Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/251

Rh percentage of foreign born in our country is not greater than it was thirty or forty years ago; in fact it can be said to be decreasing, as shown in the following tables:

Inclination for city life is not confined to any particular race, nor to the alien alone. All races contribute to our crowded cities, some of course more constantly than others, but the best and the worst are alike fully represented. The congestion in the cities is increased also by our own native born rural population, which furnishes an ever increasing quota to the army of city dwellers.

The great number of foreign born inmates of insane asylums throughout the country indicates that in the past too little restriction was placed on the mentally defective, and that the opportunity afforded by an inspection at the port of entrance was too scanty to be of much value. A man mentally oblique or subject to periods of insanity would, without doubt, pass the inspectors at the port of landing, if he was at that time rational and quiet. Epileptics, too, had an excellent chance of being admitted, their rejection depending on the remote possibility of their having a paroxysm while passing the inspectors. An anarchist in passing the officers would of course be docile and quiet, and his detection extremely difficult.

Mr. Goodwin Brown, attorney for the New York State Commission of Lunacy, stated before the Senate Committee on Immigration, Washington, 1902, that although only 25 per cent, of the population of the state of New York were foreign born, 50 per cent, of the inmates of the State Insane Asylum were foreigners. He also stated that this excess is not alone exhibited in New York statistics, but that an excess of 17 per cent, existed throughout the entire country of foreign born insane over the percentage of foreign born population. That these mentally defective persons were sent formerly in large numbers by persons living in Europe is scarcely open to question, but the period of government supervision of, and of power to deport, the landed alien, has been extended to two years (Act of 1903). Under this wise provision, an insane person of foreign birth, upon admission to an asylum, is investigated, and if landed within two years can be deported. The same clause covers the deportation of idiots and epileptics, so that we are now much better protected against these burdens than ever before. An additional protection is given by that part of Section 2, Law of