new race would come other cultures, languages, and traditions for the country. Proper control of immigration is necessary to prevent class or caste formation in America; the preservation of democracy depends upon the absence of caste; the development of democracy upon a uniformly high national intelligence. While language and race are not always associated, there is a close correlation between them. In building a defense against the insidious invasion of American social and political life by unassimilated aliens, New York State found it necessary, in November, 1921, to make an amendment to her State constitution which requires a knowledge of the English language in order to qualify as a voter in New York State. It is interesting to learn that this amendment passed by a vote of 896,355 votes for it and 632,144 votes against it. Had the amendment been offered to the people a few years later, it is a question whether it would have passed. The text of this constitutional amendment which seeks to preserve the government of the American people to themselves in New York State reads as follows: After January first, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two, no person shall become entitled to vote by attaining majority, by naturalization or otherwise, unless such person is also able, except for physical disability, to read and write English; and suitable laws shall be passed by the legislature to enforce this provision. The matter of social and cultural assimilation of immigrants has just come to an acute state in the United States. The formation of isolated alien centers, which maintain their alien languages and cultures, is a dangerous thing for the American people, in which the greatest tie of nationality is a common speech and free exchange in trade, travel, and cultural contact. If alien interests from the outside interfere in American domestic politics, or if unassimilated, although naturalized immigrants, organize political blocs on the basis of their former alienhood, or specific alien race and tongue, then the United States as a whole, will find it increasingly necessary to follow the policy of New York State, and to define the qualifications necessary to vote, with particular reference to American standards of character and intelligence. An amendment to the Constitution of the United States with the following provisions would doubtless serve, so far as could be done by law in this direction, in establishing a high and patriotic standard for the suffrage: SECTION 1. The right to vote shall be vouchsafed and limited in each State to residents thereof who are citizens of the United States, who are over twentyone years of age, who are intelligent, literate, sane, patriotic and obedient to law, who have visible means of support, who have duly qualified and registered as voters, and who, except for physical disability, can speak, read, and write the Engligh language. SEC. 2. The Congress shall establish uniform standards and tests necessary for the enforcement of this article, and each State shall conduct the qualifying, registering, and voting within its own territory; provided that all these processes shall be executed without favor or hindrance. A given racial complex which characterizes a nation of one generation may or may not continue the same racial proportion in subsequent generations. The varying factors for this change or evolution are, principally, mate selection and differential fecundity, modified, of course, by immigration which influences the next generation in accordance with its quality and numbers. There is a continual succession of dominant strains or family stocks within a given population. A strain represented by 5 per cent to-day in subsequent generations may represent 90 per cent of the population of a given territory, while the dominant strain of to-day may die out completely or almost in subsequent generations or centuries. Natural selection works this phenomenon and, as a rule, works slowly. Artificial or guided selection may accomplish in a few generations the same ends which natural selection might never accomplish or would achieve only after many centuries. In comparing the rate of evolution in natural species with the rate in domestic species, Darwin calls attention to the great advance which man made when he saw the possibility of taking his own evolution in hand. The nation, in setting an ideal in race and family qualities, can work by law and custom toward this ideal, and properly controlled immigration is one of the greatest factors. If the American Nation decides that it is still unmade as a people, then it might well throw open the doors and admit all comers, but if it decides that we have national ideals worth saving, not only in national tradition and individual quality, but also by racial ingredients, the Nation must exercise stricter control over immigration. This is a critical period in American history. We can continue to be American, to recruit to and to develop our racial qualities, or we can allow ourselves to be supplanted by other racial stocks. The individual standard for immigrants must always be high, and, for