g have resulted to passengers, but a
due care for the homes of our people justifies in such cases the utmost
precaution. There is danger that with the coming of spring cholera will
again appear, and a liberal appropriation should be made at this session
to enable our quarantine and port officers to exclude the deadly plague.

But the most careful and stringent quarantine regulations may not be
sufficient absolutely to exclude the disease. The progress of medical
and sanitary science has been such, however, that if approved
precautions are taken at once to put all of our cities and towns in
the best sanitary condition, and provision is made for isolating any
sporadic cases and for a thorough disinfection, an epidemic can, I am
sure, be avoided. This work appertains to the local authorities, and the
responsibility and the penalty will be appalling if it is neglected or
unduly delayed.

We are peculiarly subject in our great ports to the spread of
infectious diseases by reason of the fact that unrestricted immigration
brings to us out of European cities, in the overcrowded steerages of
great steamships, a large number of persons whose surroundings make them
the easy victims of the plague. This consideration, as well as those
affecting the political, moral, and industrial interests of our country,
leads me to renew the suggestion that admission to our country and to
the high privileges of its citizenship should be more restricted and
more careful. We have, I think, a right and owe a duty to our own
people, and especially to our working people, not only to keep out the
vicious, the ignorant, the civil disturber, the pauper, and the contract
laborer, but to check the too great flow of immigration now coming by
further limitations.

The report of the World's Columbian Exposition has not yet been
submitted. That of the board of management of the Government exhibit
has been received and is herewith transmitted. The work of construction
and of preparation for the opening of the exposition in May next has
progressed most satisfactorily and upon a scale of liberality and
magnificence that will worthily sustain the honor of the United States.

The District of Columbia is left by a decision of the supreme court
of the District without any law regulating the liquor traffic. An old
statute of the legislature of the District relating to the licensing
of various vocations has hitherto been treated by the Commissioners
as giving them