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 immigrants, and they should be held to a strict accountability for any infraction of the law.

There is general acquiescence in our present tariff system as a national policy.  The first requisite to our prosperity is the continuity and stability of this economic policy.  Nothing could be more unwise than to disturb the business interests of the country by any general tariff change at this time.  Doubt, apprehension, uncertainty are exactly what we most wish to avoid in the interest of our commercial and material well-being.  Our experience in the past has shown that sweeping revisions of the tariff are apt to produce conditions closely approaching panic in the business world.  Yet it is not only possible, but eminently desirable, to combine with the stability of our economic system a supplementary system of reciprocal benefit and obligation with other nations.  Such reciprocity is an incident and result of the firm establishment and preservation of our present economic policy.  It was specially provided for in the present tariff law.

Reciprocity must be treated as the handmaiden of protection.  Our first duty is to see that the protection granted by the tariff in every case where it is needed is maintained, and that reciprocity be sought for so far as it can safely be done without injury to our home industries.  Just how far this is must be determined according to the individual case, remembering always that every application of our tariff policy to meet our shifting national needs must be conditioned upon the cardinal fact that the duties must never be reduced below the point that will cover the difference between the labor cost here and abroad.  The well-being of the wage-worker is a prime consideration of our entire policy of economic legislation.