The National
Civic Federation Review
Vol. II. No.3 NEW YORK, JUNE, 1905 Ten Cents

IS THERE AN IMMIGRATION PERIL?
The popular impression that the scum of Europe invades the United States vigorously combated by qualified experts.

The growing volume of immigration and its relation to American industry was the general topic discussed at the quarterly meeting of the Civic Federation of New York and vicinity held on June 19 at the rooms of the Board of Trade and Transportation, 203 Broadway. Special questions considered in relation to the subject were: What is the net annual gain in the population of the United States from this source, and what is its characters? Is there any practicable and desirable plan for distributing the immigrants throughout the country? What percentage of the arrivals is undesirable, and what, if anything can be done to reduce this? What proportion of the 64 percent that arrive at Ellis Island remains in this city? What industries does this affect and how?

The participants in the discussion all spoke with the authority of expert knowledge. The information that they presented and the opinions they expressed were such as to correct much popular misapprehension upon this subject; such as, for example, that a great majority of the arrivals are from the jails, asylums and poor-houses of Europe. They were also of such a nature as to emphasize the importance of the topic. For that reason, a resolution was adopted requesting the National Civic Federation to appoint a committee to give especial consideration to the relation of immigration to American industry, including particularly methods of its distribution and existing and proposed legislation; the committee to be composed of men of national reputation and to make a public report as soon as practicable. Among the illustrations accompanying this report are reproductions of photographs of immigrants, selected by the officials at Ellis Island as typical, both of those admitted and of those deported. A verbatim report of the proceedings follows:
Charles A. Moore, President of the New York Civic Federation, in calling the meeting to order stated succinctly the scope of the discussion. He introduced as the first speaker Nathan Bijur, President of the State Conference of Charities and Vice-President of the United Hebrew Charities.

Mr. Bijur:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen- I doubt whether I can say more than a word or two on one or two of the suggestions contained in the invitation, as the subject is so broad as to be impossible of thorough treatment in the short compass of a few informal remarks.

As a lawyer I take the liberty of advising my friends that it is impossible to discuss a problem unless we know what the problem is.

Aliens Waiting for Tickets at Railway Ticket Office, Ellis Island Station

It is a very common thing to hear of the evils of immigration and the misfortune brought upon the United States by the immigrant, and of the hardships and burdens of the immigrant. Personally, I have no knowledge of these burdens; personally, I have not seen the evils as the term is applied particularly to immigrants, and I have searched in vain for a categorical and clear statement of what the trouble may be. I know that we have in the United States, and particularly in New York City, a great many poor people. That is nothing new. It simply carries out the prediction contained in the good old book. I presume we shall have those poor with us for a long time to come. I have no knowledge whether there were poor people when the original Americans monopolized the inhabitancy of this country, that is the North American Indians, but so far as our civilized history goes, we have had the poor among us ever since the first immigrant landed here, in the person of Columbus.

Now, in regarding the question of the immigrant- not the evils of immigration, but the question of the immigrant- we are frequently furnished with statistics. Let me say a word about statistics. Statistics should never be gathered by an advocate. Statistics should be gathered by a statistician. You know the old joke about three kinds of lies: Lies, and blank lies, and then statistics. That is a very unfair characterization of statistics. Statistics, if gathered by a statistician, do present the pictures of fact. After we have the statistics we may honestly determine whether we are an advocate or an opponent of the particular question which the statistics elucidate. The trouble with very much of the statistics gathered on the subject of immigration is that they have been sought after with a view of proving or disproving some previously conceived theory.
Now, when we look at the question broadly, what have you here about immigrants and immigration? That there is such an enormous number of immigrants coming into the United States at the present time. I have taken the trouble to look up some figures, in fact they have been collated by a number of men interested in the subject, and some of these have been published. A very interesting tale is the one prepared by Mr. R. P. Falkner and published in the Political Science Quarterly for March, 1904. Taking the decades from 1821 to 1900, 1821, 1831 to 1840, and so on, he shows the relation of the total number of immigrants to one thousand inhabitants of the initial population. That is, the relation of the number of immigrants coming in during each ten years to the number of inhabitants of the United States then present in the United States. Now I will read this relation of the number of new immigrants to the actual population by decades:

1821 to 1830, 15 to the 1,000.
1831 to 1840, 47 to the 1,000.
1841 to 1850, 100 to the 1,000.
1851 to1860, 110 to the 1,000.

And now in the subsequent decades, 73, 73, 104, and in the decade from 1891 to 1900, 59 to the 1,000.

In other words, not only is the ration of increase by immigration not growing, but it is actually diminishing. That is to say, the number of immigrants who came between 1891 and 1900 is very much fewer to the general population than the number of immigrants who came in 1841 to 1850, 1851 to 1860, 1881 to 1890, and the other periods that I have named. So that this tremendous inrush of immigrants is something that is tremendous in its absolute figures, but very small in its relative figures to the general population of the United States.

Main Building, Ellis Island	Immigrant Children on Roof Garden, Ellis Island

Now, when you remember that the State of Texas, which is larger than Germany, is alone capable of feeding a population and holding a population very much larger than Germany, which is. I think, some fifty-five million, and that the total number of inhabitants of Texas is about three and a half million, you will see that there is room in the United States, for an increase of population, whether by immigration or otherwise.

But when these figures are presented we hear another objection to immigration, namely, this: It is true we need two hundred million, or we can stand two hundred or three hundred million more population, but we want them in the West and we want them in the South, and they should not come in the great cities; but that is where the immigrant flocks.

Now, it is equally interesting in that relation to see what growth of urban population has been in the United States in recent years. From 1891 to 1900 the increase of population in the United States as shown by the last census was 13,000,000. That is, new inhabitants of the United States, whether born here or coming here as immigrants. Now, out of the 13,000,000 the growth of population in the urban communities was 7,600,000; in the semi-urban communities 2,000,000, and in the rural communities, 3,400,000. That is, the urban and semi-urban population grew 9,600,000 while the rural population grew 3,400,000. The total immigration during that period was but 3,600,000. It is perfectly evident, therefore, that the tremendous growth of the urban communities was not due to the immigrant at all, or at least was only due to the immigrant to the same extent that it was due to the native. The people from the country have come to the city, because either they liked it better, or thought there were greater opportunities in the city. If we are going to shut out from our city, because of some rule that we arrogate to ourselves the power to make, the people who now live in the country who prefer to live in the city, because they either liked it better, or thought there were greater opportunities in the city. If we are going to shut out from our city, because of some rule that we arrogate to ourselves the power to make, the people who now live in the country who prefer to live in the city, we should have to shut out the Vice-President of the National Civic Federation, Mr. Oscar S. Straus, and we should have to keep from our city lines a gentleman who has recently distinguished himself, named Mr. Thomas F. Ryan. There are other men you might think of who have come from rural communities to the cities and have not been a great burden upon the city institutions or upon the charity of the rich.

Pauper Aliens-Deported	Roving Servian Gypsies- Deported

Now, what other general objection do you hear to the immigrant? You hear this, as I have said: First, there are too many of them. Well, the figures do not seem to show that, proportionately considered. Next, they flock to the cities more than the native does. That does not seem to be borne out by the figures. But, you are told, the immigrant in particular becomes a burden upon the community by occupying the charitable and the penal and the reformatory institutions which the public have established. Then you are told that there are two kinds of immigrants- desirable and undesirable, the desirable being those that are designed as the ones who are kin to us in race or blood or habits, and the undesirable are all the rest.
But an analysis of the figures, which it would be altogether too voluminous a task to undertake here will indicate that while it is true that the alien and the foreign-born furnish a large proportion of the census of our charitable institutions, it is not true that the undesirable, so-called, that is, the south and the eastern European furnishes that larger proportion. On the contrary, an analysis of our criminal and of our charitable statistics will show that the so-called desirable aliens from northern and western Europe occupy- well, nearly double the amount of room in our charitable and penal institutions that is occupied by the so-called undesirable immigrant from southern and eastern Europe. I want to say a word after all about this occupancy of our charitable institutions. The immigrant comes here and generally for the first ten or twenty years, until the new generation is on its feet, the immigrant is poor; the immigrant takes what we might call the laboring oar in the community. Is it any wonder that he occupies our hospitals and our insane asylums? Not at all.

