estless; the times have passed by when grandchildren would
live in the same house in which their grandparents lived or when they
consider it a hardship and misfortune to move out of such a
habitation, or to see it change owners; time has been, when only the
adventurer left his native place, and when it was considered dangerous
to go into the world, which at that time could be circumscribed by a
radius of a few miles; time has been, when people lived for
generations in the same house, in the same street, in the same village
or town, when even the household furniture became venerable on account
of its antiquity and the remembrances connected with it. What boy or
girl in our day plays around the chair which their great-grandfather
used to occupy? To sell one house and move into another; to leave one
city and seek settlement in another, is now the rule and not the
exception; and it is mainly this inter-migration, stirring up the
masses, to which is due our increased prosperity and our progress in
all branches of knowledge. Inter-migration keeps us from stagnation;
it removes shyness and fear at the sight of a stranger, accustoms us
to an intercourse with different people, removes prejudices and
superstitions, and facilitates the exchange of thoughts and ideas.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that intermigration has also
its drawbacks; that it will easily flood the labor market so as to
screw down wages; it will foster the venturesome spirit, induce people
to risk a certainty for an uncertainty, and especially has it tended
to draw people from the rural districts to the large cities.

All the complaints heard against immigration, and all the pressure
that is brought to bear upon the government to restrict it, do not
come from the rural districts, but from the large cities; and it is
generally overlooked that the competition, which presses down the
compensation for labor to such a degree that the wages earned for hard
work are sometimes not sufficient to support one person, and far less
a family, is not brought about solely by the immigrant who comes from
abroad, but is, to a very great extent, the consequence of
inter-migration, of the influx of villagers into the cities. While in
country places there is a scarcity of labor, thus in New England, for
example, while many farms are vacant, there are people starving in the
cities, unable to obtain work. The increase of large cities and of
their population is beyond the