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United States, the immigration of aliens to the United States; of providing for the mental, moral, and physicial examination of such aliens by American consuls or other officers of the United States Government at the ports of embarkation, or elsewhere; of securing the assistance of foreign governments in their own territories to prevent the evasion of the laws of the United States governing immigration to the United States; of entering into such international agreements as may be proper to prevent the immigration of aliens who, under the laws of the United States, are or may be excluded from entering the United States, and of regulating any matters pertaining to such immigration.

The conferees also added a new section (sec. 42) to the bill amending section 1 of the passenger act of 1882 relative to air space allotted to steerage passengers, and amended section 1 of the immigration bill under consideration by inserting the following provision:

That whenever the President shall be satisfied that passports issued by any foreign government to its citizens to go to any country other than the United States, or to any insular possession of the United States, or to the Canal Zone, are being used for the purpose of enabling the holders to come to the continental territory of the United States, to the detriment of labor conditions therein, the President may refuse to permit such citizens of the country issuing such passports to enter the continental territory of the United States from such other country, or from such insular possessions, or from the Canal Zone.

It will be noted from the above that the attitude of the Senate and that of the House of Representatives toward the immigration question differed radically. In adopting the literacy test provision the Senate clearly favored restriction, as did the House committee, but the House of Representatives not only rejected this provision and refused to increase the "head tax," but, in adopting the Littauer amendment, seemingly indicated a willingness to make even the existing law less formidable.

In view of the fact that the legislation finally agreed upon was a compromise and made no radical change in existing law, the creation of a commission charged with making "full inquiry, examination, and investigation" of the subject under consideration was clearly an admission that the evidence at hand was insufficient to warrant a congressional verdict either for or against a change in the immigration policy of the Government. The Commission as created viewed the situation in this light, and its only purpose has been to execute the will of Congress accordingly.

MEMBERSHIP OF THE COMMISSION.

On February 22, 1907, the Vice-President appointed as members of the Immigration Commission on the part of the Senate, the following Senators: Hon. William P. Dillingham, of Vermont, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Immigration, and Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, and Hon. Anselm J. McLaurin, of Mississippi, both of whom were members of the same committee. Mr. McLaurin, at his own request, was excused from service on the Commission, and on March 2, 1907, Hon. Asbury C. Latimer, of South Carolina, also a member of the Committee on Immigration, was appointed to fill the vacancy. On March 2, 1907, the Speaker of the House of Representatives appointed as members of the Commission on the part of that body, Hon. Benjamin F. Howell, of New Jersey, Hon. William S. Bennet, of New York, and Hon. John L. Burnett, of Alabama. Mr. Howell was chairman, and Messrs. Bennet and Burnett were members,

of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. The President of the United States appointed as representatives of the executive department on the Commission, Hon. Charles P. Neill, of the District of Columbia, Prof. Jeremiah W. Jenks, of New York, and Mr. William R. Wheeler, of California. Mr. Latimer died February 20, 1908, and on February 25, 1908, Hon. Anselm J. McLaurin was again appointed to the Commission. The latter died December 22, 1909, and on March 16, 1910, Hon. Le Roy Percy, of Mississippi, was appointed as his successor. With the exceptions noted the membership of the Commission remained unchanged.

ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMISSION.

The Commission organized April 22, 1907, by electing Hon. William P. Dillingham, chairman; Morton E. Crane, of Massachusetts, secretary and disbursing officer; and W. W. Husband, of Vermont, clerk of the United States Senate Committee on Immigration, and C. S. Atkinson, of New Jersey, clerk of the House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, secretaries. Fred C. Croxton, of the United States Bureau of Labor, was later chosen as chief statistician of the Commission. In the early part of the work Mr. Croxton was assisted by Erville B. Woods, and later by Mary Louise Mark. In the final preparation of the reports of the Commission, H. Parker Willis was the editorial adviser. Mr. Atkinson was, at his own request, furloughed without pay on June 1, 1908, and from that date was not actively engaged in the work of the Commission.

