246 The Journal 
healthiest, eradicating once for all the 
finest strains of the race.’”’ There was 
serious discussion with a view to bring- 
ing about an increased multiplication of 
the fit by various means, chiefly the 
assistance of large families of healthy 
stock. 
From the foregoing considerations it 
appears that the effect of the Great War 
upon the United States will, unless all 
signs fail, be profound and far-reaching. 
For it will affect the mental, physical 
and even moral characteristics of mil- 
lions of our future immigrants and of 
their descendants. 
PROPOSED LEGISLATION 
There is a bill which passed the 
House of Representatives on March 
30, 1916, by a vote of 308 to 87 (H. R. 
10384), which, all things considered, is 
the most comprehensive immigration 
bill ever introduced into Congress. It 
is the result of years of careful study of 
our present law and of its workings. 
Its provisions, as the commissioner- 
general of immigration says in his last 
annual report (June 30, 1915), ‘contain 
the result of experience and investiga- 
tion—of the experience of administrative 
officers, extending over nearly a quarter 
of a century, in the enforcement of 
various statutes regulating immigration, 
and of the investigations “conducted 
variously but in particular by the 
Immigration Commission, created under 
the act of 1907, the report of which, 
comprising forty-two volumes, was sub- 
mitted to Congress in December, 1910.” 
The provisions of this bill “have been 
drawn with great care and thought- 
fulness, . . . by them the law is made 
certain in its definitions and clear in its 
terms throughout—+mprovements badly 
needed in the existing statute.”’ The 
bill aims to protect the United States 
against the incoming of mentally and 
physically, and of otherwise unfit and 
undesirable aliens. It also embodies 
several provisions which would insure 
more humane treatment to the aliens 
themselves, and would, to a large extent, 
do away with the hardships involved in 
the deportation of aliens who are ex- 
cluded at our ports, by preventing their 
original embarkation. 
of Heredity 
The bill is largely a codification of our 
existing immigration laws, but embodies 
several important new eugenic provi- 
sions. Attention is here called to the 
more important changes which its 
enactment would make in our present 
laws with reference to the exclusion of 
the mentally and physically unfit. In 
regard to the better detection, exclusion 
and deportation of this group there is 
no essential difference of opinion among 
those who have the future of our race 
at heart. The unanimity of feeling in 
this matter is encouraging; but, in view 
of our past experience with mentally 
and physically defective aliens who have 
been admitted to this country, it is not 
surprising. 
MORE STRINGENT MEASURES 
To the excluded classes the bill adds 
persons of constitutional psychopathic 
inferiority and persons with chronic 
alcohoism. That many persons not 
properly to be certified as insane but 
who would, in many cases, become 
insane soon after arrival, could be kept 
out under the former provision, has long 
been the opinion of the physicians, the 
alienists and the immigration officials 
who have made a special study of this 
subject, and who have for years strongly 
urged the inclusion of this new provision 
in our immigration law. Chronic alco- 
holics, who are surely undesirable mem- 
bers of our community, are often 
discovered by our examining surgeons, 
but as the law does not now state 
specifically that they shall be excluded 
they must in most cases be allowed to 
land. The new bill excludes vagrants, 
and persons afflicied with tuberculosis in 
any form. It also aims to prevent the 
embarkation of aliens afflicted with 
idiocy, insanity, imbecility, feeblemind- 
edness, epilepsy, constitutional psycho- 
pathic inferiority, chronic alcoholism, 
tuberculosis in any form, or a loathsome 
or dangerous contagious disease, by 
imposing upon steamship companies 
who bring such aliens a fine of $200 plus 
the amount paid by the excluded alien 
from his initial point of departure, 
provided the Secretary of Labor is 
satisfied that the defects could have been 
detected by a competent medical exami- 
—-.- ~~ 
