bring little money with them, who settle in the city slums, who have a low standard of living and little ambition to seek a better, and who do not assimilate rapidly or appreciate our institutions. It is not claimed that an illiteracy test is a test of moral character, but it would undoubtedly exclude a good many persons who now fill our prisons and almshouses, and would lessen the burden on our schools and machinery of justice. In a country having universal suffrage, it is also an indispensable requirement for citizenship, and citizenship in its broadest sense means much more than the right to the ballot. The illiteracy test has passed the Senate three times and the House four times in the last eight years. The test has already been adopted by the Commonwealth of Australia and by British Columbia, and would certainly have been adopted here long since but for the opposition of the transportation companies.

b) Pauperism and Illiteracy3

BY KATE H. CLAGHORN

The general conclusion to be drawn with regard to the newer elements in immigration seem to be, first, that among them the unskilled worker gets along better than the skilled, and the illiterate than the literate. This is not to say that skill and education in themselves are a handicap in the industrial contest, or that all racial groups with a large proportion of illiterate, unskilled labor get along better than those having a high degree of literacy and a larger proportion of skill.

Industrial success in this country depends upon adjustment to conditions here. Some groups seem to find suitable openings for skill and education. But on the whole there is more chance for the newcomer into any social aggregation if he is willing to begin at the bottom, and in this country, in particular, there is less demand for skilled labor from outside, owing to the fact that the present inhabitants are willing to follow these lines of work themselves, but are unwilling to occupy themselves in unskilled labor. On the other hand the skill, and especially the education, of the newer European immigrant has been directed along lines that do not suit American conditions. In the evolutionary phrasing, undifferentiated social elements can more easily adapt themselves, by specializing, to fit a new environment, than can the elements which have been already differentiated to fit a former environment.

36

Adapted from an article in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, XXIV, 197–198. Copyright (1904).

Any restriction of immigration, then, that is based on an educational qualification, would be meaningless with respect to the growth of pauperism. Such a qualification would, among the newer immigrants at least, let in the class which though small is the most difficult to provide for, and would keep out the class that can best provide for itself.

In two particulars of vital consequence this bill embodies a radical departure from the traditional and long-established policy of this country, a policy in which our people have conceived the very character of their government to be expressed, the very mission and spirit of the nation in respect of its relations to the peoples of the world outside their borders. It seeks to all but close entirely the gates of asylum which have always been open to those who From The Square Deal, XII, 165–166 (1913).

37

38 Adapted from the Message of the President of the United States Vetoing H.R. 6060, 63d Cong., 3d sess., Document 1527, 3-4 (1915). This bill provided for the so-called "literacy test" for admission of aliens into this country.

could find nowhere else the right and opportunity of constitutional agitation for what they conceived to be the natural and inalienable rights of men; and to exclude those to whom the opportunities of elementary education have been denied, without regard to their character, their purposes, or their natural capacity.

Restrictions like these adopted earlier in our history as a nation, would very materially have altered the course and cooled the human ardor of our politics. The right of political asylum has brought to this country many a man of noble character and elevated purpose who was marked as an outlaw in his own less fortunate land, and who has yet become an ornament to our citizenship and to our public councils. The children and the compatriots of these illustrious Americans must stand amazed to see the representatives of their nation now resolved, in the fulness of our national strength and at the maturity of our great institutions, to risk turning men back from our shores without test of quality or purpose. It is difficult for me to believe that the full effect of this feature of the bill was realized when it was framed and adopted, and it is impossible for me to assent to it in the form in which it is here cast.

The literacy test and the tests and restrictions which accompany it constitutes an even more radical change in the policy of the nation. Hitherto we have generously kept our doors open to all who were not unfitted by disease or incapacity for self-support or such personal records or antecedents as were likely to make them a menace to our peace and order or to the wholesome and essential relationships of life. In this bill it is proposed to turn away from tests of character and of quality and impose tests which exclude and restrict; for the new tests here embodied are not tests of quality or of character of personal fitness, but tests of opportunity. Those who come seeking opportunity are not to be admitted unless they have already had one of the chief opportunities they seek, the opportunity of education.

WOODROW WILSON

245. Wanted-An Immigration Policy39

A friend of ours languidly expatiates upon the folly of answering letters. "Lay them away in the drawer," he advises, "and after a month or perhaps six months they will have answered themselves."

