to come in from Canada and Mexico save natives of the two countries themselves.  As much as possible should be done to distribute the immigrants upon the land and keep them away from the contested tenement-house districts of the great cities.  But distribution is a palliative, not a cure.  The prime need is to keep out all immigrants who will not make good American citizens.  The laws now existing for the exclusion of undesirable immigrants should be strengthened.  Adequate means should be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies engaged in the passenger business to observe in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or solicit immigration to the United States.  Moreover, there should be a sharp limitation imposed upon all vessels coming to our ports as to the number of immigrants in ratio to the tonnage which each vessel can carry.  This ratio should be high enough to insure the coming hither of as good a class of aliens as possible.  Provision should be made for the surer punishment of those who induce aliens to come to this country under promise or assurance of employment.  It should be made possible to inflict a sufficiently heavy penalty on any employer violating this law to deter him from taking the risk.  It seems to me wise that there should be an international conference held to deal with this question of immigration, which has more than a merely National significance; such a conference could, among other things, enter at length into the method for securing a thorough inspection of would-be immigrants at the ports from which they desire to embark before permitting them to embark.

In dealing with this question it is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and to discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of that man’s fitness for citizenship.  It is our right and duty to consider his moral and social quality.  His standard of living should be such that he will not, by pressure of competition, lower the standard of living of our own wage-workers; for it must ever be a prime object of our legislation to keep high their standard of living.  If the man who seeks to come here is from the moral and social standpoint of such a character as to bid fair to add value to the community he should be heartily welcomed.  We cannot afford to pay heed to whether he is of one creed or another, of one nation, or another.  We cannot afford to consider whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether he is Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Japanese, Italian, Scandinavian, Slav, or Magyar.  What we should desire to find out is the individual quality of the individual man.  In my judgment, with this end in view, we shall have to prepare through our own agents a far more rigid inspection in the countries from which the immigrants come.  It will be a great deal better to have fewer immigrants, but all of the right kind, than