and until there is a better assimilation and real Americanization of thousands of aliens already within our gates. Let us, therefore, not rock the boat, but hold steadfast, bearing in mind that we are dealing with human beings and that the problem is one that affects the welfare of our country, our community, our homes, and our future generations. EMIGRATION CONDITIONS IN EUROPEAN PORTS OF Marion Schisby, Foreign Language Information Service, The Foreign Language Information Service is at work on a manual for immigrants. For it and for other purposes it seemed necessary to have firsthand information about port conditions and port procedure as they are at the present time, so last winter I visited fifteen of the principal emigration ports of Europe. I started at Genoa, skirted the continent, and got as far east as Riga. It was an interesting and illuminating experience and I brought back with me many impressions and much information. There are two or three points which I believe will be of interest to this audience. One is the fact that in certain quarters and in certain ports emigration seems to have come to a standstill; and the second is that despite this apparent lull there are indications that the migration movement has not stopped, but is flowing through other channels and into other countries. At all but two of the ports, Marseilles and Bordeaux, I found emigrant stations or hotels in operation. You probably all have seen one or more of these stations. In most cases they are owned and operated by steamship companies. This is not true in Italy, where the government has charge of them, nor is it true in Riga, where the Latvian government operates a station; at Danzig there is a municipally owned station, and the Polish government has one nearby, at Wejherowa. As is the case at Ellis Island, the steamship companies contribute largely to the upkeep of these government-owned stations, paying for the maintenance of each of their passengers. Business enterprise is responsible for most of the emigrant stations, however. They have been constructed by the transportation companies in order that their passengers may have safe and cheap lodging at the ports, and at the same time in certain countries in order to prevent them from proving troublesome to the country at whose port they are to be embarked. At the immigrant stations third-class passengers are entitled to free lodging and food for a certain number of days; this is included in their tickets. Second-class passengers may lodge there if they wish, but usually they have to pay a small sum. The stations vary considerably in equipment and in provisions for the comfort of emigrants; which is natural, as they date from differ ent periods, some being twenty to thirty years old and others of recent construction. On the whole, in recent years the standards as to sanitary requirements have greatly improved, also as to the amount of space and privacy an emigrant should have. Competition for the emigrant business is keen nowadays and it tends to secure for them good treatment. The emigrant stations serve a twofold purpose. They are not only hotels; they are also quarantine stations. The United States has very definite sanitary regulations with which every emigrant must comply before he is allowed to embark. The United States Public Health Service officers stationed abroad supervise the enforcement of these regulations. To prevent the spread of smallpox it is required that every third-class passenger be vaccinated before going to the United States. Still more drastic is the treatment emigrants must undergo in order to prevent their bringing typhus to this country. At the present time every third-class, and also every second-class, passenger coming from Poland, Russia, and Turkey is thoroughly bathed and deloused and his baggage disinfected. Subsequently he spends fourteen days in quarantine (the ship journey is reckoned as part of the quarantine period). For other parts of Europe the requirements are less severe, but no third-class passenger is allowed to embark till he has been inspected and found to be free from vermin and otherwise clean. It is thought that through these requirements the United States has been largely responsible for checking the spread of typhus. Most of the emigrant stations can accommodate a large number of emigrants. For instance, the Lloydheim in Bremen had, at the height of its activity, a capacity of 4,000; now, some of the buildings having been closed, it has room for only 1,300. The Hamburg-America station located at Fedel, ten minutes' train ride from Hamburg, can accommodate about 1,900. The Cunard and White Star camp, Atlantic Park, at Eastleigh, near Southampton, has a capacity of about 1,600. The station at Libau, owned by the United Baltic Corporation, can take care of 2,200. It will be seen they were planned for a large volume of business. Ellis Island, our largest immigration station, has a capacity of about 1,600. In contrast to the numbers they might house, the numbers actually at these stations on the day of my visit are of interest. At the Lloydheim there were probably 400 people; at Fedel, about 640; at