Representative JOHNSON. All right. I want to put in the record the reports of the consular agents. This data was furnished me under date of December 4, 1920, being reports from our consular agents who have to deal with applications for passports in Austria, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and elsewhere.

The CHAIRMAN. You deal with that matter in your majority report, of course?

Representative JOHNSON. A portion of it is in the majority report, but it is a statement to the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the House of Representatives from the State Department. Senator EDGE. How long is that report?

Representative JOHNSON. About 12 or 15 cablegrams.

Senator EDGE. Will you refer to it briefly while we are sitting here . in committee, so we may have it in mind?

Representative JOHNSON. Here is a report from Italy, for instance. I might say that some of these reports have been assailed as somewhat offensive, but they are from our own State Department, from the consular agents. We asked for statements, and we offer what we have received.

(The report referred to by the witness is here printed in full in the record, as follows:)

STATE DEPARTMENT REPORTS CONCERNING PROSPECTIVE IMMIRGATION.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, CONSULAR SERVICE, Washington, December 4, 1920. MY DEAR MR. JOHNSON: In accordance with your request of this morning it gives me great pleasure to send you herewith paraphrases of statements in regard to immigration received from officers of this Government who have visited the countries mentioned. I hope you will find the data of value in connection with the presentation of your bill to Congress.

Vienna.-Sixty per cent of the present emigrants are of the Jewish race, 20 per cent are of the German race, and 20 per cent of other races. The favorite occupation of these emigrants is merchant or clerk.

Tunis. Mostly poverty-stricken, often illiterate, Sicilians and Maltese laborers and families, migrating to better their condition; day laborers, mechanics, masons, joiners, and similar workers and dependents.

GERMANY.

Berlin. It is estimated that 2,000,000 Germans desire to emigrate to the United States if passport restrictions are removed.

The Germans who proceed to the United States are not of the most desirable class, due to the fact that military service is at present in most cases an absolute bar. Most of those who receive permission to leave for the United States are the aged parents of American citizens or minor children. The wives of declarants who are now permitted to proceed are almost always of the lower classes.

The Poles, Austrians, and nationals of the different new Russian States who apply for visés are, as a rule, of the most undesirable type of emigrant. They are usually traders, who only increase the number of middlemen, or, if they work, usually go into sweatshops.

GREECE.

Athens. A great majority of the emigrants to the United States from this district are of the peasant class and represent a low form of unskilled labor. Very few of them have any trade. From this number should be excluded a certain proportion who have been in the United States and other countries and who have there learned a trade, and who have raised themselves in the social scale to being proprietors of small shops, etc.

ITALY.

Catania.-A large proportion of aliens from this district going to the United State are inimical to the best interests of the American Government. This is not due to any bolshevist or communist tendency on their part, but to their standard of living and their characteristics, which render them unassimilable. Practically all the emigrants from this district are of the peasant class. For the most part they are small in stature and of a low order of intelligence. The men have all been engaged in agriculture and belong largely to the class which furnishes the unskilled day laborers in the United States.

Florence. The only really effective way of eliminating those inimical to American interests from aliens coming to America from a country so honeycombed with socialistic ideas and activities of every degree as Italy would be to suspend emigration altogether.

Turin. According to reports of steamship agents, the present unrest in Italy and the recent seizure of all metallurgical establishments by the workmen have had a serious effect upon the population, an increasing number of which desire to emigrate as soon as steamship accommodations can be found. Agents state that 75 per cent of those asking for tickets desire to go to the United States.

NETHERLANDS.

Rotterdam. The great mass of aliens passing through Rotterdam at the present time are Russian Poles or Polish Jews of the usual ghetto type. Most of them are more or less directly and frankly getting out of Poland to avoid war conditions. They are filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits.

POLAND.

Warsaw. Concerning the general characteristics of aliens emigrating to the United States from Poland and the occupation or trade followed by them reports indicate such to be substantially as follows:

(a) Physically deficient:

(1) Wasted by disease and lack of food supplies.

(2) Reduced to an unprecedented state of life during the period of the war as the result of oppression and want.

(3) Present existence in squalor and filth.

(b) Mentally deficient:

(1) Illy educated, if not illiterate, and too frequently with minds so stultified as to admit of little betterment.

(2) Abnormally twisted because of (a) reaction from war strain, (b) shock of revolutionary disorders, (c) the dullness and stultification resulting from past years of oppression and abuse.

(c) Economically undesirable:

(1) Twenty per cent is given as a round and generous estimate of productive laborers among present applicants for visées. This estimate is meant to include workers, or those who may be expected to become workers, from both sexes. The remaining percentage may be expected to be a drain on the resources of America for years.

