tection of the country against the shipment and landing of the disturbing, burdensome, and troublesome classes on our shores, and, if such laws and methods be found defective for the purposes intended, seek to remedy them by appropriate legislation and the establishment and enforcement of wholesome rules and regulations upon the subject.

The federal statutes in relation to immigration seem to impose nearly all the restrictions necessary against the introduction into this country of criminals, paupers, lunatics, and other disturbing and burdensome classes from foreign countries. These statutes are believed to be defective, however, in that the inspection of intending immigrants at the ports of departure is by the masters or commanding officers and the surgeons of the steamships or vessels bringing them to this country instead of by United States officers appointed and stationed abroad for the purpose. When epidemic cholera in Europe threatened this country in 1892, we wisely adopted measures to combat the disease and restrict its spread, by extending our hospital accommodations and placing our cities in the highest sanitary condition in the event of its reaching our shores. As a further protection against the invasion of the disease, Congress empowered the Secretary of the Treasury to appoint and send abroad sanitary inspectors, who, in connection with our United States consuls at the various ports, were authorized to establish and prescribe rules and regulations regarding the embarkation of intending immigrants, and, in case of such immigrants coming from infected districts, to enforce their detention under strict quarantine rules and regulations until danger from the infection had passed. This prompt and energetic action resulted in confining the disease to the sources of its emanation, and thus saved this country from its devastating ravages; and it is believed that like beneficial results would follow a thorough inspection of all intending immigrants by competent United States officers under consular direction at the various ports of departure, by excluding the prohibited classes generally, many of which, under the present imperfect system of inspection abroad, are now enabled to reach our shores.

Various other means for the regulation and restriction of immigration have been suggested, among which are an increase of the head money tax and an educational qualification. The former might well be applied to the alien sojourner coming to this country for the ad

vantages of labor and intending to return to enjoy its benefits at his home; but any general system of heavy taxation of immigrants is inharmonious with our American ideas, and any proposition in this direction would probably meet with but little favor. There is much in the latter, or educational proposition, to commend itself to public favor; and it has the earnest support of persons of large and extended observation upon the subject. Whatever further conditions may be imposed in respect to immigration, it is believed, as before stated, that the examinations should be made by United States inspectors under consular direction, and the tests in all cases applied at the ports of departure, instead of leaving the eligibility of the persons to enter the country to be officially determined, as at present, at the ports of landing.

The desire for the further restriction of immigration, so as to enable us to assimilate and bring into accord with American ideas our already large alien population, with no correct conceptions of our social or governmental systems, is so universally prevalent that any just and reasonable proposition to this effect, it is believed, would command universal and hearty support.

INTERSTATE MIGRATION.

BY H. H. HART,

SECRETARY OF THE MINNESOTA STATE BOARD OF CORRECTIONS

AND CHARITIES.

This important subject has received but little attention in this Conference except as it has come up in connection with the subject of immigration. In the report of Mr. Sanborn at the Denver Conference in 1892 the question was discussed intelligently and as practically as the very limited data attainable would allow.

It has been assumed in the discussion of this question in the past - as, indeed, it is assumed in our State legislation generally that each country and each State is bound to carry its own burden of pauperism, insanity, and crime, and that a wrong is done whenever a pauper or criminal is transferred from the place where he be

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came a pauper or a criminal to another country or another State. I am inclined to take issue with this view.

The care of a dependent or delinquent is a charge upon the more prudent and the more law-abiding portions of the community. Interstate migration is constantly tending to transfer to the newer portions of the country the best elements of the older communities. The most enterprising business men, the most ambitious lawyers, the most progressive teachers, the most zealous ministers, the most active farmers, mechanics, and laboring men have forsaken the established communities of the East, and have engaged in building up new empires in the West. These migratory people have left behind them in the East the weaker elements of their several classes. If a member of the family is insane, he is left in an Eastern asylum. If a pauper, he is left in an almshouse. If a criminal, he is left in a prison. If he is infirm or old or unenterprising, he is left on the old homestead, to be cared for and assisted, if necessary, by the community in which he lives.

