perfect enforcement of the spirit of the existing law. The objection to the educational test was that the demand of the country was not for skilled and educated labor, but "for a class of brawn and muscle to assist in agriculture and in the line of their work to aid in the development of the almost boundless resources of the great West and South." It was further argued that the country was not demanding the exclusion of any but criminals and paupers. While there were some who favored even a more radical restriction than was proposed in the committee bill, the idea of a better enforcement of the existing laws prevailed, and while the committee's recommendations resulted in a revised immigration law, which was approved March 3, 1893, it was by no means radical. THE IMMIGRATION LAW OF 1893. The immigration act of 1893 required the captain or commanding officer of all vessels bringing alien immigrants to deliver upon arrival to the proper immigration official lists of all immigrants aboard their ship. It was further required that these lists be signed and sworn to before the United States consul at the port of departure; their sworn statement being to the effect that, after a personal examination of all the passengers, no persons belonging to classes excluded by United States laws were included in the list. In regard to each immigrant the list gave the full name, age, and sex; whether married or single; the occupation; whether able to read or write; the nationality; the last residence; the seaport of landing; the final destination; whether having ticket through to such destination; who paid his passage; whether in possession of money; and if so, whether upward of $30; whether going to join a relative; and if so, his name and address; whether ever before in the United States; whether ever in prison or an almshouse; whether under contract to perform labor; and what is the immigrant's health, mentally and physically, and whether deformed or crippled. No longer would the word of one inspector exclude an immigrant. It now became his duty to detain for special inquiry every immigrant whom he did not think, beyond a doubt, entitled to admission. Special inquiries were to be conducted by not less than four inspectors, and to admit, a favorable decision by at least three of them was necessary. Bonds that no alien should become a public charge were allowed to be received only upon express authority given by the Secretary of the Treasury in each special case. Transportation companies engaged regularly in carrying immigrants were required to certify twice a year to having kept exposed in the office of each of their agents in foreign countries a copy of the law of 1891 and all subsequent laws relating to immigration, and that they had instructed their agents to call the attention thereto of all persons before selling them tickets. The subject of immigration, however, continued to be agitated in Congress, and on April 5, less than five weeks after the approval of the law of 1893, the Senate passed a resolution which provided That the Committee on Immigration be authorized and directed to make inquiry into the condition and character of the alien immigrants coming into • Appendix B, p. 101 (27 Stat. L., p. 569). the United States for the purpose of supplying labor for the coal, iron, and other mines of the country, and further to inquire whether the laws against the admission of laborers under contract are effectually enforced, etc., and also generally to inquire into the workings of the law of March 3, 1893. Since the law of 1893 was not yet in force, it is easily seen that Congress was not wholly satisfied that the existing laws were sufficient. During this Congress, as in the previous one, the principal attempt at legislation was in trying to secure a more rigid inspection of immigrants with a view to preventing the immigration of undesirables. The plan especially urged was that of consular inspection. Such a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by Mr. Stone, of Pennsylvania, on January 16, 1894. On July 20, 1894, Mr. Stone's bill passed the house without debate. The purpose of this bill, as declared in the committee report upon it, was to prevent the admission of criminals and paupers into this country as immigrants. They were excluded by the present laws, but the committee held that the examination on the arrival of the immigrants was, necessarily, wholly insufficient to determine whether the immigrant belongs to the excluded class or not, and that there was no reason why the immigrant should be brought 3,000 or 4,000 miles to determine whether he was admissible or not, and that if he was not admissible it would be much better for him to know that fact before he embarked at a foreign port for the United States. Consular inspection of immigrants, however, was not generally in favor in the Senate. One ground of objection stated by Senator Hill, of New York, being that it was not wise to have two departments of the Government meddling with the same subject, but that it is best that to the Treasury Department, which is intrusted under existing laws with the carrying out of the immigration system, should be given whatever authority is to be given, and that the Department of State, which has charge of the Consular Service, should have nothing to do with it. The Senate, following the advice of the Secretary of the Treasury, amended Mr. Stone's bill so that it provided for an inspection abroad by United States Treasury agents instead of by consuls. Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts, opposed the Senate's amendment substituting Treasury agents for consular officers, saying in a debate upon the bill-a that they have no powers at all on the other side of the water. The Senator from New York says that they will examine the manifests; that they will go on the ships and examine the immigrants. That is purely a permissive right. They go on if the owner of the ship allows them to go and look at the manifest. They are clothed with no authority whatever. I do not mean to say that they would not do some good and effective work. I think they would. I think also they would probably in practice be allowed to inspect the immigrants and to send out a great deal of valuable information such as the Senator from New York has described, but I think it is distinctly an inferior method to that proposed in the bill as passed by the other House. No agreement was reached in the conference on the bill between the two Houses. In the Senate, as a result of the action of this conference, another bill (S. 2314) was introduced by Senator Hill, of a H. R. 5246, Fifty-third Congress, second session. House Report No. 416, Fifty-second Congress, second session. • Congressional Record, Fifty-third Congress, second session, p. 8235. New York, to provide for the exclusion of alien anarchists, such a provision having been added to the first bill in the Senate. This bill passed the Senate on August 16, 1894, but the House did not consider it. Consequently the only legislation of the Fifty-third Congress affecting immigration was found in the appropriation acts of 1894 and 1895. The act of 1894 increased the head tax on immigrants from 50 cents to $1; provided that the decisions of appropriate immigration by customs officers, if adverse to the admission of an alien, should be final unless reversed by the Secretary of the Treasury, and provided for the appointment by the President of commissioners of immigration at various ports of arrival. By the act of 1895 the designation of the Superintendent of Immigration was changed to Commissioner-General of Immigration, and in addition to his other duties he was given charge of the enforcement of the contract-labor laws. THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION. It is necessary here to refer to the American Protective Association, a phase of the old Know Nothing movement, which became active at about this period. It was a secret organization, and like the earlier one it was formed for the purpose of making itself felt in the elections. The Junior Order of United American Mechanics and Patriotic Sons of America were claimed as sympathizers and cooperators. The reasons for the formation of this organization were stated by its president as follows: " 1. That the spirit of the National Constitution was being violated in various ways by certain persons and bodies in the United States. 2. That certain members and sections of the National Government were in connivance with the said violators. 3. That the conditions governing our national immigration were such as to weaken our democratic institutions and form of government and to substitute therefor a system of government not in harmony therewith. 4. That the immigrant vote, under the direction of certain ecclesiastical institutions, had become so dominant a factor in politics as to virtually control it. 5. That this domination had resulted in political prostitution, corruption, and favoritism of the worst kind. 6. That the great majority of the American people, while painfully cognizant of the sinister and debasing results of these conditions, and desirous of amending them, were either ignorant of any efficient means of counterorganization, or fearful of their personal interests at the hands of their powerful and organized opponents. It would seem from the above that the movement was directed against immigrants only as they were Catholics. Up to 1893 the membership of the "A. P. A.," as it was commonly known, never exceeded 70,000. But in the two following years it became firmly planted and, according to the president of the society, was instrumental in overturning the entire political machinery in New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Iowa, and of California, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wis 28 Stat. L., pp. 390, 391, and 780. J. H. Hopkins, Political Parties in the United States, p. 195. Policy and Power of the A. P. A. W. J. H. Traynor, president of the Ameri. can Protective Association, North American Review, vol. 162. consin, Washington, and Oregon in part. It is said that in the Fifty-fourth Congress nearly 100 Members were pledged to support the platform of the order, but, says Mr. Traynor, "it would be unfair, as it is untrue, to say that the great majority of these were honestly the friends of the American Protective Association, or imbued with the principles of the organization," for, he continues, "many accepted A. P. A. principles as a means to the end of obtaining A. P. A. votes." a In 1896 the association claimed a membership of nearly 2,500,000 persons. At this time it seemed probable that it would grow in influence and power, but in reality it never went beyond the stage of being an agitation. The reaction soon set in and its decline was even more rapid than its rise. LITERACY TEST FAVORED BY CONGRESS. In the