Testing Immigrants at Ellis Island This photograph, taken in 1917, shows an examiner administering a mental test to a newly arrived immigrant at the U.S. immigration center on Ellis Island. According to one intelligence “expert” of the time, 80 percent of the Hungarians, 79 percent of the Italians, and 87 percent of the Russians were “feeble-minded” (see Kamin, 1995). The new science of “mental testing” was used to argue for restrictions on immigration.

Archives of the the History of American Psychology/The University of Akron