Page:Senate Reports 1892–’93.djvu/780

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IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

Mr., from the Committee on Immigration, submitted the following

The Committee on Immigration, acting under the resolutions of the Senate of July 16 and December 14, 1892, considered it advisable to appoint a subcommittee, consisting of Senators Proctor, Squire, Dubois, and Call, to act with Senator Gibson of the Senate Committee on Epidemic Diseases, and Representatives Stump (chairman), Covert, Wright, and Coburn, of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, to examine into the conditions of immigration from Cuba and the West India Islands, and the danger of the importation of epidemic and contagious diseases into the United States through immigrants from those islands.

The committee found it necessary to make their inquiry by visiting Florida and Cuba, where they took the testimony herewith reported. They discovered, as will appear from the evidence, facts which had not before been brought prominently to the notice of the country.

There is daily intercourse between the people of Havana and Key West and Tampa, Fla. The number of persons estimated to pass annually from Cuba to the United States and back is between 50,000 and 100,000. Havana is within six or seven hours, by steam, of Key West, and is connected with Europe by several lines of steamers running fifty ships, more or less, each month between the island and European ports, furnishing an easy, convenient, and cheap passage to immigrants from all parts of Europe to Cuba and Mexico and the United States.

The evidence shows that the most fatal form of yellow fever is always present in Havana, and in the summer and autumn it is liable to be imported into the United States, by both immigrants and merchandise passing through the State of Florida, unless the most careful and thorough preventive measures shall be constantly used.

The sanitary condition of Havana is a perpetual menace to the health of the people of the United States and invites the entry into the island of contagious and infectious diseases of the most virulent and fatal character. The danger from immigration and the constant passage backward and forward of persons on business who are temporary residents, and the increased commerce between the island of Cuba and the United States, requires the most unremitting care and vigilance.

The island of Cuba, lying in the Gulf of Mexico and almost touching the shores of the United States, was regarded by all the great statesmen of our earlier history as an outpost of the United States, the key of the Gulf, and the necessary place of guard and protection for its commerce. It is one of the most fertile regions in the world,