Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/537

Rh of such labor will be compatible with its financial success. If this assurance can not be given to capitalists, they will not invest, industrial expansion ceases, and the wages of the American workers, as well as of the aliens, suffer from general business depression.

In order to be a desirable immigrant, the type of immigrant represented must be necessary. As skilled alien laborers are no longer necessary, they can scarcely be classed as desirable. The necessity for the unskilled laborer will be conceded by those who take the trouble to study economic conditions.

The aliens of poor physique, who are usually skilled laborers, go to the crowded city, to the dark, poorly ventilated and disease-infected tenement. The thousands of these city dwellers arriving every year perpetuate the tenement house problem, and retard the work of sanitation and reform.

Of remedies proposed for the further exclusion of undesirable immigrants, three are worthy of consideration: (1) Raising the head tax, (2) an illiteracy test, (3) a definite standard of physique.

Raising the head tax to 100 or 150 dollars is suggested by some as a means of restricting immigration. This procedure is open to serious objection for several reasons. It would not be selective in its action. It would bar all classes, good and bad, indiscriminately, and would be almost prohibitive to the races with the best physique and highest percentage of unskilled laborers. In case of those who come here as home-seekers and who are able to pay such a tax, it would deprive them of a sum of money which would be of great value in their struggle, and much needed at the very outset of their new life. The imposition of such a tax is a weapon of defense which might be used in the event of great danger from immigration, owing to absence of demand for labor here, but that possibility seems remote and this high head tax must be considered as a last resort, not likely to be needed. A moderate head tax will probably be the rule for the next few years. The present head tax of two dollars may be raised to five or ten dollars in order to restrict the volume of immigration, if, in the opinion of our lawmakers, restriction of the quantity as well as the quality of our immigrants is necessary. Any head tax moderate or high can operate only as a numerical restriction and can not be expected to regulate the quality of immigration.

In order to appreciate fully the effect of barring illiterates, it is necessary to consider the proportion of illiterates in each of the principal racial factors of our immigration. Consideration must also be given to the percentage of unskilled laborers furnished by each of these races, because, although the illiteracy amendment is intended to exclude the parasitic city-dwelling immigrant, it affects as well a large proportion of the races furnishing us with the bulk of our necessary unskilled labor.