ing to murder in 1904 were of the relatively illiterate Slavic and Iberic races. The Slavic and Iberic alien criminals constituted, in 1904, 64 per cent of all aliens detained in penal, reformatory, and charitable institutions, and 87 per cent of the alien inmates of such institutions arrived within five years. The recent alarming increase in insanity in New York State is attributed by the State Lunacy Commission to recent immigration.

In the state prisons of New York State the number of Italians and Russian inmates doubled from 1906 to 1909. It is not claimed that an illiteracy test would exclude all criminals, for many of them are well educated. But that it would exclude a considerable number appears from the fact that over one-fifth of all foreign-born prisoners in the United States are illiterate. In view of the fact that the present provisions of law specifically excluding criminals are almost impossible to enforce, an illiteracy test would be of distinct value in this regard.

(c) It Is a Certain and Definite Test Easily Applied-The Illiteracy Test Would Save Hardship

About 44 per cent of those now excluded are debarred as being "liable to become public charges." In a considerable number of cases the alien can not tell until he arrives here whether he will be debarred on this ground or not. The phrase itself is very elastic. The fact often is determined by evidence obtainable only when the immigrant arrives, such as ability of relatives to support him, pregnancy of immigrant women, and other circumstances. If an immigrant is debarred, it means often great hardship to him and to his relatives.

It is not proposed to abolish the present requirements as to economic sufficiency, but in a very large number of cases those debarred for this cause are also illiterate, and to this extent an illiteracy test would save hardship, and often the separation of families. At present this hardship tends to relax inspection on the part of sympathetic officials.

THE ILLITERACY TEST IS DEFINITE

One defect in the present law is its vagueness and elasticity, especially as to the class of persons "liable to become a public charge." Ninety per cent of all immigrants are admitted by a primary inspector without further inquiry. When any officials, especially superior ones, conscientiously or otherwise favor a lax

interpretation of the law, its existing provisions are but a small protection to our people. Any change from a lax to a strict interpretation, or vice versa, is unjust to the immigrant.

A reading test in any language or dialect the immigrant may prefer is perfectly simple and definite, and can be evaded neither by the immigrant nor by the inspector.

An illiteracy test would diminish the work of the boards of special inquiry and give them time for more thorough examination of other cases.

THE ILLITERACY TEST CAN BE EASILY AND EFFICIENTLY APPLIED

When commissioner at New York, Dr. J. H. Senner, voluntarily applied the test for three months, and reported that there was no difficulty in using it and no appreciable delay by reason of it.

The theory of our immigration laws is that, in the first instance, the steamship companies, for their own protection, will not sell tickets to aliens who they know are inadmissible. Although the steamship companies are prone to take chances on the admissibility of an immigrant, and although it has been found necessary to fine them for bringing inadmissible immigrants where such inadmissibility could have been detected before embarkation, yet most of the trouble arises in cases where neither the immigrant nor the steamship company can be certain of the result.

With the illiteracy test a part of the law the steamship agents would have no excuse for bringing illiterates, as it would be perfectly simple for them to ascertain the fact of illiteracy at the time of selling the ticket, and the companies could justly be fined if they brought any aliens found to be illiterate.

This would probably result not in any great diminution of the numbers of immigrants, but in a great improvement in the quality. If the steamship companies can not bring illiterates, they will seek immigrants who can read. The falling off in the desirable immigration from northwestern Europe has been ascribed by competent authorities to the unwillingness to compete with the kind of immigration we are now chiefly getting. One effect of the test would be to improve the sources as well as the quality of our immigration. Further, it is the very ignorant peasants who are now most easily induced to emigrate by unscrupulous steamship agents by false and misleading statements as to conditions of employment in this country.

(d) Elementary Education Desirable in Immigrants

Ability to read is now required for naturalization. But the ballot is only one way in which a foreign-born resident affects the community at infrequent intervals. In countless other and more important ways he is affecting the community all the time. The newspapers are the chief source of information as to social, political, and industrial conditions. An immigrant who can not read, unless in very favorable environment, will be assimilated, if at all, much less rapidly than one who can.

The ability to read is essential not merely for citizenship but for residence in a democratic state. It helps the understanding of labor conditions and the obtaining of employment under proper environment.

Then, again, how can one obey the laws and ordinances, whether penal or sanitary, unless he can read them? One difficulty experienced today in our large cities in enforcing sanitary regulations and preventing epidemics is the illiteracy of large masses of the immigrant population.

