Economically Americans are more prosperous than the residents of any other country in the world, partly because our standard of living is higher, partly because our land is less crowded in proportion to our resources. Consequently there must be, without restriction, a constant flow of people hither, until an equilibrium is established - that is, until our surplus resources are exhausted and our land is as crowded as that of other countries. This is as inevitable as that water will seek its own level.

To protect laborers some sort of tariff should be placed on laborers. In other words, they should know how to read and write, as our own citizens are obliged to, or show tangible proof of saving habits or be in some way so selected that good will come to this country with them sufficient to offset the constant tendency to reduce economically our well being. For, economically, 1,000,000 immigrants a year are rapidly consuming the very advantages which we prize.

Far more important is the effect of immigration on the American race. We are to-day taxing severely our powers of assimilation. With the example of the old world staring us in the face, we are developing in all our great cities new foreign slums, as if the fundamental character of our new world were of no consequence.

Even the horrors of the old slave ships are almost forgotten in the American problem of to-day. The million immigrants a year now coming are in the

foreground, but it is the million upon millions into which they will grow which should most make us stop and think.

Let us not be further misled by a charitable feeling in regard to the good effect of emigration on foreign countries. - John F. Moors, Pres. Immigra tion Restriction League in United Mine Workers Journal.

It looks as if the immigration question will not down. United States Commissioner Sargent is determined to keep it before the country until something is done by the government regarding it.

Commissioner Sargent has just announced that according to estimates he has just made there are more immigrants coming to the country now than there ever were, and they are coming in larger numbers from the most undesirable sections. The Commissioner is more than ever convinced that some heroic act will have to be done to regulate this immigration evil.

Various methods have been suggested to cope with this evil and many of them have been dis cussed in the Labor World. It is apparent that there is a strong opposition to any measure or law that will put up extraordinary barricades against these immigrants. The opposition has its source in various reasons and it is evident that no very great embargo is to be placed on the immigrants for some time at least. In view of this fact something ought to be done toward having the immigrants sent to places in the country that are best suited to receive them. While this may not remedy the evil entirely it will certainly modify it. It is not unreasonable to say that had the great bulk of the immigrants coming to this country gone direct to places where they were really needed there might not have been any immigration evil to complain of. Labor of the kind that is almost continually coming to this country from Europe is ever in demand, but it needs a kind of pioneer spirit to take it to where it is really needed. Instead of going to undeveloped sections of the country these immigrants join others who have preceded them in congested settlements or colonies in large cities or centres where labor is already overstocked. This is one of the chief causes of the evil and if it were removed a great blessing would be secured.

While there are some strong arguments against preventing immigrants coming to this country in great numbers, it can hardly be conceded that any reasonable objection can be raised against having these immigrants go to certain places when they do come.-Labor World.

When once moved by the spirit of unionism the immigrants from low standard countries are the

most dangerous of unionists, for they have no obligations, little property, and but meager necessities that compel them to yield. The bituminous coal miners were on strike four months in 1897 and the anthracite mine workers five months in 1902. Unionism comes to them as a discovery and a revelation. Suddenly to find that men of other races whom they have hated are really brothers and that their enmity has been encouraged for the profit of a common oppressor is the most profound awakening of which they are capable. Their resentment toward employers who have kept them apart, their devotion to their new found brothers, are terrible and pathetic. With their emotional temperament unionism becomes not merely a fight for wages, but a religious crusade. It is in the nature of retribution that, after bringing to this country all the industrial races of Europe and Asia in the effort to break down labor organizations, these races should so soon have wiped out race antagonism and, joining together in the most powerful of labor unions, have wrenched from their employers the greatest advances in wages.

There is but one thing that stands in the way of complete unionization in many of the industriesnamely, a flood of immigration too great for assimilation by the unions. With nearly a million im. migrants a year, the pressure upon unions seems almost resistless. A few of the unions which control the trade, like the mine workers and longshoremen, with high initiation fees and severe terms of admission, are able to protect themselves by virtue of strength already gained. But in the coast States and on miscellaneous labor this strategic advantage does not exist, and the standards are set by the newest immigrants.- Chautauquan.

The problem of immigration, which was discussed by the American Academy of Political and Social Science in Philadelphia, last week, is one that assumes increasing importance every year. But the problem has been wrongly stated. It is not a prob lem of prevention, but a problem of distribution.

