by any former period. The multiplying millions, the awakened intellects which can grow in vice as easily as in virtue, the needless work and pain of a people made half wild by liberty, the value of all true education and study, whether it comes from the arts or the fields or the sanctuary, join in asking the thinkers powerful in the Church to discover what kind of Sunday will most truly bless man, not only as a religious being but also as a being capable of a greatness and happiness upon earth. The occupation of this country by the European Sunday ought to be looked upon as only a calamity. Such a day intensifies passions the Sunday was designed to abate. It doubles the opportunity of both vice and crime. Under it society can live indeed, but the spectacle is a poor one compared with the vision of a great nation in which the dreamer sees the labors of the week all suspended for one day, the dens of temptation all closed, the churches, the parks, the libraries, the galleries, the fields all open, and frequented by millions of persons in youth or in old age who one day in seven touch existence on its greater side. If these millions cannot all feel with the Hebrews that God is in the silence, they can all feel for one day each week that there is much of nobleness and happiness possible to mankind.

A great moral or social principle has often come to society by way of fanaticism, but never by way of indifference. Puritanism itself, with all its defects, offered more hope of a Sunday than can be found in apathy, because fanaticism often settles down into reason, while the natural ending of indifference is death. The Christians who made the holy day weigh upon the heart like lead and who spent twelve hours in the active exercise of worship, promised to the world more of the Sabbath philosophy than can be found in the practice of those who in Christ's name offer a religious service for eleven o'clock and a bull-fight or a horse-race for the afternoon. The minds which can consent to resolve Sunday into a feast, a nap, games, and continued work for man and beast with a general tolerance of weaknesses and vice, must be looked upon as having abandoned the human race and having become the disciples of a sleepy indifference. It is to be hoped that these great times will produce thoughtful men; and that by the aid of the great volume of human experience and the new power of a reason greatly awakened, there shall be deduced a Sunday which shall be full of rest, of education, of morals and happiness for the people of a most noble republic.

DAVID SWING.

METHODS OF RESTRICTING IMMIGRATION.

THE practical immediate questions concerning immigration are: What alarm is felt, what is the real danger, what are our present laws, and what new legislation is needed? The alarm springs from a constantly increasing influx within our borders of classes of immigrants of a most undesirable character. The danger is the reduction of wages, to the injury of the American workman and of his home and family, the debasement of the suffrage, and a wide contamination of society. The existing laws are wisely framed so far as they go, and their present strict enforcement (which should be made even more rigid) will do much to quiet the alarm and avert the danger. Some new legislation is required, more effectually to keep out persons now proscribed. The question of excluding persons now allowed to come will depend entirely upon the views and wishes of the people as expressed by their senators and representatives acting without reference to politics. Party legislation in the Fifty-second Congress is impossible; and partisan discussion in a magazine article would be valueless.

THE ALARM AND THE DANGER.

It is necessary to look at a few statistics.

It is estimated that since

1820 there have come to this country between twelve and fourteen millions of immigrants. The arrivals during the decennial years since 1820 have been as follows:

During the ten years from 1881 to 1890, inclusive, the number was 5,246,613. During the past six years the total immigration (not including that from the Canadian Dominions or Mexico) has been as follows:

The nationalities for 1890 and 1891 show whence the rapid in

The increase between June 30, 1890, and June 30, 1891, is 103,289,

The total immigration from June 30 to December 31, 1891, is 241,162, of which there come from—

About one-half the above increase of 105,017 is composed of the very worst class of immigrants. They are illiterate, coarse, and stupid -utterly unfit for residence or citizenship in the United States. These remarks apply to recent immigrants from southern Italy, Russia, Poland, and also Hungary. The following illustrative specimens came from southern Italy and testified before the Ford Committee of the Fiftieth Congress, First Session (House Miscellaneous Document, No. 572, of January 19, 1889):

Vincendo Ronda, from Campobasso, near Naples, swore as fol

lows:

Q. What was your occupation in Italy? A. Farmer. Q. What did you receive for farming? A. Ten cents and meals. Q. Meals for yourself, or yourself

and family? A. No, sir, the meals were for me, and the family fed on the ten cents. Q. No lodgings were included-you had to lodge yourself? A. I had to bed myself. Q. When you landed in this country, were you in possession of any money? A. Not a cent. Q. Or property of any kind? A. Nothing, sir, no property. Q. Were you able to live on that ten cents a day in Italy and three meals? A. Well, it was bound to be enough by taking the Indian corn on credit, and paying for it as best I could.

