GOING THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND 9 



who are stopped there, or realize that if the bars were lowered ever so 

 little the infirm and mentally unsound would come literally in hordes, 

 without becoming a firm believer in restriction and admission of only 

 the best. The average citizen does not realize the enormous numbers 

 of mentally disordered and morally delinquent persons in the United 

 States nor to how great an extent these classes are recruited from 

 aliens, and their children. Restriction is vitally necessary if our truly 

 American ideals and institutions are to persist, and if our inherited 

 stock of good American manhood is not to be depreciated. 



This restriction can be made operative at various points, but the 

 key to the whole situation is the medical requirement. No alien is de- 

 sirable as an immigrant if he be mentally or physically unsound, while, 

 on the other hand, mental and physical health in the wide sense carries 

 with it moral, social and economic fitness. The present United States 

 immigration law (legislation of 1907) is very definite in its statement 

 of medical requirements for admission. The law divides physically 

 and mentally defective aliens into three classes. Class A includes those 

 whose exclusion is mandatory under the law because of a specified de- 

 fect or disease. In this class are idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, the feeble- 

 minded, insane and those subject to tuberculosis, or a dangerous or 

 loathsome contagious disease. When a medical diagnosis has been made 



Russian Girls. 



