CHAPTER XXXIV

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LEGISLATION ABOUT IMMIGRATION. SUNDAY LAWS AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT.

Jewish interest in immigration――The first legislation on the subject――The Nativists or “Know Nothings”――A Congressional investigation in 1838――President Taylor’s invitation to foreigners to come and settle here――A law to encourage immigration passed on Lincoln’s recommendation in 1864――The General Immigration Law of 1882――The “Ford Committee”――Permanent Immigration Committees in Congress――Continued agitation and legislation on the subject――A bill containing the requirement of an educational test is vetoed by President Grover Cleveland in 1897――The last Immigration Law of 1907――The Immigration Commission of 1907 and its report in 1910――Sunday Laws and their significance for the Orthodox Jew――Laws of various States and Territories――Their effect on movements for municipal reform――Status of the problems.

The question of immigration, or rather of its restriction, was always of great interest to the Jews, not only because they are great wanderers and many of them are looking for a home, but also because to the many who came from countries where they were persecuted or from which they were exiled, exclusion meant a much more serious matter than to those who had a home to go back to. The immigrants of the second period, from 1815 to 1880, were more fortunate in this respect than those who came very early and were harrassed by frank discrimination against them as Jews, as was related in earlier parts of this work; and also more than the later arrivals, many of whom were excluded as undesirable, along with the defective and helpless of other races and nationalities. From the time of the establishment of the Government of the United States until about 1835, immigration was taken as a matter of course; the only legislation enacted, and practically all that was proposed, was the law of 1819 for the regulation of the carriage of steerage passengers at sea, which law also for the first time provided that statistics relative to immigration to the United States be recorded.

The second period, from 1835 to 1860, is sharply defined by the so-called “Native American” and “Know Nothing” movements, which, as is well known, were largely based on the opposition to the immigration of Catholics.[49] The hostility early took the form of a political movement, and in 1835 there was a Nativist candidate for Congress in New York City, where that party nominated a candidate for mayor in the following year. It spread over various states, and in 1845, when it held its first national convention in Philadelphia, it had six Representatives in Congress from New York and two from Pennsylvania. The chief demands of this convention were a repeal of the naturalization laws and the appointments of native Americans only to office.

While these societies were stronger in local politics than in national, their few Representatives in Congress attempted to make Nativism a national question. As a result of their efforts, the United States Senate in 1836 agreed to a resolution directing the Secretary of State to collect certain information respecting the immigration of foreign paupers and criminals. In the House of Representatives on February 19, 1838, a resolution was agreed to which provided that the Committee on Judiciary be instructed to consider the expediency of revising the naturalization laws so as to require a longer term of residence in the United States, and also to consider the propriety and expediency of providing by law against the introduction into the United States of vagabonds and paupers deported from foreign countries. This resolution was referred to a select committee of seven members, and its report (House Report No. 1040, 25th Congress, 2d session) was the first resulting from a Congressional investigation of any question bearing upon immigration. It proposed a system of consular inspection, and there was even talk of a tax of $20 to be paid by the immigrant upon his receipt of a passport from the consul. The bill presented on recommendation of the committee provided heavy penalties for any master taking on board his vessel with the intention of transporting to the United States any alien passenger who was an idiot, lunatic, maniac or one afflicted with any incurable disease, or any one convicted of an infamous crime; it was further provided that the master should forfeit $1,000 for any alien brought in who had not the ability to maintain himself.

Congress did not even consider this bill, and during the next ten years little attempt was made to secure legislation against the foreigner.

In a message to Congress on June 1, 1841, President John Tyler (1813–62) referred to immigration, in part, as follows:

We hold out to the people of other countries an invitation to come and settle among us as members of our rapidly growing family; and for the blessing which we offer them, we require of them to look upon our country as their country, and unite with us in the great task of preserving our institutions and thereby perpetuating our liberties.

