Golden Age, February 27, 1924
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Contents of the Golden Age
Labob and Economics The New Age and the New Unit
Machinery Eliminating Much Labor
Old Unit la Complicated
New Order Self-Adjusting by Lore
Social and Educational Bomb Signs or the Times
A Cobbection
Finance- -Commerce—Thanspohtauon Slaveet to Monet
Lateb Infoemation Regarding the 1917 Douab Bux
Political—Domestic and Foreign Tn Pbessing Immigration Quebxzow . . . . ,
The Present Immigration Law ..........^ . . . 323
Reasons for Restriction
: The Countries of Migration
1 America a'Cosmopolitan Country
! Illegal Entry of Immigrants
' The Literacy Test
Conditions at Ellis Island
Frauds against Immigrants ....
I Am Wab
"The Victory Ball” (Poem)
Keeping the Germans Out or Ceylon
Big Business on the Rack
Tkavxl and Miscellany The Uplifting or the Canadian Indians....... •
Religion and Philosophy
Longing fob the New Dat. • • . • .......... •
When God Was Alone
The Permission of Evil . .
The Unchangeable One
The Seven-Sealed Scroll . . .
••Worthy Is the Lamb" ....
Studies in “The Harp or God*‘
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Golden Age
Velum* V
Brooklyn* N.Y., Wednesday, February 27, 1924
The Pressing Immigration Question
ON THE subcription list of The Golden Age we have a few full-blooded North American Indians. All the rest of us Americans are immigrants, or we are the near or remote children of immigrants, and hence should be interested in the immigration question. Moreover,-there are indications that this will be one of the outstanding features of the forthcoming presidential campaign, so a consideration of the subject is in order.
The management of the Immigration Bureau is in the hands of the Secretary of Labor, and properly so, we think; for an excess of immigrants immediately affects the labor market, resulting in lower wages, with corresponding disadvantages to workers here, only in part offset by slightly lowered costs of manufactured products which they must use.
Whenever there is an era of depression here in America, there is always a great hue and cry against whatever of liberality may exist in the American immigration policy, sometimes coupled with a demand that all immigration of every sort be shut off for a specified term.
Whenever there is an era of prosperity here, accompanied by the better wages which prosperity brings, there is always pressure from the great employers of labor for a more liberal policy as repects immigrants. Most of the hard and rough work in America is done by “foreigners”, as they are commonly termed.
On one occasion the present Secretary of Labor, Mr. Davis, in an after-dinner speech, said that the reason why he had opened the doors at Christmas time and let in 1,100 immigrants after the quota for the year was full was that he could remember the time when his mother came into America as an immigrant with eight little children, of whom the Secretary himself was one. Sometimes Secretary Davis has to pass upon as many as three hundred appeals in a single day.
A man in his position needs to have a great deal of wisdom and common sense, and should be well endowed with a sense of pity for the unfortunate and sympathy for the poor. Moreover, the laws which he is to administer should have similar characteristics—unfortunately not now the case.
The Present Immigration Law
THE present immigration law, passed in May, 1921, and expiring July 1st, 1924, provides that only three percent of the number of foreign-born persons of any nationality living in the United States, according to the census of 1910, can be admitted in any one year; and that not more than twenty percent of the allotment for any one country can be admitted in any one month.
The law was passed in a panic in 1921, at the time when the^ Bolshevism scare was at its height and every immigrant was suspected by some gullible Americans of being intent on overturning the United States Government, This panic was manufactured by big business, with the deliberate intent of using it as a smoke screen behind which to get away with their war loot The tools used were the press, the preachers, and the representatives of the Department of Justice, so-called. The scheme worked pei-fectly, as far as keeping the loot was concerned. The law, while bad in some features, is not so bad in others.
The good features of the law are that it has resulted in a higher grade of immigrants than came before the law went into effect, and it has restricted the newcomers to American shores to such an extent that the labor market has not been affected adversely.
Changes proposed in the law would provide for the admission of immediate relatives who may be in excess of the quotas, in order to avoid breaking up families; discretion to act
humanely in cases where deportation violates common sense; requirement of steamship companies that they assure themselves before sailing that they are not carrying immigrants in excess of quota; and a redistribution of the quotas into ten monthly installments of ten percent each instead of five monthly installments of twenty percent each.
In order to improve the character of the immigrants it has also been proposed to base the allotment on the 1890 census; to restrict the quota to two percent with an additional one percent for selected applicants. The reason for shifting to the 1890 census is to bring in more aliens from the north and west of Europe and less from the south and east.
Before the war Northern and Western Europe provided only fifteen percent of the total immigration, but during the last two years it has run about thirty-five percent. The only persons from whom consuls can legally withhold vis4s are bolshevists, anarchists, and habitual criminals; all the rest of the selection is made on arrival in America.
Biff Business Wants a Hand
BIG business wants a hand in formulating any changes that are to be made in the immigration law. Now that the war steals are all safely cached, it does not now need a smoke screen. Hence it would really like to let in a great many more of the kind of hard workers it has used in the past, though it is still timid about letting in anybody who does not believe in the divine right of capital to commit every crime on the calendar.
The United States Chamber of Commerce, so-called, the official spokesman for big business, is willing to let the three percent quota stand as it is now; to this it would add two percent upon a selective basis, making a possible five percent in all. About a year ago the packers and the steel trust had to raise the wages of their men in order to hold them; and straightway the papers began to be flooded with the usual wail of big business that there is a labor shortage which can be overcome only by a more liberal immigration policy. The National Manufacturers' Association openly argues for and urges the granting of permission to import alien labor under contract. This is now illegal
Weary of waiting for labor from Europe, the usual source, big business turned to the southern Negroes, with the result that tens of thousands of them came north to work in the packing houses and the steel mills. It is a wonder that they did not think of Porto Rico and other West Indian islands, where there is such an excess in common labor that the people can < hardly exist. There are no restrictions for bringing in these, except health and ability to read and write.
