tion, and to provide that if within five years after landing an immigrant becomes such a person as to be within the classes now excluded by law, whether the causes of his changed condition arose prior or subsequent to his landing, he shall be deported. There are various practical difficulties with such a plan, the chief one being that of identification, but, in view of the decision in the Turner case, such a plan would probably be held to be constitutional.

The other plan is to adopt some more or less arbitrary test, which, while open to theoretical objection—as any practicable test must be-nevertheless will on the whole exclude those people whom we wish excluded. It must be a definite test, because one trouble with the "public charge" clause of the present law, under which most exclusions now occur, is that it is so vague and elastic that it can be interpreted to suit the temper of any of the higher officials who may happen to be charged with the execution of the law. As I have elsewhere repeatedly shown those persons who cannot read in their own language are, in general, those who are also ignorant of a trade, who bring little money with them, who settle in the city slums, who have a low standard of living and little ambition to seek a better, and who do not assimilate rapidly or appreciate our institutions. It is not claimed that an illiteracy test is a test of moral character, but it would undoubtedly exclude a good many persons who now fill our prisons and almshouses, and would lessen the burden upon our schools and machinery of justice. In a country having universal suffrage it is also an indispensable requirement for citizenship, and citizenship in its broadest sense means much more than the right to the ballot. The illiteracy test has passed the Senate three times and the House four times in the last eight years. It has been endorsed by several State legislatures, a large proportion of the boards of associated charities of the country, and by numerous intelligent persons familiar with immigration matters, including the State associations for promoting immigration above referred to. This test has already been adopted by the Commonwealth of Australia and by British Columbia, and would have certainly been adopted here long since but for the opposition of the transportation companies.

It is no doubt true that many of the newer immigrants are eager to have their children educated, and that many of these children are good scholars. But this fact strikes us the more forcibly

because it is the one ray of hope in a dark situation. I do not know that anyone has ever claimed that these foreign-born children are superior in any way to native-born children, and the latter acquire the most valuable part of civic education by hearsay and imitation in their own homes, while the foreign born have their only training in the school. Furthermore, everyone admits the enormous burden of educating such a large mass of children, illiterate as to even their own language. This is in addition to the burden of the adult illiterates imposed on a country which already has its problems of rural and negro education. There is no doubt that an illiteracy test would not only give us elbow room to work out our own problems of education, but would greatly promote elementary education in Europe. Why should we take upon ourselves a burden which properly belongs to the countries from which these immigrants come?

Whatever view we may take of the immigration question there can be no doubt that it is one of the most important, if not the most important, problems of our time, and, as such, it deserves the careful study of all our citizens. We are trustees of our civilization and institutions with a duty to the future, and as trustees the stocks of population in which we invest should be limited by the principle of a careful selection of immigrants.

Immigration in its Relation to Pauperism

By Kate Holladay Claghorn, Tenement House Department, New York City

IMMIGRATION IN ITS RELATION TO PAUPERISM

By KATE HOLLADAY CLAGHORN

Tenement House Department, New York City

While it is plain enough that foreign immigration has some connection with the problem of pauperism since common observation and all the statistics available unite in showing that the majority of the recipients of our charity, public and private, are of foreign birth, it is equally certain on the other hand that pauperism is not something that the immigrant brings with him, but is the result of a considerable period of life and experiences here.

In 1903, even with the careful scrutiny now given by the immigration department, out of 857,000 foreign immigrants only 5,812, or less than seven-tenths of one per cent.,were deported as likely to become public charges, and only 547 persons, or less than one-tenth of one per cent. of the immigration of the previous year, were returned within one year after landing as having become such.

In age distribution the immigrant group is the diametric opposite of the pauper group; the former consisting mainly of young adults, a group at the height of working power and ability for selfhelp; the latter of children and the old. This of itself indicates that much pauperism among the newly arrived is unlikely.

Furthermore, as a matter of fact, it takes some time for the immigrant to find his way to the poorhouse. The census of 1890 showed that 92 per cent. of the foreign-born male almshouse paupers had been in this country ten years or more, and their average length of residence here was probably much higher.

It is, in short, the immigration of past decades that is filling our poorhouses to-day. Of the foreign-born almshouse paupers enumerated in 1890, 83 per cent. were Irish, Germans and Englishour older immigrants-while Italians, Austrians and Russians, the newer arrivals, were hardly to be found in almshouses at all. And this preponderance of the older immigrants in the almshouses was not merely due to their preponderance in the general population at that time. The ratio of paupers to the million of the same nation