Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/13

Rh who are stopped there, or realize that if the bars were lowered ever so little the infirm and mentally unsound would come literally in hordes, without becoming a firm believer in restriction and admission of only the best. The average citizen does not realize the enormous numbers of mentally disordered and morally delinquent persons in the United States nor to how great an extent these classes are recruited from aliens, and their children. Restriction is vitally necessary if our truly American ideals and institutions are to persist, and if our inherited stock of good American manhood is not to be depreciated.

This restriction can be made operative at various points, but the key to the whole situation is the medical requirement. No alien is desirable as an immigrant if he be mentally or physically unsound, while, on the other hand, mental and physical health in the wide sense carries with it moral, social and economic fitness. The present United States immigration law (legislation of 1907) is very definite in its statement of medical requirements for admission. The law divides physically and mentally defective aliens into three classes. Class A includes those whose exclusion is mandatory under the law because of a specified defect or disease. In this class are idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, the feebleminded, insane and those subject to tuberculosis, or a dangerous or loathsome contagious disease. When a medical diagnosis has been made