acceptance of the fact. Community interests grow up. The discomforts, which of course are present, are so much emphasized that it seems well to speak of this. New friendships are made, the various nationals tend to gather in little groups on the porches or in the day rooms. School, Sunday services, occasional concerts, thebathing of babies in the nursery, visits to the hospital, receiving visits from friends, the ever recurring three meals a day, all serve to make a life that is much more filled with variety than some of these same lives have ever known before.

Where many have never previously suffered from such crowded conditions, others have never before had so much done for them. Clothes are furnished, sewing is given out, and all the various societies1o at work at the island, lend themselves to the furnishing of any necessary and possible help.

Then too we must remember that if one woman is bitter because of the untidy habits of some of her neighbors, these same neighbors, hard working mothers of large families, may be looking at her with scorn because of a moral defect which means exclusion. Even deportation seems not always the unbearable experience that many writers think it to be.

A theoretical estimate of immigration usually lacks much in an understanding of these various and interlaced parts. Out of this atmosphere, then, came the children of whom I shall speak. In this atmosphere, whatever further advance, in the process of selection is deemed wise, will have to be developed.

1 For descriptions of procedure at Ellis Island see:

(1) "Regulations Governing the Medical Inspection of Aliens." 1917: Govt. Printing Office, Miscellaneous Publication No. 5.

(2) "Manual of the Mental Examination of Aliens." 1918, Govt. Printing Office, Miscellaneous Publication No. 18.

(3) "The Mentality of the Arriving Immigrant." E. H. Mullan. 1917, Govt. Printing Office, Public Health Bulletin 90.

(4) 'Mental Examination of Immigrants. Administration and Line Inspection at Ellis Island." E. H. Mullan. 1917, Govt. Printing Office: Reprint No. 398 from the Public Health Service Report.

(5) "The Medical Examination of Mentally Defective Aliens, Its Scope and Limitations." L. L. Williams, M.D. American Journ. of Insanity, 71, no. 2, pp. 257-268, October 1914.

(6) Public Health Service, Annual Report 1910, p. 166. Description by Dr. Mullan, writing from Montreal, as to the detection of mental defectives.

(7) "Medical Inspection of Aliens at Ellis Island with Special Reference to the Examination of Women and Children." Mary T. Mernin M.D. A. A. Surgeon U. S. P. H. S. Medical Woman's Journal, vol. xxxi, no. 6, June 1924, pp. 172–175.

(8) "Imported Americans." Broughton Brandenburg.

2 "Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York." Friedrich Kapp. New York, 1870 (The Nation Press). 3 Annual Report, U. S. Public Health Service, 1923, p. 188.

New York Times, December 22, 1923.

5 See New York Times, August 16, 1923, for text.

6 Report Commissioner General of Immigration, 1922, p. 5.

7 Speech by Commissioner General Husband. November 21, 1923, Arundel Hall, Baltimore.

8 Odd things often happen in regard to luggage. What is checked on one side of an official may be picked up, tag and all, by the immigrant, and carried off, on the other side, unless great care is used. That such a procedure offers difficulties, when later the check is produced, can easily be understood.

• Often when the children are hungry, it is due to the fact that owing to the excitement of boarding the barges, and through various fears, the mother has not given them breakfast even though breakfast is provided. 10 "Medical Inspection of Aliens," p. 19, op. cit., note 1.

11 A boy, while waiting to be summoned to the examination room, once asked if it were true that it would take him days to get through Ellis Island. He was of a nationality that had just been making complaints against the treatment of its nationals at Ellis Island, and the first impulse was to say: "No, it doesn't take days. The stories that you hear are exaggerated." With the usual caution, the answer given was, “If you are all right in every way, you go through very quickly." The boy went on into the examining room, and in the next hospital train that went out, he led the line. Though lack of direct answering is sometimes thought "unfeeling," it seems much kinder in the long run, than voluminous but perhaps false information. Sometimes, of course, lack of a helpful answer is due to irritability or fatigue on the part of the guard; but it seems unusually seldom that this is the case in the midst of much possible provocation. To distinguish the moment when everything must stop until a full answer to a question is given (as when a woman's baby has died, and she doesn't know just what has happened) takes a certain sort of ever alert comprehending attention, and in the midst of swamping numbers, cases needing attention may pass unheeded for a while; but they are sure to be found out in time, and then great kindness shown.

12 There is great danger of overemphasizing the hardship, for many times a mother is dissolved in tears over separation from a baby that is trotting off to the care that the hospital will give, most happily. After having seen the two the next day, you realize that at least the particular strain referred to is but temporary, however great an anxiety it may

develop into, in serious cases of illness. That, however, is a very different question which natives at home, as well as aliens travelling, must at times go through.

