IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN RACE 595 



obtained for the German cities, to the great industrial and commercial 

 centers of America, for conditions here are not more favorable to the 

 maintenance of human life. We may assume, therefore, that the fam- 

 ilies that are now living in our large cities will, with few exceptions, die 

 •out in the course of two or three generations. It is only through the 

 constant supply which the cities draw from the country that they are 

 able to maintain and increase their population. If a modern city had 

 to rely solely on its own natural increase, its population would steadily 

 decline and finally shrink to an insignificant number. But if the dis- 

 appearing portion of the American city population were constantly 

 replenished by new immigration from Europe there would be no change 

 in the actual conditions. However, the time is near at hand when the 

 government of the United States will be compelled, for economic rea- 

 sons, to close the gates to the great mass of poor immigrants from 

 Europe. When that time comes the cities will have to rely exclusively 

 on the country to replenish their dwindling population. Then the 

 unceasing stream of people, which even now is constantly flowing from 

 the country towards the towns, will reconquer the cities from that alien 

 population which now holds them. 24 It is clear that the longer this 

 process of conquering the cities by the rural population is going on the 

 more thorough will be the elimination of the alien races. A few ele- 

 ments of the new immigration will doubtless persist and form a perma- 

 nent part of the future American race, but they will be a desirable 

 acquisition, for by the law of the survival of the fittest they must be 

 considered a superior type of humanity. 



We have thus shown that no general intermixture of the old with 

 the new immigration will take place, and that instead of the Anglo- 

 Saxon and Teutonic settlers " are working for inferior races," who will 

 some day displace them, the reverse is true. There is no doubt that 

 these later immigrants, as laborers, have performed and are performing 

 an important part in this country; they have contributed not a small 

 part to the wealth of this nation. 25 



It was not the purpose of this article to minimize the disadvantages 

 and dangers of this later immigration. The presence, in our large 

 cities, of great numbers of these illiterate strangers, who neither under- 

 stand nor sympathize with the political institutions of this country, is 

 an impediment to municipal reform. So many of these heterogeneous 



21 This is what one of the orators at the last Congress of Catholic Mis- 

 sionaries had in mind when he said that if the Catholics did not make headway 

 in the country districts, the time was coming when their churches in the great 

 cities would be empty. It is well known that most of the adherents of that 

 denomination live in the great cities. 



25 Emerson, who certainly spoke with no cynical or mocking motive, did 

 not hesitate to affirm that these laboring emigrants " have a good deal of 

 guano in their destiny." 



