STRICTL II. IMMIGRATION LAWS. ENFORCED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY-WORK- The enforcement of the laws enacted by Congress for excluding from our shores undesirable immigrants and alien laborers imported under contract has a very important bearing upon the interests of American workingmen. While the manufacturers of the country have been "protected" by a tariff, enacted at their behest, the laboring part of our population were for a long time unprotected from the danger of being superseded by underpaid and underfed laborers, imported from overstocked hives of industry in the Old World. In other words, our industrial population were subject to free trade in labor while they had to pay protection prices for the means of subsistence, The law now prohibits the immigration of laborers under contract, with a few exceptions, such as skilled workmen for new industries, labor for which cannot be otherwise obtained, actors, artists, lecturers, singers, and personal or domestic servants. It also excludes idiots, insane persons, paupers, persons suffering from a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease. persons who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, and polygamists. It having been found difficult in many cases to prove a specific contract under which an alien laborer could be barred, a spcial statutory provision has been made that any assisted immigrant, or any alien whose ticket or passage has been paid for with the money of another, shall be barred ipso facto, unless it is affirmatively and satisfactorily shown on special inquiry that he does not belong to one of the excluded classes, including alien contract laborers. Federal legislation on this subject began in 1882. It has grown into quite a code of laws, some of which, however, lack clearness and precision and need amendment in may respects. The difficulty in their enforcement is largely inherent in the subject, but has been enhanced by the greed of steamship companies, to secure steerage passengers, and their connivance, in the past, at least, with agents, bankers, and padroni in this country, who make a business of supplying foreign laborers to employers-corporations, mines, railroads, and factories. About eighty per cent. of all the immigrants arrive at the port of New York. Prior to 1890 the New York State government had charge of immigration at that port; but in that year the Secretary of the Treasury assumed control and appointed a Federal Superintendent of Immigration for the port. In 1891 an act of Congress was passed which enlarged the Government's control of the subject of immigration. Under it a general Superin tendent of the Bureau of Immigration, with an office at Washington, was appointed, and commissioners were appointed at New York and several other ports by the Secretary of the Treasury. A large immigration station was erected at Ellis Island, so that all steerage passengers could be brought there with their baggage for the purpose of full inspection and quasi-judicial determination of their right to land. In 1893 the immigration laws were further amended by providing that it should be the duty of every inspector of arriving immigrants to detain for special inquiry every person who might not appear to him to be clearly and beyond doubt entitled to admission, and that the issue should be tried and determined by a board of four inspectors, whose decision should be final, subject, however, to appeal to Washington. The Commissioner of Immigration at each port is charged with supervising his force of inspectors and other employees, and the work is of great magnitude. The following will show the work at the port of New York for the fiscal year of 1896: Increase in the first six months, July-Dec.. 1895. 38,442 Increase in the second six months, Jan.-June, 1896. 34,339 72.781 656 excluded as contract laborers. 1,756 excluded as paupers. Board of Special Inquiry investigated 40,539 cases. Lowest, 1,539, in January. Highest, 6,876, in April. 249 appeals. 102 admitted on bonds. 1,689 cases treated in hospital. A Democratic Bureau of Immigration took charge of the execution of the immigration laws in the spring of 1893, soon after President Cleveland's inauguration, when a new superintendent of the general bureau at Washington, afterwards called Commissioner-General of Immigration, was appointed, as well as a new commissioner at the principal port of New York. The efficiency of the Democratic administration has been marked. The effect of the rigid enforcement of the laws is shown in various ways: First, by the decrease of immigration; secondly, by the improved quality of immigrants now arriving; thirdly, by the uprecedentedly numerous exclusions, both in actual numbers and proportionately, of intending immigrants, who have been forced to return to Europe by the watchful gatekeepers of our country; and, fourtaly, by the refusal on the part of the steamship companies to sell tickets to intending immigrants whose eligibility to land was not obvious, such refusal being due to the fact that, under the new law, the steamship companies must assume full responsibility for embarking undesirable immigrants. The systematic importation of laborers under contract has been practically stopped by the unceasing vigilance of the present Democratic officials. It is safe to say that, since the