Sec. 13. #Laissez-faire policy of immigration.# There are those who take a fatalistic, or a laissez-faire, view of the subject, and declare that the problem will solve itself as the level of American wages comes to be nearly the same as that of the countries of Europe from which our immigration is coming.  True enough, if this can be called a “solution.”  There are many who cherish the commercial ideal according to which cheap labor is absolutely desirable and needful to produce cheaper products.  This ideal has spread to wider circles.  Here, for example, are the words of a man who combines wide knowledge of the facts of immigration with keen sympathy for the working classes:[15] “The past industrial development of America points unerringly to Europe as the source whence our unskilled labor supply is to be drawn . . .  America is in the race for the markets of the world; its call for workers will not cease.”  Yet a little further on he must say:  “All wage-earners in America agree that it is not as easy to make a living to-day as it was twenty years ago, and the dollar does not go so far now as it did then.  The conflict for subsistence on the part of the wage-earner is growing more stern as we increase in numbers and industrial life becomes more complicated, and the fact must be faced that the vast army of workers must live more economically if peace and well-being are to prevail.”

Sec. 14. #Social-protective policy of immigration.# A different kind of solution is offered by those who favor the strict limitation, if not the complete prohibition, of immigration.

The foregoing study indicates that the time has come, if it is not far past, when the traditional policy of fostering immigration is opposed to the welfare of the masses of the people.  This belief can be based solely on grounds of numbers, the relation of population to resources, quite apart from a preference for particular races or the familiar arguments regarding social and political evils and lack of assimilation, however valid they may be.  The limitation of immigration would immediately improve working-class conditions where they are worst in America,[16] and would check and probably reverse the tendency to diminishing returns already manifest in many directions.  This opinion does not necessitate an absolute prohibition of immigration; it is consistent with the continuance of immigration of a strictly selected character, and in numbers so small that all European immigrants now here could be rapidly and completely assimilated, economically and racially.  With a slow national increase of population and with the continued progress of science and the arts, it should be possible for real wages to continue indefinitely rising in America.  The selection of immigrants to be admitted should be a part of a national policy of eugenics,[17] which aims to improve the racial quality of the nation by checking the multiplication of the strains defective in respect to mentality, nervous organization, and physical health, and by encouraging the more capable elements of the population to contribute in due proportion to the maintenance of a healthy, moral, and efficient population.  In such a view, a eugenic opportunity is presented in the selection and admission of immigrants that are distinctly above (not merely equal to) the average of our general population.