3 i6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



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Immigrant Hospital, Ellis Island. 



United States. The tremendous bulk of this movement, together with 

 the fact that it is drawn from such diverse and often mutually antagon- 

 istic races and nations, produces problems which not only are unique but 

 whose proper solution is a matter of the gravest concern for the welfare 

 and continuance of this country. The population of New York and of 

 many sections elsewhere increases faster by immigration than by birth. 

 These immigrants at best are only imperfectly and superficially sifted, 

 and many enter to whom the privilege should be denied. The reason for 

 this lies in the extreme difficulty of recognizing many physical and 

 mental affections in their incipienc} r , in the shrewdness so often ex- 

 hibited by the immigrant in concealing such defects, and in the loop- 

 holes that exist in the administration and interpretation of the law 

 whereby many defectives who are detected are nevertheless admitted. 



It goes without saying that the development of American ideas and 

 standards in an immigrant foreign population will be inversely propor- 

 tional to the density and homogeneity of that population in any section. 

 Intermixture is the secret of assimilation. And assimilation is the test 

 of desirable immigration. But not alone is the social and economic 

 advance of the immigrant determined by his relations with Americans, 

 for it is just as true that the immigrant will affect the standards and 

 ideals of the American. This influence of the immigrant on the native 

 population becomes operative in many ways, but none of these is so 

 important and yet so complicated as the influence on the physical, mental 

 and social health of the general population. 