As a consequence of the increase of immigration about the middle of the nineteenth century, the old dread of the foreigner was revived, and in the early fifties the Nativist politicians again became active. The new, like the earlier movement, was closely associated with the anti-Catholic propaganda. The new organization assumed the form of a secret society. It was organized probably, in 1850, in New York City, and in 1852 it was increased in membership by drawing largely from the old established Order of United Americans. Its meetings were secret, its indorsements were never made openly, and even its name and purpose were said to be known only to those who reached the highest degree. Consequently the rank and file, when questioned about their party, were obliged to answer: “I don’t know”; so they came to be called “Know Nothings.” They participated in local, State and even in national elections, and claimed as many as forty-three Representatives and five Senators in the Thirty-fourth Congress. But in the end they disappeared without having accomplished anything against immigration, adopted citizens, or Catholics, and, as a matter of fact, some legislation favorable to foreigners was passed during these periods of agitation. The passenger law of 1819 was amended in 1847, and again in 1848, in order to improve the condition of the steerage of immigrant ships. The act organizing the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas, passed in 1854, was also favorable to foreigners, it being provided that the right of suffrage in such Territories should be exercised by those declaring their intentions to become citizens and taking an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of the act. During the discussion of the homestead act in 1854, which act, however, was not finally passed until 1862, there was considerable reference to immigrants and to whether they should be allowed to enjoy the advantages of the act. The “Know Nothings” proposed to strike out the section of the bill permitting the granting of land to foreigners who had filed their intention of becoming citizens; but the attempt failed.

Although the National Government did not assume control of immigration until 1882, Congress in 1864, on the recommendation of President Lincoln, passed a law to encourage immigration. It provided for a Commissioner of Immigration, to be under the direction of the Department of State, and that all contracts that should be made in foreign countries by emigrants to the United States, whereby emigrants pledged the wages of their labor for a term not exceeding twelve months to repay the expense of emigration, should be held to be valid in law and might be enforced in the courts of the United States or by the several States and Territories, and that no such contract could in any way be considered as creating a condition of slavery or servitude. Following the enactment of the law several companies were established to deal in contract labor, but they were not satisfied with the law and wanted its scope enlarged. This indirectly led to the abolition of the entire law in 1868, and the brief period of national encouragement of immigration was over. A campaign against contracting for foreign labor began soon afterward, though no legislation to forbid it was enacted until many years later. A law, enacted in 1875, which provided for the exclusion of prostitutes, was chiefly designated to regulate Chinese immigration, and thus early touched two subjects with reference to which the most stringent exclusion laws were to be enacted in the period of national control over immigration, which was now approaching.

In 1876 the Supreme Court of the United States declared laws enacted by several States to regulate and tax immigration to be unconstitutional, and expressly recommended that Congress should exercise full authority over immigration. This ultimately led to the enactment of the first general immigration law, which was approved by President Chester A. Arthur (1830–86) August 3, 1882. It provided for a head tax of 50 cents on all aliens landed at United States ports, the money thus collected to be used to defray the expenses of regulating immigration and for the care of immigrants after landing. It also provided that foreign convicts, except those convicted for political offences, lunatics, idiots and persons likely to become public charges, should not be permitted to land. Aside from a law forbidding the importation of contract laborers, adopted in 1885 and strengthened by supplementary laws in 1887 and 1888, and aside from the laws about Chinese immigration which do not concern us here, there was no legislation affecting general immigration for nearly a decade, though the question was now widely discussed in the press and there was considerable agitation for further restriction.

In 1888 the House of Representatives authorized, by resolution, the appointment of a select committee to investigate the charges which were made that the immigration laws were being extensively evaded. The committee, known as the “Ford Committee,” in its report more than sustained the charges; it praised the immigrants of the past and deprecated those who were then coming; and proposed a new bill which added polygamists, anarchists and persons afflicted with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease to the excluded classes. Congress, however, did not act upon the recommendations of that committee.

In 1889 a Standing Committee on Immigration in the Senate and a Select Committee on Immigration and Naturalization in the House were established. In 1890 these committees were authorized jointly to make an inquiry relative to immigration. Various reports were submitted, and the conclusion was that a radical change was not advisable, although it had been found that throughout the country there existed a demand for a stricter enforcement of the immigration laws. During 1890 one or more political parties in twenty-three States had demanded additional regulation of immigration. Consequently a law strengthening the existing law in several important details, but making no radical departure from the former policy, was adopted in 1891.

But the question continued to receive the attention of Congress. There was another investigation by a joint committee in 1892, which reported in July of that year, and still another investigation ordered by the Senate. Two new bills were proposed――one establishing additional regulations, the other entirely prohibiting immigration for one year, on account of the epidemic of cholera then prevailing in Europe. But neither this measure, nor the educational test which was then for the first time recommended by a Congressional committee, was adopted, and the revised immigration law, which was approved by President Harrison March 3, 1893, was by no means radical. The head tax on immigrants was raised from fifty cents to one dollar by an amendment to an appropriation act in 1894.

