War, Immigration, Eugenics 
nation before embarkation. This is an 
excellent and humane provision. It 
would go far toward making these 
companies more careful in the sale of 
passage tickets, and would save many 
unfortunate aliens the disappointment 
and hardship of being deported after 
arrival at our ports. The present fine 
is $100, has been shown to be too small 
to be really effective, and does not cover 
as many cases as are above enumerated. 
A new fine of $25, plus the alien’s 
transportation expenses, is established 
in cases of certain other less serious 
mental defects, and of physical defects 
which may affect an alien’s ability to 
earn his living. 
BETTER EXAMINATION 
The new bill provides for a very 
much more thorough medical examina- 
tion of arriving aliens, especially with 
reference to the detection of mental 
disease; gives the medical inspectors 
the exclusive services of interpreters, 
and suitable facilities for the detention 
and examination of the aliens. This 
amendment has been strongly urged 
by the united action of the most im- 
portant scientific bodies in the United 
States which deal with the prevention 
and treatment of mental disease; by 
state medical associations, and by indi- 
vidual physicians all over the country. 
That our medical inspection has been 
hopelessly inadequate has long been 
known to the experts. We have not 
had enough medical inspectors, and 
those on duty have not had adequate 
facilities for their work. Thus it has 
come about that in spite of our law 
prohibiting the admission of insane and 
mentally defective aliens, our institu- 
tions have been filling up with just 
these people. As Dr. T. W. Salmon, of 
the National Committee for Mental 
Hygiene, has well said: 
“There is no reason for the acceptance 
of a single insane or mentally undesirable 
alien except inability to determine his 
condition.”’ 
It is a very significant fact that, with 
the decrease in immigration since the 
war, particularly at New York, a more 
rigid medical inspection has become 
possible. This “intensive examination”’ 
247 
has resulted in a marked increase in the 
numbers of aliens certified as having 
physical or mental defects. It has also 
resulted in increasing the percentage of 
the total arrivals who were debarred or 
returned within three years after landing 
from 2.6% in 1914 to 6.1% in 1915. 
“Certainly,” says the commissioner- 
general, “‘there could be no better or 
more convincing argument .. . for in- 
creasing the medical force sufficiently 
to insure that no alien shall be admitted 
to the country until he has been sub- 
jected to a medical inspection really 
calculated to disclose his mental or 
physical deficiencies.”’ With this state- 
ment all public-spirited citizens will 
surely agree. 
The new bill extends from three to 
five years the period during which aliens 
may be deported who at the time of 
entry belonged to one or more of the 
excluded classes; who have become 
public charges from causes existing prior 
to landing; and of some other groups. 
This extension of the deportation period 
has been urged, year in and year out, by 
heads of institutions who have had to do 
with dependent, defective and delin- 
quent aliens; by organized charitable 
societies, and perhaps most strongly 
by the former commissioner of immigra- 
tion at the port of New York, Hon. 
Wm. Williams, whose thorough, sane 
and illuminating study of the whole 
immigration problem has contributed 
greatly to our understanding of the 
subject. It is the conviction of all the 
unprejudiced experts who have studied 
this problem that a five-year deportation 
period would relieve our penal and char- 
itable institutions of an enormous 
financial burden, reaching into the 
millions of dollars, and would rid our 
communities of large numbers of defec- 
tives who otherwise would remain here, 
many of them a burden upon State or 
city, and many of them starting long lines 
of defective and delinquent children. 
SAFEGUARDS FOR THE ALIEN 
The new bill strengthens the provi- 
sions of existing lawregarding the ‘‘White 
Slave” traffic; makes the inspection of 
steerage quarters more _ thorough; 
compels steamship companies, when 
