K

THE TERRORS OF ELLIS ISLAND

EEPING BRITISH VISITORS IN A CAGE with people of all nationalities and colors is one of the charges recently brought against our administration of immiants at Ellis Island. The charge came up recently when an dependent member of the House of Commons, in the words the Philadelphia Inquirer, "badgered the Under Secretary of late for Foreign Affairs with a recital of the indignities inflicted American officials upon British immigrants." The Under cretary at once stated, according to the same paper, "that in s opinion the American Government would do all it could to leviate the conditions complained of, but that there were traordinary difficulties in ealing with the matter." ther questions asked on the me day, according to the ew York Times, were:

"How many Englishmen and omen are incarcerated' there Cause the British quota of amigrants is filled? Does the nder Secretary know that as any as 150 women and chilren of all races and colors are uddled together in one room

sleep? Why are not indusrial centers, like Glasgow, duly formed that the quota is ill, to prevent futile voyages o New York and unpleasant xperiences at Ellis Island?"

A study of the American ewspapers commenting on his incident shows practical nanimity as to certain of the extraordinary difficulties' which are summarized in the Kew York Times as follows:

IMMIGRANT

widely reported pathetic cases of various barred aliens, in which recommendations were made for meeting the objections. All but the first and last recommendations are reported on the authority of Commissioner Tod, as follows:

(1). Require of all steamship companies certificates of fitness, medical and otherwise, to be filed with each application for a visa or O. K. on a passport, and make the issue of such visas discretionary with our consuls, instead of, as at present, obligatory in the case of any person of "good repute" who demands

overnment and the steamship lines; inadequate facilities at Ellis sland, which accounts for crowding and unwelcome personal ontacts; niggardly appropriations by Congress; red tape and elay in disposing of doubtful cases; interference by politicians ith the Commissioner; conflict of authority between the local pard of review and the Washington board; not enough officials and subordinates to do the day's work-the staff is about the me in numbers as it was in 1914; arbitrary use of authority nd failure to exercise discrimination in the case of persons assed as immigrants under a liberal interpretation of the law." The retiring Commissioner, Robert E. Tod, according to the me paper, "a man of means, who took the office to render ablic service, worked twelve hours a day, gave himself no eations, has never been indifferent to the humanities, but has tel on the principle that it was his duty to enforce the law erally," is quoted as saying that "the politicians and attorneys e making a mockery of the immigration laws," and is said to · leaving because "he couldn't endure the torments any nger." In answer to the British criticisms, the New York rald reports him as saying:

"Not many Britons have experienced any considerable delay Ellis Island, even with the quota of that country exhausted. believe the number is far less than 100, and the majority of ese have only remained here twelve or twenty-four hours to early establish their claims to exemption. These are kept in best quarters when they are cabin passengers, and while it is e that 150 women may sometimes, be herded together, it is practicable for us to segregate the English women as a class." As it happens, a few days before this issue was raised by the itish, the same paper published an article in connection with

Slovakia.... *14,357

*Quotas were not filled.

A very great deal of sympathy with the average immigrant is exprest by a majority of the press, commenting on the situation, as, for instance, the New York Daily News:

"What our immigration laws and administration need is more humanizing. And it is a reproach to the United States that such needs have to be pointed out."

Says the Buffalo Express:

"If means really can not be devised to regulate properly the flow of immigration, unfortunate victims of the embargo can be treated with reasonable courtesy and consideration. America owes that much, if not to the excluded foreigner, at least to her own repute."

This is the way it looks to the Springfield Republican:

"Evidently Ellis Island is too crowded, and there are not enough of the right kind of attendants there. Something short of a gigantic building' would go far toward meeting one of the troubles. The way to meet the other is obvious. Fundamentally the trouble is that the Government has never sufficiently realized the importance of Ellis Island in the scheme of things."

With regard to the specific British complaints, however, this paper adds:

"The frequent official and unofficial criticisms of Ellis Island by Englishmen and the infrequency or absence of criticism by other governments seem to reflect a difference in conception of the rights of aliens in a foreign port. In a word, there is evidence of a strong feeling in England that Englishmen are for some reason entitled to special favors. As Commissioner Tod says, however, we are compelled by law to treat all nationalities alike.""

London Daily Chronicle, who cites the following instance of several such cases which came under his close personal observation:

"The man came from Nottingham and was a highly skilled lace-maker. He had received his visa, and had been so far encouraged to emigrate that he had sold his house and taken with him his wife and children. He wished to join his brother who was already a naturalized citizen of the United States.

