"Europe as an emigrant-exporting continent," Harry H. Laughlin testimony before the House Committee, including Immigration Restriction Act (5)

1145. 1278 Europe as an Emigrant-Exporting Continent need in our immigrant. We can only furnish his new environment, but we can not furnish his heredity; he brings that with him. In applying for a vise[accent acute over e] for the passport, which passport would-be emigrant has, it might be well as a preliminary to require his applicant to answer a more extended questionnaire that the one at present required. After this is done the applicant, with the completed questionnaire, would be placed in contact with the physician and field worker, who would take up the case and work out the facts to the satisfaction of the consul in the manner outlined in the sample case and family history (Series I, Appendix A, p. 1343). In brief, besides the quota limitation of the law of 1921 and the causes for rejection enumerated in the law of 1917, our future laws, if the country is to be protected against inferior immigrants and is to select and welcome superior strains, should provide by statute for the determination of individual and hereditary qualities by requiring modern pedigree examination in the home territories of the would-be immigrant. Natural Intelligence Doctor Laughlin. Natural intelligence is a factor which constitutes a great element in the evolution of peoples, and consequently should weigh heavily in emigration and immigration standards. The increasing tendency is to encourage the permanent emigration of the least intelligent and for the receiving country to screen out all but the most intelligent. Table 3 (p 1280) shows the rough or approximate comparability of scales for the measurement of natural intelligence. Many tests and scales for measuring this quality are being developed by psychological research. Their purpose is to evaluate naked natural intelligence which, so far as possible, is uninfluenced by education and environment. These scales are shown in this fashion on the chart in order to present them in parallel form for comparison. Much improvement is expected in the near future with particular reference to the mental examination of the adults. Our standard should ultimately eliminate not only the positively feeble-minded, but also all those who are below the American average in natural intelligence. That our recent immigration, as a whole, has not served to raise the intelligence level of the total white portion of the United States is shown by Table 4 (p. 1282). These computations are approximate, but they are based upon reputable sources, as will be seen in examining the chart. They are, by far, the most extensive and reliable data which have thus far been secured on this subject. Until better and more accurate records are secured these must be accepted as the most nearly approximating the truth, and infinitely superior to the unsupported opinion of the critic. Chart 7, on "Superior Intelligence," chart 8, "Inferior Intelligence," and chart 9, "Intelligence Rating," were compiled from the findings of "Psychological examinations in the United States Army," reported in Memoir XV of the National Academy of Sciences. These examinations, as all members of the committee know, were conducted under the direction of Maj. Robert M. Yorkes. The samples of races and groups subjected to the examination were large and representative, and the tests given were the best which the psychologists of the world had devised for adults up to the time of the examina