transcript, Springfield Republi-
can, Indianapolis News, and St. Louis Glohe-Dcmocrat all find
something to commend in the Gulick plan and prefer it to the
Hat exclusion idea, but do not venture to guarantee its complete
practicability. The chief points in the plan have been sum-
marized in the newspapers as follows :

"i. The complete suspension of all labor immigration for a
])criod of two years or longer.

"2. The regulation of all immigration thereafter on a per-
centage principle, with the application of this principle to each
people or mother-tongue group separately, but impartially.

"3. The annual admission of from 5 to 15 per cent, (or 3 to
10 per cent.) of those of each people already naturalized, in-
cluding the American-born children of that people as recorded in
the 1920 census.

"4. The creation of an immigration commission to determine

aniuially the rate within the specified limits, with power to admit

or exclude labor under exceptional circumstances, to formulate

plans for the distribution of immigration, and to deal witli other

specified and exceptional matters of importance, including the

formulation of educational standards for naturalization.

"5. The sending of examining immigration oflicers to ports
from A\hich immigrants largely sail.

"6. The raising of standards of qualifications for citizenship
and the extension of the privileges of naturalization to every
one who qualifies.

"7- The separation of the citizenship of a wife from her
husband.

1 Literary Digest. 62:28-9. July 5, iQig.

"8. The repeal ol all laws dealing specifically and differ-
cnliall}' with the Chinese."

The Spring-field Republican points out that under this plan —

"Restriction would be particularly rigid against immigration
from south, central and east Europe. The maximum permissible
immigration during a year under the proposed plan would be
approximately 95,000 from Italy, compared with 285,000 in 1914
and 265,000 in 1913 ; from what was Austria-Hungary, 132,000,
compared with 278,000 and 254,000; from Russia, 125,000, com-
pared with 255,000 in 1914; and from Japan, 2,481, compared
with 10,213 in 1918."

In an article in last week's Annalist (New York) Dr. Gulick
asserts that his plan "will reduce the evils and dangers of Japa-
nese immigration more effectively than does the present method
of dealing v.dth Japanese immigration." But, he continues:

"The immediate and outstanding advantage of the proposed
percentage law arises from the way in which it enables us to
regulate immigration from Europe.

"In place of the free immigration now permitted — 20,000,000
might conceivabh' come to our shores in the next five years — this
plan sets up a flexible standard which will admit only so many
as w^e can hope to Americanize and employ. . . .

"These advantages are of paramount importance. And they
Y, ill all be gained without race discrimination, East or West, and
on ?. basis equally fair and friendlj' to all."

The plan thus defended by Dr. Gulick, who is an authority
on, and a long time resident of, the Far East, finds its severest
critics on the Pacific coast. The Spokane Spokesman-Review
considers the proposal to naturalize Chinese, Japanese, and sim-
ilar aliens already here thoroughly "objectionable." Victor S.
McClatch}-, editor of the Sacramento Bee, denounces the Gulick
plan as Japanese propaganda and an attempt to secure for the
J apanese what v\as denied them by the Paris Conference.

T 1

TO HALT IMMIGRATION

The passage of such an anti-immigration measure as is now
before Congress is demanded by such representative newspapers
as the Boston Christian Science Monitor, the Philadelphia In-
quirer, Grand Rapids Herald, St. Louis Republic, and Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. The St. Louis paper's support of a drastic

1 Literary Digest. 60:17-18. February 8, 1919.

liniitrttion on immigration for the next few years is based upon
its firm convictjon that "Bolshevik fanatics should by aH means
be kept out." A citizen of Baltimore xvrites to The Sun of that
city to say that in the tirst place "me total restriction of immi-
gration would go a long way toward settling the question of
giving our overseas boys employment." But, he adds,

*'\Ve could go still further and clinch the problem by deport-
ing every German, pro-German, conscientious objector, Bolshe-
vik, Industrial Worker of the World, and other disturbing ele-
ments out of our land. These elements have no use for America,
except to live off the fat of the land, exploit themselves and
their accursed doctrine, and strive to force them on a long-
suffering people."

The Sun says editorially that not only should we keep out
immigrants of the type just mentioned, but we should also "make
certain that no interned aliens are allowed to remain, and that
every alien now in jail for disloyalty shall be deported after his
sentence expires" ; and this "ought to include naturalized dis-
loyalists like Berger, whose citizenship should be revoked."

But some object that a labor shortage may result from the
proposed halt in the westward march of population. Attention
is called by the Syracuse Post-Standard to the decline in immi-
gration during the war. From 1,218,480 in 1914 it dropt to
300,000 in 191 7 and 110,000 in 1918. The Post-Standard dis-
agrees with labor leaders when it says that "with all that needs
to be done after these years of delayed enterprise there should
be places for all those w^ho return from the war, and for a larger
number of immigrants than we have been getting besides."

A Pennsylvania Congressman reports that coal operators and
manufacturers in his State fear there will be an inadequate sup-
ply of the kind of labor they need if immigration is cut off. In
Europe, according to some of the dispatches, the proposal for
prohibiting immigration to the United States for the next few
}ears is far from popular. Mr. George Nicoll Barnes, labor
representative on the British peace delegation, says European
labor would be strongly opposed to such a law. There have been
reports that there are serious objections in Italy to any restric-
tion on the entrance of Italians into the United States. But ac-
cording to the New York Evening Post, Italy, as w-ell as other
countries in Europe, has an industrial program intended to re-
move the cause for emigration "by giving her workers what
ihcy formerly sought in America — good wages and decent living
conditions."

AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION

THE VANISHING AMERICAN WAGE-EARNER''

The native American wage-earner is rapidly disappearing.
Along with him have also gone his working companions of for-
mer years, the English, Irish, Scotch, Swedes, Norwegians, and
Germans. In their places have appeared the representatives of
almost two score alien races from the south and east of Europe,
and the Orient. Onl}' one fifth of the workers in our mines and
manufacturing plants to-day are native Americans. About one
tenth of our wage-earners are the native-born children of parents
from Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, and the Scandinavian
countries. More than three fifths of our great body of industrial
workers are southern or eastern Europeans.

There is scarcely a cit}' or town of any industrial importance
east of the Mississippi, and north of the Ohio and Potomac riv-
ers, which has not its immigrant colony, composed of members of
the Italian, Magyar, and Slavic races. Practically the same sit-
uation exists in the mining states of the West. The Pacific coast,
in addition to its Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos, has also re-
ceived its contingent of southern and eastern Europeans. \\ her-
ever there has been any industrial development — in the coal
mines of Kansas and Oklahoma, the iron-ore mines of the Mesabi
and Vermilion ranges of Minnesota, the furnaces and mills at
Pueblo, Colorado, and Birmingham, Alabama, the packing-houses
in Kansas City, South Omaha, and Fort Worth, the copper
mines of Tennessee, the coal mines of ^'irginia, as well as in
the mines and mills of the East — the Slav, the Hungarian, and the
Italian have found a lodgment in the operating forces. As a
rule, the extent of their employment decreases as industr}- moves
westward, but even in the West these races are rapidl}' becom-
ing predominant among the industrial workers. Their status is
also not confined to the substratum of unskilled workmen, but
they are found in all grades of the industrial scale, — with the

1 By W. Jett Lauck. In Atlantic Monthly. 110:691-6. November,
1912.

exception of the executive and the technical positions, — from
the highest to the lowest occupations. A brief review of several
basic industries will forcibl}- disclose the real significance of the
recent racial substitutions in our mines and manufacturing
establishments.

Only one fourth of the iron and steel workers of to-day are
native Americans, and only one eighth are the descendants of the
older skilled immigrant employees, who received their training
in the mills and furnaces of Great Britain and Germany. Prac-
tically all of these are in the more responsible executive and
technical occupations. The superintendents of our iron and steel
manufacturing plants are unable to persuade the native Amer-
icans to enter the industry', and are wondering whom they will
get to take the places of the foreman and skilled workers of the
present generation. Three fifths of the employees of our furn-
aces and steel mills are of foreign birth. Two thirds of these
immigrant workmen are southern and eastern Europeans of re-
cent arrival in the United States. Polish, Magyar, and Slovak
iron and steel workers, combined, equal in number the native
Americans in the industry; and the North and South Italians,
Pithuanians, Russians, and Croatians together outnumber the
English, Irish, Scotch, and Germans. The operating forces of
the industry until tv.enty 3^ears ago were exclusively composed
of native Americans and older immigrants from Great Britain
and Northern Europe. In the decade 1890- 1900, southern and
eastern Europeans found employment in the mills and furnaces,
and the pressure of their competition has gradually driven out
the members of races at first employed.

The displacement of the native American miner has been even
more sudden and widespread than that of the iron and steel
worker. Only one fifth of our bituminous coal miners are native
Americans, and less than one tenth are of native birth and for-
eign parentage, the children, that is to say, of British and north-
ern European immigrants. More than sixty per cent are foreign
born. Three fourths of the immigrant employees are from the
south and east of Europe, and among these the Italians, Poles,
Slovaks, Croatians, and Lithuanians are numerically predom-
inant.

The low-paid and unskilled southern and eastern European

immigrants were first employed in the western Pennsylvania
mines. With their advent, native workers and northern and
western European employees were gradually displaced. Some
went to the mining localities in the Middle West and Southwest,
and some left the industry entirely to engage in other occupa-
tions. The native American and older immigrants, who remained
in the Pennsylvania mines, were those who held or were ad-
vanced to more responsible positions, and the few who were left
in the unskilled occupations were usually the inert and the un-
progressive. The recent immigrants, after inundating western
Pennsylvania, moved on to the Middle W est, and the American
miners and those of British extraction in Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois, are being steadily displaced by them. As in the case of
the Pennsjdvania mines, the older immigrants are leaving the
industry or moving to the coal fields of Kansas, Oklahoma, and
Colorado, where the competition of the southern and eastern
European is less keenly felt.