(2) Of the 50 per cent of emigrants from Poland who may be termed efficients, 40 per cent of the total number of immigrants-will enter trade as a middleman, not a producer. These will thrive on the efforts of their associates.

(3) The productive labor, small percentage as it is, will be found in America in the sweatshops in the large centers of population. It is decidedly not agri

cultural, but urban in character. In this report female applicants as housewives, etc., are, of course, termed as efficients.

(d) Socially undesirable:

(1) Eighty-five to ninety per cent lack any conception of patriotic or national spirit, and the majorty of this percentage is mentally incapable of acquiring it. (2) Seventy-five per cent or upward will congregate in the large urban centers, such as New York or Baltimore, and add to undesirable congestion, already a grave civic problem.

(3) Immigrants of similar class are to be found already in the United States who, taken as a class and not individually, have proved unassimilable.

(4) All Europe is experiencing in the reaction from the war a corruption of moral standards. This may even be most noticeable in Germany. The introduction of these lowered standards can not fail but have its evil influence in the United States.

(e) At the moment, 90 per cent may be regarded as a low estimate of the proportion representing the Jewish race among emigrants to America from Poland. (f) The unassimilability of these classes politically is a fact too often proved in the past to bear any argument.

EXTRACTS FROM REPORTS OF OFFICERS WHO HAVE VISITED POLAND.

Report of March 3.-A large number of people are endeavoring to proceed to the United States regardless of travel and other difficulties. The majority of these people belong to the undesirable classes; that is, those who are prone to congregate in the large cities, and from whom the present type of political and labor agitators are drawn. These do not belong to the good classes of agricultural and factory workers.

Report of April 6.-Approximately 100,000 persons are desirous of immediately leaving Poland for the purpose of coming to the United States. Ninetyfive per cent of these persons are of the very lowest classes of the country and are considered to be thoroughly undesirable. Many of these persons have trachoma and other quarantinable diseases and come from typhus-infected areas. They are filthy and ignorant and the majority are verminous. Persons who come in contact with these prospective emigrants are obliged, owing to their insanitary condition, to take the greatest precautions to avoid contamination. There is a grave menace to other parts of Europe because persons from typhus-infected areas travel to European ports. The strictest quarantine regulations should be observed for emigrants from Poland.

To permit large numbers of such persons with such characteristics to enter the United States is believed to be a dangerous policy, inasmuch as it is impossible to determine the attitude of these persons toward orderly government owing to the present political and social unrest in this part of Europe. There appears to be under the present serious circumstances no adequate reason for the voyage to the United States of other than commercial men and of wives with or without young children whose husbands are already in this country. Report of April 10.--Outbreak of cholera this spring and summer anticipated. Typhus situation is a menace to travel.

Report of May 15.-Typhus conditions have shown little, if any, improvement. Some organizations interested in sending certain classes of Polish citizens to United States are objecting to quarantine restrictions, and are endeavoring to avoid these regulations through transshipment through other countries. Some emigrants are objecting to certain sanitary provisions, such as removal of beards and clipping of hair.

Report of May 17.-One immigrant aid society, which has offices in Poland, is said to be planning to send 250,000 emigrants of one race alone, the Jewish, to the United States within the next three years.

The increase of emigration from Poland raises two important questions for the United States-first, public health, and, second, public safety. Many bolshevik sympathizers are in Poland. It is difficult through visé control to keep out the undesirables.

Report of June 28.-Reports indicate 34.538 cases of typhus in Galicia and Poland in 1916, 43,480 in 1917, 97,082 in 1918, 232,206 in 1919. and the first two months of 1920, 46,500. Typhus situation in Poland shows little improvement despite active campaign against it. Refugees from infected regions in Russia are constantly pouring into Poland. Unconfirmed report shows that 8 per cent of the population of the city of Zitomir, Ukraine, died of typhus between January and April, 1920.

Report of July 11.-All emigrants who pass through Danzig are decidedly inferior type, physically, mentally, and morally, and because of their insanitary habits constitute a menace to the health of all with whom they come in contact. Report of July 11.—Crowds collecting in Warsaw for the purpose of procuring necessary papers to enable them to emigrate are alleged to be a menace to the health of Warsaw.

It is alleged that one of the reasons for the remarkable increase in the number of intending emigrants from Poland to the United States may be found in the activities of representatives at Warsaw of American immigrant aid societies, who are reported to have aided the emigrants to obtain passports, to have arranged for special care on trains to ports of departure, to have negotiated with steamship companies for ships to intermediate ports, and special trains to connect with the trans-Atlantic liners.