Libau, about 200; at Eastleigh, about 330. And even at that, in all four places stranded Russians-who, unfortunately, are more or less permanent-furnished a considerable part of the population. You probably recall their story. Some 8,000 more Russians than could enter in the quota for the year 1924 were given American visas prior to July 1, 1924. At first the situation did not seem so very serious; it was thought they could be taken care of in the following year's quota. Then there was a sudden and very drastic reduction of the Russian quota by the provisions of the Act of 1924, from 28,000 to 2,248. As a result, there have been, ever since the fall of 1923, stranded Russians in most of the European ports, waiting their turn in the quota. The consul in Riga who is in charge of the Russian quota believes that not until some time during 1929 can they all be taken care of. Many of them will then have spent four to six long years of waiting, mostly in enforced idleness, as, with the exception of France and Belgium, most countries do not permit them to seek work. They neither may, nor will, return to Russia, and few other countries are open to them. In every port I heard sad stories of physical, mental, and moral deterioration due to the abnormal conditions under which they have been forced to live. The shrunken population of the emigrant stations is not the only witness to the effect of our restrictive immigration policy. It is shown, for instance, in the withdrawal of steamship companies from the emigrant business in certain countries. The White Star and other outside steamship lines used to be active in connection with Italian emigration. Nowadays that field is left to Italian steamship companies, no foreign line except the Fabre competing for it. Riga and Libau were once important emigration ports; now they are practically abandoned by transoceanic steamers as ports of call. Yet from Libau there was formerly sufficient emigration to warrant the construction of two emigrant stations, one with a capacity of 2,200 and the other of 500. While I was in Libau a small coastwise steamer left for Danzig with a few emigrants who were to transship at that port. They were chiefly Mennonites going to Canada; there was just one passenger for the United States, a mother coming here in the preference quota. Fewer sailings from the different ports is another indication. In October, 1923, the Fabre Line had six sailings from Marseilles to the United States. Even as late as that date Marseilles was a prominent transshipping point. Nowadays there are not more than two sailings a month, and the ships have very small passenger lists. The emigrant station which was formerly in operation has been closed for two or three years. The French Line talks of closing its offices in Bordeaux. At a January sailing one of their ships carried only twenty-four thirdclass emigrants, mostly destined for Canada. It was said a February sailing would probably be canceled for lack of passengers. Still a fourth indication are the port statistics. The glory of Rotterdam is past. In 1920, before our first Quota Act, 30,697 passengers left that port for the United States. By 1923 the number had dwindled to 8,909; and by 1924, to less than 2,000 (1,983). Antwerp statistics tell a similar story. In 1913, 100,624 passengers passed through that port. In 1921 the number was only 39,626. In 1925 not more than 11,325 embarked there, and of this number only 5,992 were destined for the United States. And yet they still move! In spite of these things-the fact that the emigrant stations, once crowded, are now almost deserted; that steamship companies have abandoned as unprofitable fields which formerly were very lucrative; that there are far fewer sailings from many ports which once were prominent; that statistics show once flourishing emigration ports to have become prac tically negligible emigration is by no means a thing of the past. The restrictive immigration policy of the United States may turn the flow away from these shores, but it will find other channels. In countries where there seems to be no compelling need to emigrate, in Scandinavian countries, for instance, and in Germany, the volume of emigration tends to correspond, more or less, to the quota allotted them. If they cannot come here they seem to prefer to remain at home rather than to seek some other country. But of countries like Italy, Poland, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, this is not true, especially not of Italy. The statistics for total emigration from that country for the period 1920-24 are interesting. In 1920, 364,944 persons emigrated. In 1921 we limited the number that could come from that country to 42,000, and the statistics for that year and the following show a decrease-255,166 and 244,440. But in 1923, in spite of our quota restrictions, the total mounted to 348,079, and in 1924, when we still further reduced the quota (to less than 4,000) the Italian emigration mounted to 408,606! They must be going somewhere! In view of these figures it is not surprising to find that certain steamship companies, instead of planning retrenchment, seem to be