"He had gone out a whole man, so the ship's doctor informed me, and he was returning to England a physical wreck. On arriving in New York he had been debarred from landing at the pier and had been taken straight to Ellis Island.

"There he and his family had been kept for six weeks, and had been finally sent back on the same ship as that on which they arrived, so that the officers had full cognizance of the case.

"During his stay on Ellis Island the lace-maker had been, according to his own assertion, lanced for specimens of his blood so often that he came back suffering seriously-the doctor told me he had many boils on his body-and, altho they did not specify any disease on his papers, they had sent back the whole family with the papers marked 'Likely to become a public charge.' During the leisure of my ocean voyage I took particular trouble to investigate this case very carefully. At first it appeared to me incredible, but gradually I realized that the man was speaking the absolute truth.

"He and his family were being sent back, wrecked in health, at the expense of the steamship company. They had been treated as criminals for no other offense than an untimely belief in the freedom of the United States. They were returning to England confirmed enemies of America and all its ways."

As we go to press comes an Associated Press dispatch, carrying the answer of Ronald McNeill, the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, to a later question in the House of Commons about the "unnamed English mercantile captain who was placed in a wire cage with thirty foreigners and forced to strip for examination, altho his passport was in perfect order." Andrew W. Mellon, the American Secretary of the Treasury, said he will probably be consulted immediately upon his arrival in London by "officials who are investigating alleged indignities to British subjects landing in America."

In view of such comments, the New York Times concludes: "Instead of railing at British critics of Ellis Island methods, it would become us to occupy ourselves in reforming them and in revising the immigration laws to insure just and courteous treatment for new arrivals under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty."

T

THE WHEAT-GROWER TOO SUCCESSFUL HE PROBLEM OF THE WHEAT FARMER in post-war economy has never been solved, or nearly solve This flat statement is made by the New York Journe of Commerce, and it is echoed by a dozen other widely read newspapers from Philadelphia to Portland, Oregon. Moreove maintains the Omaha Bee, “things can never be right in America until agriculture is restored on a sound basis. There will be r sound prosperity in America until a bushel of grain will bring in exchange as much as it brought before the war." With a bumper crop of wheat in immediate prospect, the farmers the country over face the problem of finding a market for it at a price that will yield a profit. A market must also be found for more than a hundred million bushels that were left over fro last year's crop. "Wheat has been produced this year at a ne loss," declares the Wichita Eagle, and the Chicago Daily Ne admits that "the crisis in wheat is real."

Our wheat farmers, we are told, now produce more than o people consume. They have been too successful in their efforts and are being ruined by the overplus of their own product. For this a foreign market must be found. But right here is the rub, for we have competitors in Australia, Argentina and Canada Later we shall have Russia as a competitor. Land values are much less in all of these countries, and labor costs, too, are comparatively low in each one except Canada. Another fact that militates against success in marketing wheat abroad is that "wheat is harvested somewhere every month of the year," according to a Chicago correspondent of the New York Evening Post, and while it is true that the wheat raised in foreign cour tries, as we are told by the Kansas City Journal, “is not coming into the United States, it is going into the European market and it is going there on terms which can not be met by the American farmer." As the St. Paul Dispatch points out:

"The price is made in the world market and is governed by world conditions. Whether the United States exports much or

THE FARMER'S DOLLAR

-Morris for the George Matthew Adams Service.

little wheat affects the price only as it relates to the total amount of wheat offered from all producing sources. As long as we have an exportable surplus, whether it is 10,000,000 bushels or our average of 250,000,000 bushels, that surplus will carry the world price and that price will govern the domestic market."

In an editorial dated June 20, the Lincoln State Journal, pubished in the heart of the wheat belt, thus sets forth the wheatrowers' plight:

"As matters look now, the farmers of the trans-Missouri wheat belt will get not over 90 cents for their wheat at threshing ime. It is produced with wages, machinery and other costs of production at a pitch exceeded only by the peak of war-time. Yet the price bids fair to be lower than at any time in nine years. The average farmer will get about $13 worth of wheat per acre. His taxes will take about ten per cent. of this income. His seed represents another ten per cent. His harvest and threshing bill will take a still larger slice. If his farm is mortgaged, the interest may take as much as $3 or $4 an acre more. One needs go no farther to see that 90-cent wheat is not profitable farming. The price is probably 40 per cent. below the profit level."

