This suggests to us the true nature of the problem of city congestion and the nature of its solution. It is not to be found in special efforts on behalf of the immigrant, but in efforts to better the condition of both Americans and immigrants. The congestion of cities is owing to discriminations in favor of cities. If the government gives aid to agriculture as it does to manufactures, if it provides better communication, equalizes taxes, reduces freight rates to the level enjoyed by cities, then agriculture and the small towns will be more attractive. Americans will not crowd to the cities, and the more provident of the immigrants will find their way to the country. The proposition of federal distribution of immigrants is merely a clever illusion kept up to lead Congress astray from the restriction of immigration.
=Higher Standards of Immigration.=--As for the inferior, defective, and undesirable classes of immigrants, there is no protection except stringent selection. The Commissioner of Immigration at New York estimates that 200,000 of the million immigrants in 1903 were an injury instead of a benefit to the industries of the country,[149] and he advocates a physical examination and the exclusion of those who fall below a certain physical standard. During the past ten years the educational, or rather, illiteracy test, has come to the front, and the advantages of this test are its simplicity and its specific application to those races whose standards are lowest.
[Illustration: ALIENS AWAITING ADMISSION AT ELLIS ISLAND]
Much discussion has been carried on respecting this test, and there has been considerable misunderstanding and misrepresentation as to its probable effects. The principal mistake has been the assumption that it is designed to take the place of other tests of admission, and that therefore it would permit, for example, the most dangerous criminals--those who are intelligent--to enter this country. If we examine existing laws, and seek to understand the real nature of immigration restriction, we can see the character of this mistake. All of our legislation governing immigration should be described as _improvement_ of immigration rather than _restriction_ of immigration. The object has always been to raise the average character of those admitted by excluding those who fall below certain standards. And higher standards have been added from time to time as rapidly as the lawmakers perceived the need of bettering the quality of our future citizenship. Although in 1862 Congress had enacted a law prohibiting the shipment of Chinese coolies in American vessels,[150] it was not until 1875 that the lawmakers first awoke to the evil of unrestricted immigration. In that year a law was enacted to exclude convicts and prostitutes. This law made an exception in favor of those who had been convicted of political offences. Next, in 1882, Congress added lunatics, idiots, paupers, and Chinese. In 1885 laborers under contract were for the first time to be excluded, but an exception was made in order to admit actors, artists, lecturers, singers, domestics, and skilled workmen for new industries. In 1891 the list of ineligibles was again extended so as to shut out not only convicts but persons convicted of crime, also "assisted" immigrants, polygamists, and persons with loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases. In 1903 the law added epileptics, persons who have had two or more attacks of insanity, professional beggars, and anarchists. Notwithstanding these successive additions of excluded classes, the number of immigrants has continually increased until it is greater to-day than in any preceding period, and while the standards have been raised in one direction, the average quality has been lowered in other directions. The educational and physical tests, while not needed for the races from Northwestern Europe, are now advocated as additions to the existing tests on account of the flood of races from Southeastern Europe.
