IMMIGRATION BUREAU. 



371 



pamphlet giving a history of the experiments with 

 sugar beets. It obtained from Washington a 

 quantity of the best imported seeds, which were 

 distributed to more than 600 farmers in different 

 sections of the State, with directions for sowing 

 and care. The station also grew a quantity of 

 beets on its own soil. The results proved that 

 Illinois can grow large yields of beets of excel- 

 lent quality. The results of the analysis of 400 

 samples of beets was published and 19,000 copies 

 were distributed. At Peoria and Pekin a strong 

 company has been organized with a 700-ton fac- 

 tory, and beet growing has now become one of 

 the great commercial questions of the State. 



Treasurers' and Assessors' Association. 

 A permanent organization of the county treasur- 

 ers has been formed, for the purpose of carrying 

 out the provisions of the revenue laws of the 

 State and to consider any questions of mutual 

 interest to members of the association. 



Legislative Session. Among the bills that 

 became laws were the following: 



To enable cities and villages to buy or con- 

 struct waterworks and to levy taxes for the same. 



To empower the city board of education to ex- 

 amine teachers for certificates in cities of more 

 than 30,000 and less than 100,000 population. 



To insure the better education and compel reg- 

 istration of opticians. 



To provide for the appointment of a pure-food 

 commissioner. 



To require corporations to report to the Secre- 

 tary of the State annually, empowering the Secre- 

 tary to cancel the charters in case of failure to 

 comply with the law. 



To allow counties to erect monuments and 

 memorial buildings in memory of their soldiers 

 and sailors. 



To prohibit the use of the national flag for 

 advertising. 



To tax all corporations 2 per cent, of their 

 gross earnings. 



The aggregate amount appropriated by the As- 

 sembly for the next two years was $11,500,000, 

 an increase over the last appropriation due to 

 the $600,000 appropriated on account of the Span- 

 ish-American War, $200,000 for a new asylum at 

 Peoria, and $100,000 for the Lincoln monument. 



IMMIGRATION BUREAU. This is one of 

 the latest wheels added to the great machinery 

 of the United States Government. Only during 

 the past twenty years have attempts been made 

 to check the flood of foreign arrivals. The law 

 of 1875, forbidding the landing of criminals and 

 the importation of women for immoral purposes, 

 was the first prohibitory legislation. As the pop- 

 ulation of the country became more dense and 

 the question of subsistence more anxious a de- 

 cided jealousy of cheap labor spread through- 

 out the United States, and appeals were made 

 to Congress in behalf of American workmen who 

 were being driven out of employment by the 

 alien influx. In 1882 a bill was passed which im- 

 posed a duty of 50 cents for each passenger not 

 a citizen of the United States, to be paid to the 

 collectors of customs by vessels arriving at the 

 different ports. This tax was afterward increased 

 to $1, and constituted the immigration fund, 

 which, under the direction of the Secretary of 

 the Treasury, was employed in regulating immi- 

 gration and in caring for such helpless foreign- 

 ers as through accident or failing health became 

 a burden upon public charity. The fears of 

 American workmen were further allayed by the 

 act of 1885 and its amendatory act of 1887, which 

 forbade importation of foreign labor, imposing 

 a fine of $1,000 upon every employer who should 



continue to import workmen, and a penalty of 

 $500 upon any steamship company that should 

 connive at such violation of law. It was also 

 provided that the offending immigrant who, al- 

 lured by the promise of definite work, should ar- 

 rive at any port was to be promptly carried back 

 at the expense of the steamship company to the 

 place from which he embarked. 



On April 19, 1890, Col. John H. Weber, a Fed- 

 eral officer, was sent to New York to take charge 

 of the famous immigrant station at Castle Gar- 

 den, and administer the restrictive regulations 

 of the General Government. Soon after this 

 movement the Immigration Bureau was recog- 

 nized as a distinct branch of the Treasury De- 

 partment, and the entire management of immi- 

 gration was placed under national control. Hon. 

 W. D. Owen (father of the bill that is known 

 by his name), at the close of his term in Con- 

 gress, was appointed superintendent of the new 

 bureau. The Owen law, approved March 3, 1891, 

 excluded from admission to the United States all 

 idiots, insane persons, paupers, or persons likely 

 to become a public charge, persons afflicted with 

 any loathsome or contagious disease, persons who 

 had been convicted of felony or infamous crime, 

 and all persons whose ticket or passage was paid 

 for by others, unless it could be satisfactorily 

 proved that such persons did not belong to any 

 of the excluded classes and that they were not 

 contract laborers. This section of the law, how- 

 ever, did not prevent persons living in the United 

 States from sending for a relative at their own 

 expense. Neither were foreigners convicted of 

 political crimes abroad debarred admission. 



In 1893 the Marine-Hospital Service began a 

 practice which had important results to the Im- 

 migration Bureau. It sent medical inspectors to 

 the principal ports of embarkation in Europe to 

 examine physically all emigrants bound for the 

 United States, and insist upon the strictest pre- 

 cautionary measures of quarantine while Amer- 

 ica was threatened by an invasion of cholera. 

 Taking this action as an initial movement, the 

 Hon. Herman Stump, member of Congress from 

 Maryland, chairman of the Committee on Immi- 

 gration, effected the passage of a bill that pro- 

 vided for a complete examination of immigrants 

 abroad prior to their going on board ship. The 

 operation of the Stump law at the present day 

 requires that each master or commanding officer 

 of a vessel intending to bring immigrants to the 

 United States shall furnish to the proper in- 

 spectors of immigration lists containing 30 names 

 each, which he has duly signed and certified by 

 oath before the American consul, and which shall 

 state, in answer to the questions at the top of 

 such lists, the full name, age, and sex of each 

 immigrant, whether married or single, the call- 

 ing or occupation, whether able to read or write, 

 the nationality, the last residence, the seaport 

 for landing in the United States, the final destina- 

 tion, whether having a ticket through to such 

 destination, whether the immigrant has paid for 

 his passage or whether it has been paid by some 

 other person or corporation or society, whether 

 he is in possession of money, and if so whether 

 more than $30 or less than that amount, whether 

 going to join a relative, what relative, his name 

 and address, whether ever before in the United 

 States, whether ever in prison or almshouse or 

 supported by charity, whether a polygamist, 

 whether under contract, express or implied, to 

 perform labor in the United States, and what is 

 the condition of health, mental and physical. This 

 last statement is required to be verified by the 

 ship's surgeon under oath. This method of in- 