planning expansion. I met many indications of this. In Genoa I was told that the Italian government is planning to replace the present Casa Degli Emigranti by a larger and more efficient one and likewise planning to build a station at Palermo. At Cherbourg the Royal Mail Steamship Company has been rebuilding its old station and putting up new buildings. The capacity at present is 500, but it is the plan to enlarge it to a capacity of 1,000. The French Line has an old and unsatisfactory station at Havre. There also it was said to be the intention to rebuild soon. As stated above, both the Free City of Danzig and the Polish government have within the last year or so established new emigrant stations, the former small, with a capacity of from 50 to 100, but the latter with a capacity of about 2,000. The situation here is interesting. At the present time Danzig is the official port of Poland. Last December it was decreed by the government that all Polish overseas emigration must be through Danzig. This, however, is to be merely a temporary arrangement. Work on a large scale is—or was, at the time of my visit-being carried on at Gdynia, a small seaport in the Polish Corridor. It is the purpose to create here a port of magnitude which shall take the place of Danzig. Wejherowa, where the Polish emigrant station has been established, is quite close to Gdynia. These plans for expansion would seem to indicate that in certain quarters it is not by any means believed that the story of migration is finished. In several places I saw evidence of extensive emigration to other countries. In Genoa some three or four hundred North Italians were seen in the process of being prepared for the journey to South America. In Cherbourg the Royal Mail station was filled to capacity with farmers and their families from Bessarabia. They were scheduled to sail for Brazil the following day, and another 500 were coming a few days later, likewise destined for Brazil. At Havre there were about 500 Poles also going to Brazil. It was said that about 1,200 emigrants are leaving Havre each month for South America, and only about 200 to 300 for the United States. Sao Paulo, according to reports, is planning to import 100,000 coffee plantation laborers during the year 1926. The Royal Mail has a contract with the government for bringing them. They are also being brought by the Chargeur Reunis and by the Royal Holland Lloyd from Amsterdam. Brazilian agents are said to be recruiting workers chiefly in central and eastern Europe. Other South American countries are also said to be encouraging the immigration of laborers, especially of farm laborers. Brazilian immigration statistics are not available, but those of Argentina are. In 1924 that country received more immigrants than the United States: 159,939 as against 136,337. (This latter figure is for the twelve months of 1924, not for the fiscal immigration year.) Australia during the same period admitted 103,667, and Canada, 108,122. We are so accustomed to thinking of the United States as the chief, if not the only, immigration country that these figures are interesting. Canada has launched upon a program of immigration expansion. On September 1, 1925, the Canadian government and the two railway systems of that country agreed upon a program for encouraging immigration of farmers, farm laborers, and domestics. Great Britain and central and eastern Europe seem to be the chief fields of activity. The plan seems to be working satisfactorily. An official bulletin, Canada Week by Week, announced May 22 that every month since last November immigration has been greater than the corresponding month of the previous year, and that in March and February it was practically doubled. Palestine is likewise opening up. In 1920 it admitted only 4,111; in 1924, 13,553; and preliminary figures are to the effect that during the first month of 1925 it admitted 27,604. During the past five years France has proved a godsend to countries with surplus population, particularly to Italy and Poland. The figures for the five years for continental immigration are: 1920, 129,803; 1921, 24,490; 1922, 183,482; 1923, 262,877; 1924, 223,495; and 1925, 178,294. The decrease shown for 1925 will probably be still more noticeable in 1926. There are numerous indications that the French public disapproves of the present practically unrestricted immigration and is demanding a more careful sifting. Immigration has thus far been a mass immigration. The demand is that the immigrant be given an individual examination, especially a medical examination. It is also proposed to tax aliens for the upkeep of charitable and medical institutions. During the past year several measures tending to restrict immigration were adopted. For instance, it was decided that no person over fifteen years of age should be admitted except for obviously a temporary stay, unless he could show a work contract. The cost of a card of identity was increased to 68 francs, and workers were forbidden to change their work status, i.e., a man who entered to do farm labor must continue to be a farm laborer-he must not go to a city to try to find more congenial and |