Reasons for Restriction
THE United States long ago decided that it could not assimilate Chinese and Japanese, and accordingly special treaties or agreements have been made with those countries by which their laboring classes are kept from these shores. Objection is made also to aliens from other lands who do not or will not learn the English language, and who merely use America as a place to make money which they plan to spend in later years in the land of their birth. It is stated that one out of every two immigrants to America returns to the old country eventually.
The Mining, and Scientific Press is authority for the statement that when Japan organized her government she wrote to Herbert Spencer, the leading political economist of his time, asking whether or not she should admit foreigners, and the answer was “Emphatically, noF* Spencer advised the Japanese to grant foreigners only bare commercial privileges, to forbid them to own lands, to hold them at arm's length, and to avoid intermarriage—all to prevent the deterioration of the Japanese type. The deterioration of Chaldea, Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, Rome, and Egypt came about through admixed populations, due to conquest or invasion.
We speak of the art of Greece and Italy, the music of the Germans and the Poles, and the poetry of the English, recognizing that back of these there are the temperamental characteristics of pronounced racial types. But we sometimes forget that Greece is full of Greeks, that Italy is full of Italians, that Germany is full of Germans, that Poland is full of Poles, and England is full of English, while America is full of everything except Americans. Moreover, the melting pot melts poorly.
Nobody could expect very much from a restricted immigration wherein the privilege of the selection of immigrants is left to other nations. Europe is naturally not eager to part with her best citizens. As a result the figures prove that 44.09 percent of the inmates of jails and asylums are children of foreign-born parents. In Michigan one-fourth of the insane persons in the state were born in foreign countries, and their support costs the state $4,000,000 per year.
The Government makes seven classifications of immigrants: Very superior, superior, high average, average, low average, inferior, and very inferior. A checking up of 14,000,000 immigrants shows that there were only 6,000,000 of them in the first four classifications named, while the great number of 8,000,000 were of the low average, inferior, and very inferior types.
Reasons for Liberality
WHEN Lloyd George returned to England from America he said of America. that it is infinite, and that if developed to the extent that England is developed it should easily maintain a population of 1,500,000,000. In our opinion the time will come when more than this vast number will live in what is now the United States and Canada. Indeed, we anticipate about twice the number.
The New York Herald recently pointed out that if the entire present population of the world were located in the one state of Texas, and only ten persons were assigned to each acre of land there would still be room in the state for 196,000,000 additional persons. Under these circumstances it is but folly for anybody to talk of overcrowding America at this time; and it does not seem just fair to shut the doors to the worthy and the needy and to say to them: *You shall not come here to make your home."
The Baltimore Swn points out that "by the time an immigrant gets accustomed to the climate he begins to worry about the horde of aliens coming in.” While this may be stretching it somewhat, yet it is a fact that many do not realize the value of hard-working immigrants to a country and are hostile to those who speak a foreign tongue.
The ten million foreign-born now in America, together with those of foreign parentage, represent only one-third of the people of the United States, yet they mine three-fourths of the coal, manufacture three-fourths of the clothing, half of the silk, linen, wool, lace, and embroidered goods, bake more than half of the bread, refine more than half of the sugar and put up half of the canned food.
With the aid of Ampriean capital the foreign-born built the Ameroan railways, and still do half of the maintenance work on both railroads and streets. They also do half of the work in the blast furnaces, in the carpet mills, in the hemp and jute factories, and in the copper, silver, brass, gold, rubber, and leather goods. To shut out immigration altogether, as proposed by some of the wild advocates of narrowmindedness, would put the United States back as much as would a first-class war.
While the inferior rating of many past immigrants is deeply regrettable, yet the.. United States now makes an earnest effort to exclude convicts, except those guilty of political offenses, women imported for immoral purposes, lunatics, paupers, persons afflicted with loathsome or dangerous contagious disease, polygamists, those whose passage has been paid by others unless it can be conclusively shown that they do not belong to any of the excluded classes, epileptics, persons who have been inr sane within five years previous or who have ever had two of more attacks of insanity, professional beggars, anarchists, persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by violence of government or law, persons attempting to bring in women for immoral purposes, persons deported within a year previous as contract laborers, and persons who cannot read or write.
Attitude of Other Immigrant Countries
SOMETHING is to be learned from a consideration of the attitude toward immigrants of other countries which have large areas of undeveloped land and other natural resources, Brazil, “the United States of South America,” is one of these. Brazil pays the passage of immigrants, takes care of them on arrival, transports them free to their destination, provides them with tools and seeds, and supplies them with free medical care for themselves and their families.
Argentine, to the south of Brazil, offers immigrants free land. Chile, to the west of Argentine, offers land and implements. New Zealand, to the west of Chile, offers reduced steamship fares. Australia, to the west of New.
Zealand, pays $60 toward the parage of selected British settlers, and makes an effort to select only such as will stay in the country. It does not want those whose purpose is to hoard their money and return to the old country. To bona-fide settlers it sells land on easy terms and advances money for improvements.
Immigration from North America to Australia in 1921 was 1,577, practically all of whom were from the United States. Australia's total immigration for 1921 was a little in excess of 1.5 percent of her population. The immigration into America at the very height of the flood was only a trifle in excess of one percent. We incline to the thought that the Lord is shaping things so as to bring forward the development of the lands of the southern hemisphere more rapidly.
Canada forbids the entry of any immigrant mechanic, laborer or artisan who possesses less than $250 in his own right, plus transportation to his destination in Canada, plus $125 for each person in his family over eighteen years of age, plus $50 for each child over five and under eighteen years.