Practically the same conditions with the same results have
been brought about b}' the entrance of the southern and eastern
European into the anthracite mines. The American and older
immigrants, originally employed, have left the industr}', or have
migrated to the western coal and metalliferous mining fields, and
those who .remain are chiefly in the supervisory and responsible
positions.

The recent immigrant industrial invasion has also extended to
the iron-ore and copper mines. The great majority of iron-ore
workers in the Birmingham district in Alabama are Negroes, the
tide of recent immigration to the Southern States thus far having
been very small. On the iron-ore ranges of Michigan and Min-
nesota, however, only about one eighth of the employees are
native Americans. Three fourths are of foreign birth, the prin-
cipal races represented being the Croatians, Finns, North and
South Italians, Poles, Slovaks, Slovenians, ^ and Swedes. In the
copper mines of Alichigan and Tennessee the same preponder-
ance of foreign-born employees exists. About one fifth of the
workers in the copper mines are native Americans, and about
one eighth were born in America ; but their parents were born
abroad. The great majority are Croatians, Finns, Poles, North
Italians, Slovenians, and English. The Finns and the English
were the orginal copper-mine workers, but they have been, and

1 A people of south-western Hungary, related to the Croatians as the
Slovaks are to the Bohemians. In the rate of immigration the Slovaks
lead; next come the Hebrews, while the Slovenians rank third. — Tuf.
Editors.

are gradually being, displaced by the southern and eastern Euro-
peans.

With the exception of a few Italians in the mills in New
Orleans, there are no foreign-born textile operatives in the
Southern States. The immense labor force called into existence
by the demand for labor growing out of the extraordinary devel-
opment of cotton-goods manufacturing in the South has been
recruited from the native-born agricultural classes and moun-
taineers of that section. In New England, however, the situation
is entirely different. There is scarcely a race from the south
and east of Europe or the Orient which does not have its repre-
sentatives among the employees of cotton, woolen, worsted, silk,
hosiery, and knit-goods mills.

When the cotton mills were first started in New England,
the looms and spindles were tended by the sons and daughters
of the farmers who lived in the surrounding country. As the
industry expanded, skilled and experienced operatives were at-
tracted from England, Scotland, and Ireland. After 1850 the
French-Canadians came in large numbers in response to the
growing demand for operatives. These sources of labor-supply
continued until 1890, when southern and eastern Europeans began
to find employment in the mills. As their employment became
more extensive, the immigration of English, Irish, Scotch, and
French-Canadians declined, and during the past decade has prac-
tically ceased. Not only has this class of work-people stopped
entering the mills, but those already employed have sought work
elsewhere, and the southern and eastern European employees are
now predominant.

The same condition of affairs prevails in the other branches
of the textile industries, — woolen, worsted, silk, carpet, hosiery,
and knit-goods manufacturing, — as in the cotton mills. The na-
tive Americans and older immigrant employees have been super-
seded by foreign-l)orn operatives of recent arrival in the United
States.

At the present time, the native Americans in the New Eng-
land cotton mills scarcely make up one tenth of the total number
of operatives employed. The proportion of native Americans in
other branches of textile manufacturing, as compared with cotton
goods, is slightly larger, but even then is exceedingly small. Only
one seventh of the employees of our woolen and worsted mills
and silk-dyeing establishments, and only one fifth of those in our
silk mills and carpet factories, are of native birth, and of native
fathers. About one operative out of each three workers in

hosiery and knit-goods establishments is a native American.
Three out of every five operatives of cotton, \\oolen, worsted,
and carpet mills are of foreign birth, and two out of three of
these foreign-born wage-earners are of recent arrival from
southern and eastern Europe and the Orient. Three out of every
four operatives of dyeing establishments for silk goods are aliens.

The Poles, Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, and Lithuanians are
the predominant races of recent immigration employed in our
cotton, woolen, and worsted mills. In the spinning, weaving and
dj-eing of silk goods and carpets, and in the manufacture of
hosiery and underwear, the North and South Italians, Mag}'ars,
and Poles are the leading races of recent arrival in the United
States among the employees. Among the immigrants in all of
these industries are also to be found considerable numbers of
skilled operatives from England, Scotland, and Ireland, and from
German}-. The French-Canadians form an important proportion,
especially among the cotton and woolen mill operatives.

Such are the racial elements in the operating forces of our
basic industries. Furthermore, this situation is tj-pical of all the
less important divisions of industry. The United States Immi-
gration Commission included within the scope of its exhaustive
investigations in all parts of the country more than forty of the
leading branches of mining and manufacturing. Everywhere —
in the manufacture of agricultural implements, cigars and to-
bacco, boots and shoes, clothing, furniture, glass, gloves, leather,
petroleum, collars and cuffs, electrical supplies, machinery', loco-
motives, and a score of other industries — the same condition of
affairs was found to exist. The native American occupied nu-
mericall}' a subordinate position among the wage-earners and,
along with the representatives of older immigrant races from
Great Britain, was being rapidly displaced by southern and
eastern European employees, who had been securing employ-
ment in all kinds of mines and manufacturing establishments.

Ill

The southern and eastern European immigrant who has so
extensively found emplo\'ment in our mines and factories has
had no industrial training abroad. He has also brought with
him a low standard of living, and has been tractable and sub-
servient. As a result, his competition has exposed the native
American and older immigrant employees to unsafe or unsan-

itaiy working conditions, and has led to or continued the im-
position of conditions of employments which the Americans and
older immigrants have considered unsatisfactory and, in many
cases, unbearable. Where the older employees have found un-
safe or unsanitary working conditions prevailing, and have pro-
tested, the recent immigrant wage-earners, usually through
ignorance of mining or other working methods, have manifested
a willingness to accept the alleged unsatisfactory working condi-
tions.

The southern and eastern European also, because of his tract-
ability, necessitous condition, and low standards, has been in-
clined, as a rule, to acquiesce in the demand on the part of the
employers for extra work or longer hours. The industrial work-
ers have also accepted without protest the system of so-called
compan}' stores and houses, W'hich prevails extensively in bitu-
minous and anthracite coal, iron-ore, and copper mining, and
other industrial localities.

The presence of the recent immigrant industrial worker has
also brought about living conditions or a standard of life with
which the native American and older immigrant employees have
been unwilling, or have found it extremely difficult, to compete.
The southern and eastern European wage-earner is usually single,
or, if married, has left his wdfe and children abroad. He has no
permanent interest in the community in which he lives or the
industry in wdiich he is employed. His main purpose is to live
as cheaply as possible, and to save as much as he can. Conse-
quently, he has adopted a group method of living known as the
"boarding-boss" system. Under this plan, from eight to twenty
men usually crowd together in a small apartment or house in
order to reduce the per capita outlay for rent, and buy their own
food and do their own cooking. The total cost of living ranges
from eight to fifteen dollars per month for each member of the
group. The impossibility of competition hy the native American
with such standards of living needs no discussion.

In addition to these conditions, brought about by the influx
of southern and eastern European industrial workers, another
factor, mainly psychological in its nature, but no less powerful
in its effect, has been operative in the displacement of native
Americans and older immigrant employees. In all industries,
and in all industrial communities, a certain reproach has come td
be associated with native American or older immigrant workmen
who are engaged in the same occupations as the southern and
eastern Europeans. This feeling on the part of the older cm-

ployees is mainly due to the habits of life and conduct of recent
immigrants, and to dieir ready acceptance of conditions; but i1
is also largely attributable to the conscious or unconscious an-
tipathy, often arising from ignorance or prejudice, toward races
of alien customs, institutions, and manner of thought.

The same psychological effect was produced upon the native
Americans in all branches of industrial enterprise who first came
into working contact with the older immigrants from Greal:
Britain and northern Europe. In the decade 1840-1850, when the
Irish immigrant girls were first employed in the New England
cotton mills, the native women who had previously been the
textile operatives protested; twenty ^-ears later the Irish girls,
after they had become firmly fixed in the industry, rebelled be-
cause of the employment of French-Canadian girls in the spin-
ning rooms, just as the French-Canadian women refuse to be
l)rought into close working relations with the Polish and Italian
women who are entering the cotton mills at the present time.
Whatever may be the cause of this aversion of older employees
to working by the side of the newer arrivals, the existence of the
feeling has become one of the most potent causes of racial sub-
stitution in manufacturing and mining occupations.

It is obvious that the advent within recent years of the south-
ern and eastern European into American industrial life has been
a matter of most serious consequence to the American workman,
and the present-day competition of the same racial elements is
of the greatest significance to the native-born and older immi-
grant wage-earners. The labor unions of the original employees,
which should have been among the greatest factors in assimilat-
ing industrially the recent immigrant, and in educating him to
American standards, in some industries — as for example bitumin-
ous coal mining in western Pennsylvania, or the cotton mills of
New England — have been completely inundated, and wholl}' or
partially destroyed by the sudden and overwhelming influx of
southern and eastern Europeans. In other industries, where the
competition of the immigrant of recent 3Tars has not been so
directly felt, as in the glass industry, where skilled workmen were
formerly necessary, the labor organizations are being weakened
and undermined indirectly in other ways.

Everywhere improved machiner}'^ and mechanical processes

are eliminating the clement of skill formerly required of em-
ployees, and are making it possible for the unskilled foreign-born
workman to enter occupations which have hitherto been beyond
his qualifications, because they required previous training or ant
extended apprenticeship. Formerly, in order to be a pick- or
hand-miner a number of years of training was necessary. Now
a machine does the work and unskilled workmen attend it. By
means of the automatic loom and ring-spinning-frame an un-
skilled immigrant from the south or east of Europe may now
become a proficient weaiver or spinner within a few months. The
former highly skilled work of blowing glass bottles, as well as
window and plate glass, may now be done by machinery manned
by foreign-born employees who have been in the United States
less than three months and w'ho, before their employment, had
never seen a glass factory.

