Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/444

440 second only to those 'prize birds of passage' the Italians. They are very industrious workers and rarely become public charges, so must be given credit for the amount of work they do, even if their permanency as citizens is open to question.

The distribution of Magyars landed in 1903 is shown by the following table:

From the countries bordering on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea we receive several thousand immigrants each year, who are so far below all others in the matter of desirability that they are in a class by themselves. This scum of the Levant includes Syrians, Armenians, Greeks and Turks.

The Greeks are the best of this rather bad lot. Some few are producers and are engaged in textile industries, many more are peddlers and push-cart men. They establish Greek quarters in large cities and are probably under the control of padroni. Often when they are examined at Ellis Island, each member of a large party of Greeks will be in possession of the same amount of American money and all tell the same story, giving evidence of having been instructed and brought out in large parties by some one who probably controls their labor here.

The Syrians and Armenians are producers to a very limited extent in silk and cotton industries. The majority of Syrians and Armenians are engaged in trade, either as small shopkeepers or itinerant peddlers.

The activity of steamship agents in southeastern Europe and the establishment of a regular oriental steamship service from Marseilles to the Piraeus, Beirut and Smyrna, have had much to do with the increase in Levantine immigration. Greek immigration particularly is stimulated by the enterprising Greek population of Marseilles, who reap handsome profit from the traffic, as all these oriental immigrants are landed at Marseilles and shipped from there overland to Havre, Rotterdam or other Atlantic ports.

The Syrians and Armenians ascribe as the cause of their expatriation the rapacity and misrule of the Sultan. Well-meaning American