-f 
 
(Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. 1 
 LOOKING TOWARD THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 An Asset and a Liability 
 
 BY 
 FREDERIC J. HASKIN 
 
 Author of 
 "The American Government" 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 

 Copyright, 1913, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: "158* Fifth Avenue 
 
 .*/. : j^fticagpVizs & .-Wabash Ave. 
 
 * Toronto": 25 'Richmond St., W. 
 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
This book is a reproduction of a series of 
 articles which were published in a large list of 
 newspapers throughout the United States. 
 The material was taken largely from the ex- 
 haustive reports on Immigration made by the 
 Federal Government, augmented by the per- 
 sonal observations of the writer on immigra- 
 tion conditions at home and abroad. The 
 articles were put in book form to fill a demand 
 from readers of The Haskin Letter in all 
 parts of the Union. 
 
 267408- 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 Past Human Migrations . 
 
 II 
 
 II. 
 
 Coming to America . 
 
 *9 
 
 III. 
 
 The " Old " Immigrant 
 
 27 
 
 IV. 
 
 The " New " Immigrant . 
 
 34 
 
 V. 
 
 Why the Immigrant Comes 
 
 42 m 
 
 VI. 
 
 Contract Labour and Induced 
 
 
 
 Immigration .... 
 
 50 — 
 
 VII. 
 
 Immigrant Races 
 
 58 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Steerage Passenger . 
 
 66 
 
 IX. 
 
 Landing at Ellis Island . 
 
 74 
 
 X. 
 
 Immigrant Homes and Aid So- 
 
 
 
 cieties 
 
 83- 
 
 XI. 
 
 Distribution of Immigrants 
 
 92 - 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Immigration Commission's 
 
 
 
 Investigation .... 
 
 100 ^ 
 
 XIII. 
 
 General Legislation 
 
 108 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The Alien in the Mine 
 
 US * 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Foreigner in the Factory 
 
 123 9m 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The Foreigner on the Farm 
 
 • 
 131 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The Children of Immigrants in 
 
 
 
 School 
 
 139 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Immigrants and Crime 
 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The White Slave Traffic 
 7 
 
 155 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 XX. The Foreigner's Large Family 
 
 XXI. Descendants of Immigrants 
 
 XXII. Padrones and Peons 
 
 XXIII. The Immigrant Bank 
 
 XXIV. Immigrant Charity Seekers 
 XXV. Immigrants from Asia 
 
 XXVI. How the "New" Immigrant 
 
 Lives .... 
 
 XXVII. Some Unsolved Problems 
 
 XXVIII. The Problems of Other Coun 
 
 tries .... 
 
 XXIX. Emigration to Canada . 
 
 XXX. Future Human Migrations 
 
 163" 
 
 171 
 
 179 
 
 187 
 
 203 
 
 211' 
 219^ 
 
 227 
 
 235 
 243 /• 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Looking Toward the Promised Land Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Slav Peasants of Bosnia 
 
 Polish and Slavak Women . 
 
 A Hungarian Family .... 
 
 Italian Girls 
 
 Excluded Immigrants About to Be Deported 
 
 from Ellis Island .... 
 Roof Garden for Immigrant Children at 
 
 Ellis Island 
 
 Mountain Women of Montenegro 
 
 Roumanians 
 
 A Finnish Girl 
 
 Looking for More Liberty and a Better 
 
 Wage for the Sweat of Their Face . 
 A Greek Peasant .... 
 
 Immigrants Changing Foreign Money into 
 
 American Currency 
 Few Arabs Come to the United States 
 Cossacks from the Russian Steppes . 
 Sicilian Boys 
 
 19 
 
 34 
 42 
 58 
 
 66 
 
 74 
 
 92 
 
 100 
 
 123 
 
 131 
 179 
 
 187 
 203 
 219 
 243 
 
I 
 
 PAST HUMAN MIGRATIONS 
 
 LONG before Joseph induced his brethren 
 .to return for their father and bring him 
 up into Egypt, and long before Moses 
 afterward led them out from under Egyptian 
 bondage, humanity was unceasingly on the 
 move. After Babel and its confusion of 
 tongues and the dispersion of humanity, we 
 get our next picture of human wanderings 
 from the Bible story when Terah took Abram 
 and Lot and their wives and went forth from 
 Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of 
 Canaan. They got as far as Haran and 
 Abram's father, Terah, died there. Then 
 came the message to Abram to " get thee out 
 of thy country, and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father's house, unto a land that I will 
 show thee." From this land they travelled into 
 Egypt and out again, .and finally the posses- 
 sions of Abram and Lot became so great that 
 they could no longer get along together. So 
 Abram said to Lot that they would separate 
 and he would give him first choice of the direc- 
 11 
 
12 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 tions they could go. And Lot chose the plain 
 of Jordan, while Abram chose Canaan. 
 
 And so the history of early Israel is full 
 of the wanderings of the shepherd patriarchs, 
 their households, their herds, and their flocks. 
 Called forward by green fields and pleasant 
 watering places ; lured on by the thirst for the 
 peaceful conquests of unoccupied lands, and 
 the martial conquest of alien peoples, they 
 marched here and there, both before and after 
 the exodus from Egypt. The Israelites were 
 a restless people, and their constant seeking of 
 new lands to possess and new opportunities to 
 improve in those days was perhaps no more 
 remarkable than the spirit of the Jew to-day 
 who is willing to pay the price in the coin of 
 suffering and isolation for getting on in the 
 world, and for establishing a home and a com- 
 petence for his children and those who come 
 after them. He willingly wanders through the 
 deserts of difficulty and prejudice if he can see 
 before him the promised land of golden oppor- 
 tunities. And that is why he is the most widely 
 dispersed and yet the most strictly isolated of 
 all the races of humanity. 
 
 We do not know when man first began his 
 career on the earth. We only know that, vast 
 geologic ages ago, both the climate and the out- 
 line of Europe were very different from what 
 
PAST HUMAN MIGRATIONS 13 
 
 they are to-day, and that man lived there with 
 animals long since extinct. We do know that 
 when the curtain first rose on the stage of his- 
 tory it revealed in some favoured regions, such 
 as the valley of the Nile, nations and civiliza- 
 tions venerable with age and possessed of lan- 
 guages and arts, and institutions that bear evi- 
 dence of thousands of years of growth and 
 development before the period of written his- 
 tory began. 
 
 According to the most authentic information 
 gathered by the ethnologists, the earliest inhab- 
 itants of Europe were of the yellow race, 
 which, broadly speaking, not only includes the 
 Chinese and Japanese, but the Slavic peoples 
 as well. They were also the first inhabitants 
 of the New World. In Europe to-day live two 
 small peoples who escaped the common fate of 
 an overwhelming avalanche of civilization that 
 swept up behind them — the Basques sheltered 
 by the Pyrenees, and the Finns and Lapps of 
 the far North. The polished stone implements 
 found in the caves and river gravels of west- 
 ern Europe, the kitchen-middens upon the 
 shores of the Baltic, the Swiss like-habita- 
 tions, and the burial mounds all over Europe 
 confirm the belief that close kinsmen of the 
 Chinese were the first people of Europe. What 
 happened in prehistoric times in the migrations 
 
14 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 of humanity into Europe has been witnessed" 
 in the coming of the Hungarians and the Turks 
 into Europe. 
 
 Although the Aryan race is undoubtedly the 
 youngest of the great classes of humanity, it 
 is, collectively, the most scattered. It includes 
 the ancient Hindu and the modern English- 
 man; the ancient Roman and the modern Ital- 
 ian; the ancient Athenian and the modern 
 Greek. Its descendants have peopled the New 
 World, Europe, and Australia. 
 
 The original seat of the Aryan race seems 
 to have been in the Hindu-Kush mountain re- 
 gion of northwestern Asia. In the less than 
 five thousand years that have passed since the 
 first pilgrims started out of those mountain 
 valleys to conquer the world as they progressed, 
 they have wandered all over the earth. Some 
 tribes spread over the tablelands of Iran and 
 the plains of India, and became the progeni- 
 tors of the Medes, the Persians, and the Hin- 
 dus. The tribes which entered Europe prob- 
 ably went there by way of the Hellespont, 
 pushing themselves down into the peninsulas 
 and founding the Greek and Roman states. 
 The vanguard of the tribes which swept across 
 middle Europe from Asia to the west were 
 the Celts. After them came the Teutonic 
 tribes, and the hard-crowded Celts were forced 
 
PAST HUMAN MIGRATIONS 15 
 
 out upon the westernmost edge of Europe, into 
 Gaul and Spain, and across the Channel to the 
 British Isles, where they are represented to this 
 day by the Welsh, the Irish, and the Highland 
 Scots. Behind the Teutons came the Slavs, 
 and they pressed up against the Teutons as 
 hard as the Teutons in their first days had 
 pressed against the Celts. 
 
 From the time when the first venturesome 
 tribes began to wander westward from the 
 Aryan cradle-home until now, the wanderlust 
 has possessed the Aryan peoples, and perhaps 
 for four or five thousand years they have been 
 moving forward and westward, and the great 
 migration to America is but the continuing flow 
 of the stream that began so many years ago. 
 
 We find the history of this Aryan migration 
 written in the earliest books of the race. The 
 Rig- Veda, the most ancient of books, is made 
 up chiefly of hymns which were composed by 
 the sweet-singers of the Aryan clans which, 
 during a thousand years, marched steadily 
 forward through the Himalayas and across 
 the Indian peninsula to the Ganges. These 
 hymns are filled with the memories of the long 
 conflict of the fair-faced Aryans and the dark- 
 visaged aborigines. They tell of the terrors 
 of the mountain passes, speaking often of the 
 great dark mountains through whose gloomy 
 
16 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 defiles the early immigrants to India wended 
 their way. 
 
 The people of eastern Asia seem to be the 
 only great exception to the poetic statement that 
 "westward the course of empire takes its way." 
 China was first settled by a band of Turanian 
 emigrants who headed toward the rising in- 
 stead of toward the setting sun, and settled in 
 the basin of the Yellow River, there to become 
 the progenitors of the most populous nation 
 human history has ever known. They found 
 aborigines there just as Columbus found them 
 in America and as the Aryans found them in 
 India. Whence they came is beyond mortal 
 ken. History stands silent and dumb, so re- 
 mote were the days of their advent. 
 
 Every reader is familiar with the sweep of 
 the tides of humanity to America's shores after 
 the discovery of the Western Hemisphere by 
 Columbus. But far behind that date there 
 were other races which had come to America 
 and which had erected civilizations of their 
 own — civilizations whose few remaining ruins 
 are mutely eloquent witnesses of the high order 
 of intelligence of the people. Perhaps the 
 most mournful diary entry ever made was 
 written by a priest who accompanied Cortez 
 into Mexico, where, in the name of religion, 
 an attempt was made to wipe even the last 
 
PAST HUMAN MIGRATIONS 17 
 
 reminiscence of the Aztec civilization from the 
 earth. He told of their histories, their litera- 
 ture, their medical science, their astronomical 
 knowledge, and then related with pride and 
 pleasure the joy he felt in seeing all their 
 sacred books of knowledge placed in a huge 
 bonfire and destroyed beyond all hope of 
 resurrection. 
 
 Since then centuries have come and gone, 
 and archaeologists have been able to gather here 
 and there small threads in the chain of evidence 
 as to the nature of these civilizations. But 
 the calendars of the Aztecs and the Mayas dis- 
 close even a greater knowledge of astronomy 
 than Caesar possessed when he ordained the 
 Julian calendar, with the aid of the Alexan- 
 drian scholars, and greater than was at the dis- 
 posal of Pope Gregory when he revised it. 
 But certain it is that the ruins of Mitla, of 
 Palenque, of Quiragua, of Yucatan, of Casa 
 Grande, and of the Incas, tell of races which 
 in their day could match their best contempo- 
 raries of Asia, Europe, and Africa. 
 
 That the emigrants who laid the foundations 
 of these civilizations came from across the seas 
 seems certain. We see the Toltecs migrating 
 across the barren plains which stretch almost 
 from the Rio Grande to the vale of Anhuac. 
 Then they disappear, legend says through the 
 
18 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 ravages of pulque, and after them come the 
 Chichimec — Mongolian in features, Chinese' in 
 the forms of their civilization. Even to this 
 day we may read on the pyramid of the sun, be- 
 lieved to have been erected by them, the same 
 inscription one most often finds upon the an- 
 cient tombs of China — an inscription which 
 means " longevity." Whence they came or 
 how, there is nothing but circumstantial evi- 
 dence to indicate, but it seems probable from 
 that evidence that it was but a continuation of 
 the eastward movement of humanity that be- 
 gan when the Turanians settled in the valley of 
 the Yellow River and founded the great empire 
 of China. 
 
 Throughout hundreds of generations human- 
 ity has thus been moving here and there in 
 search of the promised lands of better oppor- 
 tunities, nearly always migrating amid neces- 
 sities and hardships, and often at the risk of 
 life itself. Sometimes it has been the hand 
 of oppression and tyranny that has given im- 
 petus to the tide; at other times it has been 
 religious faith; now it has been a question of 
 staying and starving or of going and enjoying 
 plenty. But whatever the impelling motive, 
 multiplied millions of people have traversed 
 the lands and the seas of the earth in search 
 of peace, happiness, and contentment. 
 
(From National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D. C. Copyright, 1913, 
 SLAV PEASANTS OF BOSNIA, 
 
II 
 
 COMING TO AMERICA 
 
 NO more important or far-reaching ques- 
 tion confronts the American people to- 
 day than the problem of our present 
 immigration. Each year approximately a mil- 
 lion aliens — aliens in speech, aliens in cus- 
 toms, aliens in ideals, though kindred in desire 
 for opportunity to better their conditions, kin- 
 dred in craving for freedom, and kindred in 
 the possession of the spirit of ambition — swarm 
 to our shores. Guided into proper channels, 
 surrounded by proper influences, this alien 
 horde may be transformed into good American' 
 citizens and made to constitute a great political 
 and economic asset to the nation. Fused into 
 our national life in the melting-pot of Ameri- 
 canization, and in the process of leaving be- 
 hind the dross of Old World ways, it may 
 become part and parcel of our body politic, 
 devoted to American traditions, espousing our 
 ideals, and filled with our own best aspirations. 
 On the other hand, left to form itself into 
 colonies which come into contact only with the 
 19 
 
20 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 worst element of our native population, re- 
 moved from the better influences of our na- 
 tional life, never learning our language, never 
 adopting our customs, never sensing our ideals, 
 and never catching the spirit of our civilization, 
 it might become a permanent source of dan- 
 ger to our political well-being and a menace 
 to the very life of the nation. The character 
 of our immigration has changed. Formerly 
 it came from northwestern Europe, and readily 
 fused itself into our national life; to-day it 
 comes largely from southern and eastern Eu- 
 rope, and it holds itself aloof, preferring to 
 colonize rather than to be assimilated. 
 
 How to overcome this tendency toward per- 
 manent separation is the great problem of 
 American immigration. It is largely this phase 
 of the question which occupied the attention of 
 the United States Immigration Commission 
 during its four years of investigation. It will 
 probably constitute the subject of important 
 legislation during the Wilson administra- 
 tion. 
 
 Only sixty of the ninety-three millions of 
 our population can boast of a native parent- 
 age. The remainder are foreigners or the chil- 
 dren of foreigners. The immigrant army is 
 received at the rate of a million a year, and 
 assuming, as Congress has assumed, that it re- 
 
COMING TO AMERICA 21 
 
 quires five years to convert a foreigner into 
 an American, there being sixty million native 
 Americans, it follows that every twelve natives 
 must convert one foreigner into an American. 
 It is easy for twelve native American people 
 to exert the Americanizing influence on one 
 foreigner if they can get at him, but when he c 
 lives in a colony aloof from them it becomes a 
 difficult task. 
 
 And under such conditions Americanization 
 is not taking place as rapidly as was hoped, 
 so far as the immigrant from southern and 
 eastern Europe is concerned. Uncle Sam long 
 ago said that the alien might become a citizen 
 in five years, and the immigrant from north- 
 western Europe usually goes after his citizen- 
 ship papers as soon as the time limit has ex- 
 pired. But not so with the immigrant from 
 southern and eastern Europe. Precious little 
 he cares about naturalization laws. To begin \ 
 with, he does not come to America to stay. I 
 He wants to make money and then go back | 
 home to live in comparative affluence. And two- I 
 fifths of those who come do go back home. ^ 
 They barely exist while here and when they 
 return home they have money enough to make 
 them Morgans and Rockefellers in their native 
 villages. But of those who stay, a surprisingly 
 large number care nothing for citizenship. 
 
%% THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 Statistics show that fully a third of those who 
 have been here the necessary five years fail to 
 take out citizenship papers. 
 
 But, although the immigrant constitutes the 
 great American problem, he is also a great 
 American asset. The inquiries of the Immi- 
 gration Commission show what a tremendous 
 factor he is and has been in our industrial life. 
 In the iron and steel industries he and his chil- 
 dren contribute seven-tenths of the labour. In 
 the slaughtering and meat packing industry 
 they give three- fourths of the labour required. 
 They do seventy per cent of the work in the 
 bituminous coal mines, and nearly three-fifths 
 of that of the glass factories. Seven-eighths 
 of the labour in woollen and worsted manufac- 
 turing is contributed by the immigrant and his 
 children, and they produce nearly four-fifths of 
 our silk goods, nearly nine-tenths of the cotton 
 goods, and nearly nineteen-twentieths of the 
 men's and women's clothing of the country. 
 They make more than half of America's shoes, 
 nearly four-fifths of its furniture. Half of 
 the labour in making our collars, cuffs, and 
 shirts is contributed by them, and five-sixths 
 of the work in the leather industry is placed to 
 their credit. They make half of our gloves, 
 refine nearly nine-tenths of our oil, and nearly 
 nineteen-twentieths of our sugar. Also they 
 
COMING TO AMERICA 23 
 
 manufacture nearly half of our tobacco and 
 cigars. 
 
 There is room for considerable speculation 
 as to what the effect of the war between the 
 Balkan States and Turkey will be on the im- 
 migration of the immediate future. During 
 the last decade we received nearly half a mil- 
 lion immigrants from the countries affected, 
 216,000 coming from Greece alone. Will the 
 decimation of the population through the pres- 
 ent war and the expansion of the territory of 
 the several countries through the conquest of 
 the Allies result in a shifting of the tide of 
 immigration from southern Europe to this new 
 field? One may discover in the immigration 
 figures for the years following the conclusion 
 of the several European wars of the last half 
 century a- falling off of immigration in general 
 and of that from affected territory in par- 
 ticular. 
 
 But changes in America have been even more 
 influential than European fluctuations of 
 economic and other conditions upon the tide of 
 immigration. We may read the story of our 
 panics and our wars, of our hard times and 
 our prosperous eras, in the rise and fall of the 
 immigrant tide. As a sunshine recorder tells 
 of the hours of sunshine and the hours of a 
 clouded sky, so the immigration figures tell the 
 
24 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 story of the bright days of peace and pros- 
 perity and the dark days of panic, war, and in- 
 dustrial depression. 
 
 It was not until after 1840 that our immi- 
 gration gave even a hint of assuming its pres- 
 ent proportions. In that year it was still below 
 the hundred thousand mark. But by 1850, 
 beckoned hither by the great expansion of the 
 opening Middle West, its numbers were 
 swelled to 369,000 in a single year. Then came 
 the panic of 1857 and an era of depression be- 
 fore and after that saw the figures fall from 
 427,000 in 1854 to 118,000 in 1859. It began 
 to recover in i860, but in the two years that 
 followed it fell to a point as low as that of 
 the early forties. Then it began to recover 
 again, and by the end of the war reached a 
 quarter of a million annually. By 1872 it 
 passed the 400,000 mark again, but the hard 
 times of the middle seventies forced the figures 
 down from 457,000 in 1873 to 138,000 in 
 1878. By 1880 the stream had reached its 
 high mark again, and then set a new record in 
 1882, with 786,000. Then it fell off to 338,000 
 in 1886, rising again to 623,000 in 1892, and 
 once more falling to 229,000 in 1898. Then 
 it rose again by leaps and bounds until it 
 touched the million-mark in 1905. The panic 
 of 1907 forced it down a half million, but in 
 
COMING TO AMERICA 25 
 
 1910 it recovered one-half of this loss. In 
 
 191 1 it slipped back another quarter of a mil- 
 lion, standing then at 878,000. 
 
 All of this proves that the real impelling 
 motive of the immigrant who comes to America 
 is to better his economic condition. Some say 
 it is his love of liberty and freedom and his 
 desire to escape oppression at home. But lib- 
 erty and freedom were as much with us in 
 1909, when our immigration brought us only 
 751,000 souls, as in 1907, when it brought us 
 1,285,000. Nor is there anything to show that 
 the countries of Europe placed any greater 
 burdens upon the shoulders of their people 
 in 1907 than in 1909, or that their eco- 
 nomic condition was worse in 1907 than in 
 1909. 
 
 We know from our own experience how 
 much bigger a salary of a hundred dollars a 
 month looks to the man in the rural districts 
 than to his brother who gets it in the city. To 
 the former it may appear to be all that a man 
 could reasonably desire; to the latter it does 
 not begin to get him the things he got before 
 he came to the city. When the people of south- 
 ern and eastern Europe hear of wages of $1.50 
 a day it sounds great. We are told that in 
 the Balkan States 50 per cent of the people 
 suffer from want of food in winter. Some see 
 
26 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 here a permanent home, but more see an oppor- 
 tunity to gather together enough money to go 
 back and live in comparative affluence in the 
 land of their birth. 
 
 In many an Italian village the chief person- 
 age is a man who adventured into America 
 and came home with wealth. It is not in hu- 
 man nature that he should tell of the privations 
 he suffered en route to his El Dorado, or of 
 the submerged existence he led while accumu- 
 lating those dollars, so few in America, so 
 many in Italy. It is such successful adven- 
 turers as he that kindle the spirit of the 
 Argonauts in the breasts of young men in 
 southern and eastern Europe. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE "OLD" IMMIGRANT 
 
 NOTHING is more significant in the his- 
 tory of immigration to America than 
 the change in the character of the 
 stream of humanity that is coming to our 
 shores. The bulk of immigration always has 
 come from Europe, for to date nearly ninety- 
 three out of every hundred immigrants arriv- 
 ing have come from that one continent. Prior 
 to 1883 nineteen-twentieths of all our immigra- 
 tion from Europe came from the United King- 
 dom, Germany, Scandinavia, The Netherlands, 
 Belgium, France, and Switzerland. As re- 
 cently as 1883, only a little more than one- 
 eighth of the European immigration came 
 from eastern and southern Europe. To-day 
 the immigration from that section has grown 
 until it embraces more than four- fifths of all 
 those who come. Meanwhile the countries 
 which gave us our rich influx of home-builders 
 prior to 1883 are not sending us many immi- 
 grants to-day. 
 
 The old immigration differed from the new 
 27 
 
28 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 in many essentials. The former was largely 
 a migration of people who came to become citi- 
 zens, to acquire homes here, and to establish 
 their posterity upon the land. They entered 
 practically every line of activity in every part 
 of the country. A large proportion of them 
 were engaged in agriculture before they came 
 and they went out as farm-labourers when they 
 got here. But they were frugal and the la- 
 bourer of yesterday became the farmer of 
 to-day. They formed a very important factor 
 in the development of all the territory west 
 of the Allegheny Mountains. So rapid was the 
 process of assimilation that the racial identity 
 of their children was almost lost and for- 
 gotten. 
 
 The extent of the decline of immigration 
 from northern Europe is emphasized by the 
 results in various countries. Germany gave us 
 eight times as many immigrants in 1883 as * n 
 191 1. Ireland gave us 76,000 of her people 
 in 1883 and only 29,000 in 191 1. Sweden's 
 contribution to our immigrant population fell 
 from 64,000 in 1883 to 20,000 in 191 1, and 
 Switzerland's from 10,000 to 3,500. 
 
 As stated before, the people who come from 
 northwestern Europe come to stay. Among 
 them only sixteen out of every hundred go 
 back to their homes in Europe, while thirty- 
 
THE " OLD " IMMIGRANT 29 
 
 eight out of every hundred from southern and 
 eastern Europe return. The " old " immigra- 
 tion comes with its families, for more than two- 
 fifths are females. The " new " immigration 
 leaves the women folk behind, for only a little 
 more than one-fourth of the arrivals are fe- 
 males. 
 
 The better condition of the immigrant from 
 northwestern Europe, as compared with his 
 more unfortunate brother in other parts of the 
 continent, is revealed by the money they were 
 able to show. The average " old " immigrant 
 can exhibit forty dollars to the immigration 
 inspector. The average " new " immigrant 
 has about sixteen dollars when he lands. The 
 educational advantages of the " old " immi- 
 grant are even more marked. There are more 
 than thirteen times as many illiterates coming 
 to us from the " new " immigration as from 
 the " old." The " old " immigration measures 
 up to all the usual tests of good citizenship in 
 about the same ratio, when compared with the 
 " new." And yet all authorities agree that in 
 the " new " immigrant we have, as a rule, a 
 diamond in the rough, a human being who is 
 just as capable of transformation into a good 
 citizen as his more fortunate brother from 
 northwestern Europe. The process is simply 
 a longer and more tedious one, and one to 
 
4 
 
 30 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 which the immigrant does not lend himself as 
 readily. 
 
 Northwestern Europe has responded faith- 
 fully to our demand for people to fill our lands 
 and become a part of the bone and sinew 
 of our country. It has in ninety-two years 
 given us nearly seventeen million immigrants. 
 Draw a line through Grand Forks, Sioux City, 
 Omaha, Kansas City, and Hot Springs, and 
 thence down the Louisiana-Texas boundary to 
 the Gulf of Mexico, and the entire population 
 west thereof is no greater than that contributed 
 to us by northwestern Europe. 
 
 Germany has given us more immigrants than 
 any other country, with the single exception of 
 Great Britain. Nearly five million Germans 
 have come across the water to become a part 
 of this nation. The pioneers of the great Ger- 
 man migration were the Mennonites, who in 
 1682 followed the path of the English Quak- 
 ers. They were the first people in America to 
 petition the abolition of slavery. They also 
 were the first people in America to raise their 
 voice against intemperance. They were soon 
 followed by the Scandinavians, of whom it has 
 been said that there is no second generation, 
 since the children become so thoroughly Ameri- 
 cans. 
 
 The coming of the " new " immigration has 
 
THE " OLD " IMMIGRANT 31 
 
 caused the members of the " old " to move out 
 of their vocations and residential quarters and 
 on up into a higher sphere. Where once the 
 Irish, the German, and the Scandinavian 
 worked and lived, now the Greek, the Italian, 
 the Pole, the Bohemian, the Austrian, and the 
 Russian Jew are found. The German, the 
 Irishman, the Swede, and the Norwegian have 
 moved into better quarters and have taken up 
 more attractive work. 
 
 The immigrant from northwestern Europe 
 quickly becomes a citizen. More than nine- 
 tenths of the Swedes and the Swiss entitled 
 to citizenship papers have them, approximately 
 seven-eighths of the Germans, Welsh, Danes, 
 and Norwegians have taken them out, and 
 four-fifths of the Irish, English, Scotch, and 
 Dutch have cast their lot permanently with us. 
 Compare this with the Allies in the Balkan- 
 Turkish War, and the remarkable difference 
 in the character of the aspirations of the two 
 types of immigration will appear. Only one- 
 eighth of the Servian immigrants have taken 
 out citizenship papers, one-fifth of the Greeks, 
 and a little more than a third of the Bulgarians. 
 Seven-tenths of the southern Italians hold aloof 
 from citizenship. 
 
 When will our affairs reach that situation 
 where there is an economic balance and an 
 
32 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 end to immigration to the United States ? The 
 late Professor W. J. McGee once declared that 
 the soil of the United States has a sustaining 
 power of 500 to the square mile. Assuming 
 that one-third of our territory is waste land, 
 we still, upon this basis, would have room for 
 a round billion of people. Dr. McGee esti- 
 mated that in three centuries we can reasonably 
 hope to approach that number. But to reach 
 that high population we would have to make 
 heavier drafts upon Europe than Europe could 
 bear. Assuming that we would need propor- 
 tionately as many immigrants to expand from 
 our present population to the billion mark as 
 we needed to reach our present population, we 
 would have to draw a draft upon Europe for 
 300,000,000 souls — a million every year for< 
 three centuries. And when we consider that in 
 two generations the foreigner — both of the 
 old immigration and of the new — becomes so 
 thoroughly Americanized that he follows the 
 tendency of the native American toward race 
 suicide, it will be seen that the small-family 
 "inclinations of Americans will prevent as heavy 
 contributions to the swelling population as " a 
 billion in three centuries " would call for. 
 
 Many economists think the immigration 
 from northwestern Europe has settled down to 
 a basis that is about normal, and that we hence- 
 
THE " OLD " IMMIGRANT 33 
 
 forth may count upon receiving about a quar- 
 ter of a million of them during the average 
 year. But there are others who say that the 
 disappearance of cheap farming land and the 
 filling of the factories with cheap labour from 
 southern Europe will cut down the figures 
 probably to half their present proportions. 
 They believe that Germany is about the best 
 example of what we may expect of the " old " 
 immigration in the future; and Germany now 
 gives us only one-eighth as many of her good 
 citizens in a year as she did thirty years ago. 
 All students of the immigration problem 
 agree that the passing of the " old " immigra- 
 tion accentuates the problems of the " new," 
 and since it is becoming the latter or nothing, 
 it behooves the nation to try to make the most 
 of it, and to aid it to fill the place in future that 
 the " old " has filled in the past, a The consefvM 
 sus of opinion is that this is not so much a mat- \ 
 ter of the restriction of immigration as it is \ 
 of Americanizing the immigrants.. 
 
IV 
 
 THE " NEW " IMMIGRANT 
 
 SINCE three out of every four of our pres- 
 ent-day immigrants come from countries 
 where public education is unheard of, 
 where popular participation in the affairs of the 
 government is undreamed of, where dire pov- 
 erty is the rule, it is apparent that the immigra- 
 tion problem is a grav e one. And then, when 
 we consider that two-thirds of this " new " 
 immigration comes from the rural village and 
 is dumped out upon our big centres of popu- 
 lation, where vice surrounds it and fattens upon 
 it, where it feels all of the worst effects of our 
 civilization and none of its better effects, the 
 wonder grows that the problem is not more 
 serious than it is. 
 
 But that it is a problem serious enough as it 
 stands is recognized by all who have studied 
 our immigration. While the " new " immi- 
 grant, with his willingness to work in the dirt 
 and the filth and the danger that are a con- 
 comitant, has made possible much of America's 
 splendid industrial development, the very fact 
 84 
 
THE " NEW " IMMIGRANT 35 
 
 of his willingness to brave these things and to 
 brave them at scant wages, has made him a 
 £s liability to the nation. The man who will do 
 these things is necessary to the industrial life 
 of a nation; but the man who is content to do 
 them and never to look up and beyond them 
 may be a menace. If they come to America 
 and start at the bottom of the ladder and 
 gradually work up to better things, as the 
 members of the " old " immigration have done, 
 it augurs well for the future, and one of the 
 most serious problems of the immigration situ 
 ation is solved. But if they are content to 
 live their own lives away and to commit their 
 children to similar lives, it is evident that their 
 assimilation must be uncertain and their value 
 to the body politic a doubtful thing. 
 
 The economic distress that led the pioneers 
 of the southern and eastern European countries 
 to migrate was pressing. The average earning 
 of a Slovak, for instance, during the harvest 
 season was twenty-five cents a day, and in other 
 seasons he was fortunate to get half that much, 
 for work was as scarce as wages were low. If 
 a load of wood were brought to town dozens 
 would apply for the job of sawing it. A 
 strong, muscular servant-girl who could scrub 
 and wash, attend to the garden, and look after 
 the cattle and sheep, besides helping with the 
 
36 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 harvest, might get ten dollars a year with a 
 big cake and a pair of shoes thrown in. Hard 
 rye bread and an onion constituted the daily 
 diet. Edward Steiner, himself an immigrant, 
 and now one of the greatest of our authorities 
 on immigration, tells of seeing a pig die of 
 disease and being buried. According to law 
 it was covered with quicklime and coal oil. 
 Hardly had the burial been completed when 
 the carcass mysteriously disappeared — for the 
 peasants were hungry and meat was scarce. 
 
 And so it has been everywhere. Once the 
 tide starts in a given country it keeps up, grow- 
 ing larger as it comes. A few Joshuas and 
 Calebs travel to this new Canaan and then write 
 back telling of the milk and honey they find 
 here, or else they go back with the grapes of 
 American gold, and after that the trail needs 
 no blazing. 
 
 The rise of the " new " immigration is as 
 remarkable as the decline of the " old." Thirty 
 years ago there were less than 30,000 Aus- 
 tro-Hungarians coming to America annually; 
 to-day the annual arrivals total about 200,- 
 000 a year. Thirty years ago 126 Greeks 
 came to America as immigrants; last year 26,- 
 000 came. Italy's contribution to our popula- 
 tion was six times as great in 19 11 as in 1882, 
 Russia's ten times as great, while Turkey sent 
 
THE " NEW " IMMIGRANT 37 
 
 us 19,000 in 191 1 as compared with 69 in 
 1882. 
 
