Shipping concerns are making preparations for a large increase in immigration after the first of the year. This increase is believed to be inevitable, particularly if restrictions against Germans and Austrians are removed.

SERBIA.

Belgrade. It is estimated that 5,000 persons desire to proceed to the United States within the next six months. There are many more persons, who are Russian refugees and former enemy soldiers.

SPAIN.

Valencia.-Emigrants from this district apparently without undesirable tendencies, but appear to have no intention of becoming American citizens.

Vigo.-Spanish press reports are discouraging to emigration, as they are pointing out the bad labor conditions in the United States.

TURKEY.

Constantinople.-While there is at the present time no congestion of persons waiting transportation to America, there are thousands of Russians recently evacuated from the Crimea hoping to procure permission to make the journey. There are also some 25,000 persons of local lower classes who, if they can procure funds, contemplate to emigrate to this country. There are doubtless many more than this number in the interior who are unable to make the journey at this time, due to abnormal conditions.

The almost unrestricted immigration under the present regulations of ablebodied persons will make dangerous complications in the labor conditions of the United States. Not only would it affect the United States, but in addition it will deprive the Near East of its raw labor supply, and therefore retard by years the rehabilitation of countries and affect the economic situation of the world.

Seventy-five per cent of present applicants are fleeing from taxation and war conditions. Their obvious intention is to engage in petty businesses upon arrival in this country, being petty middlemen by profession. Existing local conditions would force these people to work into the ranks of labor if they were not permitted to emigrate. They should be obliged to remain at home and assist in repairing the destruction wrought by war, if world conditions are to be improved.

American prestige abroad has been seriously injured by the travel of naturalized but unassimilated persons of foreign origin. One-third of these Americans are unable to speak English intelligently and are usually the ones who are wrongly involved in cases requiring protection.

Trieste.-It is contemplated that there will be no material change in the number of applications in the following few months. Despite present system of consular control, it is impossible to prevent labor agitators, criminals, and other undesirables from obtaining visés.

Malta. The class of emigrants belong to skilled and unskilled workmen. The skilled workmen come mostly from the British dockyards; the others are largely farm laborers, cabmen, and small traders.

POLAND.

Warsaw. It is estimated that persons waiting for visés at the present time will be in excess of 400 per diem. At least 350,000 Polish Jews and Poles are preparing to proceed to the United States during the current year. Some estimates place the total at 500,000 and 1,000,000 as the number of persons who may emigrate. This is due to filtration of persons from the newly acquired territory of Poland.

The emigration of this number depends upon their ability to obtain funds from American relatives or associates, steamship accommodations, etc. The per diem rate of persons seeking to leave Poland will probably increase in the immediate future.

Restriction of emigration from Poland is highly desirable because of the unassimilable character of the large majority of the emigrants and because of the immediate danger of their carrying contagious diseases now prevailing in that country.

Numerous emigrants show signs of mental, physical, and moral depreciation, probably due to hardships encountered during the past six years of the war. Such emigrants should not be admitted to the United States unless guaranties are given by responsible relatives for their care and maintenance.

GERMANY.

Berlin.-A conservative estimate furnished by the German Government indicates that 2,000,000 German citizens desire to emigrate to the United States. There is no present indication that such a movement would be restricted. Many applications have been withheld because of the present understanding that visés can only be obtained in cases of urgent necessity, and men who have been in the military service are not acceptable. If visé regulations are relaxed there will be immediately a great increase in applications.

Poor living conditions, high taxes, and unemployment are reasons why these millions desire to leave Germany. Among the present applicants are many refugees from Poland and Lithuania, who become traders and are not producers.

I present also a tabulated list showing typical consular offices, with estimated number of visés applied for and granted during the months of October and November, etc.:

(The following is also from a statement by Mr. Johnson in the Congressional Record:)

I desire to call attention to the fact that about 1,250 immigrants who arrived to-day on the White Star Liner Adriatic have been sent to Hoffman Island because of an outbreak of typhus among them.

At Gloucester, N. J., 11 aliens have been taken from the steamship Haverford and sent to the detention station suffering with typhus.

The French senate is considering closing the doors of that Republic to immigrants owing to the spreading of a mysterious disease known as malady No. 9, which is a form of cholera and with which tens of thousands of Polish and Russian refugees to Paris have suffered the past year. French police say that thousands of these immigrants are crossing the French border daily, intending

to go to America despite the fact that they have not obtained American visés to their passports. In Paris they are sleeping as many as 20 in a room.

