MIGRATIONS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 219 



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 singler 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, drunkenness and vagrancy than 

 were the original EngUsh settlers. Since of the insane in 

 hospitals there are relatively more foreign-born than native 

 it seems probable that, under present conditions, the ratio 

 of insanity in the population will rapidly increase. 



As to the question of increasing dlyendence and credulity 

 among recent immigrants it agpears that "the immigrant 

 to the United States in a Islt0 measure ass|||^ as well as 

 advises his friends in the Old World to emigrat||jt^Next 

 to this '*the propaganda conducted by steamshi^MBjk is 

 undoubtedly the most important immediate cause of'eJni- 

 gration from Europe to the United States," especially in 

 Austria, Hungary, Gj|^||,and Russia. While America will 

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



