He

of intelligence, ability, and honor prevail in the United States Senate. Senator Bulkeley, of Connecticut, who signs this report, is as shrewd and skillful a practical politician as there is in the Senate. is thoroughly familiar, from his experience in his own State, with the methods of legislative corruption. We should like to ask what kind of testimony would be regarded by him as "a warrant for believing that either one of said legislators was moved by any corrupt influence." It is a relief to turn to the dissenting report of Senator Frazier, of Tennessee, who did find warrant for believing that the alleged bribers were moved by corrupt influence. We quoted his words last week, but they are important enough to repeat:

The four self-confessed bribe-takers im plicate three other members of the Legislature who voted for Senator Lorimer as the persons who bribed them. The testimony satisfies me that the three alleged bribegivers were guilty of that offense. To my mind, the man who bribes another is as corrupt as the one who is bribed, and by his corrupt act of bribery he demonstrates the fact that he is none too honest to receive a bribe if offered him.

The facts stated by the majority of the Committee in their exoneration of Senator Lorimer, taken in connection with Senator Frazier's expressed belief that bribery was proven to his satisfaction, appear to us to make it clear that Senator Lorimer's election is invalid in accordance with the standards which the Committee itself lays down. But we go still further, and place our protest against the admission to the United States Senate of such a man as Senator Lorimer on broader grounds.

In the volume on "The Government of England," by President Lowell, of Harvard University, we find the following description of the operation of the Corrupt Practices Act in English Parliamentary elections:

If upon the trial of a controverted election the court reports that any corrupt practice has been cominitted by the candidate, or that bribery or personation has been committed with his knowledge and consent, his election is void and he is forever incapable of being elected to Parliament by that constituency. Moreover, if the election court reports that a corrupt practice has been committed by his agents, although he may be personally quite innocent, his election is void and he is incapable of being chosen by that constituency for seven years. . . . If bribery,

The United States Senate ought not to be behind the British Parliament in the

standards of honesty which it demands in the election of its members. The testi

mony collected by two Illinois State attorneys of opposite party faith and submitted to the Committee of the Senate shows

beyond the shadow of a doubt that the most appalling condition of corruption and bribery prevailed in the Illinois Legisla

ture at the time of the so-called election of Mr. Lorimer. We are at a loss to understand how any men of honest convictions can read this testimony without concluding that this widespread corruption included corruption in connection with the election of this United States Senator. According to English standards this would of itself be sufficient to dismiss Mr. Lorimer from his seat. It ought to be. Such corruption not only disgraces all who take part in it, but disgraces every public man who condones it, and every constituency that knowingly elects to office those who condone it.

Lieutenant-Commander Belknap's book 1 recalls a thoroughly healthy and pleasant memory of our international relations. In times of terrible and overwhelming disaster to any nation, the sister nations of the world of to-day-in striking contrast to what has been true of past ages-are for the time being lifted above the plane of self-interest on which they normally move and must move, and show themselves capable of acts of sincere and disinterested friendliness.

The whole civilized world felt a shudder of genuine horror and a thrill of genuine sympathy over the news of the frightful calamity which had befallen Messina. Among the nations whose sympathy found

American House Building in Messina and Reggio. By Reginald Rowan Belknap. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $2.

immediate and practical expression our own country stood foremost. Congress at once made provision for furnishing relief to the sufferers; and the American battle fleet, then nearing the end of its cruise round the world, acted without even waiting for explicit orders. No small part of the respect and good will inspired by the United States in the world at large during recent years has been due to the known preparedness for war of the United States navy; and it is a matter for just pride to Americans that the very qualities which give the navy its military efficiency are also the qualities which have again and again at Martinique, at Jamaica, at Messina-enabled the navy to give the most convincing proofs of efficient National good will to foreign peoples. When, by consultation with the Italian Government, it was found out exactly what shape our help should take in order to do most practical good, Lieutenant-Commander Belknap was sent to Messina to take charge of the work; and a number of the officers and enlisted men of the navy were detailed to serve under him.

In this volume the Commander shows just what the work was and how it was done. It was signally successful from every standpoint, and reflects the utmost credit on the Commander and all his subordinates, both those from the navy and those from civilian life; including especially the Red Cross. In efficiency, in economy, in speed, and in thoroughness there was nothing left to be desired as regards any part of the work.