The province of Quebec has at least one lecturer touring the New England states, endeavoring to persuade French Canadians to return to Canada. Canada gladly provided a home for forty Swiss farmers who were denied entry to the United States under the three percent quota arrangement
The Canadian Pacific Railway maintains a personally conducted immigrant service direct from Great Britain to the land of their choice and to the very district in which the new settlers will locate. This is an excellent idea, and one worthy of adoption by the United States. The railway sells these settlers land payable over a period of thirty-four years, the first payment not to be made until after two years.
Canada is burdened with the problem of keeping her immigrants in Canada after she gets them; the lure is always southward. She needs desperately to keep them at home if she is to pay the colossal war and railroad construction debts which have been contracted. More people, more taxes paid.
Canada has one growing immigration at which she now looks askance. In 1911 the Chinese population of British Columbia was 19,563; today it is 40,000. There are about 60,000 Chinese in Canada altogether, and about 20,000 Japanese. It is claimed that they monopolize the fishing and garden trucking businesses and have increased the drug traffic.
The Countr of Migration
FOR a hundred years Great Britain has supplied a greater number of new citizens to the United States than has any other country. When the British come here they are always welcome. The language, the ideals, the literature, and most of the customs are the same; and in a few years even the most discerning can distinguish no differences between an immigrant from Britain and a native-born American. There are now 10,000,000 representatives of the British racial group in America. This includes immigrants from Canada. Many of the British immigrants come into the United States via Canada.
It seems too bad that any law should hold up immigration from the British Isles. No matter where they go, Britishers add an element of honesty, courtesy, kindness, courage, that makes them invaluable as citizens. In America they are specially welcomed by the people as a whole; and yet the present law keeps many thousands of them away, and works great hardships on many who come. It has happened, not once but several times, that a whole shipload of people, after selling their homes and businesses, and planning to sail at a given date, have been compelled to wait in idleness for two months because the current quota was exhausted. Under the present law only 77,342 immigrants from Britain may enter in each year.
Next to Britain, as a provider of citizens for the United States, has come Germany. There are 9,250,000 of the German racial group in America. When Prince Henry was touring America he asked some American statesman whether he had ever been in Germany and was greatly amused when he received the reply, "Oh, yes! I have been in Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati many times.”
Despite all newspaper, political, and pulpit slop to the contrary, the Germans also are valued citizens of the United States. They are law-abiding, industrious, musical, home-loving, educated, and progressive. To have them shut out also seems a crime against the country. The newcomers soon speak a broken English that is highly entertaining and enjoyable to Americans ; and their children, from the moment they begin to attend school, never speak anything but English even in their own homes. Under the present law Germany may send only 67,607 new citizens into the United States each year.
Other Nordic Countries
THE third racial group, the Scandinavian, represents a big drop from the British and German figures; yet there are 3,750,000 of this group in America and it is a goodly number. The Scandinavians are like the Germans, highly intelligent, well educated, progressive, Protestants—just the kind of citizens America should welcome with open arms.
Included in the Scandinavians are the Danes. Denmark is a small country, but stands out prominently in American immigration records because of the prison incident. It seems that the Danish prison was overcrowded. An addition was needed, but the funds wherewith to build it were not at the moment in sight, so the Danish government hit upon a more feasible plan. The 700 convicts were all pardoned with the distinct understanding that they should emigrate to America. Tickets were provided, and the whole lot were shipped to make new and better homes for themselves in a new and better land. This was before present restrictions were in force.
Next after the Scandinavians are the Poles, of whom there are 3,000,000 in America, The Poles are naturally bright, but their development has been retarded by the old Czarist regime and by the fact that they are mostly under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. Under the present law Poland may send in 21,076 new citizens annually, but Poland is attempting to hold as many of her own citizens as possible.
The new country of Czecho-Slovakia, lying on Poland’s southern border, is following Poland’s example of offering inducements to keep her citizens at home, so as to develop her own resources. Czecho-Slovakia may send 14,557 citizens to America each year under the present law.
A Czecho-Slovakian invited to an Americanization conference is reported by The Nation as having said among other things:
"Nothing will make a people ding to their language so much as forcing them in one way or another not to speak it. Some Americans think that you can make people love a country by driving them to it with a dub. If you want us to be Americans, treat us like human beings. Our features may be different from yours, but I guess we also are made in God’s image. Lincoln wouldn’t have been suspicious of us. He would have made us love America by the way he would have treated us. And once people love America by the way they are treated, no one needs to Americanize them.”
That is the way to talk. When the workers in the steel district wanted better living conditions, there were any number of officials ready to commit wilful acts of anarchy against the Czecho-Slovakians in their districts; and now they want to prove to them what nice people we are by teaching them how to spell out English words. Probably they want to teach them how to spell out such words as "Justice” and <rLove.” If the present generation of Czecho-Slovakiana in America never get any farther in their spelling lessons than to be able to spell “B-a-t-s” we should not much blame them.
Southern and Eastern Europe
THE present law, and the proposed changes in it, have in view the restriction of immigration from the southern and eastern countries of Europe, Hungary, Italy, Greece, and Russia. There were probably a quarter of a million people from southern and eastern Europe that would have been glad to come to America in the last year, but were prevented by the quota. For example, Hungary may bring in only 5,638 new citizens each year; yet there are applications for 30,000 American passports on file* enough to fill the quota for more than five years. If the basis is changed to the 1890 census and reduced to two percent, as is proposed, Hungary would be able to send in only 424 persons in a year, and would practically be eliminated as a source of emigration.
Next to Scandinavia, and on a par with Poland, Italy is represented in America by 3,000,000 citizens. Under the present law Italy may bring in 42,057 citizens per year, while the number that wishes to come averages more than 300,000. If the law is modified in the way proposed Italy would be reduced to 3,912 per year* and also virtually eliminated.