You see, statistics must always be regarded from a comparative standpoint. You must differentiate, you must classify.

If you compare the statistics of accidents that happen in the City of New York and pick out, say, the firemen, you will find the proportion of accidents is much larger among firemen than among other people. It is their duty to meet with accidents. And the same might be said of the police. If you pick out the immigrant, who is generally the worker, it is quite natural you will find more immigrants in the hospitals than native, because the immigrant is the man who takes up the employment which brings about the accidents; he takes up the employment in which the work is hard and dangerous. It is no wonder that he breaks down, and it is no wonder that he is injured.

On the question of intelligence I have never heard the immigrant criticized. There is a vague notion that the immigrant is illiterate. That is not true. Moreover, whether the original immigrant be illiterate or not, his children are more literate than the children of the native American.

I was very much startled to find a little set of figures that gave these facts: Natives of foreign-born parents who could not speak English in New York State, according to the 1900 census, 2,500; in Wisconsin, 3,000; in Minnesota, 2,740; in Pennsylvania there were natives born of native parents who, nevertheless, the children, could not speak English to the number of 19,000.

Now, there is nothing significant in this; there is no conclusion to be drawn from this. I cite it merely to dissuade rapid judgment from insufficient figures. I know of no inference that can be drawn from this. But you go about and you know from your own experience that the children of the immigrant are the most ardent citizens and the most ardent students in our schools and colleges.

We have a notion that the immigrant comes here poor and that, therefore, he is a burden on the community. What would we do without the poor? Somebody has got to do this work. The history of the United States has been that in every irruption of a large number of immigrants the people who have been here before have been, as I think some politician once expressed it, kicked up into a higher place. It was been the history of this country since 1821 that every time a poorer class comes in, it takes the last economic strata of the community and pushes it up a peg. And that is going on today exactly as it did in the 1830’s and in 1840’s.

Typical Slovac Woman	Typical Holland Dames

If we establish a purely economic or financial basis for immigration I am afraid we would be apt to exclude a great many gentlemen who are today quite a factor in the community- we would have excluded them, one of whom I see sitting here now, another of whom has become famous the world over as the greatest ironmaster, and yet when he came here he was quite incapable of getting in by a show of cash in hand.

Stalwart Specimens From Romania

There is a different question, not the question of anti-immigration, but the question of sifting the immigrant who comes in. When it comes to the question of keeping out the diseased, the actually pauperized, the actually criminal, who, gentlemen, come here, I think, not of their own accord, but because they are sent here- that is a different question. Anything that we can do to protect ourselves against the burdens that probably belong in other communities we should do. Whether we can do that by imposing a money penalty upon the immigrant that comes in I doubt very much. Whether we charge a $2 a head tax or a $25 a head tax, it is my impression it will make no difference. I think the community- I do not mean this as applying to Germany or France- but I think the community in Germany or France or Austria or England, or wherever it is, will pay the $25 to get a pauperized immigrant in here. But the honest immigrant, who deserves to come in and who may have only $10, will be kept out. Financial bases for immigration are very artificial and very dangerous.

I do not know that I can add anything more- excepting to say one word: There is something in this question of immigration altogether outside of figures and dollars and cents. The United States is great, not because of any one class of population, but just because it represents an amalgamation of various types. There have been brought to us all the forms of activity that have made modern civilization what it is, and the United States has become on that account a microcosm. We have got our love of art from the Italian; we have a lively and active spirit, perhaps from the French and from the Irish; from the German we got our love for music. From all these continental nations we are beginning to learn how to rest. Now, why do we want to keep these elements out? What is the matter with them? From the Russian we are getting an idealism to which ourselves have been strangers for decades. Do we want to go back to the old humdrum, or do we not want to have all these elements?

Typical Routhenian Woman	From Roumania to Michigan Lumber Camps

And then there is one other consideration, I need not go into the history of the United States to say that if the United States stands for anything, it stands for political and for religious freedom, and I think I voice the sentiments of the American people in its true sense if I say that so long as there exists a man or a group of men in any part of the civilized word who are persecuted or oppressed because of peaceable political or religious beliefs and purposes, so long the doors of the United States will have to remain open. (Applause)

The Chairman- The Chair will call on Mr. A. W. Sullivan, editor of the Weekly Bulletin of the Clothing Trades.

Mr. Sullivan:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, being asked a few days ago my views on immigration, I replied, “Exclusion”. There upon I was invited to come here and outline my position.

The transatlantic steamship lines, almost exclusively non-American, in the last three years, coming and going, have carried wage workers in migration to the number of more than three million; any one may compute for himself how nearly the gross earnings of these companies from this traffic have approached one hundred million dollars. If the average of the railroad and steamboat fares spent within this country by three migrants has been ten dollars. If the manufacturers and mine owners and the employing classes in general have availed themselves of one-tenth of this providential supply of cheap labor, in substituting it for labor previously better paid by 10 percent., they have saved in the three years in wages a matter of fifty million dollars. Crumbs sufficient to keep them alive falling from this traffic have also been picked up by some thousands of contractors, padroni, employment agents, slum landlords, and dealers in small patches of “our” undeveloped resources. If in America it could occasionally happen that lawmaking should result from pull and steering, the not somnolent interests mentioned might perhaps be tempted to try their turn in asking Congress for something good. Having overstuffed the cities to a point of acute indigestion, they might come forward and suggest a project for loading up the hinterland.

Among the numerous articles afloat on the ocean of print during the last year or two advocating government aid in distributing the arriving millions, none has suggested a clearly considered, specific, detailed plan. “Kansas announces its need of forty thousand agricultural laborers for the coming harvest” “The South is always calling for more field workers” “Immigrants, have reclaimed many abandoned New England farms” “Healthy new communities can be nurtured from the bosom of Nature itself” “Land is offered everywhere on desirable conditions” “Plenty of room in our West, Northwest, South and Southwest”- these glittering pearls, borrowed from the phraseology of the real estate boomer, have been dangled before us, but out of it all we have been given no definite project.

To what part of this country can the coming poverty-stricken swarms be sent where they will surely benefit themselves and the community?

Shall we recommend the Pacific Coast? For twenty years rural California has been the gleaning ground of thousands of roving, homeless white blanket men and of great gangs of yellow and brown men, whose movements depend on the successively ripening crops on large plantations in various parts of the State. Today the entire Pacific Coast is in the throes of an agitation for the exclusion of all Asiatic laborers. The San Francisco Chronicle says that there are now in California thirty-five thousand Japanese, and on the whole length of the Coast fully one hundred thousand, the majority having arrived in the last five years, and a former agent of the Industrial Commission reports that “the number of Japanese in California alone is greater than the total number recorded at all ports of the United States in ten years”.

Shall we send immigrants to the Northwestern States? The last number to hand of the Butte (Mont.) Reveille re-describes the remarkable movement of American citizens to Canada. It says the number going this year will be fifty thousand; Collier’s counts on a hegira of one hundred thousand a year. Why don’t these people stay and develop the alleged virgin riches of the country they are deserting?

