NG REFERENCES

ROSS: _The Old World in the New_, pages 24-304.

FAIRCHILD: _Immigration_, pages 213-368.

COMMONS: _Races and Immigrants in America_, pages 198-238.

ROBERTS: _The New Immigration._

JENKS AND LAUCK: _Immigration._

WOODS: _Americans in Process._

WILLIS: "Findings of the Immigration Commission," art. in _The
Survey_, 25: 571-578.

CHAPTER XXXI

HOW THE WORKING PEOPLE LIVE

238. =In Europe.=--A large proportion of the immigrants from Europe
have been peasants who have come out of rural villages to find a home
in the barracks of American cities. In the Old World they have lived
in houses that lacked comfort and convenience; they have worked hard
through a long day for small returns; and a government less liberal
and more burdened than the United States has mulcted them of much of
their small income by heavy taxes. Young men have lost two or three
years in compulsory military training, and their absence has kept the
women in the fields. From the barracks men often return with the
stigma of disease upon them, which, added to the common social evils
of intemperance and careless sex relations, keeps moral standards low.
Thousands of them are illiterate, few of them have time for
recreation, and those who do understand little of its possibilities.
Religion is largely a matter of inherited superstition, and as a
superior force in life is quite lacking. To people of this sort comes
the vision of a land where government is democratic, military
conscription is unknown, wages are high, and there is unlimited
opportunity to get ahead. Encouraged by agents of interested parties,
many a man accumulates or borrows enough money to pay his passage and
to get by the immigration officer on the American side, and faces
westward with high hope of bettering his condition.

239. =In America.=--On the pier in America he is met by a friend or
finds his way by force of gravity into the immigrant district of the
city. Usually unmarried, he is glad to find a boarding place with a
compatriot, who cheerfully admits him to a share of his small
tenement, because he will help to pay the rent. With assistance he
finds a job and within a week regards himself as an American. Later
if it seems worth while he will take steps to become a citizen, but
recently immigrants are less disposed to do this than formerly. Many
immigrants do not find their new home in the port of landing; they are
booked throu