Those who speak of desirable immigration should note that no aliens are coming aimlessly to the United States from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Laws of these countries forbid. Those who come to the United States from these countries come with just such guaranties as House bill 14461 provides.

It is interesting to note that Spain, by recent royal decree, insures each Spanish emigrant to the amount of 3,000 pesetas (about $600) against risks of death or permanent disability while the emigrant is proceeding to his destination aboard ship. Immigration of men from Spain to the United States is increasing rapidly, and Canada is closing her gates to immigrants by various methods.

In the meantime, while we are splitting hairs over the method of suspension, the Communist Party of America has flooded the country with the most vicious circular it has yet put out. It calls for straight-out revolution.

Representative JOHNSON. Noting the consular reports as to the situation in Germany, I desire to call the attention of Senators to the fact that when the passport regulation dies we will be left, while preparing a general immigration bill, without means to stay a possible great migration from Germany. The best reports indicate that a great number of present German citizens would like to migrate to the United States.

Now, gentlemen of the committee, coming down to the immediate emergency, I would like to have permission to put into the record some papers which were sent to me by Mr. Frederick S. Bigelow, associate editor of the Saturday Evening Post, which publication sent to Central Europe a newspaper correspondent who published an article in that periodical on November 6 last entitled "The Goal of Central Europe." The United States is the goal. That article needs to be read by everyone. Mr. Kenneth Roberts, who wrote that article, is in Poland again and will publish shortly an additional article. Furthermore, a special representative of the State Department, Mr. McBride, is about to return from Europe, and I think will be here in time to appear before your committee.

Mr. Bigelow says in a telegram under date of December 31, 1920,

to me:

See Williams's important dispatch in to-day's Ledger on fears of French press that if central European and oriental aliens now in France are barred out of America the dregs of Europe will remain in France.

He asked me to present the article to this committee. It follows:

[Philadelphia Public Ledger, Dec. 31, 1920.]

FRANCE IS STIRRED OVER IMMIGRATION-REFUGEES FROM ORIENT AND CENTRAL EUROPE HELD THERE AS RESULT OF UNITED STATES PUTTING UP BARS-AMERICANS ALSO PROBLEM-THOUSANDS ARRIVING TO LIVE ALMOST GRATUITOUSLY AS RESULT OF EXCHANGE RATE.

(By Wythe Williams.)

PARIS, December 30, 1920. The year of suspended immigration just adopted by the United States is expected to provoke such serious internal conditions in France that the Government probably will take similar protective measures.

To-day it is a matter of immediate attention for the authorities how to dispose of the thousands of emigrants and refugees who have joined the exodus from central Europe and the Orient en route for America. Virtually every large city in France is crowded with itinerant peoples, whom the newspapers refer to as "the dregs of Europe," and the news from the United States, together with the refusal of passports, has left them at a standstill in western Europe.

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With Italy overcrowded and a labor crisis in England, France has become more and more like the Ellis Island of Europe. As the French always have prided themselves on their national hospitality, there never has been much of a ban on immigration. But now the cities of Paris, Marseille, and Bordeaux are asking for quick action.

The French authorities want a strict surveillance of all borders and a law prohibiting immigration until the industrial and economic conditions of the world are more settled. It has been suggested that a strict medical examination be given all who pass the frontiers and that information concerning their financial status be recorded correctly.

66

With the franc worth less than six cents at to-day's exchange, it is pointed out, with increasing discomfort to the French, that crowds are pouring in from lands where currency is measured in pesetas, pounds, florins, and, above all, dollars, enabling them to live in France French are burdened by post war taxation. almost gratuitously while the Paris gives the list of Americans having taken residence as totaling 22,000, and A recent census of strangers in they are only a part of the colony which assumes few of the taxation obligations of France's citizens, but which adds to the housing and apartment problem of the cities.

If immigration restrictions are to be established it is proposed not to overlook these " de luxe" individuals, and to present the regular luxury taxes along with their cards of identity. But this has been suggested before and always answered with argument that Americans or others who have the advantage of the exchange spend about three times as much as they would normally, and while they do not produce much they bring gold and leave it here, which, according to economists, gives a proportionate stabilizing impulse to exchange. Thus it probably will be long considered before tourists have taximeters applied to their pocketbooks.

Gentlemen, if the French press views with alarm the vast numbers of aliens that it characterizes as "the dregs of Europe" which now crowd her leading cities and is fearful that France instead of America may become the catch basin for the permanent reception of these undesirables, is not that the strongest and most impartial evidence that our Senate should pass without delay the bill for the suspension of immigration now before it?