Next, Colorado. Are we to send a hundred thousand more laborers to that noble State? Last year the United Mine Workers spent nearly half a million dollars in the Rocky Mountain region supporting moderate union demands and came to grief. But perhaps there are other vast mining districts only awaiting the “magic hand of labor” for their needed development. There’s Illinois, the State of Mr. Joseph Leiter, having Professor Commons tells us, thirty-seven thousand coal miners, 60 percent, being foreign born, the majority arriving since 1894, having taken the places of Americans and Americanized miners from Western Europe. There’s West Virginia, the scene of a long series of strikes, still on, many of the non-unionists newly arrived foreigners and the union men being described in the United Mine Workers’ Journal this month as living under a reign of terror, the victims of lawless opponents. There’s the Alabama mine district, where the United Mine Workers have recently had eight thousand men out, but where convicts have long been busily employed. There are the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania, where the Slaves and their descendants number one hundred and ten thousand, if we may believe Dr. Peter Roberts, of Mahoney City, a systematic observer of the subject.

A. Moore, President New York Civic Federation	Robert Watchorn, Commissioner of Immigration at Port of N.Y.

It is no longer proposed that immigrants adapted to the work be sent to the New England textile mills, which now largely employ not only French Canadians, but Armenians, Greeks and Portuguese, with remnants of the English and Irish who have two decades ago pressed in on the American employees. None are to go to the iron and steel mills of Western Pennsylvania, where the callous indifference to their swarming foreign human life has recently moved the Austrian, German and Italian Consults to seek an investigation. Skilled immigrants are not to be assigned to communities according to their trades- for example, potters to the pottery towns, packed with importations from England; glassworkers to the middle West, over-run with Belgians who came under inducements; quarrymen to Vermont and Massachusetts, where the union organ is printed in four languages. Are our beneficent railroads still clamoring for more foreign construction hands? Or are there really not enough half-employed Italian gang laborers in this country now? The Ninth Special Federation Report (p. 29) put the percentage of the unemployed unskilled Italians in Chicago at 56.97. Dr. Peter Roberts writes that after the great anthracite strike, when the mining industry was rushing, the collieries did not average more than two-thirds time.

What region or occupation in America is not already over-supplied with cheap foreign labor?

Ah, agriculture! Every farmer needs a hired hand! Five million farms; five million hands wanted! Five years more of business for the steamship companies before our vast national stomach shall be crammed to the throat. Unsophisticated persons there are who still echo the marvelous tales told about farm help somewhere growing rich on harvest-hand wages. And what is the big, broad, blanket-like fact that covers the entire proposition? It is this: For fifty years the average yearly earnings of the American farmhand have been the lowest in the entire national wage scale. From 1860 to 1890, except during the part of the Civil War, the annual farm wages was variable in but the slightest degree. Aside from the census, the Department of Agriculture has made repeated investigations, one of official conducting five of them within twenty-five years, and always finding this same state of facts. The census of 1900 reported a small increase, but the late Dr. Spahr, making special inquiries in ’99 as correspondent of the Outlook, found that general farm wages in Arkansas, for example, had fallen from $18 a month to $10 within fifteen to twenty years. Those excellent citizens who find mental recreation in belittling the laboring classes sometimes indulge in agreement on a fallacious prejudice according to which the working man shuns the country and loves the city’s lights. The fact and principle involved are otherwise. America’s labor, following the line of least resistance in striving for the American standard of living, cannot be expected to remain contented at an occupation whose rewards do not include a united family life, a home or wages above that of the day laborer. As to the attractions of the South and Southwest, continually advertised during the last quarter of a century, the foreigner believes them to be counteracted by a competition with the Negro, who, acclimatized, disciplined to subservience, by nature a season worker, presents to the world an example of the survival of the fittest.

But, “the immigrant is to buy land,” “the era of the small farmer is at hand,” “suitable acreage can be had on most desirable terms”. Reply: The three hundred thousand Southern Italians, Hebrews and Poles arriving last year landed with an average capital of $13 per person. The Industrial Commission in 1900 gave the average for these nationalities for years as respectively $8.84, $8.67, and $9.94. Our immigrants reach here on the brink of want, the general average of their capital in 1904 being $25.70. Nearly all are untaught in American methods of agriculture and of selling produce. The barrier between the $10 foreign capitalist and the independence of an American farmer’s life is mountains high- his need of food, clothing and shelter until he can surely produce a paying crop, his need of at least a part of the purchase price of his land, his ignorance of our language and commercial methods.

Where in the name of horse sense, is there today a dearth of common labor in America? In what region will not brawn and backbone, of itself, appear, ready and willing, whenever a living wage is offered? In 1900, the census tells us, the percentage of those engaged in gainful occupations who were unemployed during some portion of the year was for the whole country 22.3; in 1890 it was only 15.1. In agriculture the percentage was 20.7.

[At this point the speaker said that to deliver his entire address would overrun his time; he therefore asked to leave to print. Granted.]

One quarter there is to which the non-English speaking creatures with but $10 between themselves and pauperism can count on being rushed posthaste to work. It is where there is a strike or lockout. In one occupation they are given an indulgent trial for the passing hour by solicitous employers. It is as strikebreakers. Unrestricted immigration is unlimited government aid to union workers.

The cry now is for “distribution!” The unemployed are already well distributed in every State of the Union. The many great strikes of the miners the last two years should be deeply significant to those who urge sending the laborers out away from the cities. That is where the miners are. The miners are diggers, delvers, laboring men, as closely related to farm workers as any other class. If really any rural part of this country wants labor, underpaid, partly employed mine workers are so distributed by the thousands that it is strange they do not respond to the demand.

The problem of immigrants admits at its present stage of only two modes of interference.
The first mode is further to extend the present policy, which, ostensibly that of assistance to the immigrant, is really a costly and indulgent paternalism toward parasites on the American people. Further steps in its pursuance will provide for more dividends to foreign corporation subsidized by European governments, possessed of ships convertible to war uses, and developed with the intent to drive our American marine from the seas in peace and in war. These further steps will also call for more rackrent for slum landlords, more rakeoffs for contractors, padroni and foreign agents of transportation, more blood for real estate sharks, more non-unionists for manufacturers combines, more outlay for every charitable and penal institution in this country, and incalculably more misery for America’s wage earners.

Shall I illustrate by facts?

Not alone more riches and power for foreign steamship companies, but help to foreign governments. We read only last week that the Royal Steamship Company of Great Britain, built up by a subsidy of a million dollars a year, is to establish a line between America and the Mediterranean ports. We are informed that the English Government has a sovereign interest in the great new convertible Cumarders. The advertised present activity of the Italian Government in supervising emigration greatly results in keeping in Italy conscripts for the military service. The long continued practice of deporting public dependents has been astutely permitted by foreign governments to be shifted to a new form of insurance company. Professor Edward T. Devine writes that at Bremen and other points of embarkation are agencies with offices in many parts of Central and Southeastern Europe which contract for a price a safe landing transaction the hand of neither government nor steamship company can be seen. But steamship officials are not always so modest. On January 26, 1897, the restriction bill being up in the Congress for a vote, a German steamship official telegraphed to doubtful members threatening them with defeat at the next election if they voted for the act- if we may believe the Restriction League, which prints the telegram, with names, in one of its leaflets. Mr. Lodge declared in the Senate, without contradiction, that another telegram had been sent at the time to every American newspaper carrying the company’s advertising.

More fees to steamship agents! Stimulating emigration to America is in Eastern Europe a recognized profession. A representative of the United States Treasury Department investigated the subject in the summer of 1903. He found that in Europe drummers for steerage passengers to America included school teachers, notaries, postmasters, pedlars, peasants, and even priests. Mr. Ward assures us that the seven thousand steamship agents scattered thousands to come here who otherwise would have remained at home.
More access to Italian padrone and American contraction. For example, Rome, New York. That city let out to the lowest bidder certain public works. He sent to New York for a gang of two to three hundred Italians. They came and did the work at wages representing a degenerate level for Americans. They lived in shacks, ate animal food, wore foreign clothing, lived meaner than at home, for economy’s sake. They saved their full share of the $25,000,000 annually sent to Italy by New York’s Italian banks. To the town shopkeepers they brought little or nothing; to the State, no taxes; to the jail, assault cases; to the public school, itch and trachoma. The city of Rome, N.Y., had numerous workingmen who would have been glad of the work. But, as in ancient times, foreign serfs labored on the municipal improvements while Rome’s proud citizens stood idly by. In this respect the history of Rome has been repeated in a hundred American cities.

