The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 by Various

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For these reasons, and others, we are driven to the conclusion that future
policies of immigration must be based on sound principles of social
welfare and social economy, and not upon the economic advantage of certain
special industries. Whether we want the brawn of the immigrant must be
determined by what it will contribute to the general social surplus, and
not by what it adds to A's railroads or B's iron mines.

We are told that the three classes of our population demanding
unrestricted immigration are large employers of unskilled labor,
transportation companies, and revolutionary anarchists. Since this is by
definition an economic and not a philosophical question, we may neglect
the third class. To the other two classes should be directed certain brief
tests of economic good faith. Take at its face value their claim that
European brawn by the ship-load is indispensable to American industry. It
is becoming an accepted maxim that industry should bear its own charges,
should pay its own way. American industry has long fought the
contract-labor exclusion feature in current immigration law. Suppose we
frankly admit that it is much better for the immigrant to come over here
to a definite job than to wander about for weeks after he arrives, a prey
to immigrant banks, fake employment agents, and other sharks. Suppose,
accordingly, we repeal the laws against contract-labor. Let the employer
contract for as many foreign laborers as he likes or says he needs. But
make the contractor liable for support and deportation costs if the
laborers become public charges. Also require him to assume the cost of
unemployment insurance. Exact a bond for the faithful performance of these
terms, guaranteed in somewhat the same way that National Banks are
safeguarded. Immigration authorities now commonly require a bond from the
relatives of admitted aliens who seem likely to become public charges, but
who are allowed to enter with the benefit of the doubt. Customs and
revenue rules admit dutiable goods in bond. Hence the principle of the
bond is perfectly familiar, and its application to contract-immigrants
would be in no sense an untried or dangerous experiment. It would
establish no new precedent: for precedents, and successful ones, are
already established, accepted and approved. It would be understood that
all admissions of aliens can be only provisional, with no time limit on
deportation. It would be understood further--and the plan would work
automatically if the contractor were made such a deeply interested
party--that intending immigrants must be rigidly inspected, that they be
required to produce consular certificates of clean police record, freedom
from chronic disease, insanity, etc.

The result of such a scheme would probably cut away entirely
contract-labor; for it would not longer pay. But this does not mean
barring the gate to all foreign labor. As an aid to the employer and to
our own native workingman, we must, sooner or later, and the sooner the
better, establish a chain of labor bureaus throughout the Union. The
system must be placed under Federal direction, largely because the
Department of Labor would be charged, _ex officio_, with ascertaining the
"true demand" for immigrant labor, and it could only accomplish this end
effectively through such an employment clearing system. This true demand
would, of course, be based not only upon mere numerical excess of calls
for labor over demands for jobs, but would also take into account the
nature of the work, working conditions, and above all the prevailing level
of wages. According to this true demand the Department would adjust a
sliding scale of admissions of immigrant laborers.

Much might be said in favor of an absolute embargo upon all immigration
until such a body as the Industrial Relations Commission has time to make
an authoritative economic survey of the whole country, or until the
Unemployment Research Commission recently called for by Miss Kellor could
make the three years' study contemplated by her as the only way out of the
unemployment morass. Twenty years ago men of the type of General Walker
frankly urged that the immigration gates be closed for a flat period of
ten years or so. But the sliding scale plan contemplates no such radical
step. Indeed it is radical in no sense whatever. The proposed immigration
act now before Congress (The Burnett Bill, H.R. 6060) paves the way for
it, and provides a working principle, which apparently is accepted on all
sides. Section 3 includes this clause: "That skilled labor, if otherwise
admissible, may be imported if labor of like kind unemployed can not be
found in this country, and the question of the necessity of importing such
skilled labor in any particular instance may be determined by the
Secretary of Labor...." A really workable test for immigration, superior
by far to the literacy test or any other so far suggested, might easily be
developed by simply enlarging the scope of this clause, making it include
unskilled as well as skilled labor. No machinery other than that
contemplated by the present act would be required.

