Senator SnIPSTEAD. I am quoting from your statement on the floor of the Senate. April 3. 1924. page 5460. part 6. volume 65. of the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD: " There was no official governmental record of immigration commenced until the year 1820." Dr. Edward McSweeney. former Assistant Commissioner of Immigration. has made a statement on that. and if you would care to have me do so I would like to read It. He said [reading] : " In 1819 a law was passed making it necessary for the captains of all incoming ships. bringing passengers to the United States. to file a manifest of the passengers. but except to give the number of the passengers to the Government was never other than perfunctory and almost never used. These accumulated manifests were burned in the Ellis Island fire of 1896. The first real attempt to gather immigration statistics was after the Immigration Bureau was established In the early nineties." So that brings us down to 1896. if that statement is correct. Senator REED. Not necessarily. because the statistics were copied and compiled. or for many decades before that. and appear in the Government reports here in Washington.
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