 The attitude of the governments affected by 
 the " new " immigration depends largely upon 
 the degree of its permanence in America. 
 Italy, for instance, is very glad to see its peo- 
 ple come over, because they have demonstrated 
 that they not only can come back, but do come 
 back. In a recent investigation made by the 
 Italian government into conditions in Sicily, 
 the beneficial effect of the returning of the 
 emigrant was declared in the strongest terms. 
 It was said that greater than the benefit of any 
 laws the government could pass, better than 
 any training the government could give, were 
 the benefits conferred upon the community by 
 the returning emigrant. Not merely did he 
 bring new wealth, a thing the community 
 badly needed, but what was much more im- 
 portant, he brought with him the American 
 spirit of intelligent enterprise which did much 
 for his community. In short, the report in- 
 dicates that the returned emigrant helps his 
 community in Italy about as much as an agri- 
 cultural school graduate helps the farmers of 
 his community in America. 
 
 And so it is proving throughout southern 1 
 and eastern Europe. The returning immigrant 
 is carrying back American money, and along 
 
 I 
 
38 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 with it American thought and American cus- 
 toms. Scarcely a village there is now without 
 its returned immigrants. They bring Ameri- 
 can phonographs, American collars and ties, 
 American taste for modern clothes. It is no 
 novelty even in the remote mountain villages to 
 hear an American talking-machine screeching 
 American ragtime. 
 
 In every country the returning immigrant 
 is somebody in his little community. He has 
 made as much in America in a week as he 
 made at home in several months, and his sav- 
 ings of a thousand dollars make him a nabob. 
 The people believe his stories of American 
 genius and achievement until he gets to tell- 
 ing about a forty-story building, and then their 
 faith breaks down. They can believe that the 
 Americans have a machine into which one can 
 feed iron and wood and a wagon comes out 
 of it finished; they can even believe that we 
 have machines which will cut wheat, thresh it, 
 grind the flour, and then make bread or cake 
 out of it according to which button is pushed; 
 but when it comes to a forty-story building, 
 that is impossible. 
 
 The pitiful thing about the " new " immi- 
 grant is the fact that he usually hails from a 
 rural village, where he worked on the farms 
 and in the vineyards or herded sheep. Land- 
 
THE " NEW " IMMIGRANT 39 
 
 ing in a big city, he is immediately beset by 
 those who would exploit him. Off he goes to 
 some industrial centre where he must live in 
 'places scarcely fit for human habitation, 
 crowded with a dozen others in a shack scarce 
 big enough for two. The work he finds is 
 either filthy or dangerous. He goes into the 
 bituminous coal mine, into the fertilizer fac- 
 tory, into the wood-working plant, into the 
 slaughter house — everywhere that there is 
 work too disagreeable or dangerous for the 
 native American workingman. 
 
 The toll that is taken from these immigrants 
 is fearful. With few women among them to 
 cast a refining influence over them, they spend 
 their time between working and drinking, as 
 a rule, and saving what they can, with the day 
 in view when they can return to their native 
 land. In the vast majority of cases their con- 
 dition for the time being is worse in America 
 than it was in their native lands. But they 
 sacrifice themselves to-day in America in order 
 that to-morrow at home they may live in com- 
 fort. If they lived according to American 
 standards their wages would barely suffice to 
 keep them going. But they will half starve 
 themselves and live in the worst of surround- 
 ings for the sake of going back home some 
 day. 
 
THETM] 
 
 40 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 Where the women come along they usually 
 keep boarding-houses, and their husbands com- 
 pel them to do so as long as the wives are yet 
 without the American spirit. But manyVthe 
 time when there has been a Declaration of 
 Independence proclaimed in one of these board- 
 ing-houses when the wife concluded no longer 
 to play slave to her lord. The Slav has none 
 of our consideration for his wife. He has 
 a proverb that he is happy twice in his life; 
 once when he marries and once when he buries 
 his wife. His wife sings, " Love me true, and 
 love me quick, pull my hair and use the stick." 
 The Montenegrin says his wife is his mule. 
 The Greek and the Italian, the Austrian and 
 the Magyar treat their wives much better. 
 
 Three- fourths of all the " new " immigra- 
 tion is made up of men and boys. The Balkan 
 States send only one woman to twenty-five 
 men, and the same ratio exists with the Greeks. 
 The ones who have womenfolk with them usu- 
 ally stay; most of the bachelors return. More 
 than half the Croatians, Italians, Slovaks, and 
 Magyars return to their native homes, and in- 
 quiries show that perhaps two-thirds of all 
 who go never return again. 
 
 Among those who help to cut down the hig'i 
 percentage of returning immigrants are t . 
 Jews of eastern Europe. They come over 
 
KlGR^ 
 
 THE " NEW " IMMIGRANT 41 
 
 great numbers and precious few of them ever 
 go back. They correspond to our " old " im- 
 migration in their desire to make America their 
 home. The immigrant who returns takes his 
 money with him; but he has left much more 
 than value received when he does so. The 
 entire list of Italians who build a tunnel under 
 the Hudson River might trek back to Europe 
 with their savings, but the benefit of that tun- 
 nel will continue throughout the years. With- 
 out their labour the mighty works of which \ 
 we Americans boast so pride fully could not 
 have been accomplished. 
 
 The comforting thought about the " new " 
 immigration is that it has not much to unlearn. 
 It is often easier to build a new house than 
 to remodel an old one, and likewise it might 
 be easier to make a good citizen of an illiterate 
 villager from the lands of the Slovaks, the 
 Italians, and the Finns than of their better 
 educated brethren who must first unlearn some 
 fixed notions. 
 
V 
 
 WHY THE IMMIGRANT COMES 
 
 ONE needs look no further than the 
 statistics of the ebb and flow of the 
 immigrant tide to discover that the real 
 basis of American immigration is more eco- 
 nomic than idealistic. At all times in our his- 
 tory immigrants have come to America seeking 
 an asylum from persecution of one kind or 
 another — political or religious. But the vast 
 majority have come because they thought 
 America offered better opportunities to get 
 on in the world. With the returning alien 
 of the " new " immigration this is patent, but 
 it is no less true of the one who comes and 
 stays, else why should the tide rise so high in 
 fat years and fall so low in lean ones ? 
 
 It always has required some period of un- 
 usual economic distress or of religious perse- 
 cution to start an important movement of im- 
 migrants to the United States. It was the 
 Irish potato famine that caused Irish immigra- 
 tion to double in a single year and to be multi- 
 plied five times in as many years. In the mid- 
 42 
 
WHY THE IMMIGRANT COMES 43 
 
 die forties conditions in Germany began to 
 swell the immigrant tide, and in eight years the 
 number of our German immigrants increased 
 sevenfold. 
 
 But, as a rule, especially in the case of the 
 " new " immigration, the number coming from 
 any one country is very small at first. In 1870 
 only twenty Greeks were welcomed to our 
 shores. Not until 1890 did the Greek arrivals 
 reach the thousand mark. But during the suc- 
 ceeding twenty years the stream continued to 
 grow until in 19 10 it was more than a thou- 
 sandfold greater than in 1870, and more than 
 twenty times as great as in 1890. In 1870 
 fewer than three thousand Italians came to 
 America. But the Italian immigration had in- 
 creased to twelve thousand a year by 1880, fifty 
 thousand a year by 1890, a hundred thousand 
 a year by 1900, and to nearly a quarter of 
 a million by 19 10. Austria-Hungary gave us 
 less than five thousand immigrants in 1870 
 and more than a quarter of a million in 1910. 
 The Russian immigrant wave had barely 
 started in 1870, and yet it has brought us nearly 
 three million souls since then, while Austria- 
 Hungary and Italy have each sent us more than 
 three million in that time. 
 
 All European countries except Russia and 
 Turkey recognize the right of their people to 
 
4* THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 come to America. Under the laws of Russia, 
 citizens are forbidden to leave the country for 
 a permanent residence elsewhere, but the fact 
 that upward of three million of them have come 
 to America in forty years demonstrates that 
 even a despotic nation cannot stay the irresist- 
 ible wanderlust of humanity when economic 
 necessity forces it to move on. Turkey has the 
 same sort of law, but it also is more honoured 
 in its breach than in its keeping. When north- 
 ern Europe bids farewell to its immigrants it 
 knows that when once they reach their Ameri- 
 can port of entry they are lost to Europe for- 
 ever. But with southern and eastern Europe 
 it is different. Here the emigration of their 
 people to America is looked upon as more in 
 the nature of a movement of transient indus- 
 trial workers, a fair percentage of whom will 
 return. It is felt that the ones who return, 
 plus the money and the experience they bring 
 back, are worth more than the larger number 
 who went out. 
 
 The present-day immigration embraces a 
 comparatively small proportion of inhabitants 
 of the larger cities. Only the Russian Jews 
 form an exception to this rule, but that arises 
 from the fact that they are compelled to live 
 in the cities. The immigrant usually comes, 
 not because he is unable to make a living at 
 
WHY THE IMMIGRANT COMES 45 
 
 home — for the possession of enough money to 
 get here argues his ability to live at home — but 
 in the hope of making a better living than is 
 possible at home. He is simply a man with 
 labour to sell and he sees a much higher price 
 for it in America. 
 
 The direct causes of our immigration to-day 
 are the letter writer and the returning immi- 
 grant. It is from them that the European 
 peasant hears of this great land of high wages 
 across the seas. Their messages tell of pros- 
 perity, of earning as much in a day, often, as 
 the peasant earns in a week. There is scarcely 
 a village in all southern and eastern Europe 
 which has not contributed its share to the im- 
 migrant tide, and, in fact, scarcely a man or 
 woman who has not a father, a brother, an 
 uncle, or a cousin over here in America or 
 who has been here. Thirty million dollars a 
 year is sent back in American money orders 
 as mute but indisputable witness of financial 
 success in America. The whole neighbour- 
 hood hears about it when a money order ar- 
 rives. For instance, when the Italian saves a 
 hundred dollars and sends it home — that's five 
 hundred lire in Italy, and five hundred lire 
 buys a home. If some one sent you enough 
 money from across the seas to buy a nice little 
 bungalow, wouldn't your friends soon know 
 
* 1 
 
 46 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 about it? And if your brother were to go to 
 South America and send enough money back to 
 his parents in a single year to buy a home, and 
 with it a letter saying that other members of the 
 family could do just as well and that he had 
 places for them all, wouldn't you want to go ? 
 Well, that's exactly what happens when the 
 u new " immigrant sends his money orders 
 home. 
 
 In many cases a proud father and mother, 
 when they receive such letters, pass them from 
 hand to hand and let all their neighbours 
 see the great prosperity of their son, until 
 the whole community knows of his success in 
 America. And there is one class that this 
 news particularly appeals to — the boys with 
 budding ambition. They are as eager to try 
 their luck in America as is the American 
 country boy to go to the city. 
 
 These letters tell little of the hardships and 
 the privations endured to make saving possible. 
 Come closer home. A country boy whose par- 
 ents stand well in his community — his father 
 an elder in the church, a justice of the peace, 
 or a school trustee — goes to the city. At home 
 the boy goes with the best people of his com- 
 munity, has his own horse and buggy, and is 
 otherwise well fixed; but when he gets to the 
 city and becomes a street car conductor or a 
 
WHY THE IMMIGRANT COMES 47 
 
 factory hand, do you suppose that his pride will 
 let him tell of the little hall-room he sleeps in, 
 of the cheap food he must live on, of the doors 
 that are closed against him socially? No, he 
 works on, hoping eventually to climb the ladder 
 high enough to command in town the things he 
 gave up when he left home. 
 
 So it is with the new immigrant — at best it 
 is hard to give up the life of the little village 
 with its adjacent poppy fields, its friendships, 
 and all that, but when the immigrant arrives 
 and gets to work, rinding himself " only a 
 Dago " or " only a Hunkey " in the eyes of the 
 native American, fit only to be cursed and 
 cuffed about, handled in the mines and the 
 other places which use unskilled labour as we 
 might handle cattle and horses, it's a situa- 
 tion that the people back home need not be told 
 about. The immigrant will bear it all because 
 he must, denying himself every comfort to 
 hasten the days when he needs bear it no longer. 
 It is a terrible price he pays, but he pays it with 
 a cheerfulness that is pleasant to behold when 
 once you have looked through his rough and 
 forbidding exterior into his heart. 
 
 When he is killed in the course of his work — 
 and he has a monopoly of the dangerous and 
 extra-hazardous trades — the verdict of the 
 coroner's jury may not be in so many words 
 
48 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 that it was " only a wop," but it might as well 
 be — for that is nearly always the effect of it. 
 Perhaps fifty thousand such verdicts are ren- 
 dered annually in the United States, but " they 
 are tough, they don't mind such things/' says 
 many a mine foreman. 
 
 Next to the advice of relatives and friends 
 who already have emigrated, the propaganda 
 conducted by the steamship lines is the most im- 
 portant immediate cause of immigration from 
 Europe to America. Remember how the rail- 
 roads advertised when new territory was 
 opened up here in the United States? See the 
 appealingly beautiful descriptions of this new 
 land flowing with the milk and honey of 
 plenty ? Here's a sample farm that was bought 
 for ten dollars an acre and now is worth one 
 hundred; and exhibit B is a man who came 
 here with a thousand dollars and now is worth 
 a fortune. 
 
 That's what is happening to-day in the im- 
 migrant centres of southern and eastern Eu- 
 rope. The immigrant passenger is a profitable 
 animal to carry. Ten steerage passengers can 
 be carried for what it costs to transport one 
 first-class passenger, and the net profit is many 
 times greater. So, in spite of the fact that the 
 promotion of immigration is made unlawful 
 here and of emigration unlawful abroad, what 
 
WHY THE IMMIGRANT COMES 49 
 
 cannot be done openly is done through local and 
 sub-agents. 
 
 But let hard times come here. Then it is 
 different. Everybody is admonished to stay 
 at home and wait until it blows over, and the 
 immigration figures show that the advice is 
 heeded. 
 
 The panics of 1873 and 1893, an d even that 
 of 1907 — which was not generally regarded as 
 an industrial panic — caused an immediate fall- 
 ing off in the stream of immigration that with- 
 out such financial depression gradually rises 
 and rises, promising for 19 13 a record-break- 
 ing tide. Whatever may be the toll of lives 
 exacted by our crushing age of steel, there is 
 not the slightest fact upon which to predicate 
 the prediction that Europe will any time in the 
 near future cease to furnish " wops " in plenty 
 for the sacrifice. 
 
VI 
 
 CONTRACT LABOUR AND INDUCED 
 IMMIGRATION 
 
 ONE of the classes of immigrants that 
 the government desires to keep out of 
 the United States is made up of la- 
 bourers who come by contract, or who have 
 their passage paid. A law prohibiting the en- 
 try of such immigrants was passed in 1885 and 
 has been strengthened by later amendments. 
 The first weakness was found in the lack of 
 provision, of machinery for the enforcement 
 of the law. The first amendment gave the Sec- 
 retary of the Treasury the right to exclude 
 such immigrants, and the second amendment, in 
 1888, gave him the right to deport any who 
 were discovered here within a year after their 
 arrival. 
 
 When the new immigration law was passed 
 in 1907, it contained a broad provision shut- 
 ting the doors of our ports to all who have 
 been induced or solicited to come by offers or 
 promises of employment or in consequence of 
 either written, printed, or verbal agreements, 
 50 
 
LABOUR AND IMMIGRATION 51 
 
 whether express or implied. It must also be 
 shown that no organization of any kind what- 
 soever paid for the ticket or passage of the 
 immigrant. 
 
 The law provides for the admission of 
 skilled labour under contract, when such labour 
 unemployed cannot be found here, and for the 
 admission of professional people and personal 
 and domestic servants. A penalty of one thou- 
 sand dollars is imposed for the violation of 
 the act, and it is to be applied to any person 
 or organization prepaying transportation or as- 
 sisting or encouraging immigration. Suit may 
 be instituted by the United States, by any per- 
 son for his own benefit, or by the alien affected. 
 The issuance of circulars or advertisements in 
 foreign countries inviting immigration renders 
 the person or organization doing so liable to 
 the penalties of the law, and the immigrant 
 coming as a result thereof liable to deporta- 
 tion. An exception is made of the states, ter- 
 tories, and the District of Columbia. They 
 may advertise their natural inducements to im- 
 migration. Steamship lines may announce 
 their sailing dates and tell of the facilities they 
 offer, but may not tell of the attractions of the 
 United States. 
 
 It has been found to be one thing, however, 
 to enact a law shutting out contract labour and 
 
52 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 induced immigration, and quite another to se- 
 cure an effective enforcement of it. The Com- 
 missioner-General of Immigration says it is 
 exceedingly difficult to secure evidence that will 
 convict the person or organization that plainly 
 is surreptitiously evading the law. He finds it 
 much easier to find the immigrant and de- 
 port him than to detect the agency that brought 
 him in a specific violation of the statute. 
 
 The courts have been inclined to be liberal 
 in their construction of the law, but woe betide 
 the immigrant who permits it to leak out that 
 he has a certain, definite job in sight when he 
 lands. On the other hand, it is the almost uni- 
 versal opinion of the immigration authorities 
 that hundreds of thousands of immigrants have 
 a better idea of the jobs they are going to get 
 than the law allows. A still larger number get 
 here under direct and indirect violation of the 
 law against solicitation of immigrants. 
 
 Large employers of labour have a smooth 
 
 iway of getting around the law. The prospec- 
 tive immigrant is not particular about having a 
 definite contract for a job when he lands. All 
 he cares for is a reasonable assurance that there 
 is work in sight. All the employer has to do 
 is to let it be known around his plant that he 
 needs more labour and that he will give em- 
 ployment to the relatives and friends of his 
 
LABOUR AND IMMIGRATION 53 
 
 employees when they come. Letters by the score 
 are sent back to Europe, some containing money 
 for tickets for relatives, and all containing 
 the information that a job is in sight. The 
 next steamer brings a goodly number of immi- 
 grants in response. How can the officials of 
 the government detect or punish such viola- 
 tions of the spirit if not the letter of the law? 
 
 Then there is the immigrant banker, the im- 
 migrant grocer, the immigrant saloonkeeper, 
 and their like. They want more immigrants 
 to come, for it makes their business better. 
 They are in touch with steamship ticket-agents 
 at home. A plant which needs more labourers 
 only has to tell them, and straightway a stream 
 of letters goes to Europe telling of the inces- 
 sant demand for labour, and enclosing fictitious 
 newspaper articles telling of the fine living 
 conditions, the good wages, and the like. 
 Armed with these, the steamship agent in Eu- 
 ropean labour centres can work just about as 
 successfully as our own American railroad 
 immigration agent worked in days gone by, 
 although he must work surreptitiously. 
 
 To avoid difficulty with the immigration au- 
 thorities the immigrants who come in this way 
 are furnished with various and mostly fictitious 
 addresses, and only the leader of the group, 
 selected for his superior intelligence, has the 
 
54 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 address of the real consignee, who usually is 
 an immigrant banker or saloonkeeper. 
 
 Of course the people who are determined to 
 evade the law know its ins and outs, and they 
 are always careful to make their offers and 
 promises in such a vague way that they could 
 hardly be held by the courts to be really offers 
 and promises, and the Immigration Commis- 
 sion admits that they are probably not actu- 
 ally violations of the letter of the law. 
 
 The operations in behalf of emigration in 
 southern and eastern Europe are not carried 
 on for the purpose of assisting the emigrant to 
 establish a home in America nor to supply 
 American employers with labour. Rather, they 
 are simply for the purpose of getting steerage 
 passengers for steamship lines. Nor are they 
 desirous that these people shall come to the 
 United States to stay. They prefer the kind 
 that come back, for that means two steerage 
 fares instead of one. 
 
 One of the most effective of the promoters 
 of immigration is the travelling labour agent. 
 He is a common labourer himself, and fre- 
 quently travels back and forth between the 
 United States and his native country. He is 
 supposed to be a man who likes America so 
 well that he is making it his permanent home, 
 and who returns to his home country only to 
 
LABOUR AND IMMIGRATION 55 
 
 see the " old folks." He tells all the natives 
 he meets of the splendid opportunities in 
 America, and draws an idealistic picture of 
 conditions here. If his auditors are interested 
 and would go but for fear of the perils of the 
 trip, he readily assures them that on such and 
 such a day he will be going back himself, and 
 will be glad to look after them en route. When 
 they meet he is elected the leader of the group, 
 each one paying him a certain stipend for his 
 services, all the while ignorant of the fact that 
 the steamship company pays him a commission 
 on each immigrant he gets, and that the labour 
 agents or employers in America will also pay 
 him so much per head for his wards. 
 
 Another method resorted to by the foreign 
 steamship agents is to scatter circulars of 
 American land companies and labour agents, to 
 inspire the discussion of immigration in the 
 local papers, with a view to arousing the imagi- 
 nation of the potential immigrant. Then there 
 are runners or agitators who go from village 
 to village to stir up emigration enthusiasm 
 and to coach prospective immigrants as to the 
 answers they shall give when they reach the 
 gates of America. They deliver lectures, and 
 in some cases use moving pictures to tell of 
 the wonders of America and the successes of 
 their brethren here. Often prominent citizens, 
 
56 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 social leaders, and even lesser government 
 functionaries are sub-agents of the steamship 
 lines at a commission of so much per head for 
 every immigrant started to the New World. 
 
 The steamship companies, it is charged, also 
 act in collusion with the local money-lenders. 
 An immigrant wants transportation to the 
 United States but has not the money to pay 
 for it; the money-lender furnishes him the 
 ticket on credit and charges him a big price 
 for it and a bigger interest until the debt is 
 satisfied. The steamship company stands be- 
 tween the money-lender and loss. 
 
 The Commissioner-General of Immigration, 
 ,Daniel Keefe, in his report for 1912, waxes in- 
 dignant in contemplating this traffic in human 
 freight by the steamship companies. He says, 
 to say that the steamship companies are respon- 
 sible for an unnatural immigration is not to 
 state a theory, but a fact — a fact that some- 
 times becomes, indeed, if not always, a crying 
 shame. 
 
 Contrast this attitude with that of the gov- 
 ernment during the Civil War when President 
 Lincoln came to the conclusion that the only 
 way to supply the need of labour to take the 
 place of the men who had gone into the armies 
 was to establish a contract labour system which 
 would permit the importation of labour under 
 
LABOUR AND IMMIGRATION 57 
 
 binding contracts to secure the return of the 
 passage money. This law was afterward found 
 to work much injustice and finally was re- 
 pealed. 
 
 At one time the nations of Europe them- 
 selves took advantage of our hospitality to 
 the incoming tide by using this country as a 
 dumping-ground for their criminals. In 1866 
 a joint resolution was adopted by Congress 
 stating that it had been ascertained that it was 
 proposed in Switzerland to pardon a murderer 
 on condition that he would emigrate to the 
 United States, and that such action was re- 
 garded by the United States as unfriendly and 
 inconsistent with the comity of nations, and 
 authorizing all diplomatic officers to insist that 
 such acts should not be repeated. 
 
VII 
 IMMIGRANT RACES 
 
 ONE of the most interesting phases of 
 the investigation of the problems of 
 the great movement of humanity from 
 Europe to the United States by the Immigra- 
 tion Commission, was its study of the races 
 which furnish America with its immigrant 
 population. This study shows something of 
 the future possibilities of our immigrant tide, 
 revealing the numbers of each race that have 
 remained behind, the proportion that has come 
 to America, and the probable future arrivals. 
 Upon some races we have made such heavy 
 drafts that there are comparatively few more 
 to come. Upon others we have made like 
 heavy drafts, but their great numbers and their 
 fecundity have prevented any material cutting 
 down of the supply in sight. 
 
 Under the direction of Dr. Daniel Folkmar, 
 a dictionary of our immigrant races was pre- 
 pared for the Commission. It is the first work 
 that ever has undertaken fully to measure the 
 numerical strength and the geographic distribu- 
 58 
 
(Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. 
 ITALIAN GIRLS. 
 
IMMIGRANT RACES 59 
 
 tion of immigrant races in the United States. 
 Having done this it gives us many striking 
 views of our immigration in its effect upon 
 European peoples. We see in some cases, 
 notably in those of the Slovaks and the 
 Hebrews, that the supply is so small and the 
 rate of immigration so large that it may termi- 
 nate ultimately from the exhaustion of the stock. 
 On the other hand, in the case of the Russians, 
 the Germans, and the Italians, the visible sup- 
 ply is so great and its rate of recruitment so 
 high, that we can draw from them indefinitely 
 and in large numbers without seriously affect- 
 ing the general balance. 
 
 In the preparation of the dictionary of im- 
 migrant races, Dr. Folkmar and his associates 
 called in the best authorities in the country to 
 check up and verify their work. Even then 
 troubles were encountered. For instance, one 
 of the great distinctions which ethnologists 
 make between races of people is the shape of 
 their heads. They are sharply divided between 
 long-headed and broad-headed races, and the 
 ethnologist measures the effect of the com- 
 mingling of races by the changes in the shape 
 of the head. Broad-headed races wear big hats 
 and long-headed ones have long faces in pro- 
 file. 
 
 It was stated by Dr. Folkmar and his asso- 
 
60 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 ciates that some of the Greeks, rubbing up 
 against other races to the north and east of 
 them, had changed somewhat from the " long *' 
 to the " broad " head. Now, if you want to 
 get a rise out of a Greek tell him that the 
 Greek head is not so long as in the days of an- 
 cient Hellas. He prides himself upon his 
 ancient ancestors. He wants to be considered 
 genuinely Hellenic. The official title of his coun- 
 try now is the " kingdom of Hellas," and every 
 subject of the Danish George, no matter how 
 mixed in his race, styles himself a Hellene. 
 When it was stated that the Greeks were more 
 inclined to broad-headedness, it stirred them 
 up, and the Greek legation took up the ques- 
 tion and protested against such a base slander 
 upon the people of Greece. But scientific fact 
 cannot be changed by diplomatic representa- 
 tion, and the dictionary shows the Greek heads 
 have been undergoing a change. 
 
 Some striking illustrations of the great 
 movement of humanity to American shores 
 are afforded by the investigations of Dr. Folk- 
 mar and his associates. For instance, we find 
 that there are more Irish and their children 
 in the United States than there are in Ireland. 
 There are about five million in America as 
 compared with four and a half million in Ire- 
 land, and they are still coming to us at the rate 
 
IMMIGRANT RACES 61 
 
 of about thirty thousand a year. No other 
 race of its size has contributed so largely to 
 American immigration as the Irish. During 
 the forty years following 1820 they gave us 
 nearly two-fifths of all our immigrants, and 
 since the beginning of 1900 have sent us ap- 
 proximately half a million of their people. The 
 Irish tongue is rapidly going out of existence 
 as a means of communication. It is said that 
 there are fewer than five thousand people in 
 Ireland who can read books in Irish; that not 
 a single newspaper is published in Irish nor a 
 single church service conducted in it. Only 
 four people out of a thousand in Ireland can- 
 not speak English, and they are mainly in the 
 remote western part of the country. 
 
 The Jewish immigration to America has 
 been vast in numbers and rich in material. 
 They have come here as Moses led his hosts 
 into Canaan, to found a home for themselves, 
 their children, and their children's children, 
 and all who have studied the immigration 
 problem with profit concede that in the Jew we 
 have secured one of the best elements in our 
 citizenship. New York City alone now has a 
 Jewish population more than ten times as great 
 as that of all Palestine, and the United States 
 as a whole has eight times as many as all Asia 
 
62 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 together. New York has a million of them, 
 which is one-half of America's Jewish popu- 
 lation. During a period of fourteen years they 
 have been coming to our shores at the rate of 
 ninety thousand a year. The entire Jewish 
 population of the world is placed at eleven mil- 
 lion. Europe has eight million of these, and it 
 is from them that our Jewish immigration 
 mainly is drawn. 
 
 The total Czech population of Europe, which 
 includes the Bohemians, the Moravians, and 
 the Slovaks, is less than eight million, but we 
 received nearly 500,000 in a single twelve-year 
 period. Most of this was represented by the 
 surprising incoming tide of Slovaks. Out of 
 less than two million population they have 
 given us nearly 400,000 in twelve years. 
 
 The wonderful military prowess of the peo- 
 ple of the Balkan States — Servians, Bul- 
 garians, and Montenegrins — during their war 
 with Turkey focussed the attention of the 
 world upon them. The Bulgarians are phys- 
 ically of one stock and linguistically of an- 
 other. They are of Asiatic, or Mongolian, 
 origin, yet speak a Slavic tongue. The Turks 
 form only one-seventh of the population of 
 European Turkey as it stood before the recent 
 outbreak of hostilities, and practically all of 
 central Turkey down to the ^Egean Sea, except 
 
IMMIGRANT RACES 63 
 
 a little strip along the coast, which was occu- 
 pied by the Greeks, was populated by Bul- 
 garians. 
 
 In industrial districts in the United States 
 largely peopled by foreigners, one hears much 
 about the Croatians. They are people who 
 have relatives in the war with Turkey, em- 
 bracing the Croatian, the Servian, the Monte- 
 negrin, the Bosnian, and several lesser peoples. 
 They are coming to us at the rate of nearly 
 thirty thousand a year, but the present situa- 
 tion in southern Europe is likely to wipe 
 out the major portion of this immigra- 
 tion. 
 
 Germany has furnished the United States 
 more immigrants since 1820 than any other 
 single country, although the United Kingdom 
 as a whole has done better than Germany, giv- 
 ing us nearly eight million souls as compared 
 with Germany's six million. But German im- 
 migration has fallen off to a small fraction of 
 its former proportions, and to-day more Ger- 
 man immigrants are coming to the United 
 States from Austria than from Germany 
 itself. 
 
 During twelve years there came to the 
 United States enough Italians to people five 
 cities like Rome; enough Greeks to people two 
 cities like Athens; more Poles than there are 
 
64 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 in Warsaw ; more Scandinavians than there are 
 in Stockholm; more Magyars than in Kron- 
 stadt; and more Finns than in Viborg. 
 
 Italy's contribution to American immigra- 
 tion of nearly two and a quarter million souls 
 in twelve years, stands out as a marked feature 
 of immigration history. Nearly nine-tenths of 
 this came from southern Italy. The people of 
 northern and southern Italy speak such vary- 
 ing dialects that they scarcely can converse 
 with one another. In some parts of southern 
 Italy more than three-fourths of the people are 
 illiterate. Bosco, the Italian statistician, ad- 
 mits that Italy leads all the nations in the num- 
 ber of crimes against the person. Niceforo, 
 the Italian sociologist, declares that the in- 
 habitants of northern Italy possess all the quali- 
 fications for good citizenship, but that the 
 South Italian is an individualist having little 
 adaptability to highly organized society. Yet 
 Italians from the south who come to this coun- 
 try and who are not colonized with their own 
 people, but who mingle freely with native 
 Americans, rapidly become good citizens. 
 
 There are a dozen or more linguistic races 
 which send immigrants out of eastern Europe 
 in large numbers. The Poles gave us nearly a 
 million immigrants in twelve years, the Lithu- 
 
IMMIGRANT RACES 65 
 
 anians 175,000, the Ruthenians 150,000, the 
 Croatians and Slovenians 335,000. All of 
 these races are Slavs except the Lithuanians, 
 who are the only people of the Lettic group in 
 Europe. 
 
 The future historian, no doubt, will acknowl- 
 edge a great debt to the painstaking students 
 who are compiling from year to year the statis- 
 tics concerning the racial characteristics of the 
 flood of immigration into the United States. 
 A century hence the student of this question 
 will be able to determine with scientific pre- 
 cision exactly what is the result of the fusion 
 of the nations in this republican melting-pot. 
 
VIII 
 THE STEERAGE PASSENGER 
 
 IT is doubtful if anywhere else in the entire 
 civilized world can such vile and disgrace- 
 ful treatment of human beings in masses 
 be found as on the majority of the steamships 
 which carry our immigrants to us. The con- 
 ditions which these people meet beggar descrip- 
 tion, and the official picture that has been 
 painted of it is so startling that it could scarcely 
 be accepted did it not find corroboration in 
 every unofficial picture of the steerage that our 
 best word-artists have painted. 
 
 One stands amazed that greed for gold could 
 lead men to subject their fellow-beings to such 
 conditions as the steerage passenger endures, 
 according to the revelations of the Immigration 
 Commission. The picture it draws is a careful 
 one. The data were obtained by special agents 
 travelling as steerage passengers on twelve 
 transatlantic liners and from cabin observa- 
 tions of the steerage on two others. This was 
 done in 1908, when the immigration reached a 
 very low ebb. The Commission is careful to 
 66 
 
THE STEERAGE PASSENGER 67 
 
 tell us that the information was obtained at a 
 time when travel was at its lightest and the 
 steerage at its best. 
 
