Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/231

Rh immigrant, and we are much more likely to receive as our English immigrant the degenerate product of the East London slums. The same has been true of Germany for many years, the prosperity of the country, the growth of national pride and reconciliation to the form of government have cut down the German emigration from the great exodus of the eighties to the comparatively insignificant figures of to-day; and the German immigrants to-day do not compare favorably with their countrymen who came here twenty-five years ago. It will be seen, therefore, that it is unwise to consider an immigrant good because he is of one race, or worthless because he is of another. They must be measured individually irrespective of race or creed, for it is better to receive the robust pastoral or agricultural immigrants from countries where the intellectual status, perhaps, is not high and the school system faulty, than to receive from countries, possessing a high intellectual status and a superior educational system, the urban degenerate, criminal, diseased and defective.

To-day we receive the agricultural home-seeker as in the early days of this country. We demand and receive the industrial immigrant, the unskilled laborer who was unknown as a type fifty years ago. And we also receive against our own will the human parasite who remains and can only exist in the great centers of population.

The work which will be done in the next twenty years to reclaim the arid land by irrigation will be genuine empire building and provide thousands of homes for agricultural settlers. No doubt proper care will be exercised by the government to prevent this reclaimed land from falling into the hands of speculators, and the bulk of it will be available for the immigrant of the future.