Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/40

Rh

"The failure of the government to provide for the distribution of aliens through the United States, and the exertions of foreign countries combine, says Mr Sargent, to maintain alien colonies in this country. Such colonies are open to objection not merely on political grounds, but for social and sanitary reasons in a far greater degree. It cannot, in justice to the interests of our country and to the preservation of its institutions, be too urgently or too frequently repeated that in confining our treatment of the all-important immigration problem to the exclusion of such of certain enumerated classes as we can detect our policy is superficial. The practical and pressing question is, What shall be done with the annual arrivals of aliens, approximating now 1,000,000?" The present immigrants throng to the states which now need them least, to overcrowded cities, and entirely neglect the western states, where there is a scarcity of laborers.

All the political and social, and occasionally religious, resources of some countries are being directed to one end, to maintain colonies of their own people in this country, instructing them through various channels to maintain their allegiance to the country of their birth, to transmit their earnings hereto the fatherland for the purchase of ultimate homes there, and to avoid all intercourse with the people of this country that would tend to the permanent adoption of American ideals. Thus emigration from certain foreign countries has become, in a much larger sense than the public imagines, a revenue resource to those countries, of immediate benefit to them to the extent of the aggregate remittances, of prospective benefit to them because it insures the return of the emigrant with his accumulated savings.

An examination of the ability of the immigrants to read and write shows surprising extremes, of which the following are specially noteworthy:

Only 3 per cent of 10,077 Finns from Russia were illiterate;

4 per cent of 40,526 Germans from the German Empire;

4 per cent of 22,507 Germans from Austria-Hungary;

1 per cent of 36,486 English;

1 per cent of 11,226 Scotch;

3 per cent of 36,747 Irish, and

1 per cent of 59,878 Scandinavians.

On the other hand, as large a proportion as 36 per cent of 32,577 Poles from Russia could not read or write, and the same illiteracy is true for the Poles from Germany and Austria-Hungary; 23 per cent of 77,544 Hebrews from Russia could not read or write and 20,211 Hebrews from Austria-Hungary showed the same degree of illiteracy.

The percentage of illiteracy among the north Italians is only 13, yet it is as high as 48 among the south Italians. We are receiving nearly six times as many south Italians as we are north Italians, and yet the latter are far more desirable immigrants than the former.

One member of a large family from eastern Europe, composed of a father, mother, and six children all under ten years of age, with hardly any money, and bound for the tenement district of New York city, was recently asked at Ellis Island how he intended to provide a competent subsistence for his family if allowed to land. He answered: "What do I care for a big house if I can get one room to sleep in. That is all we want; that is the way we did in Russia."

This particular family was excluded.