here, and the love of adventure sends many young men to seek their fortunes in the United States.

The Jews in Russia are impelled to emigrate largely on account of religious persecution and the denial of political and civil rights. The Russian laws compel the mass of the Jewish population to live within certain prescribed areas, known as the Pale. They permit them to engage in few occupations, prohibit them from acquiring land; withold from them the privilege of freely entering schools and universities; debar them from other essential rights accorded to other sections of the population. After massacres, such as those of Kishineff, Odessa, Bialystok, Siedlice, there is a flight of emigration toward America. The withdrawal from the Finns of the right of self-government led to a rapid increase in emigration by them to the United States. Unsuccessful attempts at revolution and reform during the last few years have also brought large numbers of aliens, including many cultured and liberty-loving men and women. From the earliest days this country has been a haven of refuge for the oppressed and a sanctuary for those who have striven unsuccessfully to better the conditions of their fellow-men. The United States has always protected the political refugees who have fled to this country, and has refused to surrender those whose extradition is sought for political offenses.

Aliens when they land are generally poor, five-sixths showing less than $50, though they frequently possess much more. The majority are not educated, since 26 per cent of all over fourteen years of age are unable to write. As a rule they are not accustomed to the exercise of full political rights, the voting privilege in their native lands being ordinarily limited by property and educational qualifications. The vast majority of aliens, coming as they do from rural districts, are unskilled workers, and the main opportunity for them is as common laborers. Yet in many of the skilled trades are found trained artisans from other lands. Often, owing to inability to secure employment in their own trades, aliens enter occupations for which they are ill adapted.

In immigration the rule is, men arrive first, and unmarried men first of all. In 1907, 72 per cent of all aliens arriving in the United States were male, and of these 89 per cent or over 64 per cent of all were above the age of fourteen. Only 4 per cent of all aliens were above the age of forty-five. After the alien has secured his foothold and learns something of American ways

and customs he brings over his wife and children, or if he is unmarried he often revisits his native land and returns a married man. The older the immigration, other things being equal, the larger is the percentage of women. Thus, in 1908, among the Irish, 51.1 per cent were females; of the Scandinavians, Germans and French, over 40 per cent were females; while of the Greeks, who are among the recent aliens, only 6.9 per cent. were females, and of the Bulgarians, Servians and Montenegrins, 4.5 per cent were females.1

The preponderance of young men accounts for the fluidity of the alien population. Being mainly unattached they are able to move forward or backward, toward America or from America, in answer to a rising or lowering demand for labor. They are also able to move rapidly to labor camps and to undertake work of a temporary or seasonal nature. There are drawbacks to this excess of unmarried men, among which are contentment with lower wages and bad living conditions, and the social disadvantages incident to segregated groups of males.

Economic Conditions.-The alien, though a rural worker at home, here to a large extent remains in the city. This permanency of urban residence is due to various causes, including ignorance of opportunities and resources in other parts of the country; lack of incentive, or the means to go elsewhere; reluctance to leave the small colony to which he first attaches himself, and where he can have association with his own nationality and race, especially those of his native province; the lack of protection from the pitfalls which beset him when seeking to make his way alone among strangers; and the self-interest of those who profit by his remaining in the city.

As a consequence, although the alien works to a large extent in industries grouped about small towns and villages, he forms a large proportion of the city workers. The existence in New York and other cities of the state of large numbers of persons unable to seek their best economic advantage, leads to their employment in the so-called sweated trades. This term is used to denote industrial conditions involving hard-driven workers, who labor long hours for low wages, usually in their living quarters in tenements under unsanitary conditions. These trades

1 The Jews furnish an exception to this rule, and to certain other rules concerning immigration, owing to the fact that they come so largely on account of political and religious persecution, and as a consequence their migration is to a larger extent than among other nationalities a family migration.

have developed with the increase of immigration, and in this state during the last generation these workers have been most largely recruited from the most recent immigration. Wages are low and factory conditions, though much improved, are far from good. Men, women and children labor long hours under unsanitary conditions, and earn wages in many cases materially below the current wages of the community. Whole families work in sleeping rooms temporarily converted into workshops, sometimes in the midst of filth and dirt. The work during certain seasons lasts until late at night, and sometimes long after the workers' reserve of physical strength and nervous energy is exhausted. Children are, in some sections of the city, kept at work to the injury of their health.

The exclusion of aliens from many of the skilled trades and professions is due in part to their ignorance of the English language and of American traditions, to lack of previous training, or at least of a training similar to that required in America, and often to the mere fact of their alienage.

