te books through the efforts of the Knights of Labor and the
trades-unions. As early as 1875 Congress had prohibited the immigration
of paupers, criminal, and immoral persons, but the law of 1885 went to
the other extreme and was designed to exclude industrial classes. The
law is directed against prepayment of transportation, assistance, or
encouragement of foreigners to immigrate _under contract_ to perform
labor in the United States, and provides for the prosecution of the
importer and deportation of the contract immigrant. This law has been
enforced against skilled labor, which comes mainly from northwestern
Europe, but, owing to the new system of _padroni_ and middlemen above
described, it cannot be enforced against the unskilled laborers of
Southern and Eastern Europe, since it cannot be shown that they have
come under contract to perform labor. By the amendment and revised law
adopted in 1903, after considerable discussion, and an effort on the
part of the labor unions to strengthen the law, it was extended so as to
exclude not only those coming under contract but also those coming under
_offers_ and _promises_ of employment.[73]

From what precedes we see that there are two exactly opposite points of
view from which the subject of immigration is approached. One is the
production of wealth; the other is the distribution of wealth. He who
takes the standpoint of production sees the enormous undeveloped
resources of this country--the mines to be exploited, railroads and
highways to be built and rebuilt, farms to be opened up or to be more
intensively cultivated, manufactures to be multiplied, and the markets
of the world to be conquered by our exports, while there are not enough
workmen, or not enough willing to do the hard and disagreeable work at
the bottom.

He who takes the standpoint of distribution sees the huge fortunes, the
low wages, the small share of the product going to labor, the
sweat-shop, the slums, all on account of the excessive competition of
wage-earner against wage-earner.

Consider first the bearing of immigration on the production of wealth.

[Illustration: AGE GROUPS, FOREIGN AND NATIVE-BORN]

=Immigration and Wealth Production.=--Over four-fifths of the immigrants
are in the prime of life--the ages between fourteen and forty-five. In
the year 1906 only 12 out of every 100 were under fourteen years of age,
and only 4.5 out of every 100 over forty-five years of age. The census
of 1900