The menace of immigration lies not so much in an imaginary channel from European poorhouses to American poorhouses, although there are those who do pass through just such a channel ; but rather in the well-trodden high way which leads from the low-standard laborers of South ern Europe to the lower margin of American industry, which is kept low, not because the immigrant wishes it, but because his standard and efficiency, his physical and mental equipment, are such that he is at the mercy of those who exploit his unskilled labor to their own profit. The unskilled, inefficient, underpaid immigrant may be a source of pecuniary gain to his individual employer, but his pres ence is an injury to the community.
The effect of utilizing underpaid immigrant labor under conditions which, in order to afford a living at all, make excessive demands upon adult men, and lead irresistibly to the employment of women and children, is directly to increase the number who sooner or later require relief. To produce stray instances or even a goodly number of persons who have struggled through such adverse condi tions without becoming dependent upon others, is not to offer evidence to the contrary. The plain tendency is to augment the number of those who break down prema turely; of those who, in advanced years, have made no pro vision for their own maintenance ; of the children whose support must be supplied by others than their own parents ; and of those who, meeting with unexpected misfortune of any kind, have no resources except the generosity of strangers.
It is, of course, ports of entry, and preeminently the city of New York, that suffers most from the effects of undesirable immigration. Those who have normal wage earning capacity, and who do not require the presence of a number of their own nationality about them, may push on to the interior cities and towns, or may find employ ment at farm labor. Those who remain behind comprise the most and the least ambitious. For the man who can really succeed, there are, perhaps, greater rewards in the greater cities ; but those who are least efficient and capable remain, not because it is to their advantage, but because it is easier. They do not know, and they have no means of finding out, what opportunities would be open to them elsewhere, and they shrink from a venture which might prove fatal. Their instinct leads them not to repeat the original mistake of cutting loose from friends and acquaint ances, even if these are but of slight value as compared with the more than lifelong ties which have been severed by removal from their original home.
The conditions which arise in the seaboard cities from ever augmenting immigration call for some revision of the principles of settlement and of transportation.
The principle relating to settlement, inherited from the English Poor Law, and applied with many modifica tions in the various states, is that so far as public relief is concerned, dependent persons are to be aided in the com munities in which they have had a permanent residence, and that if they become dependent elsewhere, they may legitimately be returned to the place in which they last had a permanent residence. The length of time neces sary to establish a residence or a settlement varies greatly among the different states. Residence in the county or in the town as against other counties and towns within the state is usually gained or lost in a shorter time than is re quired to gain or lose residence in the state itself. How
ever necessary or expedient it may be to limit public relief to those who have a settlement established through long continued residence, it is clearly unwise to adopt the same principle in the administration of private relief, and then to apply it both in public and in private relief in such a way as to lessen the distribution of the immigrant popu lation throughout the entire country.
The argument for liberal immigration laws is based upon the assimilating powers of the American people. If, however, colonies of various nationalities are estab lished at the very point of entry, the opportunities for assimilation are greatly diminished. The inducement for those who speak a different language to acquire knowledge of English is lessened, and there are fewer occupations open to those who are required in any event to learn some new means of livelihood. Either many of those who are still admitted should be excluded by more stringent laws, or there should be developed systematic plans for distributing them to the places where there is need of the labor which they can perform or, if necessary, to establish colonies for the purpose of affording them a home and employment, and an opportunity to make a start under favorable conditions. A temporary landing in New York City, and the spending of a few months in a desperate attempt to gain a footing, is not in any real sense to establish a residence. When one who has had this experience becomes, through loss of employment and inability to find anything to do, dependent, it may be advisable to aid him, and impracticable, for exceptional reasons, to return him to his native country, but the gen eral principle that dependent persons are to be aided where they have a settlement ought not to debar the giving of aid in transportation to another place if the conditions there are known to be more favorable. It is not the gen eral condition of the market for labor that has caused the difficulty, but the limited demand for and the excessive supply of the class of unskilled immigrants, or immigrants whose skill lies in a direction for which there is no de mand. In so far as relief is required, the responsibility for it rests undoubtedly upon the community in which the person has become dependent, or the one from which he has come. Those who remain dependent immediately upon transfer to some other place should be returned at the expense of those who have sent them away. Trans portation to other places should not be resorted to merely as a means of lessening the demand for relief. Only in so far as there is a reasonable prospect of actual employ ment in the new community, or a transfer of the burden to those upon whom the dependent person has an imme diate personal claim, is the resort to transportation justi fied, and even this is justified only as a remedy for an unsufferable condition created by immigration and the congestion of an abnormal number of the least efficient immigrants in the cities of their first arrival. It is not then simply a question of money, but a question of as similating capacity. Either the number to be admitted, therefore, must be greatly reduced, or the burden of assimi lation must be far more widely distributed, and in truth there is need of both remedies.