INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT | 351 
While migration sometimes occurs for the sake of religious liberty, 
or in order to escape from a despotic political régime, the chief 
driving force is usually want of the necessities of life. It would 
require a volume to discuss adequately the réle which migrations 
have played in the evolution of man, and no attempt will be made 
to point out more than a few aspects of the problem. When one 
people invades the territory of another, either type may supplant 
the other, or they may combine to form a hybrid stock. In 
modern times especially, the effects of migration are complicated 
with the problem of the influence of racial amalgamation. This 
is particularly the case in a country like the United States 
where the problems of immigration are more pressing than in 
almost any other place on the globe. It is to this country that 
our few remarks on immigration will be mainly confined. 
The United States has long been the great ‘“‘melting pot” of 
the nations. Formerly our immigration was mainly from the 
north of Europe, consisting of English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, 
Scandinavians, mostly members of the great “Nordic race.” 
This source of supply has now failed to furnish more than a small 
proportion of our immigrants. For some decades our influx from 
abroad has consisted mainly of Russians and Southern Euro- 
peans,—Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, Southern Slavs, Turks, 
Bosnians, Rumanians and Armenians. On the West coast we 
have received a considerable number of Chinese, Japanese, 
Hindus, Filipinos and other peoples in lesser numbers. Some of 
the latter elements will assimilate slowly, if at all, with our native 
population, but those arriving on our eastern shores, although 
they tend to form segregated groups in our cities and elsewhere, 
will probably become amalgamated in the course of a few genera- 
tions in the great melting pot. 
Naturally the biological effect of this influx of foreigners 
depends largely on their hereditary qualities. While there is 
no doubt that many of our immigrants are of excellent stock, it 
has been seriously doubted if the great mass of Greeks, southern 
Italians, Portuguese, Syrians and Turks measure up to the 
general intellectual level of the peoples of Nordic stock which 