The immigration problem can never be satisfactorily handled until we fix
upon some such means of determining just what the economic need is. There
is no danger of hindering legitimate industrial expansion in times of
sudden business prosperity: for the transportation companies may be safely
trusted to supply in three or four weeks aliens enough to fill all the
gaps in the industrial army. Neither would injustice be done to the
immigrant himself. On the contrary, he would be assured of a job and
respectful consideration when he arrived. The "dago" or the "bohunk" would
acquire a new dignity and a more enviable status than he now occupies. The
selective process thus involved would much improve the quality of the
immigrant admitted, and would incidentally render assimilation of the
foreigner all the easier.

The precise details of selection, and the machinery, are mere matters of
detail. But the consular service, as long ago suggested by Catlin,
Schuyler and others, seems to offer the proper base of operations. We have
already recommended charging consuls with viseing certificates from
police, medical, and poor-relief authorities. We should further require
that declarations of intention to migrate be published (somewhat as
marriage banns are published) at local administrative centers
(arrondissement, Bezirk, etc.) and at United States consular offices; the
consular declaration should be obligatory; perhaps the other might be
optional, though in all probability foreign governments would cooeperate in
demanding it. These validated declarations of intention should be filed in
the consular offices. When notice comes from the United States Department
of Labor that so many laborers will be admitted from such and such
district, the declarations are to be taken up in the order of their
filing, and the proper number of persons certified for admission. The
apportionment of admissions from each country might be calculated on a
basis of its population, also upon the nature of the employment offered,
and upon the desirability of the alien himself, his general
assimilability, his willingness to become naturalized, to adopt the
English language and the American standard of living among efficient
workers, etc.,--all as proved by past experience with his countrymen. This
plan, in so far as it provides for a sliding scale of admissions, is in
line with that proposed by Professor Gulick. He advocates making all
nations eligible for admission and citizenship, but would admit them only
in proportion as they can be readily assimilated. This would admit
annually, say, five per cent of those already naturalized, with their
American children. The principle here seems to be that we can assimilate
from any land in, and only in, proportion to the number already
assimilated from that land. But the difficulty of applying such a test
lies in the complexity of the assimilative process. No measure yet exists
for assimilation. Anthropologists are convinced that various strains in
the populations, for example of France, or Great Britain, which have been
dwelling together for centuries, are not by any means assimilated. Mere
naturalization is not a sufficient test of assimilation; it is only the
expression of a desire to be assimilated; and it may only be a device for
the promotion of business success here or in foreign parts, as we have
already indicated in the case of the Greeks. Hence in working out the
basis of a sound immigration policy, it would seem more practicable to
consider first the question of economic utilization rather than
assimilation. This, of course, does not exclude from the Secretary of
Labor's judgment the category of assimilability as one of the factors in
determining the apportionment of admissions.

It will appear that the plan outlined above limits immigration policy to
purely national and economic considerations. But it is, as matters now
stand, a national question. And it must remain so for some time to come,
even if we are reproached with a narrow Mercantilist economics. The
admission of aliens is not yet a fundamental international _right_, or
_duty_; it is only an example of _comity_ within the family of nations.
And the matter must rest in this state of limbo until we develop some
institution or method of registering our sentiments of internationalism,
and especially of determining _international surplus_. As it is idle to
talk or dream of abolishing poverty until at least the concept of social
or national surplus is pretty clearly fixed and its realization either
actually at hand or fairly imminent, just so is it vain to expect an
international adjustment of the immigration problem on economic grounds
until the existence of an international surplus is demonstrated, and the
methods of apportioning it worked out.

