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the original material and make an independent judgment. This enormous mass of facts has, however, been well digested and summarized and is easily accessible. The facts now are known.

In its conclusions and recommendations the Commission indicated certain lines along which standards of judgment might and ought to be fixt. In other directions they assume without formal statement what they believe to be the accepted standards of the people; but whatever may be the judgments regarding the recommendations the facts set forth are undeniable.

For the purpose of this book it is, however, desirable that at the beginning the principles be summarized on which, in the judgment of the authors, the standard of civilization of our country may be affected by immigration. Throughout the discussion of the facts these principles should be kept in mind.

Principles Upon Which American Civilization is

Based

It is extremely difficult to analyze a civilization so complex as ours. All will agree that civilization depends upon the characteristics and attainments of the individuals of whom the State is composed, and upon their relations one to another. In the discussion of the question of immigration, as of all other social or political questions, no better beginning can be made than to use the old division of human characteristics into physical, mental and moral. In many cases so interdependent and overlapping are the influences 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. In fact we have laid especial emphasis upon the economic influence of immigration as affecting the standard of living without attempting to analyze fully the physical, mental and moral effects of a change in the standard of living.

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; 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 upor our institutions has been profoundly modified by

Pauperism is, of course, to be considered also in other than its moral aspects, but it is conveniently classified here.

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-house 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. Have racial characteristics or the European customs of the immigrants so determined the occupations which they enter here as to have produced 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? How has it affected the geographical distribution of industries?

(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 recent 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 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.

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