REPORT OF CHIEF INVESTIGATOR (IN CHARGE OF THE BUREAU OF INDUSTRIES AND IMMIGRATION) To the Industrial Commission: I have the honor to submit the report of the Bureau of Industries and Immigration for the fiscal year ended September 30, 1915. In order to correct an erroneous impression that has been disseminated and accepted by those unfamiliar with either the four previous annual reports of the Bureau or with the scope of its work, it is desirable to state that the activities, as provided in the statute, concern chiefly the welfare of the alien population now resident within the state, and the problem of enhancing the social and economic value of these alien communities to the state. The Bureau of Industries and Immigration is not invested with jurisdiction over either the admission or exclusion of aliens, but was created by the legislature to protect, direct and assist those aliens "arriving and being within the state" and making their permanent residence here in order that they may become an asset to the state. The fact cannot be disregarded that the large immigrant population in New York is an important economic factor that if protected becomes an asset, if neglected a liability; and as our native-born children are educated at the expense of the state, so these immigrants, who come to our country with high hopes and pioneer courage, must be educated and trained according to our traditions and directed into our customs and standards of living for the same economic reasons that these advantages are conferred upon our own minors and illiterates. Each alien resident, therefore, as he becomes a better producer and consumer, contributes his constantly increasing quota of indirect taxation to the state. In the United States it is conceded that workmen are unit for unit more effective because of the public school system. New York has an estimated alien population of 3,000,000 which is so closely allied to its industrial, educational, health and social welfare that the task of regulating the huge problem is a difficult one. In the year 1914 there were admitted to destinations within the state 344,663 immigrants, and during the four preceding years New York received about one-third of the total immigration, or over one-quarter of a million immigrants for permanent residence each year. Although the year 1915 shows a decrease of about 900,000 incoming, the proportion of this number remaining in the state remains the same; the 1915 report of the Commissioner General of Immigration announces 326,700 arrivals, 95,028 of whom indicated New York State to be their intended future residence. Thus the number of immigrants arriving at the port of New York during this abnormal period of the world war continues to exceed the earlier immigration, and the predominating number of non-English speaking aliens has vastly increased the problems of protection, distribution and assimilation. Unless the state provides an agency where immigrants may present their complaints when they have been exploited, defrauded or mistreated, our foreign speaking residents are driven into colonies where they are deceived by their own countrymen and where they never hear the English language. Aliens have come to this Bureau for assistance who, after a residence of twenty-seven years in the country, did not understand one word of English, but whose children had been educated in our schools; such foreign-speaking parents naturally retard the Americanization of their children. Much has been said and is being written about the elimination of the hyphen and the naturalization of the alien, but little attention has been given by the state to the preparation of that alien for citizenship. The elimination of the hyphenated American is as certain a guarantee of preparedness to the state as is the maintenance of a regular army. "How to obtain your first papers" should be taught and understood in the English language. What folly to advocate such instruction to an alien in a foreign tongue! It is a necessity and a duty for the state to assist in the process of the amalgamation of its alien population and to thus accelerate the development of an American type. This can be assisted by a thorough preparation for naturalization. The English nation developed a British type and England did not become a conquering nation on land and sea until she had developed a pure British type. How much more necessary therefore must education and supervision be to a country where the immigration problem reaches the proportions attained not only in the nation but in the State of New York. If this proposition is a correct one, if the United States expects to move until it develops an American type, then exclusion should be enforced as long as the accession of the alien born exceeds the native born, otherwise we are clearly moving away from an American type and increasing the national problem of a heterogeneous population. At present we find that less than 50 per cent of our alien population who have been in the country over ten years are naturalized; and only about 35 per cent of those who are here under ten years. The Bureau has co-operated with all Federal, state and municipal departments, and is doing work ranking second in importance to none in this state. This work has increased 600 per cent in the five years of its existence, and it may be considered the clearing house for information to immigrants in the country at large. During the past year requests for advice and information were received from every state in the Union except four. The present staff consists of nine investigators speaking eighteen languages and various dialects, an entirely inadequate equip ment to handle this great problem, bound up in which is the consideration of practically every important question with which the state is confronted and including enormous possibilities for good or evil, for economic gain or loss within the next decade. The economic value of an illiterate, unskilled alien laborer to the state has been estimated to be $100 per year; to a literate alien $100 additional value is conceded; and this value increases as his producing and consuming powers are enlarged and decreases as he becomes an unemployed or unemployable factor in our economic system. Who can doubt, therefore, the wisdom of a state policy that seeks to increase the earning capacity, efficiency, patriotism and economic value of its alien population, when to neglect this prob lem means added dependency, unemployment, a drifting, incompetent contribution to posterity and an extra financial burden on the |