13 "Mental Examinations of Immigrants," p. 8, op. cit., note 1.

14 An old woman from Macedonia who, when first brought into the examination room, did nothing but pray, paying practically no attention to questions asked her through the interpreter, on the next day, after a night of sleep, and after talking with her family whom she joined in the detention rooms, answered promptly and well, the questions that the doctor asked, and did with sufficient readiness such performance tests as she was asked to do. Great care is taken not to judge in haste.

15 For case histories see: "Manual for the Mental Examination of Aliens," pp. 72-109, op. cit., note 1.

See also "Mental Examination of Immigrants," E. H. Mullan, pp. 8-9, op. cit., note 1.

16 Commissioner Husband in a speech in Baltimore on November 21, 1923, cited some figures which were gathered, as well as could be, over a given time, to show how many people were turned back by steamship companies in comparison with those refused during the same time by the immigration authorities. 50,000 were turned back by the companies in the specified time, while only 6000 or 7000 were so turned, by the machinery of immigration. Fines are a cause of caution for the steamship companies.

17 Figures given personally by Dr. Loughran of Ellis Island.

18 In regard to digits, Dr. Loughran said that he found very few Italians who could give six, while the English, the Scotch, and the Germans could get six easily. It seems probable that the actual length of the words themselves (in some languages a factor) could not in these cases enter into the question.

19 The list of 1922, shows 19 different societies which have representatives doing work with the immigrants.

CHAPTER V

REVIEW OF CERTAIN ARTICLES AND STATISTICS PRESENTED BY WRITERS CONNECTED WITH IMMIGRATION WORK

Next must come a survey of the work that has actually been done with immigrants, on the mental side.

In his recent book on Intelligence Testing, Pintner suggests that a future edition of such a book1 may well have among its chapter headings, "The Immigrant," and, he refers briefly to Dr. Goddard's work at Ellis Island, to which reference will be made later, as "among the very few reports that we possess dealing with actual testing at an immigrant station." Such studies are few, it is true, and practically all are made in connection with the problem of detecting the mentally abnormal among arriving immigrants, not from the point of view of determining intellectual rating in a group, without prejudice. That is, for the most part, such work has had to do with those already suspected of some mental lack, and for that reason turned apart for further investigation.

The constantly increasing strictness of the law on the mental side, which we have already noted, naturally caused increasing development in the measures used; but we must not forget that various simple tests have been in use at immigrant stations, for unknown lengths of time. The Geographic Test, for instance, is said to go back for many years.2

Before 1907, Dr. Williams tells us, the feebleminded,3 if they were given a medical certificate, were landed or deported at the discretion of the immigration authorities. From 1892 to 1903 inclusive, one to seven were excluded annually for mental reasons; from 1904 to 1907, from 16 to 92 a year were shut out. For the years directly after the stricter law went into effect, the tabulation on following page shows the change that had come about.

After speaking of the great difficulty in detecting the high grade moron, as the period of observation is so short, and as it is impossible to get the true history, or a true record of emotional

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stability, Dr. Williams gives warning that no single test must be depended on, however valuable it may be. He also refers to criticism coming in this matter of testing from observers without medical knowledge, from lay workers who have learned the usual tests employed in examining school children, from people who have not considered the practical difficulties, or the gravity of what a certificate for feeblemindedness means. In "certifying," he says, as nearly as is humanly possible, there must be certainty. Mental defectives excluded from 1908 to 1913

He then refers to an investigation at that time in progress at Ellis Island.

The study is one of the few not based on already suspected cases. Dr. Mullan, who conducted the experiments, reminds the reader in his introduction that in order to diagnose mental disease or deficiency in an immigrant, there must be some knowledge of the "mental ability and conduct of the normal or average immigrant at the time of arrival." Various psychologists assisted Dr. Mullan with their suggestions in formulating the plan to be used, in trying to establish these norms, and special mention is made of Dr. August Hoch, Professor Ruger, and Professor Woodworth.

The tests selected were to be given to a number of immigrants passing through Ellis Island, who were not "obviously mentally deficient or insane." Dr. Mullan emphasized the need of knowing what could be done "under the conditions attending the landing from a long voyage!" Many of the tests used were already employed at Immigration Stations-others were new.

The examinations began in January, 1914. The immigrants chosen had been in detention at least twenty-four hours, that is, the first excitement of arrival at least was over. The examiner tried to select young subjects over nine years of age who had never