How soon we may expect these things it is not our province to predict. It
is too early to pass final judgment on Professor Patten's dictum that
inter-racial cooeperation is impossible without integration, and that races
must therefore stand in hostile relations or finally unite. But it is
perfectly apparent that we have a long way to travel before the path to
integration is cleared. Such assemblages as the First Universal Races
Congress which met in London in 1911 can do much to prepare the way. But
it must not be forgotten that the German representative at that Congress
pleaded for the maintenance of strict racial and national boundaries, and
summed up his plea in the rather ominous sentence: "The brotherhood of man
is a good thing, but the struggle for life is a far better one." Meanwhile
we need not anticipate serious international difficulties in the way of
the sliding-scale plan; for foreign governments are watching the tide of
immigration with mixed feelings. They welcome the two or three hundred
million dollars sent home annually by alien residents in the United
States. But they also resent the dislocations of industry, the fallow
fields, the dodging of military service, and the disturbance of the level
of prices which such wholesale emigrations inflict upon the mother
country.

Since the protagonists of unrestricted immigration have taken largely an
economic line of argument, it seemed desirable to accept their terms, and
meet them on their own ground. But I should not wish to be misunderstood
as limiting the immigration question to its economic phases. When we have
said that the _latifondisti_ of Southern Italy are in despair at the
scarcity of laborers to work their lands at starvation wages, and that the
railway builders and mine operators of America are equally anxious to have
those selfsame South Italian laborers for their own exploitive
enterprises, we have told a bare half of the tale. There remain all those
cultural, educational, political, religious and domestic variations and
adjustments which make up the general problem of assimilability of the
alien and of the strength of our own national digestion. America had a
giant's undiscriminating appetite in the great days of expansion from 1850
to 1890. But there are many signs, economic and other, that we can no
longer play Gargantua and continue a healthy nation. An unwise engineer
sometimes over-stokes his boilers, and courts disaster. Is it not equally
possible that national welfare may suffer from an over-dose of human fuel
in our industry?

THE WAY TO FLATLAND

"The next great task of preventive medicine is the inauguration of
universal periodic medical examinations as an indispensable means for the
control of all diseases, whether arising from injurious personal habits,
from congenital or constitutional weakness, or from social and vocational
conditions." That this declaration by the Commissioner of Health of the
city of New York is not the mere expression of an individual opinion,
there is abundant evidence. And no one who has watched the growth of other
movements towards such regulation of life as only a few years ago would
have seemed wholly outside the domain of practical probability can doubt
that the "Life Extension" movement, as thus outlined, will rapidly grow
into prominence. Nor is there much room for doubt that, whether explicitly
contemplated at present or not, compulsion as well as universality is
tacitly implied in the movement.

I say that the movement is sure to grow into prominence, that it is a
thing which must be seriously reckoned with; I do not say that it will
march straight on to victory, or even that it is sure to prevail in the
end. It is instructive, in this regard, to hark back to a recent
experience in a more special, but yet an extremely important, domain.
Several years ago a report on university efficiency was issued under the
auspices--though, it should be added, without the official endorsement--of
the Carnegie Foundation. The central feature of this report lay in its
advocacy of the application to universities of those principles of system
and of standardization which have been successfully applied on a large
scale to the promotion of industrial efficiency, and are generally
referred to by the catch-word, "scientific management." In spite of the
merits of the report in certain matters of detail, and of the high
standing of the expert who wrote it in his own department of industrial
engineering, the report evoked an almost universal chorus of contemptuous
rejection not only in university circles, but also from those organs of
public opinion which have any claim to be regarded as enlightened judges
in questions of education and culture. The thing seemed to have been
laughed out of court. And yet it turned out that a year or two afterwards
a full-fledged scheme for carrying out some of the crudest and most
objectionable features of this "efficiency" program was presented to the
professors of Harvard University, apparently with the expectation that
they would fall in with its requirements without hesitation or protest.
For some days there seemed to be real danger that this would actually
happen. It turned out to be a false alarm; the faculty of the foremost of
American universities were guilty of no such supineness. The project was
ignominiously shelved, with some sort of explanation that the springing of
it on the professors was due to an error or misunderstanding. But that the
attempt should have been made, and in a manner that argued so total a lack
of any sense of its grossness and crudity, is a significant warning of the
extent to which the notions underlying it have fastened upon the general
mind.

