knowledge to enable us to exclude, if we had these pedigrees, the larger number of aliens who would themselves be undesirable, or would have defective or delinquent offspring. This ideal selection is obviously impossible to carry out.

The next best plan, which has the advantage of being feasible, although it would require legislation and considerable expenditure of public money (yet would not almost any expenditure, even on a huge scale, be a wise national policy in so important a matter?) would be to insist that each alien, on landing here, should undergo a very thorough mental and physical examination at the hands of our public health and marine hospital service surgeons. These examinations would involve a stripping to the skin of each alien; the usual physical and mental examination; tests for syphilis and similar precautions. Is this too much to demand when the welfare of a whole new race is concerned? The eugenist is ready with his answer; he says, emphatically, No. We certainly ought to begin at once to segregate, far more than we now do, all our native and foreign-born population which is unfit for parenthood. They must be prevented from breeding. But the biggest, the most effective, the most immediate way in which we can further national eugenics is at the ports where this year over half a million alien immigrants will land. Our immigration officials are doing all in their power, under existing conditions, to select our immigrants. Our surgeons are doing a wonderful work, under tremendous disadvantages, in trying to detect the physical and mental disabilities which by law debar the aliens who have them. But it is nothing short of a crime to admit people, as often happens in a rush season, at the rate of 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000 in one day. On April 11 last, according to press reports, 7,931 aliens were landed at Ellis Island. We ought to limit the number of aliens who shall be landed in one day to a certain maximum which could reasonably well be carefully examined. We have a perfect right to do that, just as we have a perfect right to prohibit immigration entirely., The steamship companies, the foreign societies, and others interested in one way or another in foreign immigration, would vigorously object. But those who are seriously and unselfishly concerned for the future of this race would welcome such a move. We ought to increase the number of the surgeons detailed for the most important duty of inspecting arriving aliens. We might have to

enlarge the accommodations at our immigration stations. But can there be anything more vital than this if we are to do our duty to the unborn Americans of future generations?

In addition to the steps which we should take at once to accomplish the more effective exclusion of the insane, imbecile, idiot, tuberculous, those afflicted with loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases, etc., we ought to amend our immigration laws so that it will be possible to exclude more aliens of such low vitality and poor physique that they are eugenically undesirable for parenthood.

Nation. 98: 430-1, April 16, 1914

Problems of Immigration. Henry P. Fairchild

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION:

Sir: May I be permitted to give expression to my surprise on reading, in your editorial on "The Irish in Our Public Life," in the Nation for March 26, the following sentences: "For example he (Professor Ross) has previously given expression to the serious disquietude which many Americans feel today in connection with the new-comers from South European countries. But their grandfathers were just as acutely concerned over the Irish emigrants. These were, sixty and seventy years ago, as much disliked and even dreaded as are, by some, Slav and Italian today. . . . It may be asked, however, if the large immigration of today will not, half a century hence, look as harmless and even desirable as does now the Irish immigrants of 1845- 55.”

The argument that it is wrong to object to the "new immigration" because our forefathers objected just as strongly to the "old immigration," which we now regard as innocuous or even desirable, has four distinct weaknesses, any one of which is sufficient to condemn it. The first is a question of fact. Often as we hear this statement repeated, it is not at all certain that our grandfathers disliked and dreaded the Irish as much as we fear the Slavs and Italians. I have had occasion to examine with great care the evidence on this point furnished by the contemporary writings and discussions, and I have failed to find any widespread sentiment against the Irish comparable to the restrictionist agitation of today.

In the second place, such objections to immigration as there

were rested on wholly different grounds from those of the present. The antipathy felt in the middle of the nineteenth century was not against the Irish as such, nor was it against a degrading competition in the economic field. It was against paupers, criminals, diseased persons, and Roman Catholics. To treat the opposition to immigration of the twentieth century as if it were analogous to that of this earlier period misses the point completely. An excellent illustration is furnished by the fact that whereas we fear that our present immigrants will not avail themselves of the blessings of American citizenship and will fail to become naturalized, our grandfathers feared that they would become naturalized too easily, and wanted to extend the period of residence required for citizenship to twenty or twenty-five years, or to refuse naturalization altogether.

