who is longing to put his hand to our political
wheel and rule the United States. There are no healthier immigrants
coming to this country. It is with difficulty, and only under pressure
of necessity they are induced to leave China, so that the bugbear of
millions of coolies overrunning America is absurd."

[Sidenote: Call for Fair Play]

Workers in the Chinese missions and Sunday-schools in this country will
assent to Mrs. Baldwin's words. And Americans will appreciate her sense
of the ludicrous when an Irish washerwoman in San Francisco, indignant
that a Chinese servant had been brought to America by the missionary,
said to her, "We have a right here and they haven't." As for the
Chinese, the time will come when the injustice of discriminating against
a single nation will be recognized and the wrong be righted. There are
no more stable converts to Christianity, no more generous givers and
zealous missionaries, than the Chinese converts. Let us have American
fair play, about which President Roosevelt says so much, in our
treatment of them. Recent developments prove that the United States is
unwilling to imperil the relations of friendship which have existed with
China.

_IV. Excluding the Unfit_

[Sidenote: Intelligence of Inspectors]

[Sidenote: Trickeries Attempted]

At Ellis Island one may see what is aptly termed "the tragedy of the
excluded."[24] The enforcement of the laws comes into operation at the
ports of entry. Practically everything depends upon the intelligence and
faithfulness of the inspectors, who are charged with grave
responsibility. Immigrant and country are equally at their mercy.
Necessarily a large margin must be left to their judgment when it comes
to the question, Will the applicant now before me probably become a
public charge--that is, fall into the pauper or criminal class--or is he
of the right stuff to make a respectable and desirable American citizen?
In cases of plain insanity or idiocy or disease the decision is easy;
but when it comes to the moral and economic sphere an expert opinion is
required. Then, the inspectors have to be constantly on the lookout for
deception and fraud. Immigrants who belong to the excluded classes have
been carefully coached by agents interested in getting them through the
examination. Diseased eyes have been doctored up for the occasion; lame
persons have been trained to avoid the fatal limp during that walk
between the two surgeons. Lies have been p