In all industries, the immigrant wage-earner, through the
elimination of the requirements of skill and experience, is being
brought directly into contact and working competition with the
native American and older British or northern European wage-
earner. Unless the latter can do something to elevate the stand-
ards oi the recent immigrants, their competition in the higher
occupations will be followed by as serious results as have already
attended their invasion of the lower grades of the industrial
scale.

Much has been written in the past decade relative to the
social and political effects of recent immigration. The recent
exhaustive investigation of the Federal Commission, however,
has revealed the fact that these phases of the problem are com-
paratively of little import. The actual problem is found in the
industrial effects of the recent alien influx. Existing legislation
cannot settle this problem. Its solution is dependent upon a
change in our present immigration policy.

WHY IMMIGRATION SHOULD BE
RESTRICTED '

There is one further step which is an absolutel}^ essential part
of the Americanization campaign. The problem is difficult
enough, at best, to require all the energy, and time, and money
that can be given to it. But no thorough Americanization can

1 By Robert de C. Ward. In Review of Reviews. 59:512-16. May,
1919.

possibly be accomplished unless the numbers of incoming alien
immigrants are kept within reasonable limits. It is an absolutely
impossible task properly to (i) _educatej_ (2) assimilate, (3)
Americanize and (4) naturalize our foreign-born population if
millions forever keep poring in. It is exactly like tr^dng to keep
a leaking boat bailed out without stopping the leak. To expect
any reasonable success in this campaign, immigration must be re-
stricted.

The balance of expert opinion on the question of our prob-
able immigration in the years immediately ahead is that, as soon
as ocean transportation is again fully established, there will be a
far larger immigration than ever before. It is the opinion of
American diplomatic and consular officers in Europe, and of
competent correspondents who have recently traveled extensively
abroad, that there is everywhere a more widespread desire than
ever to "go to America." All the arguments which may be urged
in favor of a decreased immigration, based on the need of labor
for reconstruction and for agriculture abroad, collapse when we
remember that the great magnet of "America" will continue to
draw immigrants to this "promised land." Our part in feeding
and caring for vast numbers of people abroad, and in helping to
win the war as liberators of the oppressed, and as ready to sacri-
fice, if necessary, any number of lives and endless sums of money
for an ideal, will prove new incentives.

Immigration is essentially a matter of economic conditions
here and abroad. As the late Gen. Francis A. Walker so well
put it, "the stream of immigration will flow on as long as there
is any difference in economic level between the United States and
the most degraded communities abroad." A recent writer after
considerable study of the subject, has put the probable annual
number of immigrants who will soon be coming here at 2,000,000.
Be that as it maj', the most enthusiastic believer in the success of
the Americanization movement can hardly face the prospect of
a stead\^ annual immigration of even only several hundred thous-
ands without doubt and discouragement. To hope to accomplish
successful Americanization v.-hen the supply of aliens keeps up is
to have an optimism "beyond all bounds of reason." A real re-
striction of immigration is a necessary and a logical part of the
Americanization program.

Temporary Decrease Due to the War.

The effect of the war in temporarily diminishing the volume
of immigration to the United States was, of course, expected.

From an annual innnigralion ol ncarl\- a million and a hall"
during the hscai years 1913 and 1914, and an annual net increase
in alien population (i.e., deducting the numbers of those who re-
turned to their own countries) of 800,000, the number of immi-
grant aliens fell to a little over 325,000 during the year ending
June 30, 1915. In the fiscal 3'ears 1916 and 191 7, about 300,000
came, while in the year ending June 30 last the number of immi-
grant aliens was only 110,000.

While 110,000 is a very small immigration as compared with
the very much larger numbers in the years preceding the war, it
is worth noting that these alien immigrants arrived at the rate
of more than 2,000 a week and nearly 10,000 a month.

From July to November, 1918, the number of immigrant aliens
was 45,909, and of non-immigrant aliens 30,456. How all these
immigrants have managed to get here during wartime is a mys-
tery-. Obstacles innumerable have been in their way, yet they
have kept coming. That they have done so, in spite of the dif-
ficulties, shows what is likely to happen on a vastly greater scale
in tho next few years, w'hen transportation by rail and steamship
is once more fully restored.

It has always been held by those who are concerned regarding
the admission into the United States of mentall}^ and physically
defective aliens that, with a smaller number of alien arrivals,
the work of inspection can be more effecti\ely done, \\ith the
inevitable and greatly to be desired result that fewer undesirables
will escape detection. Our experience during the v^ar has borne
out this view. The increase in the percentage of rejections dur-
ing the past four years is to be ascribed, according to the Com-
missioner-General of Immigration, to two causes : first, a deteri-
oration in the quality of immigration itself ; and second, to more
rigid inspection made possible by decreased numbers.

In the earlier days of the war there was a large emigration
from the United States of men belonging to the various belliger-
ent countries who went home to fight. The majority of these
will naturally come back. As soon as transportation conditions
become more normal, there will be a further considerable exodus
from the United States of both men and women belonging to
the nations which have been at war. These recent immigrants
will go home to ascertain the fate of their relatives and friends ;
to see what has become of their famih- property, and to bring-
back with them to this country as many as possible of their
families and friends still left abroad.

Proposed Measures of Restriction

The almost certain prospect of a greatly increased immigra-
lion closely ioilovving the ending of the war; the manifest in-
justice of exposing our returning soldiers and sailors to com-
petition \\i\h the low-priced labor of Europe and of \\ estern
Asia, and the conviction that our present immigration law is
selective rather than numerically restrictive, have naturally re-
sulted in a widespread demand for immediate further legislation
\vhich shall really limit the numbers of our alien immigrants.
During the Short Session of the Congress which ended on
March 4, 1919, the Immigration Committee of the House of
Representatives reported a bill (H. R. 15302, Union Calendar Xo.
359; Report No. 1015), suspending immigration for four years,
with many exceptions in the cases of certain professional classes ;
the riear relatives of aliens now in, or who have become citizens
of the United States; aliens from Canada, Newfoundland, Cuba
and Mexico; aliens who are refugees because of various kinds
of persecution, and aliens admitted temporaril}- under regulations
to-be prescribed. No action was taken on this bill.

At the hearings which vvcre given by the House Committee
on Immigration, the bill was strong!}- advocated by the American
Federation of Labor and by other organizations which stand for
the maintenance of American wages and of American standards
of living, and which, especially in view of demobilization and of
the dangers of unemployment, wish to prevent, at least tem-
porarily, the influx of large numbers of alien workers.

The line-up of the opponents of the bill was the same as in
previous years. The old argument was used that there is already
enough restriction, and it was urged that there should be more
hearings, and further delay. Organizations from Vshose sym-
pathies the hyphen has by no means been eliminated, and "inter-
ests" directly or indirectly concerned with cheap labor and with
transportation, were represented among those who spoke against
the pending measure. One of the opponents, representing certain
labor bodies composed of recent immigrants, maintained that the
more immigrants and the more other labor we have in this coun-
try, the higher will be the wages of the workers, and the higher
will be the general standard of living!

Another bill, which was not reported (H. R. 11280), based on
the conviction that one of the best tests of assimilation is the
wish to become naturalized, limits the number of aliens to be ad-

niittcd from any country in any year to from 20 to 50 per cent,
of tlie persons born in such country who were naturaUzed at the
date of the last census. The exact per cent, is to be fixed an-
nually by the Secretary of I^abor, with reference to existing labor
conditions in the United States. The percentage plan has the
merits of being more than a temporary "reconstruction" meas-
ure, and of being sufficiently elastic to respond to varying eco-
nomic conditions.

That a further real restriction of immigration is necessary
for the best interests of American labor, and for the proper as-
similation and Americanization of our heterogeneous population,
has long been obvious to the large majority of those, both Amer-
icans and foreigners, who have impartially studied our immigra-
tion problems.

IMMIGRATION STANDARDS AFTER THE WAR '

One of the knottiest problems which will have to be faced
in the establishment of a world state or a league of nations will
be the question of the movement of people. Under the national
economy which has prevailed hitherto, every state has assumed
its own right to d(^termine what should be the constituents of
its population so far as extrinsic contributions were concerned —
in other words, the right to control immigration — and few states,
with the exception of Japan, have questioned the legal or moral
right of other states to make such a determination. On the
other hand, few modern states have found it expedient to place
limitations upon the movements of their own people within
their own territor3^

Whether the era of internationalism which is now dawning
results in the formation of a world state, or in a more loosly
coordinated league or federation of self-determining units, in
either case there can be only two general alternatives as re-
gards migrations. Either there will be a free right of passage
over the entire territory included in the state domain, analogous
to the present right of travel within a given country, or else
restrictions must be placed by the central authority, or by the
federated states in accordance with a common agreement and
consent, with respect to boundaries broadly similar to those

1 By Henry Pratt Fairchild. Annals of the American Academy, 81:
73-9. January, 1919.

which now separate existing nations. In the former case, there
would be introduced the new principle of discrimination withiii
a given jurisdiction; in the latter, the way would be left open
to uncreditable bitterness, jealousy and dissension. Either so-
lution is full of uncertainties and dangers.

It is the purpose of this paper to show that, great as are the
dihiculties of migration control under a world government, for
the present the scientific and only safe course is to insist upon
restrictions (so far as the United States, at least, is con-
cerned) at least as rigorous as those which w^ere in operation
before the outbreak of the war. The demonstration of such
a proposition calls for a matter-of-fact, impersonal analysis
which seems at first to ignore the claims of humanitarianism
and universal brotherhood, and yet is as fully legitimate as if
the subject under discussion were the transplantation of fruit
trees, or the control of river currents.