In the third place, this argument always assumes that none of the evils which our forebears dreaded in connection with the Irish immigration has, in fact, materialized. This assumption is open to serious question. It is, of course, a difficult and hazardous undertaking to assign any of our present-day problems to any specific foreign race. But there is evidence that the Irish are responsible for more than their share of some of our troubles. On the same day in which I read your editorial, my attention was attracted by an editorial in the New York Times, which spoke thus of the Irish attitude towards the repeal of the tolls exemption law: "The opposition of the Irish-American organizations is characteristically open and vociferous. The motive is far from creditable. . . . [They] have been prompted thereto by their hatred of England. They act on an American question from considerations wholly un-American, which is pretty bad citizenship." The fact that one of our great dailies can speak thus of the Irish after two-thirds of a century of Americanization is at least disquieting. If we turn to more concrete matters, we find that the number of Irish paupers in this country is out of all proportion to their percentage of the total population-46.4 per cent of the total number of foreign-born paupers in the almshouses in 1903, over one-third (including native-born of Irish fathers) of the total number of charity cases of all nationalities in Bellevue and allied hospitals, etc. Among criminals, also, the Irish stand at the head of the foreign-born as regards the total number of offences. Furthermore, it is most significant that in the one aspect of life in which, as your editorial points

out, the Irish have displayed the most marked ability, viz., public affairs, the record which they have made-as you also point out has not been such as wholly to discredit the sagacity of our forefathers when they were uneasy as to the effect of the Irish on American politics.

The fact is that we have become accustomed to those evils of American life which are traceable to the early immigration, and take them for granted. We even go so far as to use them as a means of forestalling unfavorable comparisons between southeastern Europeans and Americans. An excellent illustration of this is afforded by Dr. Peter Roberts in his book, "The New Immigration," when, in an effort to extenuate the drunkenness and lawlessness of the newcomers, or at least to divide the responsibility, he points out that "with very rare exceptions the men on the bench, in the brewery business, and in politics," who help to create these conditions, "are native-born." He does not stop to consider how many of them are the sons of the Irish and German immigrants of the nineteenth century, whom Dr. Roberts, along with others, regards as so desirable.

Finally, the most significant fact of all is that the one reason why the evil effects of the Irish and German immigration of the forties and fifties are not much more widespread and prominent than they are, is that this very agitation of our forefathers, which we deride, had its effect. To be sure, some of it, particularly that based on religious prejudice, was misguided and unjustifiable according to our lights. But the great agitation against the indiscriminate dumping of foreign paupers and criminals on our shores, and against the horrible shipping conditions which landed swarms of miserable wretches on our docks who had to be hauled away in carts to the hospitals and almshouses, rested on a solid foundation. For decades the wiser spirits of the time fought for laws which would protect the communities of this country against an intolerable burden of expense in the support of indigent foreigners. We of today are reaping the benefit of this agitation, and it ill becomes us to ridicule it from the vantage point of our security. It is doubtful if a half or even a quarter of the Irish immigrants who made up the great migration of 1845-55 would be allowed even to embark from the shores of Ireland, to say nothing of being admitted to the United States, in the year 1914. If we were confronted with an immigration of the sort that our grandfathers had to deal with

we should be much more vociferous in our protests than they

were.

The immigration problem of the twentieth century is in many ways a wholly new one. No arguments concerning it are more fallacious than those which compare it, without discrimination, with that of the middle of the nineteenth century, and draw conclusions from parallels. And there is no more complete justification for a sober and well-considered protest against the immigration of the present than that afforded by a contemplation of the debt we owe to the agitators of an earlier period.

Charities. 12: 129-33. February 6, 1904

Immigration as a Relief Problem. Edward T. Devine

The relief problem of the American seaboard cities is greatly affected by immigration. The immigrant of the twentieth century offers little resemblance to the colonist of the early days of the republic. The colonist was establishing new outposts of civilization; he was one who was capable of making his way in the face of adverse circumstances; he was influenced by some strong religious or political or economic motive, and felt within himself a daring and strength of character sufficient to overcome the dangers, the loneliness, and the privations of the frontier. Colonization is, in short, one of those differentiating agencies leading to the selection and survival of those who have initiative and exceptional capacity. Immigration, on the other hand, is a comparatively easy escape from hard conditions. The immigrant is one who follows in a path already made easy. He goes where his friends or relatives have gone, and settles in the spot where they have settled. He yields to the artifices of transportation agents, or may even be assisted by the public authorities of his own community to emigrate for his country's good. Until legal interference is interposed he comes under a contract to work at occupations and under industrial conditions about which he may be entirely ignorant, thus lending himself readily to a lowering of the standard both of living and of wages. He is scarcely conscious even of the handicap of speaking a foreign language, since he is worked and lodged with others of his own nationality, and under foremen who can speak to him in his own language.

The immigrant who goes under tempting circumstances to a