DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS. 169 



families of newer immigrants of the same standards of living should 

 be checked. 



2. Success thus far attained not altogether Encouraging. — The 

 attempts which have already been made along the line of the distri- 

 bution of recent immigrants from our city slums, admirable as they are, 

 and much as they deserve support, have on the whole been sadly in- 

 effective. The Jewish Industrial Eemoval Society of New York, with 

 the aid of the Hirsch fund, has distributed many Jewish families in 

 the country, partly in agriculture, but usually in trade. Last year this 

 society sent more than 3,000 persons to 45 states, three per cent, being 

 on record as having already drifted back into cities. Similar societies 

 are at work in Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston, and the Italian socie- 

 ties are doing the same sort of work. Although in most cases the 

 individuals thus removed have fared better in their new homes than in 

 the slums, yet taken as a whole, the success 'thus far attained is not so 

 encouraging as to lead thoughtful persons to be sanguine about the 

 entire practicability of carrying out a successful scheme of wholesale 

 distribution along similar lines. And while there have been successes 

 in the past, there have also been many dismal failures, and in almost 

 all such attempts very great difficulties have been met. 



3. Most of our Newer Immigrants not adapted to an Agricultural 

 Life. — It is a mistake to suppose that all immigrants can be turned 

 into successful farmers simply by sending them into the country. 

 The commissioner of immigration at the Port of New York says in 

 his last annual report (1903) : 'Thousands of foreigners keep pour- 

 ing into our cities, declining to go where they might be wanted because 

 they are neither physically nor mentally fitted to go to these unde- 

 veloped parts of our country, and do as did the early settlers from 

 northern Europe/ and this is especially true of most of the immigrants 

 who, because of the steamship rate war, have been coming over to this 

 country during the summer of 1904 for less than $10 a head. Such a 

 rate makes it possible for the most ignorant and the most depraved in- 

 habitants of Europe's slums to come here. Would a railroad fare of 

 say $5 from Chicago to southern California induce the best or the 

 least desirable of Chicago's residents to take advantage of the oppor- 

 tunity to go west? Long residence of successive generations in the 

 Ghettoes of Europe has unfitted most of the Jews to be independent 

 farmers ; the Syrians and Armenians take naturally to non-agricultural 

 occupations, and so it is with others. The majority of our recent 

 immigrants from southern and eastern Europe are too poor and too 

 ignorant to be fitted for a successful farming life. In this connection 

 Mr. Gustavo Tosti, Acting Consul-General of Italy in New York, who 

 has given much time to the study of the conditions of Italians in this 

 country, says: 



VOL. LXVI. — 12. 