The country has not yet reached the point where it can afford to close its doors against immigration. Our population is by no means so large and the conditions of life are by no means so severe in the United States that it is necessary, as an act of selfprotection, that we should limit the number of those who may be allowed to makes homes within our territory. The population of the United States has now reached nearly 80,000,000. But there is room west of the Mississippi for a population of more than that number, without a greater density than that which now prevails in the Middle States. We have room in this country, between the Atlantic and Pacific, the Lakes and the Gulf, for a population of 300,000,000, and the products of our soil would provide sufficient for all of their necessities.

The point has been made that the character of immigration is degenerating, but this has not been clearly proven. The character of the immigration has indeed changed, but the fact that the 600,000 immigrants who come to our shores in a year of prosperity bring upward of $20,000,000 in actual money with them, is a fact testifying to their thrift and industry. Many of the recent immigrants have come to this country on account of religious persecution, and a man who will pull up stakes, abandon the place of his birth, and seek a new country, on account of his beliefs, must have within him some of the stuff of which good American citizens can be made.

The great evil is that so vast a proportion of the immigrants remain within the already overcrowded large cities.-Wall Street Journal.

The immigration question is becoming a serious one, which the labor leaders throughout the coun. try are watching with some alarm. In an article on the subject Edgar E. Clark, grand chief of the Order of Railway Conductors, says, in part:

"We have reached a time in the development of this country when there is danger to our economic and social institutions through our inability to assimilate the hordes of immigrants that are coming in here every year. This nation has dissipated a continent in a century, and the time has come when the influx of the serfs and criminals of Europe cannot be distributed over this vast land. They will not go out in the wilds and hew a new path for themselves. They become competitors with American workmen and drag down the rate of wages.

"These immigrants knock the prop from under the whole social and economic structure of this country, and if they are not checked the American workmen will be reduced to the level of the semislavery existence of the poorly paid workingmen of Europe. There are just two classes of workmen in this country to-day. They are the men who work hard at the real manual labor and who cannot do more. They are contented with their lot, which is vastly superior to what is the existence of the foreign laborers. The other class is the artisan. He is a highly paid mechanic, the finest speci men of manhood this great country has produced. These two great classes get along well together. The lower class does not interfere with the other. But here comes your immigrant with his low scale of wages. He lines up with the laboring-men of the country and begins to cut the price of the lower class. Now, there is one of two things for these men to do. They must accept the low wages established by the pauper immigrant or they must begin to cut the price of those higher up. The conse quence is a drop in wages all around."-- National Labor Tribune.

On a recent occasion in Chicago Booker T. Washington warned the people of his race that if they failed to improve the opportunity now offered to become owners of land in the Southern States it would soon be too late, as immigrants from Europe would shortly turn their steps in that direction, and the only inviting field remaining to those who wish to become cultivators of their own farms would pass into the hands of aliens.

The warning was timely. Foreigners are taking possession fast enough without any urging. — Chicago Chronicle.

"My observation is that Italians imported, not from the southern part of Italy or from Sicily, but from the northern agricultural districts of Italy, are excellently adapted to the needs of the Delta," said Hon. LeRoy Percy, lawyer, banker, farmer, and publicist, of Greenville, Miss. "In conjunction with my partner, Mr. O. B. Crittenden, I have had for six years the management and control of what is known as the Austin Corbin Planting property, situated in Chicot county, Arkansas, of which something more than 4,000 acres are in cultivation, and more than one-half of this property is worked by Italian labor. Some of them have been upon the property for years, and the number has increased

each year during our connection with the property, we advancing to the Italians upon the property during the past year $4,000 or $5,000, with which they brought over friends and relatives from Italy, and all of which was paid back by them out of the past crop. As growers of cotton they are in every respect superior to the negro. They are industrious and thrifty, and the present generation will not develop the land-owning instinct; they all dream of returning to sunny Italy. The property is worked about one-half by negroes and one-half by Italians. There does not seem to be any race antagonism between them and no race mixture. The Italians make a profit of $5 out of a crop where the negro makes $1, and yet the negro seems to be perfectly satisfied with his returns. No spirit of emulation is excited by the superior work or prosperity of his Italian neighbor. We had one of them recently return to Italy with more than $8,000 in cash, never having worked more than thirty acres of land, leaving behind him a family to work the land and with money sufficient to provide themselves for another year. If the immigration of these people is encouraged they will gradually take the place of the negro without there being any such violent change as to paralyze for a generation the pros. perity of the country."- From "Italians in the Cotton Fields," by Lee L. Langley in the Southern Farm Magazine.