 Three kinds of steerage are now recognized 
 — the old, the new, and the combination of the 
 two. The old brings the bulk of our immigra- 
 tion from southern and eastern Europe. It is 
 unspeakably bad. The new brings the bulk of 
 the immigrants from northwestern Europe, 
 and it is all that can be desired. Between the 
 two classes of ships are those which are be- 
 ing transformed from the old to the new. On 
 these a difference of $7.50 per ticket is the 
 difference between decency and indecency, be- 
 tween a chamber of horrors like the Black 
 Hole of Calcutta and comfortable quar- 
 ters. 
 
 Heretofore the steamship companies have 
 apologized for the filthy conditions of the old 
 steerage by saying the immigrants were a 
 piggish lot of people who would render the first 
 cabin as filthy as the steerage if they were per- 
 mitted ; they also asserted that it was impossible 
 to better conditions as long as " such cattle " 
 peopled the steerage. But now we find, in the 
 ship that has part new and part old steerage 
 accommodations, that the immigrant in the 
 steerage is not different from the remainder of 
 humanity — he will be reasonably clean if he 
 
68 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 has a reasonable chance. The Commission con- 
 cludes that " there is no reason why the dis- 
 gusting and demoralizing conditions that have 
 generally prevailed in the steerage of immi- 
 grant ships should continue." 
 
 Let us glance at the Commission's typical 
 picture of the old steerage. The investigator 
 who painted it was a woman, who made the 
 twelve-day voyage in the steerage travelling 
 as a single Bohemian peasant woman. Before 
 sailing all steerage passengers were supposed 
 to be vaccinated. The women and men were 
 vaccinated in separate rooms and an inspec- 
 tion card stamped by the U. S. Consulate, 
 certifying that they had been vaccinated, was 
 given them. In her case not one of the three 
 scratches had punctured the skin. She found 
 that others had fared the same way. 
 
 The compartment in the steerage for single 
 women she describes as better than those for 
 other steerage passengers. The bunks were 
 arranged in tiers, each having a straw mattress 
 covered with a slip sheet. A small blanket was 
 the only covering provided. There was no 
 pillow; a life-preserver under the head of the 
 mattress was the substitute. It was practically 
 impossible to undress properly for retiring, be- 
 cause of lack of privacy and insufficient cov- 
 ering. When the steerage is full, each pas- 
 
THE STEERAGE PASSENGER 69 
 
 senger's private space is limited to his bunk 
 alone. It must serve him at once as sleeping 
 quarters, clothes closet, baggage-room, kitchen, 
 pantry, and what not. There is not a hook 
 upon which to hang clothes, not a receptacle 
 for refuse, not a cuspidor, and no convenience 
 for use in times of seasickness. 
 
 There were two washrooms, used indis- 
 criminately by men and women. One of them 
 was 7 by 9 feet, with ten faucets of cold 
 water along two of the walls. The wash- 
 basins resembled in size and shape the ordinary 
 stationary laundry tub. They had to serve as 
 wash-basins, dishpans, laundry-tubs. In the 
 other room the equipment was identical, except 
 that there was a hot-water spigot that did not 
 work, and a four-foot trough for dish-wash- 
 ing, with sea water, seldom hot, from one 
 spigot. 
 
 Many of the passengers made heroic efforts 
 to keep clean. It was forbidden to bring water 
 into the sleeping compartments for washing 
 purposes, but even when the women rose early 
 and carried in a little water in the soup-pails, 
 as soon as they were discovered they were 
 brutally driven out by the stewards. 
 
 The law requires that each immigrant shall 
 be furnished with all the eating utensils neces- 
 sary. They are each furnished with a work- 
 
70 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 ingman's dinner-pail, a spoon, and a fork. 
 Each immigrant must care for his own 
 pail, and as a rule has nothing but cold salt 
 water with which to wash it throughout the 
 entire trip. The pails are so cheap that usually 
 the salt water rusts them and makes them unfit 
 to use before port is reached. Again the law 
 requires that tables shall be furnished for the 
 passengers to eat upon, but these are only long 
 single board affairs usually in a part of a steer- 
 age sleeping compartment not used on that 
 voyage for bunks. All of the foul smells 
 from the sleeping compartments come unob- 
 structed into these improvised dining-rooms 
 and drive the passengers to the open 
 deck. 
 
 The investigator says that one morning she 
 wished to see if it were possible for a woman 
 to rise and dress without the presence of men 
 onlookers. She waited her chance, and al- 
 though the breakfast bell rang at 6.55 and she 
 was ready for a meal at 7.15, the steward 
 warned her not to come so late again, and gave 
 her only a piece of bread. The meals that 
 were served were bad in quality and prepara- 
 tion, and more than half of the food was 
 thrown into the sea. The daily inspection of 
 the immigrants was a farce. They were as- 
 sembled and had their inspection tickets 
 
THE STEERAGE PASSENGER 71 
 
 punched six times, covering six days. From 
 the time the women went on board until they 
 landed they did not have one moment's privacy. 
 Not one young woman in the steerage escaped 
 attack. The investigator herself was among 
 these, and yet the steerage officials made no 
 effort to punish the offenders. Some resisted 
 for a time and then weakened; some fought 
 with all their physical strength. Two refined 
 Polish girls fought with pins and teeth. The 
 atmosphere is described as one of general law- 
 lessness and total disrespect for women, which 
 naturally demoralized the women after a time. 
 Summing up, the government investigator 
 says that her life during those twelve days was 
 passed in a disorder and in surroundings that 
 offended every sense. The vile language of 
 the men, the screams of the women defending 
 themselves, the crying of the children wretched 
 because of their surroundings, and practically 
 every sound that reached the ear, irritated be- 
 yond endurance. There was no sight before 
 which the eye did not prefer to close. Every 
 impression was offensive. Worse than this 
 was the general air of immorality due almost 
 wholly to the improper, indecent, forced 
 mingling of men and women, who were total 
 strangers and often did not understand a word 
 of the same language. 
 
72 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 Contrast this terrible picture of conditions 
 that cry to heaven for remedy, conditions that 
 apply on steamships carrying perhaps two- 
 thirds of our immigrants — contrast it with the 
 picture of the new steerage, where the people 
 are given staterooms, where practically every- 
 thing is on a simplified second-cabin basis, the 
 floors kept scrupulously clean, ample toilet 
 facilities, separate for the sexes, are provided, 
 where clean towels, clean napkins, and clean 
 bed linen are furnished, where satisfactory 
 food is supplied, where the wants of the sick 
 and of the children are looked after, where 
 women travelling alone are safe and not the 
 prey of both crew and male passengers, and the 
 difference is astonishing — and yet the differ- 
 ence in price on ships that are only partially 
 converted from the old to the new steerage is 
 only $7.50. 
 
 How long the United States will permit the 
 major portion of its prospective citizens to 
 make their voyage to America under such con- 
 ditions as the Immigration Commission says 
 are typical of the old steerage no one can 
 definitely foretell, but the indications are that 
 these disclosures will result in prompt action 
 by Congress. The travels of the agents of 
 the Commission in the steerage seem to have 
 been the first time that the government ever 
 
THE STEERAGE PASSENGER 73 
 
 has studied the steerage question in a first-hand 
 way. Perhaps ten million American immi- 
 grants have received such treatment as the 
 Immigration Commission found to exist — and 
 millions of them fared worse than that. 
 
 Of course there is the defence based on the 
 assumption that each immigrant is a free 
 agent; that he comes of his own accord; that he 
 is content because he will cross again and again 
 under the same circumstances. But in this 
 day of enlightenment few persons not wholly 
 blinded by greed will justify on any grounds 
 the cruelty, the indecency, the utter horror of 
 the old steerage. The fact is proved by those 
 steamship lines that are installing the new type 
 of steerage accommodations. 
 
IX 
 
 LANDING AT ELLIS ISLAND 
 
 NO cabin passenger ever sailed through 
 the Narrows and beheld the Statue of 
 Liberty without feeling a thrill at the 
 sight. If it were not the thrill of patriotic 
 devotion to his native or adopted land, it must 
 be a thrill of pleasure at being safely across 
 and with a chance to set foot on solid ground 
 so soon again. But, if the sight of the god- 
 dess stirs the cabin, what must it mean to the 
 steerage? To the steerage a new world is 
 dawning and a week or more of an earthly 
 purgatory ending. Dr. Steiner, the eminent 
 immigration authority who has carried his gos- 
 pel of kindness into many a steerage, himself 
 acknowledges that often he has tried to over- 
 come the deep despair of the steerage by re- 
 minding its people that though it seems like 
 hell, there is a heaven beyond. He says that 
 it is not easy to travel in the steerage; not be- 
 cause there is not room enough, or air enough, 
 or food enough, although that is all true; but 
 74 
 
LANDING AT ELLIS ISLAND 75 
 
 because it is hard to believe down there that 
 the God of Israel is not dead. 
 
 To the immigrant Ellis Island is an ordeal. 
 The " man at the gate " is a big giant who can 
 speed him through or crush the life out of his 
 hopes in an instant. A thousand lies, some 
 useful, some useless, and some unnecessary, 
 are prepared in the hope that they will help 
 in the navigation of the tortuous channel of 
 admission to America. Passing quarantine 
 and the customs officials as the ship comes up 
 the bay, it is warped into its dock, and when 
 the last cabin passenger has gone ashore the 
 steerage people are put into barges and towed 
 away to Ellis Island, where final judgment 
 awaits them. Their tickets are fastened in 
 their caps, or pinned to their clothes, and their 
 bills of lading are in their hands. When they 
 enter they are lined up in long rows, with two 
 doctors for each row. They must walk down 
 a narrow lane made by rows of piping, with 
 an interval of twenty feet between them. As 
 they approach, the doctors begin to size up 
 each immigrant. First they survey him as a 
 whole. If the general impression is favourable 
 they cast their eyes at his feet, to see if they 
 are all right. Then come his legs, his body, his 
 hands, his arms, his face, his eyes, and his 
 head. While the immigrant has been walking 
 
76 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 the twenty feet the doctors have asked and an- 
 swered in their own minds several hundred 
 questions. If the immigrant reveals any in- 
 timation of any disease, if he has any deform- 
 ity, even down to a crooked finger, the fact is 
 noticed. 
 
 If he is so evidently a healthy person that 
 the examination reveals no reason why he 
 should be held, he is passed on. But if there is 
 the least suspicion in the minds of the doctors 
 that there is anything at all wrong with him, a 
 chalk mark is placed upon the lapel of his coat. 
 After passing the surgeons who examine their 
 health tickets and their bodies, the immigrants 
 next encounter the one who examines their 
 eyes. With towels and antiseptic solutions by 
 him, the surgeon rolls the eyelids of the im- 
 migrants back on a round stick resembling a 
 pencil. He is looking for trachoma. Those 
 discovered to have it are sent away for de- 
 portation. 
 
 The line moves on past the female inspector 
 looking for prostitutes, and then past the in- 
 spectors who ask the twenty-two questions re- 
 quired by law. Here is where the lies are 
 told. Most of the immigrants have been 
 coached as to what answers to give. Here 
 is an old woman who says she has three sons 
 in America, when she has but one. The more 
 
LANDING AT ELLIS ISLAND 77 
 
 she talks the worse she entangles herself. 
 Here is a Russian Jewish girl who has run 
 away to escape persecution. She claims a rela- 
 tive in New York at an address found not to 
 exist; she is straightway in trouble. 
 
 The surgeons mark about half of the im- 
 migrants with chalk marks as they file by, and 
 those so marked go to another pen for fur- 
 ther examination. Families are torn asunder, 
 and no one has time or opportunity to explain 
 why. Mothers are wild, thinking that their 
 children are lost to them forever; children are 
 frantic, thinking they will see their parents no 
 more. Husbands and wives are separated and 
 for hours they know not why or how. 
 
 After the immigrants have passed the in- 
 spectors comes the real parting of the ways — 
 the " stairway of separation." Here are three 
 stairways, one leading to the railroad room, 
 another to the New York room, and another 
 to the ferry. 
 
 To those who have passed muster in this or- 
 deal the way is now open. They are inside the 
 gate and their troubles are over. But here is 
 a room where those go who have been given 
 tickets marked " S. I. — Special Inquiry." 
 This takes them to an iron barred gate behind 
 which sits an official who admits them and has 
 them distributed to the various detention 
 
78 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 rooms. Sometimes two thousand may be de- 
 tained at a time. Conditions are admittedly 
 bad in some of these rooms, due to overcrowd- 
 ing and inadequate facilities, but all agree that 
 the officials and those under them do all in 
 their power to ameliorate these conditions. 
 
 Those detained are given further examina- 
 tions. Such as are able to pass muster under 
 these examinations are permitted to pass 
 through the gates. Those who are temporarily 
 ill are sent to the hospital. Those who are 
 possibly deportable are given further examina- 
 tions by special inquiry boards. Those to 
 whom the gates still are barred after these in- 
 quiries, have the right of further appeal, but 
 reversals are not very frequent. 
 
 Does the law work hardships at our immi- 
 gration stations ? Yes, everybody admits that. 
 Sometimes men are turned back for trivial 
 causes. Four Greeks were going to Canada, 
 via New York. The Canadian law requires 
 each immigrant to have twenty-five dollars. 
 They had $24.37 eac h- When they found their 
 funds short they wanted to come into the 
 United States, but they could not. A child is 
 taken down with a contagious disease and is 
 carried to the hospital. The mother must 
 wait and cannot even see her child. A man 
 
LANDING AT ELLIS ISLAND 79 
 
 and his son have had their money stolen from 
 them in the steerage; they lack twenty dollars 
 and must go back. And so the sad tale goes on 
 every day. 
 
 But could the immigration authorities be vest- 
 ed with discretion in the matter ? Then sixteen 
 thousand debarred aliens a year would lay siege 
 to their sympathies and each would regard his 
 own as a special case, and innumerable difficul- 
 ties would result. All authorities agree that 
 the system in vogue is just about as humane 
 and as free from hardships as any system 
 that might be devised, and that would maintain 
 the interests of the nation as paramount to the 
 interest of the individual immigrant. It is, 
 however, equally agreed that Ellis Island is 
 often overcrowded and needs enlargement and 
 that many minor changes in the immigration 
 laws ought to be enacted. 
 
 Sixteen thousand immigrants debarred from 
 the United States in a year! Half of these are 
 debarred because they probably would become 
 public charges. Some 2,300 were deported 
 upon surgeons' certificates showing that they 
 possess mental or physical defects which might 
 affect their ability to earn a living. Another 
 1,800 were sent back because they had loath- 
 some or dangerous contagious diseases, while 
 
80 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 i>333 were denied admission because they were 
 contract labourers. 
 
 Ellis Island receives about two-thirds of all 
 the immigrants that come to America. It is 
 really a plant built on three islands with cause- 
 ways connecting them. Often more than two 
 thousand immigrants must be detained over 
 night, and of course there is much congestion 
 at such times. To shelter and feed two thou- 
 sand people over night is a large task. Some 
 days as many as five thousand immigrants ar- 
 rive, and to dispose of them means only two 
 minutes to each immigrant; consequently, the 
 inspectors must work rapidly and send every 
 doubtful case to detention for further investi- 
 gation. The next day may bring only a few 
 hundred, or it may be a foggy day and none 
 will come; then the detained ones can be given 
 more attention. 
 
 The " old " immigration is usually easy to 
 inspect. Few of them come who are not eli- 
 gible, for our immigration laws are understood 
 in northwestern Europe much better than in 
 southern and eastern Europe. Five thousand 
 " old " immigrants can be put through easily 
 in a day, while with the " new " immigration 
 such a task would represent very hard work 
 and very long hours. 
 
LANDING AT ELLIS ISLAND 81 
 
 A contract restaurant is maintained at each 
 important immigrant station, where food can 
 be had during detention, and where it is put 
 up in boxes for those going on railroad jour- 
 neys. These boxes cost from fifty cents to 
 a dollar. 
 
 Special immigrant trains are made up to 
 handle those who travel in large companies. 
 At other times they are furnished special cars, 
 while often they must travel, men and women, 
 in the smokers of regular trains. The immi- 
 grant gets a slightly cheaper rate than first 
 class, but they usually get a proportionately 
 poor service for their money. 
 
 Ellis Island, with the tragedies of detention 
 and deportation that must be enacted constantly 
 if the laws are to be executed, is a great theatre 
 where every quality of human nature is at 
 play. Here one beholds a happy reunion — 
 wife has come to join husband after waiting 
 for a year until he could get money to send for 
 her. There is another wife to join her hus- 
 band, but she has trachoma and cannot be ad- 
 mitted. Here is a painted woman trying to 
 lie herself through the gate. There is a boy 
 who gets tangled up in the forty questions 
 put to him, but finally gets through. Here are 
 hundreds who have failed on their first round to 
 
82 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 pass muster, and they are gathered in a great 
 room, some hoping and praying, some weeping 
 and fearing, some cursing their fate. But 
 even then, we admitted 838,000 during the 
 fiscal year 19 12 and deported only 16,000. 
 
 Not at any other place in all the history of 
 nations have been enacted so many silent 
 dramas of the human heart as at Ellis Island. 
 It is the door of hope to millions of European 
 peasants who are saving their copper coins 
 against a chance of entering there. It is the 
 gate of new life to millions of adopted Ameri- 
 cans who remember that there they were freed 
 of countless terrors that their fathers deemed 
 unescapable. And it has been the seat of doom 
 to tens of thousands who have been turned 
 away from its portals. 
 
IMMIGRANT HOMES AND AID 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 IMMIGRANTS arriving in this country usu- 
 ally expect to go to some relative or friend 
 or to have some relative or friend to meet 
 them upon arrival. But it frequently happens 
 that these relatives or friends fail to meet them 
 or to send funds for the continuation of their 
 journey. In such event the letter of the law 
 would require the immigrants to be deported, 
 since, being penniless, they are likely to be- 
 come public charges. But where there are 
 trustworthy persons or organizations who will 
 undertake to care for them until they find em- 
 ployment or are brought into touch with their 
 relatives or friends, the immigrants may be 
 discharged to them after five days' detention. 
 The immigrant, under these conditions, is 
 given his preference of being discharged to the 
 agents of the homes and aid societies or of 
 being deported. Usually he takes the chance 
 to be thus discharged. 
 
 In order to afford such immigrants the op- 
 
84t THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 portunity of landing and to assist other immi- 
 grants to avoid the hundred and one dangers 
 of being turned adrift in a big city where no 
 one else tries to protect them from the innu- 
 merable scoundrels who would rob them and 
 lead them into vice, many churches and philan- 
 thropic organizations have established these 
 immigrant aid societies and homes for the care 
 of the immigrants until such time as they can 
 get along themselves. 
 
 Some of the societies receive annual appro- 
 priations from various European governments 
 for their services to the immigrants from those 
 countries. Others are supported by people of 
 certain races for the benefit of immigrants of 
 their own nationality. In one year nearly fif- 
 teen thousand immigrants were discharged at 
 Ellis Island to homes and aid societies. The 
 law does not recognize the missionaries who 
 represent these organizations, but at each port 
 the Commissioner of Immigration gladly co- 
 operates with those whose places are carefully 
 conducted. Each home or society must file 
 application for the privilege of having immi- 
 grants discharged to it, and its duly accredited 
 agents are given annual passes to the immi- 
 gration station. 
 
 These societies and homes, when properly 
 conducted, undoubtedly do an infinite amount 
 
HOMES AND AID SOCIETIES 85 
 
 of good. Particularly are they of immeasur- 
 able benefit to the women and girls who come 
 friendless to America. But the investigation 
 of the Immigration Commission revealed the 
 fact that many of them were not properly con- 
 ducted, and that the very conditions they sought 
 to remedy were promoted by them. 
 
 The Immigration Commission a few years 
 ago investigated the whole question of these 
 societies and homes with great care. It sent 
 women agents interested in social settlement 
 work into the field, disguised as immigrants 
 and as foreigners seeking work, with some 
 others as applicants for immigrant help of 
 various kinds. The results of their investiga- 
 tions were a revelation to many. At some ports 
 it was found that the commissioners were in- 
 different to the qualifications of the repre- 
 sentatives of the various homes and societies; 
 at others they seldom investigated the char- 
 acter of the homes and societies making appli- 
 cation for permission to do the work; while at 
 a few they were as careful as the limited pow- 
 ers of investigation permitted them to be, and 
 yet at all the ports there were workers whose 
 motive was, " revenue only." There were homes 
 and societies which did not properly safeguard 
 the interests of the immigrants because of 
 carelessness in placing them, and even 
 
86 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 " homes " where an absolutely immoral atmos- 
 phere was encountered. 
 
 Missionaries and home and society agents 
 assist arriving immigrants in various ways. 
 They write letters for them, help them to get 
 into communication with friends and relatives, 
 trace lost baggage, escort them to their desti- 
 nations, send their names and addresses to 
 those who can look after them if they are go- 
 ing to other cities, appear before the boards of 
 special inquiry in their behalf, and make their 
 appeals to the Secretary of Commerce and 
 Labour in the event it appears that the decision 
 of the commissioner ought to be altered. When 
 they do all these things in the true missionary 
 spirit they are rendering an invaluable serv- 
 ice to the immigrant. But, unfortunately, 
 some of them do not. In spite of the watchful- 
 ness of the immigration authorities some of 
 these missionaries disgrace their profession in 
 many ways. Some have been known to come 
 to the stations drunk, some take money for 
 their services and transform themselves into 
 petty attorneys, while others have been known 
 to take advantage of helpless women. But, for 
 the most part, the immigration missionary is 
 upright and worthy. 
 
 Some of the homes to which the missionaries 
 send immigrants are all that could be desired. 
 
HOMES AND AID SOCIETIES 87 
 
 The surroundings are clean and wholesome, 
 the moral atmosphere is excellent, the food is 
 good, and the charges are no greater than the 
 pocketbook of the immigrant will allow. 
 Often they charge only sixty cents a day for 
 board and lodging, and even less when it is by 
 the week. But more important, in such places 
 the managers are very careful that the women 
 and girls shall be placed where there is a good 
 moral atmosphere. None of them is allowed 
 to go to places which cannot give satisfactory 
 references, and a card index with a follow-up 
 system keeps the home in close touch with the 
 immigrants placed until they become firmly es- 
 tablished. 
 
 Other homes are as careful about the con- 
 ditions with which the inmates are surrounded 
 while they remain there, but are distinctly 
 careless in the matter of placing the women. 
 They would not wittingly send a girl out to 
 act as a servant in a disorderly house, and yet 
 by failure to investigate requests for help, fre- 
 quently they do so. Still other homes did not 
 hesitate to send girls to such places, even after 
 it was explained to them that such was the na- 
 ture of the places. Of forty- four homes in- 
 vestigated half of them did not draw the line 
 on sending girls as servants to such houses. 
 The missionaries made little better showing 
 
88 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 than the homes in this regard. Twenty-one 
 were asked for servants for disorderly houses; 
 eleven supplied them. Only three refused 
 point-blank to do so. 
 
 Some of the aid societies refer immigrants 
 to employment agencies. Of twenty-two such 
 agencies that were licensed, only five failed 
 to furnish servants for applicants from dis- 
 orderly houses. Practically every unlicensed 
 employment agency unhesitatingly furnished 
 such help. 
 
 In some of the homes men connected with 
 their executive staffs were guilty of immoral 
 advances toward the investigators as well as 
 toward other inmates. The method of the in- 
 vestigation usually was for one investigator 
 to get admitted to the home and to stay there 
 for several days. Then another investigator 
 would come and apply for a girl, explaining 
 that she was wanted as a servant to tend the 
 door in a manicure establishment that was en- 
 joying police protection, and which was run 
 in connection with a lodging-house for tran- 
 sients. Then the first investigator would usu- 
 ally be called in and asked if she wanted the 
 job. She was usually admonished that if she 
 took it she should just close her eyes to what 
 went on. It was while the boarding investi- 
 gators were staying at the homes that improper 
 
HOMES AND AID SOCIETIES 89 
 
 advances were made. In one instance an at- 
 tempt to commit a criminal assault upon one 
 of the investigators was made. 
 
 Out of a long list of names and addresses of 
 immigrant women who had been placed 
 through eleven homes, the investigators selected 
 228 for following up. It was found that only 
 178 of those immigrants had gone to the ad- 
 dresses given. At fifty addresses given no 
 girls had ever been sent for or received, while 
 there were no such addresses in eight cases, 
 and three were the addresses of disorderly 
 houses. 
 
 The conditions revealed by the investigations 
 of the Immigration Commission's agents were 
 made known to the immigration authorities at 
 the several ports where these abuses were 
 found to occur, and it resulted in the confirma- 
 tion of the results of the investigation and in 
 proof that the investigators had performed 
 their work carefully and conscientiously, and 
 had always tried to stay on the conservative 
 side of the facts in stating the results. The 
 immigration authorities, as a result, communi- 
 cated these findings to the immigration so- 
 cieties and homes, and since then the most dili- 
 gent efforts have been made, both by the im- 
 migration authorities and by the immigrant 
 homes and societies, to weed out the unworthy 
 
90 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 and to make sure that hereafter proper care 
 shall be taken that young immigrant girls that 
 are placed by the organizations shall be placed 
 amid wholesome surroundings. In justice to 
 the spirit of helpfulness and philanthropy 
 through which immigrant homes and societies 
 have been established and are maintained, it 
 is to be said that the abuses that have been 
 found have arisen through lax supervision, 
 which has been more the result of confidence in 
 managements which have proved themselves 
 unworthy of it, rather than through any indif- 
 ference to the fate of the immigrant girl. 
 
 It is to be added that the disclosures that 
 were made when the Immigration Commission 
 made its investigation has resulted in a deter- 
 mination upon the part of the immigrant homes 
 and aid societies which are honestly trying to 
 help the immigrant that the conditions com- 
 plained of shall not occur again. Where lax 
 administration was found there have been 
 house-cleanings, those who abused confidences 
 have been banished from the work, and every- 
 where there has been a commendable deter- 
 mination to co-operate with the immigration 
 authorities in bringing to their just reward 
 those who, whether by laxity of administration, 
 indifference, or criminality, have permitted 
 immigrants whom they should have protected, 
 
HOMES AND AID SOCIETIES 91 
 
 to be preyed upon by financial or moral vul- 
 tures. 
 
 The high standards set by those homes 
 which were all that such institutions ought to 
 be, have been laid down as the standards to 
 which all homes and societies and individual 
 workers must measure up, and by a careful 
 card-index follow-up system such as a few 
 homes and societies formerly had, all of these 
 institutions are now accomplishing the pur- 
 poses for which they were founded — the pro- 
 tection of the immigrant from exploitation. 
 
XI 
 
 DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS 
 
 IT is quite generally agreed among states- 
 men and philanthropists that if the " new " 
 immigration, which is flocking to our 
 shores at the rate of three-quarters of a mil- 
 lion souls a year, is to be a blessing and an 
 economic asset to the. nation, ways and means 
 must be found whereby it may be distributed 
 widely throughout the country — for then only 
 can the digestive juices of American influence 
 reach the entire mass and fit it for assimilation 
 into the body politic. So long as it crowds 
 into colonies and holds itself aloof in com- 
 munities that never feel the touch of American 
 customs and ideas, how can we expect it to be- 
 come like us and a part of us? 
 
 And yet, that is what is happening right 
 along. Three-fourths of our Russian immi- 
 grants are to be found in cities that have a 
 population of twenty-five thousand and up- 
 ward. More than half of the Italian immi- 
 grants, the Polish, the Bohemian, the Hun- 
 garian, and the Austrian immigrants gravitate 
 92 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS 93 
 
 to such centres of population. On the other 
 hand, less than one-fourth of our native Ameri- 
 cans are to be found in such cities, and the 
 same is true qf our Scandinavian immigrants. 
 More than half of the great population of New 
 York City is of foreign birth, and there are 
 sections of the metropolis that are as foreign 
 to America, as far as influences go, as are 
 Warsaw, Naples, or Vienna. The list of 
 American cities where the foreign population 
 exceeds the native is a large one. There are 
 some fifty cities where the population of foreign 
 birth represents more than two-fifths of the 
 total, and among these are some twenty where 
 the foreign element is in the majority. 
 
 Every authority agrees that it is desirable 
 to secure as many settlers on the land as pos- 
 sible, but there are some who do not believe 
 in any other sort of distribution of immigrants 
 except such as is created by the natural work- 
 ing of the law of supply and demand. The 
 ground upon which they predicate their belief 
 is that it will tend to reduce that kind of living 
 and wages which they call " the American 
 standard." One of those who holds this view 
 is Commissioner General of Immigration, 
 Daniel J. Keefe. 
 
 He asserts that many of the arguments in 
 favour of the distribution of aliens other than 
 
94 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 to plant them on the land are fallacious. He 
 says that organizations struggling to solve the 
 problem of putting the alien where he is needed, 
 vary from those moved by purely business im- 
 pulses to those which are " or pretend to be, 
 patriotic or philanthropic in their purposes." 
 They range, he adds, from combinations of 
 ticket-agents, money-lenders, and labour agen- 
 cies to state and municipal organizations " con- 
 ducted bona fide and from high, pure motives.'' 
 He further adds, however, that the latter 
 " often incidentally produce some of the same 
 effects as the selfish organizations." 
 
 In commenting upon the problem he says if 
 it ever was feasible to devise a complete, effi- 
 cient plan for the general distribution of aliens, 
 it probably is now too late to stem the tide 
 which has set toward certain localities, where 
 alien nucleus colonies have been established, 
 constituting new reasons why aliens are drawn 
 to them; even though a certain number of aliens 
 may be distributed, they will not remain where 
 they are placed unless the arrangement coin- 
 cides with their desires, and unless- they are 
 physically and mentally adapted to their new 
 surroundings, as a large percentage of those 
 who now insist on herding in the cities never 
 will be; and that, viewed from a national 
 standpoint, distribution tends to increase the 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS 95 
 
 difficulties of immigration rather than to re- 
 duce them. He concludes that distribution 
 will tend to increase immigration, and that this 
 will in turn tend to drive down the wages of 
 American workingmen. 
 
 There are many students of the problem, 
 however, who take direct issue with Commis- 
 sioner General Keefe, both as to his minor and 
 major conclusions. They point out that the 
 same fear was expressed when his own people 
 began to come and continued to come to 
 America, but that American wages are higher 
 and American workingmen's standards of liv- 
 ing are better than they were before. Like- 
 wise, they point out that nearly ninety per cent 
 of the immigration from many southern and 
 eastern European countries comes to us from 
 the village and the farm, and that to say they 
 are not physically or mentally fitted for any- 
 thing else than to herd in congested communi- 
 ties is not a just statement. 
 
 It is further pointed out by those who oppose 
 the conclusions of Mr. Keefe that neither Con- 
 gress nor the Immigration Commission has 
 agreed with him, but has taken the opposite 
 view. Congress created a Bureau of Informa- 
 tion for the purpose of collecting information 
 concerning opportunities for immigrants and 
 disseminating it among them with a view to 
 
96 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 encouraging a beneficial distribution of immi- 
 grants. The main purpose was to co-operate 
 with the several states in acquainting immi- 
 grants with their advantages. 
 
 The Immigration Commission likewise con- 
 cludes that the reason the immigrant goes to 
 congested cities is because he knows of no bet- 
 ter opportunities elsewhere. It says that " a 
 large part of the immigrants were agricultural 
 labourers at home, and their immigration is 
 due to a desire to escape the low economic con- 
 ditions which attend agricultural pursuits in 
 the countries from which they come. With no 
 knowledge of other conditions, it is but natural, 
 therefore, that they should seek another line of 
 activity in this country." 
 
 It is pointed out that the thing to do is to 
 plant the immigrant where he can secure a 
 plot of ground and build a house on it, because 
 there goes on most rapidly the process of 
 Americanization. Go to Brown Park, Omaha, 
 which has been improved by the Bohemians, 
 Poles, and Lithuanians. What was a few years 
 ago a rolling prairie is to-day studded with 
 neat, well-kept homes, schools, and churches, 
 having well-cultivated gardens and flowers, and 
 conforming to the best American standards 
 among wage-earners. Go to the Italian settle- 
 ments in Rockland County, N. Y., Providence, 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS 97 
 
 R. L, and Rosetta, Penn. There the immi- 
 grants have their gardens, no matter what the 
 soil is, and sometimes in striking contrast with 
 adjacent homes of the neighbouring Ameri- 
 cans. The Poles on the abandoned farms of 
 New England, the Italians on the swamps of 
 New Jersey, and the Portuguese on Cape Cod, 
 have shown what they can do under conditions 
 that have driven out older Americans, have 
 shown that they can rehabilitate worn-out soil 
 and build up a competence in waste places. 
 
 The lowest wages paid in America go to 
 the foreigner and the highest to the native 
 American, and yet the investigations of the 
 Immigration Commission into home ownership 
 in cities reveal the fact that, while only 4.2 per 
 cent of the native-born Americans of native 
 parentage own their homes, more than 10 per 
 cent of the foreign-born and native-born of 
 foreign parentage own theirs. 
 
