has no actual authority for disposing of these cases in any equitable manner that would relieve them of the hardship involved.'

Page 12, lines 18-22: Strike out the word "provisions," in line 20, and insert in lieu thereof the words "fourth proviso," and insert after the word "with," in line 22, the words "the third proviso of," so that the affected clause in modification of section 5 will read: unless such contract laborer or contract laborers are exempted under the fourth proviso of section three of this act, or have been imported with the permission of the Secretary of Labor in accordance with the third proviso of said section.

The purpose of this suggestion, clarification of the section, as well as the necessity for it are so obvious as to require no further comment. Page 15, line 18: Change the period to a colon and add the following:

Provided further, That under sections five, six, and seven hereof it shall be presumed, from the fact that any person, company, partnership, corporation, association, or society induces, assists, encourages, solicits, or invites, or attempts to induce, assist, encourage, solicit, or invite, the importation, migration, or coming of an alien from a country foreign to the United States, that the offender had knowledge of such person's alienage.

If successful enforcement of the provisions of law (proposed to be reenacted in the pending measure with some modifications of importance) is to be continued it is very important that this suggested amendment should be adopted. It is feared that unless this or some similar provision is placed in the law it would be deemed by courts in which suits or prosecutions under sections 5, 6, and 7 thereof might be brought that the omission of such a provision indicated acquiescence by Congress in a recent opinion of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. (United States v. Great Northern Railway Co., 214 Fed., 46.) In that decision the majority of the court held it could not be presumed that the corporation importing a foreign laborer into the United States from Canada knew that the person residing in Canada and communicated with by such corporation was an alien, but that it is incumbent upon the Government in such a case to prove affirmatively that the corporation knew that essential fact. While the minority of the court dissented quite emphatically from the decision of the majority, that fact does not of course help the situation. In recent months the Bureau of Immigration has discovered many violations of the contract-labor law similar to that instanced by the Great Northern Railway Co. case, but it has frequently proven impossible to execute the law because the burden placed upon the Government by the decision cited is one which can only rarely be successfully borne. And it is deemed only proper that the law should put all interested persons clearly upon notice that when they are offering employment to persons residing in foreign countries it is incumbent upon them to ascertain whether such persons are aliens or citizens of the United States and not to import them if they are aliens.

Page 21, line 7: After the word "arrival" insert the word "typewritten." The lists or manifests required by this section to be furnished by the transportation companies, giving the names and other important items of information with respect to arriving aliens, are among the most important documents obtained and used in connection with the immigration and naturalization laws. The fact that these lists are often prepared in a handwriting that is almost

illegible materially reduces the value of the manifest and often leads to embarrassing results when efforts are later made to verify the arrival of an alien for naturalization or other purposes. The lists can readily be typewritten, but their preparation in that form can not be universally enforced unless a change of the kind suggested is made in the law. The department suggested this change when H. R. 6060 was under consideration in the Senate, but its suggestion unfortunately was received too late to be incorporated.

Page 34, line 5: After the words "if practicable" insert the words "and proper in the opinion of the Secretary of Labor."

During the continuance of the war in Europe it has frequently been impracticable from the department's point of view immediately to deport aliens found on arrival to be inadmissible. In numbers of these cases, however, the steamship lines concerned have insisted that deportation was practicable and, upon the department's disagreeing with them, have served notice on the department that, holding that deportation is practicable, they will not assume the responsibility or expense of deporting the alien at a later date or the expense of maintaining the alien until such time as the department might deem that his deportation was practicable in the sense that it was not only feasible but reasonably safe and not inhumane. In many such cases the department has been obliged to hold the aliens involved at its own expense and to ask that suit be instituted against the company in the hope that such expenses might be recovered. It seems only fair, humane, and appropriate that the department charged with the responsibility of enforcing the immigration law, and with the always disagreeable, and in such times as the present especially disagreeable, task of ordering returned to the countries whence they came aliens who although inadmissible have been brought to ports of this country by the steamship lines, should have the privilege of determining whether immediate deportation is proper in any given case.

Page 37, lines 19 to 21, and page 40, line 7: In lines 19 to 21, page 37, strike out the clause "the methods and measure of proof and the destination of deportation to be those specified in the law violated," and in line 7, page 40, change the period to a colon and insert:

Provided further, That any person who shall be arrested under the provisions of this section, on the ground that he has entered or been found in the United States in violation of any other law thereof which imposes on such person the burden of proving his right to enter or remain, and who shall fail to establish the existence of the right claimed, shall be deported to the place specified in such other law.

The insertion of this proviso to take the place of the clause stricken out is suggested in interest of clearness of expression. It will be recalled that the clause in question was inserted in H. R. 6060 by the committee of conference, at the suggestion of this department, to meet a situation presently described. Under the rules of Congress the legislative situation of the bill was then such that the clause could be inserted only as an amendment to an amendment. The situation of the bill now is such that this awkward method of expression can be avoided and a clause meaning the same thing be inserted in the more proper form of a proviso.

