4 CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON 



easy and cheap, and the inducement for forwarding undesir- 

 able citizens is so strong, that one community may find itself 

 overwhelmed with a burden which rightly should be shared. 

 Cities attract paupers, and country reheving officers are prone 

 to furnish free transportation to places where mercy is blind, 

 people too busy to investigate, and where questions are not 

 asked except by inveterate organizationists, that tribe so hard 

 of heart. One form of barrier is the immigration law against 

 importation of European defectives and Chinese laborers with 

 a pauper standard of life. Even Russia has been compelled 

 to resort to settlement laws to prevent congestion of pauper- 

 ism in centers of population. Germany, since 1870, under a 

 unified imperial code, has reached a fairly satisfactory solu- 

 tion. In the United States, which has felt so rich that it 

 could endure almost any abuse, the evils of imregulated mi- 

 gration of paupers are becoming so manifest as to call for more 

 efficient measures. Massachusetts and New York may be 

 taken as examples of old communities with inherited laws and 

 traditions of ancient English customs, and with a long ex- 

 perience of their own, and these have developed complicated 

 settlement regulations, though of different types. The ideas 

 of the eastern states travel slowly westward, as cities grow and 

 the pressure of pauperism is more sensibly felt. So long as the 

 hardships of the plain and of a pioneer life held feeble folk at 

 a distance, the states of the west were not impelled to fix severe 

 conditions of settlement. But when Atlantic cities shipped 

 the children of inmiigrants, even of paupers and criminals, 

 into their villages, instead of sending them back to Europe, or 

 caring for them at home, the states, one after another, passed 

 laws requiring at least security for their selection and super- 

 vision. So long as there was free public land a large pop- 

 ulation was desired, and quality was not so much a question. 

 Malaria and revolvers, in certain districts, have represented 

 natural and artificial selection, and settlement laws are grad- 

 ually added to help nature. While the laws of settlement in 

 Colorado are still quite mild, the invasion of consumptives 

 has led to a discussion which will doubtless result in more 

 adequate protection. 



The more complete organization of civil relief does not 