would-be immigrants of blood distantly related to the average American, the standard must call for talent of an especially high order, to compensate for distance in blood. Superior stock is the ideal. From the international point of view, international friendship and close cultural and commercial contacts are entirely compatible with the development of our own race and culture along those lines which lead to our own ideals. DIFFERENTIAL FECUNDITY The CHAIRMAN. You have made frequent reference to the subject of differential fecundity and its bearing upon the immigration problem. What statistics have you to present on this subject? Doctor LAUGHLIN. The character of a nation is based primarily upon the inborn racial traits of its inhabitants. In national development the determination of this racial character is brought about primarily by two biological forces: First, the character of the earliest and successive immigrants into the given territory; second, the factor of mate selection and differential fecundity between the different immigrant elements and their descendants. I have discussed the matter of immigration. Now, in differential fecundity let me present briefly the second subject statistically, as it applies to the American people to-day. Ignoring for the time being future immigration, the future inborn character of the American people will be determined by the differential fecundity of the family and racial stocks already established here. Table No. 6 (pp. 1298-1299), which I present to the committee, shows the present-day differential fecundity among five nativity groups. First, the whole population; second, the white population; third, the negro population; fourth, the foreign-born white population, and fifth, the native-born white population. There are different statistical methods of calculating fecundity. Perhaps the best and the most standard is shown as method No. 1 on the chart, in which the parental group comprises all of the women between the ages of 15 and 44, inclusive, and the corresponding offspring group, all of the children of both sexes under 5 years of age, at the same date. The second method of calculating fecundity statistically takes the parental group as comprising all of the women between the ages of 15 and 44, inclusive, at one definite date, and the corresponding offspring group as the children of both sexes under 10 years of age at a period 10 years later. The second method gives an index from two to two and one-third times larger than the first, but in relative values one is about as good as the other. Perhaps No. 1, being the simpler, is a better standard. TABLE 6.—Approximate fecundity indices of American women by nativity group for the decade 1910 to 1920 From the census returns on nativity, age, and sex, some light may be thrown upon the matter of differential fecundity of the women in the several nativity groups of the American population. This measure of differential fecundity may be computed by different formulæ. Two methods are given in this table] Whole population. 105, 710, 620 124, 756, 342211, 573, 230 0. 4675 91, 972, 266 121, 768, 4083 22, 971, 305 1. 0553 2, 257 White population 94, 820, 91522, 017, 601 5 10, 373, 921. 471281, 731, 95719, 270, 619620, 461, 166 1. 0618 2. 253 Negro population. 10, 463, 13172, 663, 2691, 143, 699 .4294 9, 827, 763 72, 435, 1892, 409, 906.98962.305 Foreign-born white population. Native-born white population_. 13, 712, 754 10 3, 459, 492 11 2, 463, 241.7120 13, 345, 545 10 3, 365, 677 12 5,022, 899 1. 4924 2.096 81, 108, 161 13 18,558,109 14 7, 910, 680.4263 68, 386, 412 13 15,904,942 15 15,438,267 9707 2.277 1 All women of child-bearing age. 2 All children, 0-5 years. 3 All children, 0-10 years. 4 All white women of child-bearing age. All white children, 0-5 years. 6 All white children, 0-10 years. 7 All negro women of child-bearing age. All negro children, 0-5 years. All negro children, 0-10 years. 10 All foreign-born white women of child-bearing age. 11 Offspring group: I. Formula: [All native-born white children, 0-5 years, both parents foreign born]+[(All native-born white children, 0-5 years, of mixed parentage) X(Per cent persons of mixed parentage, 1920, whose mother was the foreign born parent) +[All foreign-born white children, 0-5 years.] In comparing nativity groups, fecundity index No. 1 gives an index of the whole population of 0.4675; for the white population, 0.4712; for the negro population, 0.4294; for the foreign-born white population, 0.7120; for the native-born white, 0.4263. We thus learn that in 1920 the foreign-born white population was 1.6 times as fecund as the native-born white population. The data for these computations were secured from the United States census records of 1910 and 1920. Ultimately accurate fecundity data concerning each of the several racial, social, and occupational groups in the United States should be secured. It is vital to the nation to have these data, not only en masse for the nation as a unit, but for each of the several family and group elements which compose the nation. The direction of our national evolution 12 Offspring group: I. Formula: 