Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/13

 PREFACE.

resided for the past twenty years at the greatest immigrant port in the world, and having been led by my official duties during a portion of this time to pay particular attention to the subject of emigration, I have been induced to enter into a somewhat extended study of this important question. The result of my researches is now laid before the public.

A great deal has been written about emigration, its causes, aims, and results, but, with a very few exceptions, the writers on this subject have dwelt more upon their own theories and conjectures than upon facts and events. In the physical world, it is manifestly impossible to build a house without having laid a foundation; yet, in the intellectual world, people too often reason and philosophize upon political and social questions without having made that careful investigation of facts which is the only sure foundation of accurate reasoning.

The present essay on immigration is chiefly confined to the narration of facts, and it is only here and there that I have given the conclusions which have seemed to me to be their natural result. Parts of it have already been laid before the public in a paper read in this city, on the 27th of October, 1869, before the American Social Science Association.

The emigration of European masses to this country is still in its infancy, and yet it is very difficult, if not impossible, to collect and preserve the materials relating to it. If I have succeeded in