236 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



United States. Officers of the service receive special training for their 

 work as medical inspectors of immigrants. Ellis Island, New York, 

 is used by the service as a great school of instruction where young 

 officers, before being detailed for immigration duty at one of the other 

 ports of entry, are trained in the detection of the particular diseases 

 and defects likely to be found in immigrants. Canada has always 

 been a favorite route for undesirable immigrants wishing to evade the 

 law, and officers of the Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service are 

 stationed for immigration duty at Quebec and other Canadian ports, 

 and at various points upon the Canadian frontier. Certain steamship 

 lines make a regular business of carrying to Canada, for subsequent 

 entry to the United States, aliens who have been rejected and sent back 

 from an American port, or who manifestly belong to the excluded 

 classes, or who have been rejected by other steamship lines who have 

 some regard for our law^s. 



The officers of the Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service 

 stationed at Quebec, Halifax, N. S., and St. Johns, N. B., have au- 

 thority to examine only those aliens manifested as destined for the 

 United States through Canada. Immigrants so manifested do not 

 differ materially from immigrants ordinarily received at United States 

 ports, and are given certificates of physical fitness which admit them 

 to the United States through any of the border points. Thousands 

 of immigrants evade this inspection at Quebec, Halifax or St. Johns, 

 by being falsely manifested as destined finally to Canada. They have 

 no certificates of inspection by United States officers at Quebec, Halifax 

 or St. Johns, and upon attempting to cross the border are sent back 

 to Montreal for examination. 



In order to show the quality of the immigration brought by the 

 Beaver Line and other lines engaged in this nefarious business, it is 

 only necessary to state that 50 per cent, of the immigrants attempting 

 to cross the border in 1903 were rejected, whereas the usual percentage 

 of rejection at United States ports is only one per cent. 



A regularly organized system of smuggling diseased immigrants 

 across the border has been exposed by the United States immigration 

 authorities at Montreal, and although the border inspection main- 

 tained by the United States Immigration Service is doing splendid 

 work, it is impossible to guard effectively every point of over 3,000 

 miles of frontier. A more perfect system of exclusion is now possible, 

 and consists of a rigid inspection of all aliens landing at Canadian 

 ports under an effective Canadian law similar in character to our own, 

 which has recently been enacted. 



The real danger to the public health from immigration lies in that 

 class of immigrants whose physique is much below American standards, 

 whose employment is in the sweat-shop, and whose residence is the East 



