Second Report of the Committee on Immigration of 



the Eugenics Section of the American 



Genetic Association 



Alexander E. Cance, Amherst, Mass. 



James A. Field, Chicago, 111. 



Irving Fisher, New Haven, Conn. 



Prescott F. Hall, Boston, Mass., Chairman. 



Robert DeC. Ward, Cambridge, Mass., Secretary. 



THERE has been one change in 

 the membership of this Com- 

 mittee since the last report. 

 Professor Franz Boas having 

 left the Committee and Professor Irving 

 Fisher, of Yale University, having 

 taken his place. 



A second year of study of the prob- 

 lem of immigration on the part of your 

 Committee has resulted in a renewed 

 and more profound conviction of the 

 necessity of arousing intelligent and 

 unprejudiced public opinion in this 

 country to the need of strong and con- 

 certed action in favor of a more effective 

 immigration law. 



We have hitherto left the choice of 

 the fathers and mothers of the future 

 Americans largely to the selfish interests 

 which care very little whether we want 

 the immigrants they bring, or whether 

 these people will be the better for com- 

 ing. Steamship agents and brokers all 

 over Europe, and even in Asia and 

 Africa, are today deciding for us the 

 character of the American race of the 

 future. The steamships and railroad 

 companies, and the large employers of 

 cheap labor, have vast financial interests 

 at stake. They want unrestricted and 

 unselected immigration. They are well 

 organized, and have very great influence 

 in Washington. None of these "inter- 

 ests" care in the least for the sanity 

 or for the physical soundness of our 

 race. If their pocketbooks are well 

 filled they rest content. 



To counteract these influences and 

 to point out wherein our immigration 

 laws need strengthening for the better 

 protection and preservation of the race 



is a duty which the American Genetic 

 Association may well take the lead in 

 performing. 



This Committee finds that, in spite 

 of the present law which prohibits the 

 admission of insane and mentally de- 

 fective aliens, our institutions are filling 

 up with these very persons, and what is 

 still more serious, there is a rapidly 

 increasing number of mentally defective 

 aliens at large in our communities, in no 

 way segregated, and free to reproduce 

 their kind. Abundant evidence and 

 statistics of the serious conditions which 

 now exist, and are rapidly becoming 

 worse, is contained in the Report of the 

 Committee on Inquiry into the Depart- 

 ments of Health, Charities, and Bellevue 

 and Allied Hospitals in the City of New 

 York (1913), and in the Report of the 

 Special Commissioner on the Alien 

 Insane in the Civil Hospitals of New 

 York State (1914), to which this Com- 

 mittee would call special attention. It 

 appears that while the foreign-born in 

 1910 constituted 30.2% of the entire 

 population of New York State, the 

 foreign-born insane constituted 43.4% 

 of the patients in the State hospitals 

 Sept. 30, 1912. Furthermore, there is 

 a gradual decrease in the native-born 

 percentages of the admissions and a 

 corresponding increase in the foreign- 

 born percentages. Dr. Spencer L. 

 Dawes, the Commissioner on the Alien 

 Insane, says, "If the increase in the 

 percentage of the foreign-born be con- 

 tinued at its present rate for about 10 

 years longer, the foreign-born admis- 

 sions will equal in numbers the native- 

 born." Dr. Dawes points out very 



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