170 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



April 



Such men as the American leaders 

 of the small cities, especially in the 

 small cities and large towns of the 

 Middle West, have a large responsibil- 

 ity in such matters as we are discuss- 

 ing here, which relate to emigration 

 from the seaport into the interior. 



I have not thought that the great 

 mass of the Middle West fully under- 

 stood the importance of more careful 

 regulation of immigrants within the 

 United States. In 1879 I heard the 

 Governor of Kansas say in an address 

 to thirty thousand people that Kansas 

 did not distress herself about securing 

 emigrants from Europe. He said that 

 if among the States of the Valley of 

 the Mississippi, Kansas had her share 

 of the immigration of that year, she 

 would receive fifteen thousand people. 

 And with superb pride he said: "In 

 fact, she receives more than fifteen 

 thousand people every day of the sum- 

 mer, and they come not from worn- 

 out Europe, but from the best cities 

 of the East, from which they bring to 

 us the best people." 



That was a magnificent boast, and 

 as I knew Kansas and know Kansas, 

 I think it was hardly exaggerated. 

 Now that condition of things is one 

 which the statesmen of the Mississippi 

 Valley ought to maintain. They ought 

 to see what has made such cities as 

 Indianapolis, which I like to call the 

 Edinburgh of America, or such towns 

 as you see scattered through all that 

 region from Ohio to the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, from which when the country 

 needs they send to it such men as Mc- 

 Kinley or Grant or John Hay or Judge 

 Day, not to name living men of whom 

 there are so many. I believe, in face 

 of the Kansas Governor's boast, that 

 it would be worth while if every west- 

 ern State were to have a board of im- 

 migration which should watch with 

 care the measures to be taken, to make 

 known the real advantages of different 

 regions. 



As far as foreign immigration goes, 

 all this is left to greed and haphazard. 

 Twenty years ago George Holyoke 

 remonstrated with me seriously on the 

 blindness of our general Government 



in such affairs. He said that the aver- 

 age Englishman who had determined 

 to come to America was more likely 

 than not to be guided simply by the 

 advertising tout of some railway agent 

 who was circulating showy pictures or 

 pamphlets crying up particular locali- 

 ties. He said that no one at any port 

 of arrival here told the Italian or the 

 Scandinavian of the different climates 

 between Florida and Minnesota. He 

 said that as likely as not the new im- 

 migrant from Sicily might be guided 

 to Northern Minnesota by some rail- 

 road agent, and that there was no one 

 to tell him that orange-trees grew in 

 the South and that the snow was six 

 feet deep every winter in the North. 

 He made the most earnest appeal for 

 the good of mankind that the national 

 Government would prepare an intelli- 

 gible guide-book which should be cir- 

 culated everywhere among the nations 

 which contribute immigrants to the 

 United States. As it stands to-day, I 

 know of no such text-book, and I have 

 made it my business to find one if it 

 existed. 



But do not let anybody think that 

 the separate emigration of separate 

 families is a good thing. It is a bad 

 thing to separate men, women and 

 children from old friends. It is a bad 

 thing to make a family go into a re- 

 gion of absolute strangers and to work 

 their way with their own habits, with 

 their own pronunciation of words with 

 a new language. 



I do not know why we do not see in 

 the midst of our prosperity such men 

 as in the prosperity of Athens grew up 

 there. When we were school-boys we 

 read of the colony that Miltiades led, 

 or the colony that Themistocles led, or 

 the colonies in Sicily and Southern 

 Italy which one young Greek and an- 

 other led, as if that were the way in 

 which young gentlemen in Greece 

 went "into business." It was as in 

 Napoleon's day : every young gentle- 

 man went into the army. 



And we are not without such exam- 

 ples here. William Brewster and Wil- 

 liam Bradford led one hundred people 

 to New England. If Brewster's fam- 



