ing any lottery, gift enterprise, or scheme for the distribution of money, or of any real or personal property by lot, chance, or drawing of any kind, or that any person or company is conducting any other scheme or device for obtaining money or property of any kind through the mails by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, instruct postmasters at any postoffice at which registered letters arrive directed to any such person or company, or to the agent or representative of any such person or company, whether such agent or representative is acting as an individual or as a firm, bank, corporation, or association of any kind, to return all such registered letters to the postmaster at the office at which they were originally mailed, with the word 'Fraudulent' plainly written or stamped upon the outside thereof; and all such letters so returned to such postmasters shall be by them returned to the writers thereof, under such regulations as the Postmaster-General may prescribe. But nothing contained in this section shall be so construed as to authorize any postmaster or other person to open any letter not addressed to himself. The public advertisement by such person or company so conducting such lottery, gift enterprise, scheme, or device, that remittances for the same may be made by registered letters to any other person, firm, bank, corporation, or association named therein shall be held to be prima facie evidence of the existence of said agency by all the parties named therein; but the Postmaster-General shall not be precluded from ascertaining the existence of such agency in any other legal way satisfactory to himself."

SEC. 3. That section four thousand and forty-one of the Revised Statutes be, and the same is hereby, amended to read as follows:

"SEC. 4041. The Postmaster-General may, upon evidence satisfactory to him that any person or company is engaged in conducting any lottery, gift enterprise, or scheme for the distribution of money, or of any real or personal property by lot, chance, or drawing of any kind, or that any person or company is conducting any other scheme for obtaining money or property of any kind through the mails by means of false or fraudulent pretenses,

representations, or promises, forbid the payment by any postmaster to said person or company of any postal money-orders drawn to his or its order, or in his or its favor, or to the agent of any such person or company, whether such agent is acting as an individual or as a firm, bank, corporation, or association of any kind, and may provide by regulation for the return to the remitters of the sums named in such money-orders. But this shall not authorize any person to open any letter not addressed to himself. The public advertisement by such person or company so conducting any such lottery, gift enterprise, scheme, or device, that remittances for the same may be made by means of postal money-orders to any other person, firm, bank, corporation, or association named therein shall be held to be prima facie evidence of the existence of said agency by all the parties named therein; but the Postmaster-General shall not be precluded from ascertaining the existence of such agency in any other legal way."

APPROVED, September 19, 1890.

No. 124. Immigration and Contract Labor

March 3, 1891

AN act of March 3, 1875, forbade the entrance into the United States of "persons who are undergoing a sentence for conviction in their own country of felonious crimes other than political or growing out of or the result of such political offenses, or whose sentence has been remitted on condition of their emigration." By an act of August 3, 1892, a duty of fifty cents, to be paid by the master, owner, agent or consignee of the vessel, was imposed for each alien entering the United States by water. Convicts, insane or feeble-minded persons, and persons liable to become a public charge were forbidden to land, and foreign convicts, "except those convicted of political offenses," were to be returned, the expense of returning immigrants who were denied entrance to be borne by the owners of the vessels in which they came. A bill further to amend the laws relating to immigration and contract labor was introduced in the House, February 12, 1891, by William D. Owen of Indiana, and passed on the 25th by a vote of 125 to 48. The Senate substituted the House

bill for a similar bill of its own already under consideration, and passed the bill on the 27th. REFERENCES.

- Text in U.S. Statutes at Large, XXVI, 1084–1087. For the proceedings see the House and Senate Journals, 51st Cong., 2d Sess., and the Cong. Record. See also House Reports 3807 and 3472; House Report 2090, 52d Cong., 1st Sess. On earlier projects see House Report 76, 40th Cong., 2d Sess.; House Misc. Doc. 22, 45th Cong., 2d Sess.; House Report 1, 46th Cong., 2d Sess. See also the act of August 2, 1882, for the regulation of passenger traffic by sea.

An act in amendment to the various acts relative to immigration and the importation of aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor.

