Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/242

238 hard manual labor. The wording of the law should be definite enough to make the medical certificate of poor physique equivalent to deportation.

This requirement of a definite physical standard in immigrants could be exacted without undue hardship of all unmarried male immigrants within certain age limits, for instance eighteen to forty-five. In regard to families, comprising women, children and old men, in addition to males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, each family should be required to have at least one member constituting its chief support who could comply with the physical requirements of the law. The law need not apply to parents coming here to join their children, provided the children had established a home here and presented evidence of ability to care properly for their parents.

If the thousands of recruits for the sweat-shop army which arrive each year could be thus checked for ten years, the present existing tenement house problem would solve itself. The terrible congestion of the tenements would be relieved; the scale of wages for the sweat-shop worker would be elevated, and the general sanitary conditions of life in such districts as the Lower East Side, New York City, could be improved sufficiently to reduce the menace to the public health from this cause to a minimum.