1 68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



go to ; whether the removal will accomplish as much as is expected of it ; 

 whether the people among whom these foreigners are scattered really 

 want them ; whether removal on a wholesale scale will not develop new 

 agricultural colonies of aliens in which some of the evils of the slums 

 will be reproduced anew; whether the effects of such dispersion on the 

 communities among which the new settlers are located will be for the 

 best of those communities in the long run; whether — and this is per- 

 haps the most important point of all — wholesale distribution will really 

 relieve the city's burden. It is because the writer realizes that distribu- 

 tion is a remedy for existing evils which may well be added to the more 

 fundamental one of a further restriction of immigration, and because 

 he realizes that many persons have advocated the distribution idea with- 

 out giving it careful thought, that the writer desires to call attention to 

 a few points which need discussion before we go any farther in the 

 matter. 



1. Expense. — To scatter the city slum populations on any scale 

 large enough to be at all effective would require vast sums of money, 

 if the thing is done intelligently. It is not enough simply to pay the 

 fares of hundreds of thousands of persons from the cities to distant 

 points in the west or south, but provision should be made for the new 

 arrivals when they reach their destination, and they usually need care 

 and oversight for a good many years. It is obvious that if immigrants 

 who have just landed can be persuaded, or forced, to go at once into 

 the country districts at their own expense, or at the expense of some 

 railroad or capitalist desiring ' cheap ' labor, philanthropic persons 

 would be saved the immediate cost of the transportation. It must be 

 remembered, however, that wholesale distribution by railroads or capi- 

 talists is not likely to be controlled by a desire to do what is best for 

 the immigrants, nor for the people among whom they are scattered, but 

 rather by purely selfish interests. Furthermore, the natural tendency 

 of most of our immigrants is to remain in the larger cities, be- 

 cause of their desire to be with large numbers of their fellow-coun- 

 tnnnen, because the majority of the newcomers have very little money 

 and because the cities are the centers for manufacturing and me- 

 chanical industries, which are on the whole more remunerative than 

 agriculture. The average amount of money brought by each immi- 

 grant during the last five years was sixteen dollars. In the Ee- 

 port of the Industrial Commission it is shown that the amount of 

 money brought by immigrants from northern and western Europe 

 averages considerably greater than that brought by those from southern 

 and eastern Europe, but it is the latter class which it is chiefly desired 

 to distribute. To be really effective, thousands of families should be 

 removed from the slums of New York, and Chicago, and Boston, and 

 other cities, every year, and the incoming of two or three times as many 



