(e) Labor organizations. Have the immigrants strengthened or weakened the labor organizations, and has the effect upon them been beneficial or injurious to the wage-earning classes?

(f) The standard of living. At the base of every civilization stand the ideals of the people and their standards of living. The standard of living has so profound an influence upon the probability of the attainment of many ideals that it is to be considered possibly the most fundamental factor in determining the quality of the country's civilization. While one may well agree with James Russell Lowell, that "material success is good, but only as the necessary preliminary to better things," it is impossible to deny the fact that material success is often, if not always, a preliminary that is absolutely necessary to better things, so far as the question concerns development of mental characteristics, and perhaps also the modification of moral and social institutions.

Need of Impartial Study of Remedies

If the facts relative to immigration, which are now available, show such injurious effects upon American standards of civilization as reasonably to awaken a fear regarding the stability or progress of the best of those institutions, it is clearly the duty of every citizen to face, clear-eyed, boldly, these facts. It is no less his duty to judge, not sentimentally, but sanely, wisely and sympathetically, those conditions, and to determine what are the wisest remedies for the evils, and what are the practicable measures to be taken to establish and to secure for the future the maintenance and progress of our civilization.

II

THE CAUSES OF IMMIGRATION

Escape from Religious or Political Persecution

In our school histories all American children read that their forefathers in the colonial days fled from Europe to America to escape religious or political persecution. In later and more complete text-books mention is likewise made of the fact that certain of the colonists were influenced by the motive of commercial advantages, and that still others, criminals or paupers, were shipped from their home country against their will for that country's good. So much emphasis, however, has been laid upon the desire of our forefathers to escape from religious or political persecution, that in the minds of most Americans that influence remains as explaining the chief incentive for our early immigration.

So much sympathy was later aroused, especially during the revolutionary days of 1848 in Europe, for those who, struggling for a constitutional government in their home countries, failed and were obliged to emigrate, in order to escape political punishment, that this motive for immigration seems to most of us a force with greater influence than it, in fact, has exerted. (It is probably the fact that, with the exception of the Pilgrim Fathers, possibly the Palatines, some of the Scotch-Irish in the early part of the eighteenth century, and here and there a relatively few political refugees, the great mass of immigrants

throughout the entire course of our history have come to this country influenced primarily by the economic motive, a desire to better their living conditions. Even with the Palatines and the ScotchIrish, the economic motive was often prominent, even dominant.

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At the present day, if they are taken individually, a very large number, especially of the Russian Jews, are refugees from persecution, primarily religious. A much smaller number of Finns, thwarted by the Russian Government in their attempts to secure or maintain a greater degree of political freedom, are moved to turn their backs upon their home country, while in Rumania and Turkey, and in scattered cases here and there in other countries, still others are found, who, suffering on account of their religious or political beliefs, prefer to leave their home country for one which they believe will afford them freedom. In many instances, doubtless, these people who feel themselves persecuted are political idealists, or religious extremists, whose views will scarcely meet with approval in the country of their adoption, but who nevertheless will be much freer here to make political propaganda, and whose views may in many instances well have an educative influence; but there doubtless remain, when they are taken individually, large numbers of persons who are really in need of escape from persecution, either religious or political, that is genuine and severe.

At Present, Motive Primarily Economic

Taking them, however, in the mass, and comparing this number with the very much greater number of those who are influenced by the economic motive, it is

scarcely too much to say that at the present time the influence which is bringing so large a number of immigrants is the economic motive rather than any other. This economic motive, too, has to do primarily with the improvement of the living conditions of the immigrant, and not with an escape from a condition of threatened starvation. In the 40's, at the time of the potato famine in Ireland, many of the thousands who came to this country were in serious danger of absolute starvation if they remained at home. Practically none of our immigrants of the present day are in such a condition.

Wages and Standards of Living Much Lower in Europe than in the United States

The contrast in conditions between the parts of Europe from which most of our immigrants come today and the United States, is perhaps most noticeable in agricultural districts. Our farmers and farm laborers are, on the whole, the most prosperous and comfortable of our so-called laborers, with the exception of our skilled artizans. In Russia, where the change from a condition of serfdom has not always resulted in greater comfort for the people, a crop failure is likely to result in a famine. In other countries the methods of cultivation are often so primitive, the markets so difficult of access, the taxes so high, that the margin of profit is very low. A bad crop or two, the death of a wage-earner, or even a serious quarrel in the family that involves a separation, often means disaster-emigration, where that can be attained.

The money wages in southern and eastern Europe,

from which more than 80 per cent. of our present immigrants are coming, are indeed very low as compared with those in the United States-often not over one-third as much. Moreover, the assertion often made that, owing to lower prices in Europe, the low wages will furnish practically as good living conditions as those in the United States is a mistaken one. While the peasants or workmen may live on those wages, the standard is far below that of the United States as regards houses, which are often mere huts with earth floors; or clothing, which is scant or coarse as compared with that of the corresponding classes in the United States; or food, in many cases the people being rarely able to afford any food but the simplest vegetables, meat being tasted only on an occasional feast day, or among the better classes perhaps on Sundays.

It is to improve these conditions that most of the immigrants leave their country, often with the thought of making a home in the new country to which they can later bring their families, if they are unable to take their families with them. But often, too, they take the risk of breaking up their homes temporarily with the thought that by rigid economy and hard work for three to five years in the United States, they can send enough money home to purchase land, so that they may improve decidedly their economic and likewise their social status in the home country, and become, instead of mere laborers, peasant proprietors, with the opportunity of placing their children in a class distinctly above their own.