It is a matter of unmixed satisfaction once more to call attention to the excellent work of the Pension Bureau; for the veterans of the civil war have a greater claim upon us than any other class of our citizens.  To them, first of all among our people, honor is due.

Seven years ago my lamented predecessor, President McKinley, stated that the time had come for the Nation to care for the graves of the Confederate dead.  I recommend that the Congress take action toward this end.  The first need is to take charge of the graves of the Confederate dead who died in Northern prisons.

The question of immigration is of vital interest to this country.  In the year ending June 30, 1905, there came to the United States 1,026,000 alien immigrants.  In other words, in the single year that has just elapsed there came to this country a greater number of people than came here during the one hundred and sixty-nine years of our Colonial life which intervened between the first landing at Jamestown and the Declaration of Independence.  It is clearly shown in the report of the Commissioner General of Immigration that while much of this enormous immigration is undoubtedly healthy and natural, a considerable proportion is undesirable from one reason or another; moreover, a considerable proportion of it, probably a very large proportion, including most of the undesirable class, does not come here of its own initiative, but because of the activity of the agents of the great transportation companies.  These agents are distributed throughout Europe, and by the offer of all kinds of inducements they wheedle and cajole many immigrants, often against their best interest, to come here.  The most serious obstacle we have to encounter in the effort to secure a proper regulation of the immigration to these shores arises from the determined opposition of the foreign steamship lines who have no interest whatever in the matter save to increase the returns on their capital by carrying masses of immigrants hither in the steerage quarters of their ships.

As I said in my last message to the Congress, we cannot have too much immigration of the right sort and we should have none whatever of the wrong sort.  Of course, it is desirable that even the right kind of immigration should be properly distributed in this country.  We need more of such immigration for the South; and special effort should be made to secure it.  Perhaps it would be possible to limit the number of immigrants allowed to come in any one year to New York and other Northern cities, while leaving unlimited the number allowed to come to the South; always provided, however, that a stricter effort is made to see that only immigrants of the right kind come to our country anywhere.  In actual practice it has proved so difficult to enforce the migration laws where long stretches of frontier marked by an imaginary line alone intervene between us and our neighbors that I recommend that no immigrants be allowed