s that he
considers probable. Not only are the races represented in the later
immigration in many cases inferior in average ability to the earlier
immigrant races, but America does not get the best, or even a
representative selection,[145] from the races which are now contributing
to her population. "Europe retains most of her brains, but sends
multitudes of the common and sub-common. There is little sign of an
intellectual element among the Magyars, Russians, South Slavs, Italians,
Greeks or Portuguese" who are now arriving. "This does not hold,
however, for currents created by race discrimination or oppression. The
Armenian, Syrian, Finnish and Russo-Hebrew streams seem
_representative_, and the first wave of Hebrews out of Russia in the
eighties was superior."

While the earlier immigration brought a liberal amount of intelligence
and ability, the later immigration (roughly, that of the last half
century) seems to have brought distinctly less. It is at present
principally an immigration of unskilled labor, of vigorous, ignorant
peasants. Some of this is "promoted" by agents of transportation
companies and others who stand to gain by stirring up the population of
a country village in Russia or Hungary, excite the illiterate peasants
by stories of great wealth and freedom to be gained in the New World,
provide the immigrant with a ticket to New York and start him for Ellis
Island. Naturally, such immigration is predominantly male. On the whole,
females make up one-third of the recent inflow, but among some
races--Greeks, Italians and Roumanians, for example--only one-fifth.

In amount of inherent ability these immigrants are not only less highly
endowed than is desirable, but they furnish, despite weeding out,
altogether too large a proportion of the "three D's"--defectives,
delinquents and dependents. In the single year 1914 more than 33,000
would-be immigrants were turned back, about half of them because likely
to become public charges. The immigration law of 1907, amended in 1910,
1913 and 1917, excludes the following classes of aliens from admission
into the United States:

Idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane
persons, persons who have been insane within 5 years previously;
persons who have had two or more attacks of insanity at any time
previously or who are affected by constitutional psychopathic
inferiority or chronic alcoholism; paupers, vagrants, persons