To the employers’ combines that are engaged in the crusade against trade unionism the hordes of fresh immigrants have been an inestimable blessing. These combines are invariably composed of intense Americans, bound by hooks of steel to every American tradition save traditional American wages. They’ll drive the American workers out of a trade, and when their foreign non-unionists purge themselves and join the unions, will upbraid them for their un-Americanism.

An example, the clothing trade. The New York State Department of Labor has pronounced the sweatshop a result of immigration. Dr. George C. Stiebling, of St. Mark’s Place, New York, thus defines sweatshops: Workshops “in which clothing is manufactured and which serve at the same time as dwelling rooms to the bosses, their families and boarders”-“overcrowded, ill ventilated, over heated, full of dirt, filth, vermin and stench” consequently “unwholesome, health destroying and disease breeding”. Joseph Barondess two weeks ago publicly stated that never were sweatshop conditions worse than at present on the East Side. In 1904, the Immigration Bureau reports, 23,508 tailors arrived. Besides, a benevolent society maintains schools for tailors on the East Side. Last summer the wholesale ready-made clothiers’ combine, with philanthropic intent, established another school and union blacklisting employment bureau in Astor Place. This combine’s organ, the “Daily Trade Record” (March 28, 1905), thinks well of the proposed Ellis Island great exhibition hall. It wants there, as a part of it, “a big clothing factory, in which arriving immigrants could note the class of tailoring work to which they are best adapted. Agents could be stationed there to direct them to the concerns in different markets most in need of their service. In this way considerable labor trouble would also possibly be averted”. True, for the Chicago special order tailoring unions charge the combine with boldly violating its trade agreements, and refusing to submit the point to arbitration, because uncontrolled immigration permitted it to look out its Scandinavians, Germans and naturalized Hebrews having $100 apiece, and lock in Bohemians, Poles, Italians, and greenhorn Hebrews possessed of $13 apiece, less immigrant fare to Chicago.

Nathan Bijur, President State Conference of Charities	J.W. Sullivan, Editor Weekly Bulletin of the Clothing Trades

Can the Ellis Island officials guarantee that the incoming hosts booked for the suburbs will not stray to the cities? The federal inspectors, obeying the recent reform laws relating to pauper, insane criminal, diseased and contract labor immigrants, last year deported the largest proportion ever known- and that was less than 1 per cent. The law’s guarantee to protect us from these classes is plainly worthless. There’s hardly a skilled trade in America, there’s no industrial center employing highly specialized labor- from wood working to chemistry, from musician to cloth dyer- that can not bear overwhelming testimony to violations of the contract labor law. The Federal Census Bureau reports that while the native born inmates of American insane and charitable institutions are 3 to 1,000. Dr. Shively has estimated that 23,000 tuberculosis immigrants were landed in New York in 1902. The State of New York alone has 6,000 aliens in its public insane asylums. Of the 44,985 aliens in the insane, penal and charitable institutions of the United States, 19,764 are insane. Goodwin Brown, a specialist in lunacy statistics, predicts that in ten years the insane will cost the United States $50,000,000 a year. A writer in the Brooklyn Eagle has recently estimated that the cost to New York State of its foreign born poor is annually $12,000,000. Of 2,595 cases cared for by the New York Lying-in Society only 315 patients were native born. Multitudinous are the phenomena that government inspectors cannot either see or foresee. And astonishing are the things they are unable to do. The New York State Free Employment Bureau, with a million job seekers to experiment on, found places last year for about 7,000. The State Commissioner of Labor, when his inspectors last January captured in Elizabeth street tenements numerous bundles of men’s clothing being finished in unlicensed dwellings contrary to law, refusing to make public the names of the manufacturers owning the goods, since the statue gave them that discretion.

Good reasons, and many of them, in all the facts just mentioned for not enlarging the powers of labor bureau officials over Europe’s impoverished millions thrown overboard in New York Harbor.

The second mode within sight of dealing with the immigration question is exclusion. As President Roosevelt said in his message, let us welcome the desirable and reject the undesirable. I submit that every immigrant who cannot pass an illiteracy test and prepay an insurance of $50 against becoming a burden to this country, to be used for his deportation if necessary, is undesirable.

I also hold that a period of total suspension may become a necessity. This is conservative as compared with a decision of the United States Supreme Court, rendered in May, 1895. This was: “The power of Congress to exclude aliens altogether from the United States, or to prescribe the terms and conditions upon which they may come to this country, and to have its declared policy in that regard enforced exclusively through executive officers, without judicial intervention, is settled by our previous adjudications.

The illiterate among the immigrants over fourteen years of age, coming from Eastern and Southern Europe, were in 1900, 38.8 per cent; in 1901, 46; in 1902, 44.3; in 1903, 40; in 1904, 43. The State Department of Labor reports that “the two countries having more than 50 per cent of illiterates furnish one-fourth of the whole number of New York’s aliens”.

Reject the illiterates, require the fulfillment of the obvious obligation insisted on in wise New Zealand, that the foreigner shall not become a public burden, and the results will stagger the imagination. The colossal European marine leeches will no longer get drunk on both foreign and domestic blood; the discontented democratic hosts of Europe will be strengthened through the retention of their brothers at home: the working men of America will soon begin to pour out money to our business men, for their advancing wages will at once absorb a fair share of the enormously increasing product of the country. An authority in the New York building trades equal to the best recently told me that with immigration suspended common labor in this city would be $3 a day within one year. The clothing trade unions would quickly proceed to enlist every garment worker. Hebrew or Gentile, in Greater New York, and their label would insure the well attired classes that no consumption sputum infected their coats.

Have no fear that the foreign born wage workers now here will not, after a brief campaign of education, favor exclusion. Why is only one immigrant in eighty a Frenchman, on in forty a Englishman, and one in several hundred a Swiss? It is because the masses of those intelligent nationalities are already educated in the fact that, all things considered, the economic level of the American wage earner is but a bare notch or two above that of their own land. The 10 per cent of immigrants returning disgusted to Europe teach them that point. The immigrants now in this country can on humanitarian grounds repel the charge of selfishness in voting for exclusion. As one of the speakers said when the United Hebrew Trades voted for suspension of immigration for five years, “We are in a trap here; let our brothers at home keep out of it”. When the unions of the State of New York voted, two hundred to two, for suspension, it was avowedly done without prejudice of nationality or race, but purely for economic causes, and in the belief that governments owe it to themselves to work out their special problems of poverty within their own boundaries.
The Chairman-Gentlemen, this is what the Governor of the State of North Carolina says to you here in a Letter:

State of North Carolina
Executive Department
Raleigh, June 17. 1903

Charles A. Moors, President New York Civic Federation

Dear Sir,

It is with deep regret that I have to write you that it is impossible for me to be with you on June 10 to attend the immigration meeting. Our State at this time is offering the very highest inducements to immigrants who will make good laborers and also to farmers. Our farmers are willing to furnish the land, the stock, the necessary working tools, and give the party furnishing labor half of all that is made. I wish it was so I could be with you and extend an earnest and open-armed invitation to all to come to our State, but am compelled to send my regrets.

Yours very truly,

(Signed) R. B. Glenn, Governor.