The ultimate goal of the present convulsion, the military
phases of which have happily terminated, and the political and
social phases of which have just begun, is the estabhshment of
universal democracy. Democracy is composed of various ele-
ments, and is difficult of definition or description. But of its
material elements there is no better embodiment and criterion
than the standard of living of the common people. Where the
standard of living of the people is high, relative to the general
producing power of the territory, there democracy flourishes,
by W'hatever name the government may be called. W here the
masses live on a low plane of comfort, democracy languishes and
dies, however great may be the tabulated wealth of that nation.
Speaking of the world at large, if a higher standard does not
result for the great bulk of mankind, all this blood will have
been shed largely in vain. If there should result a general
lowering of the standard over the entire globe it would be an
unspeakable calamity, dwarfing all the untold horrors and losses
of the conflict itself.

For the remainder of this discussion, let us lay to one side
all question of the inferiority and superiority of racial stocks,
and think only of the tangible values of material comfort and
spiritual welfare, about which there can hardly be a difference
of opinion. What is the obligation of the United States with
reference to maintaining, and if possible raising, the standard
of living of the great masses of mankind, of whatever race or
affiliation ?

The naive answer to this question might easily lie that our
duty is to share our blessings as liberally and impartialh' as
may be with all those who care to participate in them, all the
more so, since our losses in defense of democracy have been
so trivial in comparison with those of our gallant Allies w!io
have borne the burden of the conflict. If there were, before
the war, hosts of conscientious, intelligent people who were
ready to throw our doors wide open to "the down-trodden and
oppressed of every land,'' there will be more now who will con-
ceive it as the acme of national selfishness if wc refuse as.vlum
to the would-be refugees who will seek to escape the drudgery
and hardships of the reconstruction period in Europe.

Let us set down certain basic considerations bearing upon
the question, with reference to which there will be general
agreement and which will clarify the more dubious steps of the
argument. In the first place, there is little doubt that before
the war the people of the United States enjoyed a higher stan-
dard of living than any otlier considerable nation. This was
ours, not because of any special merit of our own, imt because
of the peculiarly fortunate conjunction of land, climate and
historical development which has given us an unparallelled com-
mand over the sources of wealth. Our standard is rather in
the nature of a free gift than an achievement. In the secon.d
place, it will hardly be denied that if the spirit of universal
brotherhood is to dominate the world, those of us who have
been fortunate enough to have our lot cast in this bountiful land
must not seek to monopolize these blessings entirely for our-
selves, just because we happen to be nov, in possession of them,
or because the nation of which wc arc the constituent parts has
"owned" them for a century and a half. Surely the modern
thing the altruistic thing, the post-magnum-bellum thing to do
is to share these benefits as unreservedly as possible, particularly
with those suffering peoples vrith whom we have been so closely
associated during a year and a half of war. The crucial ques-
tion is whether or not we can best share them by allowing the
individual representatives of those and other peoples free ac-
cess to the land from which we draw our wealth and power.

No space need be devoted to a portrayal of the dire con-
ditions which w^ould result if large contingents of foreign labor
should be admitted to this country within two or three }ears
from the present date. It is painfull\- obvious that we shall
have all that we can do to handle the problems of demobiliza-

lion of our own army, and readjustment ot our industrial situa-
tion, without serious injury to our standards of wages and work-
ing conditions. Such an immigration as was normal during a
busy year before the war would now be an intolerably compli-
cating factor. Probably this wdll be prevented W'ithout any di-
rect action by the use of shipping for other purposes, and other
contributory forces. But if it should transpire that the cur-
rent of immigration labor began to flow once more while our
army was still being demobilize'd, such a .current should cer-
tainly be checked by effective means, however drastic. The
larger problem, however, has to do with the effects which may
be expected to follow' the resumption of immigration when peace
conditions are measurably restored.

Modern immigration, as is recognized by all authorities, is
large!}' an economic phenomenon, that is, it represents a search
for a higher standard of living. Almost without exception, the
countries which furnish large bodies of immigrants to the
United States have a standard lower than ours, or at least the
classes which emigrate have a lower standard than similar classes
in this country. More than that, our general standard is so
much higher than that of most foreign countries that our lowest
economic classes have a standard above that of much higher
classes in other lands. Immigration, therefore, represents the intro-
duction of lower standards into a country of higher standards.

The immigration of foreign labor to the United States tends
to low^er the standard of living of our working classes. It
numerically increases the supply of workers bidding for employ-
ment and therefore tends to lower the prevailing wage or at best
prevent it from rising. This is a sufficiently serious influence,
but if the immigrants were habituated to the same standard as
the natives, so that the effect was exclusively numerical, the result
would not be necessarily calamitous, especially in times of ex-
panding industry when immigrants come most freely. Immi-
gration, however, has an influence much more powerful and much
much more disastrous, that is directly connected wdth the stand-
ard of living itself.

The introduction of a relatively small contingent of foreign
labor into an industrial country may have a depressing effect
upon the standard of living of the working people in that coun-
try out of all proportion to the numbers involved, provided that
the immigrants are accustomed to a definitely lower standard
than the natives. The process may be schematically described as

follows: Suppose that there is in the United States an indus-
trial town centering about one great plant which is the economic
backbone of the communit}'. Suppose that this plant employs
lO.ooo people, the bulk of the wage-earners of the town. These
workers are reasonabl}- efficient, and receive wages sufficient to
enable them to maintain their families in a fair degree of com-
fort. Say that the average daily wage runs about $3.00. Into
this town there comes some morning a group of 500 raw immi-
grants in charge of a labor importer. These foreigners are men
not materialh" inferior in economic productiveness to the natives
of the town. But they have previously lived in a country where
tne conditions of existence are so much inferior that their cus-
tomary wage is the equivalent of onh- $1.50 of American money.
To receive a wage of $2.00 a day would therefore enable them 10
raise their standard very decidedly, and the}' will snatch at the
chance to work for such a wage. Immediately upon their
arrival, the labor agent goes to the superintendent of the plant
and offers him 500 laborers at $2.00 apiece. The superintendent
looks them over, becomes convinced that they can do the work
approximately as well as his present workers and agrees to take
them on. He then calls in his foremen, and together they select
the 500 least efiicient of the $3.00 men, who are thereupon in-
formed that they are to be discharged. Upon learning the reason,
they protest that they have their homes and families in the town,
they do not know where else to find employment, and rather than
lose their jobs altogether they accept the wage offered to the
foreigners. With a show of generosity, the superintendent offers
to pay them $2.25 a day, and they go back to their places. In the
meantime the group of foreigners are still available. Therefore
the next most inefficient group of 500 employes is selected, and
the process repeated, with the same result. So it goes on, until
eventually every one of the 10,000 original workers has had his
pay reduced by fifty or seventy-five cents. At the same time, not
one of the immigrants has been employed, and in the evening
the group departs to try its luck elsewhere.

It goes w^ithout saying that in the complicated life of the
nation at large the process does not go on so simply and mechani-
cally as this. But exactly this principle is at work, however
much its operation may be masked by contributory forces. There
can be no doubt that the competition of laborers habituated to
a lower standard is the most pernicious and insidious force
which can attack the standard of living of the workers of a

modern industrial democrac\-. It has been well stated that there
is a Gresham's law in the industrial world, whereby the poorer
labor drives out the better, and the lower standard eliminates
the higher.

There can be no question that free immigration of foreign
labor thoroughly undermines the standards of our common
people. The process was already beginning to tell disastrously
before the war, and would be immeasurably augmented if im-
migration should again go on unchecked, now that there will
be so much added incentive for the tax-burdened natives of
European countries to seek this land.

The worst of the whole matter is that there is no limit to
the process. The drawing off of a sufficient number ot laborers
from such countries as India and China to destro}"^ our own stan-
dard would produce no appreciable benefit in those countries,
for the simple reason that it would not reduce the pressure of
population there, and therefore could not raise their standard.
A million immigrants a year perpetually could easily be drawn
from China without decreasing its population in the least. The
logical outcome of free immigration of workingmen under
modern conditions of competitive bargaining for labor, as Gen-
eral Walker pointed out long ago, is the reduction of the stan-
dard of living of all countries to one dead level, and that the
level of the originally most degraded and backward of them all.

It needs no argument to show that the United States is
not called upon to sacrifice her standard for the sake of mere
unreasoning sentimentality. She would be most recreant to her
trust if she did so. Standards of living once lost can hardly
be regained. It is our duty as a nation, our duty to humanity
in the highest sense of the word, to protect our standard, in
order that it may serve as a model and goal for the striving
democracies in other lands, and that we ourselves ma}' be in a
position to help those democracies to climb somewhere near to
the plane of their ideals.

The question of immigration after the war is often stated
as the problem of whether we need to protect ourselves againr.t
the dumping of cripples and incompetents from foreign sources.
The real question is, how we may protect ourselves from the
able-bodied workers of less fortunate lands. Paradoxical as
it may seem, we haA'^e much less to fear from the man who can-
not earn his living than from the man who can. This is
a rich country, and we could well afford to support for

the rest of their lives thousands of the physical wrecks of war
from England, France, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Russia and Serbia.
It would be but a slight recognition of our debt to those countries
who have paid so much dearer for the liberty of the world than
we have if our military hospitals and cantonments were gradually
transformed into homes for as many disabled victims as our
Allies chose to send us (under proper government supervision to
prevent abuse), while we taxed ourselves liberally for their life-
long support and comfort. This would cost us nothing but
money. But to permit the free transference of the labor from
those countries to this under conditions which meant the disrup-
tion of our own standards would cost us our very life, and worst
of all, would cost us our abilit}' to be of real and permanent
help to less fortunate lands.

