molding these qualities that the effects of any one influence can scarcely be separately analyzed. For example, industrial prosperity in the community affects both the physical and moral characteristics of the people, so that at times it may be necessary to consider some questions apart from the named analysis.

Subjects Treated in Determining Effects of Immigration Upon American Standards

The chief subjects of a study of immigration may, therefore, be briefly summarized as follows:

PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS 1. The effect of immigration upon the physical characteristics of the American people as shown by (a) The health of the immigrant on his arrival in this country, and his effect upon the health of the community.

(b) The effect of the American environment upon the physical characteristics of the immigrant and his children.

2. The effect of the immigrant upon the mental characteristics of the American people, as shown by: (a) Illiteracy of the various races of immigrants; (b) The relation of the immigrants to our public schools, and the effect of the schools upon the children of immigrants;

(c) The papers, books and associations founded and supported by the immigrants;

(d) The occupations of the immigrants that may serve to indicate mental characteristics.

3. The effect of immigration upon the morals of the American people, as shown by:

(a) The criminal immigrant. The moral characteristics of the various races may be indicated by the number of crimes and the character of the crimes committed by them.

(b) The social evil and the white-slave traffic, indicated in part by court records and observations of social workers and special investigators.

(c) The immigrant pauper: A study of the immigrants in the charity hospitals and of the relief given by the charitable societies to immigrants.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

4. The effect of immigration upon American institutions, as shown by:

(a) Political effects, indicated by the relative number of immigrants of various races that become naturalized, and by the methods employed by political managers to influence the votes of the immigrants.

(b) The social effects as indicated by:

1. The church affiliations and religious practises and customs of the immigrants of different races.

2. The immigrant family, as shown in part by the marriage relations; the fecundity of immigrant women, as compared with American women; and the children of the immigrants. The tendency also toward establishing families here, or leaving families in Europe, with the expectation of returning to them.

3. The immigrant colony. Both in our large cities and in agricultural districts, the effect of immigration upon our institutions has been profoundly modified by the frequent inclination of the immigrants to form separate colonies which are maintained sometimes for generations.

4. Housing and living conditions. The congestion

of immigrants in certain sections of our cities and industrial centers, the bunk-house or lodging-houses for men without families who do not become permanent residents, the ownership of homes, and similar matters which affect living conditions, are of profound significance to society.

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS

5. The effect of immigration upon the economic and industrial conditions of the United States, as shown by:

(a) The occupations of the immigrant and of his children. Do racial characteristics or the European customs of the immigrants so determine the occupations which they enter as to produce any material modification of the relations between agriculture, manufacturing, mining, trading, transportation and other occupations?

(b) Changes in industrial methods. Has the incoming of the immigrant affected the use of machinery or modified the form of our industrial organization?

(c) The employment of women and children as wage-earners.

(d) The displacement of American laborers or the immigrant wage-earners who arrived in this country twenty years ago by the late immigrants from different countries.

(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 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 and wisely and sympathetically, those conditions, and to determine what are the wisest remedies for the evils, and 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 still appeals, probably far too strongly, to most of us. It is probably the fact that, with the exception of the Pilgrim Fathers 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

ΙΟ