The Chairman-The next speaker will be Dr. Joseph H. Senner, ex-Commissioner of Immigration:

Dr. Senner:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, we do not propose here to have a college debate dealing in generalities of all kinds. We propose to fall back on the specific points mentioned in the two circular letters received. The second letter I want to mention first, because it contains the stupendous statement that the great majority of the arrivals, which is more than two-thirds of a million, are from the jails, asylums and poorhouses of Europe. I wish, gentlemen, that statements of this kind would be entirely dropped from the discussion of the immigration question. There may have been some isolated cases in immigration of persons coming from poorhouses or jails, but I can positively state that no number of such cases has been or is among the arrivals at Ellis Island. And further I can state that if they exist they are not among the steerage passengers, but they are among the first and second cabin passengers. (Applause).

We have here to consider the question of what is the net annual gain in the population of the United States from immigration, and what is its character?

The net annual gain in figures has been treated of by the first speaker, but the gain in numbers, gentlemen, is very little as compared to the gain in wealth to this country by any immigrant arriving here.

If wish me you pride yourselves upon the fact that we have the greatest home market of any empire in the world, you must not forget the fact that it is no doubt due to immigration. It is immigration that has made possible the immense development of our industries.

Having had the opportunity to witness in tens of thousands of cases and with my own eyes to see the immigrant arriving upon this shore, poor, destitute, more than simple in all his make-up, and a year after to have seen the same immigrant, whether a man or a woman, come to Ellis Island again to call for her sweetheart or her husband or for children or for a friend, the difference, gentlemen, between the parties as they arrived and the parties as the appeared within the few months is simply wonderful. They have entirely changed; all their clothes are American and their new make-up is quite respectable. It is absolutely wonderful to any one who remember their condition when they arrived. Our great home market, with its feeding of millions and millions of skilled laborers, was only made possible by immigration.

In the same way it was only by immigration that we could build up such a wonderful network of railroads, many of whom had to go into the hands of receivers every time immigration came to a standstill, or because the constructors of such railroads had been rather visionary as to the time which would be necessary to fill up their country.

There is the net gain for our country which has been secured from immigration, not to speak of the fact that without immigration the number of our population would be immeasurably smaller than it is now, because our immigrants do not believe in race suicide.

Is there any practicable and desirable plan for distributing the immigrants throughout the country?

When I was Commissioner of Immigration at this port I conceived first the idea that the problem of immigration will in time be solved only by the proper distribution of immigrants all over the country into those places where they can be of the most good to themselves and to the country they live in. I then suggested in the immigration investigation report of 1895 that a clearing house should be established in Ellis Island for that purpose. I am very glad indeed that the present Commissioner General about two years ago took up the very same idea. I admit it appears rather impracticable for sometime, but only because our laws forbid instructions to immigrants about the benefits and advantages of sections of this country by any kind of advertisements or educational work abroad. This clause of the law would have to fall first. But then, with the previous education of emigrants given to them partly in their own homes before they make up their minds as to where to go, party on board of the steamship and finally on Ellis Island itself, such education I believe would be practicable and would finally lead to the point that immigrants could settle in places for their own welfare and for the welfare of the country, instead of being allured as today by all kinds of incidents or by the glowing accounts of some interested person.

A great deal is also said about the inducement of emigration by the steamship companies. I have no reason, whatever, as you know- I suppose most of you know- to be in any way interested, directly or indirectly, in or for the steamship companies. But do you believe that the zeal of the steamship companies or of their European agents to induce emigration has been smaller during my term of office, when only 250,000 to 400,000 immigrants used to land annually, than it is now, when 1,000,000 immigrants land? Just the opposite. You may rest assured that at least at that time when immigration was only 250,000 to 400,000 a year they worked much harder than they do now when immigration, so to speak, falls into their lap. It is the hundred million dollars spent right here in the neighborhood of New York on tunnels, it is the agency of all those people who prosper and write about it to their friends abroad, which would be actually helpless in the case of dull times such as we had in the middle of the nineties.

The first thing we have to do under all circumstances is to exclude all and every undesirable immigrant. But in speaking about a desirable or undesirable immigrant I beg to differ from the first speaker, who classified them according to races or origin. Every immigrant in himself, his individuality, his personality, has to be judged and appraised in order to determine whether he or she is desirable or not. (Applause).
Every one who, for any reason whatsoever may appear to be undesirable is to be rigidly excluded. And I am glad to state that under the present regime this is absolutely and conscientiously done.

Now this is the first axiom of treating the immigration problem. Don’t place any unnecessary hardships or obstructions in the way of any desirable immigrant that desires to come to the land of the free. And the third axiom is this: When they are found desirable endeavor to place them by government assistance and by the assistance of all private associations and corporations, in such localities, in such environments, where they will find a good future for themselves and where they will benefit the country to which they have come. I thank you for y our attention. (Applause).

The Chairman: The next gentlemen- I do not want to make a set speech. I simply want to mention a few figures and correct impressions that have gone abroad for a long time.
It is said, first, that this country annually increases by immigration from 700,000 to 1,000,000. But first of all, sight is lost of the fact of how many leave every year. Now, in this city alone, in the City of New York, we had last year 571,000 arrivals in the steerage, but 323,000 left in the steerage. So there was an actual increase of only 56 per cent. And so it is in the other ports, so that in the four ports of the North Atlantic, were 693,000 arrivals, but 359,000 departed in the steerage. So that there was an actual increase of one-half of this number. Now, I want you not to forget this whenever the newspapers or any persons speak of the enormous increase. Sight should not be lost of the fact that half of the number go out of the country.

A Voice: Do they take back any money with them?

Mr. Boss: I do not know. They do their work during their stay here and have actually earned whatever they take back. (Applause).

Besides, I wish to call attention to the fact that one of the speakers has said that the poverty stricken hordes of Europe come over here. Now, according to the figures of the Commissioner General of Immigration the immigrants that arrived last year were first of all thriftier than ever before; they showed up no less than twenty millions of dollars in coming over (Applause), and that was four million dollars more than the larger number that arrived the year before. So they are not a poverty stricken horde.

Mr. Sullivan: The figure was $25.78 per head.

Mr. Boss: That is only what they are showing up on the request of the Commissioner.

The Commissioner’s official report states that the immigrants showed up the amount mentioned, and if this is only $25 per head, and if that were all that they possessed upon arrival, it must not be forgotten that it costs them something to break up their homes, that they have to pay the railroad fare to the port of departure, Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, Rotterdam, etc., and the steamship fare from the continental port to the American port which is at present at least $36 per head, so that adding up all the traveling expenses alone, they must have between $60 to $70 for each person, which, the $25 upon arrival, makes $85 to $95 each. A family with six must, therefore, have had before starting over $500 for a rainy day as belonging to the “scum” and to “poverty stricken hordes?”

The money which these immigrants bring is, however, by no means their whole addition to the wealth of this country, for it has been computed by political economists that the economic value of every able bodied male immigrant over twenty years of age represents on average the sum of $1,125 actually added to our working capital; in that way the wealth of this country is annually increased by hundreds of millions of dollars.

L. Boas, General Manager Hamburg-American Line	James P. Archibald, Secretary New York Civic Federation

I only wish to remark again that the steamship lines are not scouring Europe to bring over immigrants. I want to refer to the very able article written by Mr. Whelpley in the North American Review of this month, in which he makes the statement that the laws of European governments are made with the view to retaining the population there. They don’t want to lose it. And the steamship lines are not allowed to scour Europe and distribute circulars that point in glowing colors to the advantages of America. All they are allowed to do is to announce their sailings, and if they do anything else they are severely punished. The greatest emigration agent is the United States mail, the letters that are sent from here, the letters sent home from this country, that say what a man makes when he works, that is the immigration agent that brings the people to this country. (Applause).

These letters bring information upon which implicit reliance is placed, and cause the people in the old home to sever their connection with that which is dear to them and go to the strange country beyond the sea. An emigration agent could talk till doomsday before he would have the same effect. These conditions will never change as long as the advantages are greater in this country than in Europe. There is no better barometer of the business conditions than the number of immigrants that come to this country. If times are good they will come.

