While the percentage has come down. 3.3 per cent. the actual number of farms

owned free has risen considerably. These are the figures:

Free from debt.. Mortgaged...

There is certainly small ground in this table for the assertion that our American farmers are getting into debt to an increasing extent to the capitalist interests.

Secondly and more important to observe is the fact that a farm mortgage is often the means by which the farmer rises from the ranks of tenantry to the owning class. It may, therefore, be at sign of progress towards economic independence quite as well as the contrary. We could not, if we tried, put the case more strongly than does the Socialist Spargo in the work already referred to (page 134). He says:

"Now while a mortgage is certainly not suggestive of independence, it may be either a sign of decreasing or increasing independence. It may be a step toward the ultimate loss of one's farm or a step

toward the ultimate ownership of one. Much that has been written by Populist and Socialist pamphleteers and editors. upon this subject has been based upon the entirely erroneous assumption that a mortgaged farm meant loss of economic independence, wheras it often happens that it is a step toward it."

Having seen the fallacy of the Socialist theories of wealth concentration when applied to agriculture, we shall next month discuss them in relation to manufacturing industry. At the same time we shall present various other data -such as savings bank deposits, income tax figures, and estate duty recordswhich bear intimately on the comparative movement of wealth as between the capitalist classes large and small and the capitalists and the wage-earners.

The State is to sanction

.

As

IT

T has been unfortunate for America that questions of immigration have appeared large in the minds of citizens only as they have affected matters of restriction or non-restriction. Ever since. American opportunities became known to ambitious or unfortunate people in Europe, discussion in America has been rife on the subject of the admission of aliens. In consequence, when the early immigration from England, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia was received at Castle Garden, the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers and other "respectable elements" were very much disturbed because of the inrushing tide of Europeans. Had they given less thought to the numbers coming and more consideration to the welfare and protection of the immigrants, it would have been well, for in those days the Battery was renowned as the home of the shark, the runner and the porter, whose only interest was to defraud immigrants. Castle Garden has passed from the hands of the Government to the City of New York and as an immigration station it lives only in the memories of the older New Yorkers, but still there is

landing at the Barge Office at the Battery an ever-increasing number of aliens who should be subjects of our care and protection.

In 1891 Ellis Island in New York harbor was made the immigration station, and the present buildings, erected since the original ones were destroyed by fire in 1897, are far more adequate for the careful consideration of immigration than was Castle Garden. Since the old Castle Garden days, however, the new immigration has begun. The sturdy Teutonic, Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian races no longer come in great numbers, but in their places thousands from Eastern and Southern Europe are arriving: Italians, Slavs, and Orientals. Inspection arrangements at the immigration stations were never so perfect as now, but there still remains the great problem of the protection of the immigrants after they land at the Barge Office upon Manhattan Island.

When it is remembered that for two or three weeks the immigrant has been constantly engaged in a routine of inspection, question answering and exam

ination, and that he has journeyed thousands of miles from his native village, it is not surprising that, after he has left Ellis Island and stepped foot upon Manhattan, he should easily become the prey of sharpers. To the inconsiderate, it might seem that it is of no high consequence that peasant Italians, Greeks and Hungarians should be fleeced of some or all of their money in New York City, but there are important reasons indeed. why they should be protected. In most instances, the immigrant lands with a high ideal of the American Government and when he is defrauded because of his trustfulness his opinion is changed, he becomes embittered, he is more likely to be a public charge and his value as a working unit is greatly diminished.

Robbing the New-Comers

Sums of money which would total an enormous amount have been secured by fraud and chicanery from immigrants, and until October 5, 1910, sixty or more. licensed porters, runners and hackmen, and scores of unlicensed sharpers were, with little curb, allowed to have their way with the newly-arrived aliens. this time, the North American Civic League for Immigrants, of which Frank Trumbull is chairman, through its Immigrant Guide and Transfer, entered the field of active protection of the immigrants. Organized solely as a practical philanthropy and managed in accordance with most careful business ideas, the Immigrant Guide and Transfer has been accorded the privilege of maintaining a desk at Ellis Island where its work begins. Past this desk go all aliens bound for New York and vicinity. Here they are stopped by a clerk who speaks. ten languages. They are asked if they have been in New York before. If they

respond in the affirmative, they then pass on. If they are new to the city, the clerk explains to them that for a charge varying from 25 cents to $1 each they and their baggage will be taken to any point in New York City, all expenses of carfare being included in this charge. A card is pinned upon the coat of the immigrant who has accepted the service of the Immigrant Guide and Transfer, he is then escorted to the ferry which runs between Ellis Island and the Barge Office at the Battery and placed with others in charge of the guide of the I. G. T. upon the boat. Arriving at the Barge Office. a procession is formed which goes to the office of the Immigrant Guide and Transfer, at 130 Broad Street. Here, the aliens are divided in groups and placed in the care of guides who take them to the places for which they are destined, within the city of New York and adjacent points in New Jersey.

