ping a man to help himself; and we can all
best help ourselves by joining together in the work that is of common
interest to all.

Our present immigration laws are unsatisfactory. We need every honest
and efficient immigrant fitted to become an American citizen, every
immigrant who comes here to stay, who brings here a strong body, a stout
heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose to do his duty well in every
way and to bring up his children as law-abiding and God-fearing members
of the community. But there should be a comprehensive law enacted with
the object of working a threefold improvement over our present system.
First, we should aim to exclude absolutely not only all persons who
are known to be believers in anarchistic principles or members of
anarchistic societies, but also all persons who are of a low moral
tendency or of unsavory reputation. This means that we should require
a more thorough system of inspection abroad and a more rigid system
of examination at our immigration ports, the former being especially
necessary.

The second object of a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by
a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent
capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American
citizens. This would not keep out all anarchists, for many of them
belong to the intelligent criminal class. But it would do what is also
in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of ignorance, so potent in
producing the envy, suspicion, malignant passion, and hatred of order,
out of which anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. Finally, all
persons should be excluded who are below a certain standard of economic
fitness to enter our industrial field as competitors with American
labor. There should be proper proof of personal capacity to earn an
American living and enough money to insure a decent start under American
conditions. This would stop the influx of cheap labor, and the resulting
competition which gives rise to so much of bitterness in American
industrial life; and it would dry up the springs of the pestilential
social conditions in our great cities, where anarchistic organizations
have their greatest possibility of growth.

Both the educational and economic tests in a wise immigration law should
be designed to protect and elevate the general body politic and social.
A very close supervision should be exercised over the steamship
companies which mainly bring over the