What has brought this anomalous condition about? According to Senator Capper's Topeka Capital:

"The war induced a large increase in the wheat acreage and millions of acres in the aggregate were added that are not normally adapted to wheat-growing. The whole industry suffers because of the excessive acreage, even tho the latter produces a light yield per acre."

Fundamentally, the problem of the farmer and wheat-grower is how to restore the prices of wheat and other farm products to the level of other commodities, declares the Omaha Bee in another editorial. Farm prices "are at pre-war levels, but the things which the farmer requires are selling at a big advance over pre-war prices." The Bee then shows another result as told in a Nebraska College of Agriculture bulletin:

"The farmer must necessarily restrict his purchases when the prices of his products fall more rapidly than the price of manufactured goods. This naturally decreases the volume of goods which the manufacturer can sell, and as a result he must decrease production."

Realizing that the farmers of the country are confronted by a concrete problem, the Governors of seven wheat-raising States recently called a conference in Chicago to discuss the troubles of the American wheat-grower, and the effect of these troubles upon general business. The champions of the farmer have long contended that the marketing problem is the most difficult one facing the farmer. It was natural, then, that the subject of cooperative marketing should come up at the conference, altho other suggestions for the stabilization of wheat-farming were made. The suggestion which has attracted most attention came from Bernard M. Baruch, a New York financier. What he proposes is a short-cut to cooperative marketing of enough American grain to have influence in a world market. The

farmers, he contends, should own and operate their own selling agency, preferably one that is well established, such as the Armour Grain Company. As the New York Times explains:

"Mr. Baruch's plan contemplates the purchase by the wheatgrowers of a solidly established selling concern. To be effective, he explains, at least 35 per cent. of the country's acreage would have to be party to the cooperative scheme. The personnel of the selling concern would remain unchanged, thus bringing into the service of the farmers the intelligence and experience of men, such as Mr. Armour and his associates, who have made a fortune through such salesmanship. By degrees, as the farmers developed men who could take over the direction of such an enterprise, the farmers would obtain more and more control, until finally the organization would be owned and dominated completely by the wheat-growers themselves."

"This is the biggest experiment of the kind," writes a Chicago correspondent of the Philadelphia Public Ledger. "It is designed to take from the speculator in grain and the middleman their profits, and give them to the men who actually produce the grain." "It seems to be a chance in every way worth taking," in the opinion of the New York Tribune, and the New York World, The Herald, and the Richmond (Va.) News-Leader are a few other papers who are enthusiastic about the Baruch cooperative plan. The World thus puts the situation:

"As things stand, the farmer buys in a seller's market and sells in a buyer's market, with the result that he loses on every transaction. No other great business in the country allows its prices to be fixt, as are the farmer's prices, by outsiders. When a farmer threshes his wheat in the fall he dumps it on the market, not because he doesn't know that the price is likely to increase but because he has no storage facilities and needs ready money to pay the banker, the storekeeper and whoever else has carried him through the year.

"A cooperative association, if it can be made to work, should end this state of affairs very simply. The farmers pool their product, store it, borrow money on it to carry them while waiting for a more favorable moment to sell, and pay a selling organization to market the goods.

"In the past, the storage of food for distribution and future consumption has been in the hands of dealers. In the future, it now looks as if it will be in the hands of the producers."

The New York Evening Post, Portland Oregonian, Chicago Daily News, Birmingham Age-Herald, Wichita Eagle, Topeka Capital, Socialist New York Call, Minneapolis Tribune, and Milwaukee Sentinel-papers from the North, South, East, West, and Middle West-agree that the American wheat farmer, to solve his problem, "needs to employ cooperative business methods, such as he already is doing through his farm organizations," in the words of the Alabama paper. But these farm

UNITED STATES 36 GRAINS

INDIA 27 GRAINS

IGRAIN

organizations, as represented by two of the most powerful, the U. S. Grain Growers, Inc., and the American Farm Bureau Federation, appear not to favor the Baruch plan. "The farmers are determined to set up their own agencies," says the secretary of the first named agency, while the Federation believes that "it would be dangerous to the farmers' cooperative program to take over any privately-owned grainselling and speculative company." Moreover, says the New York Journal of Commerce, in discussing the Baruch plan:

"It is certainly not a fact that all speculators in grain make money, as almost any of them will sadly admit. The farmer, then, if he succeeds in putting the speculator out of business, must bear these losses, while if he merely takes his place as a speculator among speculators he must win or lose, according as his judgment is better or poorer than that of others."