Next I present advance sheets of an editorial to appear in the Saturday Evening Post this week, on January 8. It is a concise argument in favor of immediate temporary suspension of immigration, and is as follows:

NO ADMITTANCE.

The bill framed by Mr. Albert Johnson, chairman of the House Committee on Immigration, which will, if it becomes law, largely shut off the inflow of aliens for a period of one year, is one of the most important pieces of legislation that is likely to come before the present Congress.

Among the heartiest supporters of Mr. Johnson's measure are the labor interests. The main reason for their backing is obvious. have for sale is the work of their hands; and their desire to have the price The commodity they of that commodity maintained at a time when other prices are melting away is just as reasonable and just as natural as the wish of their employers for increased protective tariffs on the goods they manufacture. The protection of labor by an act temporarily shutting out alien workers would probably exercise a marked tendency to counteract unemployment during the period of deflation through which we are now passing. Such a measure would be heartily applauded by one of the most numerous and most powerful elements in the country; but that is by no means the strongest argument that can be urged in favor of the Johnson bill.

The disquieting fact is that we are confronted by a grave emergency. According to reports submitted to the Department of State, millions of intending immigrants of the poorest and most refractory sort are almost literally standing in line at European seaports waiting for ships to bring them over. menace is not distant, but immediate; and self-protective action must likewise be immediate if our national interests are to be safeguarded. Their

If the World War can teach us anything it should have taught us the folly of throwing open our sea gates to all the peoples of the Old World on farcically easy terms. It used to be one of our proudest boasts that we welcomed the downtrodden, the oppressed, the poverty-stricken, the fit and the unfit to a land of freedom, of plenty, of boundless opportunity. Our hindsight tells us that this boast was fatuous. The exploiters of cheap labor and the incurable sentimentalists stand almost alone in their continued allegiance to our policy of the past. All thinking men who have no ax to grind, no nest to feather, are becoming aware that if we are to shape our national destines with the smallest regard for common prudence we must pick and choose our future immigrants, and admit only such as show some signs of being the stuff of which good Americans can eventually be made. This picking and choosing should be done in accordance with a new body of laws, painstakingly considered and laboriously worked out by practical men in the light of past experience and of present world conditions.

Mr. Johnson's bill is designed to give Congress leisure in which to accomplish the vast amount of constructive work that must be done before we can hope to write into our statute books a wise immigration code. Inasmuch as such a body of laws, to be really effective, should require thorough investigations of intending immigrants at ports of embarkation and at many foreign centers of emigration, a somewhat formidable organization of expert officials will have to be built up before the highest standard of choosing can be enforced.

The short closed season provided for in the Johnson bill would be of the highest value in allowing time for the gradual building up of an adequate foreign immigration service. Moreover, such a breathing space would afford a welcome opportunity to find out what we can do with those aliens who have as yet shown no willingness to exchange their imported political and social ideas, feuds, tongues, and conditions of life for those of the land that is to be their future home. It would serve also as a training season for those patriotic citizens who are endeavoring to work out practical programs for intensive courses in Americanization.

It is futile to deny that our future immigration policies are a paramount issue. In late years the character of those who have been coming to us from overseas has unmistakably deteriorated. Our immediate and imperative need of a system of social and political quarantine, over and above all old-fashioned immigrational restrictions, is too self-evident to require argument.

The Johnson bill appears to be the first step toward future safety. It merely authorizes the posting of "No Admittance" signs on every frontier--a warning off of strangers until we shall have set our house in order, made a new set of rules, and arranged to have the premises properly policed.

Returning to the reports of the consular agents, it is a fact, and so shown in one of these reports, that in France, Paris, in the poorest districts, they are greatly disturbed by the number of immigrants that have flowed in from Poland and Central Europe, originally intending that when they got across the boundary line to come to the United States, but either through poverty or failure of the machinery of the great charitable organization which is attempting to lift up and assist in this migration, they have been unable to carry out their plan to come here. At this point I will put into the record the third set of reports received by me from Mr. Wilbur J. Carr, Director of the Consular Service, Department of State.

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

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, December 31, 1920.

MY DEAR MR. JOHNSON: In compliance with your telephonic request, I take pleasure in sending you herewith paraphrases of statements concerning the subject of immigration which have been received recently from officers of this Government who have visited the countries and places mentioned.

Very sincerely, yours,

The Hon. ALBERT JOHNSON,

Chairman Committee on Immigration,

WILBUR J. CARR.

House of Representatives.