 A striking illustration of the need for some 
 sort of a system of distribution of immigrants 
 is to be had in a map prepared by Peter Roberts. 
 He takes a United States map and draws a 
 line from Atlantic City to the southeastern 
 corner of Illinois. Then he draws another 
 line from that point to the northwestern corner 
 of Minnesota. The little slice of territory in- 
 side of this angle bears about the same rela- 
 
98 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 tion to the whole United States as one slice of 
 pie to a whole pie — it represents only a little 
 more than one-sixth of the country's area; and 
 yet, within that comparatively small territory, 
 live nearly five-sixths of all the " new " immi- 
 gration to America. 
 
 The work of the Division of Information 
 of the Bureau of Immigration affords an in- 
 teresting indication of what may be done in the 
 direction of distributing immigrants, and of 
 the interest immigrants themselves take in the 
 work. More than thirty thousand applicants 
 received information during the year 191 1, and 
 it is estimated by Chief Powderly that these 
 applications represented at least a hundred 
 thousand immigrants. The Division directs no 
 skilled craftsmen, miners, or other underground 
 workers. It simply gave them information as 
 to places where they could settle in villages 
 and towns where they could follow other lines 
 of activity and avail themselves of garden plats 
 and low house rent. The Division does not ar- 
 range contracts for employment, but simply 
 gets a list of reputable employers who need 
 help, and furnishes a medium through which 
 the man who needs work can be brought into 
 touch with the man who needs help. 
 
 In addition to this the Division gathers and 
 disseminates information concerning the re- 
 
DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS 99 
 
 sources, products, and physical characteristics 
 of the various states, giving the immigrant the 
 name and address of the state official in each 
 state whose duty it is to encourage and aid 
 immigration into each state. Its work has 
 been highly endorsed by the Southern Com- 
 mercial Congress and by the National Board 
 of Trade, which also strongly endorsed the 
 recommendation of President Taft that immi- 
 grant stations be established at one or more 
 additional Gulf and South Atlantic ports with 
 a view to turning part of the incoming tide 
 away from New York. 
 
XII 
 
 THE IMMIGRATION COMMISSION'S 
 INVESTIGATION 
 
 THE investigation made by the Immigra- 
 tion Commission into all phases of the 
 subject of immigration represents the 
 most thorough and at the same time the most 
 expensive inquiry into the migration of man- 
 kind that ever has been made. In 1907 Con- 
 gress revised the immigration laws to some 
 degree, but at the same time provided for 
 future legislation by the creation of the Immi- 
 gration Commission, which it directed to gather 
 the facts upon which such new legislation 
 should be based. The Commission was com- 
 posed of three Senators appointed by the Presi- 
 dent of the Senate, three members of the 
 House of Representatives, appointed by the 
 Speaker, and three persons appointed by the 
 President. It was given full power to investi- 
 gate, and at the same time was supplied with 
 unlimited funds, the law creating it providing 
 " that such sums of money as may be necessary 
 100 
 
(From National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D. C. Copyright 
 TWO ROUMANIANS. 
 
IMMIGRATION INVESTIGATION 101 
 
 are hereby appropriated and authorized to be 
 paid out of the ' immigration fund.' " 
 
 The Commission decided to make a first- 
 hand investigation rather than to act merely as 
 a compiler of data already gathered. It in- 
 vestigated every possible phase of the question 
 in Europe and America, going with the utmost 
 care into the whole question of the causes and 
 effects of immigration both at home and 
 abroad. Upward of three years was consumed 
 in the inquiry, and as a result a report cover- 
 ing forty-two volumes, or practically thirty 
 thousand octavo pages, has been published. It 
 is such a monumental work that it is doubtful 
 if anybody will ever read it from A to Z. 
 However, it has a two-volume abstract and 
 index which digest the whole report, although 
 there are many things in the full report that 
 are of course referred to only in the briefest 
 way in the big abstract. 
 
 The Commission did not finish its work until 
 within a half-hour of the time the law required 
 that the report should be filed. Representative 
 William S. Bennet of New York desired to file 
 a minority report, but declared he was pre- 
 vented from so doing by the fact that the ma- 
 jority report was formulated too late to permit 
 any elaboration as to his views and conclusions. 
 
 During its life the Commission spent $790,- 
 
102 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 ooo in its investigations. There were quite a 
 few criticisms at the time concerning the long- 
 drawn-out character of the investigation and 
 the unusual expense incurred, but, considering 
 the thoroughness with which the work was 
 done, much of this criticism probably was not 
 deserved. 
 
 When it came to investigating emigration 
 conditions in Europe, six of the nine members, 
 accompanied by a large staff, went to Europe 
 in May and stayed until September. They 
 visited Italy, Austria, Hungary, Finland, 
 Greece, Turkey, and practically all other Eu- 
 ropean countries. Conferring with American 
 diplomatic and consular representatives, hold- 
 ing conferences with European emigration 
 authorities, and going out through the immi- 
 grant-furnishing districts, they studied care- 
 fully the causes of emigration and its effects 
 upon the countries from whence the immi- 
 grants come. 
 
 In studying the relations between the immi- 
 grant and various American industries use was 
 made of a large corps of investigators. Data 
 were gathered from the individual immigrant, 
 the household of the immigrant, the employers 
 of immigrants, and from local officials, organ- 
 izations, and institutions. For instance, in 
 gathering information concerning immigrants 
 
IMMIGRATION INVESTIGATION 103 
 
 in iron and steel industries, detailed information 
 was received from 86,000 employes, and an in- 
 tensive study was made of nearly 2,500 house- 
 holds, the heads of which were employed in 
 these industries. The number of immigrants 
 of each nationality, the number of their chil- 
 dren, and the number of native Americans en- 
 gaged in. the industries were ascertained. The 
 occupations of the immigrants engaged in iron 
 and steel manufacturing before they came to 
 America were investigated, while the weekly 
 wages, the lost time, the average annual earn- 
 ings, the family income, rents paid, number 
 of people per sleeping-room, home ownership, 
 citizenship, labour organization affiliations, il- 
 literacy, and many other matters were inquired 
 into. 
 
 Some of the investigations of the Commis- 
 sion were put to immediate and practical use. 
 Its agents who investigated steerage conditions 
 on transatlantic passenger ships were able 
 to pick up pieces of information which, re- 
 ported to the Bureau of Immigration, took the 
 form of recommendations that abuses within 
 the law could better be remedied by the steam- 
 ship companies. The same was true of its 
 investigation of the immigrant aid societies 
 and homes. With the information placed in 
 the hands of Commissioner Williams, at Ellis 
 
104 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 Island, steps were promptly taken to debar a 
 number of workers from the island and to re- 
 quire the immediate correction of conditions 
 complained of in several societies and homes. 
 
 The Commission's investigation of the white- 
 slave traffic was a very thorough one, and 
 information was put into the hands of the 
 immigration authorities which resulted in the 
 deportation of many engaged in the traffic as 
 well as many of their victims. Many other 
 cases were brought to light which deserved 
 prosecution, and the information obtained was 
 placed in the hands of the United States Dis- 
 trict Attorneys in many cities, with the result 
 that a large number of convictions were 
 secured. 
 
 Perhaps one of the most interesting phases 
 of the whole investigation had to do with the 
 changes in bodily form of the descendants of 
 immigrants. According to all race authorities 
 the most permanent and stable of all the char- 
 acteristics of human races is the shape of the 
 head. All else usually may alter in a race, but 
 it will continue to wear about the same kind 
 of hats, and have just about the same style of 
 long face or short face that it had before. But 
 when the European is transplanted to American 
 soil he undergoes a change. The round-headed 
 east European Hebrew becomes inclined to 
 
IMMIGRATION INVESTIGATION 105 
 
 have a long head, while the long-headed south 
 Italian gradually changes to a shorter-headed 
 race. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that there is a tendency 
 toward a uniform type, and it seems certain 
 that just as soon as immigration in race- 
 affecting quantities ceases to come to our shores 
 we will evolve a true American type, a sort 
 of composite European. Students are trying 
 to solve the problems of type changes, which 
 not only affect the shape of the head, but the 
 colour of the hair, the age of maturity, and 
 many other related characteristics. 
 
 As a result of its investigations the Com- 
 mission made a number of very important 
 recommendations to Congress, the majority of 
 which have been incorporated in a bill vetoed 
 by President Taft. It recommends that care 
 be taken that immigration shall be such in 
 quantity and quality that the process of assimi- 
 lation will not be made too difficult; that gen- 
 eral legislation on immigration should be based 
 upon economic principles and business con- 
 siderations; and that business expansion ought 
 not to be permitted to lower the American 
 standards of wages and living. 
 
 It specifically recommends that aliens con- 
 victed of any crime within five years of com- 
 ing to America shall be deported; that no im- 
 
106 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 migrant be admitted from any country having 
 adequate police records who cannot produce a 
 satisfactory certificate of character; that any 
 alien who becomes a public charge within three 
 years shall be deported. It says that in order 
 that immigrants may be protected from ex- 
 ploitation, to discourage the sending of savings 
 abroad, to encourage settlers on the land, and 
 to secure a better distribution of immigration, 
 the states ought to provide for the inspection 
 of immigrant banks, regulate labour agencies, 
 and co-operate with the Federal Government 
 in bringing their opportunities to the attention 
 of immigrants. The recommendation is also 
 made that any alien trying to persuade another 
 alien not to become an American citizen shall 
 be immediately deported. 
 
 With reference to the restriction of immi- 
 gration the Commission concludes that the first 
 restriction should be against those who do not 
 intend to become American citizens. Another 
 restriction recommended by the Commission 
 applies to those who cannot read or write in 
 some language. It concludes that there is to- 
 day an oversupply of unskilled labour in the 
 United States, and that a sufficient number of 
 immigrants should be debarred to produce a 
 marked effect upon the unskilled labour supply. 
 
 With regard to Asiatic immigration the Com- 
 
IMMIGRATION INVESTIGATION 107 
 
 mission recommends that the general policy of 
 excluding Chinese labour be continued, that 
 the present understanding concerning Japanese 
 and Korean immigration be permitted to stand 
 without further legislation so long as the re- 
 striction continues to be effective; and that an 
 understanding be reached with the British gov- 
 ernment whereby East Indian labourers would 
 be effectively prevented from entering the 
 United States. 
 
XIII 
 GENERAL LEGISLATION 
 
 THE history of immigration legislation 
 and attempted legislation in the United 
 States affords an interesting sidelight 
 upon our reception of the immigrant from the 
 beginning down to the present time. Prior to 
 1835 immigration was taken as a matter of 
 course, a welcome was given to every immi- 
 grant who came, and the only legislation that 
 was enacted was the law for the protection of 
 steerage passengers passed in 18 19, and for 
 the gathering of statistical data concerning im- 
 migrants to America. 
 
 But the great inpouring of foreigners, many 
 of whom were Catholics, after 1835 began to 
 arouse an opposition to immigration on the part 
 of some Protestants. This opposition culminated 
 in the Native American or Know-Nothing 
 movement, and for a while it seemed as if it 
 might accomplish a restriction of immigration. 
 An effort to make nativism a national question 
 was made, and although it gained some little 
 headway, the feeling against foreigners sub- 
 108 
 
GENERAL LEGISLATION 109 
 
 sided somewhat during the forties, but the 
 heavy increase in immigrants just prior to 
 1850 again stirred up the anti- foreign senti- 
 ment, and this time it found expression in the 
 Know-Nothing movement. It tried to capture 
 the presidency in 1856, nominating Millard 
 Fillmore as its standard-bearer. But Ex- 
 President Fillmore fared worse in 1856 than 
 did President Taft in 19 12, for he carried 
 only one state — Maryland. And it is probable 
 that he carried that state as the Whig nominee 
 rather than as the Know-Nothing nominee. 
 
 In spite of the Know-Nothings, further legis- 
 lation was enacted in 1847 an ^ 1848, throwing 
 still further protection around the steerage im- 
 migrant, and when the Kansas-Nebraska bill 
 was pending Congress gave the right of partici- 
 pation in local affairs to foreigners who had 
 declared their intention of becoming citi- 
 zens. 
 
 The Federal Government did not really as- 
 sume control of immigration until 1882, prior 
 to that time it having been regarded as a 
 question for state jurisdiction, but as explained 
 in a preceding chapter, in 1864 President Lin- 
 coln, desiring to keep up the necessary supply 
 of labour, asked Congress to encourage the 
 importation of contract labour. Such a law 
 was promptly enacted and was kept on the 
 
110 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 statute books for four years, when it was 
 repealed. 
 
 President Grant first recommended, in a 
 special message to Congress, that immigration 
 should be put under national rather than state 
 control. But the states continued to hold the 
 subject as one within their jurisdiction until 
 1876, when the Supreme Court, in an important 
 case, declared that any state law providing for 
 the compulsory inspection of passengers and 
 detention of vessels of foreign countries was 
 restrictive of foreign commerce and therefore 
 unconstitutional. The Court then did an un- 
 usual thing for the Supreme Court, recom- 
 mending that Congress take jurisdiction over 
 these matters, setting forth that it could " more 
 appropriately, and with more acceptance, exer- 
 cise it than any other body known to our law." 
 It further added that if Congress would take 
 control of immigration it would effectively and 
 satisfactorily settle a serious matter which had 
 long given rise to contest and complaint. 
 
 Congress, six years later, acted upon the 
 recommendations of the Supreme Court by 
 passing a general immigration law. This law 
 imposed a head tax of fifty cents on ^ach im- 
 migrant, and this money was used at the port 
 of collection for the enforcement of the im- 
 migration law and the care of immigrants after 
 
GENERAL LEGISLATION 111 
 
 their arrival. The law gave the Secretary of 
 the Treasury jurisdiction over immigration 
 matters and authorized him to enter into con- 
 tracts with such state officers as might be de- 
 signated by the governor of any state, to take 
 charge of the local affairs of immigration 
 within such state. The law provided that for- 
 eign convicts (except those convicted of politi- 
 cal offenses), lunatics, idiots, and persons likely 
 to become public charges, should not be per- 
 mitted to land. 
 
 The law of 1882, farming out to the states 
 the control of immigration, failed of its pur- 
 pose, and by 1888 there was such continued 
 assertion that its terms, as well as those of the 
 law prohibiting the immigration of contract 
 labourers enacted in 1885, were being violated 
 and evaded, that a committee was appointed by 
 the House to investigate the matter. 
 
 This committee recommended that the en- 
 forcement of the immigration law should be 
 entrusted solely to state officers, praised the 
 " old " immigration, condemned the " new," / 
 
 and announced that the time for restricted im- fc*" 
 migration had arrived. In 1 889 the Senate and 
 House created standing committees on immi- 
 gration, and they jointly made a further in- 
 vestigation. The result was the law of 1891, 
 which added many features still found in the 
 
112 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 immigration law. It gave the Federal Govern- 
 ment sole control of immigration, excluded 
 persons suffering from loathsome and danger- 
 ous contagious diseases, and entrusted to the 
 Public Health and Marine Hospital Service the 
 important task of making the necessary health 
 inspections. It strengthened the contract la- 
 bour law, and required the steamship companies 
 bringing deportable aliens to American ports 
 to carry them back at their own expense. 
 
 In 1892 still another investigation was or- 
 dered, and a joint committee of the two houses 
 of Congress recommended further changes. 
 It reported that inspection up to that time was 
 largely a farce, and based on this the law was 
 amended in 1893, by which the boards of in- 
 quiry were created. The following year the 
 head tax on immigrants was raised to one 
 dollar. 
 
 In 1897 Congress passed another law, which 
 excluded those aliens over sixteen who were 
 physically able but who could not read or write, 
 exception being made of the parents, grand- 
 parents, minor children, and wives of ad- 
 missible immigrants. President Cleveland 
 vetoed this measure, which was the first liter- 
 acy test ever passed by Congress. He said, in 
 answer to the charge that our immigration 
 was falling off in quality, that the same thing 
 
GENERAL LEGISLATION 113 
 
 was said of immigrants who, with their de- 
 scendants, are now numbered among Ameri- 
 ca's best citizens. He thought a hundred 
 thousand illiterate immigrants who came to 
 found homes and to work were less dangerous 
 than one unruly agitator. The House passed 
 the bill over Cleveland's veto, but the Senate 
 refused to do so. 
 
 In 1903, after the investigation by the Indus- 
 trial Commission had been made, the House 
 again passed an immigration law with the lit- 
 eracy test in it. The Senate refused to concur 
 in the establishment of such a test, but added a 
 provision increasing the immigrant head tax 
 from one dollar to two dollars. The immigra- 
 tion and naturalization of anarchists was pro- 
 hibited. This bill finally became a law, and 
 although the immigration question continued in 
 the forefront of legislative interest, no addi- 
 tional legislation was enacted until 1907, when 
 out of a number of bills Congress finally agreed 
 upon a law which raised the head tax to four 
 dollars, created the Immigration Commission, 
 and empowered the President to refuse entrance 
 to the immigrants from any country who hold 
 passports to other countries than the United 
 States, when those passports are being used to 
 enable the holders to come to the United States 
 to the detriment of internal labour conditions. 
 
114 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 This is the clause under which Uncle Sam ex- 
 cludes Japanese and Korean labourers from 
 the United States — a sort of diplomatic, sugar- 
 coated exclusion act without any offense to 
 Japan in it. 
 
 The law of 1907 also set the face of the 
 nation more positively against the international 
 traffic in " white slaves/' and this feature of 
 the law was strengthened by another law en- 
 acted in 19 10. % 
 
 The Commissioner General of Immigration 
 in 19 1 2 prepared the draft of a law embodying 
 his ideas on immigration. This bill provides 
 some advanced recommendations, which would, 
 if incorporated into law, save many thousands 
 of dollars in charity and prison expenses to the 
 country. It provides that criminals, paupers, 
 violators of the white-slave laws, alien seamen, 
 and others may be deported within five years 
 after their entry into the United States. The 
 Secretary of Commerce and Labour is made 
 the final judge in all these matters. There are 
 many other provisions calculated to strengthen 
 the hands of the immigration authorities in 
 keeping out undesirable immigrants and to 
 compel the steamship companies to aid the 
 United States in carrying out the law rather 
 than aiding immigrants to evade it. 
 
XIV 
 THE ALIEN IN THE MINE 
 
 THE immigrant long has been the main- 
 stay of the American mining industry. 
 For instance, he and his children con- 
 stitute practically three-fourths of the labour 
 force of the bituminous coal mines of the 
 United States. And, generally speaking, the bulk 
 of this immigrant labour found in the mines is 
 but lately arrived and of the " new " immigra- 
 tion. Prior to 1890 the average bituminous 
 coal miner was a native American, a Welsh- 
 man, a Scot, an Irishman, an Englishman, or a 
 German. He wielded a pick, and his work 
 required skill and experience. He undercut 
 the coal, drilled his own holes, fired his own 
 shots, and, together with his helper, loaded his 
 coal on cars at so much per ton for the entire 
 operation. 
 
 Then came the invention of the mining ma- 
 chine, capable of doing the work of many pick- 
 miners, and thereafter large numbers of help- 
 ers and coal-shovellers were needed. With the 
 coal undercut by machinery, the holes drilled 
 115 
 
116 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 in the same way, and the shots fired by an ex- 
 pert in his line, any immigrant, however il- 
 literate, and however ignorant of mining con- 
 ditions, could do the bulk of the hand-work in 
 the mine. The result was that the husky Slovak, 
 whose only skill was main force and awkward- 
 ness, could do more work than the miner of 
 the " old " immigration. After the Slovak 
 came the Magyar, the Pole, and the Italian. 
 And when they came into the mine their prede- 
 cessors went out. 
 
 One frequently hears that the " new " im- 
 migrant gets into a certain line of work, drives 
 out the native American and the " old " immi- 
 grant, and then stays there. But this is not a 
 fair statement of conditions. They work there 
 for a while, and soon one discovers many of 
 them searching better fields in the same indus- 
 try, or climbing up a rung of the industrial 
 ladder into work on top of the ground — maybe 
 into a steel plant, a plough factory, or the like. 
 
 The "new" immigrant, illiterate, inexperi- 
 enced, unable to speak or to understand Eng- 
 lish, makes an excellent mine worker. He can- 
 not talk back to his boss, he is unacquainted 
 with anything that savours of insubordination, 
 and his training in the fields in Europe, where 
 he frequently had to walk four or five miles 
 from his village home to his work and back, 
 
THE ALIEN IN THE MINE 117 
 
 and work from sun to sun, has made him 
 tractable and willing to work hard. He is 
 usually glad to get work at the wages the opera- 
 tor is willing to pay, for that is a great im- 
 provement over what he got at home. His 
 low standards of living, his ready acceptance 
 of a low wage and existing working conditions, 
 his lack of permanent interest in his occupa- 
 tion, his indifference to labour organizations, 
 his slow progress toward assimilation, have 
 made him the employe the operators want, 
 and the principal obstacle in the way of com- 
 pelling better conditions for the miner. 
 
 The story of Calumet, in the northern pen- 
 insula of Michigan, illustrates the immigrant's 
 monopoly of the mining industry in America. 
 It is a city of 45,000, and almost as un-Ameri-* 
 can as Naples, Warsaw, or Trieste. It is diffi- 
 cult to find an American in the place. There is 
 a babel of tongues, twenty different races con- 
 stituting its population. Sixteen nationalities 
 are represented in its school-teaching force. 
 Its people are the foreigners and their children 
 who live by the copper mines under Lake Su- 
 perior. The native-born are the ones who have 
 colonized at Calumet, and they have named 
 their settlement, " Houghton.'' 
 
 The men who mine our coal were not always 
 human moles burrowing in the ground year 
 
118 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 in and year out. Only one-fifth of those who 
 mine the soft coal of the country ever worked 
 in a mine before they came to America, and 
 nearly three-fifths of them grew to manhood 
 working in the fields of southern and eastern 
 Europe. Perhaps they were sheep-herders fol- 
 lowing their flocks over the rough hills; may- 
 hap they worked in the bright-hued poppy 
 fields. Whatever they did they lived close to 
 nature, amid bright, health-giving, strength- 
 making surroundings. Now they must work 
 where never a ray of natural light comes. 
 
 Peter Roberts strikingly tells the story of 
 the miner of to-day. " * Production/ * ton- 
 nage/ " he says, " that is the talisman in the 
 life of so many managers who want to make a 
 record, and they forget the men who ought to 
 count for more than production. In a coal- 
 shaft where the labour force was almost wholly 
 foreign, the man in charge wanted to make a 
 record. ' Get out the coal/ was the order, and 
 the wheels were running at their swiftest. A 
 boy came and said, * There's fire on level three/ 
 The foreman replied, ' It's a mistake, get out 
 the coal.' An hour passed, and another warn- 
 ing came; but the word was passed, 'We are 
 breaking the record, get out the coal.' Then 
 another half -hour of rushing out the coal, and 
 then the cry, ' The third level is full of smoke.' 
 
THE ALIEN IN THE MINE 119 
 
 The wheels stopped; but it was too late; no 
 word could be sent to the surface. The air 
 current changed, and none of the men on that 
 level could escape. The manager made his 
 record, but it was a record so gruesome that 
 ninety million people felt the shock the next 
 morning. Put the man first and tonnage sec- 
 ond, and many accidents will be prevented. 
 We have kept the wheels of industry running, 
 and also the hearse. We have made records, 
 and so has the recording angel." 
 
 At the same time it must be remembered 
 that the immigrant's indifference is oftentimes 
 the cause of accidents in mines as well as else- 
 where. Some of them are so reckless and take 
 so many chances that the added risk alone has 
 been sufficient to banish native American and 
 older immigrants from the mines. The Bu- 
 reau of Mines puts some of the burden of 
 responsibility for accidents upon the shoulders 
 of the miners themselves. It says that some 
 of them are inexperienced and do not take 
 proper precautions for their own safety or for 
 the safety of others, and that this becomes a 
 serious menace unless they are restrained by 
 carefully enforced regulations. 
 
 The average wage paid the miner is not 
 large. The investigation of the Immigration 
 Commission showed that all miners over 18 
 
120 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 years of age averaged $2.19 per day, but that 
 they worked only enough days in the year to 
 make their total income per year $443. Only 
 two-fifths of the families investigated showed 
 that they could live on the wages of the head, 
 of the house alone. More than a third of them 
 supplemented the family income by keeping 
 boarders, and some of them had children at 
 work. In this connection it is interesting to* 
 note how other industries, dependent upon the 
 labour of women and children, are affected in 
 their distribution by the mining industry. For 
 instance, cigar and tobacco factories, silk mills, 
 clothing manufacturing establishments, and 
 other small industries gather around the min- 
 ing centres, for here is a cheap supply of 
 woman and child labour, forced out of the 
 home by the necessities of the family ex- 
 chequer. The silk industry is largely concen- * 
 trated in the Pennsylvania anthracite region be- 
 cause of the labour supply there. 
 
 But the foreigner in the mine seems cheer- • 
 fully to suit his standard of living to his in- 
 come. This is illustrated by the rents paid per 
 person among native- and foreign-born families 
 investigated by the Immigration Commission. 
 The Bulgarians, for instance, were able to 
 crowd themselves so much that the rent of 
 their houses averaged only ninety-seven cents 
 
THE ALIEN IN THE MINE 121 
 
 a month per person. The Macedonians did 
 better still, their average expense for house 
 rent being seventy-eight cents per person. 
 Nearly all of the " new " immigrants were able 
 to hold the expenditu/e below $1.50 per month. 
 
 One may find much encouragement for the 
 future by observing how much better the sons 
 and daughters of foreigners live than their 
 parents. The investigation shows that while 
 the average foreigner spends only $1.51 a 
 month for the roof over his head, his native- 
 born children spend $2.50. The native Ameri- 
 cans in the same industries spend $2.58 per 
 month. This difference is due rather to the 
 number of people living in a house than to the 
 rental rates on the house. This shows that the 
 second generation is not willing to live under 
 such crowded and insanitary conditions as 
 their fathers, and that in a single generation 
 they approximate the American standard. 
 
 The indications are that for many years to 
 come the miners who dig the coal with which 
 we run our railroads, steamships, factories, 
 furnaces, and mills, and with which we heat 
 our homes, will still come from southern and 
 eastern Europe, and they will continue to live 
 as men down in the darkness of the earth 
 rather than as men up in the sunlight of day, 
 but at the same time they will probably join 
 
122 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 the races that came before them in giving to 
 America a sturdy yeomanry in their children. 
 They may resist the leaven of Americanization^ 
 but their children will be willing subjects for 
 its processes. 
 
 It is because of that very fact that it be- 
 hooves Americans who have more than one 
 generation of American ideals behind them to 
 do all in their power to make especial provision 
 for the nurture and care of the children of » 
 our pit-toiling immigrants. They must not 
 only be educated in the three R's, but their 
 bodies must be cared for, they must not too 
 young be offered up to our modern Molochs, 
 they must be saved from that license of un- 
 morality to which unaccustomed liberty so often 
 leads. 
 
(From National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D. C. 
 A FINNISH GIRL. 
 
 Copyright, 1913.) 
 
XV 
 THE FOREIGNER IN THE FACTORY 
 
 MORE than four-fifths of the immi- 
 grants who enter the factories of 
 America are unskilled labourers. In 
 the past ten years not less than six million such 
 unskilled workers have been recruited into the 
 industrial army of the United States. In two 
 generations this movement has transformed the 
 country from a nation almost wholly given to 
 agriculture into one that is in the very van of 
 the industrial nations of the earth, a phenome- 
 non without precedent in history. 
 
 America boasts of its industrial supremacy, 
 and yet what a vast proportion of this su- 
 premacy it owes to the immigrants who left 
 Europe to come here ! Where would our iron 
 and steel industry be if the seven-tenths of the 
 workers who are foreigners or sons of foreign- 
 ers should walk out? What would become of 
 the so-called beef trust if three-fourths of its 
 workers who are foreigners should suddenly 
 become disgusted with foul Packingtown and 
 throw up their jobs? Where would we get the 
 123 
 
124 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 coal to turn our wheels of industry if the seven- 
 tenths of the miners represented by foreigners 
 and their sons should suddenly decide to work 
 at trades where the light of day may be with 
 them? How would we continue our supply 
 of plate-glass, window-glass, bottles, and glass 
 tableware if the foreign contingent and their 
 sons who constitute three-fifths of the labour 
 force of the glass industry were to eliminate 
 themselves ? 
 
 What would become of our woollen and 
 worsted mills if the seven-eighths of their 
 wage-earners who are foreigners and their 
 children should walk out? What would be- 
 come of the silk mills if the four-fifths who are 
 foreigners and their children should cease to 
 be wage-earners? And if the nine-tenths of 
 the cotton-mill operatives who are foreigners 
 and their families were to leave their looms, 
 America might have to go back to the clothes 
 made of skins. Were it not for the foreigner 
 a " hand-me-down " suit could scarcely be 
 bought for love or money. And when we re- 
 member that the foreigner and his children 
 make half of our shirts, collars, and cuffs; 
 tan, curry, and finish nearly five-sixths of our 
 leather; make half of our gloves; refine nearly 
 nine-tenths of our oil, and nearly nineteen- 
 twentieths of our sugar; and supply nearly half 
 
FOREIGNERS IN THE FACTORY 125 
 
 of the labour in the manufacture of our tobacco 
 and cigars, we see that he is, after all, quite an 
 important factor in our industrial supremacy. 
 
 The foreigner has a monopoly upon the dan- . 
 gerous, the dirty, and the odorous trades. In the 
 slaughtering industry you will find him usually 
 in such places as the hide-curing rooms, where 
 they shake, count, and pack the slimy, slippery 
 hides; in the fertilizer plant where the refuse 
 of the slaughter house is assembled amid un- 
 speakable stenches; in the soap-making de- 
 partment where fats are reduced and the alka- 
 lis mixed, and where unbearable odours persist 
 all the time. And yet you find him a patient, 
 cheerful worker, content with his average 
 wage of $557 a year. 
 
 Visit a big contract work like the New York 
 aqueduct or v the Barge Canal, and here again 
 you find the foreigner. Go to the lumber camps 
 of the Northwest and he greets you. And yet 
 wherever they are encountered they are found 
 to be the backbone of industry, ready to take 
 the hardest and most unpleasant jobs, and to 
 work under taskmasters who are sometimes not 
 less harsh than the Simon Legree of " Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin.'' 
 
 One of the peculiar things about the for-.* 
 eigner in the factory is the tendency toward 
 racial monopoly in many lines. The French 
 
126 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 Canadian is mainly to be found in cotton fac- 
 tories, copper mining and smelting, %ahd the 
 boot and shoe trade. The Croatian is found 
 in the mine, the steel plant, and the filthy 
 trades. The Danes take to leather, furniture, 
 and collars and cuffs. The Dutch work in fur- 
 niture factories and silk making and dyeing. 
 
 America's era of greatest expansion has been • 
 coincident with the rise of the " new " immi- 
 gration. In the thirty years since the new 
 tide of humanity began to set in in earnest, the 
 capital of our industries has increased some six- 
 fold and the value of their products about 
 threefold. There are those who regret that 
 the tide from southern and eastern Europe ever 
 set in. One class says that if the " new " im- 
 migrant had not come wages would have con- 
 tinued upon such a high plane that the people 
 of northwestern Europe could not have turned 
 away from such an opportunity, and that we 
 would still be getting the bulk of our immigra-. 
 tion from there. Others declare that the 
 immigrant is largely responsible for the expan- 
 sion that took place. According to this view 
 he was attracted by then existing opportunities, 
 and his presence in large numbers stimulated 
 the capital to devise new ways and means of 
 using him, the end of which stimulation was 
 our great industrial expansion. 
 
FOREIGNERS IN THE FACTORY 127 
 
 But, perhaps, more to the point is the story i 
 of the inventions which have made it possible 
 for the raw immigrant of the present to do 
 more than the skilled native of the past. Take 
 the cotton factory. Here, after a brief train- 
 ing, the ignorant immigrant is able to operate 
 the automatic looms and ring spinning frames 
 that do the work which formerly required skilled 
 weavers and mule spinners. In the glass fac- 
 tory the unlettered labourer, with the aid of 
 machinery, can now do as good work and 
 vastly more of it, as the best-trained glass- 
 blower could do thirty years ago. The in- . 
 ventor is perhaps the man to whom the credit 
 for our industrial expansion must be given. 
 He devised machines that are able to more than 
 supply the difference between the awkwardness 
 of the ignorant labourer and the ability of the 
 skilled workman. 
 
