the native stock, the more assimilable do the foreign races appear to be. Not all who go home, however, go to stay; many visit and re-visit the old scenes; some who plan to remain at home, return to America because they miss the better living conditions to which they have become accustomed. Thus there is a movement back and forth all the time which must eventually draw all the countries closer together. Men quickly become interested in new lands where they have invested money. Why should they not become interested in those parts where they have invested human beings? At the present time, Italy seems to be manifesting much greater interest than formerly in the outlook for her people in the United States, as evidenced by the completion of a careful study of Italian Immigration as it affects both nations.3 Since the war, Italy, like other European countries, has opposed emigration, yet realizes that it is preferable to a surplus of unemployed men at home. Such being the point of view, what is more reasonable than to study the labor markets in new countries in order that Italians may be sent where they can be absorbed industrially, or to learn whether or not their going will only add to the problem of surplus labor? This Emigration Commission through its eight thousand officers seems to work with efficiency. It is thought that the improvement in the class of immigrants coming to this country from Italy at the present time, as well as the fact that Italy did not exceed its annual quota of forty-two thousand under the law of 1921, was due to its activity. Co-operation of this kind between governments interested should prove of the utmost value. The free migration of people has international significance second to no other movement, and this should be borne in mind throughout all study of the subject. *The Survey, Nov. 15, 1922, p. 231. The Three per cent. law in force till July 1923, and later extended one year. QUESTIONS TO BE STUDIED From tabulations and percentages we are able to see the numerical status of immigration into the United States, but that is not the whole story. Who are these people? Why have they come? What have they brought to us? and what have we given to them? These are questions that all thoughtful persons desire to have answered. To squeeze such facts from statistics alone is an impossible task; we must have in addition wide studies of groups. NATURE OF INVESTIGATIONS NEEDED Unquestionably such studies should be carried out by the government on a much more elaborate and more continuous scale than they have ever been. The work of the Immigration Commission commenced in the autumn of 1907 and completed in 1910, was ably planned and executed, but, as is too often the case with government studies, its publication of results was unduly delayed. The value of such material depends largely on getting it before the public while the facts are still fresh. Satisfactory answers to the questions propounded above can be found only as a result of careful investigations such as those of the commission just referred to. More recent examples of exhaustive studies are the far-reaching Americanization Studies of the Carnegie Corporation," the work of Thomas and Znaniecki on The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, and the book on The Russian Immigrant, by Professor Jerome Davis. The ground that one person can cover is naturally small, yet his contribution can have great methodological as well as informational value. We are ready now to pass to a consideration of the questions propounded in order that we may better understand the enormous significance of the thirty-five million foreign born and their children who live within our gates. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, AND WHENCE As already has been indicated, our immigrants are almost entirely from the lower economic stratum of the countries whence they have come. Exceptions to this general rule are those seeking intellectual advancement not offered them in their homeland. Probably the largest number in this group comes from the Dominion of Canada where desire for intellectual pursuits among the English speaking outstrips the supply of positions in which such pursuits may be followed. Thousands have come here for higher education and have remained for professional work or business. Such individuals form no problem because their language, standards and ideals are the same as those of the native-born, and they have a common heritage. Thus equipped, they frequently fill places of social importance. The French Canadian on the other hand has been swept into the industrial maelstrom with the European immigrants, and must be considered separately. Our immigrants may be roughly grouped as Asiatic, American and European; the scattering few from other parts of the world not being of numerical significance. Those in the first group include besides the Chinese, Japanese and Hindus from Eastern and Southern Asia,-Several small groups from Western Asia; the second includes British North America, Mexico and South America, as well as the few who come from other parts of the New World; while in the last are about thirty racial groups from Europe. OBJECTIONS TO CERTAIN GROUPS Broadly speaking, the Eastern and Southern Asiatics have been regarded as constituting the gravest menace to our living standards as well as to our moral ideas, and it is against these people, as will be seen in a later chapter, that the earliest and most sweeping exclusive acts were directed. While the Oriental Menace, if there be one, has made itself felt only on the Pacific Coast, it is of national importance since the interests of one section cannot be jeopardized without affecting the whole country. Doubtless feelings due to differences of race, religion and color contribute to the creation of antipathy toward the Orientals. Yet it must be admitted that any body of people who can live on a few pennies a day, and are willing to do so while working unbelievably long hours will inevitably lower the standards of American labor; and these standards were not attained without a struggle. Since a democracy cannot rise much higher than its great body of laborers, it is of the utmost importance that standards once achieved should not be ruthlessly relinquished. If this were all, the problem created by the presence of the Asiatics would be much simpler than it is. In addition, there are race feelings of amazing virulence to complicate the situation. CHINESE EXCLUSION The Chinese laborers began coming to the United States in 1849, and continued to come each year until 1882, when a strong and growing hostility culminated in an exclusion act in force for ten years and afterwards extended permanently. The Chinese were well received at first in gold mine and railroad construction camps where they worked as cooks, but when they entered actual construction in competition with other labor and underbidding it, trouble began. In the year 1882 there were 39,000 arrivals, making a total of 130,000 already in the country. The number is decreasing owing to a returning tide to China and a scarcity of Chinese women here. There were 89,000 in 1900, 71,000 in 1910 and 62,000 in 1920. They have been driven out of railroading and truck-farming, to a large extent, by the Italians, Mexicans and Japanese, and are now found almost entirely in domestic occupations, shop keeping on a small scale, and in canneries and laundries. In the last named, they are a familiar sight in cities all over the country. The following table shows so far as records were kept the influx of Chinese during the years when they came into the country unhindered. Japanese immigrants first came to the United States in numbers in 1869, the year of the opening of the first transcontinental railroad, and came here freely until practically |