Cofer: Evigenics and Immigration 



171 



minds, superman character, or persons 

 with superman souls. That is to say, 

 the superman who will be assembled for 

 the purpose of leading a strenuous life 

 to improve the world is the one whom 

 many of us have in mind especially if wc 

 read Bernard Shaw. 



Really the production of an evenly 

 balanced, conservative, intclHgcnt and 

 healthy individual should be the aim of 

 eugenics, and not the raising up of a 

 monstrosity or curiosity in human life. 



In the eighteenth and nineteenth 

 centuries, Europe attempted to improve 

 its race stocks by the deportation of the 

 less desirable individuals. Each country 

 had its penal colonies, and in addition 

 used the United States as a dumping 

 ground for its convicts, paupers and 

 insane. The immigration laws of the 

 United States, which purport to exclude 

 some twenty-one classes of mentally, 

 ph^^sically, morally and economically 

 undesirable persons, were originally 

 intended to protect the country from 

 the dumping process above described. 

 But, inasmuch as they operate equally 

 in the cases of assisted and of normal 

 immigration, they really go further 

 than this; and, so far as they are en- 

 forced, tend to eugenic results by select- 

 ing the better classes of aliens for the 

 fathers and mothers of future citizens. 



This brings us to the consideration of 

 immigration in its general sense. The 

 migration of men or other animals is 

 caused almost entirely by the universal 

 search for food. Man, like every other 

 organism, spreads all over the earth in 

 search of a living, and when he finds 

 himself in a locality able to support 

 him, he is usually willing to remain there. 

 It will usually be found, therefore, that 

 the average immigrant's reason for 

 shifting his residence from some other 

 country to this country is the relative 

 over-population of his native country. 

 The term "over-population" is given 

 to a place which contains more people 

 than can be fed with food raised in that 

 country. The word "over-population," 

 however, has been discarded and the 

 word "saturation" has replaced it, 

 for the reason that it is easier to 

 think of the migrations of the peoples 

 of the world as fluid-like migrations. 



on the general i)rincipk! that water 

 always seeks its level, and that a 

 sponge more than saturated will begin 

 to drip. Therefore, a locality over- 

 crowded with inhabitants is not unlike 

 a soil which cannot possibly hold all the 

 rain which is poured on to it. Some 

 must run off or be evaporated after 

 collecting in pools. The overpopulatcd 

 or saturated jjlace is one which cannot 

 hold the rain of babies i^ourcd ujjon it. 

 They too collect in pools of humanity 

 to be evaporated in pools of death, or 

 they must flow off in streams in one 

 direction or another, and these streams 

 are the streams of migration, which 

 when they converge at the shores of our 

 country are termed b}- us our streams 

 of immigration. 



THE STREAM OF IMMIGRANTS. 



Now let us see what these streams of 

 immigration mean to the United States. 

 During the fiscal year ended June 30, 

 1914, 1,485,957 immigrants landed on 

 our shores; the year before that 1,574,- 

 371 landed; the year before that 1,143,- 

 234 landed; the total for the last six 

 years being 7,544,452. In other words, 

 considerably more than 1,000,000 per- 

 sons a year from other countries have 

 migrated to our shores during the last 

 six years. These immigrants comprised 

 Africans, Armenians, Bohemians, Mora- 

 vians, Bulgarians, Servians, Montene- 

 grins, Chinese, Croatians, Slavonians, 

 Cubans, Dalmatians, Bosnians, Dutch, 

 Flemish, East Indians, English, Finnish, 

 French, Gennans, Greeks, Hebrews, 

 Northern and Southern Italians, Japa- 

 nese, Lithuanians, Magyars, Mexicans, 

 Poles, Portugese, Roumanians, Rus- 

 sians, Ruthenians, Scandinavians (who 

 comprise Norwegians, Danes and 

 Swedes), Scotch, Slovaks, vSpanish, 

 Spanish Americans, Syrians, Turks, and 

 West Indians. 



These immigrants enter the United 

 States through 88 different places, 

 which places include 25 different ports, 

 and they embark for the United vStates 

 from 25 different foreign ports. Exclu- 

 sive of the number of railway lines 

 continuously bringing immigrants over 

 our borders, over 100 steamship com- 

 I^anies were occupied, jjrior to the 