Their wages are at first likely to be low because they are usually forced to take the first opportunity offered and ordinarily do not have the protection of trade unions in maintaining wages and limiting hours of labor, and their occupation is frequently restricted to what the padrone or labor agent may offer, who is not interested in raising their standard of living or acquainting them with the standards prevailing in this country. Furthermore, where the padrone is in charge of the commissary he sometimes sets a standard below that of aliens in their own country.

Released from segregation and padrone control and brought into relationship with American workingmen, the tendency of the alien is to approximate to the standard of the American workingman. The very pressure of American industrial conditions, as well as climatic changes, makes it imperative that he be better fed and housed and clothed than he was in his native land. The poverty and low wages of the alien, especially during his first years in America, tend to force him, together with others receiving similar wages, into the least desirable sections of the city. His home must be near his work since he cannot afford carfare nor the time required to walk the intervening distance, and in his free time he desires to be near his fellowcountrymen. These racial, provincial and even local affiliations and feelings are so strong that the Italian, for instance, does not

easily or willingly live in districts inhabited by other nationalities, while the Calabrian desires to live apart from the Sicilian, and the alien from one part of a city seeks his residence in the neighborhood of others from the same section of the same city. In New York city all these forces have driven the alien into overcrowded districts and consequently rentals near the industrial centers of the city are enhanced.

Moral Conditions.-The alien is in more danger of moral contamination than the rest of the community. Unless specially protected, he is likely, through inability to discriminate, to locate in neighborhoods and houses which contain disorderly and immoral persons, to apply to unsafe agencies for employment, and to frequent places of amusement which are injurious. In the case of the alien woman the danger is increased, especially where she must become a bread-winner immediately upon arrival.

Forces of Assimilation.—Although city life increases the economic and moral dangers, there are compensations which are frequently more apparent than these dangers. The opportunities for education, association and advancement are important to the alien. Association through workshop, societies, and with his own countrymen appeal strongly to him. The attractions of the crowd, the opportunities for amusement, his gregarious instincts, charm and hold him in the city. In the country regions association with his fellow-men is limited. While he may be familiar with farm labor he is not accustomed to the lack of personal sympathy, nor to the lack of association with those of his kind. Educational facilities and social intercourse are taken into consideration by him when he chooses his home. In the cities communities of different alien races constitute cities within cities, and, therefore, the normal assimilative process, through association, work, home life, and like causes, is not adequate, and many aliens do not come into contact with that element of our population which can understand them, or which can interpret to them the underlying principles of American institutions. Because of this need there have been organized groups and movements intended to more effectively Americanize the alien. Among these are settlements, institutional churches, educational associations, clubs, and recreation centers.

Those connected with these movements believe that something is lost to the state if the alien fails to comprehend that America, Russia, Italy and Hungary and other countries hold many ideals

in common, and that a Garibaldi, a Tolstoy, or a Kossuth are revered here as well as in the land of their origin. In the opinion of these friends of the alien, respect for his fine traditional qualities tends more rapidly to make of him a good American, and to understand the genius of our institutions than he would by attempts to instil American traditions and nothing else. Opportunities for service to the alien on the part of the organizations referred to are met by classes, lectures and clubs, but largely by personal association.

Within the past few years, religious organizations have taken a deeper interest in the alien. Some of them maintain immigrant homes, conduct study classes and issue publications for the Americanization of the alien. They have established centers in various neighborhoods in which are conducted classes in English, and where social opportunities are afforded the newly-arrived alien to meet those who have been in the country for longer periods, and where they can become acquainted with American traditions and customs.

As wages increase and aliens become more skilled with length of residence and with the improvement of transit facilities they remove from crowded districts to other parts of the city. Trade organizations are important factors in assimilation. A number of them have membership among the aliens, whom they not only instruct in American standards of living and impress upon them the necessity for maintaining them, but in some instances, especially among the women, maintain classes in English, and conduct social meetings.

Conclusions.—It is thus evident that the progress and development of the alien, and his assimilation, depend upon a multitude of influences, some subjective, others objective; some beneficent, others detrimental. While a continuance of the policy which has heretofore quite generally prevailed, of indifference to the welfare of the alien and that of the state in its relations to him, would, in the majority of instances, prove harmless, because of the innate moral strength and the plasticity of the alien, it is equally true that the state, as well as the alien, would derive incalculable advantage by the creation of a better environment for the alien, and by inculcating in him a feeling of trust and confidence in our institutions.