130 JOHN R. COMMONS 



istic and significant movement of the present generation, has 

 additional significance when we classify it according to the 

 motives of those who seek the cities, whether industrial or 

 parasitic. The transformation from agriculture to manufac- 

 tures and transportation has designated city occupations as 

 the opportunities for quick and speculative accumulation of 

 wealth, and in the cities the energetic, ambitious and educated 

 classes congregate. From the farms of the American stock 

 the sons leave a humdrum existence for the uncertain but 

 magnificent rewards of industrialism. These become the 

 business men, the heads of great enterprises, and the million- 

 aires whose example hj^Duotizes the imagination of the farm 

 lads throughout the land. Many of them find their level in 

 clerical and professional occupations, but they escape the man- 

 ual toil which to them is the token of subordination. These 

 manual portions are the peculiar province of the foreign immi- 

 grant, and foreign immigration is mainly a movement from 

 the farms of Europe to the cities of America. The high wages 

 of the American industries and occupations which radiate from 

 American cities are to them the magnet which fortune seeking 

 is to the American bom. The cities, too, furnish that choice 

 of employers and that easy reliance on charitable and friendly 

 assistance which is so necessary to the indigent laborer looking 

 for work. Thus it is that those races of immigrants the least 

 self reliant or forehanded, like the Irish and the Italians, seek 

 the cities in greater proportions than those sturdy races like the 

 Scandinavians, English, Scotch and Germans. The Jew, also, 

 coming from the cities of Europe, seeks American cities by the 

 very reason of his racial distaste for agriculture, and he finds 

 there in his coreligionists the necessary assistance for a be- 

 ginning in American livelihood. 



At this point we gradually pass over from the industrial 

 motives of city influx to the parasitic motives. The United 

 Hebrew charities of New York have asserted that one fourth 

 of the Jews of that city are applicants for charity, and the 

 other charitable societies make similar estimates for the popula- 

 tion at large. These estimates must certainly be exaggerated, 

 and a careful analysis of their methods of keeping statistics 

 will surely moderate such startling statements, but we must 