 The immigration from eastern and southern* 
 Europe has adversely affected the labourt 
 unions of the communities into which they 
 have gone. In the cotton goods industry, for 
 instance, it is only the fact that the new labour 
 has been controlled by the skilled employes, 
 such as the weavers and tenders of the slashers, 
 that has saved the labour unions from disrup-l 
 tion. It is only at Fall River that the unions 
 are strong enough to enforce their demands, 
 
128 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 and at that only 9,000 out of a total of 30,000 
 employes belong to the unions. The greatest 
 difficulty with which the labour leaders have to 
 contend has been the low standard of living 
 among the workmen of the " new " immigra- 
 tion, and their willingness to accept work under 
 conditions and at wages entirely unsatisfactory 
 to the older employes. They do not like to join, 
 the unions because of the dues, and this pre- 
 vents the labour organizations from accumu- 
 lating the necessary resources for conducting 
 strikes\y 
 
 In pleasing contrast with conditions that now 
 obtain in such mill centres as Lawrence and 
 Lowell is the story Charles Dickens told of the 
 operatives at Lowell after his return home. 
 He said the girls, who were of sturdy New 
 England parentage, were all well dressed and 
 extremely clean; they were healthy in appear- 
 ance and had the manners of refined young 
 women; the rooms in which they worked were 
 as well-ordered as themselves. In all, he said, 
 there was as much fresh air, cleanliness, and 
 comfort as the nature of the occupation would 
 possibly admit. He further declared they were 
 such a healthy-looking lot that, assuming it 
 was necessary for them to gain their daily 
 bread by the labour of their hands, there was 
 not one he would have removed if he had had 
 
FOREIGNERS IN THE FACTORY 129 
 
 the power. He thought it a remarkable fact 
 that in many of the operative boarding-houses 
 there were joint-stock pianos, that nearly all of 
 the young women subscribed to circulating li- 
 braries, and that among them they published a 
 periodical. 
 
 Another writer, herself a mill-girl for years, 
 says that except in rare instances the rights 
 of the early mill-girls were secure. They were 
 subject to no extortion; if they did extra work 
 they were paid in full for it, and their own ac- 
 count of labour done by the piece was accepted. 
 They kept the figures and were paid accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 The results that may be accomplished by the 
 manufacturer who employs labourers of the 
 " new " immigration are shown by the experi- 
 ence of the superintendent of a large plant in 
 Ohio, which employs several hundred Magyars, i 
 When they first came they had the usual un- 
 desirable qualities of the new immigrant. But 
 the superintendent planned to eliminate these 
 qualities. He became a member of their fra- 
 ternal society, advised them in their invest- 
 ments, put his name down as a charter member 
 of their church, loaned them money at nominal 
 interest, built them a hall, and called in experts 
 to lay out a plan of amusements, educational 
 work, and lectures. He says of the results: 
 
130 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 " After twelve years of experience our works 
 have gathered together a splendid force of men. 
 We started out with a small reading-room 
 with a competent instructor in English, and 
 found it necessary to build a larger building. 
 They have succeeded in building two churches, 
 have a number of beneficial societies, and are 
 better citizens and better workmen. I can only 
 add that if it could be made possible for every 
 large concern employing this class of labour to 
 see the splendid results which we have ob- 
 tained, I feel sure they would not hesitate to put 
 forth every effort to extend the work." 
 
XVI 
 THE FOREIGNER ON THE FARM 
 
 EVERYBODY knows that the majority 
 of the immigrants from northwestern 
 Europe have planted themselves on the 
 soil — that they came to America to cast their 
 lot forever with its fortunes. A large per- 
 centage of them are engaged in farming. More 
 than half of the Norwegians in America are on 
 the farm, nearly half of the Swedes are there, 
 and nearly half of the Danes. Two-fifths of 
 the Swiss and a third of the Germans have 
 helped make up our grand totals in crop-raising, 
 stock-raising, dairying, etc. 
 
 Even the " new " immigration is not wholly 
 given over to mining and manufacturing. 
 Some of the immigrants are going to the land. 
 When the Immigration Commission made its 
 investigation there were some forty Italian agri- 
 cultural colonies and communities. And they 
 have been doing well. Whether upon the muck 
 lands of New York, the sandy barrens of New 
 Jersey, the rock-strewn hills of New England, 
 or the heavy black Brazos cotton lands of 
 131 
 
132 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 Texas, they have been able to make a fair liv- 
 ing, and often by working early and late, with 
 an incredible expenditure of labour, to make 
 productive lands upon which Americans have 
 all but starved. They thrive best in communi- , 
 ties, for the Italian is pre-eminently a social 
 being and likes to have close and sympathetic 
 neighbours as well as lands. In industry, thrift, 
 careful attention to details, crop yields, and 
 other matters he compares well with the other 
 farmers of his vicinity. His patience, un- 
 flagging industry, and capacity for hard, mo- 
 notonous labour make him a good farmer. 
 
 Where the second generation of Italians! 
 grow up on the little farms of their fathers 
 they develop into a sturdy people, measuring 
 up in the main to all the best standards of 
 second generations of foreigners in America. 
 In the big settlement at Vineland, N. J., whichl 
 is the largest rural Italian settlement in the 
 United States, the second generation is stick- 
 ing to the little truck-farm and making money. 
 
 Not only are the Italians starting farming 
 communities in many parts of the country, but 
 in the southern cotton fields, notably in the} 
 " delta " region, they are in prime favour as 
 cotton-pickers, and also as labourers on sugar 
 plantations, in many places being regarded as 
 much superior to negro labour. 
 
FOREIGNERS ON THE FARM 133 
 
 Most of the Italian farm-owners are men 
 who started out as pick-and-shovel men, rail- 
 road section men, and labourers on general 
 construction work. Some of them were fac- 
 tory workers. But once they began farming 
 others followed their example, and soon their 
 relatives and friends in Italy began coming, so . 
 that before long they had established a settle- 
 ment. 
 
 Where the Hebrews have gone to the land 
 they usually have done fairly well. With them, 
 as with the Italians, their most successful colony . 
 is probably the one near Vineland, N. J. This 
 colony was established amid pine barrens about 
 1882, and was conducted largely upon a com- 
 munistic basis until 1890, when it seemed to be 
 upon the verge of failure. Then some money r 
 from the Baron Hirsch Fund was made avail- 
 able for the financial rehabilitation of the 
 colony. Since that time it has thrived and 
 to-day stands out as an evidence of what the 
 Hebrew may do when he goes to farming in- 
 stead of to merchandising. Some of them have 
 developed a new sort of agriculture — summer- 
 boarder agriculture it has been called. The 
 Hebrew farmer opens his house to the summer 
 boarder and thus makes his own market for his 
 products. The Jewish Agricultural and In-/ 
 dustrial Aid Society now operates an experi- 
 
134 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 mental farm on Long Island and prospective 
 rural colonists are offered a course of instruc- 
 tion in farming. It is the opinion of the Im- 
 migration Commission that as a pioneer farmer/ 
 the Jew might not be a great success, but that, 
 if he has the means to begin with, he will 
 usually make a success where he starts on an' 
 ordinary American farm. 
 
 The Poles are beginning more and more to 
 turn to agriculture as a means of livelihood, 
 and there are some fifty settlements where they 
 are found in considerable numbers, these settle- 
 ments representing nearly seven thousand fami- 
 lies. Some few settlements were established 
 before the Civil War. But it was not until 
 about 1885 that the Polish communities began- 7 
 to dot the prairies of the Dakotas and Minne- 
 sota. Some of the settlers were immigrants 
 direct from Europe, but more of them were 
 labourers who had spent several years in 
 American mines and factories, and had saved 
 some money. They usually bought land more 
 with an eye to its cheapness than to its produc- 
 tivity, v 
 
 The most recent tendency of the Pole is to 
 settle on the abandoned farms of the East, and 
 in the main they are farm labourers who stayed 
 with the native farmers as long as they oper- 
 ated the farms and in the meantime had saved 
 
FOREIGNERS ON THE FARM 135 
 
 up enough to buy the place when the owner 
 decided to leave it. Most of the recruits are 
 of direct immigration, comparatively few of 
 those working in mines and factories being at- 
 tracted to the farm. Some of the latter class, 
 however, have been settling on the poorer hill 
 farms of New England, attracted thence by 
 enterprising real estate agents and big adver- 
 tisements. They have been especially success- { 
 ful on farms raising specialized crops. In 
 Portage County, Wis., they grow potatoes,/ 
 while in New England they usually grow 
 onions or tobacco and do well with both. The 
 Pole has been called a lover of the land, and 
 he never is quite satisfied when he is not the* 
 owner of a little plat of it. 
 
 More than a third of all our Bohemian popu-y 
 lation has taken to the farm, and the Bohemian 
 is proving to more southerly sections of the 
 country what the Scandinavian has proved to 
 the Northwest. Texas has an unusually large 
 number of Bohemian farmers, and they make 
 good, just like the German of Pennsylvania 
 and the states on the eastern side of the Miss- 
 issippi valley has made good. Most of them 
 grow cotton, but unlike the native cotton 
 grower, they raise enough of other crops to 
 supply their families and their live stock. The 
 Texas situation affords a present-day picture 
 
130 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 of the conditions which led to the great migra- 
 tion from Pennsylvania and northern Virginia 
 into the Middle West — a migration that carried 
 with it the father and mother of Abraham 
 Lincoln. The old settlers, filled with the 
 pioneer spirit, as soon as population began to 
 get a little dense and land values began to rise, 
 sold out at good prices and trekked to the West. 
 To-day the old Bohemian settler in eastern 
 Texas, willing to let others follow the easy 
 life of settled farming, turns his eyes toward 
 the Panhandle, takes his family and goes once 
 more to the frontier to grow up with the coun- 
 try, and to add to wealth through the enhance- 
 ment of land values as well as through the 
 growing of crops. The Bohemian farmer of- 
 Texas has proved a progressive citizen, hard- 
 working, honest, teaching his children a love 
 for the farm, and growing a race of which 
 Texas is proud. 
 
 The most gratifying result of a study of the 
 members of the " new " immigration who have 
 gone into agriculture is that it reveals a second' 
 generation coming on that is as well American- 
 ized as the Germans of Pennsylvania, the 
 Scandinavians of the Northwest, or the Scotch 
 and the Irish of the Middle West. It demon- 
 strates that the immigrant who settles on the 
 land, whether he be of the " old " or the " new " 
 
FOREIGNERS ON THE FARM 137 
 
 immigration, will sooner or later enrich the 
 nation with a posterity that is a tower of* 
 strength and a great economic asset. And that 
 lends much encouragement to the efforts of 
 those who are directing the attention of the 
 immigrant away from industrial life and to- 
 ward agricultural life. 
 
 An interesting type of immigrant in agricul- 
 ture is the one known as the seasonal labourer.* 
 He may be a cranberry picker in the bogs of 
 New England, a sugar-beet worker of Wiscon- 
 sin, or a strawberry picker of Delaware and 
 New Jersey. Gradually one sees the older 
 races of immigrants giving way to the newer 
 ones in these fields of cheap labour as well as 
 in other places. The native Americans and the 
 Germans gave way to the South Italians in the 
 Jersey berryfields, while in the Massachusetts 
 cranberry bogs, the Poles, Finns, and Italians 
 are gradually yielding to the Black Portuguese 
 or " Bravas." Near Geneva, N. Y., the South 
 Italians are gradually giving way to the Greeks, 
 and in the vicinity of Oneida, N. Y., the Syrians 
 are getting a foothold as labourers on truck- 
 farms.V 
 
 On the whole, the showing that the immi- 
 grant of the present day is able to make when 
 he goes on the land is not a bad one. One 
 out of every five of all the foreign-born popula- 
 
138 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 tion in the United States lives by agriculture, 
 but this large ratio is due to the " old " immi- 
 gration in years gone by. The number of the 
 " new " immigration on the land is compara- 
 tively small, but the conditions are good enough) 
 to warrant the hope that it eventually will 
 grow. But at present the drift is plainly to 
 the industrial centres and to city pursuits and 
 somewhat away from the farm. However, it 
 is the hope of many of the states which have 
 vacant land that they can make it easy for 
 an immigrant with ordinary qualifications to 
 get securely settled on a farm, be it large or 
 small, and thus turn the tide back to the land. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS IN 
 SCHOOL 
 
 THE investigation into the status of the 
 children of immigrants in schools was 
 one of the most extensive planned and 
 carried out by the Immigration Commission. 
 Inquiries were made which reached more than 
 two million school-children, approximately a 
 quarter of a million of them in parochial, 
 schools. It also reached some fifty thousand 
 teachers and upward of thirty thousand stu- 
 dents in the higher educational institutions of 
 the country. The purpose was to ascertain to 
 what extent the children of foreign parentage 
 make use of our educational system and what 
 progress they make in school work. 
 
 In the main the survey of the subject was 
 a general one, but in a number of cities hav- 
 ing a large percentage of children of foreign 
 parentage, the examination was made more 
 in detail. More than half of all the school 
 children in the public schools of the thirty- 
 seven cities investigated were of foreign par- 
 139 
 
140 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 entage. In fact, fifty-seven out of every hun- 
 dred of the children were of foreign parentage. 
 Some of the cities showed a remarkable propor- 
 tion of such children. In Chelsea and Duluth 
 it was nearly three- fourths, while in New 
 York, New Bedford, Chicago, Fall River, and 
 Shenandoah, upward of two out of three were 
 of foreign parentage. 
 
 The children of the races who do not speak 
 English have rather a hard time getting started. 
 There are a few exceptions. For instance, in 
 the case of the Swedes, there are only a little 
 more than half as many of their children be- 
 hind in their studies as there are among the 
 native American children. The little Dutch 
 boys and girls show about the same amount of 
 precocity. But when it comes to some of the 
 other nationalities there is a different story. 
 Two-thirds of the Polish Jew children have an 
 unequal struggle in their work, while nearly 
 two-thirds of the children from sunny south- 
 ern Italy are unable to keep up with their 
 American fellow-pupils. More than half of 
 the Slovaks, Magyars, Poles, North Italians, 
 and Jews are behind the normal qualifications 
 of their years. 
 
 And yet with all the difficulties experienced 
 by the children of the non-English-speaking 
 foreigner, they show a better percentage of pu- 
 
IMMIGRANT SCHOOL CHILDREN 141 
 
 pils measuring up to the average school stand- 
 ards than is shown by the American negro. 
 Whereas, taking them as a whole, the non- 
 English-speaking foreigner's children show 
 only 43 retarded pupils out of a hundred, the 
 negro children show 69. These figures are 
 the most extensive ever brought out concern- 
 ing the relative mentality of white and negro 
 children, and have added interest because they 
 come from thirty-seven cities, only one of 
 which is south of the Mason and Dixon 
 line. 
 
 The teachers in the schools of the cities in- 
 vestigated ought to be able to sympathize with 
 the struggles of the children of immigrants, for 
 it is shown that one-half of them were either 
 immigrants themselves or the children of immi- 
 grants. The majority of these teachers, of 
 course, came from northwestern Europe, al- 
 though other races were not without repre- 
 sentation. The Irish furnish more than twice 
 as many teachers in the schools investigated as 
 any other race. In fact, they furnish about 
 two-fifths of all the school teachers of foreign 
 parentage in those cities — more than the Ger- 
 mans, English, and Scotch-Irish together. 
 
 In the parochial schools covered by the in- 1 
 vestigation it was found that children of for- 
 eign parentage largely predominate, nearly 
 
142 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 two-thirds answering this description. One- 
 fourth of them are of Irish parentage. 
 
 One can scarcely overestimate the assimila- 
 tion force of the public schools as disclosed by 
 the investigation. It shows that the immi- 
 grants do not fail to put their children into the* 
 schools, and that once there they are certain to 
 become genuine Americans by the time they 
 leave school. We discover the Americaniza- 
 tion process in nearly all lines of inquiry which 
 might indicate it. We see them emulating our 
 bad traits as well as good ones. 
 
 It is true, however, that some of the races 
 from southern and eastern Europe are not in- 
 clined to keep their children in school as longi 
 as would be best for them and for the country. 
 While one out of eleven of our native American 
 children are to be found in the high schools, 
 only one out of a hundred of the average of the 
 " new " immigrant's children will be found 
 there. 
 
 The Immigration Commission finds much 
 cause for congratulation on the way the for- 
 eigner, generally speaking, takes an interest in 
 the schools and is ambitious that his children 
 should learn to read and write. While in the 
 congested districts this tendency is not as 
 marked as it is in communities having only a 
 normal foreign population, even in those dis- 
 
IMMIGRANT SCHOOL CHILDREN 143 
 
 tricts the children are given at least an ele- 
 mentary education. And where they have 
 grown up and become the fathers and mothers 
 of children of their own, they have made as 
 good a record as the native Americans in the 
 education of their children. 
 
 The children of foreigners in the smaller 
 industrial centres do not, as a rule, fare so/ 
 well in school as those in the cities. The aver- 
 age school in the mining village or camp is poor. 
 Usually it is not in session more than five or 
 six months in the year, and when it is in ses- 
 sion, the teaching is often of a decidedly in- 
 ferior quality. And then there are no attend- 
 ance officers to look to keeping the children in 
 school. A mother, burdened with a house full 
 of little children, and perhaps keeping a half- 
 dozen boarders, very naturally is inclined to 
 keep her girl of ten home to help her. Like- 
 wise, the father, desiring to supplement his 
 own meagre wages, puts his boy to work as 
 soon as he is big enough to pick the slate out 
 of coal. 
 
 The child of the immigrant usually starts 
 out in life with a valuable asset — the will to 
 overcome the obstacles in his pathway. The 
 father came to America because he was not/ 
 satisfied. He bravely bore up under the hard- 
 ships and privations of his new sphere in order 
 
144* THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 that he and his family might be better off in 
 the end. He worked hard, and placed every- 
 thing else secondary to his desire for a com- 
 petence, measured by his standard. This qual- 
 ity is inherited by the children. They sing 
 the songs of the street more earnestly, play 
 craps more recklessly, swear more outrage- 
 ously, and do almost everything else with a 
 more evident ambition to excel than their native 
 American companions. 
 
 In the cities the children of the immigrant 
 usually come to school from a crowded tene- 
 ment. The Immigration Commission could not 
 find a single tenement block occupied by Ameri-i 
 cans of native parentage. Those apologies for 
 human habitations are occupied by the immi- 
 grant and his children. They are not there be- 
 cause they prefer it, but because sheer neces- 
 sity forces them to be there. With no place 
 to play except in a slum alley, it must be re- 
 freshing to the children to go to school where 
 for at least a part of the day they may live 
 amid decent surroundings and have a good 
 place to play during recess. 
 
 Sometimes teachers have found the children 
 of immigrants eager to play but very reluctant 
 to wash. One teacher encountering this dispo- 
 sition told the boys that they could play in the 
 gymnasium on condition that they first used its 
 
IMMIGRANT SCHOOL CHILDREN 145 
 
 shower-baths. The desire to play overbalanced 
 the disinclination to wash, and a clean lot of 
 boys was the result. In one of the New York 
 schools there was a boy who would frequently 
 jump out of his seat, make funny gestures, and 
 go through other puzzling performances. The 
 teacher tried to break him of his habit, but 
 without success. Later the mother told her 
 the boy was crazy for gymnastic exer- 
 cises. 
 
 The problem of the working boy is one of* 
 the hardest with which those who would edu- 
 cate the child of the immigrant have to contend. 
 Thousands of these boys come to America when 
 they are too old to enter the primary grades. 
 If he does try to enter those grades he is so 
 big that he is laughed at and drops out rather 
 than continue to be the butt of the children's 
 laughter. So he gets no education. The same 
 is largely true of the boys born here but forced 
 to work as soon as they are old enough. 
 
 The investigations that have been made by 
 various agencies tend to show that there is 
 a markedly greater tendency to crime among 
 the children of foreign parentage than among, 
 those of native parentage. The experience of 
 the secretary of the Playground Association of 
 Maiden, Mass., perhaps explains why this is 
 
146 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 so. He found that as soon as the playground 
 was opened and the boys of foreign parentage 
 brought out of the alleys and given healthy 
 amusements, the number of petty crimes com- 
 mitted by them fell off fully fifty per cent. 
 
 It is clear, then, that the problem of correct- 
 ing the criminal tendencies among certain of 
 our immigrant classes cannot be left to any 
 test that may be imposed at Ellis Island — nor 
 can it be solved by devising punishments! We 
 must Americanize their children, and to do 
 that we must give them their share of the 
 American boy's rightful heritage — a due pro- 
 portion of healthy fun. 
 
XVIII 
 IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME 
 
 THE American people have heard so much 
 about the criminal tendencies of the 
 " new " immigration that they have 
 come generally to accept as gospel truth the 
 oft-repeated statement that the aliens coming to 
 America are distinguished for their criminal 
 tendencies. And yet every investigation that 
 has been made points to the conclusion that 
 if there is any difference between the immigrant 
 and the native American in this regard it is in 
 favour of the foreigner rather than against 
 him. » 
 
 The statistics do indicate, however, that thei 
 American-born children of immigrants show 
 a greater tendency to crime than do the chil- 
 dren of native parentage. It also appears that 
 juvenile delinquency is greater among the chil- 
 dren of immigrants than among those of native 
 parents. The Immigration Commission con- 
 cludes from its investigations that, upon the 
 whole broad question as to whether or not im- 
 migration increases crime, there is not sufficient 
 147 
 
148 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 evidence upon which to predicate a conclusion. 
 On the other hand, it has found enough evi- 
 dence to justify the assertion that immigration 
 does change the character of crime in this 
 country, and says that to measure this change 
 was the chief aim of the investigation of crime 
 records. 
 
 A marked increase in the number of crimes 
 of personal violence, such as abduction, kid- 
 napping, assault, homicide, and rape, is noted, 
 and the number of cases of disorderly conduct, 
 drunkenness, vagrancy, and like offenses has 
 increased largely as a result of the presence 
 of the immigrant. The same is true of offences 
 against chastity, and also of the prevalence of 
 blackmail, extortion, and the receiving of stolen 
 property. On the other hand, in the majority 
 of the gainful offences the native American has 
 a worse record than the immigrant. 
 
 Some of these changes in the nature of 
 American crime are traceable largely to certain 
 nationalities of immigrants. For instance, the 
 Commission concludes that the increase in the 
 number of offenses of personal violence in this 
 country is due to the immigration from south- 
 ern Europe in general, and from Italy in par- 
 ticular. The Irish and Scotch are notable for 
 their penal records for intoxication, the Italian 
 for his number of attempted homicides, and 
 
IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME 149 
 
 the Greeks and Russians for their contempt of 
 public ordinances in the big cities. - 
 
 But a much larger proportion of the offences 
 committed by native Americans are of a serious 
 nature than among those committed by the im- 
 migrants. For instance, the census inquiry 
 shows that seven out of every ten crimes com- 
 mitted by native American prisoners are " ma- 
 jor " offences, while less than six out of ten 
 committed by immigrant prisoners belonged 
 to that category. 
 
 . Perhaps the most interesting tendency dis- 
 closed by the investigation is the inclination of^ 
 the children of foreigners to cease to commit 
 the crimes which characterize their parents and 
 to commit the kinds of crimes which character- 
 ize the native American population — showing 
 that they imitate Americans with a vengeance. 
 In the records of the Court of General Sessions 
 of New York it was found that whereas the 
 percentage of gainful offences committed by 
 Irish immigrants was only 60.5 per cent, the 
 second generation shows 78 per cent, and the 
 native Americans 79.7 per cent. On the other 
 hand, the children of Irish immigrants commit 
 less than half as many offences of personal vio- 
 lence as did their fathers. — 
 
 There are some thirteen thousand alien pris- 
 oners in the penal institutions of the United 
 
150 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 States. Assuming that it costs only $200 a 
 year to maintain each of them, the country 
 must spend over two and a half million dollars 
 annually to keep them. One-fourth of their 
 crimes were committed within three years after 
 their arrival in the United States. It is inter- 
 esting to note the tendency of certain nationali- 
 ' ties to commit certain forms of crime. Half 
 of the crimes committed by Italians were of per- 
 sonal violence, while crimes of this class were 
 committed by only one-sixteenth of the Jewish 
 prisoners. On the other hand, the Jews com- 
 mitted nearly twice as many gainful offences 
 as did the Italians. Two-thirds of the offences 
 of which Irish prisoners were convicted were 
 against public policy, while the Germans com- 
 mitted much less than half as many such crimes. 
 On the other hand, the Germans committed 
 more than twice as many gainful offences as 
 the Irish. And so go the proportions all down 
 the line. One nationality makes but few mur- 
 derers, yet it has many forgers, burglars, and 
 thieves. Another nationality has many men 
 who commit or attempt to commit murder, and 
 yet is possessed of only a few forgers, thieves, 
 and burglars. 
 
 The distorted idea of the average American 
 citizen concerning the criminal tendencies of 
 immigrants is probably explained by the fact 
 
IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME 151 
 
 that such a large number of them are convicted 
 of petty offences. The New York State Com- 
 mission of Immigration says they violate the 
 corporation ordinances and the sanitary code 
 to a much larger extent than the native Ameri- 
 can. For instance, a majority of the criminal- 
 ity of the Greeks of New York is found to 
 be a violation of the law against peddling with- 
 out license. 
 
 Much of the crime among immigrants is the 
 direct result of drunkenness, and this particu- 
 larly explains why the number of crimes of 
 personal violence among the immigrants from 
 southern and eastern Europe is so large. Withf 
 such a large percentage of them unmarried and 
 living in boarding-houses where often from 
 four to ten sleep in a single room, it is little 
 wonder that they often drink to excess, and of 
 course they drink cheap liquor calculated to 
 arouse all the worst that is in them. The for- 
 eigner often attempts to hide the crime of his 
 own people, although it may have been com--' 
 mitted against himself. It has been estimated 
 that not more than three per cent of all those 
 who commit murder are brought to justice. 
 
 The Immigration Commission investigated 
 the tendency of foreign criminals to come to the 
 United States in order to escape punishment, 
 and the results show the inadequacy of the 
 
152 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 present law to debar them. Italy was selected 
 as the country upon whose subjects the in- 
 vestigation was to be made, largely because of 
 the general belief that more Italian criminals 
 come to the United States than from any other 
 country. The investigation was made in New 
 York for the reason that it could be carried on 
 to better advantage there, both because of the 
 Italians in the city and because suspicions would 
 not be as likely to be aroused. To conduct 
 the investigation it was necessary to secure a 
 corps of special agents who were familiar with 
 the Italian quarter. It was then further neces- 
 sary to check up the accuracy of their work 
 by securing the official records of the criminals 
 they had run down and reported upon. The 
 closeness with which the reports of the investi- 
 gators tallied with the facts disclosed by the 
 official records sent over from Italy, proved 
 conclusively the carefulness of the investiga- 
 tors in ascertaining and reporting their facts. 
 It was found that there are many Italian 
 criminals in the United States who served out 
 their sentences before coming; many others 
 who were tried and convicted in their absence 
 and are fugitives from justice; many who were 
 acquitted, but against whom there was strong 
 evidence ; and still others who never have been 
 tried for any crime but whose reputations at 
 
IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME 153 
 
 home were notorious. The law shuts out only I 
 the one class — those who have been tried and 
 convicted before their arrival in the United 
 States. There have been instances where the 
 Italian courts have convicted a criminal after 
 his landing in the United States, but the courts 
 have held that the law does not require the de- 
 portation of such persons. Furthermore, no 
 matter how clear the evidence that a criminal 
 got into the United States in defiance of the 
 immigration laws, the courts have held that if 
 he has been here three years he is not subject to 
 deportation. 
 
 It has been urged in many quarters that 
 every person who has committed a criminal 
 offence abroad should be liable to deportation 
 at any time within a period of five years, and 
 also that any immigrant committing a criminal 
 offence within five years after coming here 
 shall be deported immediately. Some have sug- 
 gested that every person who lands ought to 
 be required to present a certificate of good 
 standing from his home country. As it is, the 
 immigration authorities have very little ground 
 upon which to work in trying to prevent the 
 entrance of criminals. Unless there are pecu- 
 liar circumstances the criminal is usually 
 shrewd enough to hide any indications of his 
 criminalities, and so he comes in. 
 
154 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 General Theodore A. Bingham said, when 
 Police Commissioner of New York, that 
 he believed there were fully three thousand 
 desperadoes from southern Italy alone in *that 
 city, and that among them there were some as 
 ferocious and desperate as ever gathered in a 
 modern city in time of peace — mediaeval crimi- 
 nals who must be dealt with under modern 
 laws. 
 
 That this condition greatly complicates the 
 difficulties of police supervision in the metropo- 
 lis cannot be denied. It is, therefore, the more 
 unfortunate that so many criminals of foreign 
 extraction have found not opposition but en- 
 couragement from those whose duty it is to 
 keep order. The " Black Hand " outrages 
 among the Italians, the Tong wars among the 
 Chinese, the " razor parties " among the ne- 
 groes of San Juan Hill, when considered with 
 the " gang " wars of the native Americans 
 may be taken as showing that crime is neither 
 geographical nor racial. 
 
id 
 
 K 
 
 *' H 
 
 XIX 
 
 THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC 
 
 THE importation and harbouring of alien 
 women and girls for immoral purposes, 
 is pronounced by the Immigration Com- 
 mission the most pitiful and the most revolting 
 phase of the immigration question. It was 
 found that the business had assumed such large 
 proportions and was exerting so evil an influ- 
 ence upon the country that the Commission 
 decided to make it the subject of a thorough 
 investigation. Since the subject is one espe- 
 cially liable to sensational exploitation, the 
 Commission decided that it would carefully 
 state only the undeniable facts calculated to 
 form the basis of reasonable legislative and 
 administrative action looking to its suppression. 
 The Commission made its report to Congress 
 just before Christmas, 1909. The showing made 
 was so startling that Congress in a little more 
 than three months after the filing of the report, 
 sent a law upon the subject to the President 
 for his signature. This law added to the list 
 of deportable aliens persons who are sup- 
 155 
 
156 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 ported by, or who receive in whole or in part, 
 the proceeds of prostitution. This was in- 
 tended especially to break up the infamous 
 cadet system, whereby human vampires in the 
 guise of men force women and girls to deliver 
 to them the profits of their shame. The law of 
 1907 already had placed the ban upon aliens 
 who procure or attempt to bring women and 
 girls into the United States for immoral pur- 
 poses, but it was not extended to the repre- 
 hensible cadet. 
 
 The investigation of the white slave traffic 
 began in 1907, under the active supervision of 
 a special committee of the Immigration Com- 
 mission. The work was conducted by a special 
 agent with numerous assistants, and the Com- 
 mission says that too much credit cannot be 
 given to the agents who independently planned 
 details, and with cheerful courage, even at the 
 risk of their lives at times, secured information 
 relative to the traffic. Several of them had to 
 associate, under one pretext or another, with 
 the criminal procurers, importers, cadets, and 
 their unfortunate or degraded victims when 
 the discovery of the agent's purposes might 
 have resulted in his murder. One woman 
 agent was attacked and beaten, escaping seri- 
 ous injury, if not death, only with the greatest 
 difficulty, and yet the next day she went cheer- 
 
THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC 157 
 
 fully back to her work, though, of course, in 
 another locality. Information was secured 
 from men who formerly had been keepers of 
 disorderly houses; from women who were 
 managers of such houses; from physicians who 
 practised among such women; from women 
 who had formerly been white slaves; and also 
 from some of the women and girls who had 
 been lured to America under false pretences. 
 
 After its investigation, the Commission esti- 
 mated that the number of women imported for 
 immoral purposes was running into the thou- 
 sand every year. But the real work was to get 
 data as to the methods of the white slave traffic 
 so that the remedial legislation could be 
 adopted. The action of the Supreme Court in 
 the Keller case, in which that part of the law 
 under which persons were prosecuted for " har- 
 bouring " alien women for immoral purposes 
 was declared unconstitutional, has made it 
 harder to enforce the intent of the law, since 
 it is much more difficult to weave a chain of 
 evidence about an importer or procurer than to 
 convict a person of " harbouring " such 
 women. 
 
 Some idea of the prevalence of " white slav- 
 ery " in New York City may be gathered from 
 an investigation of the night court records for 
 a period of four months. During that time 
 
) 
 
 158 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 there were 2,093 cases of soliciting on the 
 streets and being inmates of disorderly houses 
 brought in, upon which convictions were se- 
 ^* cured, and of these 581 were women of alien 
 birth. Nearly half of the foreigners were 
 Jewish, while half of the remainder were 
 French. The opinions of the agents of the 
 Commission, however, were that the majority 
 of the Jewish women found in white slavery 
 had reached there at the hands of professional 
 seducers. 
 
 The motive of business profit is wholly re- 
 sponsible for the existence of the traffic. The 
 Commission states that the procurers who en- 
 tice the women to leave their foreign homes, the 
 importers who assist them in evading the law 
 or who bring them here for sale to the keepers 
 of disorderly houses, and cadets who exploit 
 them body and soul, have only profit in view. 
 Although very many of the girls are brought 
 here innocent, betrayed into a slavery rigid 
 in its strictness and barbarous in its nature, 
 there are others who come with their eyes open, 
 lured by stories that the profits of such a life 
 are often ten times as great in America as in 
 Europe. 
 
