No. 272.
Mr. White
to Mr. Evarts.
Berlin, April 24, 1880. (Received May 13.)
Sir: This legation receives from time to time letters from consuls calling attention to the hardship involved in charging passport-fees upon American students in straitened circumstances. My experience here leads me to coincide fully in the opinions thus expressed, and I may remark that our country never appears to me in such an unlovely aspect as when she insists upon taking $5 in gold from the pockets of poor young men and women struggling to obtain higher instruction in some branch of knowledge abroad in order to fit themselves for a career of usefulness at home.
A passport is required in the larger German cities by the police as a condition of residence, and at the universities and higher institutions of learning by the faculty as a condition of matriculation; but the fee above mentioned represents to a considerable number of students the difference between comfortable and uncomfortable living for a considerable time. I have taken pains to become acquainted with the American students in various universities and schools in Germany, and especially in Berlin, and I may say that I have never known a more studious and well conducted class of young people; they do us great credit in the eyes of all here who have occasion to know them. As a rule, they are men and women of small means who are deeply interested in some special branch which they are developing as far as possible in Germany in order to fit themselves to become professors or teachers or special investigators in America.
All modern governments have adopted the principle of aiding to some extent efforts of this kind; our own has done so by throwing off the duties on the products of American artists abroad.
The existing system does not exist upon any law. The act of July 14, 1870, abolished the fees on passports which had been fixed at $3 by the act of July 1, 1862 (the act of June 20, 1874, prescribes a fee of $5 for each citizen’s passport issued from the Department of State, and at $5 by the act of June 30, 1864), but on the 2d of October, 1871, Mr. Bancroft, then minister at Berlin, in forwarding his quarterly account of passports (see dispatch No. 272, October 2, 1871), called attention to the large increase in the number of applications for passports and suggested “a slight tax of one or two dollars” be laid on each passport to check this demand.
In accordance apparently with this recommendation was issued the circular instruction No. 13, dated October 14, 1871, inclosing an executive order of the President of October 13, 1871, under authority conferred by the sixteenth section of the act of the 18th of August, 1856, prescribing that in addition to the fees heretofore authorized, the sum of $5 should be charged for issuing passports in a foreign country. I cannot but think that this is a considerably larger sum than Mr. Bancroft had intended to recommend in naming the sum of two or three dollars. He [Page 424] was probably aware that a higher tax than this could not be well imposed upon the purses of poor students.
But it seems to me that our government may now well go further and give authority to ministers abroad to issue passports free of charge to Americans who under oath declare their intentions to become bona fide students of universities or other incorporated institutions. The loss of revenue would be inconsiderable. I have obtained from the consuls in Germany information from which the table inclosed is compiled, and from this it will be seen that only about 1,100 persons are here avowedly as students. I send it to the Department as a matter of interest, but it must not be taken to represent the number of passports issued to students from this legation, which would in ordinary years certainly not reach 100, owing to the fact that many of the institutions of learning do not require passports and also that some young persons furnish themselves with them before leaving America. Inasmuch, therefore, as Germany is the only country where passports are required for educational purposes the trifling sum of five or six hundred dollars would probably represent the difference in revenue to the government caused by such an order.
But while this is so slight a matter to the government, it is of great moment to those directly concerned. There have been excellent young men here in the universities and young women in the conservatories of music, eking out their existence by giving lessons in English, type setting, &c., and the hardship in these cases, I confess, seems to me to outweigh all the advantages accruing to the United States from the Executive order above referred to.
It will be observed that I suggest this immunity for persons showing bona fide intention to become students.
I put the proposal in this form because the requirement of the university authorities to exhibit passports before admission or matriculation precludes delay on the part of the legation.
I therefore respectfully suggest the question whether it may not be well to modify the order of October 14, 1871, so that ministers of the United States abroad may issue passports free from charge to any person giving satisfactory proof that he or she has the bona fide intention to enter as matriculated student any university, conservatory of music, school of design, or other incorporated institutions for instruction in science, literature, or art; and that in the quarterly return of passports to the Department such passports as are issued gratis be indicated.
I have, &c.,