The foregoing discussion rests upon the assumption that in
general the present economic system will prevail,— private owner-
ship of capital, competitive wage-bargaining, individual responsi-
bility for family living conditions, etc. What might happen
under conditions of socialism, or a world-wide minimum wage
is merely matter for conjecture — except that it is hard to conceive
of any minimum wage which would not speedily break down
under conditions of free immigration.

LABOR AND IMMIGRATION'

I believe that a carefully restrictive control of immigration is
absolutely necessary to the establishment of the kind of indus-
trial order already suggested. Not because there is no room or
fruitful work in America for all the myriads who annually (in
normal times) pass through its gates. The vast resources of
this continent could sustain, given scientific cultivation of the
land, and an economic distribution of the people, we know not
how many times its present population. And not because the
newcomers, from Europe at any rate, cannot be assimilated into
American life and raised — where raising is in question — to Amer-
ican standards. The response to the American environment of
the children of the foreign born, even of those whom we re-
missly suffer to be insulated in racial colonies, is a most remark-
able phenomenon. But the true reason for restrictive control is

* From "Labor in the Changing World," by R. M. Maclver. p. 192-4.
Copyrighted by E. P. Button & Co., 1919.

an economic one. The Report of the Immigration Commission
provides much evidence to show that the low-skilled occupations
into which the mass of immigrants enter are considerably over-
stocked. Too cheap labor is, like all cheap things, very expensive
in the long run. Our society as a whole, as well as those directly
concerned, suffers on account of the low standards, the over-
crowding and the infection, the disorganization and the exploita-
tion, which are the other side of too cheap labor. These evils
cannot be avoided so long as unskilled myriads are allowed to
flood the labor market. No standards can be maintained, no
order can be built up in face of the competition of the immigrant-
recruited reserves of unemployed. This indisputable fact is the
true ground for restriction.

PROPOSED IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION '

It has been urged against this legislation that there will be no
emigration from the war-stricken countries for several years on
account of the need of workers there. If that be true, this bill
can certainly do no harm.

But is it true?

Let that question be answered as to one country at least by a
high Italian official. A few weeks ago a delegation from the
Italian labor union came to this country from Italy. At the head
of this delegation was Mr. Alceste De Ambris, a member of the
Italian House of Deputies. In the December number of Italy
To-day, a publication gotten out in New York by the Italian
Bureau of Public Information in the United States, Mr De Am-
bris is quoted on page 50, as follows :

"Emigration of Italian labor after the war will be a necessity,
and part of the function of the delegation is to help this emigra-
tion. Italy has an excess of 300,000 births over deaths annually,
and these 300,000 must find an outlet. Industry in Italy has ad-
vanced and is making ever-increased demands on labor, but the
increase is not equal to the supply. Italy has an excess of labor
and it would benefit both the United States and Italy if this labor
could be induced or would choose to come here."

On page 51 he says :

"Although industry in Italy is entering a new era of ag-
grandizement, this development can not 3'et absorb Italy's huge

* U. S. Immigration Service Bulletin. 1:9-12. February i, 1919.

labor reserve. Emigration must take care of that; those who
remain in Italy will have work at good wages, and bolshevism
will go unheeded."

Mr. De Ambris w^as solicitous about preventing bolshevism
in Italy, but he was not worried about the bolshevism likely to
be produced here by having two men for every job.

What is said about the surplus in Italy may be said with
equal force, and even greater force, as to some other countries.

The year before the war in Europe began 1,218,480 immi-
grants came to this country.

Those were mainly from the countries of southern and eastern
Europe. During the war scarcely any came. If the war had not
been on, the emigration from those countries during the past
four and a half years, at the rate it had been making for the
previous four years, would have been somewhat more than their
loss by death in the war. Hence the depletion by death in the
war leaves those countries about where they would have been
left by emigration. Thus they will start anew.

Conditions in Russia will naturally cause many people from
that country to seek homes elsewhere. If the Bolshevists are
suppressed, they will be the ones who will come here to join
their brethren, both foreign and native, in flaunting the red flag
and teaching death to individuals and destruction to property.

Major LaGuardia in his testimony before the committee pre-
dicted a large immigration of Greeks, Syrians, and so on.

Capt. Johnson, Member of Congress from South Dakota, who
had a most honorable career at the front in France and had the
opportunity to investigate at first hand, predicted before the
committee that large numbers of the worst classes will as soon
as possible make a rush for America.

How soon will that be? Just as soon as the steamship com-
panies can begin their transportation.

A more arrogant lot of outlaws never entered our ports than
some of those steamship companies.

In proof of that fact it need only be stated that although only
a little over 100,000 aliens came to this country during the last
fiscal year, and many of them came across the Mexican border,
yet fines to the amount of $63,315 were levied on the steamship
companies for flagrant violations of our immigration laws.

Again, it is urged that many aliens now here will return to
their countries as soon as they can secure transportation. That
is no doubt true ; but nearly everyone of them will go back with
the expectation of soon returning to this country and bringing
some of his relatives with him.

This was admitted by one of the fairest and most intelligent
witnesses that appeared before our committee against this bill.
There were two cogent reasons which impelled the committee to
favor this legislation. One is the unsettled labor conditions that
are already beginning here, and that will no doubt grow worse as
the soldiers from our armies are discharged and war workers
are released.

Although less than one-fifth of our soldiers have been dis-
charged, we are already hearing of the surplus of labor increas-
ing in almost every section of the country.

A few weeks ago the Division of Employment Service of the
Department of Labor reported a surplus in only a few States.
Each day's report adds to that surplus, until to-day a majority
of the States report such surplus.

In some cities riots are occurring from unemployment, and in
a few cases unemployed discharged soldiers are engaging in those
riots.

At Pittsburgh the employers of unorganized labor are cutting
wages. Most of their employees are foreigners.

The workingman is barely making a support at present wages
with the high cost of living prevailing. Then, how can he be
expected to submit to a reduction of wages while the cost of
what he has to buy to feed and clothe his family is so high, and
in many cases going higher ?

Then will it not be a tragedy if we allow thousands of aliens
to come to our shores to work for low wages and thereby secure
the jobs that ought to go to the returning American soldiers and
the war workers? The American Federation of Labor and the
four brotherhoods of railroad workers are unanimously for this
bill.

The writer of this report has heard from some large employ-
ers of labor who favor this legislation because they fear the con-
fusion and irritation that will result from permitting a large in-
flux of foreigners, many of whom bring the red flag in one hand
and the bomb in the other.

Another reason that influenced the committee is the danger
to political, moral, and material conditions in this country gen-
erally by the admission of thousands of revolutionists and Bol-
shevists from foreign countries. War has intensified the spirit of
lawlessness all over Europe and it will take years to eradicate it.

Conditions here may be composed and return to normal in
two years if we are left alone, but in other countries it will take
lour or six or ten years to bring about that change, and certainly

during that period we ought to protect our own from European
conditions.

It is impossible to keep our revolutionists and Bolshevists
without keeping out substantially everybody. We have had a law
excluding anarchists for years, and yet the war developed the
fact that we had thousands of them in our midst. The far-famed
melting pot has proven to a great degree a delusion and a snare.
We feel that it is now time that we were beginning to look after
those of our own household, rather than to open our ports to
many who know nothing of our laws, our customs, our standards
of living, and never intend to learn of them.

We have by our liberal immigration laws taken many who
have proven that their hearts and their sympathies were not with
us, and they were ready to strike their poison fangs into the
bosom that warmed them.

Now, let us try for at least four years to close ranks and try
to see "Who's who in America."

ALIENS LEAVING OUR SHORES IN LARGE

NUMBERS '

The situation has led a writer in the New York Times to
point to one element in the situation "which is perhaps the most
important of all, but it receives little or no consideration." This
is the problem, "What would have happened if, during the
century and a half of our national life, we had received no im-
migration?" The writer points to a school of economists who
have reasoned from a "biological axiom" that as the rate of in-
crease in population is determined solely by the supply of fertile
land and food, therefore the twenty millions who have come to
our shores "have prevented the birth of twenty millions of
native-born Americans." Along this line the Times writer pro-
ceeds to say:

"In Colonial American families the birth-rate had been small
before leaving Great Britain, but increased amazingly on Amer-
ican soil, all during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In
1751, when our population was about one million, Benjamin
Franklin said that the immigrants who had produced this number
were generally believed to have numbered less than eight}' thous-
and— a gain of over twelve-fold in little more than a century. In
some parts of the Colonies the people, without the aid of immi-

1^ Literary Digest. 62:96-}-. July 26, 1919-

.^ration, doubled in twenty-five years, and there were localities in
which they doubled in less than twenty years. Up to 1820, the
entire population of New England and of the regions settled
from New England came from immigrants who numbered not
over twenty thousand. These mainly arrived between 1620 and
1640, the immigration from 1640 to 1820 being virtually nil. Many
writers, including Sydney G. Fisher, Edward Jarvis, and Gen.
Francis W'alker, have said that the subsequent checking in native
growth came as a result of the great wave of immigration which
began in 1820. If it had not been for this, they sa}^ our total
population, exclusivel}- derived from the elder stock, would now
be as great as, or even greater than, it is.

"This would have meant, of course, that our railways would
have been built and our factories manned by American laborers.
A doubt is permissible, in spite of the 'biological axiom,' whether
they would have been forth-coming in sufficient numbers to
accomplish the result we have to-day. A rise in the standards of
living, to sa}' nothing of increasing luxury, such as became in-
evitable Vv'ith the development of the continent, would probably
have acted as a check on the birth-rate. But the slowing down
of our development might not have been an unmixed calamity.
W^hat we lost in the sum total of wealth we should probal)ly
hare gained in a more equitable distribution of what we had —
fewer swollen fortunes and less poverty.