enactment of the law of 1893, under the administration of Democratic officials no substantial number of undesirable immigrants has been permitted to enter the United States, and our public charitable and benevolent institutions have not been burdened with the care of such immigrants. It is now well known that our immigration laws offer the fullest opportunity to any community or public institution burdened with immigrants who have become public charges within one year of landing to rid themselves of them. If an immigrant becomes a public charge from causes existing prior to landing within one year of such landing, the steamship companies are compelled to deport him and the immigrant fund cheerfully bears the expense of transportation in all cases where the permanent inability to earn a living arose after the time of landing. Notwithstanding the fact that these laws and regulations have been made more widely known all over the country during the last three years than ever before, the number of persons returned within one year of landing as public charges decreased as follows: During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1892. 637 577 417 177 This is self-evident proof of the increased efficiency of the immigration service in preventing, from year to year, undesirable immigrants from landing. The Hon. John G. Carlisle, Secretary of the Treasury, has issued his warrant under the act of 1888, and has caused to be deported alien contract laborers who have not been in the United States over a year, thereby establishing a precedent and affording to American labor a protection not heretofore accorded. The immigration service has been more than self-sustaining, and is supported entirely from the head-tax paid by the immigrants, so that it is no charge upon the people. The decrease in immigration is unquestionably due to a great extent to the strict inspection of immigrants insisted upon by the Democratic administration in lieu of the lax methods of their predecessors. The increased efficiency has been rendered possible by a revision of the regulations and reorganization of the service. The greatest efforts are now made to detect and send back those alien passengers who leave their homes in Europe under contracts which make slaves of them to take the places of American workmen at reduced wages, without debarring bona fide immigrants who come of their own free will because they admire our free institutions, are dissatisfied with European conditions and are willing to take their fair and natural chance here. Those who are returned become, of course, anti-immigration agents in their own countries of the most efficient type, and not even the enactment of the sternest imaginable statute could be more restrictive of undesirable immigration than these natural regulators of the ebb and flow in the tide of aliens. The present enforcement of the immigration laws is well known to the various labor organizations of the country, and they have acknowledged that they have been materially benefited by the manner in which the laws have been carried out under the present administration. No secrecy has been allowed in any department, and a cordial invitation has been extended to the members of all organizations, and especially the officers, to visit the various immigration stations and observe for themselves the manner of the enforcement of the laws. The real test, however, has been in acting upon the complaints which are being constantly forwarded by these organizations regarding the importation of people into their trades to take their places in cases of strikes, lockouts, or other trade disturbances. Every facility at the command of the Department has been exerted to detect and punish these violators of the law, with the result that, instead of viewing the law with indifference or contempt, as formerly, the organizations now realize that they have indeed friends who are executing the laws in their interest; and numberless organizations have gone on record, by formal resolutions at their State and National conventions, to this effect and forwarded the same to the Department. The work of the Bureau of Immigration at Washington, under the direction of a gentleman whose number of years' experience in Congress on the Immigration Committee of the House has given him the most thorough knowledge of the subject, has been of the greatest value to the country at large, and has been performed in such manner as to give the utmost satisfaction to all parties. On June 13, 1894, Secretary Carlisle appointed the Hon. Herman Stump. the Commissioner-General of Immigration, Dr. Joseph H, Senner, the Commissioner of Immigration at the port of New York, and Edward F. McSweeney, esq., the Assistant Commissioner, a commission to investigate and report to him information under the following five heads: 1. What changes, if any, in the rules and regulations now in force are necessary in order to secure a more efficient execution of existing laws relating to immigration and the laws prohibiting the importation of alien laborers under contract. 2. Whether said laws are defective in any particular, and what practical difficulties, if any, have been encountered in their execution. 3. What effect, if any. immigration has had upon the wages of labor or opportunities for employment in the United States, and whether or not the |