Much might be said in favor of an absolute embargo upon all immigration until such a body as the Industrial Relations Commission has time to make an authoritative economic survey of the whole country, or until the Unemployment Research Commission recently called for by Miss Kellor could make the three years’ study contemplated by her as the only way out of the unemployment morass.  Twenty years ago men of the type of General Walker frankly urged that the immigration gates be closed for a flat period of ten years or so.  But the sliding scale plan contemplates no such radical step.  Indeed it is radical in no sense whatever.  The proposed immigration act now before Congress (The Burnett Bill, H.R. 6060) paves the way for it, and provides a working principle, which apparently is accepted on all sides.  Section 3 includes this clause:  “That skilled labor, if otherwise admissible, may be imported if labor of like kind unemployed can not be found in this country, and the question of the necessity of importing such skilled labor in any particular instance may be determined by the Secretary of Labor....”  A really workable test for immigration, superior by far to the literacy test or any other so far suggested, might easily be developed by simply enlarging the scope of this clause, making it include unskilled as well as skilled labor.  No machinery other than that contemplated by the present act would be required.

The immigration problem can never be satisfactorily handled until we fix upon some such means of determining just what the economic need is.  There is no danger of hindering legitimate industrial expansion in times of sudden business prosperity:  for the transportation companies may be safely trusted to supply in three or four weeks aliens enough to fill all the gaps in the industrial army.  Neither would injustice be done to the immigrant himself.  On the contrary, he would be assured of a job and respectful consideration when he arrived.  The “dago” or the “bohunk” would acquire a new dignity and a more enviable status than he now occupies.  The selective process thus involved would much improve the quality of the immigrant admitted, and would incidentally render assimilation of the foreigner all the easier.

The precise details of selection, and the machinery, are mere matters of detail.  But the consular service, as long ago suggested by Catlin, Schuyler and others, seems to offer the proper base of operations.  We have already recommended charging consuls with viseing certificates from police, medical, and poor-relief authorities.  We should further require that declarations of intention to migrate be published (somewhat as marriage banns are published) at local administrative centers (arrondissement, Bezirk, etc.) and at United States consular offices; the consular declaration should be obligatory; perhaps the other might be optional, though in all probability foreign governments would cooeperate in demanding it.  These validated declarations