The agitation of the subject in Congress continued, however, and finally both houses adopted a bill for an educational test, excluding persons physically capable and over sixteen years of age who could not read and write the English language or some other language, parents, grandparents, wives and minor children of admissible immigrants being excepted. President Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) returned the bill with his veto on March 2, 1897. He objected to the radical departure from the previous national policy relating to immigration, which welcomed all who came, the success of which policy was attested by the last century’s great growth. In referring to the claim that the quality of recent immigration was undesirable, he said: “The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens.” In referring to “the best reason that could be given for this radical restriction,” the “protecting of our population against degeneration and saving our national peace and quiet from imported turbulence and disorder,” President Cleveland said that he did not think that the nation would be protected against these evils by limiting immigration to those who could read and write, for, in his mind, it was safer “to admit a hundred thousand immigrants, who, though unable to read and write, seek among us only a home and an opportunity to work, than to admit one of those unruly agitators who can not only read and write, but delight in arousing by inflammatory speech the illiterate and peacefully inclined to discontent.” Those classes which we ought to exclude, he claimed, should be legislated against directly. Some sections of the bill against aliens who come regularly into the United States from neighboring countries for the purpose of obtaining work, he declared to be “illiberal, narrow and un-American.”

On March 3, 1897, the House passed the bill over the President’s veto by a vote of 193 to 37, but no action was taken in the Senate, and the veto was thus sustained. The same bill was introduced in the following Congress (fifty-fifth) and passed by the Senate, but the House, by a vote of 103 to 101 refused to consider it.

By an act of June 18, 1898, Congress created an Industrial Commission “to investigate questions pertaining to immigration, and to report to Congress and to suggest such legislation as it may deem best upon these subjects.” The final report of this commission was submitted to Congress in February, 1902, and shortly afterwards a bill was introduced in the House which was substantially in accord with the recommendations made. The House added a literary test to this bill, but it was eliminated by the Senate, which raised the head tax from one dollar to two. This was accepted by the House, and the bill, as it was approved by the President March 3, 1903, made no radical change in the existing laws. The same may be said of the present immigration law, which was approved February 20, 1907, which, besides raising the head tax from two to four dollars and somewhat strengthening the provisions against the defective or undesirable classes, made no innovation or departure from the policy of admitting all who may be expected to be able to provide for themselves and to become good citizens. The number as well as the percentage of those excluded is now considerably larger than in former years; but the tide of immigration is not stemmed, and after the quick recovery from the hard times which began with the panic of 1907, there is now again a very large influx of immigrants, among whom the proportion of Jews is by no means smaller than in former years.

The act of 1907 also created an Immigration Commission to “make full inquiry, examination, and investigation, by sub-committee or otherwise, into the subject of immigration.” This commission submitted its report, in forty volumes, in 1910, and recommended some strong restrictions, with the view that “a sufficient number may be debarred to produce a marked effect upon the present supply of unskilled labor.” It also advised that “as far as possible the aliens excluded should be those who come to this country with no intention to become American citizens or even to maintain a permanent residence here; but merely to save enough, by the adoption, if necessary, of low standards of living, to return permanently to their home country.... A majority of the Commission favor the reading and writing test as the most feasible single method of restricting undesirable immigration.” Congress has not acted on these recommendations at the time of this writing (1911).

