In the matter of temporary emigration the Congress merely followed the lead of Professor Levi-Morenos, who was a member also of the International Agricultural Congress at Rome in May, 1903, in which it was bewailed that German and other ships were sharing so much Italian traffic back and forth between Italy and North and South America, and that so many emigrants were returning broken in health and injured. There was a lively row over contract labor of temporary emigrants. We are accustomed to think that our very stringent contract-labor laws are successfully excluding aliens under contract, but debate in the Congress would lead one to think the laws had merely made the _patrones_ more powerful by making “smuggled” alien labor more valuable to American corporations. In the matter of the “mediazione” of labor, or “bureauizing” it, as it were, to avoid the necessity or opportunity for _patrones_, or, as they are referred to by real sociologists of the first water on the other side, _sfruttratori_, a lively debate brought out some sharp attacks on government methods, Senator Bodio making a great speech and pushing to acceptance the following: “This Congress considers it is necessary to exercise in behalf of our emigrant labor a convenient _mediazione_ for avoiding that going forth blindly and that exposure to perfidious ‘grafters’ and innumerable perils, so coming to a condition of things that produces an obnoxious and foolish reduction of their pay, raises the animosity of their fellow-craftsmen [of America], causes prohibitive laws by the governments [American, etc.], acknowledging the purely negative character of our insufficient information and the hurtful and too widely public quality of the positive sort. “It is our wish that a more useful and rational method of private _mediazione_ of our labor, as already presaged in the acts of the Secretary of Emigration of Udine, come to be followed by the secretaries in similar offices in the chief places in the provinces, which action should be co-ordinated by means of a National Federation centralized, with branch sessions in each important centre of emigration in each particular province.” It was decided to hold another Congress in Rome in two years. Barring Italian emigrants because they are illiterate will result merely in their being given a superficial education in reading and writing to enable them to pass our port examinations, and will not raise the standard of their intelligence in the least; furthermore, what advantage will the United States derive from their being taught to read and write in Italian when the ability to read Italian newspapers in this country will but serve to delay their thorough Americanization. It must not be forgotten that the many Italian newspapers in this country are not American any more in sympathy than in print. A thoroughly American newspaper printed in Italian would be a blessing in both New York and Boston.