"One result of recruiting our population from foreign peoples
has been peculiarly unfortunate. For an English-speaking Amer-
ican to accept certain forms of hand-labor is to fall quite out of
his natural sphere. Any form of brain-work, however humble or
ill-paid, appears to be preferable. We have thus vast numbers
of rniddle-class Americans living on salaries actually less than
the wages of foreign hand-laborers. And among these middle-
class people the birth-rate is alarmingly small. Above all, the
unregulated influx of foreigners, ignorant of our ways, has
brought a loss in the vigor and integrity of our native institu-
tions. Bolshevism and socialism also very largely are the prod-
uct of the people who have been welcomed by captains of indus-
try intent on immediate material results.

"Our lofty sentiments and our materialism are alike wounded
by the proposal to limit immigration by means of selective tests.
But if the result is to convince our middle-class respectables of
the dignity and worth of hand-labor and at the same time to
guard the integrity of our free institutions, there will be a com-
pensation,"

NEGATIVE DISCUSSION

IMMIGRATION AND INTERNATIONALISM '

When the Sixty-fifth Congress adjourned, on March 4, there
was pending in that body a bill prohibiting immigration into the
United States for four years. That bill, in consequence of the
adjournment, is dead, but there is every reason for anticipating
that an identical bill, or one with substantially equivalent pro-
visions, will be introduced in the Senate or House when the new
Congress convenes. When the proposal reappears, however, its
supporters and opponents will have to take account of an argu-
ment which, while clearly enough foreshadowed at the time when
the former measure was under consideration, was not sufficiently
developed to make it a determining factor in the discussion. That
argument is internationalism. It makes little difference whether
or not President Wilson succeeds in carr}ang the country with
him in support of the resolution of the Peace Conference, or
whether the plan of a League of Nations to which the Senate
will be asked to give its approval is the original scheme pro-
mulgated by the Peace Conference or a modified draft such as
the newspapers are busily discussing. What has been set going
in the world is the idea of international organization, interna-
tional action for the furtherance of world happiness, and inter-
national comity ; and it is in the Hght of this overshadowing idea
that the question of immigration must eventuall}^ be judged.

Nothing will be gained, when the question again comes up,
by reciting the familiar arguments for or against the restriction
of immigration. If we leave out of the account the insane, the
feeble-minded, the physically helpless, and those convicted of
non-political offences — classes which each nation may properly
be asked to care for for itself — the arguments in favor of re-
striction rest ultimately upon one or other of two grounds. The
first is the assumption that everj^ nation has the right, in the

^Nation. 108:540. April 12, 1919.

nature of things, to determine who shall or shall not enter or
reside in its territory, and to keep the opportunities of its eco-
nomic or social life to itself. The second is the assumption that
the nations of the world are not equal, that some peoples are a
"menace" to others, and that differences of race are an insur-
mountable harrier to economic assimilation or social equality.
The first of these assumptions is at the bottom of every restric-
toin of immigration which professes to protect American labor
from foreign competition ; the latter underlies every contemptu-
ous reference to "foreigners" as of another and lower breed,
every worked-up cry of alarm at the "menace" of "low-grade"
labor from abroad, every restriction upon the entrance of
Chinese or Japanese or upon their life while here.

It will be interesting to see how those who have been eagerly
proclaiming their acceptance of Mr. Wilson's doctrines of democ-
racy and human brotherhood, and who now appear to be at least
as anxious that the world shall have a League of Nations as they
are that it shall have a just and durable peace, will treat the
subject of immigration w-hen the question is once more before
Congress and the country. As a matter of fact, neither of the
assumptions just referred to squares with internationalism. We
have objected to the Paris plan of a League of Nations because,
among other things, it provides for a league of Governments and
not for a league of peoples; because it has been framed in secret
by a self-constituted group of titular heads of four great Powers,
without consultation with the representatives of other Govern-
ments, neutral or belligerent, and without mandate even from
iheir own people; because the Governments whose spokesmen
have framed the League will dominate it ; and because the
special claims of right or privilege which in the past have either
helped to set nations against one another or have negatived the
idea of national equality are, apparently, to be respected and con-
tinued. This is no true internationalism, but only a novel scheme
of inter-Allied nationalism; and from such ingenious devices
for keeping up appearances the awakened peoples of the world
have now turned away.

The bearing of this upon the particular question of immigra-
tion is clear. If Congress has comprehended the new interna-
tional spirit which now everywhere pervades, and is genuinely in
sympathy with it, it will have done with putting up the bars.
Even the game of politics must, in the long run, be played fairly

if politics itself is not to be hopelessly discredited. The very
idea of internationalism, and hence of every proper scheme of a
League of Nations, implies the right of the citizens of every
member of the League to unrestricted admission to the territory
of every other member, and to equal freedom of residence or
occupation therein; so only that they obey the law of the juris-
diction in which they happen to be, and contribute by physical or
intellectual labor to the welfare of the community. Anything
less than this belongs to the narrow and selfish nationalism which
the world has outgrown.

The same is true with the assumption of inequality. Just as
there can be no lasting federation of nations if the few that are
strong are to dominate the many that are weak, so there can be
no true internationalism if the right of free migration is to be
denied or seriously curtailed. Of all the mockeries which have
h-ndered ilie growth of a genuine international spirit in this
country, those of "lower standards" and the "menace of cheap
labor" have been among the worst. If all the descendants of
foreigners who came to the United States in poverty, and who
gladly took the first job they could find at any wages the em-
ployer would pay, were to be disfranchised, some exceptionally
prominent American families would lose their voting privilege.
To possess superior advantages and deny to others the oppor-
tunit}^ of sharing in them ; to hold in povert}^ ignorance, and
suffering, through oppressive conditions of employment, wretched
housing, and poor schools, men and women of foreign birth
whose labor is adding daily to our wealth ; to lump together
contemptuously as "foreigners" all whose native language is not
English ; or to determine the social worth of a man by the color
of his skin, is not only snobbish and anti-social in the individual,
but anti-international and socially destructive in the nation. Now
that most of the nations of the earth and their colonies have
been combining against a common enemy, and those which were
fighting in the heat of the battle have gladly welcomed help from
every quarter, it is time to abandon the unctuous pretence of na-
tional and racial superiority. It were better that internationalism
should be condemned as a pernicious heres}^, and the best-con-
trived plan of a League of Nations rejected witljout a dissenting
vote, than that, having espoused the one and ratified the other,
we should insult the weakest member of the new society of na-
tions by denying to its people free admission to our shores.

WHAT RESTRICTION MEANS '

First of all, the result of the war on the sources of American
population. These sources are two, birth rate and immigration.
Of the two, the first is the more weighty ; but immigration has
been a more considerable factor in the population of the United
States than with any other country.

During the ten years preceding the war we received an aver-
age of almost exactly a million immigrants a year. A million
a year had come to be looked upon as a sort of standard annual
immigrant crop, and we counted on it unconsciousl}' in all our
business plans and forecasts of growth and expansion. Unques-
tionably, from a business point of view, it was by far the most
valuable of our crops. We didn't list it as a crop as we did our
corn and cotton and wheat and our annual ore output. But a
crop it was nevertheless, and it cost us nothing. From a business
and economic point of view, omitting for the present all social
consideration, it was a gift from the gods. Europe bore all the
expense of bearing the immigrant and raising him to maturity;
he was delivered at our gates free of charge, a full-grown, able-
bodied laborer. Valuable? Of course he was. In the South
before the Civil War the less intelligent and far less capable
slave had a market value of about a thousand dollars — the i860
kind of dollars, and a dollar of i860 was equal to about four of
our present dollars of 1919. Our annual immigrant crop, in
terms of our national wealth, was worth not less than two billion
dollars, and that was twice the value of any of the other great
crops that we boasted of.

This annual immigrant crop the war cut off from us. The
number of immigrants who came to the United States in 1918
was just about one-tenth of normal; to be exact, 110,618. (And
an undue proportion of these were of the less desirable sort,
Mexicans, Japanese, West Indians. Whereas through the war
our immigration from Europe practicall}'^ ceased, from Mexico
and Japan it actually increased.) This accumulated deficit of
between four and five million laborers is probably the largest
single factor in our present economic situation. Every business
man must take account of it, must take account of it both on the
side of lack of labor for production and on the side of diminished
consumption.

^ By Mark Sullivan. Reprinted from Colliers in the Jewish Immi-
gration Bulletin. 9:6-7, 9-10. June, 1919.

WTiat I have so far said about immigration is of the past.
The next phase of the subject is within the field of conjecture.
\\ ill peace restore the flow of immigration into the United
States? Will immigration recommence at all, and if it does will
it come in anything like the pre-1914 rate of a million a year?
While this question is in the future, the answer to it is one of the
really big, physical factors that are to affect future business and
economic conditions in this country.

On this question the only evidence that has actually developed
so far is a disturbing and rather mysterious phenomenon. Not
only has immigration from Europe to the United States failed
to materialize since the armistice. That failure of the emigrants
to come for the present and during the few months since the
armistice is easy to explain. For one thing, there are no ships
to bring them ; every corner of every ship that can be found is
crowded with American soldiers. For another thing, the Italian
laborers who might be expected to be the first to come are not
free to leave Italy; they are still in the army. The Italian Gov-
ernment has not yet demobilized its arm}-. For that there are
interesting reasons. Partly, Italy is moved b}^ fear of the social
disorders tliat may accompany her demobilization ; partly, Ital)^
has in some ways inherited the mantle of Germany. It is not
that, however, that has any essential bearing on the question of
future immigration into the United States. The disturbing
phenomenon that is already apparent is this : European immi-
grants who are already in the United States and have been here
for some time are now leaving us and returning to Europe. They
are leaving in large numbers. The head of the immigration ser-
vice of the United States tells me that:

"The alien exodus up to date is running about 18,000 a month.
It is running to ship capacity. And back of those who can get
away are many times that number (there being thousands waiting
in New York) who are planning to go just as soon as they can
secure passage. The exodus is confined to the Mediterranean
because there is very little facility for persons to get back to
central Europe. My own impression is that the exodus is going
to be tremendously heavy."