Next to the ability, energy, and zeal of the workers, the main cause of their success lay in the admirable relations they were able to maintain with the Italian officials and the people of Messina-for the manner of giving is, of course, always as important as the gift. The book itself is dedicated to Commander Belknap's "devoted colleague," Lieutenant Brofferio, of the Italian navy. The commune of Messina conferred citizenship upon the American officers, Messrs. Belknap, Buchanan, Wilcox, Spofford, and Donelson (how truly National our navy is, is instanced by the fact that their respective birthplaces are in Massachusetts, Indiana, Georgia, Oregon, and Mississippi), and the artist Mr. John Elliott. The Little

Sisters of the Poor sent a letter of thanks so touching that it deserves to be quoted in full:

To the Directing Manager and Gentlemen engaged in the erection of Barracks at Messina:

Gentlemen-I the undersigned, Superior Provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor, having been apprised of your approaching departure from Messina, feel it my duty to thank you for the great kindness shown to our Sisters in that unfortunate country; no noble manner in which you have treated us. words can express our gratitude for the

We have every reason to hope that our Home will soon be reopened, as it is the desire of our Holy Father, Pius X, that the aged poor should be taken care of.

Gentlemen, you may rest assured that your benevolence for our work will never, never be forgotten; you will always be considered as our first benefactors, and our prayers and the prayers of our dear poor will follow you everywhere. If you come back to visit this desolate country of Messina, we hope you will come at once to see us, as we are really your "protégées."

Receive, gentlemen, my most grateful homage, and believe me

Your most humble servant in Christ our Lord, SR. AIMÉE DE LA PROVIDENCE, Provinciale des Petites Sre. des Pauvres, Piazza San Pietro in Vincoli, Roma. August 8, 1909.

Where all did so well, it seems invidious to single out any for special reference; yet I think that all who saw the work at Messina took away a peculiarly vivid mind picture of the stalwart enlisted men of the United States navy. Taken as a whole, there are no better citizens of this country than the officers and enlisted men of our navy. If any other country has their equals, that country is indeed fortunate.

Perhaps the difference between what could occur in our navy and what is possible in any other navy may be illustrated by the recital of something that happened just at the close of our work at Messina. One of the civilian volunteers who worked hard and faithfully under Commander Belknap was Lloyd Derby, who had reached Messina immediately after Captain Belknap took charge. Derby had just graduated from Harvard, and was finishing a trip round the world, but when he reached Messina, finding that there was need of volunteers, he stopped, and for three or four months served under Belknap. When the work was over, he went to Rome to spend a few days, and

one day in the Forum suddenly espied a man in the uniform of an American sailor. His association with the sailormen at Messina had given him a strong feeling for them, and he made friends with the stranger. He found the man had come from an American war-ship, and had saved up his pay for some months in order that he might see Rome thoroughly. Accordingly when he drew his back pay and got leave, he came straight to Rome, hired a guide, bought a Baedeker, and was now methodically seeing everything best worth seeing, and, in addition, was improving his mind and utilizing the guide to further advantage by learning Italian from him. Derby was himself much interested in Roman history and antiquities, and he found that the enlisted man was a genial soul whose knowledge of the subject was even greater. After spending the morning together to their mutual satisfaction, they parted only after Derby had gotten his new friend to promise to take dinner with him that evening at his (Derby's) hotel; and the dinner proved as enjoyable as the morning had been.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

SELECTING OUR IMMI

GRANTS1

In the early history of our country the immigration was comparatively slight and incidental. It was developed partly by the democratic unrest and revolutionary tendencies in Europe, whence men fled to America as to a refuge from oppression, and by special disasters in Europe, specifically the Irish famine. It was retarded by the growing hostility in the slave States to any additions to free labor and consequently free voters, by the fact that American democracy was still experimental, and by America's unsavory reputation abroad, reflected in such novels as "Martin Chuzzlewit " and such essays as some of Sydney Smith's. Toward the close of the Civil War, in 1863, Congress, then controlled by the Republican party, passed the Homestead Law, which the Southern Democrats in the Senate had four years

The quotations in this article are from the "Brief Statement of the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Immigration Commission" (1910), and from "The American Commonwealth," New Edition (1910).

before successfully resisted. This bid for immigration, so soon followed by the close of the war and the victory of Nationalism, was successful. The offer of something for nothing is always appealing; and this offer to give land to the landless brought to our shores a great number of enterprising workers who had been in the Old World tenants or agricultural laborers, and who came here to become independ ent landowners. This immigration came almost wholly from northern Europe, was largely agricultural, and of necessity distributed itself over a wide extent of country. By the Homestead Law America both selected and distributed her immigrants.

