acy among Scandinavians was less than 2, among Germans less than 3, English 5, Scotch 6, Irish 7, Greeks 26, Russians 41, Austro-Hungarians 45, Italians 55, Portuguese 78. If we consider the converse of the question, namely the proportion of prisoners from the various races who are illiterate, the same result is reached.

We should expect that immigrants relatively ignorant of their language would also be ignorant of other things, e. g., a trade, and such is the case. The progression in this respect is parallel to those already noted,-from Scotland sending us 25.7 per cent. of all her emigrants as professional and skilled persons, to Hungary sending 3.7 per cent. of such persons.

The same holds true as to the amount of money brought by immigrants-those from France, Germany, England, and Sweden bringing the most ($37 to $18), while those from Austria, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Russia bring the least ($7 to $13) per capita. These figures do not give the numerical average money brought per capita, which would be extremely misleading, but are made up by taking into account the number bringing $1 to $5, $5 to $10, and so on.

It is generally admitted that the races which have largely increased their immigration since 1880 tend to settle in our seaboard cities, and do not, as did their predecessors, go out to settle the new regions of the West. We find in this respect also a progression parallel to those already noted. Thus of Norwegians only 20 per cent. are found in our large cities; of English, 40 per cent., and so on till we come to Poles and Russians, 57 per cent., and Italians nearly 60 per cent.

We find that the great size of this country is a poor argument for unlimited immigration, in the face of the fact that over seven-tenths of the total immigration last year was bound for the four States of Illinois, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. If these people could be spread abroad throughout the country, doubtless the evil effects of their crowding into particular centres might be diminished, but no one has as yet suggested any practicable scheme for doing this, even with enormous expense; and in the few cases where it has been tried it has proved a dismal failure. If the wishes of the various States as to the nationalities of immigrants desired by them have any bearing on the matter, those races of which we have received the greater

proportion since 1880 will not obtain any great inducement to settle in other parts of the United States. Among the replies of the States to the Investigating Commission, above alluded to, there were only two which expressed any willingness to receive Slav, Latin or Asiatic settlers, and these two were for Italian farmers with money intending permanent settlement.

It will readily be seen that those immigrants bringing the least money are not in a position, for some time at least, to go far from the seaboard, and when they have earned enough to carry them to other sections, if ties have not been formed which keep them on the Atlantic coast, they turn their faces eastward to spend their earnings in their native country, where a few hundred dollars seems a princely fortune. The commissioner at the port of New York states that during the fiscal year 1896 about 20 per cent. of all immigrants arriving had been in the United States before, and I have myself seen manifests of Italian immigrants at the same port which showed that in some cases they had already been in this country four, five and six times.

Too often, however, they drift at once and for all, or for a long time, into our city slums, and there become a heavy tax upon our schools, prisons, police, courts of justice, and public and private charities, and often a menace to the public health. A recent report of the United States Commissioner of Labor shows that those of foreign birth or parentage form 77 per cent. of the total population of the slum districts in Baltimore, 90 per cent. in Chicago, 95 per cent. in New York, and 91 per cent. in Philadelphia. And it appears that of these percentages Southeastern Europe has furnished three times as many as Northwestern Europe in Baltimore, nineteen times as many in New York, twenty times as many in Chicago, and seventy-one times as many in Philadelphia. In other words, the slums of our largest cities are largely a foreign product, and a product of the countries which have greatly increased their immigration in recent years. To return for a moment to a consideration mentioned earlier in this article, the average illiteracy of the inhabitants of the slum districts of the four cities mentioned was for those from Northwestern Europe, twenty-five in a hundred; for those from Southeastern Europe, fifty-four in a hundred, or more than double; while the illiteracy of the native Americans was seven in a hundred.

It appears, therefore, that restriction of naturalization, while a most desirable thing in itself, will not be any bar to the social and political dangers and burdens involved in the presence of the elements just referred to. There are other dangers quite as real as those of the ballot, and burdens quite as heavy as those of fool'sh expenditure.

Now, if we consider the effect of the laws at present in force, we find that their chief value is in deterring those from coming to this country who might otherwise come; for the actual number debarred and returned under these laws is but a paltry fraction of one per cent. of the total immigration. Under the present law an immigration inspector who wishes to exclude a man whom he thinks undesirable, but who does not come under any other excluded class, is obliged to decide that the man will certainly become a public charge within a year. This he can obviously seldom do, and the man has the benefit of the doubt. If he can keep from applying to the State or local authorities for assistance for a year, or if he can conceal his identity in doing so, he is safe from deportation. The latter method is worked so successfully that in Massachusetts only about one-third of the cases of immigrants receiving public relief can be identified so as to be deported under the laws.

If these statements are true, and the proof is clear beyond dispute, is there any remedy which shall allow us the benefit of desir able immigration, and curtail our hospitality to those from foreign lands as little as possible, but which shall yet bar out the elements which are a source of danger to our state? I believe the most effective remedy yet devised is suggested in the striking parallel we have found in the relation between illiteracy and other undesirable qualities, such as criminality, destitution, aversion to country life, ignorance of occupation and slum tendencies. It should be clearly understood that it is not claimed that the ability to read and write is an evidence of good moral character. But the facts above set forth, and others of like nature which could be adduced if space permitted, go to show that in general the illiterate are undesirable, and that the undesirable are illiterate. It is not to be expected that a test of reading and writing would exclude educated criminals and anarchists. We know how to deal with these gentlemen, as was shown at Chicago and Detroit. But the danger to the state comes not so much from

the few educated cranks as from the mass of ignorant material upon which they can work. If we must admit that some of that material is of American descent, so much the more reason is there for not adding to it from abroad.

The main object is to get some test which can be easily applied without danger of evasion. Undoubtedly, a few desirable immigrants might be excluded under such a law, but that is true of any test, and the educational test seems likely to shut out fewer desirable immigrants than any other, while it does shut the door against those unqualified to ask admission. It should be said, also, that on the one hand such a law would apply only to the less desirable part of our immigration, and would not be a wholesale measure of exclusion—if in force in 1896 it would have excluded about twenty-nine per cent. of the total immigration; and on the other hand, it is a test with which, by the exercise of a reasonable amount of diligence, the immigrant can comply. The ability to read and write his own language does not seem an unreasonable requirement to make in the case of a man who seeks to enter a democracy like ours. At the entrance to our principal port at which immigrants arrive we have placed a statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. The statue carries in one hand a torch and in the other a book; and this properly interpreted means not merely that immigrants shall be educated to a higher degree after they get here, but that they should be able to read the fundamental law of the land by the light of liberty's torch in order to entitle them to enjoy the advantages which liberty has produced.

To sum up the results at which we have arrived we may say: 1. If any immigrant be undesirable for social and political reasons, the mere economic gain from additional unskilled laborers. is not of paramount importance.

2. Even if it were, we can supply such laborers by the multiplication of our native and adopted population.

3. Immigration of a lower mental development and standard of living tends to check the natural increase of those already in this country.

4. Undesirable immigration may be defined as that which is destitute of resources, either in money or, still more, in ability and knowledge of a means to support itself; which is generally ignorant; which has criminal tendencies; is averse to country

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life, and congregates in our city slums; which has a low standard of living and little ambition to seek a better, and which has no permanent interests in this country.

5. Considering immigration by nationalities, there is a closely parallel increase of illiteracy and other undesirable qualities.

6. A reading and writing test will, therefore, exclude the dangerous and unassimilable elements by a certain and uniform method; it requires evidence of a rudimentary education indispensable in a democracy, and it will exclude fewer desirable immigrants than any other test.

PRESCOTT F. HALL.