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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE BEIGHT SIDE OF EUSSIAN IMMIGEATION. 



By Dr. ALLAN MCLAUGHLIN, 



U. 3. PUBLIC HEALTH AND MAKINE-HOSPITAL SERVICE. 



A LAEGE proportion of the immigrants giving Eussia as their 

 -^--^ birthplace crowd into the tenements of the east side of New 

 York City and furnish operatives for the sweat shops and material 

 for all the charitable organizations in the city. 



These immigrants are so prominently in the public eye that we 

 hear a great deal about the alarming and deplorable increase in Eus- 

 sian immigration. The casual newspaper reader does not find out 

 that from Eussia we receive five distinct racial elements and that only 

 one of the five races tends to congregate in New York City, the other 

 four being distributed among the mines, farms and factories in nearly 

 every state in the union. So much is published about the sweat shop 

 and the tenement that the reader is apt to lose sight of the fact that 

 we receive a great many very desirable immigrants from Eussia. 



Fifty years ago the question of what constituted a desirable immi- 

 grant was a vexed one and many claimed that no such thing as a 

 desirable immigrant existed. Time has modified the views of the ex- 

 tremist and proved that an immigrant with a good physique, willing 

 to work and obey the law, has a definite economic value. This is es- 

 pecially true if he is between the ages of fifteen and forty-five years and 

 is an unskilled laborer. Three races stand out preeminently among the 

 races of Eussia as furnishing a very large proportion of desirable im- 

 migrants. They are the Eussian-German, Lithuanian and Finn. 



The following table shows the immigration from Eussia during 

 1902, arranged by races, and shows the relative standing of these races 

 in some of the essential factors of desirability : 



Russian-Germans. 



The term 'Eussian-German' sounds paradoxical, but it in reality 

 describes the racial status of this people more accurately than any 

 other designation. 



Germans have been landlords in the Eussian Baltic provinces since 

 the days of the old German order of crusaders. The Sword Brothers 