With the overthrow of despotism in western Europe the first cause of migration came to an end; with the taking up of most of America's best arable lands the second cause of migration came to an end. Since 1883 the attraction to immigrants has been the relatively large wages paid to laborers. By a process as natural as that by which America selected agriculturists she has since been selecting wage-earners; a large majority of them unskilled laborers; three-quarters of them males; many of them unmarried; nearly three-quarters of them from southern Europe; over a third of them illiterate. The incentive to the first migration was liberty, and in the case of Ireland hunger, and it brought us all sorts and conditions of men; the incentive to the second migration was land, and it brought us sturdy agricultural workers; the incentive to the third migration is wages, and it brings us day-laborers. The second migration built rural homes; the third, laborers' camps, mining towns, and city slums.

Nothing that America can possibly do can change the present migration back to the former migration. This country cannot reproduce revolution in Europe, nor famine in Ireland; and although it can, by drainage and irrigation, do something to create more arable land in America, and perhaps more by developing wise methods of agriculture, it cannot do enough to recreate a tide of agricultural laborers to make rural homes. But it can do something to select the kind of laborers it needs and to distribute them where they are needed. And, what is more important, it

can adopt by common consent the principle advocated by the Immigration Commission, which we print here with all the emphasis that type can give to it:

"A SLOW EXPANSION OF INDUSTRY WHICH WOULD PERMIT THE ADAPTATION AND ASSIMILATION OF THE INCOMING LABOR SUPPLY IS PREFERABLE TO A VERY RAPID INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION WHICH RESULTS IN THE IMMIGRATION OF LABORERS OF LOW STANDARDS AND EFFICIENCY, WHO IMPERIL THE AMERICAN STANDARD OF WAGES AND CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT."

And, what is more important, imperil the standard of American individual and National character.

If America is not willing to accept a slower expansion of industry, if it is determined to adhere to the " get rich quickly " idea as a National policy, it can do nothing; if it is willing to go more slowly and to put the development of a National character above the development of material wealth, there are three things it can do:

I. America can modify its present prohibitory tariff, which has passed far beyond the bounds proposed by its original creators as needed to secure a variety of industries, a home market, and a comfortable support to all engaged in these industries. It need not lower the standard of American wages and conditions of employment. But it can aim so to readjust its tariff that it shall not continue to make great fortunes for the few, and to draw hither a cheap labor" which develops in America an unskilled, illiterate, transient, and unAmerican population.

II. America can learn a lesson from other countries, and do something to select its immigrants. At present we leave the agents of steamship lines and labor bureaus to select them for us. They scour Europe to find men willing to migrate, entice them by seductive promises of great wages, and conceal from them the fact that they must pay high prices; and we content ourselves by putting a policeman at the gate to turn back the diseased, the pauper, and the criminal-if we discover him.

An interview published recently in the New York "Times" with William E. Carson, an American traveler, shows how

Canada deals with this aspect of the immigration problem :

I made a short tour through England in the rural districts with a band wagon sent by the Canadian agency with moving pictures. It stopped in all the villages, and pamphlets were given out in hundreds, headed "Canada is God's Country. Come and Live with Us!" The picture-shows were packed day and night. It is not only that they encourage the immigrant to leave his own country, but he is looked after when he arrives on this side of the Atlantic. I crossed over on the Allan liner Virginian with 1,500 well-to-do immigrants on board. They came from Scandinavia, Germany, and Great Britain. Each one had a little money. The steamship companies will not book immigrants from southern Europe, and advertise in their circulars to that effect. the arrival of the liner at St. John, New Brunswick-the winter port of disembarkation-there were a number of Canadian officials to look after the people, see that they were not swindled, and that they got on the right train.

