Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/538

534 The following table indicates the ratio of unskilled laborers to the total landed in 1903, also the percentage of illiteracy; only those races whose illiteracy is above 10 per cent, are given:

The first race (Italian) and the last three races (Greek, Syrian and Hebrew) given in the above table are notoriously city dwellers. The Italian and five races immediately following, Pole, Croatian, Slovak, Ruthenian and Lithuanian, furnish us with nearly all our unskilled industrial labor.

While it must be admitted that the illiteracy test would debar many thousands of undesirable immigrants and prospective dwellers in the tenements, it is doubtful if this result would compensate for the loss of 32 per cent, of such sterling laborers as the Poles, or 35 per cent, of the Slavs in general, in view of the fact that as large, if not a larger, proportion of the undesirable immigrants could be debarred by requiring a high standard of physique, without seriously affecting our supply of unskilled labor. The standard of physique should be definitely prescribed by law, so that the medical certificate of failure to reach the standard would be final, as it is now in loathsome or dangerous contagious disease, idiocy, epilepsy or insanity.

The standard required of recruits for the United States army, with a fixed minimum height and chest measurement, could be employed for this purpose. Every male immigrant between the ages of 18 and 45 should be required to pass such a physical test. Each family should be required to possess at least one male, supposedly the bread winner, who could come up to these requirements.

An aged person, if unaccompanied, should not be permitted to land, unless he or she possess a son, daughter or other near relative in America, who is willing and able to care for such aged dependent. This physical standard to be required of the persons specified in addition to, and not in place of, such other restrictions as are now in force. The requirement of a high definite standard of physique would have very little effect upon the most desirable alien races. It would fall heavily upon the parasitic and competitive classes, and, while it would not stop all the yearly alien reinforcement of the foreign quarters and