Be it enacted That the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission into the United States, in accordance with the existing acts regulating immigration, other than those concerning Chinese laborers: All idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease, persons who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, polygamists, and also any person whose ticket or passage is paid for with the money of another or who is assisted by others to come, unless it is affirmatively and satisfactorily shown on special inquiry that such person does not belong to one of the foregoing excluded classes, or to the class of contract laborers excluded by the act of February twenty-sixth, eighteen hundred and eighty-five, but this section shall not be held to exclude persons living in the United States from sending for a relative or friend who is not of the excluded classes under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe: Provided, That nothing in this act shall be construed to apply to or exclude persons convicted of a political offense, notwithstanding said political offense may be designated as a "felony, crime, infamous crime, or misdemeanor, involving moral turpitude" by the laws of the land whence he came or by the court convicting.

SEC. 2. That no suit or proceeding for violations of said act of February twenty-sixth, eighten hundred and eighty-five, prohibit

ing the importation and migration of foreigners under contract or agreement to perform labor, shall be settled, compromised, or discontinued without the consent of the court entered of record with reasons therefor.

SEC. 3. That it shall be deemed a violation of said act of February twenty-sixth, eighteen hundred and eighty-five, to assist or encourage the importation or migration of any alien by promise of employment through advertisements printed and published in any foreign country; and any alien coming to this country in consequence of such an advertisement shall be treated as coming under a contract as contemplated by such act; and the penalties by said act imposed shall be applicable in such a case: Provided, This section shall not apply to States and Immigration Bureaus of States advertising the inducements they offer for immigration to such States.

SEC. 4. That no steamship or transportation company or owners of vessels shall directly, or through agents, either by writing, printing, or oral representations, solicit, invite or encourage the immigration of any alien into the United States except by ordinary commercial letters, circulars, advertisements, or oral representations, stating the sailings of their vessels and the terms and facilities of transportation therein; and for a violation of this provision any such steamship or transportation company, and any such owners of vessels, and the agents by them employed, shall be subjected to the penalties imposed by the third section of said act of February twenty-sixth, eighteen hundred and eighty-five, for violations of the provision of the first section of said act.

nor

SEC. 5. That section five of said act of February twenty-sixth, eighteen hundred and eighty-five, shall be, and hereby is, amended by adding to the second proviso1 in said sections the words " to ministers of any religious denomination, nor persons belonging to any recognized profession, nor professors for colleges and seminaries," and by excluding from the second proviso of said section the words "or any relative or personal friend."

SEC. 6. That any person who shall bring into or land in the 1" First proviso "substituted by act of March 3, 1893, chap. 206, sec. 6.

United States by vessel or otherwise, or who shall aid to bring into or land in the United States by vessel or otherwise, any alien not lawfully entitled to enter the United States shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, on conviction, be punished by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year, or by both such fine and imprison

ment.

SEC. 7. That the office of superintendent of immigration is hereby created and established, and the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, is authorized and directed to appoint such officer. . . . The superintendent of immigration shall be an officer in the Treasury Department, under the control and supervision of the Secretary of the Treasury, to whom he shall make annual reports in writing of the transactions of his office, together with such special reports, in writing, as the Secretary of the Treasury shall require. .

SEC. 8. That upon the arrival by water at any place within the United States of any alien immigrants it shall be the duty of the commanding officer and the agents of the steam or sailing vessel by which they came to report the name, nationality, last residence, and destination of every such alien, before any of them are landed, to the proper inspection officers, who shall thereupon go or send competent assistants on board such vessel and there inspect all such aliens, or the inspection officers may order a temporary removal of such aliens for examination at a designated time and place, and then and there detain them until a thorough inspection is made. But such removal shall not be considered a landing during the pendency of such examination. The medical examination shall be made by surgeons of the Marine Hospital Service. In cases where the services of a Marine Hospital Surgeon can not be obtained without causing unreasonable delay the inspector may cause an alien to be examined by a civil surgeon and the Secretary of the Treasury shall fix the compensation for such examination. The inspection officers and their assistants shall have power to administer oaths, and to take and consider testimony touching the right of any such aliens to enter the United States, all of which