Apkil 20, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



611 



territory. The grant of 2,594,115 acres 

 was marked at from $1.25 to $2.50 per acre. 

 Soon every public highway was lined, with 

 covered wagons from New England and 

 the middle states, from Ohio and Michigan, 

 filled with men, women and children as 

 pioneers in the peopling of the prairies 

 along our line, so that by 1870 the state 

 of Illinois was nearly as densely populated 

 as the east. Before 1880, the fruit com- 

 mission men at Chicago had never seen a 

 consignment of fruits and vegetables from 

 south of the Ohio River. About that time, 

 as the eastern states could no longer 

 supply the west with table luxuries, ibis 

 road began experiinents with strawberries, 

 peaches and other varieties of fruits and 

 vegetables in Tennessee, Mississippi and 

 Louisiana. Much of this was done on cut- 

 over forest lands supposed then to be of 

 no agricultural value whatever. The first 

 carload from south of the Ohio over this 

 line reached Chicago in 1881. In 1903 

 there were shipped to Chicago alone 128 

 carloads of strawberries from points be- 

 tween Grenada, Miss., and Keener, La., not 

 counting the earlier and later shipments 

 by express. In the same year 1,805 cars 

 of vegetables were shipped north from the 

 same territory, including New Orleans. 

 The road had 35 refrigerator cars of 14 

 tons each in its entire service when the 

 experiments began ; since then the company 

 has placed in the service 2,491 cars of 60 

 tons capacity, in addition to 1,510 fruit 

 cars, making a total of 4,001 cars. From 

 one point in Louisiana 200 carloads of 

 strawberries, and from another in Missis- 

 sippi 800 carloads of vegetables, were 

 shipped in one season, as grown on land 

 too poor to be cultivated in cotton and 

 thought to be of no value for anything. 

 These fruits are hauled to market in re- 

 frigerator cars provided with springs that 

 make them ride as easily as a passenger- 

 coach. 



Tlie Restriction of European Immigration: 



0. W. Undeewood, Member of Congi-ess 



from Alabama. 



During the year ending June 30, 1905, 

 there came into the United States 1,026,000 

 alien immigrants; a greater number of 

 people than all of the people who came 

 here from Europe between the first landing 

 at Jamestown and the Declaration of In- 

 dependence, one eightieth of the people 

 of the United States; and in ten years at 

 the present rate it would equal an addi- 

 tion of ten million aliens, or about one 

 tenth of the present population. 



From the discovery of America down 

 to the year 1880 the greater portion of the 

 immigrants who settled in North America 

 were from northern Europe. In the mean- 

 time the steamship companies had found 

 that immigrants coming to America were 

 a source of large revenue. When they 

 found that this immigration was falling 

 off they adopted artificial means to stimu- 

 late it. They found that it was more diffi- 

 cult to induce the people of northern 

 Europe to come to America than it was to 

 encourage immigration from southern and 

 eastern Europe, where the conditions of 

 the people were less favorable, and where 

 they were more willing to leave their old 

 homes. The result has been that the char- 

 acter of the immigration since 1880 has 

 almost entirely changed: out of a total 

 immigration for the year ending June 30, 

 1905, of 1,026,000 people only 221,019 were 

 of Teutonic origin and 124,218 of Celtic 

 origin. The balance were of Iberic, Slavic 

 and Mongolian origin mostly. Ultimately 

 we must assimilate and absorb these 

 peoples. 



We are now getting the weakest of Euro- 

 pean peoples, instead of the strongest. 

 The steamship companies are indifferent to 

 the quality of immigration if they can 

 only get the quantity. There is scarcity 

 of labor, to be sure ; but many of our best 



