Every applicant for citizenship--including the wives who now are swept in regardless of their own fitness by the naturalization of their husbands, or kept out by their rejection or failure to apply, should be considered in the light of his own personal character and record of behavior during the preliminary-period residence here. And character and behavior should be proved as any other material facts are proved--by _preponderance of evidence_. The present practice is quite otherwise. The whole procedure would be revolutionized if the applicant were required, or permitted, to produce _a body of reasonable and competent evidence sufficient to convince the court or its representative assigned to take the testimony_. His neighbors, his employer, his pastor, the school-teacher, his fellow workmen, by word of mouth or affidavit--in short, all those who know what sort of person he (or she) has been during the five years of required residence--could readily satisfy the court as to the essential fact. The judges themselves in most cases would welcome this change. As it is now, the whole business is wound up with red tape, and thousands of persons have been excluded on the flimsiest technical grounds, simply because the evidence presented to the court must be, in the typical case, that of two witnesses, _only_ two, and _the same_ two throughout the whole proceeding. If anything can be found amiss with these or either of them, the application must be rejected. It may even be argued that the presumptions and the benefit of doubts should be in favor of the applicant; that the burden of proof should lie upon those who oppose admission. During the whole period, 1908-18, in the whole United States only 14.3 per cent of all denials of petitions for naturalization were for reasons involving the personal fitness of the applicant--“ignorance” and “immoral character.”[178] This means that _if every alien who applied for citizenship during those eleven years had been granted his certificate of naturalization without investigation or formality, the proportion of “ignorant” and “immoral” admitted would have been only 1.7 per cent--less than two in a hundred_!