 The Commission says that of far greater 
 significance than facts showing that the law 
 has been violated, are the other facts which 
 
THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC 159 
 
 show the method employed and the inadequacy 
 of the law to protect the country against such 
 importations. Recruiting is carried on sys- 
 tematically at home and abroad. The men who 
 recruit the majority of the victims are in the 
 business for the dollars and cents they can get 
 out of it. With a cunning knowledge of human 
 nature, they play upon the weaknesses of van- 
 ity and pride, upon the laudable thrift and 
 desire to secure a better livelihood, upon the 
 praiseworthy trust and affection which inno- 
 cent girls have for those they love. They even 
 prey upon their sentiments of religion, and once 
 in their toils, they capitalize them with a cruelty 
 at times fiendish in its calculating coldness and 
 brutality. If the prospective victim is young 
 and affectionate, the procurer makes her ac- 
 quaintance, treats her kindly, offers to assist 
 her in getting a better position. Her confi- 
 dence won, she is within his power, and is cal- 
 culatingly led into a life of shame. Women 
 procurers offer girls good positions at better 
 pay than they have ever been able to make, 
 and then carry them off to some brothel. 
 
 Correspondence captured in raids instituted 
 by the agents of the Commission constitute 
 remarkable human documents. The slavers 
 write to one another in polite terms, express 
 affection for their families, talk tenderly of 
 
160 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 the mothers and other relatives, and yet when 
 they come to discuss their victims it is with 
 the same coolness with which they would name 
 the good points of a thoroughbred horse or a 
 blooded dog which they were offering for sale. 
 A Seattle case reveals something of the 
 methods of the slavers. The girl was German. 
 She served four years as a trained nurse and 
 then went to France for a year as governess, 
 after which she spent a year at home. Finally 
 she decided to come to America. En route she 
 met another German woman, who told her she 
 lived in Los Angeles, and who wanted to en- 
 gage her as governess. Finally they wound up 
 in Seattle, where she was taken, at night, to 
 a disorderly house whose address she did not 
 know, where her clothes were taken from her 
 and where she was denied paper to write. She 
 threatened to kill herself if she were not re- 
 leased, and finally she was taken to a hotel, by 
 the husband of the woman who had enticed 
 her, and was there bound, gagged, and as- 
 saulted. The law finally came to her rescue 
 and the woman who betrayed her was deported. 
 Her husband got two years in the penitentiary, 
 but under the Supreme Court decision pro- 
 nouncing unconstitutional the law against har- 
 bouring, he is not liable to any punishment for 
 his unspeakably brutal treatment of his vicl 
 
THE WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC 161 
 
 Those who recruit women for immoral pur- 
 poses frequent employment agencies, immi- 
 grant homes, moving-picture shows, dance- 
 halls, railroad stations. Often as much as a 
 thousand dollars is paid for an exceptionally 
 attractive girl, and the prices range on down 
 to two hundred dollars. The imported girls 
 usually come as the wives or relatives of the 
 men accompanying them, as maids or relatives 
 of women accompanying them, or as women 
 entering alone and booked to some home or 
 friend. The Japanese have a custom whereby 
 a woman in Japan may marry a man in America 
 by proxy, and often they come over ostensibly 
 to meet their proxy husbands, but in reality to 
 go into " white slavery." 
 
 It has been found difficult to apprehend the 
 violators of the white slave law at the ports, 
 and the danger of detaining innocent women is 
 so great that the inspectors would rather pass 
 a dozen they are not certain about than to hold 
 up one innocent one upon such a charge. 
 
 The system of exploitation is such that the 
 poor white slave victim, whether she has been 
 trapped into the life or has entered it willingly, 
 gets only a small share of the profit. In a raid 
 in Chicago a big Irish girl was taken. She was 
 asked why she didn't get out. She replied: 
 " Get out ! I can't. They make us buy the 
 
162 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 cheapest rags, and they are charged against us 
 at fabulous prices; they make us change outfits 
 every two or three weeks, until we are so 
 deeply in debt we can never hope to get out. 
 We seldom get an accounting, but when we 
 do it is always to find ourselves deeper in debt 
 than before. ,, 
 
 One depressing fact about this unhappy busi- 
 ness is that so many honest immigrant girls 
 who actually seek and find employment in 
 domestic service subsequently become the prey 
 of the " white slaver." The changed conditions 
 of life that they find in America, the abso- 
 lute extinction in many instances of the so- 
 cial opportunities, make them only too ready 
 for the wiles of the miserable creatures who 
 ever stalk the defenceless and the weak. 
 
XX 
 
 THE FOREIGNER'S LARGE FAMILY 
 
 MUCH has been written in recent years 
 about race suicide, but most of it 
 with only superficial facts at hand 
 upon which to base conclusions. Next to noth- 
 ing was known of the conditions which produce 
 it, of its relative extent in urban and rural 
 life, and of its existence among different na- 
 tionalities of people. Fortunately, when the 
 Twelfth Census was taken, data were gathered 
 as to the number of years wives had been mar- 
 ried and the number of children they had borne. 
 But these figures were never tabulated by the 
 Census authorities with a view to showing the 
 bearing immigration has upon the tendency of 
 the American people toward a lower birth-rate. 
 That task was undertaken by the Immigration 
 Commission with data taken from the state of 
 Rhode Island as representing a compactly popu- 
 lated state of the old East where nearly all 
 the people are urban dwellers; from the city 
 of Cleveland as being a typical American city; 
 from the rural counties of Ohio representing 
 163 
 
164 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 typical rural conditions among the native popu- 
 lation; from the city of Minneapolis represent- 
 ing the old immigration under urban condi- 
 tions ; and from the rural districts of Minnesota 
 as typical of the Northwest. 
 
 The results of these tabulations demonstrate 
 beyond question that if America is to continue 
 to grow and wax more powerful it will have 
 to look to the country districts and to the im- 
 migrants for the supply of children who will 
 make this growth possible. The story told by 
 the figures is one of very small families among 
 women of native parentage who live under 
 urban conditions. As a matter of fact, such 
 families scarcely have enough children to re- 
 place themselves. It is probable that out of 
 every three children born not more than two 
 grow to adult estate and have children of their 
 own. In fact, the probability is that this state- 
 ment is far on the side of conservatism, as is 
 shown by the fact that out of 100,000 children 
 born, about 40,000 die before they reach the 
 age of twenty- four. And when it is further 
 considered that out of every hundred marriages 
 in the country about seven are childless, it will 
 appear very conservative to say that the family 
 which does not have three children stands little 
 show of directly adding to the permanent 
 population of the country. 
 
A FOREIGNER'S LARGE FAMILY 165 
 
 And yet the investigations of the Immigra- 
 tion Commission disclose the fact that the aver- 
 age American wife whose parents are both 
 native-born Americans, and who lives in the 
 city, has only 2.4 children. Her sister in the 
 rural districts has 3.4 children, or one more 
 child than her city sister. To put it another 
 way, where city women of native parentage 
 have twenty-four children, their country sis- 
 ters have thirty-four. 
 
 But although the country woman of native 
 parentage has one more child in her family 
 than her city sister, the immigrant mother 
 shows even a larger family than the country 
 woman. The immigrant woman in the city has 
 a larger number of children than the native 
 parentage woman in the country, but fewer 
 children than the immigrant woman in the 
 country. The latter class of women has the 
 largest number of children of any of the classes 
 of women investigated. In rural Minnesota 
 we find her with an average of five and a half 
 children. 
 
 In nearly every case women of foreign birth 
 show a much higher percentage of children 
 than women who are the children of native 
 Americans. For all the territory studied the 
 immigrant women had an average of two chil- 
 dren more than the native women of native 
 
166 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 parentage. The French Canadian women in 
 Rhode Island had families more than twice 
 as large as the women of native American par- 
 entage, and very few of the immigrant women 
 of the different nationalities failed to show at 
 least two children more than the average 
 American woman could claim. The English 
 and Scotch came nearer to approximating the 
 American standard than any other immigrant 
 races, and yet average English and Scotch 
 mothers had one more child than the American- 
 parentage mothers. 
 
 The Polish women embraced in the enumera- 
 tion, had the champion anti-race suicide fami- 
 lies in the United States, with more than six 
 children to the family. The Bohemian women 
 had more than five children in the average 
 family, and the same is true of the French 
 Canadians, the Finnish, and the Russian 
 women. The Austrian, Danish, German, Irish, 
 Italian, Norwegian, and Swiss women who 
 were immigrants, averaged more than four and 
 a half children each. 
 
 But the children of the immigrant women 
 are not the possessors of as big families as 
 their mothers. While the immigrant women 
 themselves average 4.7 children, their daugh- 
 ters who have been married the same length 
 of time average only 3.9 children. The 
 
A FOREIGNER'S LARGE FAMILY 167 
 
 tendency of the daughters of immigrant women 
 toward smaller families applies to every na- 
 tionality. While among none of the nationali- 
 ties investigated did the daughters of immigrant 
 women have as many children as the mother, 
 on the other hand, in not a single nationality 
 did the average number of children among 
 women of immigrant parentage fall as low as 
 that among women of native parentage. Usu- 
 ally the family of the immigrant woman's 
 daughter was a medium between the big family 
 of the immigrant woman and the small one 
 of the woman of native parentage. 
 
 These figures are all based upon women who 
 are less than forty-five years old and who have 
 been married from ten to nineteen years. No 
 matter whether the figures are taken from 
 populous Rhode Island, from rural Minnesota, 
 rural Ohio, Cleveland, or Minneapolis, they 
 all show the same relative tendencies of large 
 families among the women of foreign birth, 
 medium families among women who are the 
 daughters of immigrants, and smaller families 
 among women of native parentage'. The aver- 
 age city-living daughter of an immigrant 
 woman has about the same-sized family as the 
 average country-living woman of native par- 
 entage. 
 
168 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 No matter among what class or what nation- 
 ality of women the investigation leads, the 
 uniform lesson it teaches is that urban condi- 
 tions tend to restrict the size of families. They 
 affect the woman of native parentage most of 
 all, then the women of native birth but im- 
 migrant parentage, and least of all the immi- 
 grant woman herself. 
 
 Not only do city conditions tend to cut down 
 the size of the average family, but they tend 
 to produce a large number of childless mar- 
 riages. For instance, in Rhode Island one 
 married woman out of every six who has been 
 married more than ten years and whose parents 
 are native born, has had no children. In Cleve- 
 land the ratio is about one out of seven, and 
 in Minneapolis it is about one out of eight. 
 On the other hand, the women of native par- 
 entage in the rural districts of Ohio and Minne- 
 sota show only one marriage out of twenty 
 without children. 
 
 Here again the immigrant woman excels her 
 daughters and the daughters of native Ameri- 
 can parents. In Rhode Island only one mar- 
 ried immigrant woman in fifteen has had no 
 children, in Cleveland one in nineteen, in 
 Minneapolis one in sixteen, and in the rural 
 districts it is about one in twenty. And here 
 again the daughters of the immigrant women 
 
A FOREIGNER'S LARGE FAMILY 169 
 
 fall between their mothers and the women of 
 native American parentage. 
 
 It is also interesting to note how much less is 
 the average difference of the ages of the children 
 of immigrant parentage than of native Ameri- 
 can stock. The native American woman of na- 
 tive parentage has had a child for every five 
 years and four months of her married life, while 
 the immigrant woman has had one for every 
 three years she has been married. Here again 
 the native-parentage, city-living wife shows the 
 greatest tendency to race suicide, while her 
 country-living sister, though not receiving as 
 frequent visits from the stork as the immigrant 
 woman and her daughter, does have more 
 children than her sister in the city. 
 
 A careful study of the figures presented by 
 the Immigration Commission, taken in con- 
 junction with the statistics of birth- and death- 
 rates available in the United States, indicates 
 that if America were dependent for her future 
 population upon the American woman who 
 lives in the city and whose parents were native 
 born, there would be a decline in population 
 from decade to decade. It also indicates that if 
 immigration should cease and the birth-rate of 
 all American women of native parentage should 
 be continued, we would just a little more than 
 hold our own in population. On the other 
 
170 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 hand, with the large number of immigrant 
 women coming to America and the partiality 
 of the stork for their homes and the homes of 
 their daughters, it seems certain that the coun- 
 try will continue to expand in population from 
 decade to decade. 
 
XXI 
 
 DESCENDANTS OF IMMIGRANTS 
 
 ik S has been indicated in previous chapters, 
 AA once the immigrant gets settled in 
 America and carves out a home for him- 
 self and his posterity, marked changes come 
 over him, and in many respects the after- 
 generations become unlike their progenitors. 
 Not only is this true in such ephemeral and 
 fleeting qualities as customs, language, dress, 
 and the like, but it affects the more permanent 
 characteristics such as stature, shape of the 
 head, fecundity, and disposition. In dress the 
 transition from European peasant to American 
 citizen sometimes does not take place with the 
 immigrant, but certainly does not wait longer 
 than the first generation before taking place. 
 One is reminded of the little scrap of doggerel 
 about Mary, the immigrant's daughter, who 
 " had a little hat no bigger than a stopper, ,, 
 but who soon "got rid of that, and now she 
 wears a whopper." 
 
 The great majority of the children of immi- 
 grants learn to speak English and soon use 
 171 
 
172 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 it as their regular tongue. Very few of the 
 grandchildren of immigrants adhere to the 
 tongue of their fathers in Europe. But there 
 are cases where the mother tongue persists 
 through long generations. Terence V. Pow- 
 derly, the efficient chief of the Division of 
 Information of the Bureau of Immigration, 
 tells of an experience he had in Lancaster 
 County, Penn., which illustrates the tendency 
 of some people to hold to the customs of the 
 fatherland. He was out on immigration busi- 
 ness and went to a livery stable to hire a 
 horse and buggy. The owner of the stable was 
 a Pennsylvania Dutchman. All of the horses 
 were out except the family driving horse. This 
 nag was hitched up and Powderly started on 
 his journey, but he soon found that the horse 
 could not understand English, and so, since he 
 could not speak German, he had to adopt horse 
 language Esperanto and lead the steed back to 
 the stable. That liveryman's ancestors had been 
 in Pennsylvania for a century and a half, and 
 yet his driving horse did not understand 
 "Whoa" or " Giddap." 
 
 While it has been demonstrated that there is 
 a remarkable amount of insanity among 
 immigrants, and while insanity is usually 
 regarded as an inheritable disease, there is 
 nothing to indicate that the percentage of in- 
 
DESCENDANTS OF IMMIGRANTS 173 
 
 sane among the descendants of immigrants is 
 any greater than that among people of pure 
 American stock with American ancestry run- 
 ning back a century. How much more fre- 
 quently the thread of reason is broken in the 
 alien mind is illustrated by the investigations 
 of the Census Bureau into insanity and feeble- 
 mindedness in hospitals and institutions. This 
 investigation shows that while twenty out of 
 every hundred people ten years old and over in 
 the United States were of foreign birth, thirty- 
 four out of every every hundred inmates of 
 hospitals and institutions for the insane and 
 feeble-minded were of foreign birth. In other I 
 words, while the foreign-born element ten years 
 old and over, constitutes one-fifth of our popu- 
 lation, it makes up one-third of our insane and • 
 feeble-minded charges. 
 
 That this tendency toward insanity and, 
 feeble-mindedness is not communicated to the' 
 descendants of immigrants is revealed by the L* 
 
 inquiry of the Census Bureau into the parent- 
 age of the native-born inmates of these insti- 
 tutions. This shows that 273 out of each 
 thousand inmates are the children of foreign- 
 born parents, while 277 out of each thousand 
 in the population of the country are the children 
 of immigrants. In other words, the figures 
 show that the children of immigrants are just 
 
174 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 a shade less inclined to insanity and feeble- 
 mindedness than the children of native Ameri- 
 cans. 
 
 There has been much speculation as to the 
 causes of insanity among immigrants. The 
 freedom from undue inclination toward insan- 
 ity displayed by their children would seem to 
 show that it is more a matter of environment 
 than inherited taint. Those who controvert 
 this idea declare that the reason the children of 
 immigrants show as great freedom from insan- 
 ity as the native American population lies in 
 the fact that they are still too young to make 
 a different showing. They point to other Cen- 
 sus figures which indicate that when native- 
 born and immigrant-born people of the same 
 ages are considered, the native born have some 
 advantage. Yet this advantage is narrowed 
 down to a beggarly three per cent, whereas, ii 
 a comparison between the immigrant and the 
 native, it amounts to fifteen per cent. 
 
 Some of the high rate of insanity among 
 aliens is accounted for by the great difficulty 
 of inspecting immigrants thoroughly enough to 
 keep out every person of diseased mind. 
 When, on rush days, only two minutes can be 
 given to each immigrant at Ellis Island, it will 
 be seen how hard it would be for doctors to 
 detect every person showing mental unbalance. 
 
DESCENDANTS OF IMMIGRANTS 175 
 
 This accounts for a large number coming in 
 who already have had attacks of insanity. Ther 
 most highly civilized nations show a larger 
 number of insane than those not so high up 
 in the scale of civilization. For instance, while 
 there were in institutions 88 Bohemians per 
 100,000 of Bohemian population, when the 
 Census Bureau made its investigations, there 
 were 307 Canadians and 238 Norwegians. 
 
 But more than all this, according to some of 
 the doctors who have had long experience in 
 immigration inspection work, is the great 
 change in environment which the immigrant 
 undergoes. Instead of his peaceful little cot- 
 tage home back in some quiet village, he sud- 
 denly finds himself in a very maelstrom of 
 humanity, commerce, and industry, calculated 
 to shatter even the nerves of those who live 
 amid pleasant surroundings and in happy 
 homes. Such conditions are more likely to 
 send to the madhouse the lonely foreigner who 
 ekes out a living in some sweatshop by day and 
 spends his nights in miserable tenements where 
 comfort and peace have always yielded place 
 to filth and misery. When the immigrant un- 
 der such conditions contrasts his little cottage 
 home he left behind with his new surround- 
 ings, what wonder homesickness overcomes 
 him and is often succeeded by a wrecked mind ? 
 
176 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 But, fortunately, his children escape such a 
 heavy toll. 
 
 We have seen how the bodily form of the 
 immigrant's descendants changes, and this is 
 one of the most remarkable phases of the whole 
 immigration question. Anthropologists have 
 been much surprised to see the most fixed of 
 all the racial characteristics change under the 
 influence of American conditions. Of course 
 a race which has lived for generations under 
 tropical suns will have the mark thereof burnt 
 into their faces, and residence in colder climates 
 tends to obliterate these marks. But when 
 the very bones themselves undergo changes, 
 changes that cannot be attributed to heavy 
 work or other like conditions, anthropologists 
 become puzzled to account for them. 
 
 What makes the skull of the round-headed 
 immigrant turn long- faced in his children? 
 And what makes the long face of other classes 
 of immigrants tend to round-headedness in 
 their posterity ? These are questions to which 
 no acceptable answers have been given. Again, 
 what makes the descendants of immigrants 
 mature earlier than the immigrants themselves 
 matured, and what makes the descendants of 
 some races of immigrants grow shorter in 
 stature while the descendants of other races of 
 immigrants grow taller? For instance, the 
 
DESCENDANTS OF IMMIGRANTS 177 
 
 Bohemians lose stature, but their faces grow 
 longer and their heads wider. On the other 
 hand, the Sicilians gain in stature and in the 
 width of their faces, but lose in the width of 
 their heads. Why does America have one ef- 
 fect on one race and diametrically the oppo- 
 site effect upon other people in practically the 
 same surroundings? 
 
 Some one suggested that all this was due 
 to the fact that there was a similar change 
 among these races going on in their European 
 homes. But when this matter was investi- 
 gated it was found that the Sicilian who came 
 over as an immigrant thirty years ago bore 
 practically the same measurements as the one 
 who comes to-day. And the same was true of 
 the Bohemian, and of the other races investi- 
 gated. 
 
 If, then, Americanization is an influence 
 powerful and far-reaching enough to change 
 the most permanent of all the characteristics 
 of a race, to make man over a different physical 
 mould, what must be its influence on his tastes, 
 his ambitions, his manner of thinking? What 
 wonder is it that we see tens of thousands of 
 men who were born in other countries gazing 
 upon the flag of their fatherlands with a quiet 
 indifference, but cheering to the echo when the 
 Star Spangled Banner is unfurled to the 
 
178 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 breeze? What wonder that there are twenty 
 million children of immigrants in the United 
 States in whose hearts there exists a patriotic 
 fire that is thoroughly American ? What won- 
 der that there are some two-score millions more 
 Americans, grandchildren of immigrants, who 
 are as thoroughly American as those whose 
 ancestry goes back to Jamestown and Plymouth 
 Rock? 
 
 That most of them remember with affection 
 their ancestral home is no more to be charged 
 against their devoted Americanism than is the 
 pride of a Massachusetts man who traces his 
 line back to Plymouth, or that of the South 
 Carolinian whose forefathers were French 
 Huguenots. They all are Americans and 
 America is theirs. 
 
I 
 
<From National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D. C. Copyright, 1913.) 
 A GREEK PEASANT. 
 
XXII 
 PADRONES AND PEONS 
 
 WHEN Italian immigration first set to 
 American shores ignorance of the 
 English language and lack of knowl- 
 edge of labour conditions in the United States 
 compelled labourers from Italy to depend upon 
 their employers almost as children depend upon 
 their fathers. These employers usually were 
 small contractors who had acquired a working 
 knowledge of English and a fair acquaintance 
 with American labour conditions, through sev- 
 eral years of apprenticeship as labourers. 
 They would hire their fellow-countrymen to 
 work for them, usually board them, and be 
 their advisers in all things. This peculiar situa- 
 tion led the new immigrants to call their em- 
 ployers, " padrones," just as in Italy the wife 
 usually called her lord and master her padrone. 
 The padrone system in this country is at 
 present confined to those races which have lit- 
 tle aptitude for acquiring a working knowledge 
 of English. The Italians, with whom the 
 padrone system began in the United States, 
 179 
 
180 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 have outgrown it and manage their own affairs. 
 There is an exception in the case of organ- 
 grinders and a few women and children. Con- 
 tact with Americans always ends the system. 
 
 The Syrian peddlers who peddle drygoods 
 and notions in the city and country were for 
 a number of years under a padrone system. 
 The peddlers were furnished their outfits by 
 the padrone, who also boarded them, and they 
 were given either a salary or commissions on 
 their sales. But peddling became unprofitable 
 and the Syrians who continued to engage in 
 the work soon learned to manage their own 
 affairs, until now the padrone system as ap- 
 plied to Syrians is seldom encountered. 
 
 At present it flourishes mainly among the 
 Bulgarians, Turks, Macedonians, Greeks, and 
 Mexicans. Among the Bulgarians and Turks 
 it is on the decline, but it still affects labourers 
 of these races in factories, mills, foundries, and 
 on the railroads. Among the Macedonians, the 
 system for the most part affects the peddlers 
 of fruits and candies. Among the Greeks the 
 system still affects some railroad labourers, and 
 prevails to some extent among the flower, fruit, 
 and vegetable venders of New York and Chi- 
 cago, but it principally exists among the shoe- 
 shining parlours, where boys from twelve to 
 seventeen years of age are in demand. 
 
PADRONES AND PEONS 181 
 
 The Greek flower venders in New York are 
 usually boys under sixteen years of age, hired 
 by florists who send them to Park Row and 
 other points to sell old stock that cannot be sold 
 in the stores. The boys employed by the florists 
 usually live in good quarters, are given their 
 board, and paid from $50 to $100 a year for 
 their work. The boys who sell vegetables, 
 fruits, and candies usually live in basements 
 or other filthy surroundings, sometimes over 
 horse stables. Their bedrooms are small, 
 poorly ventilated, and usually filled to their 
 capacity with beds. These have no sheets, no 
 pillow cases, and at times no pillows. The 
 only coverings are cheap blankets from Greece, 
 which become foul-smelling under prolonged 
 absence from the washtub. Sometimes three 
 and four boys must sleep in one bed. The 
 supply of unsold stock is kept overnight in 
 these quarters, usually under the beds. Each 
 peddling company has from three to four 
 wagons and from four to eight boys. Three 
 or four nights out of each week they have beef 
 stews and beans or potatoes for their one 
 square meal for the day. The other nights 
 they get nothing but bread, cheese, and black 
 olives. They start to work by sunup and work 
 until sundown. 
 
 In the shoe-shining business, the boys live in 
 
182 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 insanitary quarters, sleep with all the windows 
 down, and either have to share their beds with 
 two or three other boys, or roll up in blankets 
 on the floor. In large establishments, one of 
 the boys remains at home in the morning and 
 prepares the midday and evening meals. The 
 midday meal usually consists of black olives, 
 bread, and cheese. The boy who stays at home 
 brings the meal down to the shop, the padrone 
 apportions it, and one boy at a time retires be- 
 hind the partition to eat. The boys get up 
 about five in the morning and seldom reach 
 home until after ten at night. 
 
 Frequently the padrones, in order to save 
 rent for the boys' lodgings, get them an hour's 
 walk from the shop, and the boys must walk 
 the distance twice a day, for no carfares are 
 allowed. They never get a holiday, for the 
 shop is open three hundred and sixty-five days 
 in the year. Padrones forbid the boys to have 
 anything to say to Greeks except in their pres- 
 ence, and they do everything they can to keep 
 them in ignorance of English. They usually 
 insist upon reading all letters the boys receive, 
 and force them to lie about their age and the 
 conditions of their work, if they are allowed to 
 answer questions at all. They scrutinize all 
 letters the boys send home, so their relatives 
 will not know of the straits they are in. The 
 
PADRONES AND PEONS 183 
 
 only chance they have to go to church is during 
 Holy Week and on Easter Morning, when 
 they are permitted to go between ten o'clock at 
 night and four in the morning. 
 
 The ravages which such a life imposes upon 
 the constitutions of boys are appalling. The 
 prevalence of tuberculosis is extensive, super- 
 induced by their manner of life, their inhala- 
 tion of millions of microbes in the dust of 
 customers' shoes, and of the injurious odours 
 of the polishing chemicals. The Greek Consul 
 General at Chicago says the majority of the 
 boys contract tuberculosis, and that in his 
 opinion, and that of a large number of Greek 
 doctors, it would be more humane for them 
 to be refused admission into the United States 
 than to allow them to come here if they intend 
 to enter such employment. 
 
 The rise of the shoe-shining parlour and the 
 Greek padrone system began about fifteen years 
 ago. One of the pioneer padrones is credited 
 with having opened more than a hundred par- 
 lours. Most of the boys at first came from 
 Arcadia. As the business grew all Greece was 
 called on for boys, and some of the early boot- 
 blacks themselves became padrones, as rigor- 
 ous in their treatment of the boys as their own 
 masters had been. 
 
 In 1903 a number of other padrones decided 
 
184 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 to form a shoe-shining trust, but the Bureau of 
 Immigration objected so strongly, because of 
 their violations of the contract labour laws, 
 that they apparently gave up the project. All 
 sorts of methods of evading the immigration 
 laws are used, and it is conceded to be almost 
 impossible to stop the incoming tide of boys 
 destined to these shops. 
 
 The wages paid by the padrones range from 
 $80 to $250 a year. If you frequent a Greek 
 shoe-shining parlour and want to tip the boy 
 you might as well abandon the idea, for you 
 are only helping the padrone to pay the boy's 
 salary. The average wage of the boys is from 
 $120 to $180 a year, and his tips usually 
 amount to the latter sum. But, as soon as you 
 leave, that tip goes into the padrone's little tip- 
 box, and the poor boy sees it no more. It has 
 been shown by the investigations of the Bureau 
 of Immigration that the tips the padrone takes 
 away from his boys more than suffice to pay 
 their salaries and their board bill, so that their 
 work costs him nothing. 
 
 When the Immigration Commission took up 
 its work it decided to look into peonage condi- 
 tions in the United States, as well as to get 
 information concerning peonage. Indeed, un- 
 der sensational representations in many periodi- 
 cals, Congress itself instituted an investigation 
 
PADRONES AND PEONS 185 
 
 of the charges of peonage. The Commission 
 appointed a committee of its members to take 
 up the matter. The most interesting discovery 
 made was the fact that there is no law upon 
 the statute books prohibiting simple slavery. 
 While the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits 
 slavery, the Commission says that " if a per- 
 son simply places or holds another in slavery, 
 it is impossible for the Federal Courts to im- 
 pose penalties under United States laws, unless 
 the placing or holding be for the purpose of 
 forcing a settlement of a debt, no matter how 
 great may be the abuses perpetrated upon the 
 person held. In the Clyatt case the Supreme 
 Court unmistakably held that the peonage stat- 
 ute referred only to cases where the return, 
 arrest, or holding has been for the purpose of 
 enforcing a debt." 
 
 The main charge of the existence of peonage 
 was in connection with the building of the 
 Florida East Coast Railway extension over the 
 Florida keys to Key West. This was investi- 
 gated and the Commission found no real evi- 
 dence of peonage. Later it investigated con- 
 ditions in Maine and declared that since the 
 evils of involuntary servitude have been largely 
 stamped out in the South, there has probably 
 existed in Maine the most complete system of 
 peonage in the entire country. In late years the 
 
186 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 natives who formerly supplied the labour for 
 the logging concerns have been engaged in the 
 paper mills, and the lumber concerns have been 
 compelled to import labour, largely foreigners, 
 from other states. Boston is the chief labour 
 market, and the employment agents frequently 
 tell the labourers that the camps will be but 
 a few miles from good towns, where they 
 can come frequently for recreation and enjoy- 
 ment. Arriving at the outskirts of civilization, 
 the men are hauled for some distance into the 
 forest and then compelled to march some sixty 
 or seventy miles into the woods. The state 
 legislature, at the request of the lumber con- 
 cerns, passed a law requiring labourers to work 
 out all advances made to them on account of 
 travelling expenses, outfitting, and the like, and 
 the lumbermen use this as a club with which 
 to compel the labourers to stay their time out. 
 
(Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y 
 [IGRANTS CHANGING FOREIGN MONEY INTO AMERICAN CURR« 
 
XXIII 
 THE IMMIGRANT BANK 
 
 THE immigrant bank is an institution 
 which flourishes in every part of the 
 United States where immigrants from 
 southern and eastern Europe are found in con- 
 siderable numbers. It is a bank that bears no 
 closer resemblance to ordinary banking institu- 
 tions than a sailboat bears to the big ocean 
 greyhound that brings the immigrants over. 
 It is without capital, except the confidence of 
 the immigrant in his banker; without legal re- 
 sponsibility, except what little the common law 
 might place upon it; without regulation, except 
 what the exigencies of business require; and 
 wholly without legal control by duly constituted 
 state or national authorities. 
 
 Immigrant bankers are, as a rule, also steam- 
 ship ticket agents, and usually conduct other 
 businesses of some kind. Frequently they 
 run the neighbourhood grocery store, and there 
 is little chance of bad debts when they carry 
 both the accounts payable and the accounts re- 
 ceivable of their customers. Often they are 
 187 
 
188 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 the neighbourhood saloon-keepers, and the 
 banker who runs a saloon and an immigrant 
 bank combined is always prosperous. 
 
 But the proprietor of the immigrant bank, 
 though he may also be a saloon-keeper or a 
 grocer, is not entirely mercenary. He not only 
 is always ready to handle the immigrants' sav- 
 ings, but obliges them by writing their letters, 
 receiving their mail, giving them advice, and 
 doing everything a good neighbour might be 
 expected to do. His ability and willingness to 
 help them in all their small — but to them im- 
 portant — affairs, naturally gives him the ad- 
 vantage over regular banking institutions, and 
 makes him an important factor in the life of 
 the new immigrant. 
 
 The immigrant's deposits are not subject to 
 check, they draw no interest, and there is no 
 requirement that the banker shall keep a re- 
 serve fund on hand to take care of any pos- 
 sible " run on the bank." The banker simply 
 plays the role of custodian of the funds, and 
 uses them in his own business without let or 
 hindrance. The transmission of the money of 
 immigrants to their friends and relatives 
 abroad is an important part of the business of 
 every immigrant banker. It is estimated that 
 this business amounts to more than a quarter 
 of a billion dollars a year. The immigrant 
 
THE IMMIGRANT BANK 189 
 
 banker usually has the money orders of some 
 big banking house whose credit is good on 
 the other side, and these orders are sold to the 
 immigrants who wish to send money home, the 
 immigrant banker and the big banking house 
 dividing the profit of the exchange. 
 
 The best information available shows that 
 there are nearly three thousand of these banks 
 in operation in the United States, and that 
 New York City alone has about a thousand of 
 them. They never have flourished among im- 
 migrants from northwestern Europe, for the 
 reason that the immigrants from those coun- 
 tries have readily fallen in with the regular 
 American banking system. To the immigrant 
 from eastern and southern Europe the steam- 
 ship company that brought him over, and its 
 agents, are the only connecting links between 
 him and the fatherland. He looks forward to 
 the day when he can bring his family from 
 Europe or return there himself. 
 
 Nothing is more natural, under these condi- 
 tions, than that he should deposit his savings 
 with the steamship agent in preparation for 
 that day. It is not long before the steamship 
 agent has the nucleus of a banking business, 
 and his assumption of the role of banker 
 quickly follows. And then, this confidence as- 
 sures him that if he opens up still another 
 
190 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 business he will get the immigrants 5 trade. So 
 he becomes a saloon-keeper, a grocer, or some- 
 thing like that. It also happens, on the other 
 hand, that the saloon-keeper or the grocer is 
 led into the banking business by the demands of 
 his patrons. Here is a customer who brings 
 his savings to his grocer to keep over Sunday 
 because he has a safe in which to lock them up. 
 Another follows suit, and still others, until 
 the grocer is a banker before he knows it. 
 
