Los Angeles herald., 1892-03-02
spAUPER AND CRIMINAL IMMIGRATION

sPAUPER AND CRIMINAL IMMIGRATION.
The people of the United States will
Look to this congress for legislation that
will put an end to the outrageous abuse
of our hospitality to foreign immigra-
tion. In leaving our country open to
the free immigration of foreigners, we
never contemplated that it should be-
come the dumping ground for the pauper
and criminal classes of Europe. Yet
we have been go lax in the inspection of
the persons admitted that the very scum
and offscourings of the densely popu-
lated cities of Europe have been poured
in upon us in immense numbers.
The steamship companies, plying be-
tween New York and the old world
are go eager to bring over passengers that
they send agents out to make false rep
resentations to laborers to induce them
to emigrate. Attention has just been
called to advertisements in papers in
Poland. which announce that 100000
laborers are needed to work at remuner-
ative employment in Chicago. In this
way the natural emigration from Eu-
rope is accelerated to increase the busi-
ness of the steamship companies, and
to overrun our country with cheap
labor. There is hardly any doubt that
there has been in years past, though
the necessity for it no longer
exists, regular system OF vio-
lation of the law against importing
contract laborers. The great coal and
iron companies OF Pennsylvania and
Ohio found way to evade the law, and
at the same time to bring over hundreds
of thousands of Hungarians, Italians
and Bohemians to supplant the laborers
here who would not work for starvation
wages.
The reports made by the secret COM
missioners sent to Europe to investigate
the question, ought certainly to open
the eyes OF congress to the urgent neces-
sity of legislation to stringently regulate
the admission of further European i'm
migration. These men reported that
in England and on the continent
paupers and criminals were regu-
larly deported to the United States
by the aid and connivance of the
authorities. One of the commissioners
proved this by Disgusting himself and
representing himself as one who would
have to be helped out of the poor rates
if he was not assisted to the United
States. The parochial authorities
secured him passage to New York on an
emigrant steamer, and he vividly de-
scribes the horrors OF the passage in a
filthy and overcrowded steerage. where
disease could not but be generated, and
where men, women and children were
crowded together without regard to
health or decency.
This report will justify congress in
drawing the linee upon the promiscuous
immigration of the undesirable classes
of Europeans. Indeed, no European
should be permitted to come to this
country who is not fit person to be-
come citizen of it, and nine-tenths of
of the recent immigration is of an order
30 low, so ignorant and so debased that
it ought to be completely excluded from
entrance.
We have just seen that the health Off
GERS of New York have most serious
task to perform in trying to stamp out
typhus fever that was brought to that
city by chip load of immigrants from
the Levant. The infected people were
landed and taken to tenement houses,
where the disease was srapidly communi-
Gated to persons who carried it to other
cities to which it has been traced. Here
is danger that appeals at once to our
Eense of safety. The law should protect |
us from such risks as are incurred by |
the landing OF filthy immigrants who |
have been cooped up in an overcrowded |
steerage ior several weeks. That we |
have escaped from a widespread con-
tagiOn so far, is wonder. We cannot, |
however, continue to invite pestilence |
as we are doing in encouraging pauper
immigration, and hope forever to es-
cape the penalty.
Outside of the most Objectionable
feature of this emigration or deportation
from Europe of paupers and criminals,
we are confronted with threatened ir-
ruption of immense hordes of people
from the famine stricken portions of
Europe that are to be thrown into the
United States by systematic and
organized movement. The expelled
Russian Jews are landed in New York