Twenty-two Languages Spoken

Twelve guides are employed by the Immigrant Guide and Transfer and they are able to converse with aliens in twenty-two languages. Most of the immigrants before landing have determined where they shall go and many of them by their request are delivered by the guides to banks, immigrant lodging houses, coffee houses, and grocery stores. Others are met by acquaintances at the office of the Immigrant Guide and Transfer and are then taken to their friends' homes. If for any reason the immigrant has no destination in mind, he is then taken by the guide to the Division of Information of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization of the United States Department of Commerce and Labor, at 17 Pearl Street. The Bureau of Information gathers from all available

explicit instructions regarding the care of the aliens of whom they have charge. They are obliged to keep the immigrants within their sight at all times, to prevent them, if possible, from entering saloons, to protect them from exploitation by porters and runners, to make most careful delivery of them, to secure receipts for them and to guard their charges in every possible way from frauds. These and other exact directions result in high class service and the efficiency of the work may be guaged by the fact that the sixty

about as wide and that not infrequently 100 immigrants with heavy baggage will arrive at the office of the Immigrant Guide and Transfer as late as half-past five in the afternoon, the very onerous duties that are so faithfully discharged may be estimated. Upon days such as this, guides will not return to the office. after delivering immigrants, until one or two o'clock in the morning.

Painstaking attention to the welfare of the immigrants is the prominent feature of the work of the Immigrant Guide and

Transfer. Within two years over 46,000 immigrants have been delivered to friends in New York and adjacent points in New Jersey by the organization and so careful has been the work that but five individuals have lost any money or suffered any financial reverse through the fault of the guides. In these cases the money was promptly refunded to the immigrant. This remarkable record sufficiently illustrates the high character of the work performed.

Protection for Guides

The police authorities co-operate with the Immigrant Guide and Transfer in their work and officers stationed at the Barge Office give protection to the guides as they escort their processions of aliens. to the office. If it were not for the assistance afforded the Immigrant Guide and Transfer in this way, many an ignorant Italian or Greek would be stolen from the line by sharpers who are ever on the lookout for money.

In a single day eight steamships from European ports have come to dock in New York with over thirteen thousand steerage passengers. Since 1905, the United States has been receiving over a million immigrants a year when the industrial world has been normally active, and the port of New York receives threefourths of the total immigration to the United States. Figuring the rush season with the slack for the last three fiscal years, there has poured into the metropolis an average of 2,134 immigrants daily for six days of every week. According to the last report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, the average sum in the possession of immigrants is $33, so that a daily influx of two thousand aliens means upwards of $65,000 in ready cash, while a rush day in the spring flood

brings nearly $200,000. This is the prize for which sharpers and thieves have been contending for years. Now their harvest is much lessened because of the beneficient activities of the I. G. T.

Easy Prey for Swindlers

The office of the North American Civic League for Immigrants is full, however, of stories of confidence games worked upon the newly-arrived immigrant. To buy him a ticket for Chicago. at a subway ticket window, leaving the man to be put off the train at Kingsbridge or in the Bronx, has been a wellknown trick; money has been trustfully exchanged by him for cigar coupons, bills of defunct banks or drafts drawn upon the "Bank of Prosperity." The charges for cabs and for porterage which may be legally made by those licensed to do that work are much higher than those made by the I. G. T., but these have even been exceeded. Unsuspecting immigrants have been piloted for miles. through New York at excessive rates, when their destination was but a few blocks from the Barge Office. Immigrant lodging-houses, conducted by those who were once aliens themselves, make exorbitant charges whenever possible and restaurants and eating places also take their "pound of flesh."

Instancing frauds upon immigrants, might be told the story of the Belgian boy who was asked by a porter to change a $50.00 bill. The refusal to do this was. not accepted and for several blocks the shark accompanied the lad until at last, in self-defense, thinking that, as he sailed next day, he really had no use for his small bills, the boy stopped, took the fifty dollar bill from the porter, and counted out its face value in ones and twos of Canadian and United States currency.