'OPIUM INTERESTS BLOCKING REFORM

N

OTHING COULD GO FARTHER toward discrediting the League of Nations in America, believes the Minnesota Star (Minneapolis), than the recent failure of the opium committee of the League "to approve in full the 'American plan' for restricting the production of opium throughout the world to the amount needed for medicinal and scientific purposes."

And while other editors do not blame the League as a whole for a single committee's act-or failure to act-the majority are of the opinion that the American delegation to the Geneva opium conference did not win a victory, as the first cabled reports led us to believe. But they were able to place their program before the League committee. However, points out the Boston Herald, "the American delegates were under a disadvantage; they could not participate in any discussion as members, but could only present their recommendations." The three chief recommendations of the American delegation are given by the Geneva correspondent of the New York Times, as follows:

"If the purpose of the Hague opium convention is to be achieved according to its spirit and true intent, it must be recognized that the use of opium products for other than medicinal and scientific purposes is an abuse, and not legitimate.

"In order to prevent abuse of these products it is necessary to exercise control over the production of raw opium in such a manner that there will be no surplus available for non-medicinal and non-scientific purposes.

"All nations are urged to prohibit exportation of narcotic drugs, including opium, in whatever form, and coca leaves and derivatives of these drugs to those countries which are not parties to the Hague opium convention and which do not have domestic systems of control, including import and export certificates."

After a week of debate the League's opium committee cepted these proposals-in principle, and with three "reserve tions." Certain States, it seems, made reservations to th following effect:

"First, that the use of opium according to established usa in India is legitimate under the Hague convention. Secon that the use of prepared opium is legitimate so long as use! subject to and in accord with Chapter II, of the Hague conver tion. Third, that the production and export of opium is legitmate, provided it is produced and exported as provided for und the Hague convention."

The American delegation had gone to Geneva with the idea d stopping the supply of opium from India, Persia and Turke but the opium-producing States in attendance as members d the League had different ideas about a lucrative industry, are told. The "reservations," therefore, come with little or surprize to the Washington Post. For, maintains this paper:

"No one really anticipated that a body packed with representatives of nations financially interested in the production and sale of opium and cocaine would, at the outset at least, accept in their entirety the propositions brought forward by the American delegates.

"The reservations, like the play within the play in 'Hamlet." are the thing. By the first, unlimited opium eating in India is authorized; by the second, opium smoking is legal in Siam. India, Portuguese Macao, Dutch East Indies, French Indo China, Japan and all British possessions; by the third, India is permitted to continue to produce 1,500,000 pounds of raw opium annually, or at least twelve times more than would be sufficient for legitimate scientific and medical uses in the whole world."

Further information comes from Representative Stephen G. Porter, of Pennsylvania, chairman of the American delegation to the Geneva Conference:

"Under Article XXIII of the Treaty of Versailles, the execu tion of the treaty of the Hague (opium treaty), was delegated to the League of Nations, the Council of which appointed an opium advisory committee of nine, representing certain nations, and three advisers or assessors, who were appointed by the Council irrespective of nationality.

"At the meeting held in June, 1921, upon motion of Mr. Wellington Koo, the Chinese representative on the opium advisory committee, a resolution was adopted recommending the reduction and restriction of the cultivation of the poppy and the production of opium therefrom to strictly medicinal and scientific purposes.

"The Koo resolution was ratified by the Council of the League of Nations, which recommended its adoption by the Assembly of the League. The Assembly is composed of a representative from each nation which is a member of the League of Nations.

"At a meeting of the Assembly of the League held on October 19, 1921, the Assembly recommended that the words 'strictly

nedicinal and scientific' be stricken out and the word 'legitimate' >e substituted in lieu thereof. . .

"It is perfectly obvious that the striking out of the specific vords, 'strictly medicinal and scientific' and the substitution in ieu thereof of the general word 'legitimate' was intended to egitimatize and thereby continue to encourage the sale of large quantities of this drug without restrictions on its use in the Oriental possessions of many European countries, and thereby preserve the enormous and immoral revenues which the opiumproducing countries derive from its production and sale."

As we are told by the Newark News:

"The understanding was that this state of affairs should be permitted to continue until another international opium conTerence can be called to act upon the American 'principle' without reservation. It will be the function of the League to call such a conference, but it remains to be seen whether that will be done. It will require unanimous consent on the part of the Council and the Assembly of the League to authorize such a call, and a single objector could prevent the gathering."

