BETWEEN THE YEARS 1908-1910, FOR EVERY THREE IMMIGRANTS WHO CAME TO THIS COUNTRY, ONE RETURNED. CONGRESS TO PUT UP THE BARS C By HENRY M. HYDE ONGRESS is going to put up the bars. It seems fairly certain that before the present session adjourns a law will be enacted which will largely cut down the number of immigrants coming to the United States. For five years a distinguished commission, consisting of three senators, three members of the Lower House of Congress, and three outside experts, studied the whole question of foreign immigration, traveling all over Europe and taking an immense volume of testi mony. The investigation cost one million dollars, took five years to make and has resulted so far in the publication of forty huge volumes of testimony and reports. The commission is a unit in declaring that the time has come when further restrictions must be made-that no longer can the United States afford to permit aliens of all races and classes to pour into this country practically at their own free will. The conditions on which the recommendations of the commission are based are in themselves so startling that they do not require expert knowledge to enable the unprejudiced reader THE PROPORTION OF SOUTHERN EUROPEAN TO NORTHERN EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES IN 1882. THE GREAT CHANGE-BY 1907 THE PROPORTIONS OUR NATIONAL ILLITERACY DECREASES. immigration from Southern Europe was 85,000. Twenty-five years later the "old" immigration had dropped to 228,000, while the "new" had risen to nearly 1,000,000 people. In other words, while the total number of immigrants almost doubled, the number belonging to the Northern races of Europe dropped more than half. Some time ago the Senate of the United States passed a bill providing that immigrants must be able to read and write. This bill was amended by the Lower House of Congress and passed in a form which requires only the ability to read. That this single requirement will, however, shut out a large percentage of the present pilgrims to In 1900, 10 per cent, of our population could not read or write: by 1910. this percentage had dropped to 7%. to reach his own conclusion in the matter. Up to the year 1880, ninety-five per cent of the immigrants represented the following nationalities: German, Irish, Scandinavian, English, Scotch, Welsh, French, Dutch and Flemish. Since 1880, there has been a constant decrease in the number of these so-called "old" immigrants, and a vast increase in the flood of immigration from Southern Europe. The races making up the socalled "new" immigration are as follows: Armenians, Bohemians, Moravians, Bulgarians, Servians, Montenegrins, Finns, Greeks, Hebrews, Italians, Poles, Magyars, Portuguese, Lithuanians, Russians, Slovaks, Spaniards and Turks. One may get a graphic idea of this great change in the character of the immigrants by comparing the figures for the years 1882 and 1907. In the former year, 560,000 of the Northern races came to America. In the same year the total our shores is shown by the fact that in 1909 almost thirty per cent of the immigrants arriving-who were over the age of fourteen years were unable either to read or write. And the percentage of entirely illiterate immigrants is increasing quite rapidly; rising from almost. twenty per cent in 1899 to practically thirty per cent ten years later. While it seems probable that Congress will make the ability to read, either in English or in some other recognized language or dialect, the sole additional test for admission to the United States, the recommendations made by the commission go much further. They point out that whereas practically all of the "old" immigrants came to this. country to escape intolerable conditions and with the idea of making it the permanent home of themselves and their descendants, a very large percentage of the "new" immigrants are men who, leaving their families behind them, come to America simply for the purpose of earning and saving enough money to enable them to return to their former homes in foreign lands. This is evidenced not only by the fact that so many of the incoming immigrants are unaccompanied men, but by the especially significant fact that, while during the three years ending ILLITERATE IMMIGRATION INCREASES. working man, would be impossible: especially about the great steel plants are such colonies of alien immigrants. gathered together. At Lackawanna, New York, for instance, an industrial city of nearly twenty thousand inhabitants, between eighty and ninety per cent of the population are of foreign birth, and at various points in Pennsylvania and Illinois, there are similar foreign settlements in which the conditions of everyday living are extremely low. To remedy so far as possible this process of continually cutting down the wage and the living conditions in American industrial centers and to prevent at the same time such a large outflow of wealth from the country, the commission recommended the exclusion from the United States of all unskilled laborers unaccompanied by wives or families. In 1900, 20 per cent. of adult immigrants could not read or write; in 1910, this proportion stood at 30 per cent. with 1910, over two million and a half immigrant aliens were admitted to the United States, there departed from America to Europe no less than eight hundred and twenty-five thousand. For every one hundred aliens coming in, there were thirty-two going back to Europe, most of them with sufficient funds to enable them to live in comparative comfort. While it is, of course, impossible to get accurate figures as to the amount of wealth taken out of the country by this backwash to Europe, it is estimated that during the three years in question, the sum was more than