It is very doubtful if any number of white foreign laborers can ever be induced to come South and work in competition with the negro. The Chinaman, however, would have no such scruples, and we are of the opinion that he would prove a potent factor in solving the so-called and much-discussed "race problem." Be that as it may, we know he will work, and work is what we want. The wonderful resources of the South can never be developed without labor. The negro cannot begin to supply the requirements of our growing industries, and the white laborers at the South are so few they cannot at present enter into the calculation of the labor supply. Southern Ruralist.

Cardinal Gibbons writes: "I know under what circumstances people live in America. My advice to the young men and women of Ireland is to endeavor to find a livelihood in their own land. Ireland is blessed with a delightful climate where the great extremes of heat and cold are unknown; whereas in the United States these extremes are very serious drawbacks. Any man or woman who could eke out a livelihood at home should take my advice and stay there instead of emigrating to America to enter on the keen struggle for existence under trying circumstances that are in progress here."- From "Irish-American View of Immigra tion," in the Railroad Trainmen's Journal.

What would America have been to-day without foreign emigration? It would have been a wilder. ness, the home of warring Indian tribes with periodical wars and famines.

When first the Spaniards discovered America the Indians were not hostile, but as soon as it became understood that the invasion meant slavery, land steals, destruction of the hunting grounds, and the degenerating influences of new vices and diseases, there was trouble. The Indians claimed the land was theirs and the Spaniards that it was not. Later on, the English said it belonged to none of the firstcomers. Still later, the American colonies claimed

that the only equitable claim was that of use and that King George was without jurisdiction.

At that time the American colonies had a popula tion of about 4,000,000, while England's was about 12,000,000. If foreign emigration had been stopped by the United States it is plain that they would have lost the sympathy of the world and as the popula tion of foreign countries would have increased faster than here any foreign nation could have conquered this country. By encouraging foreign emigration the "land of the free and the home of the brave" was able to continue its national existence.

At present, in spite of the natural resources of America, it almost appears to be over-populated with 80,000,000 people, all of whom could be easily supported in the State of Texas under right and just conditions. The over-population is due to the fact that all natural resources are to-day fenced in with legal claims as property; whereas, formerly, the best land was free. Capitalist methods of industry are also factors, as much available labor is unemployed. Formerly the population of the United States was largely middle class; for it is not the volume of business, but security of home comforts that characterizes a middle class. To-day the young people of the farms are drifting to the cities, and it will not be many years before those employed in other industries will be in majority over the rural population. . . .

The American who accuses the foreigner of being ignorant had better look to see if such sentiment is not largely prejudice. True, the American-born citizen, as a rule, has some qualities that the foreignborn citizen wishes to acquire - not because he is mentally or physically inferior, but because he heretofore lacked opportunity.

The real thing the American should be against, is the competition in the labor market. To tell the foreigner to stay away under the present system is to appeal to sentiment, instead of removing causes. The land speculator wants emigration to raise the value of his land. The industrial capitalist wants submissive labor, and will use foreigners to hold the Americans down and Americans to hold the foreigners down to low wages.

Some Americans say that the emigration now is of a lower order than formerly, which is not true. The emigrants to the colonies were largely illiterate, some of them being arch criminals according to European laws of that time. It should not be overlooked that many illiterate emigrants learn to read after arrival here. In a crowd of them there are always some who are highly schooled. . . .

Many of the immigrants are from the farm population of Europe, and as a consequence are handicapped in seeking employment in the artisan trades. Thus you see the native born Americans either through inherited wealth wrung from exploiting 'foreigners" or through inherited influence of friends and relatives, or because the ignorant foreigner does the common labor- are able to gain financial advantage, steady employment and accession to trades that are easy to keep organized. . . . If the United States should want to restrict emigration of foreigners, I am sure that the foreignborn citizens would vote for it. But would it be practicable? Would America be safe from foreign invasion? The only choice of Americans is the character of those who shall come among us. By barring out Chinese they will emigrate to other countries of the earth and force their people to vacate and come here, and ultimately there will be a level.

I can see no reason why those, who because they came here first, should want to bar out those nationalities that are coming now. After foreigners have lived in colonies for a while they scatter and live like other people. They are valuable to the capitalist mode of production, in that they are on hand all times, being usually more steady. - Peter Johnson, in The Crisis, Salt Lake City, Utah.