This exodus of alien laborers, at a time when labor is scarce
and well-paid, is one of the interesting phenomena of the pres-
ent. It ma}^ turn out to be an important one. I don't know that
its significance can be perfectly explained. I have been at some
pains to try to discover the reasons for it, but I am not sure they

are clear. (Our ingenious propaganda) among the "wets" say
it is due to Prohibition). One element in it is that these aliens
are rich. During the past four years they have been earning ex-
tremely high wages, and they have acquired what is for them un-
dreamed-of wealth. From their point of view they have become
capitalists. Judged by the standard of life which they were ac-
customed to in Europe, and b}' the cost of living. as they remem-
ber it in their old homes, they think they can retire. They do
not know that in many parts of Europe the cost of living has
become higher than in the United States. One other factor that
influences them is their hope to acquire some land. They came
to America because they couldn't get land in Europe. Now they
have heard that revolution has broken up the old feudal estates.
They have heard that it is now^ possible for them to get a little
land in their old homes and the}' are going back to get it.

Whatever ma}' be the significance of this present back flow of
immigrants to their old homes in Europe, it is not necessarily
final evidence on the bigger question of future emigration from
Europe to the United States.

Shall We Destroy Wealth?

This larger question of whether immigration from Europe to
the United States will ever be resumed on a large scale may be
determined within a few months. It is just now to the front in
Congress, and in Congress there is a strong sentiment toward for-
bidding it. Congress always has a strong sentiment in this direc-
tion. On several occasions in the past severe anti-immigration
measures have been passed by Congress only to be vetoed by the
President. President Wilson vetoed one and President Taft
vetoed one. To vote against immigration always fits in with the
prejudices of the majority of congressmen, and with the pre-
vailing feeling of the majority of congressional districts through-
out the country. A congressman can usually make a hit with
the organized labor of his district by opposing immigration.
Communities which arc prevailingly native American are usually
prejudiced against immigration. The fact that a few immigrants
are anarchists, or othenvise hold political or religious beliefs
repugnant to Americans causes sweeping condemnation of all
immigration. The conspicuous recurrence of foreign names in
our present crusade against what is called Bolshevism tends to
make the prejudice against immigration even more acute than
usual.

But Congress ought to decide the matter on a hasis of
broader statesmanship than mere prejudice or panic because of a
few crazy bomb throwers. Stated truly, the question before Con-
gress and the country is this: Arc we equal to the problem of
distinguishing between desirable European immigrants and un-
desirable ones? Congress ought not to confess the futility
which would answer "no" to that question, and it and the coun-
try ought to understand the economic significance of what they
4o.

Russia or the United States f

If Congress, in its impending decision, decides against immi-
gration, that answer obviously will be final. If Congress does
not give this kind of decision, then the answer as to future im-
migration will arise out of future conditions in Europe. The
common assumption, and it is a true assumption, is that in prac-
ticall)' ever}' country in Europe, economic conditions will be such
that large numbers of people will feel like leaving. The great
burden that will press upon them, and which they will want to
escape, is taxation. You can beat the devil of taxation around
the stump as devioush' and as energetically as you may, but it will
still remain true that, at the end of the road, taxation comes out
of v/ork. And a superficial inquiry- into the national debts of
the countries of Europe makes you realize that in the immediate
future the position of a laborer in Europe will be something like
this : he will go to work in the morning and he will work to
noon ; by that time he will have earned enough to pay his taxes ;
what he earns during the rest of the day he can keep for himself.
Under these conditions, it would seem probable that a laborer
will be disposed to take his hat and move to some other country.

However, this weight of taxation will be neither so permanent
nor so severe as is now commonly assumed. Statesmen can and
will find ways of beating their national debts. Not that any of
the debts are likely to be repudiated outright. But statesmen can,
and have, inflated the currency. If a normal mark or franc or
lira is worth 20 cents, and if, by one device or another, you cut
it down to 10 cents, then 3-ou can pay your national debt with half
the amount of real wealth. Moreover, if you lay an inheritance
tax based on 50 per cent of a national debt, two generations will
wipe it out. Finally, if the European countries cut out their
standing armies and navies, the saving will go a long way toward
paying the interest on the public debt. It is not taxation that will
give the whole answer as to emigration from European countries.

The final answer, it seems to me, lies in the place where it is most
possible to get cheap land. That place, in the fairly early future,
is going to be Russia. Within five years Russia will have got a
good government. She will have broken up her old system of
feudal landholding, and will be what our great West was during
most of the last century, the country, of cheap land and oppor-
tunity, the rainbow end of the emigrant's hope. If there is to be
emigration out of the western countries of Europe, that emigra-
tion may flow, not to the United States, but to Russia. Russia,
however, as a haven for immigrants from the rest of Europe
will not be available until that unhappy country has settled down
and got a stable government. In the meantime, in the immediate
future, the United States can, if it chooses, adopt and practice
policies which will be very apt to attract European immigrants
here in large numbers.

Wanted: Millions of Workers

The United States is now in such a position of financial and
economic dominance that we can do about what we please with
respect to the rest of the world. That is to say, we can do what
we please if we go about it thoughtfully, with business and states-
manship working hand in hand. On the one hand we can lend
money and sell raw materials freely to Europe, and let the labor-
ers stay over there and make goods, and we can keep our tariflfs
low so that the goods they make can come in here for sale. On
the other hand, we can keep our money at home and make our
tariff high, so that European labor will be led to come over here
and work for us here at home. Which of the two policies is to
prevail will be developed by time. In any event, w'hether we are
to have immigration on a large scale is an important factor in
our economic future. For a generation we have relied upon the
immigrant to build our roads, to mine our coal, to dig our ore,
to man our factories, to provide our domestic servants. If we
don't get them, then most assuredly we shall have to get along
without a good deal of the work they did for us, without a good
deal of the comfort and convenience we have been accustomed
to.

The result of our present deficit of what we call common
labor is one of the most apparent aspects of our daily life. It is
apparent in the scarcity of what we call domestic servants. It is
apparent in the defective upkeep of our railroads, and even more
so in the condition of our public roads. There is no physical
need in this country just now so great as good roads. Hundreds

of thousands of miles of road which are now merely trails
through the mud ought to be made into permanent highways
adapted to automobile traffic in any kind of weather conditions.

And what I have said of roads applies in the same degree to
that large group of operations which we call "public works."
There is a great deal of activity throughout America just now.
But what we are busy about, for the most part, is perishable
goods, goods for immediate consumption. We are not, and for
five years have not been, paying enough attention^ or indeed any
measurable attention, to making additions to the permanent ma-
terial basis on which our civilization rests.

We have not been building any new railroads, nor have we
even been giving adequate upkeep to the railroads we have. The
erection of buildings has been interdicted by the Government;
we have not been building hospitals, schools, and the like. We
cannot resume this kind of building, in the accustomed degree,
without a large access of human hands. America in the near
future could make profitable use of millions of workers, to build
roads and bridges, to repair the railroads, to drain swamps, to
build levees on the Mississippi, to reclaim land by irrigation.
The degree in which we can take up that kind of permanent im-
provement will be limited by the available quantity of human
beings to do the work.

Cheap Food: More Babies

There would be no need for emphasis on this aspect of the
economic and business future of the country if one could hope
that the loss which we shall suffer through the cutting off of im-
migration would be likely to be offset by our native birth rate.
But birth rate is a process which consumes at least twenty years
in producing an addition to our labor supply. Aloreover, it is
pretty certain that the native birth rate in the United States in
the near future will be even lower than before. For one thing,
it is the recent immigrants who have had the large families, and
for five years immigration has been practically shut off. Further-
more, in the United States as well as in all Caucasian countries,
the natural laws which govern birth rate will be working ad-
versely. What those laws are cannot be stated with scientific
accuracy, but we can take, as at least having the authorit}^ of an
accepted treatise, the following from Buckle's "History of Civ-
ilization" :

"The number of marriages annually contracted is determined,
not by the temper and wishes of individuals, but by large general

facts over which individuals can exercise no antliorit}'. It is
now known that marriages bear a fixed and definite relation to
the price of corn. (By "corn" Buckle means what Americans
call wheat.) In England the experience of a century has proved
that instead of having any connection with personal feelings they
are simply regulated by the average earnings of the great mass of
the people. So that this immense social and religious institution
is not onl}' swayed but is completely controlled by the price of
food and by the rate of wages."

What Buckle is talking about, j'ou will recognize, is merely
that familiar institution of the present day, the high cost of liv-
ing. And if our birth rate in America during the immediate
future is going to be determined by the cost of living, the con-
clusion is too obvious to be stated. The chief business of
thoughtful statesmanship in the United States just now should
be focused on measures to facilitate the production and distribu-
tion of food and make it less costly to the consumer; measures
to change any conditions of industry which operate as deterrents
to early marriage ; measures which recognize that no kind of
economic function, no kind of work that a woman can do is so
valuable to society as the bearing of children; measures which
recognize that to the individual there is no other career and no
other satisfaction so durable or desirable as the founding of a
family and the rearing of children — measures, in short, which
look to more babies.

