MIGRATIONS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 2 1 9 



colony of potato planters; in Massachusetts their head- 

 quarters are at New Bedford and from this city they have 

 spread through the "Old Colony" region and into Cape 

 Cod. The Black Portuguese are the principal cranberry 

 pickers employed on the Massachusetts bogs. "They are 

 largely recruited from the ranks of dock laborers near New 

 Bedford and neighboring cities. Five-sixths of them are 

 men or boys, many of them single or without families in 

 the United States." The cranberry pickers of Massachu- 

 setts are illiterate and neither resourceful nor intelligent; 

 but this has the less eugenic significance since few settle 

 permanently in this country. 



^Summarizing this review of recent conditions of immi 

 gration it appears certain that, unless conditions change of 

 themselves or are radically changed, the population of the 

 United States will, on account of the great influx of blood 

 from South-eastern Europe, rapidly become darker in pig- 

 mentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more at- 

 tached to music and art, more given to crimes of larceny, 

 kidnapping, assault, murder, rape and sex-immorality and 

 less given to burglary, drunkeniiess and vagrancy than i 

 were the original English settlers.) Since of the insane in I 

 hospitals there are relatively more foreign-born than native 1 

 it seems probable that, under present conditions, the ratio J 

 of insanity in the population will rapidly increase. 



As to the question of increasing dependence and credulity 

 amon^ recent immigrants it appears that "the immigrant 

 to the United States in a large measure assists as well as 

 advises his friends in the Old World to emigrate." Next 

 to this "the propaganda conducted by steamship agents is 

 undoubtedly the most important immediate cause of emi- 

 gration from Europe to the United States," especially in 

 Austria, Hungary, Greece and Russia. While America will 

 be slow to relinquish her position as the home of the op- 



