DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS. 167 



little from the Ghettoes of Europe, except for the touch of kindlier fortune. . . . 

 A Syrian might go to sleep at home, and if he could sleep eight or nine days 

 he might wake up in New York, and be perfectly at home in the Syrian quarter. 

 . . . These quarters have long been here, and they are in all our cities. But 

 the new thought is of their apparently indefinite extension. 



The only remedies for such conditions are: a considerable restric- 

 tion of immigration, and (not or) the distribution of the slum popula- 

 tions through the agricultural districts of the country. Although 

 congress has repeatedly been asked, in the strongest terms, by very 

 influential bodies of citizens all over the country, to enact further re- 

 strictive legislation, no laws at all adequate to meet the situation have 

 been put upon the statute books. The powerful influences of railroad 

 and steamship companies, and of large employers who want ' cheap ' 

 labor, have been able to turn the scale against what the majority of 

 Americans without question believe to be the best for the country. 

 The first of the two remedies above referred to not having been secured, 

 there has been a decided swing of opinion in favor of the second. 

 Any one who reads over recent literature on immigration will find con- 

 stant reference to the ' solution of the immigration problem by the 

 agricultural distribution of our immigrants/ That charity workers 

 should have been so long finding out this (supposedly) excellent and 

 effective remedy, which is lauded as if it alone were to be the panacea 

 for all the ills resulting from immigration, is much more surprising 

 than that the steamship and railroad interests of this country should be 

 doing their utmost to ' boom ' it as the one solution of the immigration 

 problem, always carefully concealing their own interest in the matter, 

 which is to increase their receipts through the transportation of all 

 these thousands of immigrants, to secure cheaper labor, and to turn 

 public attention away from the need of further restrictive legislation. 

 The advocacy of the distribution plan by those having affiliations with 

 transportation interests, or with enterprises which desire ' cheap ' labor, 

 especially in the less thickly settled parts of our country, will bear 

 careful watching. 



The relief which a distribution of the inhabitants of our city slums 

 seems sure to bring to the charity workers and the philanthropists of 

 our large northern cities, and the fact that such distribution is also 

 being systematically, though not openly, advocated by powerful trans- 

 portation and capitalistic interests, have caused this new idea to be 

 welcomed with great enthusiasm, the selfish and unselfish interests 

 working along the same lines, as is seldom the case in immigration 

 matters. In all this enthusiasm for the new remedy it is natural that 

 there is danger of going too fast and too far ; there is a likelihood that 

 we are urging distribution from our congested districts without caring 

 sufficiently where the people whom we are anxious to get off our hands 