Mr. Sullivan: May I interrupt to ask one question? May I ask you whether it is correct, as Prof. Devine says, that in the Bremen and in numerous other quarters about Europe there are insurance companies which will insure the coming emigrant that he will be landed here, and if not landed here that he will be brought back? A gentleman of the Treasury Department says today there are 7,000 agents, and that even the priests are among the agents. I very much regret to interrupt you.

Mr. Boss: I cannot possibly speak for the numbers of people who consider themselves emigration agents in Europe, and those are figures that are assumed. I cannot controvert them. Anybody can make a statement of that sort, that priests are emigration agents or that there are 7,000 agents, or any other number. I speak for the steamship line that has been charged with scouring Europe to bring the poverty stricken hordes over here. That is absolutely untrue. It is not allowed by laws, and I wish to say the steamship companies and their agents are law abiding citizens. We abide by the law here and abroad. Here is the Commissioner of Immigration, he can say what we do to conform to the American law.

One of the speakers referred to $10 immigrants. The steamship lines had a war last year and the rates went down to a very low basis, and the newspapers announced that in consequence of these low rates hordes, thousands, hundreds of thousands would come over here. Statistics have shown that last year during the lower rates fewer arrived than the year before, and fewer this year when the rates are high. That only shows that the passage money has absolutely no influence on immigration at all. (Applause). There is another point I wish to make: It is again the same old story, if times are better here the immigrants are bound to come, and who comes? It is the energetic man who has the courage to break away from the ties that bind him, it is the intelligent man who can appreciate that his condition will be better here than on the other side and who can cut loose from his ties and come across to the unknown country, and it is the man with savings who can afford to go- that is the man who comes, and the poor, the ignorant, the scum, the people who are not energetic, they stay behind. They do not come to America. So I wish to contradict again the statement that it is the poor, the uneducated, the criminal horde that come over here. We have laws that restrain the criminal from coming to this country. Here is the Commissioner of Immigration; it is his business to exclude every one that is undesirable. The steamship lines do not bring the undesirable here, and if any should slip in there is the man to keep them out, and he does keep them out, too. He observes the law, and so do we. That is all I wish to say, gentlemen. (Applause).

The Chairman: Permit the Chair to suggest this, that any gentleman present who is interested, and I presume every one here present is interested in this great question of immigration- if any one has not visited Ellis Island and observed the immigrants landing, I ask him to take the opportunity of doing it at the first available moment. It will be the greatest education to him as to these “hordes”, these “pauperized people”. You will see as bright, intelligent figures, capable looking people, as you will find in the same number of their class anywhere in the world. I think this is a subject that should interest every thoughtful American, whether a property owner to a little or a great extent, who employs labor. And if he will go over there and take the courtesy of the Commission of Immigration, he will be surprised as to the people who come here as immigrants, and at the manner of handling immigrants.

In the last few days a prominent railroad man told me it would be impossible for the West to have kept its tracks in condition to run over them if it had not been for immigrants, absolutely impossible.

The man who is going to speak next is the man who in my judgment and from my observation, is the best qualified to tell us the truth as to the character of the immigrants, and to answer any questions about them.
June, 1995.

I am going to call on the Hon. Robert Watchorn, Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island. (Applause).

Commissioner Watchorn:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: When I assumed charge of Ellis Island I stated to a committee that called on me to participate in some meeting of this or similar character, that I did not believe that a Commission of Immigration had any business to participate in the discussion of questions of immigration; that I believe it was his business to enforce the law as it now stands and leave it to the good judgment of the people of this country and Congress to alter the law when it ceased to be satisfactory. I have concluded since I sat here this afternoon, that not withstanding the very handsome manner in which the invitation to be present here this afternoon was framed and delivered to me, that I made a mistake in departing from that conclusion.
I am quite sure from what I have heard this afternoon that the subject is very thoroughly understood without any information from the Commissioner of Immigration, and I am not quite sure in my own mind that there are not some people who know more about the practical enforcement of the law than I know.
It is not for me this afternoon to say to you whether I believe the law as it stands today is satisfactory or not. There is just one thing that prompted me to come here this afternoon more than any other, and that was that I might be able to state to you on my honor that at the present time the law, as it is, being rigidly and honestly enforced. I have been told and have seen quoted in the newspapers that there is very great room for improvement, and I have no doubt that some people might improve on conditions at Ellis Island from their own point of view, but I do not believe that a man who stands for a wide open policy, who would let everybody in because his sympathetic feelings get the better of him would be the proper man to enforce the law; nor do I believe that a man who has concluded, for reasons best known to himself, that there are already enough people in this country, and for that reason and that only, no more should come, that he would be a fit and proper person to administer the law.

I do not agree with some of the speakers here this afternoon that the law as it now stands is all that it ought to be. I think there are some people coming into this country today who ought not to come in. But I think the law is inadequate to keep them out as it now stands. I do not undertake to say to you how far this tendency to exclude should be extended, but I will give you one or two points for your consideration, and I leave it to you to judge whether what I suggest ought to be given serious consideration.

I have heard a great deal about the term “undesirable”. Now, what constitutes an undesirable person? When you being to discuss that one phase and turn it over in your mind you will follow the process of elimination until you get down to a point where the number will be very small comparatively and somebody will be apt to dispose of the whole question for you by still further reducing it; and if you leave it to all those who are actively interested in this question, there will not be many that will fall under the ban of undesirable. What is needed, in my opinion, is a drastic law which shall state specifically what is desirable and what is not desirable.

Now, let us take a case in point; An immigrant steps off the boat and the doctor takes him in hand, looks him over as to his mental capacity and as to his prospective physical endurance, what he is likely to stand, at what point of pressure will he break down and become a burden to somebody who will support him voluntarily or otherwise, and the doctor says he will probably break down very soon, and for that reason he should not be allowed to come in; and the inspectors, acting upon their best judgment under the law will decide that he should be deported; then there will come forward some of the very best citizens of this land who will undertake to prove to the government that it is utterly impossible for such a person to become a burden on the community, and they will bring such pressure to bear and file such proofs with the authorities at Washington that even such a person will be admitted, no matter what the inspectors may do in the premises. Now, I would like to point out, so far as I am concerned, that when a certain standard of test has been established and it is proven by all the tests that may be applied that the person is liable to break down at a certain point and somebody will have to support him, whether that somebody be public or private, there should be very good reason assigned why such a person should be admitted, and Congress ought to stipulate that he ought not to come in.

One of the speakers representing the steamship lines said that they were obeying the law. I believe they are, but it is because they are compelled to. (Applause). If you were to relax the rules and leave it to their good judgment and patriotic sentiment, undesirable immigration would increase in contrastive proportion to said relaxation. The power to exclude and the power to deport is, just in proportion to the power to find or punish for violating the law. Now, I have no fault to find with the steamship companies as such. I think they are endeavoring to obey the law. Not because they have any special scruples about violating it, perhaps, but because they do not like the punishment that is meted out to them for not observing it. This is probably rather a serious stricture to make on some of them, but my good friend, Dr. Senner, who preceded me, knows that since his term as Commissioner the power to punish has been very largely increased, and in proportion to that power to punish, an increased respect for the law has been demonstrated.

Dr. Joseph H. Senner, Ex-Commissioner of Immigration	M.V. Richards, Land and Industrial Agent, Southern Railway

Now, gentlemen, I should like to ask you all to come to Ellis Island. What concerns me now most is this: I want you all to know, and I want you all to believe, that just as the law stands and is interpreted by the courts and other competent authorities, it is being rigidly and honestly enforced, and if, after you have discussed this matter to your satisfaction, you believe that the law can be improved, as I believe it ought to be, all you have to do is to make that known to Congress. Get the law amended, and I assure you that the government has ample machinery and satisfactory facilities for enforcing it effectively.
Whether the great number that are coming in are a detriment to this country or a benefit is not for me to say. My chief function at the present time is to see that the quality is just what the department and the courts have decided it should be. As to the quantity, I do not think that you will expect me to deal with that. I do not think it would be proper for me to deal with it. But I do hope that those of you who wish to be more thoroughly informed of the difficulties encountered by the Bureau of Immigration in enforcing the law, would come to Ellis Island and exchange views with those officers with a view to getting the law intelligently amended in order that we may still further eliminate those from the incomers that are likely to be a detriment to this country in part or in whole.

