WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 407

most oppressed, and poorest people of that country, composing its peon class,
are furnishing almost the entire volume of Mexican immigration.
Of the hundreds of reports on the classes of work which these people perform
in the neighborhoods reporting, the following are most prominently mentioned:
Work on railroads; in ‘mines and smelters; producing and harvesting sugar beets
and cotton; growing and gathering onions, tomatoes, lettuce and other crops,
and miscellaneous farm work; steel mill, foundry, factory, and packing-house
work; lumbering, sheep herding; street and road paving. The reports list nearly
all of them as engaged in common, unskilled labor, though, undoubtedly, some of
those who have been longest here are rising into the work formerly done by
semiskilled American labor.

HOUSING AND LIVING CONDITIONS—SANITATION AND HEALTH

The housing and living conditions of this population are bad, as shown by the
overwhelming majority of the reports on the subject. Of about 1,304 reports
covering this point, 216 say that their housing and living conditions are good, 728
declare them to be bad, while 360 of the reports state that they are very bad.
Below are given a few of the many quotations which might be made from reports
on the housing and living conditions of Mexicans—mainly migrant alien Mexicans—in
 the United States.
On the influence which this population has upon conditions affecting sanitation
and health, 124 reports say that it is good and 811 reports show that it is bad.
Housing and living conditions, sanitation, health, and disease are so inseparably
connected that statements on these subjects are often combined by persons
reporting on them. The following are some of the many special reports on
Phang phe of the problem developed by the presence of this population wherever
it collects:

ANSWERS TO INQUIRIES AS TO EFFECT OF MEXICAN POPULATION ON SANITATION
AND HEALTH AND DISEASE PREVALENT IN THAT POPULATION
“Ninety per cent of the Mexicans live in shacks and huts that a white man
would not use for living quarters at all. Frequently, a family of from 5 to 10 live
in one room.”—=S. J. Isaacks, lawyer, El Paso, Tex.
“Living quarters are merely shacks, very crowded, several families living
together, in many cases very insanitary. Increase apparently too great, as
Jin by our hospital cases.”’—Dr. Ernest Wright, county health officer, Houston,
ex.
“Conditions deplorable. Living in shacks, children running around half
clothed, undernourished, and unclean, present a sight hardly believed by people
outside this State.”—William Haensler, vice president Federal Employees
Association, San Antonio, Tex.
“Mexicans are cartiers of lice, bed bugs, and venereal diseases. They help
spread disease.”’—Thomas W. Kelly, plumbing and steam fitting, Billings, Mont.
“The Mexican condition, so far as sanitation is concerned. is very bad.”—J. E.
Evans, La Grande, Oreg.
“Unless the tubercular and venereal Mexican is eared for through the public
health department he is likely to become a public health problem of sufficient
size to affect the general public health. Considerable tuberculosis and venereal;
these two are probably the chief among their communicable diseases.”’—J. L.
Pomroy, M. D., health officer, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, Calif.
“They are more trouble than all other classes put together. T. B., gonorrhea,
infectious trachoma, ophthalmia. heads full of cooties.”’—TF, R. Elder, city health
officer, Lincoln, Calif.
“Very worst kind always, have contagious diseases, have just been responsible
 for a smallpox epidemic. Deliberately expose themselves to smallpox.
We get the riffraff down here.”’—S8. T., Evans, M. D., citv coroner, city health
officer, Durango, Calif.
“Impetigo, smallpox, tuberculosis (especially), gonorrhea (80 per cent of this),
mumps, whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, diphtheria. The crying outrage
is the admission of Mexicans who are suffering from tuberculosis and other
diseases.”’—J. A. King, county and city health officer, Ojaia, Calif.
“Head lice, skin diseases, eye troubles, ete., almost impossible to eradicate
because of frequent migrations in and out and sanitary and loathsome conditions
 under which many live.”’—R.. B. Haddock, district sunerintendent schools,
Oxnard. Calif.