The story of the eugenics movement in this country affords a striking
illustration at once of the almost startling rapidity with which
innovating ideas as to the regulation of life gain acceptance, and of the
fact that this rapidity is by no means conclusive proof that their
progress will be continuous. The one thing clear is that there is a large,
active, and influential element in the population that is extremely
hospitable to such ideas, and manifests a naive, an almost childish,
readiness to put them into immediate execution. Since, in the nature of
things, this element is lively and active--since, too, what is novel and
in motion is more interesting than what is old and at rest--at first there
is almost sure to be produced a deceptive appearance that the new thing is
sweeping everything before it. Just now there is evidently a lull in the
onward march of legislative eugenics. This is sufficient proof of the
conservatism of the people as a whole; we may be quite sure that anything
beyond a very restricted application of eugenical notions will take a long
time to get itself established in our laws or even in our customs.
Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that even the more
extreme forms of eugenical doctrine are not forces to be reckoned with as
affecting practical possibilities of a not distant future. Though no
results may appear on the surface, the leaven is working. It is consonant
with tendencies which in so many directions are becoming more and more
dominant. So long as those tendencies continue in anything like their
present strength, there can be little doubt that the idea of control in
the direction of eugenics, like that of the regulation of human life in
other fundamental respects, will continue to make headway, and may at any
time become one of the central issues of the day.

To adduce prohibition as an illustration of this same character in the
thought and the tendencies of our immediate time may seem like forcing the
point. It is true, it may be said, that there has been within the past few
years a rapid spread of prohibition in almost every part of the country;
but the thing itself is sixty years old, has had its periods of advance
and recession, and is now, in the fullness of time, reaping the fruits of
two generations of agitation, investigation, and education. But to say
this is to overlook the distinctive feature of the present situation
regarding prohibition in the United States. A Constitutional amendment
providing for the complete prohibition of the sale of liquor throughout
the Union is pending in Congress. A year ago--probably six months
ago--there was hardly a human being in the United States, other than those
in the councils of the Anti-saloon League, who had so much as thought of
national prohibition as a question of present-day practical politics.
Suddenly it is announced that there is a distinct possibility of a
prohibition amendment being passed by Congress in the near future; and one
of the foremost representatives of the Anti-saloon League states, and with
good show of reason, that if the amendment be passed by Congress, its
ratification by the Legislatures of three fourths of the States can be
only a matter of time. What the probabilities actually are, I do not
undertake to say; neither am I concerned at this moment with the merits of
the issue itself. What I _am_ concerned with is the simple fact that in
this situation, brought upon the country with dramatic suddenness, nobody
seems to have been in the least startled, or so much as disturbed in his
equanimity. There will of course be a great struggle over the question,
sooner or later. But neither in Congress nor in the press has there as yet
been any sign of such an assertion of the claims of personal liberty as,
at any time previous to the past ten years, would have been sure to be
made in such a situation. This collective silence, on an issue affecting
so intimately the lives, the habits, the traditions of millions of people,
is, in my judgment, by far the most impressive proof of the degree in
which the public mind has grown accustomed to the inroads of regulation
upon the domain of individuality.