On

This is a process of distribution as well as of selection. Mr. Carson is probably correct in saying that America must carry it on by State, rather than by Federal, action. For the States that need the immigrants are the ones to select the immigrants. The matter might well claim the attention of the next meeting of the Governors of the States. To this result, also, the Immigration Commission were brought by their investigation: "No satisfactory or permanent distribution of immigrants can be effected through any Federal employment system, no matter how widespread, because the individual will seek such social and economic conditions as best suit him, no matter where sent. What is needed is a division of information which would co-operate with States desiring immigrant settlers."

III. Equally important is just, fair, and humane treatment of the immigrant laborers, skilled and unskilled, who arrive here. We are glad to be assured by the Commission that the padrone system is disappearing. "The only class of aliens under the control of padrones in any considerable numbers are the Greek boys employed in shoe-shining establishments or in peddling flowers, fruit, or vegetables in the larger cities." But there are other abuses which need correction: the steerage conditions, which are excellent on some lines but are still bad in many trans

atlantic ships; the immigrant homes and aid societies, which are sometimes excellent, but sometimes so bad as to be a fraud, and sometimes are even "ready to furnish to keepers of disreputable houses young girls as servants in such houses;" and immigrant banks, which are usually kept by steamship ticket agents, small merchants, saloon-keepers, or labor agents, and, except in three or four States, are entirely unregulated by law. But still worse are the social and labor conditions under which the newcomers are often allowed, perhaps we should say compelled, to live. "The condition of many

as

a

who toil in the coal mines and iron furnaces of Pennsylvania is described wretched," says James Bryce. Bad as they are in some of our great cities, " comparison of the conditions in a great city like New York or Chicago," says the Immigrant Commission, "with those in. some of the smaller industrial centers, such as mining and manufacturing towns, shows that average conditions, as respects overcrowding, are very materially worse in some of the smaller towns than in the large cities." No wonder that the laborer goes back to his native land as soon as he has earned money enough to satisfy his modest ambition; or that, if he remains, it is to add to the discontented and the revolutionary element in the population of the country.

For this condition the great employing corporations are primarily responsible. But the State Legislatures, and even the churches, are not wholly exempt from responsibility-the former for not preventing them by law, the latter for not arousing public opinion against them and improving them by philanthropic effort.1 The policy of one class of employersfor not all are of this class-is as shortsighted as narrow and selfish policies usually are. "The first question," says Mr. Bryce, "which really lays hold on and appeals directly to the newcomer from strange lands, the first thing that brings him into direct touch with American life, is a labor dispute. . . . Employers who have brought together foreigners and put

What these conditions are and what could be done and ought to be done by the State, by the employer, and by the churches, are indicated by Mr. Roosevelt in his article "The Coal Miner at Home," in The Outlook for December 24, 1910.

strike-breakers

their faith in them as have sometimes been woefully disappointed. Indeed, the Pole or Slovak follows a militant chief more blindly than a native American would. He has less to lose, and his standard of comfort is so low that the privations of a strike affect him less." The labor unrest, the chronic discontent occasionally breaking out into open and costly results, and the Socialistic and Anarchistic theories which they promote, are among the products of that "cheap labor" which modern immigration is bringing to our shores. The employers who impose on their workingmen such conditions are quite as responsible for these results as are the labor leaders to whose supposed unscrupulous demagoguery they are often charged.

The immigrant problem is not merely how to exclude undesirable immigrants; it is not less how to select desirable immigrants, and how to treat them justly and humanely when they come.

1911

As the year closes the citizen recalls its events in such domains as agriculture, manufactures, education, labor, science, art, law, politics, and religion. He asks himself, Was the twelvemonth darker and drearier than its predecessor, or brighter and better?" There can be but one answer—an emphatic " Brighter and better."

If this is true of society in general, is it true of the individual? It ought to be; for there are perpetual correspondences between the world and the individual. Heaven knows that in the world there are still falsehood and indecency and inhumanity and meanness and selfishness a-plenty. But we also know that never has the searchlight been so effectively turned on these things as during the past year; that never have truth and decency and justice and righteousness and peace held as much sway. If this is true in the world in general, it ought, of course, to be true of the average man. His individual life, we must believe, is growing richer, not poorer; stronger, not weaker.

And this is something that every man can do for his country: he can be strong and noble himself. For the country is