There are few Protestants among the Poles* Hungarians, and Italians; criminality runs higher than among the British, Germans, and Scandinavians; and they are harder to lift up to proper citizenship on account of their long submergence under the beclouding, deadening effect of Roman Catholic influence. These are the bedrock reasons for the discriminations against them, and not their industry.
In recent years most of the hard laboring work of America has been done by these three nationalities, and it is work that Americana will not do. The question is as to whether it is better to shut these men out and leave the work undone, or to let them come in and promote material progress while in some other ways they lower the national standards.
The Italians are successful in America. When they first come they will do anything—streetsweeping, rag-picking, whatever may need to be done. In a few years they are often the owners of splendid farms, being adepts in the growing of grapes and other fruits.
Greece is already a small factor as respects American immigration, inasmuch as she may bring in only 3,294 per year, and under the proposed changes would be able to bring in but 47. No objections are raised against the Greeks except by the restaurant and candy kitchen proprietors, whose businesses have suffered severely under Greek competition.
Greece is offering inducements of farms to the people, having passed an act by which large’ land owners may retain only one-third of their estates, while surrendering two-thirds to the uses of the Government for the benefit of the landless and the homeless. Greece would like to send many thousands to America, but is deterred by both American and Greek laws.
The reasons why no immigration is desired from Russia are well understood by all our readers. It is because of the fears of big business that the Russian idea of Bolshevism will spread throughout America. This it will never do so long as more than half of the Americans live in their own homes. The good wages paid during 1923 have done more to kill off Bolshevistic sentiment than all the futile and foolish efforts put forth in recent years to prevent people from studying economic subjects.
Meyer London, the only Socialistic member of Congress, speaking some two or three years ago on the efforts to keep out radicals, said bi tingly and truthfully:
“The fact that there was almost no immigration during the war did not prevent us from importing every abominable idea from Europe. We brought over the idea of deportation of radicals from France, not from the France of Rousseau, Jaures and Victor Hugo, but from the France of the Bourbons. We imported the idea of the censorship of the press and the passport system from Russia, not from the Russia of Kropotkin and Tolstoy, but from the Russia of Nicholas IL We have imported the idea of universal military service from Germany, not from the Germany of Heine, Boerne and Freiligrath, but from the Germany of the Kaiser. Ideas can be neither shut in nor shut out. There is only one way of contending with an idea, and that is the old and safe American rule of free and untrammeled discussion. Every attempt to use any other method has always proven disastrous.”
Egypt may send into the United States only eighteen immigrants a year; Palestine, Fiume, Iceland, Other Asia and Luxemburg may each send in less than 100. Africa, Russian Armenia, Albania, Danzig, Bulgaria, Syria and Spain may each send in less than 1,000; Esthonia, Latvia, Belgium, Portugal, Lithuania, and Turkey may each send in less than 3,000. Greece, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Finland may each send in less than 5,000. Denmark, France, Hungary, Jugoslavia, Austria, and Roumania may each send in less than 8,000. Norway may send 12,202, Sweden may send 20,042, and Russia may send 24,405. The other countries that may send have been already named.
America a Cosmopolitan Country
IN THE United States there are now twenty-four percent of all the Jews in the world, seventeen percent of all the Scandinavians, thirteen percent of all the Germans, eight percent of the Poles, the Slovaks and the Finns, seven percent of all the Italians, five percent of the Dutch and the Lithuanians, and three percent of the French and the Greeks.
Talk about a cosmopolitan country! In America we start off with 54,000,000 full-native white Americans and 11,000,000 native colored people. Then we have 6,500,000 children one of whose parents was foreign born, and 14,000,000 both of whose parents were foreign born. And then we have 14,500,000 people of foreign birth. These were the figures some time ago.
Not counting the British, who are really the parent stock, and are not immigrants in the same sense as other nationalities, there were in the United Slates in 1910 persons of foreign birth as follows:
German ........„ ...............................-........2,500,000
Italian ..........................................................1,607,458
Russian .....-.......................................... 1,398,999
Polish................... 1,139,578
In the following statement, several millions of those listed as foreign born are as truly American as those born of native parents; but the statement serves to show how large a proportion of work here is done by persons one or both of whose parents were foreign born, or who were themselves born in other lands.
This statement is an interesting comparison of the native and foreign born populations in the principal industrial states:
Native
Foreign Born
New York..........
______________3,365,000
5,735,000
Pennsylvania.....
....._...........4,500,000
3,200,000
Illinois ...............
.....................2.800,000
2,900,000
Massachusetts ....
...................1,180,000
2,220,000
Ohio —...........
....... 3.200,000
1,600,000
Michigan............
..................1.240,000
1,560,000
Wisconsin ..........
................... 740,000
1,560,000
New Jersey........
...........-.....1,065,000
1,435,000
Minnesota ..........
.................... 590,000
1,485,000
California ............
______1,250.000
1,150,000
Connecticut .._______
______ 400,000
700,000
20,330,000
23,545,000
Coming In and Going Out
THE high tides of immigration were about 1850, 1870, 1880, and 1900. The highest peak was reached in 1907, when 1,285,349 were admitted. The fewest arrivals were around 1860, because of the Civil War; 1875, because of business depression here; and other dates when there were relatively few arrivals were 1885, 1895, and 1910, for the same reasons. In the year 1918 only 110,618 immigrants entered the country. This, of course, was due to the war, which did not terminate until November of that year.
Immediately after the war, when it looked for a little time as if some of the American people were in danger of using their brains and making an inquiry into the hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars out of which they had been robbed by the profiteers, and when it was necessary for big business to erect a smoke screen to hide them while they were burying the loot, the press and the pulpit were busily employed, as was also the Department of Justice, in making America a very uncomfortable place for people of foreign birth. During those years immigration was small and emigration large.
