56 PERILS. — IMMIGRATION". 



pulpit and in all the learned professions. Many come to 

 us in full sympathy with our free institutions, and desir- 

 ing to aid us in promoting a Christian civilization. 

 But no one knows better than these same intelligent 

 and Christian foreigners that they do not represent the 

 mass of immigrants. The typical immigrant is a 

 European peasant, whose horizon has been narrow, 

 whose moral and religious training has been meager or 

 false, and whose ideas of life are low. Not a few 

 belong to the pauper and criminal classes. ' ' From a late 

 report of the Howard Society of London, it appears that 

 ' seventy-four per cent, of the Irish discharged convicts 

 have found their way to the United States.' " ^ "Every 

 detective in New York knows that there is scarcely a 

 ship landing immigrants that does not bring English, 

 French, German, or Italian 'crooks.'"^ Moreover, 

 immigration is demoralizing. No man is held uj)right 

 simply by the strength of his own roots ; his branches 

 interlock with those of other men, and thus society is 

 formed, with all its laws and customs and force of 

 public opinon. Few men appreciate the extent to 

 which they are indebted to their surroundings for the 

 strength with which they resist, or do, or suffer. All 

 this strength the emigrant leaves behind him. He is 

 isolated in a strange land, perhaps doublj^ so by reason 

 of a strange speech. He is transplanted from a forest 

 to an open prairie, where, before he is rooted, he is 

 smitten with the blasts of temptation. 



We have a good deal of piety in our churches that will 

 not bear transportation. It cannot endure even the 

 slight change of climate involved in spending a few sum- 

 mer weeks at a watering place, and is commonly left at 

 home. American travelers in Europe often grant them- 

 selves license, on which, if at home, they would frown. 

 Very many chvirch-members, when they go west, seem 

 to think they have left their Christian obligations with 



1 Dorehesters' Problem of Religious Progress, p. 423. 



2 W. 31. F. Round in Forum foi- December 1889. 



