Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/540

536 that the work may make some progress. As it is now, the good work done each year by charitable organizations and by philanthropists goes almost for naught. The splendid work of the New York tenement house and street cleaning departments is nullified to a large extent by the yearly addition of thousands of these alien tenement dwellers, for whom the tedious work of education in sanitary matters must be repeated from the beginning.

In regard to aliens in general, whether they desire to live in the city or in the country, many believe that something should be done at the port of arrival to educate them in the resources and opportunities which exist in various states. The commissioner general of immigration, in his annual report for 1903, recommends that Congress appropriate a sufficient sum to establish information bureaus at the various ports of entry, located in suitable buildings where exhibits can be shown and information given to arriving aliens by government or state officers. Such information would enable the immigrant to locate where his labor was needed and where the best opportunities were afforded for making a home. This plan seems feasible and, coming from such a high source, is worthy of thorough trial. The commissioner-general, in the strongest terms, urges legislation to establish these information agencies, with or without the cooperation of the states, not only because of the need of the immigrant's labor in certain sections, but also because of the good effect upon the alien.

After all, these two problems of exclusion of undesirable immigrants and distribution of aliens are closely associated. The class that clings most persistently to the crowded city is an undesirable class. And if, because of its poor physique, the majority were excluded, as it would be if we had a definite standard of physique, our problem of distribution would be very greatly simplified.

It is scarcely necessary to refer again to the baneful influence exerted by the congested tenement areas, both upon the immigrant and upon the body politic. Here the immigrant receives false ideas of personal freedom and political privilege and a distorted impression of our whole political system. Moral deterioration is a certain accompaniment of life in the slums, and physical degeneration is still more marked. His occupation is parasitic in character or at best competitive from a standard far below that compatible with decent living. And while this deadly struggle for existence is being waged by the immigrant in the city, the farmers south and west can not procure enough labor to harvest their ripened crops. What a different story could be told of these poor aliens of the tenement could they be directed to the proper sphere! Removed from the temptations which surround them in the city, from the depraved examples of slum life which everywhere confront them, they would find in the country the healthy, moral stimulus of contact