The following is an analysis by occupations of those entering and those leaving the United States since the passage of the present immigration law. These statistics show that during the years 1921 and 1922 there was a large loss of laborers; so large, in fact, that now it is not an altogether unusual thing to find native-born white English - speaking Americans actually working with their hands.
1921-1922 Immigration SmigrattaA
No occupations-------------131,050 54,944
Miscellaneous occupations .... 65,032 14,713
Skilled laborers..................... 51,588 17,958
Laborers ................................... 32,726 100,058
Farmers and farm laborers.... 18,205 7,728
Professional ____________ 10,955 3,318
Illegal Entry of Immigrants
Secretary Davis made the statement a few months ago that there are as many illegal entries into the United States as legal ones, claiming that there are American financiers who are engaged in the work of “bootlegging” immigrants into the country. ,
This would be quite easy. On the Mexican border all that is necessary is to wade across the Rio Grande, or to walk across an imaginary line on the desert. On the Canadian line there are many places where a rowboat could cross and about two thousand miles of land boundary besides.
Despatches tell of a man (location not specified) who had a grocery store with the back door in Canada and the front door in the United States. It is claimed that this man aided hundreds of immigrants to enter the United States illegally.
Florida has done such a business in providing a haven for illegal entries that it has gained the sobriquet of “The Nation’s Back Door,” The entries into Florida come from the Bahamas and from Cuba, the passengers paying from $80 to $2,500 a head for their passage.
A heartless ruse worked many times by the rascals engaged in this traffic is to take a company of passengers out in a boat, carry them around for a day or two, and then land them on an uninhabited stretch of land within a few miles from where they started, falsely telling them that they are in Florida.
If there was ever honor among thieves it seems clear that there is none now. One of the best protections the officers of the law have is that none of these lawbreakers can be trusted. However, a large number is smuggled into Florida and into New York and other Atlantic ports from the rum fleet which lies twelve miles out at sea.
Florida, especially, has a great number of bayous, bays, sounds, coves and inlets, which make it an easy place of debarkation without discovery. Tom’s Bayou, near East Pass on Pensacola Bay, is one of the bayous that have, figured in the despatches.
Seamen and Stowaways
THE LaFollette Seamen’s Act permits any seaman of a foreign vessel to leave his occupation when his ship arrives in an American port and to remain in America as long as sixty days before reshipping. This clause has allowed a loophole that has been the means of several thousand entering.
During last summer there was one occasion when the authorities found 109 Chinese seamen who had illegally entered the country. One of the inspectors claimed at the time that there are three thousand smuggled Chinese in New York city and vicinity. They shipped as seamen on boats bound for America and deserted upon arrival. This is considerably cheaper for the Chinese than the $500 to $1,000 which they have to pay to get across the border from British Columbia.
Ex-Commissioner Wallis of Ellis Island says that there is a well-organized stowaway band operating between Europe and Am^rira which contrives to aid many to enter. The most persistent stowaway to date is one Oscar Bignail, who has been deported four times. He worked each time as a stevedore and hid himself during the confusion of loading.
Occasionally there has been an escape from Ellis Island itself. Once the police caught a launch racing from the island with a girl dressed in male garb. On another occasion a Polish girl who had been here several years gave her own pass, her hat and shawl, and all her money, to a sister so that the sister might land, even though she herself remained a prisoner.
In other instances some have simply vanished from sight at the island, with the probability that they have successfully bribed some guard. This is dangerous business, however; for the penalty for aiding an alien to enter the country illegally is a maximum of five years in prison or a $2,000 fine.
The Literacy Test
IT is only a little better than a century ago since the British Parliament had on its books a law which made special provision for such lords of the realm as were unable to read or to write their own names. It may very well have been true that the ones to whom the law applied were better legislators in behalf of the people as a whole than some of the tricksters who knew just how to slip a paragraph into the law that would nullify all its good effects.
And so experience has shown that there is not so much in the literacy test as was expected. Illiteracy, of itself, is not the worst thing to be dreaded, although it is an evil, or at least an inconvenience, as all must admit. The illiteracy is about twelve times as high among immigrants from southern and eastern Europe (Roman Catholic countries) as it is from the Protestant north and west. The illiteracy of Armenia and Syria is also high.
But when it comes to illiteracy the United States has nothing whereof to boast The New York Journal says on this point:
"If you hear anybody talking about keeping out ignorant immigration and 'upholding the American standard/ remind him that, according to statistics, there are ten million illiterates in the United States, and ten million more that might as well be illiterate because of their dense ignorance. There are sections in this country where ‘marriage has no sanctity and commerce is carried on through barter and trade' the same as in the equatorial regions of Africa. It is a good thing to be patriotic about your country, but not so good to be foolishly ignorant about it.”
Ex-Commissioner Wallis is much displeased with the literacy test, which he regards as valueless in keeping out undesirables. Ha cites an instance where three Italian sisters came to America together. One of the three had stayed at home and kept house so that the other two could go to school. The self-sacrificing one was kept out of the country. Was that a benefit to the country?
He also cites an instance of a Czecho-Slovak family, composed of father, mother and two children. The father was a practical farmer and wanted to go to the Middle West and settle on a farm; but he could not read nor write. The mother and the two children could all read and write. At first the father thought to let his wife and children enter while he returned alone to the land of his birth; but finally he took his brood all back to his old home, penniless, but declaring that he would learn to read and write and be back again some happy day. How was the United States advantaged by keeping such a man out of the country?
Distribution of Immigrants
BEFORE the war the number of the world's people who migrated somewhere each year ■was about 5,000,000. The war so unsettled old routes and motives impelling a change of location that there are only about half that number now migrating. The young men and young women wander forth over the face of the earth looking for opportunity; the old return to the land of their birth. The scenes of childhood never lose their charm.