838,057 44,984 2,463, 241 [All native-born white children, 0-10 years, both parents foreign born]+[(All native-born white children, 0-10 years, of mixed parentage)X(Per cent persons, 1910, of mixed parentage whose mother was the foreign-born parent)]+[All foreign-born white children, 0-10 years). II. Computation: Offspring group=d+e+f [All native-born white children, 0-5 years, both parents native born]+[(All native-born white children, 0-5 years, of mixed parentage)X(Per cent persons, 1920, of mixed parentage, whose mother was the native-born parent).] II. Computation: Offspring group=m+n [All native-born white children, 0-10 years, both parents native born]+[(All native-born white children, 0-10 years, of mixed parentage)X(Per cent persons, 1910, of mixed parentage, whose mother was the native-born parent).] II. Computation: Offspring group=0+p 0= p= 91. Pi III. Findings, estimate: Approximate population of particular offspring group o+p=. 15, 438, 267 1. In the absence of first-hand field surveys (which surveys would give the nativity of the mother and father, the number of children, and the age of each child) the differential fecundity must be computed from the best available census data. Sample census surveys of the nature described in these notes, in sample regions, would be of great value. Ultimately, fecundity data should be sought for the whole United States, if not in connection with future decennial censuses, then through vital statistical and special fecundity surveys. 2. It is observed that these two methods give different absolute values of fecundity indices; method 2 giving generally two to two and one-third times the corresponding value of method 1. There are two factors in this difference: (1) Offspring group in method 1 includes only those children under 5 years of age; method 2 those under 10 years of age. (2) Method 1 measures both parental and offspring groups as of the same date, (1920); method 2 measures the parental group as of 10 years earlier (1910) than the offspring group (1920). can be gauged as much by this group of statistics as by any other single element in a national survey. THE AUTHORITY OF THE COMMITTEE AND FOREIGN PROPAGANDA The CHAIRMAN. I would like to say to the committee, we are in this quandary. The consuls have made reports to the United States in giving estimates of people who would like to migrate to the United States, and they are running into large numbers. If we request the Department of State for information of that kind, which has been sent in by consuls, who must maintain pleasant relations in the places where they are stationed, we may receive the information, but it is sent up in confidence. I should like to ask the committee, of what use is confidential information? Mr. Box. It might be valuable to us if we could use it as members of this committee. Mr. VINCENT. I can not see why we should not have this information officially. The CHAIRMAN. I am in a position to introduce a resolution, and that resolution might add "if not incompatible with public interests." Mr. Box. We passed a resolution the other day dropping those words. Why could we not do it again in this matter? The CHAIRMAN. The committee has intimations here of information from public officers that would be very vital, but when we receive it, we would be stopped not only from putting it into the record, but from discussing it in open sessions of the committee. Mr. BACON. What is the object of the State Department in giving that information to us and not allowing it to be made public? The CHAIRMAN. On the ground (not information given to me recently, but in years past) that confidential reports to the State Department are confidential as to the character of immigrants and the number of immigrants and, by the very nature of things, are but estimates and observations. In other words, a consul makes a statement as to a type, and his statement can not be reduced to absolute facts, so the minute the State Department lets from its files a report by a consul and permits it to become public it publishes the observations of our agents, and those observations, if they are irritating at all to the nationals of any country, become protested. Mr. BACON. Let them protest. Mr. Box. That is the very remark I wanted to mention, and it develops the fact that reports leading to the proper protection of American interests and making suggestions are more or less irritating to the foreign countries. If that is so, it is the greater reason why the American people ought to know it. In other words, if aliens want to come to this country so badly that it makes them mad to tell the American people the truth about their character, then it is all the more important that we know it. Mr. VINCENT. If that information were irritating to the foreign country, it is to our best interest to know it. The CHAIRMAN. If you develop that a little bit, you show that we are in the position that Doctor Laughlin has described; we are in the class of immigrant-receiving nations. Mr. BACON. I think we ought to have a show-down on this, and I would like to empower the chairman to use all the authority at his |