THE PROPOSAL TO SUSPEND IMMIGRATION '

Manufacturers throughout the United States believe that the
Burnett Bill, now pending in the House of Representatives, to
prohibit immigration from any but contiguous lands for a period
of four years, is neither wise nor in accord with the principles
of our Government. They further believe such action will ham-
per the future expansion of industry and agricultural develop-
ment in many sections. After the present period of uncertainty
in business passes over, our manufacturing leaders believe the
domestic supply of labor wall not be adequate to meet our needs.

The bill is a direct confession of our national failure intel-
ligently to arrange for proper supervision and distribution of
arriving immigrants. A much better solution of the matter

^ By Stephen C. Mason, President National Association of Manufac-
turers. In American Industries for February, 1919. p. 7.

would be the adoption of suitably restrictive legislation with im-
migrant distribution machinery on the new lines of Canada.

We have millions of acres of undeveloped lands in this coun-
try to which few, if any, of our returning 2,000,000 soldiers will
emigrate. Why refuse admission to those immigrants from agri-
cultural lands in Europe with these lands of our own still lying
in disuse and our farmers badly in need of labor and the country
in -need of increased farm products? Furthermore, there are
^many industrial centers where the supply of unskilled labor is
far below the demand, even now.

To shut off practically ever}- avenue for new labor forces
tor the next four years is not squarely meeting an important
problem of readjustment. It is creating possibly more grievous
problems and conditions then those which it is sought to correct.
We are weak, indeed, if, on the pretext of preventing the im-
portation of one of Europe's w-ar aggravated social diseases,
known as rampant Bolshevism, the only remedy we can adopt is
to prohibit the continued arrival of those still remaining healthy
and vital forces of European labor which may come to our shores
to escape the very social conditions in their own land which we,
ourselves, dread.

The Burnett Bill is contrary to and in conflict with the
avowed purpose of President Wilson to "make the world safe
for democracy," through the medium of the League of Nations.
Furthermore, it directly seeks to create a prohibitive labor tariff
wall, so that while our Government leaders are proclaiming our
ideals of "Democracy," an autocracy of labor may quietly be
built up within our domain.

So far as that portion of our free institutions and form of
government might apply to the immigrant, the Burnett Bill
might logically contain the following clause as to purpose : "to
extinquish the light in the hand of the Goddess of Libert}' at the
entrance to Xew York harbor for four years."

HUAL\N CURRENTS OF THE AA\\R '

Congress proposes to prohibit immigration during a period of
four years after the signing of peace. Is a blanket measure of
this character what we want and what we need? Yes — if we
can noAV dispense with Europe's contribution to our material

^ By Herbert Adams Gibbons. In Everybody's for July, 19 iq. p. 48-
53-

development. No — ^if increase of population by immigration is
still helpful to us. It is an error to think that prohibition for a
limited time will save us from undesirable elements. After four
years, the best and most energetic of the new migratory current
will have found its way elsewhere. Would it not be wiser to
permit immigration, but make our regulations more stringent.-'

We have always handled the problem of entry into the
United States stupidly and illogically, annoying to ourselves and
to the immigrants. The war has shown us the way, and pro-
vided us with the means of suppressing the absurdity of whole-
sale detention at Ellis Island. As a war measure, wc are de-
manding a passport, with the vise of an American consular 0111-
cial, of every person who proposes to put foot on American soil.
It is possible to continue this machinery after the war. We can
limit the granting of vises to desirables. The applicant's desir-
ability can best be determined by investigation on the spot in
Europe.

The Parliaments of Great Britain and the British Dominions
are as keenly alive as we are to the necessity of being ready for
a strong migrator}^ current from continental Europe. London
has gone farther than \\'ashington, and seems inclined to follow
a path that will lead to tremendous consequences for Europe. It
is proposed at Westminster to forbid enemy aliens to enter
British territory for an indefinite period and to deport Germans,
Austrians and Hungarians who are settled in the British Empire.
If this proposal is carried out, other nations, notably Brazil, may
follow the precedent set by the British. Deportation of Germans
from British territory w^ould create a forced migratory current
as great as that which is already flowing out of Alsace-Lorraine
and Prussian Poland. It is unlikely that the ousted Germans
will find it possible to settle in their country of origin. \\'here
will they go, and in what direction will the migratory current
from Germany flow? Will public sentiment in America bar Ger-
mans and influence Central and South American countries to
adopt the same policy? Upon the answer to these questions de-
pends, in a very large measure, the influence of the war of 1914-
1918 upon twentieth-century Europe. Nothing is more certain
than that we can not bottle up, under adverse economic condi-
tions, the eighty million Germans of Central Europe in a German
state narrowed down to its ethnographical limits. Even if we
gave back to Germany her colonies, they would not support a
large white population. Do we not have to choose, then, between

sharing with the German race the development of Africa, the two
Americas and Australia, and seeing the Germans overflow into
Eastern Europe and Asia?

In December, 1914, in the office of a great electrical manu-
facturing concern of Berlin, I was interviewing one of the chief
promoters in Germany of reapproachment with Great Britain. I
had come to get his version of the causes of the war. "Why is
Germany fighting?" he cried, jumping up from his desk. "I can
put it in one sentence. We were nervous to the breaking-point
over the Westward Ho ! preparation of the Slavs." In expand-
ing his thesis, the German explained the war by migratory cur-
rents. Russia was pressing Germany, so Germany had to press
France and Belgium. Great Britain was afraid she would be
pressed in turn. I suppose that if I had met this manufacturer-
philosopher again after we had entered the war, he would have
explained our intervention in the same way ! Some Americans
did. Were not we to be attacked next?

Would it be a strange ending for a war caused by German
fear of a Slav migrator}'' current westward, to have a German
migratory current eastward ? Not at all ! The greatest wars in
Europe were due to migratory currents from the east and north
seeking a way out to the Atlantic and Mediterranean. We read
that "civilization" was saved every time by the races of the west
and south stemming the migratory current. The French claim
today that they must go back to the Rhine, as they have done in
the past, in order to prevent a renewal of German aggression.
But the Eastern menace is relative. The Germans have gone
eastward to stem the Slav tide. And at the time of her war
with Japan did not Russia try to gain the sympathies of the world
by claiming that her presence in Vladivostok and Port Arthur
was essential to save Europe from the yellow peril?

"The world is not changed," says the pessimist with a sigh.
"History repeats itself. Human nature is always the same."
Platitudes ! What is being said over and over again in Paris
salons is, I am told, being said just as often on the other side of
the Atlantic. Let us put over against them the words of Phillips
Brooks, as much gospel truth to-day as when they were spoken
a generation ago from a Boston pulpit. In the backward and for-
ward movement of migratory currents in Europe, racial elements
have been steadily absorbed or united to form increasingly larger
political organisms. In the overflow to extra-European countries,
new nations have been created. Racial antagonism and intense

nationalism are the aftermath of wars only to superficial observ-
ers who can not sec farther than the end of their noses, only to
opportunist statesmen who mistake passing SA'mptoms for per-
manent conditions.

A mother once said to me : "I have come to dread the day
my babies learn to walk." "Why?" I asked. "Because they can
go a"s^y from me," she said. The status quo is a comfortable
condition. But it exists in infancy and decrepitude. Between
the beginning and the end of life, there is the rhigratory instinct.
W hen this world of ours hears the trumpet of the Angel Gabriel,
and not until then, shall we be in a position to no longer reckon
with evolution.

NATIONAL LIBERAL LMMIGRATJOX

LEAGUE '

Resolutions adopted at the Annual Convention of the National
Association of Manufacturers May 19-21, 1919

Whereas it was proposed by the Committee on Immigration
of the House of Representatives of the 65th Congress to sub-
stantially prohibit immigration to the United States for a period
of 3^ears and such proposal is likely to bfe renewed in the same
terms, and

Whereas the information is not now available upon which to
fairly determine whether the United States is likeh- to suffer an
outflow or inflow from its population, but circumstantial evidence
at hand strongl}- indicates the former is likely to occur and that
a variety of causes ma}'^ induce a severe drain amongst many ele-
ments of our foreign born population,

Therefore be it resolved that the National Association of
Manufacturers in Convention assembled declares its belief that
public interest requires that the Congress should consider the
formulation of a just and socially sound immigration policy
which, without denying admission to those whose presence is
politically and economically desirable, will reject the diseased,
the criminal, those likely to become dependent, or who by ex-
pressed belief or racial or national predisposition, are unlikeh' to
be, or incapable of becoming qualified for citizenship; that any
person, foreign or native born, who advocates or teaches the
overthrow of this form of government b}' force or physical re-

sistance to its lawful authority should upon accusation and con-
viction upon such charge, forfeit his citizenship, or if an alien, be
deported to the country whence he came, and subject to such
restrictions the United States invites to its shores, as ever, the
strong, the honest, the clean in mind who have faith in its in-
stitutions, adhere to them, and who desire to enjoy the privilege
of its citizenship.

"Mr. President, it is important to remember that this stream of
immigrants has been flowing into America since the early days
of the seventeenth century. Those who favor this bill seem to
forget that only the other day their ancestors were alien, the
sons of England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Poland, Ger-
many, Russia, and other lands; and though that stream of re-
vivifying blood has ceased to flow into some sections of our
country, it still continues to renew the energies and courage of
the North and the West, as ever. Wherever he has gone schools
have sprung up ; industries have flourished ; trade has increased ;
wealth has multiplied; prosperity has bloomed; and patriotism,
peace, law, order, intelligence and happiness follow in his foot-
steps."

— James A. Gallivan^ Representative in Congress from
Massachusetts.

"Let the objectors to opening our gates to able bodied immi
grants of good character reflect where our country would have
been except for that invaluable element."

Andrew Carnegie.

i^-

3 0112 061896962

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