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The question of enforced rest on Sunday is much older than the question of regulating immigration. Several States have Sunday laws which were in their original form enacted in the eighteenth century. In the Carolinas these laws have been but little changed since Colonial times. But the reviews of these laws in the various States and Territories, their effect on the Jews, and the leading cases under them in various times and places, give no adequate idea of their significance for the Orthodox immigrant of the later period. What our best authority on the subject, Albert M. Friedenberg,[50] could collect and collate, contains only a record of such cases which originated in, or were carried up to, higher courts of record. These are usually lawsuits which affected men of means, who could hire attorneys and fight the question as a matter of principle. But these recorded cases give no indication of the tens of thousands of arrests which were made in the large cities, especially in New York City, in the last years, where the cases never went higher than the first instance, because the poor man, if he was not discharged in the Police Court, had to pay his fine or be imprisoned. Appeals to higher courts and insistence upon constitutional or statutory rights are out of the question, not only on account of poverty or ignorance, but also because of familiarity with such procedure in the Old World. The Sunday laws are not constantly enforced in the same manner, there being periods of severity and periods of lenience even under the same local administration, and often a complete change of policy under a new administration, though the statute or State law remains the same. The Jew of Russia or Roumania has been too well accustomed to intermittent police tyranny for the purpose of extortion at home, to be able to interpret the frequent changes in administrative policy or in police regulations here in any other way, and this also tends to discourage appeals to higher courts. The question ought to be investigated not juristically but statistically; the number of arrests made, the loss of time and money sustained by those who are charged with transgressing these laws, and the contrast in the enforcement of them at various periods: if such facts and figures were placed before the American people and before legislators, the attitude of many in regard to Sunday laws would probably be changed. But the figures are not available in a form to be used in a work like the present, and only the hope can be expressed here that they will be collected in the near future by one of the agencies which gather data of that kind relating to Jewish subjects.

There is no Federal Sunday Law, although the distillation of spirituous liquors on the first day of the week is prohibited. California only prohibits labor by any employee on more than six days out of every seven, but not specifying any compulsory day of rest. In Colorado only trafficking in liquors and barbering are prohibited on Sunday and in Montana there is a law against barbering only.

In most of the other States, as well as in the Territories and in the District of Columbia (which is also counted as a Territory), there are more or less stringent laws, most of them forbidding not only manual labor but also the carrying on of trade or business. There are eleven States――Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia――where servile or manual labor is permitted on Sunday to those who observe Saturday as their day of rest. In thirteen more――Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin――the exceptions in favor of Seventh-Day Sabbatarians affect both manual labor and trade or business. But the statute is not always a criterion of the observance or enforcement of Sunday laws in a certain locality. Some of the laws, like that of New York, decree that “it is a sufficient defense to a prosecution for work on the first day of the week, that the defendant uniformly keeps another day of the week as holy time, and does not labor on that day, and that the labor complained of was done in such manner as not to interrupt or disturb other persons in observing the first day of the week as holy time.” In many localities, especially in large cities, the Sunday laws are simply obsolete, and are usually revived in the name of Reform after the success of a Reform Party at the polls, only to become obsolete again when that party is voted out of office at the succeeding election. The defeat usually comes for no other reason than the dissatisfaction of a large number of citizens with the strict enforcement of the Sunday laws. Jews are by no means the only element of the population which resents stringency in these matters. It may be said that the coupling together of strict enforcement of the Sunday laws with the good government movements in the large cities has been a greater drawback to municipal reform in the United States than any other single cause.

Of all these three problems which are of special interest to the Jews of the United States, the first, or the passport question, seems at the present moment to be nearest to solution. The immigration question is certain to remain open for many years to come, as neither side of the conflicting interests who work against each other is likely to yield in the near future. The trade unions, which see in the immigrant a menace to the highly-paid laborer, and the so-called patriotic societies, which fear a deterioration of the American race or stock by the admixture of people from nationalities and races which they consider to be inferior, keep up a constant agitation for more restrictive measures against the influx of strangers. On the other hand, there is a constantly increasing demand for workmen in the expanding industries, for farm laborers and for domestic servants, and the million or more immigrants who now arrive in a year of ordinary business activity are so easily absorbed that their usefulness cannot be denied. While the adoption of some restrictive legislation may be forced on Congress by the pressure of those who agitate for it, real restriction seems to be out of the question before the country is filled up and built up; and this will take so long a time that all speculations as to what may happen afterwards are at present premature.

There is hardly any agitation for or against the Sunday laws, as such. New and mostly restrictive measures are adopted, either against the liquor business as a concession to the Prohibition element, which is backed by the churches; or against single trades, like those of butchers or barbers, as a concession to the sentiment in favor of overworked laborers. The time for abolishing the Sunday laws or for adopting explicit exemptions in favor of Jews, making the observance of Saturday not a defense against prosecution but a security against molestation, has not yet arrived; but the sense of justice and righteousness is unmistakably growing, and there is no doubt of the ultimate triumph of liberal tendencies over this heritage of intolerant ages, when nobody considered himself bound to respect the rights, especially the religious rights, of helpless minorities.

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