The changes now taking place in the population of the United States through immigration are very interesting, and will have a potent influence on the future development and history of the country.. There is only one objection to the immigration of any white race and that is to the landing of the criminal classes. The laws should be so stringent on this point that prospective immigrants ought to apply to immigration inspectors in their respective countries for a license to enter the United States, and their applications should be accompanied by suitable references. The honest, ambitious, and well-educated are always welcome. America has always welcomed good immigrants. Millions of them have entered our industrial and mechanical arts, and have aided wonderfully to bring about our present national prosperity. They have become naturalized, acquired lands, and married, and will generally be found upholding the laws of their adopted country.- Boston Globe.

After the peace of Paris in 1783, and the birth of a new nation on the American continent, homeseekers arriving at ports of the United States were called immigrants. Previous to the Revolutionary war they were known as colonists. The distinction is one of political allegiance. The colonist was an immigrant who desired to make a home in the new country, but to retain his allegiance to his native land. On the other hand, the immigrant, in a majority of instances, expected and desired to change his political allegiance.

The immigrant of those days was not allured by the promise of high wages, nor by the desire to better his financial condition, but was actuated chiefly by the desire to create a home and free himself from the trammels and persecutions of the Old World. He was at once a pioneer, a woodsman, and a farmer.

The many advantages offered to the home-seeker who was brave, willing, and strong, in the new United States, attracted many thousand immigrants, and it is estimated that 150,000 settled in the country between 1783 and 1810. These early immigrants were mostly from the British Isles, with a few Germans, French, and Scandinavians.

The strained relations with England followed by the war of 1812 practically stopped immigration for several years. During 1817, however, 20,000 immigrants arrived in the United States. This number was unprecedented at that time, and caused considerable criticism of the overcrowding of immi grant ships.

Immigration first assumed large proportions during the decade of 1831-1840. It increased progressively, and during the next twenty years was relatively greater in proportion to the native population than at any other period. The great famine in Ireland greatly increased Irish immigration. German immigration was increased at the same time because of industrial depression and the revolt of 1848. The discovery of gold in California no doubt also contributed to the increase of immi. gration at this time.

Irish immigration reached its height in the decade of 1841-1850, when it constituted 46 per cent of the total. It has declined steadily and is now only four per cent of the total.

The Germans kept coming in increasing numbers, and in the early eighties were 30 per cent of the total. They also have fallen off, and now constitute less than 10 per cent. The Scandinavians became a considerable factor in the decade 1861-1870, and in 1889 furnished 10 per cent of our immigrants. Their proportion has also declined and at present is about 10 per cent. With the decline in the proportion of immigrants from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, a rapid increase in the arrivals from Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia is noticeable.

Immigrants of to-day can be grouped under four heads, (1) agricultural, (2) industrial, (3) competi tive, (4) parasitic.

The agricultural class includes farm laborers and those desiring to take up land for settlement. The industrial class includes the great army of unskilled laborers who seek employment in the mines, mills, great works of construction, and manufacturing concerns. These two classes are valuable and necessary for the development and industrial progress of the country.

The competitive class takes in the skilled laborers, mechanics, artisans, and others who come here and enter into competition, in their respective callings, with Americans. This class is not necessary for our advancement, and may or may not be of value to the country.

The fourth or parasitic class is, as its name im. plies, not only valueless, but decidedly detrimental to the body politic. In this class are included the peddlers, fakirs, paupers, etc., who congregate and will live only in the large centres of popula tion and who cannot or will not do hard physical labor.

Social and political conditions in Europe determine to a large extent both the quantity and the quality of our immigration. A country well and justly governed and which is in a prosperous condition is not likely to send us many good immigrants.

The type of Englishman who would be welcome here as an immigrant, the sturdy Anglo-Saxon yeoman, of whom we delight to form a mental picture, finds conditions of life so suited to him in England that we rarely see him as an immigrant, and we are much more likely to receive as our English immigrant the degenerate product of the London slums.

The same has been true of Germany for many years. The prosperity of the country, the growth of national pride, and reconciliation to the form of government have cut down the German emigration from the great exodus of the eighties to the comparatively insignificant figures of today.

It will be seen, therefore, that it is unwise to consider an immigrant good because he is of one race or worthless because he is of another. They must be measured individually, irrespective of race or creed, for it is better to receive the robust pastoral or agricultural immigrants from countries where the intellectual status, perhaps, is not high and the school system faulty, than to receive from countries possessing high intellectual status and a superior educational system the urban degenerate, criminal, diseased, and defective. - Dr. Allan McLaughlin in Popular Science Monthly.