One outcry made against the immigrants is that they flock to New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Buffalo, and take up their abodes in the foreign centers of those cities, instead of taking up agricultural pursuits. To us this seems like the natural thing for them to do, at first. We think that later many of them find their way to the land.
Several suggestions have been made as to the best way to effect a quicker distribution. The vice-consul at Athens proposed the novel and seemingly practical plan of dividing the United States into twelve districts, each of which should have its own quota, according to the needs of the population and industries. An objection to this is that it would require registration and supervision of immigrants and would limit their liberties.
Another registration plan proposes to demand $100 of each immigrant who settles in a city of a million inhabitants and to decrease the sum required proportionately to the size of the city, so that if he settles on a farm there ■will be no charge at all.
Another plan proposed is that each immigrant be met at the dock and questioned closely to find out what kind of country he wishes to live in. He is then to be told just where he can find what he is looking for, so that he can have it in mind as an ideal to work toward, even if he is not able immediately to betake himself thither.
Senator LaFollette has scant patience with those who criticize immigrants because they love the land of their birth. He thinks, and with good reason, that because a person loves his home land it is no sign he will not love this one. He thinks, on the other hand, that one who does love his own land is far more likely to appreciate the good points of this one. The . fact that a man has left his own land to come here shows that there were in his mind some reasons why this was the more desirable.
Steamships and Immigration
WHILE the present immigration law is in operation the captain of a vessel.that brings these citizens to America necessarily must be a very capable man. Much of the responsibility of carrying out the provisions of the law rests upon his shoulders.
Years ago there were several European countries that paid a bonus to the steamship companies for all the emigrants they took out of those countries. Under the present restricted quota system all this is changed; but the consuls abroad indiscriminately issue passport visSs to eligible and ineligible alike, no examination being held even to determine mental fitness. Yet the steamship company must not bring in ineligible persons, and they must not bring in too many persons.
To begin with, a steamship captain is penalized $10,000 if he permits a stowaway to escape. Then he is fined $200 for each immigrant brought in after the quota for the month ia filled, and must refund the passage money paid by such immigrant and carry him back to his homeland free. If all the other conditions are complied with he must see that each alien who lands has at least $50 in cash.
In their rivalry to get the immigrant business the steamship companies have been more than ready to take vast numbers to arrive on the first day of the new quota period This has brought in the immigrants in great waves and has handicapped the authorities at this end, besides being another complication for the steamcompanies.
e steamship companies are about to face another expense from which they have thus far been spared All other countries require the steamship companies bringing in immigrants to take full responsibility for them until they are definitely accepted or rejected Ellis Island, at New York, and other immigrant detention stations cost the United States in excess of a. million dollars annually.
On account of complaints that have been made in the British House of Commons against the conditions at Ellis Island it is probable that the United States will lease land to the steamship companies and require them to maintain their own detention stations.
Conditions at Ellis Island
EPORTS differ as to conditions at Ellis
Island, but it is generally admitted that the quarters are too small for the throngs that are cared for there, and that the employes are overworked and underpaid Men and women are constantly sweeping and mopping the white tiled floors; but as fast as they do so, untidy immigrants litter the floors again with paper, bread, orange peels, and banana skins.
The representative of the Immigration Department of Spain, who arrived in America by steerage, reported that he found little at Ellis Island to criticize. On the other hand, "Whitehead, the British journalist, who came to America to seek aid for Russia, said of the Island: “The food is practically inedible. You are treated like a criminal and confined like a prisoner, And the vermin: the less said the better."
Prof. E. A. Steiner, of Grinnell University, Iowa, who crossed from Europe via steerage so that he might better study the immigrant problem, said of the Island about a year ago: “Ellis Island has become a prison. Unspeakable barbarities have been committed there. Because of the rigor of the law and an undermanned service, the commonest decencies are denied to persons of culture and refinement"
To criticisms of this nature Secretary of Labor Davis has replied that "no hotel in the United States catering to the same class of patronage as that to be found among the immi. grants at Ellis Island gives so good food, more pleasing surroundings, so careful treatment, and such sanitary conditions as those given to immigrants arriving at New York.”
On account of the unfavorable publicity given Ellis Island in Britain the British Ambassador, Sir Auckland Geddes, was called upon to make a report to his government as to conditions on the Island, in which he said in part:
"I noticed in many corners impacted greasy dirt that It was possible to say with certainty had been there for many days, if not weeks or months. As a result of ths presence of chronic dirt, the buildings are pervaded by a flat, stale smelL This is quite distinct from the pungent odor of unwashed humanity. Both are to bo met at Ellis Island. In many ways the efficiency of the officials is highly to be praised. Still detention on Ellis Island must be a hateful experience for all of any sensibility who pass its portals. Every immigrant who io rejected is told of his right to appeal to the Secretary of Labor. This arrangement, the theory of which is probably right, is in practice nothing short of diabolic. For days some wretched creature is kept in suspense.”
Sir Auckland gave an unpleasant account of medical examinations conducted with makeshift arrangements, used the word “tragedy" in describing the Island, and undertook the somewhat doubtful propriety of suggesting remedies for what is purely an internal American affair.
He found that the ventilation and sleeping cages could be improved, advocated a more liberal use of hot water and strong cleansers, and declared that “the compound smell of old dirt and new immigrants was so nearly universal that after leaving Ellis Island it took me nearly thirty-six hours to get rid of the aroma which flavored everything I ate and drank."
