familiarity with the loathsome surroundings, wholly at variance with all moral or social improvements.

A gloomy picture of the moral effects of bad housing conditions in the foreign sections of New York City in 1878, when the immigrants were only Irish and Germans, was drawn in a report of the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor:

In many quarters of the city family life and the feeling of home are almost unknown; people live in great caravansaries, which are hot and stifling in summer, disagreeable in winter, and where children associate together in the worst way. In many rooms privacy and purity are unattainable, and young girls grow up accustomed to immodesty from their earliest years. Boys herd together in gangs, and learn the practices of crime and vice before they are out of childhood. Even the laborers' families who occupy separate rooms in these buildings have no sense of home."

Dr. Griscom, as early as 1842, had called attention to the "depraved effects which such modes of life exert upon the moral feelings and habits"; and the city inspector in 1851 remarks that "these overpopulated houses are generally, if not always, seminaries of filthiness, indecency, and lawlessness."3

Dr. Claghorn concludes her review of the housing conditions of the former generations of immigrants with the following remarks:

The newer immigrants arrive here at no lower social level, to say the least, than did their predecessors. Their habits of life, their general morality and intelligence can not be called decidedly inferior. . . . The Italian ragpicker was astonishingly like his German predecessor, and the Italian laborer is of quite as high a type as the Irish laborer of a generation ago. In some cases the newer immigrants have brought about positive improvements in the quarters they have entered. Whole blocks have been transferred from nests of pauperism and vice into quiet industrial neighborhoods by the incoming of Italians and Hebrews.

Throughout the nineteenth century relief against city

Report of the Industrial Commission, p. 456. 3 Loc. cit.. p. 458.

2 Ibid., p. 459. 4 Loc. cit., p. 491.

poverty was sought in directing the current of immigration to the farm. As early as 1817, "the same anxiety was felt that is felt to-day to get the immigrant out of the 'crowded' cities into the country beyond." In 1819, the managers of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism of the City of New York favored the plan of establishing "communication ... with our great farmers and landholders in the interior" with a view to provide "ways and means . . . for the transportation of able-bodied foreigners into the interior," where labor could be provided for them "upon the soil." Forty years later the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor complained of the Irish immigrants that "they had an utter distaste for felling forests and turning up the prairies for themselves. They preferred to stay where another race would furnish them with food, clothing, and labor, and hence were mostly found loitering on the lines of the public works, in villages, and in the worst portions of the large cities where they competed with negroes . . . for the most degrading employments."3 The old immigrants, like those of the present generation, were mostly unskilled laborers and farm hands, as will appear from an analysis of Table 2 next following. 4

Report of the Industrial Commission, p. 449

Report of the A. I. C. P., 1860, p. 50.

Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 462.

a Loc. cit., p. 462.

Quoted from Report of the

4 For annual averages and sources of information see Appendix, Table I.

The sharp fluctuations of the percentages of agricultural workers and common laborers indicate that the distinction between farm laborers and other laborers was probably not very accurately drawn in our immigration statistics. For the period 1901-1910 it is possible to subdivide all persons engaged in agricultural pursuits into farmers and farm laborers, the former constituting 1.6 per cent and the latter 23.0 per cent of all immigrant breadwinners.

Allowing the same percentage for the decade next preceding, with a rising tide of immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, and estimating the maximum proportion of farmers in the "old immigration" at one half of all incoming agricultural workers,' we arrive at the following comparative ratios for unskilled laborers and farm help combined.

The ratio of unskilled laborers and farm hands to the total number of breadwinners exhibits but little change during the whole fifty-year period. For the half-century beginning in 1820, the proportion of unskilled laborers, exclusive of those classified under agricultural pursuits, has been computed as 46.6 per cent, i. e., about the same as for the later period.

2

This is vastly more than is claimed for the "old immigration" by Professors Jenks and Lauck in their unofficial summary of the reports of the Immigration Commission, wherein they say that "the percentage of farmers as distinguished from farm laborers has always been very small, so small as not to be an appreciable factor in determining our civilization."-Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 31.

2

Political Science Quarterly, March, 1904; Roland P. Falkner: Some Aspects of the Immigration Problem, p. 49.

The percentage of skilled mechanics has varied but little for the last fifty years, and has at no time reached one quarter of all immigrant breadwinners. If this percentage

is added to the estimated maximum ratio of farmers, it will be found that the aggregate of "skilled artisans and progressive farmers of the thrifty, self-reliant type" could in the good old days not have been as high as one third of the total immigration.

Still it is broadly asserted that the "new immigration" is drawn from the "poorest and least desirable" elements of the population of Italy, Austria, and Russia. "Measured either by intellectual, social, economic or material standards, the average immigrant of any particular class from these countries is far below the best of his countrymen who remain behind, and probably also below the average.

No comparative study of the immigrants and their countrymen who remain at home is cited in support of this view. It still rests on the purely deductive argument, first advanced by Mayo-Smith twenty-four years ago, that, as the result of the increase of transportation facilities and the reduction of the cost of passage, "it is more and more the lower classes that are coming. In corroboration of this argument he cited the fact that the Irish and German immigrants of his day were coming from the poorer sections of their countries. It is obvious, however, that the inhabitants of those sections were not all on the same economic level. Lack of opportunities in a poor country will drive people of some means to seek better luck abroad, while lack of funds will keep the poorest at home. Be that as it may, since the time of Mayo-Smith the steerage rates have been doubled. The increase in the cost of transpor

William Williams: New Immigration, p. 286. Report of the Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1906. See also Prescott F. Hall: Selection of Immigration, Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science, July, 1904, p. 174; Robert Hunter: Poverty, p. 270.

2

Richmond Mayo-Smith: "Control of Immigration," Political Science Quarterly, 1888, pp. 62, 69, 70, and 71.

tation has been tantamount to a head tax of from $18 to $271 and should have raised the standard of the "new immigration," as compared with the immigrants of the 70's and the early 80's.

Leaving aside, however, all speculative considerations, we have a purely objective standard of comparison, viz., the ratio of literacy. It is generally recognized that "probably the most apparent cause of illiteracy in Europe, as elsewhere, is poverty. The economic status of a people has a very decided effect upon the literacy rate. . . . Another phase of the economic factor is the need of children's service at home.

While the statistics of illiteracy among immigrants to the United States are not compiled on a uniform basis with foreign statistics of illiteracy, still for a few countries and nationalities the data are fairly comparable. An examination of the figures presented in Table 4 shows that as a rule the ratio of illiteracy among the immigrants is considerably lower than among their countrymen at home.3 These statistics prove that measured by intellectual standards the average immigrant is above the average of his countrymen who remain behind. Illiteracy, being the effect of poverty (by hypothesis), one cannot escape the conclusion that, measured by economic standards, the immigrant is likewise above the average of his native country.

"During the later seventies and early eighties the steerage passenger rate fluctuated from as low as $12 up as high as $25, but averaged about $17 or $18. . . . In the later eighties and early nineties. . . most of the foreign steamship companies-there were no native companies— gradually increased the steerage rates to about $38 or $39. . .. (The rates charged now) vary from about $36 to $38 and $39, depending upon the port, vessel, and so forth. Thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents is commonly quoted as the average."-Hearings before Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, H. R. 61st Congress: Statement of James H. Patten, pp. 31-32.

2

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4 (in press).

3 See Note on the Statistics of Italian Illiteracy, at end of chapter.