I am quite sure that from the Chairman down, there are those here, as I stated before, who are amply qualified and able to discuss that feature. So far as getting acquainted with the practical end of it is concerned, none of you will need a pass to come to Ellis Island. You will all be welcome, and if you can point out to me where the present system of enforcing the law can be improved, I shall most cheerfully welcome your suggestion. (Applause).

The Chairman: We have here this afternoon with us Mr. M. V. Richards, Land and Industrial Agent of the Southern Railway Company, who has done a great deal to build up the Industrial South. I was at Washington a short time ago and the president of the road pointed to a map, and speaking of the change that had occurred since he came in charge, showed that on three hundred miles of that system three hundred cotton mills have been erected.

Mr. Richards:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen-:I come to you today quite in sympathy with the foreign immigrant; I mean the immigrant who comes to our shores for the purpose of bettering his condition and is willing and competent to avail himself of the great opportunities our country affords those seeking a competency and desiring to conform to the splendid rules and regulations which go to make this the leading nation in the world. I have no sympathy with the immigrant who is not capable of appreciating the privileges extended to the home seeker. I would uphold a most rigid investigation of immigrants before they are permitted even to purchase tickets to the United States. We can, in my opinion, well afford to strengthen immediately the Department of Commerce and Labor, so that it can organize its forces in Europe sufficiently to carefully investigate immigrants seeking admission into this country. It is our duty as Americans to throw safeguards around our shores, and while we welcome the thrifty progressive and substantial newcomer, we should strongly fortify ourselves against the undesirable class.

The trend of immigration to this country has been to the West through the ports of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Until within the last few years foreign immigration into the Southern States was limited. The last census shows that the States of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, all of which I have the honor to represent by reason of the railroad I am connected with, having lines running through or to those States, had only 1 ½ percent of the total foreign-born population of the United States, or 156,284. These States occupy a very peculiar position in reference to immigration. Since the Civil War the South sent about two and one-half million of white people into the North and West and received from all sources less than one-half that number of immigrants. One state alone sent out to other sections 415,000 people and received only 190,000 showing a net loss of about 230,000. Massachusetts sent 300,000 people to other states, but received 845,000 from Europe alone.

The reason for this movement from the South to the West and North is well established. It will be interesting to note that no section of the United States has advanced more rapidly during the past ten years in agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce than the Southern States. This advancement has been made under many disadvantages. It is well known that not many years ago the South was without money, without credit, and- as has been shown- immigration was pouring out, rather than coming in. The results accomplished by the South under these conditions have at last attracted the attention of the outside world. The South is now recognized as one of the desirable fields for people with limited means and for the employment of capital. A few years ago the railroads, state authorities, manufactures and farmers in the South found that their country could be best advanced through increased immigration. A systematic campaign has been carried on, and to those who have labored earnestly, seriously and persistently in promulgating information concerning the South, it is very gratifying to observe that the South today is in the minds of people throughout the North, Canada, and many parts of Europe, as a field for settlement and investment.

We have established numerous factories throughout the Southern country. You will be interested to know that over 2,500 manufacturing enterprises were located within the last three years upon the line of the Southern Railway. These factories each give employment to anywhere from five people to 2,000 people. A large percentage of the employees in these factories were drawn from the farming sections. The immigration into the South has not been equal to the migration of people from the farms of the South to the factories. While we have progressed remarkably well in our agricultural development, if we could have kept all of our farmers on the farms, induced immigrants to come in, open up and develop more farms and accept employment in our factories, our agricultural development would have been far greater and our factories would be larger today than they are.

We have appeals to us from farmers and manufacturers in all parts of the South for laborers. We can accommodate several million people. They can be provided with pleasant homes and profitable employment. The future of the immigrants locating with us, I do not for a moment doubt, will be in line with their desires and necessities.

We have systematically laid the foundation for the introduction of a foreign population by securing Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, French, Bohemians, and Polanders from the Northern States. We are now ready to receive the raw immigrant from Europe. We can place him in neighborhoods in which are successfully established people of his own nationality. We do not doubt but what we will be successful.
Not many years ago I remember we established the first settlement of Germans in a State on our line. The forerunners of this settlement were brought from the congested sections of your city, New York. They were followed by German-speaking people, friends of friends and acquaintances of acquaintances. There are now several hundred German families in that section and more are wanted, and as they come, properly establishing themselves, they will be successful. In the same section we have colonies of Bohemians, Hungarians, and some Scandinavians, all of whom are being joined by friends from the North and Europe. Recently we established a colony of French-Canadians. These people came from Canada to the United States, and after working around the mills in New England for a time found that they would be better satisfied if engaged in agricultural pursuits. They purchased farms in the South, at practically their own terms. They are satisfied and are being joined by other French people. We now have French colonists coming to us from Europe. True, the number is limited, but the foundation for an increased immigration is being laid. We have many Scandinavian farmers and business men located with us, and more are coming annually.

Recently, I had the pleasure of making an extended trip through the South with the Italian Ambassador, Baron May des Planches, at which time he studied several of the Italian colonies located on our system. These colonies were found most prosperous and contented. There is abundant room for many thousand Italian families on Southern farms and in Southern mills. We have to-day applications from not only farmers, but manufacturers as well, for Italian laborers. They will be given steady employment, and those desiring to own homes of their own will have no difficulty in being accommodated. We visited one settlement of Italians number about 175 families. Each family works from 20 to 30 acres of land for which they pay rental. They are furnished equipment, seed and supplies, as well as houses to live in. The statement of their net earnings shows that no farmer-earned less than $350- some of them as much as $1735. This was accomplished without any capital, and no investment whatever on the part of the Italian family, excepting the labor. I note this to show that the family without capital can succeed in the South.

It would seem appropriate for me to make the following suggestion as an aid to the solution of the problem:

Of the many thousands of immigrants now domiciled in your city, a considerable proportion come from farms in Europe. They come to this country to better their condition, to secure a home in free America. They are without any knowledge of the country beyond your city limits. They are not assimilating with out people, and I question whether they will; at least not as rapidly as they would, if placed in the rural districts. To distribute and establish these people we must have a location and money. With land, some money and people much can be accomplished. We have these three factors:

1. Desirable lands in the South at low prices.
2. Capitalists in the City of New York, in the North, and some in the South.
3. The people in congested districts.

Let us bring these three together.

The Commissioner of Immigration of the United States has, in my opinion, wisely recommended, that he be authorized to permit the various States to establish on Ellis Island, bureaus of information, the purpose being to reach the immigrants before they are permitted to enter the United States, and direct them to suitable homes, sending them direct thereto from Ellis Island. We are anxious to have many of these people in the South, and are ready to consider taking them; we believe we could aim materially in relieving the situation here in New York if we were permitted to go among these immigrants, making our investigation and selection, that is, giving the immigrant reliable information concerning the advantages we offer, the opportunities existing in the South, so that he can intelligently consider the proposition we would make. This done in advance of the immigrant having an opportunity to taste metropolitan life would, we believe, send more people away from the city than are going at this time. I would further suggest that the various organizations in your city interested in the caring for and protection of these immigrants be given sufficient support to properly connect themselves with people throughout the United States, likely to be interested in securing immigrants, thereby enabling these societies to do considerable more good work in directing people to suitable homes.