This report caused many British immigrants to come by the Canadian lines and to enter the United States through Canada. But if conditions at Ellis Island are bad, they seem to be not much better at Halifax, if we may judge from the following report in the London Daily Herald of the experiences of a Jew who was detained at that port He says:
“At five o’clock I was taken out to have something to eat, but the sight of the stuff they gave me nearly turned me sick. Later they took me to a room—a bedroom they called It—but it was more like a filthy pigsty, I have never seen such a place in my life. There were nine other men in the room. The weather was very hot, and the windows were all bolted, and there was absolutely no ventilation at all. It was more like the famous "Black Hole of Calcutta/ I was given a dirty sheet, a dirty pillowcase and a blanket and told to make my bed. At eight o’clock the next morning I was called before the board, which consisted of one man. He cross-examined me for about an hour, and in the end he told me that because I was a Jew he would have to send my papers to Ottawa, and it would cost me twenty dollars to appeal. I refused to appeal, because I had nothing to appeal about; whereupon I was taken back to that unspeakable room and locked in it for the next fifteen days, being permitted to leave it only at meal times.”
More Light on Ellis Island
AN INTELLIGENT woman immigrant interviewed by the New York World summarized her experiences briefly and pointedly as follows:
“Berths on ship, clean but stuffy. Food, good and clean, but nothing to serve it with. Besting space limited and not seats enough to go around. Entertainment and information lacking. Detention of an extra day on ship due to congestion at Ellis Island. Lack of system in identification of baggage on pier. Confusion in presenting credentials at Ellis Island. Hours of unnecessary delay there. Women’s room overcrowded and filthy. Inability to communicate with relatives or friends. No food except for children from 6:30 A. M. to 5:30 P. M. Night in a cage, with no mattresses or pillows. Women with babes sleeping on tiled floor. We were like animals in a den. Surely one dollar spent on Americanization at Ellis Island would be worth ten spent later on. Indeed the one dollar might make it unnecessary to spend the ten.”
The New York City Merchants Committee examined the Island three years ago and reported that "facilities on Ellis Island for examining and accommodating incoming foreigners are woefully inadequate. Sleeping quarters intended for 1,500 frequently are made to accommodate twice that number; and the staff, much too small, is constantly overworked, with a consequent impairment of efficiency.”
During the time that Commissioner Wallis was in charge of the Island he constantly urged enlargement of quarters; and three years ago a bill appropriating $5,600,000 for enlargement of the station was before Congress; but apparently nothing was done about it.
He made an earnest effort to improve the lot of the immigrants. Going there disguised he was insulted and threatened and found that immigrants had not been getting towels for ten years. He discharged several men for callousness and officiousness in dealing with the immigrants.
Any one who desires to do so can help conditions at Ellis Island to some extent by sending to the Librarian of the Ellis Island Hospital, Ellis Island, New York, good literature in any language. This literature will find its way into the hands of the very cream of the working classes of Europe, and will do something to offset any unfavorable opinions of America that other conditions on the Island may arouse More than 82,000 Bibles were given away at Ellis Island in 1923; over 14,000 of them in Italian.
There is little complaint of graft among the employes at the Island, although there have been some cases uncovered and punished where inspectors have allowed diseased or otherwise rejectable immigrants to enter upon payment of a stated sum.
Hardships of Present Law
TJLACE of birth decides nationality accord-ing to the present law and produces situations that are enough to make angels weep. Thus, the wife of a British immigrant was separated from her two-year-old child and her husband because she had been born in Australia, though she lived there but the first six months of her life. The husband and the child were allowed to land; but the wife was deported, because the Australian quota was exhausted.
Again, two Russians were deported because, by accident of birth, their baby was born in Constantinople, where the father was temporarily engaged in American Y. M. C. A. wort The whole family was compelled to return to Europe, although the parents could have entered, as the Russian quota was not exhausted.
The. New York Times cites another case, saying that "an Englishman who happened to be born at Bilbao sixty-eight years ago and lived there until the age of three was lately deported on the ground that the Spanish quota was exhausted, no doubt on the well-known bureaucratic principle that if a cat has kittens in the oven they are classed as biscuit.”
The Nation caustically summarizes several similar cases by saying,
’'When Englishmen living in England are threatened with deportation as Egyptians because they happened to be born in Egypt; when Czechs living in Czechoslovakia are sent home because their parents lived in what is now Jugoslavia at the time of their birth; when Roumanians living in Bessarabia are sent home because the United States government does not recognize any changes in the frontier of the old Russian Empire, we begin to feel that no protest can prevail against such absurd red tape."
Two or three years ago, under the present law, fifty-one Armenians were barred out, classed as Turks, and sent back to almost, certain death at the hands of their enemies. A little boy, the only one of his family to escape the massacre at Smyrna, was one of those sent back.
Reviewing his experience, Ex-Commissioner Wallis said:
'‘The longer I remained as U. S. Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island the more sensitive I became to the needs and sufferings of these groups of foreigners. Ellis Island would melt a heart of granite. It is literally a vale of tears. These people have been saving for years, denying their families every necessity of life in order that they might get sufficient funds to come; and after years of sacrifice and saving they come to this port only to be turned back. And sent back to what ? Destitution and desolation. No one can picture the scenes of anguish and heartbreak at the Port of New York. It becomes necessary at times to carry people bodily and place them back on the ship. Many attempt suicide rather than go back to their destitute countries.”
Frauds against Immigrants
IN ORDER to enter America now a stranger must be quite forehanded. Before the war a steerage passage could be had for $25. During the war it was possible to cross for $10. Now the rate from Hamburg to New York ranges from $120 to $160. The head tax is $18; and the immigrant must have $50 in cash after all other expenses have been paid. As a consequence there is room for sharpers to do even such despicable work as to play upon these poor home-seekers.
Fake shipping agents work among the foreign-born workers here, offering, for sums ranging from $250 to $1,000, to bring their families from Europe, secure passports, etc. Their usual story is that they are about to sail for Europe and will personally find and escort the aged parents, wife and children from their European home to their destination in America. Others actually visit foreign ports, where they assure their victims that they have influence at Ellis Island and will make it easy for them to land.
