ion as they can be readily assimilated. This would admit
annually, say, five per cent of those already naturalized, with their
American children. The principle here seems to be that we can assimilate
from any land in, and only in, proportion to the number already
assimilated from that land. But the difficulty of applying such a test
lies in the complexity of the assimilative process. No measure yet exists
for assimilation. Anthropologists are convinced that various strains in
the populations, for example of France, or Great Britain, which have been
dwelling together for centuries, are not by any means assimilated. Mere
naturalization is not a sufficient test of assimilation; it is only the
expression of a desire to be assimilated; and it may only be a device for
the promotion of business success here or in foreign parts, as we have
already indicated in the case of the Greeks. Hence in working out the
basis of a sound immigration policy, it would seem more practicable to
consider first the question of economic utilization rather than
assimilation. This, of course, does not exclude from the Secretary of
Labor's judgment the category of assimilability as one of the factors in
determining the apportionment of admissions.

It will appear that the plan outlined above limits immigration policy to
purely national and economic considerations. But it is, as matters now
stand, a national question. And it must remain so for some time to come,
even if we are reproached with a narrow Mercantilist economics. The
admission of aliens is not yet a fundamental international _right_, or
_duty_; it is only an example of _comity_ within the family of nations.
And the matter must rest in this state of limbo until we develop some
institution or method of registering our sentiments of internationalism,
and especially of determining _international surplus_. As it is idle to
talk or dream of abolishing poverty until at least the concept of social
or national surplus is pretty clearly fixed and its realization either
actually at hand or fairly imminent, just so is it vain to expect an
international adjustment of the immigration problem on economic grounds
until the existence of an international surplus is demonstrated, and the
methods of apportioning it worked out.

How soon we may expect these things it is not our province to predict. It
is too early to pass final judgment on Professor Patten's dictum that
inter-racial cooeperation is impossible