Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/172

168 go to; whether the removal will accomplish as much as is expected of it; whether the people among whom these foreigners are scattered really want them; whether removal on a wholesale scale will not develop new agricultural colonies of aliens in which some of the evils of the slums will be reproduced anew; whether the effects of such dispersion on the communities among which the new settlers are located will be for the best of those communities in the long run; whether—and this is perhaps the most important point of all—wholesale distribution will really relieve the city's burden. It is because the writer realizes that distribution is a remedy for existing evils which may well be added to the more fundamental one of a further restriction of immigration, and because he realizes that many persons have advocated the distribution idea without giving it careful thought, that the writer desires to call attention to a few points which need discussion before we go any farther in the matter.

1. Expense.—To scatter the city slum populations on any scale large enough to be at all effective would require vast sums of money, if the thing is done intelligently. It is not enough simply to pay the fares of hundreds of thousands of persons from the cities to distant points in the west or south, but provision should be made for the new arrivals when they reach their destination, and they usually need care and oversight for a good many years. It is obvious that if immigrants who have just landed can be persuaded, or forced, to go at once into the country districts at their own expense, or at the expense of some railroad or capitalist desiring 'cheap' labor, philanthropic persons would be saved the immediate cost of the transportation. It must be remembered, however, that wholesale distribution by railroads or capitalists is not likely to be controlled by a desire to do what is best for the immigrants, nor for the people among whom they are scattered, but rather by purely selfish interests. Furthermore, the natural tendency of most of our immigrants is to remain in the larger cities, because of their desire to be with large numbers of their fellow-countrymen, because the majority of the newcomers have very little money and because the cities are the centers for manufacturing and mechanical industries, which are on the whole more remunerative than agriculture. The average amount of money brought by each immigrant during the last five years was sixteen dollars. In the Report of the Industrial Commission it is shown that the amount of money brought by immigrants from northern and western Europe averages considerably greater than that brought by those from southern and eastern Europe, but it is the latter class which it is chiefly desired to distribute. To be really effective, thousands of families should be removed from the slums of New York, and Chicago, and Boston, and other cities, every year, and the incoming of two or three times as many