Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/19

 IMMIGRATION TO NEW YORK.

CHAPTER I.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION—LAW OF EMIGRATION—THE UNITED STATES THE FAVORITE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT. FROM the remotest ages down to the present day, from the first Phoenician and Greek colonies down to the settlement of the North Pacific coast, two principal causes have always induced emigration and led to the establishment of new states and empires, viz., political or religious oppression and persecution, and social evils, such as want of prosperity or insecurity, lack of employment, famine, and high prices of living in general. In modern times, either of these causes has proved powerful enough to produce emigration on a large scale from certain countries. People who are happy and comfortable at home do not emigrate; the poor and oppressed only, who cannot find a fair reward for their labor in the land of their birth, or who feel themselves obstructed and thwarted in their religious or political aspirations, seek to better their condition by a change of country.

The territory which constitutes the present United States owes its wonderful development mainly to the conflux of the poor and outcast of Europe within it. The adventurers who discovered and first settled it belonged to the feudal aristocracy of Europe. Being neither able nor willing to work, they failed and perished, and gave way to the so-called lower classes of society to the sturdy farmer and the industrious mechanic. Feeble as their efforts were in the beginning, the toils and sufferings, the patience and