New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-09-05
SOME EACrS ABOUT IMMIGRATION

SOME fACIS ABDUL IM HIUhd lIO@''
The Bureau of Statistics has just issued an
interesting and valuable report on immigration,
showing so far as the records of the Government
enable it to show, where the vast body of our
immigrants have come from, where they have
been distributed, their character, sex, age and
qualifications for American citizenship. The
Bureau has never been more intelligently re-
sponSive to the public interest than it is to-day,
and in putting out this volume it has done
great deal to set at rest the anxiety OF many
as to the dangers to our citizenship from the
TOO little guarded admission of aliens. Not that
those dangers are wholly absent. On the con-
trlry they are plainly traced, and are exhibited
in all their substance and in their actual FORM
But they arc not 50 serious as many have sup
posed, nor have they gone so far but that wise
legislation is still able to overcome them and
prevent their extension. Until 1920 no record
of alien arrivals was kept by the General Gov
eminent, but the Bureau is satisfied that up to
that date they had not exceeded 100000. From
1920 to 1856 they numbered 4,212,624 The
nationality OF these is known, but 1t is not
possible to say how many were transient travel
ers. From 1856 that distinction was made
in the records, but not until 1868 were they
full and Gear enough to furnish answers to all
the questions of moment. For present pur-
poses. however, the recent records are suifi-
Gent. Fully half of the total immigration of
15,427,G57, arriving from 1920 to the end of
1890, has come since 1868, and as for the
earlier half 1t is already absorbed and American
lied We are particularly concerned, indeed,
only with the arrivals of the last twenty years.
It is within this period that the flow of OBJ
ectionable classes began.
Taking the arrivals since 1920, however, it
is interesting to know that So per cent of the
whole have come from lands whose people
easily coalesce with our native population, and
naturally fall in with the spirit Of our institu-
tions. England has supplied 2,43O,3SO, or
1916 per cent; Germany, 4,5O4 1913, or 1920
per cent; Ireland, BASIL or 22.56, per
cent Norway and Sweden, 925, O31, or per
cent There is a percentage of undesirable
immigrants among these, undoubtedly, but it
is small and manageable. The class that is
positively Objectionable comes from among the
races of Southern EHrope, and, although the
flow from these has been recently increasing, it
has not as yet amounted to more than 10 per
cent of the whole Expressed in general
way, the classes we could better afford to do
without have been supplied by China, Austria
Hungary, Italy and Russia and Poland and the
total immigration from these countries up to
June 80, 1890, amounted to only LABS, 593.
Distributed among $4,000, 600 Of people, the
proportion of this number that is actually
burden and danger can be held in check.
In the three decades from 1850 10 1880 the
average annual immigration amounted to about
$50, 600, but in the last decade it was twice as
great and that fact is the more significant be-
cause it was in 1882, after an inflow of 772.-
J92 for that fiscal year, that our first generally
restrictive law was passed But it applied only
TO conyicts. 1t was preceded by the prohibitiye
Chinese Treaty and followed by an alien con-
tract law and under the provisions of these
measures imm grafton has been notably reduced.
Since 1887 it has been growing again and
especially in quarters from which unfortunate
results are to be apprehended To what ex-
tent the law Of 1891, forbidding entry to all