Angelo Antonio Di Dierro, of Campobasso, swore:

Q. What was your occupation in Italy? A. Countryman. Q. Farmer? A. Digging. Q. Digging at what? A. Farm work. Q. Can you read or write Italian? A. No, sir. Q. You cannot read nor write? A. No, sir. Q. How old are you? A. Twenty-three. Q. What wages did you receive as an agricultural laborer in Italy? A. Food and half a franc. Q. Half a franc is equal to about ten cents of our money? A. Yes, sir.

Antonio Angionicola, also from Campobasso, swore:

Q. Can you read or write? A. No, sir. Q. What was your occupation in Naples? A. Countryman. Q. Farm work? A. Yes, sir. Q. Give us the lowest and highest wages that prevailed during any given time. A. For farm work always ten cents. Q. And meals? A. And meals.

Dominco Ramone, also from Campobasso, swore:

Q. How much wages did you receive working on a farm? A. Ten cents and meals, and when I worked for my own account then I made 24 or 25 cents.

Gaetaro Braccio, from Avellino, Southern Italy, swore:

Q. What was your occupation in Italy? A. Farm work by the day. Q. How much did you get a day? A. Ten cents and meals.

Nicolla Di Alve, from Chieti, Italy, swore:

Q. What was your business or occupation in Italy? A. Farm hand. Q. What pay or compensation did you receive for your labor there? A. From ten to fifteen cents a day and meals. Q. Does that mean meals for yourself or does it include your family? A. For myself alone.

And so on with numerous other southern Italy farm hands.
Nasief Abonazin, of Mt. Lebanon, Syria, swore:

Q. What are the wages of an ordinary common laborer in your country? A. Ten or 15 or 20 cents a day. Q. And board? A. No, sir, nothing at all. Q. How much would it take you to live economically? A. About 20 cents; 15 cents if I wanted to live in an honest way, if I didn't want to spend out all the money. Q. What do you live on? What food do you eat? What do you have for breakfast or dinner or common daily life? What did you use to eat? A. Well, sometimes bread and lebin, that is made out of milk and dry meat and kidneys, and something which they cook with corn. Q. Did you eat meat every day? A. No, once or twice a week. Q. Is once or twice a week all you would have meat? A. Some weeks three times and some weeks twice. Q. By meat do you

mean poultry, chickens? Do you include that in the meat, or do you mean beef? A. They don't eat beef, only mutton and lamb. Q. Do you mean poultry and mutton? A. No, we can't eat chicken.

Not only are the wages of labor lowered and society degraded by the inroads of foreigners like the foregoing, but it may fairly be said. that they become immediate additions to our voters and begin to elect the rulers of America.' All the male immigrants who remain in New York City become voters without regard to the prohibitions of our naturalization laws whenever a great political party determines to bring them to the polls.

In New York City during October, 1891, and before the November election, about seven thousand naturalization papers were issued, nearly all by one judge, who examined cach applicant and his witnesses to his satisfaction, and signed his orders at the rate of two per minute and as many as six hundred and eighteen in one day. There were many classes of frauds committed. Papers were issued where the aliens named in them had not been in the country five years; where there should have been preliminary declarations, but no proof of such was required; where there had been such declarations, but final papers were issued without their production, on the false assumption that the applicants had arrived under the age of eighteen; where witnesses were recorded as testifying to the five-years' residence, when they had known the applicant only a few hours, the witnesses being professional perjurers, each swearing in hundreds of such cases; where the applicants were not sworn to make true answers when under examination; where a clerk of a court, on orders signed by the judge, gave out full naturalization papers without the appearance in court of any applicants or any witnesses; where the minutes showed that subjects of Great Britain renounced their allegiance to the Emperor of Germany; where, upon names being handed outside the court to persons engaged in making fraudulent naturalizations, papers for those names were brought back on orders signed by the judge either without any evidence or upon evidence wholly fictitious; and where the face of the papers showed to the judge that preliminary declarations had been made less than two years before he signed the orders for naturalization-in some cases less than four months before! If it is difficult to credit the foregoing assertions, a few irrefragable cases may tend to induce belief.

Patrick Hefferman, of 556 West 40th Street, New York, was 21 years old September 2, 1891, and came to this country on the Ger