Report of October 1.-It is estimated that 350,000 Polish subjects of the Hebrew race alone are anxious to proceed to the United States for the purpose of joining relatives or for other reasons. Another estimate places the figure of those who will aetempt to reach the United States during the next three years at 5,000,000. Crowds estimated at 6,000 have at times waited before the Warsaw consulate to obtain visés. It is impossible to overestimate the peril of the class of emigrants coming from this part of the world, and every possible care and safeguard should be used to keep out the undesirables.

RUMANIA.

Bucharest.-Possibly 10 per cent of applicants are Rumanians from Transylvania or the Old Kingdom. The remainder are Jews, mostly from Bessarabia and Bukovina, practically all, except women and children, being petty merchants or salesmen. It should also be noted that the proportion of men emigrating is increasing and that not a few are probably fugitives from Ukrainia who have managed to obtain Rumanian passports. Ninety per cent of applicants are Jews of both sexes and all ages.

SWITZERLAND.

Berne. The stagnation of industry, the general economic situation, and the enormous increase in taxation consequent on the expenses incurred during the war, together with fear of social unrest, is sufficient to account for the desire of the Swiss agriculturist, laborer, or business man to seek relief beyond the

sea.

TURKEY.

Constantinople.-The emigrants from this part of the world are exclusively raw laborers, waiters, and servants who are intellectually incapable of being dangerous. Never having enjoyed the right to participate in governing themselves, they are politically colorless and controlling them is largely a matter of making sure that they can pass the literacy test and the physical examination in order that they may not incur the expense of a journey to the United States only to be deported.

Senator EDGE. Those telegrams from the consular agents are in response to what?

Representative JOHNSON. They are reports made to the State Department from time to time by the consular agents.

Senator EDGE. I understand that, but were they in response to a special request for the consular agents to report at this particular time because of this legislation, or anything of that kind?

Representative JOHNSON. No; not quite. I sent a note down there about the 1st of December and asked for such reports as they had, and they sent me paraphrases from their reports, under a letter dated December 4, 1920, and our bill came up in the following three or four days.

Senator EDGE. Those reports were already in their files.

Representative JOHNSON. Yes; these were available at that time. On December 11, 1920, I had an additional set of reports, which is

here in the Congressional Record, dealing with the actual numbers desiring to proceed to the United States, covering refugees, former enemy soldiers, and citizens generally-for instance, of Belgrade. (The data offered by the witness is here printed in full in the record, as follows:)

The Hon. ALBERT JOHNSON,

Chairman Committee on Immigration,

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, December 11, 1920.

House of Representatives

MY DEAR MR. JOHNSON: In compliance with your request, I am sending herewith additional extracts from reports concerning immigration which have just reached the department from officers of this Government who have visited the countries mentioned.

Very sincerely, yours,

WILBER J. CARR.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA.

Prague. It is estimated that there are 5,000 persons who intend to apply for visés during the month of December. There are also many thousands of persons in the surrounding countries desirous of proceeding to the United States who have been advised to make their applications in the country of origin. Applications for visés are increasing at the rate of 5,000 each quarter. At this rate 25,000 persons will be applying for visés during the June quarter. The number of persons desirous of emigrating is increasing rapidly owing to the present unsettled conditions. The majority of these persons are aged parents, wives, and children of persons already residing in the United States. The occupation of most of the prospective emigrants is farming, but they are going to the mining and manufacturing districts of Pennsylvania. The destination of these persons should undoubtedly be restricted.

ENGLAND.

London. The non-British aliens who obtain visés consist chiefly of Poles and Polish Jews, who have large families, and generally are engaged in the garment trade. They are an undesirable class of immigrant, as they live almost entirely in large cities, particularly New York.

ITALY.

Catania.—Approximately 10,000 persons have obtained visés and are now waiting opportunity to emigrate to the United States. It is estimated 100,000 or more persons want to come to America. During the spring and summer applications for visés will increase, with requests estimated at 3,000 per month. Naples. It is estimated that 76,000 persons are awaiting opportunity to emigrate to the United States. Any further increase is, of course, contingent on the augmentation of the number of steamships to facilitate departure. There appears to be no possibility of a decrease in emigration during 1921.

Palermo.-There are 50,000 emigrants who have already procured visés waiting to depart from Palermo, but many are discouraged from seeking visés at this time because of steamship accommodation and winter weather. During the following spring and summer it is estimated that there will be between four and five othusand applications per month. Owing to the limited capacity of Sicilian emigrants for only manual labor and their failure to assimilate properly, which is evidenced by those returning to their native land unAmericanized, the admission of this class will tend to lower the American standard.

NETHERLANDS.

Rotterdam. At all times there are awaiting in barracks on an average of 2,500 persons who desire to sail to the United States. This number is constantly increasing, coming generally from Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and the Netherlands. Rotterdam is a large clearing house for these countries.