At the present day even manual employment is conducted in a manner which makes the ability to read desirable, if not indispensable. Time slips, records of all kinds, are more and more used in factories and shops, and the ability to read and write is necessary for all but the lowest grades of labor.

(e) The Illiteracy Test Is Demanded by the People

No single proposed addition to our immigration laws has received the indorsement accorded to the illiteracy test. Bills to enact it into law have passed one or the other House of Congress seven times since 1894, usually by very large votes.

It has been advocated in party platforms and presidential messages; by the Farmers' Educational and Cooperative Union, representing some 3,000,000 farmers of the country, who do not want as farm help the kind of immigrants we are now receiving; by the American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor, by the patriotic societies, by the boards of associated charities, and by thousands of other organizations and individuals in all parts of the country. Four thousand five hundred petitions in its favor were sent to the Fifty-seventh Congress. A recent canvass of leading citizens, whose opinion was not known beforehand, showed that 93.1 per cent favored further selection of immigration, and 81 per cent advocated the illiteracy test.

The Immigration Commission, which has been studying the question for nearly four years, says in the statement of its conclusions (p. 40): "The commission as a whole recommends restriction as demanded by economic, moral, and social considerations. A majority of the commission favor the reading and writing test as the most feasible single method of restricting undesirable immigration." The majority in this case consisted of eight out of nine members of the commission.

(f) General Remarks

It is often said, “A man is not a better man because he can read or write." It is not claimed that ability to read is a test of moral worth or even in some cases of industrial value. But, in framing law for selecting immigrants, as in framing any law of classification, we have to consider classes, not individuals.

Taking the world as it is, we find, on a broad view, that the illiterate races, and especially the illiterate individuals of those races, are the ones who are undesirable, not merely for illiteracy, but for other reasons. Those who are ignorant of language are, in general, those who are ignorant of a trade, are of poor physique, are less thrifty, tend to settle in the cities and to create city slums, tend to become dependent upon public or private charity, even if not actual criminals and paupers, have little permanent interest in the country, and are unfitted for citizenship in a free and enlightened democracy.

An illiteracy test would undoubtedly shut out some unobjec tionable individuals, but the absence of it is causing untold hardships to thousands already in the country. Let the immigrant who seeks to throw in his lot here take at least the trouble to acquire the slight amount of training necessary to satisfy this requirement, and thus show that he appreciates the advantages he seeks to share.

Journal of Education. 80: 567-70. December 10, 1914

Literacy and the Immigrant. W. D. Parkinson

Some degree of restriction we are all agreed upon. At any rate, the nation has already set up restrictions and there is little prospect that it will ever venture to remove them without substituting others. Some basis must be sought that is not incon

sistent with the spirit of the great experiment itself. Any acceptable check must, too, be capable of ready application, and it must also be in some degree a test of qualification. That is, it must tend in the main to admit those who possess in a superior degree desirable qualifications for promoting our main experiment, and it must in the main tend to include those who possess those qualifications in inferior degree. No test will ever be found which will admit only the fit and exclude only the unfit. No human ingenuity has ever devised such a perfectly discriminating line as that. All that can be hoped is that the test shall operate in general to admit desirables and to exclude undesirables.

There are two kinds of qualification for immigration both of which are of vital concern to this country. One is the kind which it is possible to impart after arrival. The other is the kind that must either be brought with the immigrant or be permanently waived in his case. Racial qualifications are of the latter kind. So are physical qualifications and mental qualifications, generally speaking. No one objects to the exclusion of the feeble-minded and of those afflicted with transmissible disease or with infirmity that disqualifies for self-support, or of those known to be morally delinquent. But to exclude these does not meet the main question. The ability to use a written language has been proposed as an available test. The proposal has called forth many sentimental protests, but its practical effect has received little attention. It, like all other tests, will admit some undesirables and exclude some desirables. The determining question should be whether in the main it would discriminate favorably to a safer class of immigrants.

It is said that literacy is not a test of ability and this is true. It is said it is not a test of ability to earn a living. This also is true. It is not even a sure test of intelligence. It is, however, a test of certain serious obstructions in the way of success of our great experiment, so serious that our states are just awakening to the necessity of attempting at very large expense to remove them. Is it best to invite those who bring us burdens that must be removed, equally with those who are glad to come without them?

We in America have had our seasons of over-valuing the ability to read and write. Our schools are in process of reaction from an excessive emphasis upon it.

Nevertheless written language is itself a useful tool, and the ability to use one of some sort or other does signify something