REPORT OF BUREAU OF INDUSTRIES AND IMMIGRATION. Hon. JAMES M. LYNCH, Commissioner of Labor: SIR.I have the honor to transmit herewith the annual report of the Bureau of Industries and Immigration, covering work performed from October 1, 1912 to September 30, 1913. With the completion of its third year, the Bureau has made itself a vital factor in the solution of the State's immigration. problem, a boon to its thousands of alien residents and, to a considerable extent, a deterrent force against the unscrupulous evil-doers who live upon the credulity and ignorance of its newly arrived immigrants. Through an educational campaign of publicity and the sympathetic personal contact of its field staff in the course of inspection tours, the various services of the Bureau have become so well known to the State's alien residents that from 150 to 200 of them applied every week during the past year at the New York and Buffalo offices for advice or information, for the purpose of filing complaints or for other assistance of sympathetic and understanding officials. Every effort has been made to reach the immigrant before he found himself in need of the State's protection, and, through repeated personal warnings and publicity, he was kept informed of the many vicious schemes which are constantly being used to exploit him. The number of individuals who called at the office this year has increased two-fold over those of last year and has nearly quadrupled those of the first year. The considerable number of persons who have profited by the advice given and by the plain truths published cannot be estimated. With its work and duties so thoroughly wrapped up with the sorrows and woes of our large mass of undigested and unassimilated humanity, the Bureau has in reality become the official clearing house of all the State's various immigration problems. That it is filling a long needed want in the administrative machinery of the State's humanitarian work is evident from even a casual examination of the many simple, crude, yet sincere letters of appreciation and thanks received from many of the hundreds who have received direct aid, or the thousands whose living conditions have been improved. General Problems. The importance of providing for the welfare of our alien residents, for their own protection and health and for their intelligent and normal assimilation cannot be overestimated. Over 2,700,000 persons, or nearly 30 per cent. of our total population, are foreign born whites. Over 700,000 of the male residents of voting age are unnaturalized. In the last decade nearly 840,000 new immigrants have settled in this State. The dormant power for future good or evil of this addition to our population is enormous. Only in so far as these prospective citizens receive protection in the early stages of assimilation, will they respect our laws and form of government when later the duties, powers and obligations of citizenship are conferred upon them. Credulous, simple-minded and impressionistic, their open, plastic minds are permanently affected by their early trials and tribulations. Their regard for our laws, their understanding of the keynote of our nation that "all men are created free and equal" and their desire to live according to their own standards of living, will depend, to a large degree, on the helping hand the State can give them on the rough road they must first travel. To this vast internal problem of adjustment should be added the fact that in 1912 over 750,000 aliens passed through the Port of New York in going to or coming from other States. These presented an additional field for exploitation for hordes of unscrupulous train hands, express agents, hotel representatives, hackmen, runners and railroad immigrant agents. Immigrant Legislation Outside the State. It is of interest to note the wide-spread attention other states and cities have given to the special needs and requirements of their alien residents as a result, to a large extent, of the Bureau's activity and work it has accomplished. California has already created a permanent Immigration Commission; New Jersey and Massachusetts have Commissions on Immigration which are investigating the extent of this problem in their respective States and which will very likely recommend to their Legislatures next January the creation of bureaus with powers similar to those of this Bureau. Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington are now considering the same situation. The city of Cleveland has created a Department of Immigration and Employment "to assist the immigrant to solve his own problem," while other cities and states have enacted legislation for the protection, education and welfare of their alien residents. The Federal Government is also awakening to its responsibilities. A bill creating a Commission on Naturalization to investigate the naturalization facilities, requirements, language qualifications and status of the alien under the present Federal and State laws is pending in Congress, while a Federal redistribution centre for immigrants, with an appropriation of $20,000 has recently been created at Chicago. Plans are now under way for the creation of a Federal Bureau of Distribution in the new Department of Labor, which shall be vested with power to establish labor exchanges at important industrial centers, furnish information concerning business opportunities and reduce unemployment to a minimum, license and regulate employment agencies and steamship ticket agencies doing an interstate business, protect aliens in transit, investigate their interstate complaints, provide for the registration and furnishing of information concerning lands for settlers and the investigation of the terms and conditions under which such lands are offered for sale, and to devise some method of providing long-time, low-interest loans to settlers. The country at large seems to have realized that its domestic immigration problem requires immediate attention. Bureau Staff.— Although the official staff of the Bureau was increased during the year from 14 to 23, this increase was more apparent than real. Miss Frances A. Kellor, the former Chief Investigator of the Bureau, through whose foresight, sincerity and untiring energy the Bureau had been organized, and its scope of activity developed on broad, far-reaching lines, resigned in February of this year, from which time the writer has remained in charge as Acting Chief Investigator. Until the official appointments provided for by the increased appropriation were made, Miss Kellor had employed at her own expense a secretary, a statistician, a file clerk, a complaint clerk, two stenographers and occasionally other temporary clerical help, all of whom severed their connection with the Bureau at the time of her resignation. The actual increase in the staff was, therefore, |