Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/237

Rh immigrant a public charge. When the physical defect or poor physique is so marked that it seems to the medical inspector likely to make the immigrant a public charge, the immigrant is detained, and a certificate is made stating his disability, which certificate goes to the board of special inquiry with the detained immigrant. About two thirds of the immigrants so certified as likely to become a public charge are admitted because of the latitude allowed by the phrase, 'likely to become a public charge.' Under the present law, therefore, the immigrant certified as suffering from a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease, or as being idiotic or insane, is deported. The immigrant recorded as having a 'poor physique' or other physical defect is usually admitted.

Destination is scarcely less important than physique, and it is the rule that aliens of a race having a low physical standard will invariably herd together in the overcrowded insanitary tenement districts of our great cities, while the sturdy races of unskilled laborers are scattered over a wide territory and tend to establish little homes of their own in the country or in the suburbs of manufacturing towns or cities.

The following table indicates the relative physical strength of the various races under discussion, and also the percentage of each race giving New York as their destination. Statistics of the Irish and Scandinavian races are given in this table for the purpose of comparison.

The third factor to be considered is the presence of communicable disease among immigrants. The ordinary quarantinable disease are eliminated from the question by efficient quarantine methods, but certain communicable maladies, classed as loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases, exist among immigrants, and constant vigilance and considerable skill are necessary on the part of medical inspectors of immigrants to detect these cases and separate them from the healthy immigrants.

The most important of these diseases, because of its frequency, is trachoma. Of the total number of cases of loathsome or dangerous contagious disease found in immigrants, 87 per cent, are due to trachoma and 10 per cent, to favus.

Several years ago the prevalence of trachoma in the poorer districts of our large cities, and particularly among the foreign-born population, caused numerous requests from medical men engaged in