The result has been that the newer States have been peopled with a fresh population, including much less than a normal proportion of dependants or criminals. Professor A. O. Wright brought out the fact, in a paper read before this Conference in 1884, that "the largest proportion of insanity was to be found in the New England States, next in the Middle States, and next in the interior States." The same general fact was revealed in the census of 1890. In other words, the proportion of insanity is greatest in the oldest and settled. States, and smallest in the new and recently populated States. The census of 1890 shows that the same is true of the almshouse population. The North Atlantic States have a ratio of 1,790 almshouse paupers in the million; the North Central States, 1,145; and the Western States, 1,036. The census shows the ratio of prisoners to be as follows in the North Atlantic States, 6,550 in the million; in the North Central States, 3,900 in the million; and in the Western States, 7,130 in the million. Here we have an exception to the general rule which is found in the mining States of Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and California. In no one of the North Central States is the ratio of prisoners equal to the average ratio for the North Atlantic States.

On the whole, interstate migration operates greatly in favor of the newer States; and, if there were any way in which they could be

made to take a fair portion of the burden of dependency which legitimately belongs to the people who come from the older States, it would be equitable that they should do so. But there does not seem to be any way in which this could be done; and the older States must continue to bear a disproportionate share of the burden until the new States become old, and the equilibrium is restored by the natural increase. One reason why the question of interstate migration of paupers and criminals has received so little attention is probably because those who are familiar with the subject know that the burdens of the younger States in this particular are comparatively light. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois begin to feel the pressure of the burdens that press upon Massachusetts and New York; but there are no slums west of Chicago, and no Western city has any large number of paupers "without visible means of support." The entire State of Minnesota, with a population of 1,500,ooo people, has, even in these times, only 487 almshouse paupers. The city of Buffalo, N.Y., alone, has 696 almshouse paupers, which is nearly 50 per cent. more than the entire State of Minnesota. city of Cleveland has 547; and the city of Cincinnati, 773.

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The subject of interstate migration of paupers and criminals is not serious, economically considered, except for a few cities which lie in the travelled road between the East and the West; but it is an important question to the student of charity, for it tends to breed paupers, and it is a great obstacle to the repression of crime and the reformation of criminals.

Travelling paupers inflict a double burden upon the community. We do not let people starve in this country, if they cannot or do not feed themselves; and, in the case of the travelling pauper, we not only feed him, but pay his travelling expenses besides. It is astonishing the facility with which the penniless pauper travels from one end of the United States to the other, not only the travelling "bum" who steals rides on the freight cars, but the less disreputable traveller who goes on a half-fare ticket in a first-class car. Some time ago a woman, with two or three children, applied to the public authorities at Detroit for assistance to go to her husband in Manitɔba. She was likely to become a public charge, and she was told that the best they could do was to send her to Chicago. Chicago, she applied to the charitable agencies there. not let her starve, they had not the firmness to send

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roit. So they gave her a half-fare ticket to St. Paul. The St. 1 charitable agencies, in turn, sent her to Winnipeg; and the inipeg authorities sent her to her destination. I do not know ther she returned to Detroit or not; but she would have had no culty in doing so by the reversed process. An old man came a Providence, R.I., to St. Paul with ease and despatch in search ome mythical relatives. An old woman came from Arkansas to Paul by boat to find some friends who, she understood, "lived St. Paul." She sojourned contentedly for a month at the ne for the Friendless while a vain search was made for the ids who did not exist; and then she returned by the way she e, well pleased with the free summer outing.

s a preliminary to the preparation of this paper, the following iries were addressed to the officers of charity organization ties or similar organizations in Pittsburg, Cleveland, Detroit, innati, Indianapolis, Chicago, Omaha, and Burlington, selected use they are situated on the main travelled lines.

What can you say of the practice of sending paupers from the in which they belong to other States for the purpose of getting f them?

What can you say of the practice of sending paupers from the to which they do not belong to other States to which they do elong for the purpose of getting rid of them?

What can you say of the facility with which indigent persons 1 from one State to another by the use of public charities and te charitable organizations?

What information can you give relative to the coming of foreign grant paupers into the interior States, who have eluded the orities at the seaboard? Have you any information of such le being sent through to interior points from foreign countries? What remedies would you suggest for the evils connected with migration, so far as there are any?

Would you advise an effort for concurrent legislation on the of the several States?

Would you advise that in all cases, indigent persons, forwarded blic expense, be sent back in the direction which they come r than to be transmitted to their destination?

As to the practice of sending paupers from States in which belong to other States for the purpose of getting rid of them.