use of Immigration]

A Syrian, born on the Lebanon range, went to an American mission school
at fifteen, learned much that his former teacher the friar had warned
him against, had his horizon broadened, gave up his idea of becoming a
Maronite monk when he learned that there were other great countries
beside Syria, and had all his old ideas overthrown by an encyclopedia
which said the United States was a larger and richer country than Syria
or even Turkey. The friar was angry and said the book told lies, and so
did the patriarch, who was scandalized to think such a book should come
to Mount Lebanon; but the American teacher said the encyclopedia was
written by men who knew, and the Syrian boy finally decided to go to the
United States, where "we had heard that poor people were not oppressed."
His mother and uncle came, too, and as the boy was a good penman he
secured work without difficulty in an Oriental goods store. As for his
former religious teaching he says: "The American teacher never talked to
me about religion; but I can see that those monks and priests are the
curse of our country, keeping the people in ignorance and grinding the
faces of the poor, while pretending to be their friends." In his case it
was the foreign mission school that was the magnet to America.

[Sidenote: A Japanese]

A Japanese says: "The desire to see America was burning in my boyish
heart. The land of freedom and civilization of which I had heard so much
from missionaries and the wonderful story of America I had heard from
those of my race who returned from there made my longing ungovernable."
A popular novel among Japanese boys, "The Adventurous Life of Tsurukichi
Tanaka, Japanese Robinson Crusoe," made a strong impression upon him,
and finally he decided to come to this country to receive an American
education.

[Sidenote: A Chinese]

A representative Chinese business man of New York was taught in
childhood that the English and Americans were foreign devils, the latter
false, because having made a treaty by which they could freely come to
China and Chinese as freely go to America, they had broken the treaty
and shut the Chinese out. When he was sixteen, working on a farm, a man
of his tribe came back from America "and took ground as large as four
city blocks and made a paradise of it." He had gone away a poor boy, now
he returned with unlimited wealth, "which he had obtained in the country
of the American wizards. He had become a me