In much the same spirit our Congressmen are advised that no immigration policy is necessary, that if they will but leave the pend

"Adapted from an editorial in the New Republic, December 26, 1914, 10-11. Copyright.

ing Immigration bill alone, they will not have abjured labor in vain. The immigration question, left to itself, will answer itself. The alien will become an American, the capables absorbed in our national organism, the incapables rejected. Moreover, the countries from which our immigrants come will gradually lose their surplus of men, and immigration will cease without legislation as our own westward migration to an ever-receding frontier ceased of itself when our free lands became exhausted.

This theory of the automatic drying up of the sources of immigration has been emphasized more strongly than ever since the outbreak of the war. If the war lasts a year or more millions will be killed and other millions will be permanently incapacitated.

But even though population does decline, it does not follow that the immigrating impulse will be lessened. The rapid decrease of the Irish population during the half-century after the famine did not retard but actually accelerated the immigration. It is not from countries with lessened population, but from countries with lessened economic opportunities that population proceeds. . And it is exactly this lessening of economic opportunities that we have to fear as a result of the war. Capital will be dissipated, credit shattered, and whole trades, the learning of which has cost years of arduous labor, will be for the time discounted. The system will accommodate itself only slowly to the sudden withdrawal, and later the sudden replacement of millions of wage-earners.

If then, as is to be feared, new armies of ragged and unemployed are to be enrolled as soon as the armies in uniform are disbanded, if wages fall and life becomes insecure, the outward pressure upon the huge wage-earning populations of Europe will be overwhelming, and those who have the means will seek to emigrate. There will be restless millions of former wage-earners in whom the fierce emotions of war have made an end to all those industrial ambitions and acquiescences so habitually ignored, and yet vitally essential, to the mere existence of society. Others, having lost their farms or their little shops or houses, or their wives and families, and still others who have had their country and their patriotism swept away from under the feet will be discontented and mobile. The world will be full of foot-loose adventurers, good and bad, filled with romantic illusions or else utterly disenchanted, and to these broken lives America will appeal with a freshness of attraction such as she has not possessed since the days of '48, when the defeated revolutionists of Germany turned westward to a land which to them embodied the liberal principles for which they had been struggling.

And recalling, as we must, the high reverence for the America of that day, and this ideal picture of her which may still be found in the hearts of boys risking their lives in the cold trenches-recalling this, does it seem sinister to close the doors upon this misery, to make the wretchedness of the European our excuse for debarring him? It may be sinister. Yet what else has been or can be the justification of that policy of self-defense which we seek to express in some adequate restriction or regulation of a swelling immigration? Wretchedness is infectious, and no contagion is more deadly than that of poverty. It is the poverty and the resourcefulness of the immigrant, which, handing him over to the exploiter, renders him so dangerous to himself and to others. To justify a policy of restriction we need only oppose the wisdom of facing problems concretely and courageously to the folly of leaving things as they are. If we are to protect ourselves and the immigrant from exploitation, impoverishment, and a fierceness and lawlessness of economic struggle, which too often brands the victor with an indelible brand and leaves the victim crushed and demoralized, we must work out a statesmanlike policy of immigration and end our listless method of sitting grandiloquently at the gate and letting all enter, irrespective of their needs or ours, provided only they have thirty dollars and ungranulated eyelids.

All of which does not mean that we favor the bill at present before Congress or even the principle of the literacy test. The value or valuelessness of such a test is a matter of proof, and the burden of such proof rests squarely upon its advocates. Is this test really a test? Is it selective of the best? Or is it merely repressive, a cutting down of the number of immigrants without regard to merit or capacity, as a law excluding red-headed immigrants would cut down the number? Is illiteracy a real disqualification and the fault of the immigrant, or is it a part of the very conditions which he has the courage to flee?

We ask these questions without too definitely suggesting our answer. We do not, however, conceal our preference for some form of immigration policy larger, more constructive, more educative and human, and less rigidly restrictive than that which is now proposed. Such a policy as we have in mind would enable highly trained and highly paid government experts, resident in Europe, to meet the aspirant for immigration months or even years before he started on his travels, and it would keep the government in touch with him during a period not less than five years after his immigration. In other words, the plan which we should like to see elaborated is a federal