one hundred and fifty million dollars. The commission points out that many of these men, coming here with the sole idea of saving as much money as possible in the least time, are massed into groups at various industrial centers, where they live under conditions which, to the average American As was pointed out in Congress, the American working man would seem to need not so much protection from the products of the so-called pauper labor of Europe as protection from the labor itself, coming in through the open ports of the Atlantic seaboard. Another suggestion made by the commission is that the immigrants from each race should be limited to a certain percentage of the average number of the same race arriving during a period of years. The passage of a law containing the reading qualification will, however, be a start in the direction of keeping out the least desirable class of immigrants. And a cutting down of the number of unskilled laborers coming into the country should do much to lessen the great and growing problem of non-employment. T MAKING GOOD CITIZENS OF LEFT-OVERS O make a boy into a good citizen in spite of his birth or inheritance is what one man in Maine is doing. Over three hundred good men, who have gone into all parts of the country, now holding responsible positions bear testimony of this fact. Nineteen years ago George W. Hinckley, living in a town in Connecticut, one day after he had been disappointed because he could not enter Yale College, saw a boy sentenced to the state reformschool. He had been charged with stealing food from a workingman's dinner pail. He was not a vicious boy, he was hungry. From this arrest the feeling grew stronger and stronger in Mr. Hinckley that boys ought to be helped and that people should take more interest in the boys. From this incident grew the famous Good Will Homes now in Fairfield, Maine, on the Kennebec River. Starting with only an old set of farm buildings and a desire to better the conditions of homeless boys and girls in the world, the Rev. George W. Hinckley has built up in less than twenty years these homes which now comprise nearly twenty buildings and are the homes of over one hundred boys and nearly fifty girls. Both girls and boys are taught self-help. The homes are conducted on the cottage plan, there being about fifteen of either sex in a cottage under the care of a matron. Each boy has his daily duties. to perform besides the hours spent in study and recitation. The boys are taken from all parts of the country, from the ages of nine to fourteen, none being taken unless in needy circumstances. Boys leave the home upon graduation from the High School there. Of three hundred who have been graduated not one has turned out bad and fifty per cent have gone to college and universities. and everyone of the others are holding responsible positions. One has spent two years at Oxford University, England, having won a Rhodes' scholarship. The boys do all kinds of Some wash dishes; others sweep and scrub floors, some cook, or make beds; others perform outdoor tasks, hoeing weeds, haying, or caring for the farm animals according to the season. Mr. Hinckley has never received a cent of salary for this work. If children must be kept in an institution this would seem the best possible substitute for a Normal home. HELPS BOYS AND TAKES NO SALARY. A MODERN PORTIA O Miss Lucille Pugh belongs the distinction of being the first woman of her profession in the world to defend a man accused of willful murder-an honor that is modestly accepted by her, with the same unassuming frankness that characterized her conduct of the defense of Leroy Poindex ter, the negro, whose life was at stake. As soon as Miss Pugh was assigned to the Poindexter case, by Judge Swann, she commenced to collect the necessary evidence for the purpose of breaking down the overwhelming testimony against her client, which had already been amassed by the district attorney's staff. This entailed visits, absolutely unattended, to some of the most notorious dens of the underworld in New York City, where gambling, drinking and vice of every description is rampant, and where apparently there is no respect for the forces of law and order. On some occasions she was menaced by drink sodden men with loaded revolvers in their hands and bottles of spirits protruding from their pockets, and subjected to the scoffing and jeers of gaudily dressed women, who participated in the riotous celebrations of their male associates. In Hell's Kitchen, one of the most dangerous sections of New York, she was being unceremoniously IN HOUSE DRESS. hustled amidst a crowd of the lowest inhabitants of that part, and things were looking distinctly unpleasant, when, fortunately, the very man she had been searching for appeared, an associate of Poindexter's, and recognizing her as his friend's counsel came to her side and, shooting a revolver into the air, swore to kill any man who dared molest her further, thus enabling her to IN COURT COSTUME. escape. Thanks to the skill with which Miss Pugh handled this case the first jury disagreed, and at the second trial she literally tore to pieces some of the most damaging evidence of the prosecution. For thirty-three hours consecutively, without sleep or rest this case occupied the attention of the second jury, who finally rendered a reduced verdict of manslaughter in the second degree. While this meant a reduction in the gravity of the charge, from the original one of murder in the first degree, Miss Pugh expressed considerable dissatisfaction with the result and filed an application, on four separate counts, for a third trial. How many young women twenty-five years of age would have sufficient courage to do all that Miss Pugh has done? |