24 8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



1903, which places in the excluded classes ' persons who have been 

 insane within five years previous, and persons who have had two or 

 more attacks of insanity at any time previously/ 



Immigrants established years ago a reputation for bringing in epi- 

 demic diseases. They have played their part in the past in outbreaks 

 of typhus, smallpox and cholera, but with the disappearance of the old 

 immigrant sailing ships, the advent of the swift, clean ocean steam- 

 ships and efficient modern methods of quarantine and prevention of 

 disease, the immigrant to-day as a carrier of epidemic disease no longer 

 causes us apprehension. The relation of the immigrant to the public 

 health has already been discussed in an article in The Popdlak Sci- 

 ence Monthly, and it is only necesary here to refer to diseases pecul- 

 iar to, or prevalent among immigrants, as one of the social effects of 

 immigration. Of these, trachoma, a contagious form of granular lids, 

 is one of the most obstinate and destructive diseases of the eye. Ocu- 

 lists from all parts of the country claim that this disease was intro- 

 duced by immigrants and disseminated by them, from foci of the dis- 

 ease, established in their tenements. 



The disease is now epidemic in the poorer districts of many of our 

 cities, but since 1897 has been one of the causes for exclusion of aliens. 

 About the same time favus, a loathsome contagious disease of the scalp, 

 was made a cause for exclusion. Favus is a typical immigrant disease 

 and can not spread among persons of cleanly habits. 



These two diseases, favus and trachoma, constitute 97 per cent, of 

 the total cases of loathsome or dangerous contagious disease found in 

 arriving aliens. After they were classed as causes for exclusion they 

 were responsible for more determined effort to evade our laws than had 

 ever before been exhibited. Various means of escaping inspection were 

 resorted to, the placing of diseased steerage aliens in the cabin (cabin 

 passengers were not inspected until 1898), the use of false naturaliza- 

 tion papers, entrance by way of Canada or Mexico, were all employed as 

 modes of entrance. One by one, these gateways have been closed, and 

 with the increasing vigilance of trained medical officers at our ports 

 and upon the Canadian and Mexican frontiers, we shall be amply pro- 

 tected in the future from this menace. 



The ill effects of immigration upon politics are all traceable to the 

 evils of criminal or careless naturalization. These evils are most in 

 evidence in the large cities, but a recent investigation by the attorney 

 general of the United States, shows that the loose administration of the 

 naturalization laws extends to the smaller cities and rural communities 

 as well. President Eoosevelt in his message to the Fifty-eighth Con- 

 gress, December, 1903, forcibly presented the picture of fraudulent 

 naturalization and its baneful effect upon the moral health of the body 

 politic. 