Fifty-fourth Congress the principal immigration bill under discussion provided for an educational test. In December, 1895, such a bill was introduced in the Senate by Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts, and in the House by Mr. McCall, of Massachusetts. As introduced this bill provided that there should be added to the excluded classes— all persons between fourteen and sixty years of age who can not both read and write the English language or some other language. On April 2, 1896, Mr. Bartholdt, from the Committee on Immigration, reported a substitute for Mr. McCall's bill. The substitute provided that no— male person unable to read and write his own language be admitted to the United States, excepting children under the age of sixteen years, and parents of persons now living in or hereafter admitted to this country. On February 18, 1896, Mr. Lodge's bill was reported adversely in the Senate and a substitute introduced." The substitute provided that there should be excluded all persons over fourteen years of age who can not read and write the language of their native country, or some other language, except that an aged person not so able to read and write, who is the parent of an admissible immigrant, may accompany or be sent for by each immigrant. The House substitute bill passed that body on May 20, 1896, by a vote of 195 to 26, after being amended by the addition of three sections dealing with the coming of Canadians across the border to perform daily labor in the United States. This amendment made it unlawful for any alien to be employed on any public works of the United States, or to come regularly into the United States by land or water for the purpose of engaging in any mechanical trade or manual labor for wages or salary, returning from time to time to a foreign country. The Senate did not act on the House bill during this session, nor did it consider the Senate bill. Early in the following session, how a W. J. H. Traynor, North American Review, vol. 162. ever, December 17, 1896, the House bill with amendments passed the Senate by a vote of 52 to 10. The House disagreed to the Senate amendments and asked for a conference. After two conference reports, the House disagreeing to the first, the bill was finally passed, the second conference report being adopted in the House on February 9, 1897, by a vote of 217 to 36, and in the Senate on February 17 by a vote of 34 to 31. As the bill went to the President it provided for the exclusion from the United States of persons physically capable and over 16 years of age who could not read and write the English language or some other language; parents, grandparents, wives, and minor children of admissible imigrants being excepted. The basis of the argument for the educational test can be found in the following quotation from the Senate report on the subject: The illiteracy test will affect almost entirely those races whose immigration to the United States has begun within recent times and which are most alien in language and origin to the people who founded the 13 colonies and have built up the United States; that it would tell most heavily against those classes of immigrants which now furnish paupers, diseased and criminal, excluded by existing law, and is therefore a continuance of the present policy of the United States which has met with general acceptance; that the immigrants who would be excluded by the illiteracy test do not go out into the Western and Southern States, where immigration is needed, and become an agricultural population, but remain almost entirely in the Atlantic States and in the great centers of population, where the labor market is already overcrowded; that the illiterate immigrants who would be excluded by the bill proposed by the committee are largely congested in great cities and furnish a large proportion of the slum population; that the illiteracy test would shut out those classes of immigrants which statistics show contribute most heavily to pauperism and crime and juvenile delinquents, and that with two exceptions none of the excluded races, as shown by the letters of the governors of the different States, are desired in 26 States of the Union from which reports have been received. In one word, it may be said that this measure will exclude a larger number of undesirable immigrants, so far as statistics can be relied upon, than any restriction which could be devised. In the arguments made against the bill it was contended that restriction of immigration was not desired, and also that the educational test would not shut out criminals, many of whom were well educated. The passage of this restrictive measure, which was especially aimed at southern and eastern European immigrants, seems to emphasize the truth of the sentiment of the several States as expressed by their governors in replies to inquiries sent to them by the special immigration investigation commission in 1895, asking them whether immigration was desired in their respective States, and if so, from what races? The following is a summary of their replies: " RACE PREFERENCES EXPRESSED BY GOVERNORS. Wisconsin: Germans, because they all work and are generally very prosperous. Michigan: English-speaking are most desirable, with Scandinavians and Germans next. Kansas: Germans, English, Swedes, and Norwegians. North Dakota: Scotch, English, Scandinavians, and Germans. • Senate Report No. 290, Fifty-fourth Congress, first session. |