The Character of Our Immigration 



1 5 



qualifications, to enter the service. From 

 top to bottom, it should be placed upon a 

 scientific basis, entirely outside the con- 

 trol of politics. 



The voluntary, unsought, and unso- 

 licited emigration to the United States 

 has been the means of building up an 

 intellectual, energetic, and prosperous 

 community. Our country has received, 

 not the high born, but the strong and 

 always the oppressed, whose past history 

 made them all the more appreciate their 

 condition here. 



The children of the colonial period 

 were pushed upwards in the social scale 

 by the immigrants, who in turn push 

 each other upward as they come in. 



It is not true that the native of four 

 or five decades ago stepped from one 

 occupation to the other. The upward 

 movement was gradual, and the pro- 

 motion was rather that of generations 

 than individuals. 



Science and invention are working 

 together to abolish occupations at the 

 lower end of the scale and creating new 

 ones at the top. The laborer of Europe 

 has his place in the economy of our 

 age. His whole drift is upward, in 

 spite of all the counteracting influences 

 to the contrary. 



Since 1850 the immigrants have al- 

 ways been found on the side of law, 

 public decency, and public morals, as 

 instanced in the response to the call for 



troops in the Civil War, the agitations 

 for change in money standards, etc. 

 Ever since 1870 those states having the 

 preponderance of aliens could be relied 

 upon to vote on the right side in moral 

 questions in the same proportion in 

 which aliens existed in their commu- 

 nity. 



In what I have said I have tried to 

 be fair, but I cannot close without say- 

 ing that our hospitality is abused, and 

 by reason of our defective laws and 

 the general knowledge of the means to 

 evade them in Europe we are receiving 

 an increasing number whose coming 

 will do us no good, but harm. 



We have no right to oppose needful 

 measures of legislative relief out of 

 sympathy for the sufferings of the peo- 

 ple thus seeking admission to our shores, 

 or out of respect to the traditions which 

 up to now have caused this country to 

 be regarded as an asylum. 



There is only one Ellis Island in the 

 world ; no other country has its mate, 

 because none offers the inducements to 

 the poor of the world that we do. Let 

 us thank God that this is so and pray 

 that we may be able to keep it so, and 

 that the twentieth century may bring 

 to America the fruition of all its hopes, 

 and the standard of progress and free- 

 dom which its history has inspired be 

 the torch that will light the world in 

 the same path. 



OUR IMMIGRATION DURING 1904 



NO one can read the report for 

 1904 of the Commissioner Gen- 

 eral of Immigration, Frank P. 

 Sargent, without being seriously im- 

 pressed with the laxity of our present 

 immigration laws and the urgent need 

 of more stringent regulation of our im- 

 migration. The number of immigrants 

 for 1905 bids fair to reach the one mil- 

 lion mark. Only a few less than 10,000 



landed at New York in two days in 

 November, the least popular season of 

 the year for newcomers. The follow- 

 ing facts are taken from Mr. Sargent's 

 report : 



The striking and significant feature 

 of the table of immigrants for 1904 

 is that the chief diminution is shown 

 in the arrivals from Austria-Hungary, 

 amounting to 28,855, and from Italy, 