PURPOSE OF THE INQUIRY.

As previously stated, the act creating the Commission directed that it should "make full inquiry, examination, and investigation, by subcommittee or otherwise, into the 'subject of immigration," and the Commission has followed this instruction.

In the beginning two plans of work were considered. One plan contemplated bringing together in a new form already existing data; conducting an inquiry into the effectiveness of the existing immigration law and its administration, and by means of hearings securing information and expressions of opinion from persons interested in various phases of the subject under consideration. By the second. plan it was proposed to utilize such existing data as might be considered of value, but also to make an original inquiry into fundamental phases of the subject which had previously been considered only in a superficial manner, or not at all.

After due consideration the Commission reached the conclusion that the first-mentioned plan, no matter how carefully it might be carried out, would yield very little new information that would be of value to Congress in a serious consideration of the Government's immigration policy. Consequently it was discarded in favor of an original investigation which, it was perfectly apparent, would necessarily be more far reaching and involve more work than any inquiry of a similar nature, except the census alone, that had ever been undertaken by the Government.

PLAN AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY.

Briefly stated, the plan of work adopted by the Commission included a study of the sources of recent immigration in Europe, the general character of incoming immigrants, the methods employed here and abroad to prevent the immigration of persons classed as undesirable in the United States immigration law, and finally a thorough investigation into the general status of the more recent immigrants as residents of the United States, and the effect of such immigration the institutions, industries, and people of this country. As above suggested, the chief basis of the Commission's work was the changed character of the immigration movement to the United States during the past twenty-five years.

During the fiscal year 1907, in which the Commission was created, a total of 1,285,349 immigrants were admitted to the United States. Of this number 1,207,619 were from Europe, including Turkey in Asia, and of these 979,661, or 81 per cent, came from the southern and eastern countries, comprising Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Poland, Portugal, Roumania, Russia, Servia, Spain, Turkey in Europe, and Turkey in Asia.

Twenty-five years earlier, in the fiscal year 1882, 648,186 European immigrants came to the United States, and of these only 84,973, or 13.1 per cent, came from the countries above enumerated, while 563,213, or 86.9 per cent, were from Belgium, Great Britain and Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Switzerland, which countries furnished about 95 per cent of the immigration movement from Europe to the United States between 1819 and 1883. During the entire period for which statistics are available-July 1, 1819, to June 30, 1910-a total of 25,528,410 European immigrants, including 106,481 from Turkey in Asia, were admitted to the United States. Of these, 16,052,900, or 62.9 per cent, came from the northern and western countries enumerated, and 9,475,510, or 37.1 per cent, from southern and eastern Europe and Turkey in Asia. For convenience the former movement will be referred to in the Commission's reports as the "old immigration" and the latter as the "new immigration." The old and the new immigration differ in many essentials. The former was, from the beginning, largely a movement of settlers who came from the most progressive sections of Europe for the purpose of making for themselves homes in the New World. They entered practically every line of activity in nearly every part of the country. Coming during a period of agricultural development, many of them entered agricultural pursuits, sometimes as independent farmers, but more often as farm laborers, who, nevertheless, as a rule soon became landowners. They formed an important part of the great movement toward the West during the last century, and as pioneers were most potent factors in the development of the territory between the Allegheny Mountains and the Pacific coast. They mingled freely with the native Americans and were quickly assimilated, although a large proportion of them, particularly in later years, belonged to non-English-speaking races. This natural bar to assimilation, however, was soon overcome by them, while the racial identity of their children was almost entirely lost and forgotten.

See pp. 61 to 64.

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On the other hand, the new immigration has been largely a movement of unskilled laboring men who have come, in large part temporarily, from the less progressive and advanced countries of Europe in response to the call for industrial workers in the eastern and middle western States. They have almost entirely avoided agricultural pursuits, and in cities and industrial communities have congregated together in sections apart from native Americans and the older immigrants to such an extent that assimilation has been slow as compared to that of the earlier non-English-speaking.races.

