Ward: The Immigration Problem Today 
mental and physical standards of the 
American race of the future. This is 
not a chance sensational statement. 
It is the conviction of competent 
medical authorities who know the 
present conditions of immigration, and 
the wholly perfunctory and _ inade- 
quate medical inspection which passes 
the aliens without proper examination 
as to their physical and mental con- 
dition. 
Fourth: A Period of Unemployment 
Has Begun, and Immigration is Not 
Needed to Supply Labor 
The enormous industrial demands 
during the war, and the later expansion 
of our export trade, naturally resulted 
in a great influx of workers from the 
country districts into the cities, and of 
a very considerable abandonment of 
domestic service for the better paid 
positions in industry. This change in 
the conditions of employment brought 
about a shortage of farm labor and also 
a shortage of domestic servants. But 
the tide has turned. There is a general 
slackening of industrial activity. Mills 
and shops are slowing down or closing. 
In many cases employees have been 
willing to accept a reduction in wages 
rather than have their jobs cease 
altogether for a time. We are facing 
a period of general unemployment. 
Already a flow of labor from the cities 
to the country is reported to be setting 
in, and farm labor will again be sup- 
plied by men who left the farms for the 
mills and machine shops. On the other 
hand, also, thousands of women who 
left domestic service for industrial work 
will soon be ready to go back to their 
old jobs, and at lower wages than they 
have been receiving in industry. In 
other words, the crisis in the labor 
situation has passed. Unemployment 
will increase. A wholesale immigra- 
325 
tion is not needed, and will greatly 
aggravate the approaching economic 
situation. 
There is surely something radically 
wrong in the following situation: Hun- 
dreds of thousands of men and women 
already in the United States are out of 
work, and their number is increasing 
daily. Congress and State and munici- 
pal authorities are being urged to pro- 
vide work and support for these people 
at public expense. Yet every week 
there are being landed at our ports 
thousands of aliens, the large majority 
of whom are very close to the pauper 
line, and all of whom must, in some way 
or other, be provided with work, or else 
be supported by public or private 
funds. Where is the logic, or the jus- 
tice, in such a condition of things? 
Canada, which handles its problem of 
alien immigration far more effectively 
and far more intelligently than we 
handle ours, has recently increased the 
individual financial entrance require- 
ment to $250 in order to improve the 
condition of unemployment now pre- 
vailing in the Dominion. 
Fifth: Present and Impending Immi- 
gration Will Not Furnish the Kind 
of Labor Needed on Farms 
This point has already been em- 
phasized in the Consular Reports and 
in the Report of the House Immigra- 
tion Committee above referred to. 
Only 2.8% of the immigrants of the 
past year purported to be ‘“‘farmer.”’ 
Our past experience has shown that 
immigrants inevitably flock to centers 
where their compatriots are already 
congregated. This is happening now. 
The large majority of incoming aliens 
are going to our great cities, and to the 
congested districts. Delegations of 
representative citizens from certain 
Western cities have recently been to 
1 “Paragraphs 1 to 3 of the former Order-in-Council, applicable to mechanics, artisans and 
laborers, have been suspended, and four others substituted, by which ‘‘no immigrant of the 
mechanic, artisan or laborer classes, whether skilled or unskilled, shall be allowed to land in Canada 
unless he possesses in his own right money to the amount of $250, and in addition transportation 
to his destination in Canada. 
If an immigrant in the classes mentioned is accompanied by his 
family, he must possess in addition to transportation for his family to their destination, a further 
sum of $125 for every member eighteen years old or over and $50 for each child to five years old 
and under eighteen years.” 
