226 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fields hitherto inaccessible to agricultural home-seekers. Of late years, 

 most of the desirable, arable land, profitable and fertile without irriga- 

 tion, has been taken up, and the advantages offered the agricultural 

 type of immigrant in the west have been materially lessened, but our 

 wonderful industrial growth still demands and attracts the strong 

 willing unskilled laborer, and this demand will probably last for many 

 years to come. 



The development of our great manufacturing industries also at- 

 tracted great numbers of skilled artisans and mechanics. At first 

 these skilled laborers were necessary. The necessity for their coming 

 has now disappeared, and not only are they unnecessary for develop- 

 ment or progress along industrial lines, but they enter into direct 

 competition with American mechanics and artisans. These may be 

 classed as competitive immigrants. 



The rapid growth of our large cities, the establishment of great 

 centers of population, most marked in the past twenty-five years, at- 

 tracted another class of immigrants, who can only live in such environ- 

 ment, who are simply human parasites unable to exist by their own 

 effort. 



Thus immigrants of to-day can be grouped under four heads, (1) 

 agricultural, (2) industrial, (3) competitive, (4) parasitic. The 

 agricultural class includes farm laborers and those desiring to take up 

 land for settlement. The industrial class includes the great army of 

 unskilled laborers, who seek employment in the mines, mills, great 

 works of construction and manufacturing concerns. These two classes 

 are valuable and necessary for the development and industrial progress 

 of the country. The competitive class takes in the skilled laborers, 

 mechanics, artisans and others who come here and enter into competi- 

 tion, in their respective callings, with Americans. This class is not 

 necessary for our advancement and may or may not be of value to the 

 country. The fourth or parasitic class is, as its name implies, not 

 only valueless, but decidedly detrimental to the body politic. In this 

 class are included the peddlers, fakirs, paupers, etc., who congregate 

 and will live only in the large centers of population and who can not 

 or will not do hard physical labor. This class constitutes a load to 

 be carried, and their deleterious influence on the vigor of the nation 

 is in direct proportion to their numbers. 



Social and political conditions in Europe determine to a large ex- 

 tent both the quantity and the quality of our immigration. A country 

 well and justly governed and which is in a prosperous condition is not 

 likely to send us many good immigrants. The type of Englishman 

 who would be welcome here as an immigrant, the sturdy Anglo-Saxon 

 yeoman, of whom we delight to form a mental picture, finds conditions 

 of life so suited to him in England that we rarely see him as an 