* * * * *

A number of years ago, when the mathematical concept of space of more than
three dimensions was attracting great popular interest, an ingenious
writer undertook to make the idea intelligible to "the general" by
picturing the state of mind in regard to three dimensions of a race of
beings whose life and whose sensual experience was limited to space of two
dimensions. He gave his little book the title "Flatland," and it gained
wide attention. In his Commencement address at Columbia last year,
President Butler had the happy thought of applying the term in the
characterization of certain aspects of the intellectual and political life
of our time. He was speaking particularly of that absorption in the
immediate problems of the day which makes almost impossible a true study
and contemplation of the lasting concerns of mankind as embodied in
history and literature. "Every ruling tendency," he said, "is to make life
a Flatland, an affair of two dimensions, with no depth, no background, no
permanent root." That this is a literal truth probably neither Dr. Butler
nor anyone else would contend; but it hits off with great force and with
substantial accuracy the prevailing character of thought in the circles
most active and most influential in almost every department of human
activity at the present time. And the tendency which President Butler
describes as arising out of our absorption in current problems is still
more manifest in the spirit of our actual dealings with those problems
themselves. On every hand we find a surprising readiness to accept views
which explicitly tend to take out of life that which gives it depth and
significance and richness. Each one of the four movements we have
mentioned affords an illustration of this: in following any one of them we
travel straight toward Flatland. They differ very much, one from another;
they have very different degrees and kinds of justification; it may be
difficult in the case of some of them to strike a balance between the gain
and the loss. The remarkable thing--the ominous thing, if we are to
suppose that the present tone of thought will long persist--is that the
loss involved in the flattening of life, as such, apparently almost wholly
fails to get consideration. I say apparently, because there is, no doubt,
a deep and strong undercurrent of opposition which, sooner or later, will
manifest itself; in speaking of "ruling tendencies" we are apt to mean
merely the tendencies that are most in evidence. But after all, it is to
these that criticism of contemporary life and thought must, of necessity,
be chiefly directed.

As I have already indicated, the attack on individuality and personal
dignity in the universities was met in a spirit that is highly gratifying,
and which is quite out of keeping with the tendency that I am discussing
and deploring. Yet it is doubtful whether, outside the circle of the
universities themselves, and of those individuals who are thoroughly
imbued with the university spirit, there is any true realization of what
it is that constituted the head and front of that offending. If some
bureau of research were to present a formidable array of figures showing
that the "output" of professorial work could be increased by so and so
many per cent. through the adoption of some definitely formulated system
of "scientific management," it is by no means certain that the scheme
would not receive powerful support in the highest quarters of efficiency
propaganda. We should be told just how many millions of dollars a year we
are spending on university education, and just how many of these millions
go needlessly to waste. Even the opponents of the "reform" would probably
find themselves compelled to use as their most powerful argument this and
that example of great practical results which have flowed from letting men
of genius go their own way. It would be pointed out that many an
investigation which, to the authorities of the time, appeared wholly
unpromising, turned out to be of cardinal value. We should be warned that
what we gain in a thousand cases through time-clock and card-catalogue
methods, might be lost ten times over through the shackling of the
initiative of a single man of unrecognized genius. And all this would be
very much to the purpose; but it is not upon any such special pleading
that the case ought to be made to rest. The loss that would be suffered
transcends all these concrete and definable instances of it. It would be
pervasive, fundamental, immeasurable. Grievous as might be the injury
caused by the prevention of specific achievements of exceptional
importance, this would be as nothing in comparison with the intellectual
and spiritual loss entailed by the lowering of the human level, the
devitalizing of the intellectual atmosphere, which must inevitably follow
upon the application of factory methods to university life.

* * * * *

The case of the eugenics propaganda is far more complex. In its origin,
and doubtless in some of its present manifestations, it may lay claim to
being directed toward aims which are particularly concerned with the
higher interests of life. The author of "Hereditary Genius" certainly
could not be accused of indifference to the part played in the past, or to
be played in the future, by exceptional minds and characters; nor is it
necessary to charge any of the present promoters of the propaganda with
explicit failure to appreciate the importance of such minds and
characters. The criticism is often made, from this standpoint, that the
hard-and-fast rules which the eugenists propose would, in point of fact,
have put under the ban some of the most illustrious names in the annals of
mankind--men whose genius was accompanied with some of the very traits
which they hold should most positively be prevented from appearing. But,
however weighty this objection to the methods of eugenics may be, it is to
be looked upon rather as an item on the debit side of the reckoning than
as marking an ingrained defect, a fault at the very heart of the matter.
The eugenists may well challenge those who urge merely this kind of
objection to show that the losses thus pointed out are great enough to
offset the gains, in the very same direction, which they regard their
program as promising. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, they can at
least set up the contention that, as a mere affair of quantity, genius
will do better under their system than without it.

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