"The United States," declares the New York Tribune, "is more vitally interested in restricting traffic in narcotics than any other country, but it can do nothing directly to restrict the world's supply, and has to content itself with fighting opium smuggling." At the recent National Anti-Narcotic Conference one of the speakers declared that "if we could limit the production and sale of opium to legitimate medical and scientific purposes, we would have no dope problem." But that America has such a problem, and that drug addiction is on the increase, was made plain by other speakers. "Altho America is on a higher intellectual plane than any other country," said one, "forty times as much drugs are consumed here per capita as in any other of the white nations." Still another authority pointed out that the use of drugs in the United States has trebled in the past two years, and now Americans are using seventeen times as much per capita as the Chinese. Furthermore, we are informed by the Seattle Times:

"The danger of narcotics to young persons is revealed by statistics compiled from the 50,000 known addicts in New York State, showing their average age is 23 years.

"Almost 500 times more narcotics, in the form of opium and its derivatives, are produced than are legitimately needed. Fifteen hundred tons are marketed throughout the world annually. Only three and one-half tons, by the most liberal calculation, are required for medicinal purposes. The poppy plant, from which is manufactured opium, is grown in British India, China, Persia and Turkey. Most of the poppies are cultivated in British India and sold in open markets in Bombay, Calcutta, and other cities. By taxes on the sales of the crops, the Imperial Indian Government obtains one-fifth of its revenue.

"The countries that are engaged the most extensively in the manufacture of opium and its derivatives are Japan, Germany, Switzerland and Holland. Japan and Holland are more earnest than the others in supporting British India in opposing restriction of production."

But Taraknath Das, writing in The Nation (New York), avers that "the British Government's opium policy is to a large extent responsible for drugging other nations." Says this writer:

"The British Government is a signatory to the Hague conference on opium. Yet in India the British Government advances money without interest to the poor farmers of India to induce them to cultivate the poppy, and then the Government has the monopoly of the opium trade.

"China, through the efforts of the Chinese reformers and others, made an agreement with the British Government to stop importation of all opium from India so that she would be able to save her people from the menace of opium. China did stop poppy cultivation most effectively, and the selling, using, or smuggling of opium was prohibited by law. But morphine has taken the place of opium in China. Morphia is manufactured from opium and is ten times more dangerous. It is not only devitalizing China, but it has secured a grip over the American people, particularly of the younger generation. . . . "As long as Great Britain, a Christian nation, refuses to stop the opium monopoly for profit, what can America say to Turkey and Persia?"

Mr. Frederick A. Wallis, Commissioner of Correction of New York City, offers further facts. "These are appalling; almost unbelievable," says Mr. Wallis. According to the Commis

sioner

"The amount of opium used by the leading nations of the world, according to latest available scientific statistics, is as follows: The annual per capita consumption in Italy is one grain; in Germany, two grains; in England, three grains; in France, four grains; the United States, which does not grow one commercial poppy plant, used the enormous amount of thirty-six grains per capita per annum. Why, even in India, with all of its opium antecedents, only twenty-seven grains is

used. Furthermore, our consumption of opium is steadily on the increase, and this in spite of the Harrison narcotic act, passed in 1914, which is conceded to be the most restrictive and punitive measure ever passed by any nation in the world.

"In order that we may the more fully appreciate what thirtysix grains of opium per capita means in this nation, let us visualize, if we can, the result. If the morphine which is derived from these thirty-six grains of opium were dispensed in the usual doses of one-eighth of a grain each, it would be sufficient to keep every person in the United States-man, woman and childunder the influence of an opiate for twenty-nine consecutive days. It means the entire nation paralyzed and practically out of existence for a whole month out of each year."

In view of all these facts-and "reservations"-what is to be done to check the narcotic evil? "Settlement of this worldwide problem can not be made without the full cooperation of every civilized nation in whose territory the growth of the opium poppy is carried on," asserts Drug and Chemical Markets, a New York Trade organ. Continues this drug journal:

"For Great Britain and France to interject a series of 'ifs and buts' in the consideration of the American opium plan recently presented before the League of Nations opium committee at Geneva means only one thing. In their own minds the delegates of these nations are against any drastic restrictions in opium production, and also opposed to cutting off the supply of nonmedical opium from the natives of their colonies. To solve a combined moral and political problem of the opium type is impossible if insincerity lurks behind the high-sounding phrases of the delegates of great nations.

"The only method which can effectively stamp out drug addiction all over the world is to reduce opium production to the exact needs for scientific and medicinal purposes. Laws piled upon laws without this control at the source have been and will continue to be ineffective."