The new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old, Connecto approximately one-third of all those over 14 years of age when admitted being illiterate. Racially they are for the most part essennot clear tially unlike the British, German, and other peoples who came during the period prior to 1880, and generally speaking they are actuated in coming by different ideals, for the old immigration came to be a part of the country, while the new, in a large measure, comes with the intention of profiting, in a pecuniary way, by the superior advantages of the new world and then returning to the old country.

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The old immigration movement, which in earlier days was the subject of much discussion and the cause of no little apprehension among the people of the country, long ago became thoroughly merged into the population, and the old sources have contributed a comparatively small part of the recent immigrant tide. Consequently the Commission paid but little attention to the foreign-born element of the old immigrant class and directed its efforts almost entirely to an inquiry relative to the general status of the newer immigrants as residents of the United States.

In pursuance of this policy the Commission began its study of the subject in the countries of Europe which are the chief sources of the new immigration, and followed the emigration movement to ports of embarkation, across the ocean in the steerage, and finally to every part of the United States and into practically every line of activity in which the new immigrants were to be found.

The general plan and scope of the Commission's work are briefly stated in the pages following.

INVESTIGATIONS IN EUROPE.

The main subjects considered in the European inquiry were as follows:

1. Causes of emigration, natural and artificial.

the United States.

2. Economic conditions in Europe and the effect on emigration to

3. Steamship companies and their agents as factors in promoting emigration.

4. Classes and character of European emigrants.

5. Emigration of criminals.

6. Attitude of European governments toward emigration.

7. Laws of the various countries respecting emigration and emigrants.

8. Effect of the United States immigration law in preventing the embarkation of undesirable emigrants.

9. Medical examination of intending emigrants at ports of embarkation and elsewhere, and practicability of having such examinations made by United States medical officers.

10. United States consular officers as a factor in regulating immigration.

11. International regulation of emigration and immigration.

INVESTIGATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Before undertaking investigations in the United States several months were spent in examining existing data upon the subject under consideration with special reference to material which could be utilized in a study of the effect of the new immigration upon the United States, in both an economic and a sociological sense. found that in the United States census schedules for 1900 there were considerable data relating to the general subject that had not been utilized, and by courtesy of the Department of Commerce and Labor this material was made available for the use of the Commission, with the result that a valuable and interesting report on the occupational status of immigrants and their children and another on the relative fecundity of foreign-born and native-born women were prepared. In the meantime the Commission's investigations into the white-slave traffic and some other subjects were undertaken.

The main object of the Commission, however, was to secure data which would show as clearly as possible the general effect, in a broad sense, of the new immigration movement upon the people, the industries, and the institutions of the United States, and in order to accomplish this it was found imperative that a large amount of original statistical data be collected. Consequently a broad and comprehensive plan of work was adopted, and in the winter of 1908 the Commission's field investigations, which eventually were extended to every part of the country, were inaugurated.

The plan of work under which the field investigations of the Commission were carried on contemplated an extensive inquiry into the status of the new immigrants and including the following subjects:

1. Congestion of immigrants in New York, Chicago, Boston, and other large cities.

2. Immigrants as industrial workers in the leading industries, including effect on wages, employment of native-born workers, conditions of work, etc.

3. Effect of recent immigration on wages and other conditions in various trades, from the standpoint of native-born and older immigrant workers in such trades.

4. Progress of immigrant industrial workers.

5. Recent immigrants as residents of industrial communities. 6. Recent immigrants in agriculture.

7. Immigrant children and the children of immigrants in schools. 8. Extent to which recent immigrants and their children are becoming assimilated or Americanized, and agencies promoting or retarding Americanization.

9. The physical assimilation of immigrants.

10. Alien criminality.

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