 The immigrant banker deals almost wholly 
 with a floating population of alien labourers. 
 Having just arrived, almost wholly beyond the 
 influence of Americanization, completely ig- 
 norant of American banking methods, easily 
 influenced by racial appeal and largely de- 
 pendent upon leaders of their own nationality, 
 they flock to the immigrant banker. A suc- 
 cessful Italian banker, in commenting upon the 
 ignorance and trustfulness of his patrons, 
 pointed out the ease with which he could ex- 
 ploit them should he so desire. Often they 
 lose their deposit receipts and forget how much 
 is due them. They accept without question his 
 statement of the amount. A member of a 
 leading steamship agency which acts as a de- 
 positing agency, in trying to encourage immi- 
 grants to patronize regular American banks, 
 declares that, without solicitation, his agency 
 
THE IMMIGRANT BANK 191 
 
 could command $200,000 in immigrant de- 
 posits, so frequent and insistent are the requests 
 from the immigrants that it act as custodian 
 of their funds. 
 
 The ordinary American bank is looked upon 
 with suspicion by the new immigrant, and, 
 furthermore, it has no facilities for rendering 
 the sort of banking service the immigrant 
 needs. When they see the magnificence of the 
 rooms of some of our big banks they stand 
 aghast, and are sure that no bank can be hon- 
 est which has (what seems to them) such 
 extravagant appointments. The equipment of 
 American banks prevents them from entering 
 into a fair competition with the immigrant 
 banker. A Slovak immigrant banker, in apolo- 
 gizing to an American for the appearance of 
 his banking room, declared that it was neces- 
 sarily ill-kept, because the men came to the 
 bank in their working clothes, often intoxi- 
 cated, and usually smoking, chewing, and spit- 
 ting without regard to cuspidors. 
 
 While there are many large and carefully 
 conducted immigrant banks in the United 
 States, there are many more small ones which 
 are indifferently conducted. Some of the large 
 ones fail at times. A Croatian banker in New 
 York, who had branches and agencies through- 
 out the country, failed to the extent of $600,- 
 
192 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 ooo in 1908. In some of the banks no receipts 
 are given and no pass-books issued. The alien 
 press frequently helps keep alive a prejudice 
 against American institutions, often because 
 those who control the papers are immigrant 
 bankers. A certain Slovak banker is the re- 
 ligious leader of his people, and the organizer 
 of a national Slovak society. Although he has 
 become an American citizen, in the several 
 publications he issues, ranging from a daily 
 paper to a yearly almanac, he preaches Pan- 
 Slovakism. He transmits more than two mil- 
 lion dollars to Europe and sells some six thou- 
 sand steamship tickets every year. 
 
 Sometimes immigrant bankers obtain a pos- 
 tal sub-station in their places of business, and 
 use this as a means to encourage their people 
 to patronize them. One Italian banker who 
 operated such a station in connection with his 
 bank, made it appear that he was doing a 
 government business. He failed, with liabil- 
 ities of more than a quarter of a million dollars. 
 
 The investigation of the Immigration Com- 
 mission shows that comparatively few of the 
 immigrant bankers keep an adequate reserve 
 fund on hand, and also that there are many 
 scoundrels who set up immigrant banks just 
 long enough to get a good line of deposits, and 
 then abscond, leaving the poor immigrants 
 
THE IMMIGRANT BANK 193 
 
 without a cent of their savings. There are 
 frequent instances where the bankers, in per- 
 fect good faith, make use of the funds de- 
 posited with them, and fail from making in- 
 judicious investments. 
 
 The amount deposited by the immigrant in 
 an immigrant bank seldom exceeds one hun- 
 dred dollars, and the amount sent back to 
 Europe at a time averages about $35. The 
 bulk of the savings goes back through the im- 
 migrant banks rather than through the postal 
 money order system, because the immigrant 
 does not know how to make out the application 
 blank and the postal clerk cannot undertake 
 to do it for him. Yet, in spite of this draw- 
 back, the postal service transmits about $75,- 
 000,000 a year in post-office money orders. 
 
 Many immigrant bankers undertake to trans- 
 mit money after they find themselves on the 
 verge of failure. They receive the money, but 
 do not transmit it, although pretending to. It 
 may take a month or more to discover that 
 something is wrong, and meanwhile the banker 
 absconds and leaves nothing behind. Some of 
 them have paid editorials in the alien news- 
 papers telling of their great success as bankers, 
 and recommending themselves as the best 
 mediums for the transmission of money to 
 Europe. The superintendent of banks for the 
 
194* THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 state of New York estimates that there is 
 probably two million dollars a year lost to 
 immigrants through the operations of immi- 
 grant bankers. 
 
 Based upon its investigations the Immigra- 
 tion Commission declares that some method of 
 regulating these banks and of protecting the 
 depositors seems imperative. The failure or 
 absconding of an immigrant banker brings dis- 
 aster to the one who can least afford it, and 
 sweeps away the savings of one who has lived 
 like a dog and endured the greatest hardships 
 that American industry requires of human 
 flesh. As to the nature of the security to be 
 exacted of the immigrant banker the Commis- 
 sion makes no recommendation. The remedy 
 probably will have to come through state laws 
 rather than by congressional enactment. 
 
XXIV 
 IMMIGRANT CHARITY SEEKERS 
 
 IT has been recognized that there are thou- 
 sands of immigrants who come to America 
 and get lost in the busy life of this bustling 
 country. While the immigration laws en- 
 deavour to exclude those who are likely to 
 become public charges, there are no fixed rules 
 by which such things can be determined. In 
 spite of the most rigid enforcement of the law, 
 consistent with the interests of the immigrant 
 and the country to which he comes, there 
 are always prospective charity seekers who 
 thread their way through the immigrant sta- 
 tion. 
 
 How many such there are was never accu- 
 rately ascertained until the Immigration Com- 
 mission began investigating the matter. Not 
 only did it gather what data it could in the few 
 years allotted, but it also digested the statistics 
 of the Census Bureau on pauperism in America, 
 and those, also, of the Bureau of Immigration, 
 the figures of the two bureaus extending from 
 1850 to 1908. Its own plans of investigation 
 195 
 
196 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 were made after conferences with the officials 
 of the field department for the extension of 
 organized charity in the United States. In 
 addition to receiving general information con- 
 cerning charitable assistance rendered to immi- 
 grants in certain typical industrial centres, it 
 secured data relative to aid furnished immi- 
 grants during certain periods by charity organi- 
 zations in a number of typical cities. 
 
 Information was secured concerning more 
 than thirty thousand cases of people who had 
 received charitable assistance, and it was found 
 that nearly two-fifths of these cases were those 
 of immigrants, while only one-tenth of them 
 were cases of children of immigrants. In Mil- 
 waukee, Buffalo, and Cleveland two-thirds of 
 the cases were immigrants ; and the percentage 
 in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco was 
 more than three-fifths. In a number of cities 
 more than half of the cases were immigrants. 
 The inquiry revealed the fact that there were 
 nearly four people dependent upon the average 
 immigrant who received assistance. It fur- 
 thermore showed that the immigrants, as a 
 whole, tried to get along, and that only in one- 
 fifth of these cases presented was the fault that 
 of the breadwinner. In three-fifths of the cases 
 aid was necessary because the breadwinner 
 lacked employment or had insufficient wages to 
 
IMMIGRANT CHARITY SEEKERS 197 
 
 support those dependent upon his labour. The 
 hardships of the family were less frequently 
 due to the neglect or bad habits of the bread- 
 winner in cases of immigrants, than in the 
 cases of native Americans, and, in the case 
 of the immigrant, they affected fewer de- 
 pendents. 
 
 A silent commentary upon the greater dan- 
 gers to which the immigrant is exposed, when 
 compared with the native born, is seen in the 
 nature of cases which require charity. Of the 
 American charity seekers aided, 27.7 per cent 
 were aided because of the death or disability of 
 the breadwinner; in the case of immigrants, 
 30.2 per cent. 
 
 Some races are much more given to seeking 
 charity because of the neglect or bad habits 
 of their breadwinners than others. More than 
 one-fourth of the charity cases among the 
 Finns, the Lithuanians, and the Norwegians 
 was due to the neglect or bad habits of the head 
 of the family, while in the case of the Dutch, 
 the Hebrews, the Italians, and the Syrians 
 less than one-eighth of the charity seeking was 
 due to these causes. The Syrians experienced 
 more difficulty in getting along because of lack 
 of employment or insufficient earnings than 
 any other race, and they did not seek charity 
 for many other reasons. Three out of every 
 
198 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 four cases of relief sought among them was 
 the result of no work or low earnings. On the 
 other hand, less than half of the Swedes were 
 helped upon these grounds. 
 
 As in nearly all of the other statistical in- 
 quiries by which immigrants, their children, 
 and native Americans may be compared, this 
 one shows that the children of immigrants ap- 
 proximate the native standards, as a rule, and 
 fall between the immigrant and the American 
 of native parentage. The children of immi- 
 grants received aid less frequently because of 
 old age than the children of native parents, and 
 likewise needed aid fewer times because of 
 deaths or disabilities in the families. On the 
 other hand, among the children of immigrants 
 there was a larger number of breadwinners 
 whose dependents sought charity because of 
 neglect or bad habits than either among the 
 immigrants themselves or among native Amer- 
 icans. Likewise, they were more frequently 
 out of work or had insufficient earnings than 
 either of the other classes. 
 
 When the immigrant sought charity his 
 needs were greater, because he had a larger 
 family than the native. There were twice as 
 many families of ten or more among the im- 
 migrants aided, more than twice as many 
 families of nine and nearly twice as many fami- 
 
IMMIGRANT CHARITY SEEKERS 199 
 
 lies of six, seven, and eight, respectively. It 
 will be seen from this that one reason why the 
 immigrant seeks charity so frequently is the 
 fact that he has such a large family that any 
 untoward incident in the family economy leaves 
 him unable to meet the demands upon him. 
 
 The charity cases examined show that the 
 immigrant respects the marriage bond more 
 than the native American. While approxi- 
 mately eleven out of every hundred cases 
 among native Americans were those of women 
 who had been deserted or who were separated 
 from their husbands, among the immigrants as- 
 sistance for that cause was required in less 
 than eight out of every hundred cases. And 
 almost without exception the races from south- 
 ern and eastern Europe showed the lowest per- 
 centage of desertion and neglect. 
 
 The immigrant, as a rule, hesitates to seek 
 charity until he has been in America for four 
 years. Seven-eighths of all the cases presented 
 in the Immigration Commission's report were 
 those of immigrants who had been in America 
 for more than four years. Of course, if they 
 become a public charge at an early date after 
 landing they are liable to deportation, and this 
 may lead them to keep their misery to them- 
 selves. 
 
 One is surprised at the number of those 
 
200 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 seeking charity who are able to speak English. 
 The natural inference would be that those who 
 cannot speak the American tongue would have 
 the hardest time to get adequate work, and 
 that this would bring a larger percentage of 
 them to the charity relief organizations. But 
 only about three per cent of the children of 
 immigrants who seek charity are unable to 
 speak English, and less than one- fourth of the 
 immigrant charity seekers themselves are un- 
 able to do so. 
 
 The care taken to admit only able-bodied 
 immigrants and dependents who have relatives 
 both able and willing to support them, has 
 tended to reduce to a minimum the need for 
 charity, and pauperism is the exception and not 
 the rule. But it was not always so. In the 
 earlier days, when immigration was unregu- 
 lated, immigrant pauperism was one of the 
 most serious evils of immigration, and this was 
 enhanced by the fact that many European com- 
 munities preferred to pay the cost of trans- 
 porting their paupers to America rather than 
 provide for them in almshouses. It is recorded 
 that in many instances a large proportion of 
 an entire shipload of immigrants would be 
 so destitute that it was necessary to transport 
 them directly to poorhouses, where they were 
 cared for until they could get work. The 
 
IMMIGRANT CHARITY SEEKERS 201 
 
 records of the poorhouses of that day show that 
 they were a refuge for thousands of immi- 
 grants who had just arrived in America with 
 no other asset than the scant clothes upon their 
 backs. 
 
 One of the things which helps to keep down 
 the number of charity-seeking immigrants is 
 the fact that those who come over and fail in 
 their battle for living may be returned within 
 three years at the expense of the government. 
 Often it happens that when an immigrant finds 
 America too hard for him, he suddenly de- 
 velops symptoms of incurable disease, and 
 finds himself unable to work. He keeps up the 
 deception until he reaches the immigration 
 authorities, and if he can convince them, he is 
 sent back to his native land without expense 
 to himself. 
 
 On the whole, the immigrant must be com- 
 mended for his pluck in fighting the battle of 
 life. He frequently has to start out in lines 
 of work which afford the smallest compensation 
 and, when he is married, he usually has more 
 than his share of mouths to feed. Large fami- 
 lies and low wages mean a very stern fight with 
 poverty. And, furthermore, his burden is made 
 heavier by the lack of helpful encouragement 
 from the native Americans around him. His 
 problem of earnings meet expenses is an ever- 
 
202 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 present one. He has little chance to lay by 
 anything for a rainy day and when the rainy 
 day comes he simply does without the neces- 
 sities he cannot buy. He makes a noble, if 
 unheralded, fight against adversity, and the 
 wonder is that he is not forced to seek charity 
 more often than he does. 
 
 On the whole, it cannot be said that the im- 
 migrant peoples have added to the burdens of 
 those who provide for the unfortunate. Much 
 of the actual misery among them is relieved 
 by the people of their own race and, it must 
 be said, that much charity has been dispensed 
 to native Americans by the generosity of those 
 who themselves came here through Ellis Island. 
 
XXV 
 
 IMMIGRANTS FROM ASIA 
 
 SO far as the coming of immigrants from 
 China, Japan, and Korea is concerned, 
 conditions are now regarded as satisfac- 
 tory. The Chinese Exclusion Law operates so 
 well, and the agreement with Japan is carried 
 out with such good faith by the Japanese gov- 
 ernment, that there are no changes recom- 
 mended by the Immigration Commission. But 
 there is another tide of Asiatic immigration 
 that is giving much concern to < the Pacific 
 Coast. This is the stream of humanity coming 
 from India. These East Indian coolies are 
 Aryans, and belong to that immigrant tide 
 which swept out of the cradle of the race far 
 up in northwestern Asia, and down through 
 the lands of the Medes and Persians into India. 
 But, according to the findings of the Immigra- 
 tion Commission, they are, from no point of 
 view, desirable members of the community. 
 The British government, whose subjects they 
 are, acceded a few years ago to Canada's 
 203 
 
204 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 desire to exclude them. That turned the tide 
 to the Pacific Coast of our own country. The 
 Commission recommends that steps be taken to 
 induce the British government to stop their 
 coming to the United States by the same policy 
 that Japan prevents Japanese labour from com- 
 ing. 
 
 The East Indians are entering the United 
 States at the rate of about a thousand a year. 
 Of these nearly seven-eighths are Hindus wear- 
 ing the turban. The first important immigra- 
 tion of East Indian labourers into the United 
 States came from British Columbia, where, as 
 a result of the activity of steamship agents and 
 the spread of Canadian literature in India, there 
 arrived over five thousand of them in four 
 years. As soon as Canada decided that these 
 immigrants were undesirable, they were denied 
 admission unless coming direct from their na- 
 tive land upon through tickets. The amount of 
 money required to be shown was also advanced 
 from $25 to $200. Since there are no steam- 
 ship lines direct to Canada from India, the 
 intent of Canada to exclude the East Indian 
 is plain. 
 
 The Hindu labourers who had already come 
 to Canada soon found that the winters of that 
 country were too rigorous for them, and fur- 
 thermore, that the lumber mills and salmon in- 
 
IMMIGRANTS FROM ASIA 205 
 
 dustry in Washington and Oregon offered bet- 
 ter wages than they were getting in British 
 Columbia. Of course, when a labourer could 
 get $1.60 a day for his work on this side of 
 the line, and only 80 cents to $1.25 a day on 
 the other side, he was not long in crossing the 
 line. 
 
 But when Canada barred her boundaries 
 against them, immigration from British Co- 
 lumbia soon exhausted the supply, and those 
 who come now are directly from India. Con- 
 sidered by the government as the most unde- 
 sirable class of immigrants who ever came to 
 American shores, a policy of most rigid inspec- 
 tion has been adopted at Pacific Coast ports, 
 and if there is any possible reason for exclud- 
 ing a Hindu, he is promptly turned back upon 
 the steamship company for transportation back 
 to India. Nearly one-half of all those who 
 come are rejected. Yet, in spite of the strict- 
 est interpretation of the law, they still continue 
 to come, and it is the opinion of the Immigra- 
 tion Commission that unless some radical meas- 
 ures of exclusion are adopted, they may insist 
 upon coming into this country in large num- 
 bers. 
 
 Nearly all of the Hindu immigrants have 
 been agricultural labourers in India. A large 
 majority of them come here ambitious to save 
 
206 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 $2,000 and then return home. However, many 
 of them come to stay permanently, predicating 
 their determination upon British oppression at 
 home. Most of them are not physically sturdy 
 enough to meet with favour as construction 
 labourers or section hands on the railroads, so 
 the only thing left to them is to become farm 
 labourers. Here their work is limited almost 
 wholly to hoeing and weeding. In most of the 
 communities, because of their dirty appearance 
 and their turbans, they find it difficult to get 
 work. They usually go from place to place in 
 small gangs, with one of their number as leader, 
 business manager, and interpreter. Many of 
 them find great difficulty to secure work during 
 the winter months. The Commission calls 
 their competitive position the most insecure of 
 any race, and says that when other labour is 
 available the Hindus find little favour with 
 employers. 
 
 The standard of living among the Hindus 
 in California is lower than that of any of the 
 races with whom they compete. Having no 
 families, they usually have no furniture and 
 sleep upon blankets on the floor or ground. 
 They generally cook upon a grate placed over 
 a fire built in a hole in the ground. If there 
 happen to be members of different castes in 
 the gang, those of each caste mess separately, 
 
IMMIGRANTS FROM ASIA 207 
 
 and all food eaten must be prepared by a mem- 
 ber of the caste eating it. They will not eat 
 any meat that they do not kill and dress them- 
 selves, so they get but little of it. The strength 
 of their caste feeling is revealed by the fact that 
 when placed in jail for petit larceny or other 
 misdemeanours, they consistently refuse food 
 not brought and prepared by members of their 
 own caste. One of them fasted for ten days 
 rather than eat food not prepared by his caste. 
 The jail authorities kept him from starving to 
 death only by providing him a stove upon 
 which he could prepare his own food. 
 
 The average Hindu spends about twenty-five 
 cents a day for his food and thirty dollars a 
 year for his clothes, of which he seldom has a 
 change. Dressing up, with him, consists in 
 changing his turban and putting on his coat. 
 He saves money but sends it back to India as 
 fast as he saves it, so that he seldom has any 
 on hand for periods of unemployment and sick- 
 ness. They are the most illiterate of all the 
 immigrant races coming to America, and the 
 government has instructed the Federal attor- 
 neys everywhere to oppose their being granted 
 citizenship papers. The Commission says their 
 assimilative qualities appear to be the lowest 
 of any race in the West, not barring the 
 Chinese, and that the mass of Western people 
 
208 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 oppose their coming as they oppose that of no 
 other race. 
 
 The Commission did not investigate the 
 Chinese question generally, it having become 
 largely a minor issue, but it did conclude from 
 evidence presented that there are fewer 
 Chinese in the cities of the West than formerly. 
 The coming of the Chinese began about the 
 time of the discovery of gold in California. 
 In the late seventies Chinese immigration be- 
 came a live issue. California passed much in- 
 effective state and local legislation, and finally 
 appealed to the government to stop the immi- 
 gration of Chinese labour. Congress passed 
 an exclusion act, but it was vetoed by President 
 Hayes. Then it was asserted that the agitation 
 was not the result of a general public sentiment 
 but only the mouthings of those whose opinions 
 were not entitled to respect by the lawmakers of 
 the nation. In answer, California submitted 
 the whole matter to a referendum before the 
 people. The result was that out of 162,000 
 votes cast only a few hundred were registered 
 against exclusion. With this evidence of the 
 unanimity of sentiment Congress passed, and 
 President Arthur signed, the Exclusion Law 
 of 1882, although previously he had vetoed a 
 bill because of some of the provisions contained 
 in the approved measure. 
 
IMMIGRANTS FROM ASIA 209 
 
 In 1886, after there had been some minor 
 legislation in 1884, China proposed a new 
 treaty, which was signed, excluding the 
 Chinese for twenty years. The Senate 
 amended the treaty in several minor matters, 
 and then China refused to accept it. In this 
 state of affairs President Cleveland signed a 
 law carrying into effect the subject-matter of 
 the treaty. Exclusion was made even more 
 rigid by the law of 1892, which provided that 
 all Chinese in the United States who did not 
 register their presence within a year, should 
 be deported. Its constitutionality was attacked, 
 but upheld by the Supreme Court. Mean- 
 while, some 90,000 Chinese failed to register 
 and were liable to deportation. As it was 
 found that it would cost some six million dol- 
 lars to deport them, the time for registration 
 was extended. 
 
 In 1894 China negotiated a treaty upon the 
 subject, which was ratified and which provided 
 for the exclusion of all Chinese labourers for 
 a period of ten years. In 1902 there was some 
 further legislation, and when the ten year 
 period, provided by the treaty, expired in 1904 
 and China refused to recognize the American 
 contention further, Congress passed a law ex- 
 cluding Chinese labour indefinitely, without 
 any reference to China's views upon the 
 
210 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 subject. That is the law in force to-day. 
 Because of the devious ways which the Chinese 
 use in smuggling themselves into Uncle Sam's 
 domains, it is said to be the hardest law upon 
 the statute books to enforce. 
 
 The story of the restriction of Japanese im- 
 migration is too fresh in the minds of readers 
 to need relation at length. The anti- Japanese 
 sentiment had been rising for years, but was 
 brought to a climax when the Japanese refused 
 to send their children to the separate schools 
 established for them, and sought to force their 
 way into the white schools. President Roose- 
 velt sent Secretary Metcalf to make an investi- 
 gation, and upon the strength of Metcalf 's 
 report Roosevelt went so far as privately to 
 threaten to make California come to terms by 
 force of arms. The upshot of the whole matter 
 was an agreement between the two govern- 
 ments that no Japanese should be admitted 
 who did not possess a passport, and that pass- 
 ports should not be issued to labourers. 
 
XXVI 
 
 HOW THE "NEW" IMMIGRANT 
 LIVES 
 
 A STUDY of the conditions under which 
 the new immigrant lives after coming 
 to America, serves to convince the stu- 
 dent that he is often something of a hero. He' 
 often lives in filth and squalor, but frequently 
 it is necessity that compels him to do so. He is 
 sometimes found in camps where conditions 
 are so bad that they would make the best of 
 us indifferent, but he lives in this way so that 
 he may provide for his family, present or 
 prospective. If he has a family with him in 
 America, he shows himself provident of heart 
 by bearing uncomplainingly the hardships of 
 to-day in order that his family's needs may be 
 met to-morrow. 
 
 The hundreds of thousands of immigrants 
 who live in camps lead an isolated life. Their 
 daily existence is little more than working, 
 eating, sleeping in endless round. They live in 
 shacks, have about as few of the creature com- 
 forts as men may have, and their only diver- 
 211 
 
212 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 sions are drinking and gambling. Here is a 
 picture of camp life on a great engineering 
 project — the New York Barge Canal — drawn 
 by Peter Roberts: 
 
 " Italians formed the major part of the la- 
 bour force, and the accommodations furnished 
 most of them were shameful. We saw men 
 crawling into pens which few Americans would 
 have their dogs occupy. The cooking these men 
 did was not elaborate; it was easier and pleas- 
 anter to get a loaf of bread, a piece of bologna, 
 and a bottle o f beer at the commissary. In these 
 camps the commissary boss is supreme, and 
 the men must buy of him if they wish to retain 
 their jobs. He has both wet and dry goods 
 for sale, and believes in charging all the traffic 
 will bear. Often he collects a fee for each 
 man to whom he gives work. The coarse, vul- 
 gar elements of human nature come to the 
 fore; the indecent story, the vulgar joke, and 
 the immoral picture are passed around. Con- 
 ditions of this kind can only be duplicated in 
 some towns in southern Italy. The workmen 
 are removed from all agencies that mould and 
 shape coming Americans; deprived of the re- 
 fining influences of women and the soothing 
 touch of childhood." 
 
 The women of the immigrant community 
 appreciate the help and encouragement of 
 
HOW " NEW " IMMIGRANTS LIVE 213 
 
 American women — something they do not 
 often get. The life of these women is seldom 
 easy and often hard and dreary. Their homes 
 have many births and many deaths. They are 
 as meek and submissive in the home as the men 
 are at work. An instance of what a good 
 American may do is that of a Pennsylvania 
 woman who visits the houses of the poor im- 
 migrant women in her community and carries 
 to them the gospel of cleanliness. Oiten these 
 mothers protest that there is some good in 
 dirt and vermin. But the sweet cleanliness 
 of the visitor comes in and the parasites go out. 
 She teaches them how to feed their children, 
 and then invites them to little meetings which 
 she holds. They come washed and neatly 
 dressed, and from month to month their homes 
 grow better kept and their burdens grow 
 lighter. 
 
 High rents and a desire to save produce 
 overcrowding among the poor, native or immi- 
 grant, but especially among the latter. In a 
 small house in Omaha, forty-six Greeks lived 
 and ate and slept. In an eastern city a Ruthe- 
 nian, his wife, their two children, and seven 
 boarders occupied one room. In another 
 boarding-house forty-two foreigners lived in 
 four rooms, each room thirteen feet square; 
 while in another place twenty-four foreigners 
 
214 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 lived in one room fifteen by eighteen feet. In 
 some of the boarding-houses the beds are used 
 in two shifts — by day workers at night and 
 by night workers in the daytime. 
 
 One of the most interesting phases of the in- 
 vestigation of the immigration problem made 
 by the Immigration Commission concerned the 
 condition of the homes of immigrants in cities. 
 Perhaps the most striking result was the show- 
 ing of the large percentage of clean homes 
 among immigrants, in spite of their being 
 forced so often to reside in districts where 
 proper standards of cleanliness are hardest to 
 maintain. The investigation covered more 
 than ten thousand households, in which lived 
 upward of fifty thousand people. These house- 
 holds were located in New York, Chicago, 
 Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Buffalo, and 
 Milwaukee. Four-fifths of these households 
 were in apartments of four rooms or less. A 
 third of them were four-room apartments, and 
 nearly a third were three-room apartments. 
 While nearly all of the households of the new 
 immigration had about five people for every 
 two sleeping-rooms, they still managed to keep 
 things fairly clean in a large majority of their 
 homes. In more than half of the households 
 of the foreigners they had but one room out- 
 side of the sleeping-rooms, and in one-eighth 
 
HOW " NEW " IMMIGRANTS LIVE 215 
 
 of them they had no rooms except the sleeping- 
 rooms. 
 
 In more than one- fourth of the foreign 
 households boarders were kept, while in only 
 one-tenth of the native households were board- 
 ers found. As is the rule in most things, the , 
 children of immigrants seem to be about half 
 American and half foreigners in this respect. 
 One-sixth of their households have boarders. 
 The equipment of the average foreigner's home 
 was only about half as good as that of native 
 Americans, in such matters as water supply, 
 toilet accommodations, and other facilities. 
 All of these conveniences are found much more 
 frequently among the people of the " old " 
 immigration than among those of the " new." 
 And yet, in spite of all the drawbacks of over- 
 crowding, keeping boarders, having only one 
 room they did not have to sleep in, lacking 
 proper equipment, and the like, only one- 
 seventh of the Syrians had homes in which 
 conditions were bad, only one-fifth of the 
 Slovenians, only one-sixth of the Slovaks, 
 Poles, and Hebrews, and only one-tenth of the 
 Magyars. 
 
 The foreigners of the new immigration are 
 famous for their societies. It is estimated that}' 
 there are a hundred national societies of one 
 kind or another among the Italians ot\the 
 
216 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 country. There are estimated to be seven 
 thousand societies and clubs of all kinds among 
 the Poles of the country, and they have an 
 aggregate membership of some 800,000. 
 Among the Slovenians there are some fifteen 
 hundred clubs and societies, with a total mem- 
 bership approximating 125,000. Among the 
 Slavic peoples in Europe there is a communal 
 tendency. The lands near the villages are cul- 
 tivated on a communal basis and all prosper, or 
 starve, together. Their societies and clubs in 
 the United States are a reflection of this. 
 
 There are a large number of church organi- 
 zations. Some of these pay sick and death 
 benefits, and nearly all of them are under the 
 ultimate control of the spiritual advisers of the 
 people. There are also many secular organiza- 
 tions looking to the protection of their mem- 
 bers in case of sickness and death. The 
 Italian government always has taken a deep 
 interest in the Italian immigrant, and has in- 
 stituted a protective society for Italian labour, 
 which is supported partly by a government 
 appropriation and partly by monthly payments 
 from its members. Among the Poles there are 
 a large number of military societies. Usually 
 there are one or more such societies in every 
 Polish centre, and the members are drilled like 
 soldiers. A Polish priest has estimated that 
 
HOW " NEW " IMMIGRANTS LIVE 217 
 
 there are 20,000 Poles receiving some sort of \ 
 military training in the United States, in antici- 
 pation of the day when their beloved Poland 
 attempts to free itself from the grip of Russia. 
 
 The main body of the " new " immigration 
 is Catholic. Out of a million immigrants ar- 
 riving probably six hundred thousand are of 
 Catholic affiliations. It is estimated that dur- 
 ing the past twenty years ten million Catholics 
 have come to America. To shepherd these 
 millions of souls, speaking thirty different 
 languages, to soothe race hatred and national 
 prejudices, and do the many other things that 
 such a situation involves, are problems the like 
 of which no ecclesiastical body ever has had 
 to meet. 
 
 When the foreigner takes his recreation it is 
 usually in a spirit of relaxation. They go at 
 their games in a leisurely, easy-going way, that 
 is not calculated to quicken the pulse or excite 
 the enthusiasm. They love their holidays, how- 
 ever, and have as many of them as the ex- 
 igencies of their employment will permit. 
 Holy and festal days and weddings and christ- 
 enings are happy times with them. 
 
 Largely banished by poverty to the poorer 
 parts of our cities, compelled by circumstances 
 to live among surroundings that are often un- 
 wholesome, in neighbourhoods that frequently 
 
218 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 are skirted by the worst elements of our native 
 life, treated with contempt by the majority of 
 the native population, it is no wonder that the 
 immigrant often seems unresponsive to Ameri- 
 can ideals and disposed to hold out against a^ 
 process of assimilation. Men and women who 
 patiently can bear the things that the average 
 " new " immigrant must bear, are, according to 
 those who know them best, men who will leave 
 after them a progeny worthy of their adopted 
 country. 
 
XXVII 
 SOME UNSOLVED PROBLEMS 
 
 THAT there are still many unsolved prob- 
 lems in the handling of the immigrant 
 tide coming to America is a fact patent 
 to every student of the question. Some of 
 these problems are so knotty as to baffle the 
 most earnest attempts to settle them fully and 
 •satisfactorily. Most prominent among them is 
 the question of qualifications for entering the 
 country. The House of Representatives insists 
 that the situation demands an educational quali- 
 fication for entrance. That there is a very 
 large percentage of ignorant immigrants com- 
 ing into the United States from eastern and 
 southern Europe, the figures of the Bureau of 
 Immigration prove. More than a third of the 
 Syrians, Ruthenians, and South Italians are un- 
 able to read; more than a fourth of the Croa- 
 tians, Russians, and Servians; and more than 
 a fifth of the Bulgarians, Greeks, Lithuanians, 
 and Poles, are in the same category. A liter- 
 ^acy test would keep these people out. 
 
 In the early days of the American nation 
 219 
 
22© THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 tens of thousands of people who were unable 
 to read or write came to the United States and 
 became the progenitors of families who to-day 
 form a part of the bone and sinew of the na- 
 tion, and there are many who assert that his- 
 tory is but repeating itself; that among those 
 who are coming now, who cannot read or write, 
 there are tens of thousands who will become 
 the progenitors of families who will add much 
 to our national human capital. It is claimed 
 that it is not the uneducated foreigner who be- 
 comes our anarchist, our alien agitator, or our 
 rebel against American institutions; that an 
 illiterate man with an open mind may be much 
 more fit for admission into our country than 
 the literate one with a mind filled with enmity' 
 against our institutions. 
 