The Chairman: Gentlemen, this is a national subject, and time will not permit of much further present discussion to-night. We have some gentlemen from the West here whom I would like to invite to show the immigrants the advantages of the West. Somebody is evidently getting men who want to work, for I can’t get farm hands out on my farm twenty-five miles away. There is a scarcity of labor in the country, and I do not know whether they go South or where they go, but I can’t get them.

Mr. James P. Archibald:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: It was my intention to read a paper here to-day from the labor standpoint and to endeavor to express the feelings of the working people in regard to the question of immigration. I feel that it would have settled some of the assertions that have been made here to-day in regard to unlimited desirable immigration.

I will detain you but a few moments, Mr. Chairman, but I want to get square with you because I could not read my paper, but I will endeavor to have it printed in the proceedings of this meeting. It is a paper that I prepared ten years ago. When I was invited to address this meeting, I read over this old paper and found that it expressed my views now just as if I had written it yesterday.

Way back in 1892 the Central Labor Union of New York interested itself very much in immigration, and I was one of the committee that was then selected to investigate and report to the Central Labor Union. We did so, and our conclusion at that time was that no desirable man should be prevented from landing in this country. That is my opinion. I am amply satisfied that the interests of the labor people will be conserved, at this port to-day is a man in whom ass of us who have the pleasure of his acquaintance have unqualified confidence. (Applause)

As this question is likely to give rise to discussion all over the country, and perhaps compel the attention not only of our State Legislature, but of our National Government, I believe it behooves the Civic Federation to be in a position to put itself on record as to its attitude towards this great question, the principal part of which I believe is the distribution of the immigrants in the country. Mr. Chairman, I move you that the Civic Federation of New York and Vicinity request the National Civic Federation to appoint a committee composed of men of national standing to investigate this question of immigration and report to the National Civic Federation at as early a date as possible.

The resolution offered by Mr. Archibald was adopted unanimously and the Chairman declared the meeting adjourned.

The Following is the paper submitted by Mr. Archibald:

It should be clear, in our opinion, to every thinking man that a course of public policy which would diffuse labor all over the country is the great necessity of our times. Every year, and is their tens of thousands, there come to us men and women whose life experiences have been wholly connected with farming. They come from countries where militarism and landlordism eat the substance of the people, where taxation and rents have reduced them to an almost entirely impoverished condition. Hence, when they reach our ports, they have little or no money; they are ignorant of our resources; they do not know where to go; and if they did they would not have the means to defray the cost of transportation.

The result is that they remain just where they first land. They crowd the districts which are already over crowded. Want and misery, filth and disease are the inevitable concomitants of such unnatural conditions. Hunger must be at least partly appeased. The “sweater” comes to offer something for its appeasement, or the employer of “scab” labor is at hand to give work for starvation pay, or the employer of union labor is besieged with applicants for work until, even where he a philanthropist, he could not find places for all. The remainder, go to the wall. They go down and down. Public and private charity, are next taxed to the last degree of endurance. A standing army of paupers is created. Trampdom is filled to repletion. The criminal classes are increased by many, at first, unwilling recruits. Public health is endangered. Public appreciation of man’s inherent dignity is lessened. Public morality is assailed in a vital part, while the multiplication of suffering by tens of thousands of able-bodied men and women tends to destroy the finer feelings of humanity and to create a brutal hard-heartedness in the stead of Christian love and fraternal sympathy. Meanwhile the South and West are calling loudly for the very class of labor which most abundantly discharges itself on our shores. But there is no organized means to supply it. The poor immigrant is unable to help himself of place himself within the reach of fair opportunity for work.

Now, why is this not remedied? And is it not apparent as the noonday sun that the means of our remedy are in the hands of our Governments, both national and state?

And is it not equally clear that the whole country would be improved and the condition of workers everywhere be ameliorated if an effective remedy were applied? So far as our State Governments are concerned, it seems to be wholly within their power and entirely within their province to maintain labor commissioners at this port, whose duty it would be to hold constant communication with the national officials of immigration, and take concurrent action with such officials to take charge of the immigrants in directing, divesting and transporting them to a place where labor is required. If credence is to be given, as no doubt it should, to the press of the South, they are more in lack of labor than of capital of those fertile States. The want of farm labor fetters the farmers, who cannot increase the areas of improved and cultivated lands because they cannot find laborers to do the work. Good pay awaits the sober, industrious laborer. Plenty awaits the able-bodied workers if they only get there. But unadvised and unaided, our European immigrants cannot and do not get there. Vast treasures of national wealth poverty are made with each new influx of what might be manipulated to public and private goods.

Nor is it in farming alone that the South, Southwest, and West are calling for more workers. Alabama and Georgia cry out for more mechanical labor every day. Tennessee is rich in mineral wealth, while her soil has but to be scratched for abundant results. Florida calls for fruit growers. Louisiana offers great sugar opportunities. Arizona, the Dakotas, Nebraska, the wonderful State of Washington, Montana, Texas- but why further enumerate?- All these states require the industry (and have ample opportunities for its exercise) of millions yet to come; and it only remains for us to distribute and transport our immigrants where they are most needed. Such action would stop overcrowding. The general good would be promoted, and in the general advantage of the States the whole country would share. The organs of plutocracy may shriek “paternalism” as much as they may when dealing with this feature of the labor problem; they may desire to the top of the bent that there shall be yet more overcrowding in our already congested districts, so that concentration of capital may find a defenseless, impoverished concentration of mere human machinery at hand to be dealt with according to the dictates of soulless greed; but to this great policy of adequate, intelligent and well-directed distribution of labor the country must come.

Nor are we without example and precedent, in a limited degree, in this matter. One of the greatest governors of Massachusetts, the long-headed, far-seeing, wise and patriotic Andrews, once sent one hundred respectable, well-educated daughters of that State to the extreme West. They had been educated to an employment then crowded. There was nothing before them but starvation or the indescribable infamy of the streets. At the expense of Massachusetts they were saved from either of these awful alternatives. Provided with suitable escort, they were removed to a part of the country where their education, labor, and thrift were most needed. They were placed where they could be of efficient help to themselves, and to those about them. The result proved the wisdom of great Andrews, and what he caused to be done for those one hundred young women can be done by our National and State Governments if they but rise to the height of the occasion in behalf of our immigrants.

It may and will be objected that the State has no right to interfere with individual liberty, and that such direction and transportation of immigrants would infringe on their individual rights; that they have a right to further congest the labor supply in our large cities if they choose; that they have a right to increase the fierce competition for means of mere existence and further add to the burdens of labor in places where its superabundance is the super inducing cause of cheap wages and consequent hardship to the community. But such objection cannot stand the test of logical examination. It is self-evident that the State has the inherent right to protect itself against pauperism and its consequence, heavy taxation. It is not upon the barons of monopoly the burdens of taxation fall. It is the industrious poor of New York, with outrageously high rents flowing into pockets of the landlord class, whose evicting propensities out-Herod the Herod’s of Ireland, who bear the burden of taxation for alms houses, houses of correction, penitentiaries, city hospitals and prisons. When trouble comes in financial circles thousands are thrown out of employment, and when the unemployed are brought to utter destitution the State or the municipality must come to their relief.

The idle and profligate are among us, but what shall be done with those who are only anxious for work, and the morality of whose lives under the most wretched conditions excites the admiration of every Christian or philanthropic observer, be he in religious belief or what he may? If the State has the right to organize for punishment, it must have an equal right to organize for guardianship. To prevent further overcrowding in this and other large cities would seem to be one of the highest forms of guardianship the State can exercise; and we hope that in due season, before the evil becomes unbearable, our statesmen and legislators will cease for a season their selfish scramble for place and power and give to the question of labor distribution their best thought and action. By doing so they will urge forward the car of American progress, create tens of thousands of American homes, cause civilization to bloom over trackless prairies, build up a citizenship that shall be a tower of strength to the Republic and invoke on our statesmanship the benedictions of Him before whose all-seeing eye the humblest working man stands the equal of the wealthiest capitalist.