Labor Unions' Contracts Void. In a decision recently rendered in Milwaukee, Wis., by Judge Ludwig of the Circuit Court, it appeared that the Milwaukee Custom Tailors Union brought suit against a local firm, with which it had made an agreement to employ none but union workmen, to have the firm punished for the alleged failure to comply with the terms of a temporary injunction. The motion to punish was denied and the injunc tion set aside.

The judge said in part: "This agreement strikes at the right of contract, and provides that the firm shall employ none but members of the several unions, thus discriminating in favor of one class of men, and excluding all others. Therefore, the prohibition contained in the contract strikes at the right of contract, both on the part of the laborer and the employer. The agreements in question would tend to create a monopoly in favor of the members of the different unions, to the exclusion of the workmen not members of such unions, and are in this respect unlawful. Contracts tending to create a monopoly are void."

Employee- Misconduct Waiver Action. The case of Person vs. McGregor, decided recently by the Supreme Court of Minnesota, was an action to recover stipulated wages for work performed pursuant to a contract for a definite term. It appeared that the defendant continued to accept the services to the end of the term after alleged misconduct of the plaintiff. The court held that the defendant thereby waived his right to insist on a forfeiture of the plaintiff's wages on account of such misconduct.

Hiring One Under Contract. In the case of Wolf et al. vs. New Orleans Tailor Made Pants Company, Limited, recently decided by the Louisi ana Supreme Court, it appeared that a commercial traveler engaged his services to the plaintiffs for the term of one year, and when about half the time had expired sought other employment and engaged his services to the defendant company, which at the time had no information that his term would not expire for five or six months. After the trayeler had quit the service of the plaintiffs, they informed the defendant company of the terms of the contract, and thereupon the traveler offered to release his new employers, but at the same time expressed his determination not to return to the service of the plaintiffs. The court held that the plaintiffs had no cause of action against the defendant company for damages because it did not release or discharge the employee.

Employer's Liability — Accident - Recovery. The Supreme Court of Louisiana held, in the case of Schoultz vs. Eckhardt Manufacturing Company, Limited, that if a break occurs in machinery and a workman undertakes to mend it and is injured, the causes which brought about the break are only remote causes of the injury and juridically are not

its causes at all; that the employer is under no obligation to provide a hood or guard for inner and ordinarily inaccessible parts of machinery; that if there is a safe and an unsafe way of doing a thing and the employee chooses the unsafe way and is injured, he cannot recover against the employer for the injury; that the employer is under no obligation to keep his premises so lighted that all repair work may be done without the necessity of additional light, and that if such additional light is needed for repair work and the servant, instead of procuring it, undertakes to do the work without it and is injured, he cannot recover against the employer.

Employer's Liability - Risk Negligence. The Supreme Court of Nebraska held, in the recent case of Weed vs. Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railroad Company, that employers are not insurers, but are liable for the consequences not of danger, but of negligence; that the unbending test of negligence in methods, machinery, and appli ances is the ordinary usage of the business, and that an employee who, from the length or character of previous service or experience, may be presumed to know the ordinary hazards attending the con duct of a certain business is not entitled as an abso lute right to the same or similar notice of dangers incident to the employment as if he were ignorant of or inexperienced in the particular work. In the case before it the court ruled that it was not negli gence per se for a conductor of a freight train, while engaged in switching cars at a station, to order an experienced brakeman to board and stop a car moving at a speed of from four to six miles an hour, and that in such a case, where it appeared from the evidence that the act ordered to be done was a usual and customary act performed by freight brakemen generally under like circumstances, the giving of the order would not be imputed to the company as negligence.

Insurance Indemnity Employees. The Supreme Court of Minnesota held, in the recent case of The Fidelity & Casualty Company of New York vs. The Gillette-Herzog Manufacturing Company, that where under indemnity policies issued to the owners of a foundry and machine shop against liability to employees and others from accidents through alleged negligence of the insured, the initial premiums being paid upon the estimated number of the employees under an agreement that there was to be a subsequent adjustment based upon the actual number engaged and wages paid, and the insured to have rebates for overpayment, a settlement of such excesses and rebates after the life of the policy was made, with full knowledge by each party of the number of employees and occupation of each, there was an accord and satisfaction protecting the insured in an action there. after for unpaid premiums claimed by the insurer. The court further held that whether or not upon a construction of the policies the excluded employees