 Those who favour the literacy test declare/ 
 that our tide of immigrants is now so large 
 that there are difficulties surrounding its as- 
 similation, and that the time has come when we 
 can pick out immigrants with greater care and 
 make it a select body rather than one that has 
 not been filtered of the undesirables. They 
 contend that with our present supply of incom- 
 ing foreigners it is better that two fit persons 
 be excluded than that one unfit be admitted. 
 They feel that even with the restrictions drawn 
 so close as to keep out all illiterates, we still 
 
SOME UNSOLVED PROBLEMS 221 
 
 will have leeway enough to choose a sufficient 
 number of good immigrants to tax the assimi-j 
 lable powers of the nation. They do not assert 
 that every illiterate alien is a bad citizen, or 
 that even the majority of them are; they argue 
 that a good immigrant who can read and 
 write is better than a good one who cannot, 
 and that there are enough of the former with- 
 out having to take the latter. 
 
 The majority of those who favour a restricted * 
 immigration predicated upon the belief that 
 the tide has become too large for assimilation 
 to keep pace with expansion, favour the literacy 
 test as the best method of checking it. But 
 other methods have been proposed to accom- 
 plish the same result. One of these is the. 
 limitation of the number of immigrants ad- 
 mitted by restricting the number of each race 
 to a certain percentage. This would simply 
 accept all that come as now, literate and illiter- 
 ate, up to a certain number and prevent us from 
 exercising a preference for literates over il- 
 literates. 
 **■*- Still another proposition for restriction is 1 
 to exclude all unskilled labourers who do not 
 come with their wives or families. It is argued 
 by those who urge this method of restriction, 
 that those who come unaccompanied are usu- 
 ally men who are coming over for the pur- 
 
222 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 pose of working a few years and then return- 
 ing home. It is declared that they tend to 
 restrict the opportunities of labourers who 
 come with their wives and families. It gen- 
 erally is agreed that the man who comes with 
 his wife or his family comes with the intent 
 of making America his home — an intent that; 
 tends to make a good citizen of him. Those 
 who oppose this plan agree that there is much 
 in what its advocates say, but, on the other hand, 
 there are so many labourers who come over 
 and get money enough to bring their wives or 
 families later that the provision would shut 
 out tens of thousands of the very people it 
 was meant to help — the men who want to make 
 America their home and the home of their 
 posterity. 
 
 Another method proposed for restricting im-^ 
 migration is to limit the number of immigrants 
 ... arriving at any one port in any one year. By 
 this method, it is urged, New York could be 
 saved from the great congestion that exists 
 there, and the tide of humanity could be bet- 
 ter distributed to all parts of the country. This/ 
 plan is opposed by others because it would 
 throw the immigrant traffic out of its natural 
 channels. Still another method proposed is 
 that of raising the head tax on all immigrants 
 or of raising it on those who are unaccom-* 
 
SOME UNSOLVED PROBLEMS 223 
 
 panied by their wives or families. The Im-«I 
 migration Commission concluded unanimously j 
 that restriction is demanded by economic, 
 moral, and social considerations, but it re- 
 jected every plan of restriction except the lit- 
 eracy test. 
 
 " It is generally conceded that the immigrant- 
 handling business is such a profitable one that 
 the steamship companies take many chances 
 of being fined a hundred dollars, or of being 
 required to carry back an excludable immi- 
 grant. It has been recommended that the 
 fines be made so heavy for a lack of compliance 
 with the law as to render it a dangerous thing k 
 for a steamship company to accept passengers 
 whom they should not bring over, or even to 
 connive at the coming of deportable persons. 
 The deported immigrant has a hard life of it. 
 He has staked his all to come, and when the 
 steamship carries him back it is to dump him 
 in some foreign port, without funds, to con- 
 tinue his journey home. Some have proposed 
 that inspection should be made at the ports of 
 embarkation, but the immigration authorities 
 do not agree with this. They say that it would 
 be a case of beginning at the big end of the 
 funnel. Where countries are willing to assist 
 their immigrants, as in Italy and Russia, the 
 Public Health Service stations its men at the 
 
2M THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 ports of embarkation, and their recommenda- 
 tions as to who will be admitted and who are 
 likely to be excluded, are accepted by the gov- 
 ernments in question and by the steamship com- 
 panies. In this way the evils of deportation 
 are reduced to a minimum. 
 
 -— It is generally conceded that some methodf 
 must be found of filtering out the criminals 
 
 „who come in on the immigrant tide. The im- 
 migration authorities catch a large percentage 
 of them, but there are still too many over- 
 looked. It has been proposed that wherever 
 possible the immigrant be required to show a 
 clean bill of health in the shape of a certificate 
 from his government showing that he is not the* 
 possessor of a criminal record. Another pro- ■ 
 posal is that any alien convicted of a crime 
 within five years after he comes, shall be im- 
 mediately deported, or deported as soon as his 
 prison sentence ends. 
 
 The problem of distribution of immigrants 
 so as to keep them out of the cities and to lead 
 them to the land, has had many solutions pro- 
 posed, and yet few of them seem likely to 
 accomplish their purpose. The most interest-^ 
 ing of these is the proposal to establish a zone 
 of a hundred miles' radius around each port 
 of entry, and to admit no alien who does not 
 possess a railroad ticket for some point beyond 
 
SOME UNSOLVED PROBLEMS 225 
 
 that zone. This proposition is objected to by 
 others on several grounds. One is that the 
 ports themselves would hardly be willing to 
 accept such conditions. For instance, over- 
 crowded as New York is to-day, does one sup- 
 pose it would be willing to let the immigrant 
 tide pass out of its gates without a fair toll 
 of humanity from it? Another objection is 
 that this would be only a process of filling the 
 coffers of the railroads; that the immigrant 
 might go beyond the zone in question, but 
 would likely drift back again. 
 ^A serious problem from the standpoint of the 
 immigrant is how to avert the unpleasant con- 
 ditions of the detention rooms of immigrant 
 stations. In most of the stations the size of 
 the rooms is adequate for the ordinary needs of 
 the traffic, but, for instance, in the case of Ellis 
 Island, the steamship companies to-day may 
 dump five thousand immigrants out of their 
 steerage quarters. Perhaps three-fifths of 
 these will go through all right, but the other 
 two thousand must be detained for further 
 examination. It is inevitable under such con- 
 ditions that there will be crowding in the de- 
 tention rooms. And where perhaps half of the 
 detained know next to nothing about cleanli- 
 ness, and no insignificant percentage of them 
 arrive with vermin of one kind or another on 
 
226 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 their persons, it is inevitable that the deten- 
 tion rooms will not always be clean. At Ellis 
 Island every one admits that there long has 
 been imperative need of more room, and yet, 
 with all the room that a liberal government 
 might provide, conditions would in all likeli- 
 hood remain such as would grate upon the 
 sensibilities of people who love cleanliness. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF OTHER 
 COUNTRIES 
 
 THERE are five leading countries which 
 are now making a bid for immigrants, 
 and which are able to accommodate 
 millions of them. There are few countries in 
 the New World which do not wish a healthy 
 influx of new blood, but only Canada, Argen- 
 tina, and Brazil have gone about the matter in 
 a careful and systematic way. In the Old 
 World, Australia and New Zealand are stand- 
 ing in the market-place of humanity trying to 
 induce the emigrant to bend his footsteps their 
 way. 
 
 Canada offers an interesting example of a 
 country with a definite immigration policy, a 
 policy that consists of recognizing the country's 
 peculiar needs and then enacting a law suffi- 
 ciently broad and flexible to meet those needs. 
 There are two characteristics about the Cana- 
 dian immigration policy — the one is to attract 
 settlers to the land and the other is to dis- 
 courage the coming of such immigrants as tend 
 227 
 
228 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 to congregate in cities and towns. The United 
 States, the United Kingdom, and certain other 
 countries of northern and western Europe are 
 regarded as furnishing the kind of people 
 Canada needs for its upbuilding, and the 
 Dominion government has carried on a propa- 
 ganda that has been carefully wrought out 
 and successfully conducted. The Canadians 
 ido not try to attract immigration from south- 
 ern and eastern Europe. In fact, they let it 
 be known that unless such immigrants are 
 headed for the land and not for the cities 
 •Canada would rather they would stay at home. 
 
 In the earlier years Canada shared with the 
 United States in the immigration from west- 
 ern and northern Europe to some extent, 
 though until the railroads were extended into 
 the great prairie region of Middle Canada and 
 British Columbia, the bulk of this immigra- 
 tion remained in the United States. But when 
 it finally went into Canada there followed a 
 propaganda that has been remarkable for the 
 success that has attended it, and Canada has 
 become one of the great immigrant-receiving 
 nations of the world. 
 
 The most significant feature about the 
 Canadian immigration laws is the latitude and 
 'discretionary power vested in the immigration 
 authorities. A picked immigration is wanted, 
 
OTHER COUNTRIES' PROBLEMS 229 
 
 and the immigration authorities are permitted 
 to do the selecting without being hampered on 
 every hand. 
 
 In the propaganda work much advertising 
 is done, advertising by circulars, through the 
 newspapers, through permanent exhibits in big 
 cities, and by travelling exhibits in smaller 
 ones. And then Canada pays a liberal bonus 
 to several thousand booking agents in the coun- 
 tries from which immigrants are sought. A 
 bonus of $4.86 is paid for each immigrant of. 
 certain classes who is enlisted for Canada. It 
 is given for such immigrants as have been for 
 at least one year engaged in the occupation of 
 farmer, farm labourer, gardener, stableman, 
 carter, railway surfaceman, miner, or navvy, 
 and who declares his intention of following 
 farming or railway construction in Canada. 
 Grants are also made to the Salvation Army 
 for the purpose of assisting people to come to 
 Canada. 
 
 Another plan that Canada has hit upon to 
 encourage immigration is to appoint successful 
 immigrant farmers as delegates to Great 
 Britain, paying them to go about the United' 
 Kingdom and tell the people of the wonderful 
 opportunities in Canada. The result of the 
 Canadian campaign and the Canadian policy 
 is that seven-tenths of Canada's immigration 
 
280 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 to-day is from northern and western Europe, 
 t while eight-tenths of ours is from southern 
 and eastern Europe. Two-thirds of all the 
 homesteads entered during the past decade 
 were taken up by immigrants from Europe and 
 the United States, and of these the United 
 States furnished nearly half. 
 
 Canada is also bidding for the immigration 
 *of poor and homeless British children. These 
 are brought over under government super- 
 vision, and placed in homes where they can 
 grow up with the country and have a chance 
 to become homesteaders in their own right. 
 It is estimated that in the past fifty years more 
 than sixty thousand of these children have 
 been placed in the homes of Canadian farmers. 
 How much greater the demand for the chil- 
 dren is than the supply, may be inferred from 
 the statement that in nine years nineteen thou- 
 sand juveniles were sent over, whereas there 
 were received 130,000 applications for chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Since the establishment of the Australian 
 Commonwealth in 1901, immigration has be- 
 come a national question. The general out- 
 \ line of the policy pursued is that Asiatics and 
 Pacific Islanders are excluded and a general 
 plan of making the continent a " white Aus- 
 tralia" is followed. Australia has an area 
 
OTHER COUNTRIES' PROBLEMS 231 
 
 exactly duplicating the area of the landed part 
 of continental United States, and yet it has a 
 population only one-eighteenth as great as that 
 of the United States. More than half of its 
 lands is unoccupied, and a billion acres await 
 settlement. In order to induce settlers to take 
 up unoccupied land, the government allows 
 them to purchase the freehold by the payment 
 of half-yearly installments. Advances are 
 made for the improvement of the lands in all 
 the states except Tasmania. In order to stimu- 
 late immigration from the United Kingdom) 
 some of the states pay wholly, or in part, the 
 transportation expenses of persons desiring to 
 settle on the land or to engage in farm or dairy 
 work, or occupations of a similar nature. Do- 
 mestic servants and other desirable settlers are 
 likewise aided to make the journey. To date 
 more than seven hundred thousand immigrants 
 have been assisted in Australia in this way. 
 Great Britain is now furnishing immigrants to 
 Australia at the rate of about sixty thousand 
 a year, and this represents more than four- 
 fifths of Australia's immigration. 
 
 Australia has a literacy test. It requires that ' 
 no one may enter the commonwealth who can- 
 not write at least fifty words dictated to him 
 by an immigration official. This test may be 
 repeated at any time within a year after the 
 
232 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 arrival of the immigrant, and if he fails to pass 
 it he may be deported. However, in practice 
 this test is applied only to the immigrants of 
 'those countries where exclusion is desirable. 
 
 New Zealand has an area about the size of 
 Colorado, and it has a population approximat- 
 ing a million, of which a fourth was born in 
 the United Kingdom. The tide of immigra- 
 tion is not a very extended one, and now comes 
 mainly from Australia. In eight years it num- 
 bered more than a quarter-million souls, three- 
 fourths of them from Australia. New Zealand 
 has for years co-operated with the steamship 
 companies in securing reduced rates for desir- 
 able settlers. 
 
 The Argentine Republic has a population of 
 about five persons to the square mile, as com- 
 pared with 25.75 for the United States. Out 
 of its three-quarters of a billion acres of land, 
 only about three hundred million acres are 
 arable, and out of the arable land only one- 
 eighth is under cultivation. In addition to its 
 vast grain-producing possibilities, much of its 
 territory is admirably adapted to grazing, and 
 it has immense timber and mineral resources 
 as yet all but untouched. The Constitution 
 itself provides for the encouragement of immi- 
 gration, and guarantees to the immigrant the 
 same civil rights enjoyed by citizens. All im- 
 
OTHER COUNTRIES' PROBLEMS 233 
 
 migrants are exempted by the Constitution 
 from military service for a period of ten years, 
 and the government is expressly denied the 
 power to restrict, limit, or burden with taxes 
 of any kind the foreigners coming to it to 
 cultivate the soil, to improve its industries, or 
 to introduce and teach the sciences and arts. 
 
 Within a period of forty-five years Argen- 
 tina's gates have swung inward to upward of 
 five million souls, and they are now coming 
 at the rate of about three hundred thousand a 
 year. Of these some ninety thousand come 
 from Italy and about 125,000 from Spain. 
 The government provides generously for the 
 immigrant. He is given five days' free board 
 at the expense of the nation after he lands, is 
 carried to his destination from the port of 
 debarkation at the expense of the government, 
 and has his wearing apparel, household goods, 
 and the implements of his trade admitted free. 
 These provisions apply also to his children. 
 They are supported at the expense of the gov- 
 ernment for a period of not to exceed ten 
 days, until they have opportunity to settle down. 
 This applies to those who go out into the 
 provinces as settlers. At the expiration of this 
 time they may still be boarded and quartered at 
 a charge of fifty cents a day for adults and half 
 rates for children. In case of serious sickness 
 
234? THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 the state continues to support the immigrant 
 as long as his illness lasts. 
 
 Brazil is larger than continental United 
 States and the Kingdom of Spain together, yet 
 it has only two-ninths as many people within its 
 boundaries as the United States. The govern- 
 ment wants immigrants and wants them badly. 
 It is willing to provide them with free trans- 
 portation to Brazil, to transport them free to 
 their destination from the port of debarkation, 
 to provide them with free tools and seeds, and 
 with medicine and care for their families. It 
 seeks to build up a class of peasant proprietors 
 who shall at the same time be available for 
 work on the great coffee plantations. It now 
 gets about seventy thousand immigrants a year, 
 nine-tenths of them being Portuguese, Italians, 
 and Spaniards. 
 
XXIX 
 EMIGRATION TO CANADA 
 
 FOR many years Canada has made sys- 
 tematic efforts to promote emigration 
 from the United States to its dominions. 
 The propaganda has resulted so successfully 
 that nearly one-third of its immigration comes 
 from our country. We are sending Canada 
 more colonists than it is getting from England 
 and Wales together. Our immigrants are ex- 
 actly the kind of people Canada is looking for, 
 since they are the best fitted in the world for 
 pioneering in the development of agricultural 
 and other resources in a new territory. In less 
 than eight years the United States has sent 
 nearly four hundred thousand people across the 
 line. 
 
 One needs only consult Canada's immigra- 
 tion authorities to see how much they want 
 Uncle Sam's citizens to come into the Do- 
 minion. W. J. White, the press agent of the 
 propaganda, says there is not a state in the 
 Union in which Canada is not advertised, 
 the offices of the government being located in 
 235 
 
236 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 the best agricultural sections where easy com- 
 munication with the surrounding country may 
 be established. He tells how agents go out and 
 meet the prospective settlers; carry information 
 to them and their friends as to the soil, crops, 
 and the like; how they make the annual rounds 
 of the fall agricultural fairs with exhibits; and 
 how the general work is done. 
 
 In addition to the salaried agents, the Ca- 
 nadian government employs a large number 
 of sub-agents, who are paid a bonus of three 
 dollars per head for every man, two dollars 
 per head for every woman, and one dollar per 
 head for every child among the actual settlers 
 they secure. The farm periodicals are used 
 extensively in advertising the attractions of 
 " the last best West," and the country weekly 
 is also made use of. Over seven thousand 
 newspaper advertising contracts were signed 
 in a single year. 
 
 Tours of inspection by editorial associations 
 and newspaper writers are arranged at fre- 
 quent intervals, and they have been found of 
 great value in the work of separating Ameri- 
 cans from their allegiance to the Stars and 
 Stripes. 
 
 The Canadian government is very well satis- 
 fied with the results that have been achieved. 
 Mr. White says it has not been considered ad- 
 
EMIGRATION TO CANADA 237 
 
 visable to make any changes in the method of 
 advertising; that the plan heretofore pursued 
 has increased the inflow of settlers from the 
 United States in nine years from one thou- 
 sand a year to sixty thousand a year, and that 
 this is a showing with which Canada may be 
 satisfied. Many of the immigrants dispose of 
 their lands or other property before leaving 
 for Canada, and the Canadian officials esti- 
 mate that they bring with them to Canada 
 money and property amounting to sixty million 
 dollars a year. 
 
 It is probable that nowhere else in the world \ 
 is any considerable movement made up so 
 largely of agricultural people as the trek of 
 Americans to Canada. More than three- 
 fourths of the Americans going have been en- 
 gaged in agriculture or its allied industries in 
 the United States. During a period of eight 
 years they took up seventy thousand homesteads 
 in the western provinces. They now consti- 
 tute nearly half of the farming population of 
 these provinces. Thus is Canada getting from 
 us the very kind of people who transformed 
 our Middle Western States from boundless 
 prairies into communities which are the back- 
 bone of American agriculture, the very kind 
 of people it would be most worth while for the 
 United States to keep. The Canadian immigra- 
 
238 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 tion authorities admit that they have had to 
 fight heavy competition along this line from 
 immigration agents in Texas and other West- 
 ern and Southwestern states, and that the 
 strongest consideration they have to overcome 
 in inducing emigration is the reluctance of the 
 people to settle outside the United States. 
 
 For a long while the railroads to Texas and 
 other places in the United States where set- 
 tlers are wanted, gave better rates for excur- 
 sions of settlers than those leading to Canada, 
 but the Canadian government now has secured 
 rates that enable it to compete with the roads 
 to the Southwest. In ten years Canada spent 
 approximately two million dollars in encourag- 
 ing immigration from the United States, this 
 being almost half of the total expenditure for 
 the entire immigration propaganda in all parts 
 of the world. 
 
 It is certain that no other country labours so 
 persistently to attract the right kind of people 
 as Canada, and it likewise is certain that one of 
 the reasons our immigration from the countries 
 of northern Europe has fallen off is the suc- 
 cess of the Canadian immigration propaganda 
 in those fields. Thus Canada is not only recruit- 
 ing half of its new farming population from 
 the United States itself, but it is drawing the 
 major portion of the other half from territory 
 
EMIGRATION TO CANADA 239 
 
 which used to be the especial immigrant- fur- 
 nishing preserves of the United States. It is 
 hoped that the movement of some of the states 
 of sending representatives abroad for the pur- 
 pose of building up our waning immigrant tide 
 from northwestern Europe may be fruitful. It 
 is realized, however, that those states will have 
 a keen and successful competitor in Canada, 
 and that our success in developing the prairie 
 region of the Mississippi Valley is Canada's 
 greatest argument for the future of its great 
 grain-producing region. Its slogan of "the 
 last best West " has proved a most effective 
 one. It calls forth in the immigrant mind a 
 twentieth century repetition of the history of 
 Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. 
 
 While the United States is losing its farmer 
 folk to Canada in such large numbers, Canada 
 is losing its share of people to the United 
 States. Approximately one-fifth of all the peo- 
 ple born in the Dominion reside in the United 
 States to-day. And where we are giving 
 Canada some sixty thousand immigrants a 
 year, it is responding with a counter current of 
 some fifty thousand immigrants to the United 
 States. Of these, approximately one-half are 
 native-born Canadians, while the others are 
 naturalized Canadians. However, a relatively 
 small proportion of this immigration is of the 
 
240 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 same kind we are sending to Canada. It takes 
 our farmers and in return gives us skilled and 
 unskilled labourers. 
 
 The assertion is made in some quarters that 
 this exodus of labour from Canada is largely- 
 due to the incoming tide of immigration, the 
 native workmen being replaced by the immi- 
 grant and forced to seek employment else- 
 where. An example of how this has happened 
 in the United States is cited in the case of many- 
 American industries in which native labour has 
 been replaced almost entirely by immigrant la- 
 bour. In this connection it is pointed out, how- 
 ever, that in nearly every instance the effect of 
 the coming of immigrant labour has been to 
 force the native workingman up and not out. 
 The big supply of immigrant labour has so 
 expanded the industries of the country that the 
 native workingman has found a full supply of 
 picked jobs instead of being forced to accept- 
 " the run of the mine." 
 
 A large proportion of the immigrants com- 
 ing from Canada to the United States are 
 French Canadians who come to work in the 
 mills of New England. It thus happens that 
 the tide out of the United States goes largely 
 from the Middle West, while the tide into the 
 United States comes into the Northeast. 
 While the Canadians who come to the United 
 
EMIGRATION TO CANADA 241 
 
 States are, in the main, a desirable immigra- 
 tion, it is generally realized that the best im- 
 migrant from an economic standpoint is the 
 one who goes upon the land, and therefore 
 that Canada gets the better of us in the annual, 
 immigrant exchange between Uncle Sam and" 
 John Canuck. 
 
 The Canadian immigration law, as pointed 
 out in another article of this series, is admirably 
 adapted to the needs of a new country which 
 wants the best class of immigrants. Its flex- 
 ibility is regarded as its best quality. For 
 instance, any one getting his way paid into the 
 United States is shut out without question. In 
 Canada, such immigrants may be admitted upon 
 the approval of the Canadian immigration 
 representative in London. 
 
 Canada knows thoroughly how to accomplish 
 a desired end without direct offence against any 
 one. Some years ago Hindu immigration began 
 to increase and Canada thought best to check 
 the incoming tide quickly and completely. But it 
 was not willing to put itself in the open posi- 
 tion of denying admission to British subjects. 
 A little headwork, and presto! the thing was 
 done with no feelings hurt! Recalling that 
 there were no means on earth whereby Hindus 
 could make a continuous journey from India 
 to Canada, the Canadian authorities promul- 
 
242 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 gated an order that no Asiatic would be ad- 
 mitted who did not come by a continuous jour- 
 ney. British prestige was protected, but the 
 Hindus were completely shut out. 
 
 On the whole, Canada has an immigration 
 service that is the admiration and despair of 
 many countries. With so much power vested 
 in the executive branch of the government, the 
 steamship lines are simply told that they must 
 do this thing or that, else their steerage pas- 
 sengers will be denied admission to Canada. 
 Hence the government gets a co-operation 
 from the steamship companies in filtering the 
 immigrant stream before it starts across the 
 sea such as the United States authorities never 
 have been able to secure. And the particular 
 phase of the service which affects the United 
 States to such a large degree is so efficient as 
 to be dangerous — the attraction of so many of 
 our best citizens — unless we can believe that 
 American settlers on the other side will make 
 for more complete commercial intercourse and 
 thus neutralize our loss. 
 
XXX 
 
 FUTURE HUMAN MIGRATIONS 
 
 IT seems reasonable to assume that the end 
 of the migrations of man is still centuries 
 away, and that many a generation will 
 rise and pass beyond earthly concerns before 
 any approximate equilibrium of population 
 will be established. Indeed, it is probable that 
 so long as the world stands economic oppor- 
 tunity will call peoples, as well as individuals, 
 to move from country to country, and from 
 continent to continent. A study of the map of 
 the world reveals how unequally distributed are 
 the people of the earth, even when measured 
 by the opportunities of getting a living. For 
 instance, Asia has a population of fifty per 
 square mile; Europe has a hundred people to 
 the square mile; North America has fifteen; 
 Africa, eleven; South America, seven; and 
 Australia, five. 
 
 It must be plain to every person who has a 
 
 reasonable knowledge of the relative resources 
 
 of the several continents, that South America 
 
 has the latent ability to support fifty people 
 
 243 
 
244 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 to the square mile as easily as Europe can sup- 
 port a hundred, and if that be true there is 
 room on that continent for three hundred mil- 
 lion immigrants and their descendants. It also 
 seems to be evident from a comparison of the 
 relative resources of North America and Asia, 
 that North America, with its up-to-date west- 
 ern-world system of agriculture, manufactur- 
 ing, and commerce, can support a population of 
 a density equal to that which Asia supports 
 to-day with its out-of-date and antiquated agri- 
 cultural and industrial methods. If that be 
 true, then North America might yet find room 
 for three hundred million souls. Africa is hot 
 for the most part, and somewhat inhospitable 
 to civilization, and yet the spread of the science 
 of tropical medicine makes it as available a 
 place for human existence as equatorial South 
 America in general, and Panama in particular. 
 Leaving out the Great Sahara, it might support 
 a population of at least twenty-five to the 
 square mile, and that would mean room for 
 an increase in population of more than 150,- 
 000,000 souls. 
 
 Australia, likewise, might accommodate at 
 least twenty-five to the square mile, and that 
 would mean nearly a hundred million souls 
 could find room on the smallest continent. In 
 other words, with South America and North 
 
FUTURE HUMAN MIGRATIONS 245 
 
 America having a population half as dense as 
 that of Europe and equally as dense as that of 
 Asia; and with Australia and Africa having 
 a population only a fourth as dense as that of 
 Europe and half as dense as that of Asia to- 
 day, there would be room for an immigration 
 to those continents of nearly nine hundred mil- 
 lion souls. As things stand to-day, Europe 
 and Asia, with about two-fifths of the world's 
 area, support four-fifths of the world's popu- 
 lation. 
 
 It naturally follows that from these two 
 continents must flow the rivers of humanity 
 which will bring the population of the earth 
 to a common level, if such a level ever is 
 reached. And as long as the other continents 
 set up the bars against the Asiatic as they are 
 doing to-day, not much of the immigration 
 of the future can come from there. Europe 
 for centuries witnessed one tide of humanity 
 after another sweeping westward from Asia — 
 the Celt, the Teuton, the Latin, the Slav— 
 and its population has grown until it is now 
 four times as dense as the rest of the world. 
 And this, in spite of the fact that once the 
 Asiatic tides of humanity ceased to sweep west- 
 ward, other tides in turn started out of Europe, 
 whose ends are not yet, and which already have 
 
246 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 carried perhaps a hundred million souls across 
 the seas to other continents. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting probable de- 
 velopment in human migratory matters for the 
 early future is the indicated tide that gives 
 promise soon to be sweeping through the 
 Panama Canal. All the world looks for a 
 boom throughout the Americas as a result of 
 the opening of the great waterway. And espe- 
 cially is this to be true of the Pacific sides of 
 the two continents. Suddenly all this vast re- 
 gion is to be brought five thousand miles 
 nearer to the immigrant embarking ports of 
 Europe, five hundred hours sailing closer for 
 the interchange of commerce. Instead of San 
 Francisco's being as far by water from Liver- 
 pool as Sitka is from New York, the City 
 of the Golden Gate will be brought as 
 near to Liverpool as New York now is to 
 Bombay. 
 
 When every one believes an era of great de- 
 velopment is coming, and squares himself to 
 greet it and to profit by it, nothing can stop 
 its approach. And what a getting ready for 
 the prosperity that is coming is now to be 
 found on the West Coasts of the two Americas ! 
 These preparations are not in the shape of such 
 a tremendous rise of values as to discount 
 the future for a generation, but rather in the 
 
FUTURE HUMAN MIGRATIONS 247 
 
 shape of a widespread plan to be ready to open 
 up the latent resources of these regions the 
 minute conditions are ripe. It gives no indi- 
 cation of being an era of speculation on things 
 that exist to-day, but rather it promises to seek 
 its reward in the development of latent wealth. 
 With such a concerted, united, common-consent 
 plan for reaping the benefits of the canal, there 
 is going to be almost an unprecedented demand 
 for labour in western Pan-America. There 
 will be no bubbles of speculation to burst, but 
 rich tolls of industry to gather. 
 
 Already the big steamship lines are planning 
 to take advantage of the situation. They will 
 have large fleets of immigrant carrying ships, 
 equipped with the excellent accommodations 
 which the " new " steerage provides, ready 
 to carry labourers and their families to these 
 new fields of abundant opportunities for work 
 and good pay. The labour centres of Europe 
 are watching with interest the approaching 
 completion of the Canal, since the tide of im- 
 migration that will set through it will mean 
 not only better wages for those who go, but 
 likewise for those who stay behind. The cut- 
 ting down of the labour supply in Europe has 
 consistently helped the wage-earner who re- 
 mained behind to get a better wage than he 
 could command before his brethren answered 
 
248 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 the wanderlust begotten of economic condi- 
 tions which called upon them to take up their 
 possessions and join the great caravan of hu- 
 manity bound to the New World. 
 
 An inkling of what the West Coast of the 
 Americas may be able ultimately to do in the 
 way of furnishing homes for a new population 
 is to be gathered from Salvador. This little 
 country, with an area so small that nineteen 
 countries like it could be tucked away within 
 the confines of the single state of California, 
 has a population of 1,707,000 souls. In other 
 words, while California to-day has a popula- 
 tion of 2,377,000, according to the Salva- 
 dorean standard it could support some forty 
 million people. Any one who has travelled 
 from La Libertad to San Salvador, and from 
 San Salvador via Sonsonate to Acajutla and 
 Zacapa, and who has beheld the hundreds of 
 square miles taken up with volcanic moun- 
 tains, knows that Salvador has no greater pro- 
 portion of arable land than California. Fur- 
 thermore, having seen the tropical system of 
 agriculture and industry, he knows that Cali- 
 fornia can match product with product and re- 
 source with resource. The Salvadoreans are 
 the most prosperous people of the West Coast, 
 in spite of the remarkable density of popula- 
 tion found there. 
 
FUTURE HUMAN MIGRATIONS 249 
 
 Duplicating the population of Salvador, the 
 other countries of Central America could find 
 room for upward of thirty million souls above 
 their present population. Mexico could fur- 
 nish an abiding-place for nearly 150,000,000 
 additional people. Measured according to the 
 Salvadorean standard, the Americas ultimately 
 could accommodate a total population equiva- 
 lent to twice the estimated population of the 
 entire earth to-day. Of course, such a time 
 may never come and certainly will not come for 
 many centuries, but it demonstrates the pos- 
 sibilities of the West Coast. 
 
 It seems certain that the opening of the 
 Panama Canal will give new truth to the say- 
 ing that westward the course of empire takes 
 its way. But that age-long tendency of the 
 unceasing drift of humanity will stop with the 
 Pacific shores of the Americas, for beyond 
 that lies Asia, where the movement began, and 
 where there is no room for new immigration. 
 The indications all point to the Americas and 
 Australia as the regions to which the footsteps 
 of the immigrant will lead for at least a cen- 
 tury more. Asia will be shut up within her- 
 self, neither offering her hospitality to immi- 
 grant races, nor being offered that of the other 
 continents. 
 
 After all the resistless tides of humanity 
 
250 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 have swept to and fro over the bosom of the 
 oceans and over the lands of the earth in 
 search of new worlds of economic advantage 
 to conquer, there yet may come a time when 
 they will fold their tents and march back to 
 the irrigation ditches from which civilization 
 sprang. Once the earth's supply of coal is 
 exhausted man will be put to it to find power 
 to turn the wheels of the world's industries. 
 The capital that old Sol stored up in the earth 
 through millions of years of shining, exhausted, 
 some means then must be found to replenish 
 the supply. And only one means thereafter 
 can science see to-day — the solar engine, driven 
 by the direct rays of the sun. The solar engine 
 can do its work steadfastly and efficiently only 
 under a hot sun and permanently cloudless 
 sky. So industry will be driven to the sun- 
 burnt waterfronts of the earth. There man 
 will irrigate his fields, run his factories, drive 
 his railroad trains, operate his ships, cool his 
 houses, freeze his ice, and do all of the thou- 
 sand things that civilization demands, with the 
 heat of the sun. He will be independent of the 
 seasons, for there is but one ; he will not have 
 to bother about the rainfall, for he will distill 
 his water and irrigate his fields from the sea. 
 He will not care about the weather, for he will 
 
FUTURE HUMAN MIGRATIONS 251 
 
 be largely indoors and all buildings will be 
 cooled by the same power that burns the sands 
 of the desert. Fanciful? But none the less 
 one of the futures to which the drifting tides 
 of humanity may be sweeping. 
 
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