, the most dangerous
criminals--those who are intelligent--to enter this country. If we
examine existing laws, and seek to understand the real nature of
immigration restriction, we can see the character of this mistake. All
of our legislation governing immigration should be described as
_improvement_ of immigration rather than _restriction_ of immigration.
The object has always been to raise the average character of those
admitted by excluding those who fall below certain standards. And higher
standards have been added from time to time as rapidly as the lawmakers
perceived the need of bettering the quality of our future citizenship.
Although in 1862 Congress had enacted a law prohibiting the shipment of
Chinese coolies in American vessels,[150] it was not until 1875 that the
lawmakers first awoke to the evil of unrestricted immigration. In that
year a law was enacted to exclude convicts and prostitutes. This law
made an exception in favor of those who had been convicted of political
offences. Next, in 1882, Congress added lunatics, idiots, paupers, and
Chinese. In 1885 laborers under contract were for the first time to be
excluded, but an exception was made in order to admit actors, artists,
lecturers, singers, domestics, and skilled workmen for new industries.
In 1891 the list of ineligibles was again extended so as to shut out not
only convicts but persons convicted of crime, also "assisted"
immigrants, polygamists, and persons with loathsome or dangerous
contagious diseases. In 1903 the law added epileptics, persons who have
had two or more attacks of insanity, professional beggars, and
anarchists. Notwithstanding these successive additions of excluded
classes, the number of immigrants has continually increased until it is
greater to-day than in any preceding period, and while the standards
have been raised in one direction, the average quality has been lowered
in other directions. The educational and physical tests, while not
needed for the races from Northwestern Europe, are now advocated as
additions to the existing tests on account of the flood of races from
Southeastern Europe.

The question of "poor physique" has come seriously to the front in
recent reports of immigration officials. The decline in the average of
physical make-up to which they call attention accompanies the increase
in numbers of Southern and Eastern Europeans. While the commissioner at
Ellis Island estimates that 200,000 immigrants are below