n railroad and other construction work, into which employments
the foreigners largely go.

How seriously the workers and our cities are burdened with this new
immigration from south and central Europe is indicated by the fact that 56
per cent of the foreign-born population in this country is in the States to
the east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio Rivers, to which at least
80 per cent of the present incoming immigrants are destined. In the larger
cities between 70 and 80 per cent of the population is either foreign born
or immediately descended from persons of foreign birth. In New York City
78.6 per cent of the people are of foreign birth or immediate foreign
extraction. In Boston the percentage is 74.2, in Cleveland 75.8, and in
Chicago 77.5. In the mining districts the percentage is even higher. In
other words, almost all of the immigration of the last twenty years has
gone to the cities, to industry, to mining. Here the immigrant competes
with organized labor. He burdens our inadequate housing accommodations. He
congests the tenements. He is at least a problem for democracy.

But the effect of immigration on our life is not as simple as the advocates
of restriction insist. It is probable that the struggle of the working
classes to improve their conditions is rendered more difficult by the
incoming tide of unskilled labor. It is probable too that wages are kept
down in certain occupations and that employers are desirous of keeping open
the gate as a means of securing cheap labor and labor that is difficult to
organize. It is also probably true that the immigrant is a temporary burden
to democracy and especially to our cities. But the subject is not nearly as
simple as this. The immigrant is a consumer as well as a producer. He
creates a market for the products of labor even while he competes with
labor. And he creates new trades and new industries, like the clothing
trades of New York, Chicago, and Cleveland, which employ hundreds of
thousands of workers. And a large part of the immigrants assimilate
rapidly.

In addition, the new stock from southern and central Europe brings to this
country qualities of mind and of temperament that may in time greatly
enrich the more severe and practical-minded races of northern Europe.

But it is not the purpose of this article to discuss the question of
immigration restriction or the kinds of tests that should be applied to the
incoming alien. It is rather to consider