Vol. XXXI, No. 2 



WASHINGTON 



February, 1917 



OUR FOREIGN-BORN CITIZENS 



ALTHOUGH the immigrants who 

 /\ have flocked to our shores since 

 X JL i 7/6 have mingled their blood 

 with pre - Revolution strains until the 

 American of unadulterated colonial an- 

 cestry is the exception and not the rule ; 

 although a great political party was 

 formed and the presidential campaign of 

 1856 was fought with the immigration 

 question as practically the paramount 

 issue ; although the coming of the Irish 

 and of the eastern European each in turn 

 stirred the nation, there never has been a 

 time when the subject of our foreign-born 

 population occupied such a deep place in 

 the minds of the people as it does today. 

 Should we have departed from our 

 time-honored custom of making America 

 a homeland for whoever loves freedom 

 for himself and craves liberty for his 

 children, whether he be literate or illit- 

 erate? Would our polyglot population 

 be a menace in war time, or would it, as 

 we have proudly thought in the past, be 

 fused into one liberty-loving, flag-defend- 

 ing race ? And when the war is over and 

 the world escapes from the horrible night- 

 mare of blood and carnage and hate, will 

 the consequent burdens drive hordes of 

 people to America, as did the potato fam- 

 ine in Ireland, the social and political un- 

 rest in Germany in the decade preceding 

 our Civil War, and other economic hard- 

 ships in continental countries? 



THE, MOST FREQUENTLY VETOED MEASURE 

 IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



Never in the history of the American 

 people has a measure been passed by 



Congress as often and vetoed by the 

 President as many times as the immigra- 

 tion bill recently enacted into law. Three 

 Presidents of the United States have felt 

 so keenly that the founders of the gov- 

 ernment and their successors were right 

 in holding that the lack of opportunity to 

 learn to read and write should not bar an 

 alien from freedom's shores, that they 

 have overridden the will of four Con- 

 gresses and have interposed their veto 

 between the congressional purpose and 

 the unlettered immigrant's desire. 



But Congress was strong enough at last 

 to override the presidential veto, and so 

 the immigration doctrines of a century 

 and a quarter are changed and the prac- 

 tices of generations are to be made over. 

 Hereafter no one above the age of 16 

 who cannot read and write may enter. 



The effect of the literacy test applied 

 to the immigration of the future may be 

 shown by a few figures. More than one- 

 fourth of all the immigrants admitted to 

 the United States in the past two dec- 

 ades who were over 14 could neither 

 read nor write. Out of 8,398,000 ad- 

 mitted in the ten years ending with 191 o, 

 2,238,000 were illiterate. And yet so rap- 

 idly does illiteracy melt away that, add- 

 ing to this number all the illiterates here 

 before these came, there were only 

 1,600,000 illiterate foreigners in the 

 United States when the census of 1910 

 was taken. 



Under a literacy test we will turn back 

 one-fourth of the Armenians, two-fifths 

 of the Serbians, Bulgarians, and Monte- 



