1903, which places in the excluded classes 'persons who have been insane within five years previous, and persons who have had two or more attacks of insanity at any time previously.'
Immigrants established years ago a reputation for bringing in epidemic diseases. They have played their part in the past in outbreaks of typhus, smallpox and cholera, but with the disappearance of the old immigrant sailing ships, the advent of the swift, clean ocean steamships and efficient modern methods of quarantine and prevention of disease, the immigrant to-day as a carrier of epidemic disease no longer causes us apprehension. The relation of the immigrant to the public health has already been discussed in an article in The Popular Science Monthly, and it is only necesary here to refer to diseases peculiar to, or prevalent among immigrants, as one of the social effects of immigration. Of these, trachoma, a contagious form of granular lids, is one of the most obstinate and destructive diseases of the eye. Oculists from all parts of the country claim that this disease was introduced by immigrants and disseminated by them, from foci of the disease, established in their tenements.
The disease is now epidemic in the poorer districts of many of our cities, but since 1897 has been one of the causes for exclusion of aliens. About the same time favus, a loathsome contagious disease of the scalp, was made a cause for exclusion. Favus is a typical immigrant disease and can not spread among persons of cleanly habits.
These two diseases, favus and trachoma, constitute 97 per cent, of the total cases of loathsome or dangerous contagious disease found in arriving aliens. After they were classed as causes for exclusion they were responsible for more determined effort to evade our laws than had ever before been exhibited. Various means of escaping inspection were resorted to, the placing of diseased steerage aliens in the cabin (cabin passengers were not inspected until 1898), the use of false naturalization papers, entrance by way of Canada or Mexico, were all employed as modes of entrance. One by one, these gateways have been closed, and with the increasing vigilance of trained medical officers at our ports and upon the Canadian and Mexican frontiers, we shall be amply protected in the future from this menace.
The ill effects of immigration upon politics are all traceable to the evils of criminal or careless naturalization. These evils are most in evidence in the large cities, but a recent investigation by the attorney general of the United States, shows that the loose administration of the naturalization laws extends to the smaller cities and rural communities as well. President Roosevelt in his message to the Fifty-eighth Congress, December, 1903, forcibly presented the picture of fraudulent naturalization and its baneful effect upon the moral health of the body politic.