It will be remembered that when the immigration act of 1903 was passed section 21 thereof (corresponding to section 21 of the existing law and to section 19 of the pending measure) was so drawn as to

authorize the department to remove from the country aliens of the Chinese race who had entered surreptitiously or otherwise in violation of law, instead of adopting for their removal in every instance the more cumbersome judicial procedure prescribed by the Chineseexclusion laws. The department's right in this regard was vigorously contested in the courts, but was finally upheld by a number of the courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States. (United States v. Wong You, 223 U. S., 67.) For a number of years surreptitiously entered Chinese have been deported expeditiously, effectively, and economically in pursuance of this statutorily conferred authority. Recently, however, serious questions have been raised in several of the courts with respect to whether the burden of proof placed by the exclusion laws upon aliens of the Chinese race still rests upon such aliens when they are handled under the procedure of the immigration act, and also whether, where the Chinese have entered from some other country than China, after living in such other country for a long enough time to establish a domicile, they can be deported under the immigration act to the land of their origin, if the law of the country of their domicile demands the payment of a head tax as a condition precedent to their return thereto. While the department has always held that the mere adoption of a different method of deporting does not interfere with either the burden of proof or the place to which deportation should occur, its views in this regard have been sustained by some of the courts and reversed or partially reversed by others. It is believed that the suggested proviso makes the proposition so clear as to be open to only one construction-the one which is necessary if Chinese who are smuggled into the United States are to be successfully dealt with.

Page 38, line 2: Strike out the words "existing prior to the" and insert in lieu thereof the words "not affirmatively shown to have arisen subsequent to," so that the affected clause, descriptive of one of the classes of aliens subject to deportation under section 19, shall read as follows:

any alien who within five years after entry becomes a public charge from causes not affirmatively shown to have arisen subsequent to landing.

This amendment was incorporated in H. R. 6060 by the Senate Committee on Immigration at the suggestion of the Department of Labor. The reasons for the suggestion were clearly shown in the report of the Senate committee (S. Rep. 355) and in this department's letter to the committee (S. Doc. 451). In the letter it was stated, among other things, that

A change to this effect is greatly needed. The insane asylums, hospitals, and other like institutions of some of our States are now crowded with aliens who have become public charges, but with respect to whom it is practically impossible for the Government to show that the causes of their being such existed prior to entry: yet they are persons who, by every dictate of justice and fairness, should be maintained in the public institutions of their native countries and not at the expense of the taxpayers of our communities.

Page 54, line 9. After the word "master" insert the words "or the seaman himself."

As H. R. 6060 was reported to the Senate by its committee the words suggested for incorporation appeared in the connection shown. They were removed from the measure in the conference committee, it is believed, because probably through lack of time, there was a

failure to understand their full significance. The seamen's bill, as was anticipated at the time H. R. 6060 was reported to the Senate, has become law. One of the fundamentals of that measure is the noninterference with the desertion of seamen in United States ports. Sections 31 to 36 of H. R. 6060 and of the pending measure are intended to provide means for protecting the United States against the entry of inadmissible aliens in the guise of seamen. At the request of the Senate committee this department undertook to slightly modify the language of these sections in such a way as to leave to them the fullest possible effect and at the same time provide against their interfering with the operation of the seamen's act. Unless the words "and the seaman himself" are reinserted as now suggested, seamen coming into United States ports will be prevented from leaving their vessel and reshipping at the rate of wages here prevailing, unless in doing so they violate the immigration law; for if a seaman who makes up his mind to leave his ship and secure employment upon another, but who is unable to obtain a formal discharge from the master of the vessel, can not himself report to the immigration officers for examination, the master will still have a hold upon him which might be used to his disadvantage, preventing his leaving the ship when it is in a safe port, thus obstructing the operation of the seamen's bill. Respectfully, yours, W. B. WILSON, Secretary.

64TH CONGRESS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 1st Session.

RELEASE OF CERTAIN LAND TO ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA.

LETTER

FROM

THE SECRETARY OF WAR,

TRANSMITTING

RECOMMENDATION FOR THE REPEAL OF CERTAIN PROVISIONS IN THE ARMY APPROPRIATION ACT APPROVED MARCH 3, 1911, TO RELEASE TO THE CITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA., A STRIP OF LAND ON THE NORTH LINE OF FORT MARION RESERVATION.

MARCH 27, 1916.-Referred to the Committee on Military Affairs and ordered to be printed.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington, March 25, 1916.

The SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

SIR: I have the honor to renew the recommendation of the Secretary of War contained in letter of February 27, 1914 (H. Doc. 809, 63d Cong., 2d sess.), for the repeal of the following provision contained in the Army appropriation act approved March 3, 1911:

The Secretary of War is hereby authorized and directed to release to the city of Saint Augustine, Florida, a strip of land not exceeding twenty-three feet in width, on the north line of Fort Marion Reservation, for the purpose of restoring the street formerly known as Clinch Street, extending from San Marco Avenue on the western boundary of said reservation eastward to the Matanzas River.

2. Owners of private property affected by the proposed establishment of a street along the northerly boundary of the Fort Marion Reservation are three in number, holding approximately equal frontages each property has existing streets on two of its four sides. 3. Two of the three owners opposed the action contemplated in the act of Congress quoted in first paragraph above, which is also opposed by the city of St. Augustine.

4. In 1807, the Spanish governor laid out a road (the present San Marco Avenue) northerly from the "land gate of the city," to a distance of 1,500 yards (English measure), and made a provisional distribution of lands bordering this road, reserving from the distri