Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/173

Rh families of newer immigrants of the same standards of living should be checked.

2. Success thus far attained not altogether Encouraging.—The attempts which have already been made along the line of the distribution of recent immigrants from our city slums, admirable as they are, and much as they deserve support, have on the whole been sadly ineffective. The Jewish Industrial Removal Society of New York, with the aid of the Hirsch fund, has distributed many Jewish families in the country, partly in agriculture, but usually in trade. Last year this society sent more than 3,000 persons to 45 states, three per cent, being on record as having already drifted back into cities. Similar societies are at work in Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston, and the Italian societies are doing the same sort of work. Although in most cases the individuals thus removed have fared better in their new homes than in the slums, yet taken as a whole, the success 'thus far attained is not so encouraging as to lead thoughtful persons to be sanguine about the entire practicability of carrying out a successful scheme of wholesale distribution along similar lines. And while there have been successes in the past, there have also been many dismal failures, and in almost all such attempts very great difficulties have been met.

3. Most of our Newer Immigrants not adapted to an Agricultural Life.—It is a mistake to suppose that all immigrants can be turned into successful farmers simply by sending them into the country. The commissioner of immigration at the Port of New York says in his last annual report (1903): 'Thousands of foreigners keep pouring into our cities, declining to go where they might be wanted because they are neither physically nor mentally fitted to go to these undeveloped parts of our country, and do as did the early settlers from northern Europe' and this is especially true of most of the immigrants who, because of the steamship rate war, have been coming over to this country during the summer of 1904 for less than $10 a head. Such a rate makes it possible for the most ignorant and the most depraved inhabitants of Europe's slums to come here. Would a railroad fare of say $5 from Chicago to southern California induce the best or the least desirable of Chicago's residents to take advantage of the opportunity to go west? Long residence of successive generations in the Ghettoes of Europe has unfitted most of the Jews to be independent farmers; the Syrians and Armenians take naturally to non-agricultural occupations, and so it is with others. The majority of our recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe are too poor and too ignorant to be fitted for a successful farming life. In this connection Mr. Gustavo Tosti, Acting Consul-General of Italy in New York, who has given much time to the study of the conditions of Italians in this country, says: