likely to become public charges; professional beggars, persons
afflicted with tuberculosis or with a loathsome or contagious
disease; persons who have been convicted of a crime involving moral
turpitude; polygamists, anarchists, contract laborers, prostitutes,
persons not comprehended within any one of the foregoing excluded
classes who are found to be and are certified by the examining
surgeon as being mentally or physically defective, such mental or
physical defect being of such a nature as to affect the ability of
the alien to earn a living.

[Illustration: EXAMINING IMMIGRANTS AT ELLIS ISLAND, NEW YORK

FIG. 39.--Surgeons of the United States Public Health Service
test every immigrant, physically and mentally, in order to send back any
who give promise of being undesirable additions to the population. The
above photograph shows how the examination of those whose condition has
aroused suspicion, is conducted. The boy under the measuring bar, in the
foreground, and the three immediately to the left of the desk, are
examples of congenital asthenia and poor physique; two of the four were
found to be dull mentally. Photograph from U. S. Public Health Service.]

Despite the efficiency of the U. S. Public Health Service, it is quite
impossible for its small staff to examine thoroughly every immigrant,
when three or four thousand arrive in a single day, as has frequently
happened at Ellis Island. Under such circumstances, the medical officer
must pass the immigrants with far too cursory an inspection. It is not
surprising that many whose mental defects are not of an obvious nature
manage to slip through; particularly if, as is charged,[146] many of the
undesirables are informed that the immigrant rush is greatest in March
and April, and therefore make it a point to arrive at that time, knowing
the medical inspection will be so overtaxed that they will have a better
chance to get by. The state hospitals of the Atlantic states are rapidly
filling up with foreign-born insane.[147] Probably few of these were
patently insane when they passed through the port of entry. Insanity, it
must be remembered, is predominantly a disease of old age, whereas the
average alien on arrival is not old. The mental weakness appears only
after he has been here some years, perhaps inevitably or perhaps because
he finds his environment in, say, lower Manhattan Island is much more
taxing to the brain than th