Before they start for America many immigrants are robbed of everything they possess by a very simple method. They are given checks for their valuables and baggage when they undergo bathing and sterilization, as required by the health laws of the city of departure; and the man who gives the checks absconds before they return. Another method is to sell forged tickets to America and rob the immigrants so completely that they cannot even start.
The immigrants have troubles enough at Ellis Island. Relatives come for them and do not recognize them, on account of changes in appearance. Husbands come, to find proof of their wives' infidelity. Swindlers abound. Pickpockets are on hand.
We know of an instance where a Scotch immigrant left his baggage with a supposedly reputable baggage concern having connections with a leading British steamship line. In the day or so that the man’s trunk was in the care of this concern some one pried off the lock so as to rummage through the trunk in search for valuables.
What a blessing the Lord’s kingdom will be, distributing the blessings of the earth among the meek and lowly and making it no longer necessary for any to wander far in search of a home with the risk of suffering great hardships and financial losses!
A Correction By Victor F. Schmidt
THE article, “Treasures for the Last Days,” in Golden Age No. 107, contains the statement: “The English boys were even instructed how with their finger nails to gouge the eyes from their victims’ heads.” The statement was based upon a newspaper report of a lecture. Further investigation has traced the information to verbal expressions made to the lecturer while traveling in Canada. The statement therefore rests on a weak foundation. The word “musket,” occurring in the eleventh line of the same paragraph, should be changed to “bayonet" I am very sorry that these errors occurred.
The New Age and the New Unit of Value
THE several articles that have been published in Thf. Golden Age, relative to the unit of value, embrace one of the most discussed sublets. directly or indirectly, in the whole world. The equitable distribution of this world’s goods is becoming so vital that it is threatening to overthrow time-honored traditions, institutions, and even empires. *
These articles have pointed out their respective writers' impressions of what would be the ideal solution of an old established evil, by causing all values to exchange; viz., the labor unit, the gold unit, the market price unit, or a standardization of materials unit, etc. They have a decided longing for a practical ideal, while each plan seems to show up some tangible shortcoming, when placed under the present order of things. We are told in the Scriptures, however, that there is a solution. We are told also that it will not be during the old order nor of old-order methods.
There is a solution creeping in on us quietly, yet very rapidly, doing our work more completely, talcing on new forms, laying new foundations. The world perceives it not, or at least very little, and does not realize the stupendousness of it or of its future. New scientific inventions are a part of the solution, all a free gift costing no more than a chance idea in the mind of some practical person. These will be the means of taking the penalty of "the sweat of thy brow” from the whole race and of releasing it from the very thing that has been the cause of people measuring values to such a fine line, trying in vain to find a perfect unit of value.
It seems from the way things are created that with the idea of private ownership and of liberty to act at will with one’s own possessions, taken together with the fact that each man has been created a being separate from another, with a will and personal equation of his own, we shall never be able to solve the problem, under the present order, of providing an ideal unit of value and of giving justice to all. The new order has a bigger, grander plan; and we can just begin to see the silver lining on the passing clouds.
To the average mind the things going on in the ever-multiplying technical field are after all but little known; and the future that can be seen is a vision for but only a few. It has By C. P. Leonard, M. E.
reached a stage, at the present time, when it is possible to build a machine to perform almost any conceivable operation that man can think up. We are only awaiting the removal of the limitations incident to the old order, such as greedy financial restrictions, cheap labor by oppression, lack of time and willful indifference to progress; or we would be having them now.
Machinery Eliminating Much Labor
WE CAN credit the medium through which the civilized nations have obtained their knowledge to nothing less than a machine. We call it the printing press, yet that thing has placed strongly before us an example of the point to be brought out; viz., the "abundance of supply.” Knowledge is now to be had almost without cost. A day’s labor will buy more knowledge than can be absorbed thoroughly in a month, and in respect to some things, in six months. Abundance of supply will carry the race over all the present problems of necessity, which can be compared to buying the world’s news for the one five-hundredth part of a day’s work.
It was once regarded as impossible to build a machine to do bookkeeping; it was thought that this was one place where the human element could not be avoided. But it is now possible for bookkeeping to be done by entirely automatic means, and is very nearly done so already.
As it is, reports come in from the salesmen of a large manufacturing concern hand-written. Clerks take the reports and punch the information on a machine similar to an adding machine keyboard, punching holes in relative positions on cards. These may represent the salesman’s number, amount of sales, cash, credit, kinds of goods, and any other classification that may be desired. These cards may then be sorted out by a machine for any classification wanted, by an electric contact passing over the holes faster than one can see.
Thus the total sales of one traveler are obtained, his cash, his credits, his whole month’s business. Then, again, the acccunts of all the salesmen can be totaled under any of the classifications desired. It matters not how much segregating of conqplex accounts is wanted, the machine can do it in enormous quantities in * few minutes.
The automatic telephone is seen nearly everywhere; but the automatic switches, with their complex network of wires and relays, are but little known. Advantage is taken of the laws of magnets, successive electric impulses, and the laws of numbers. The successive impulses sent in from the calling dial excite certain magnets, which raise certain switches and swing them around to certain positions, throw other magnets in circuit for another set of impulses, and other ratchets operate, and so on till the calling instrument finds its own way through a maze of connections and wires in from one to three exchanges, till it gets to the instrument wanted. When done it rings the bell, as well as tells any intruder that this phone is busy. All this is done with speed and accuracy, and eliminates the human element. Comparing the cost of labor saved with the monthly cost of a phone, the phone is almost a free gift He suffers most who does not have one.
The Panama Canal would not have been completed in anything like the time it -was, but for the automatic block signal system, which ran trains hauling dirt through what to a stranger appeared a veritable network of congestion, but was order and simplicity to the engineer.
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