one day in the Forum suddenly espied a man in the uniform of an American sailor. His association with the sailormen at Messina had given him a strong feeling for them, and he made friends with the stranger. He found the man had come from an American war-ship, and had saved up his pay for some months in order that he might see Rome thoroughly. Accordingly when he drew his back pay and got leave, he came straight to Rome, hired a guide, bought a Baedeker, and was now methodically seeing everything best worth seeing, and, in addition, was improving his mind and utilizing the guide to further advantage by learning Italian from him. Derby was himself much interested in Roman history and antiquities, and he found that the enlisted man was a genial soul whose knowledge of the subject was even greater. After spending the morning together to their mutual satisfaction, they parted only after Derby had gotten his new friend to promise to take dinner with him that evening at his (Derby's) hotel; and the dinner proved as enjoyable as the morning had been.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

SELECTING OUR IMMI

GRANTS1

In the early history of our country the immigration was comparatively slight and incidental. It was developed partly by the democratic unrest and revolutionary tendencies in Europe, whence men fled to America as to a refuge from oppression, and by special disasters in Europe, specifically the Irish famine. It was retarded by the growing hostility in the slave States to any additions to free labor and consequently free voters, by the fact that American democracy was still experimental, and by America's unsavory reputation abroad, reflected in such novels as “ Martin Chuzzlewit" and such essays as some of Sydney Smith's. Toward the close of the Civil War, in 1863, Congress, then controlled by the Republican party, passed the Homestead Law, which the Southern Democrats in the Senate had four years

The quotations in this article are from the Brief Statement of the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Immigration Commission" (1910), and from "The American Commonwealth," New Edition (1910).

before successfully resisted. This bid for immigration, so soon followed by the close of the war and the victory of Nationalism, was successful. The offer of something for nothing is always appealing; and this offer to give land to the landless brought to our shores a great number of enterprising workers who had been in the Old World tenants or agricultural laborers, and who came here to become independent landowners. This immigration came almost wholly from northern Europe, was largely agricultural, and of necessity distributed itself over a wide extent of country. By the Homestead Law America both selected and distributed her immigrants.

With the overthrow of despotism in western Europe the first cause of migration came to an end; with the taking up of most of America's best arable lands the second cause of migration came to an end. Since 1883 the attraction to immigrants has been the relatively large wages paid to laborers. By a process as natural as that by which America selected agriculturists she has since been selecting wage-earners; a large majority of them. unskilled laborers; three-quarters of them males; many of them unmarried; nearly three-quarters of them from southern Europe; over a third of them illiterate. The incentive to the first migration was liberty, and in the case of Ireland hunger, and it brought us all sorts and conditions of men; the incentive to the second migration was land, and it brought us sturdy agricultural workers; the incentive to the third migration is wages, and it brings us day-laborers. The second migration built rural homes; the third, laborers' camps, mining towns, and city slums.

Nothing that America can possibly do can change the present migration back to the former migration. This country cannot reproduce revolution in Europe, nor famine in Ireland; and although it can, by drainage and irrigation, do something to create more arable land in America, and perhaps more by developing wise methods' of agriculture, it cannot do enough to recreate a tide of agricultural laborers to make rural homes. But it can do something to select the kind of laborers it needs and to distribute them where they are needed. And, what is more important, it

can adopt by common consent the principle advocated by the Immigration Commission, which we print here with all the emphasis that type can give to it:

"A SLOW EXPANSION OF INDUSTRY WHICH WOULD PERMIT THE ADAPTATION AND ASSIMILATION OF THE INCOMING LABOR SUPPLY IS PREFERABLE TO A VERY RAPID INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION WHICH RESULTS IN THE IMMIGRATION OF LABORERS OF LOW STANDARDS AND EFFICIENCY, WHO IMPERIL THE AMERICAN STANDARD OF WAGES AND CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT."

And, what is more important, imperil the standard of American individual and National character.

If America is not willing to accept a slower expansion of industry, if it is determined to adhere to the "get rich quickly " idea as a National policy, it can do nothing; if it is willing to go more slowly and to put the development of a National character above the development of material wealth, there are three things it can do:

I. America can modify its present prohibitory tariff, which has passed far beyond the bounds proposed by its original creators as needed to secure a variety of industries, a home market, and a comfortable support to all engaged in these industries. It need not lower the standard of American wages and conditions of employment. But it can aim so to readjust its tariff that it shall not continue to make great fortunes for the few, and to draw hither a "cheap labor" which develops in America an unskilled, illiterate, transient, and unAmerican population.

II. America can learn a lesson from other countries, and do something to select its immigrants. At present we leave the agents of steamship lines and labor bureaus to select them for us. They scour Europe to find men willing to migrate, entice them by seductive promises of great wages, and conceal from them the fact that they must pay high prices; and we content ourselves by putting a policeman at the gate to turn back the diseased, the pauper, and the criminal-if we discover him.

An interview published recently in the New York "Times" with William E. Carson, an American traveler, shows how

Canada deals with this aspect of the immigration problem:

I made a short tour through England in the rural districts with a band wagon sent by the Canadian agency with moving pictures. It stopped in all the villages, and pamphlets were given out in hundreds, headed "Canada is God's Country. Come and Live with Us!" The picture-shows were packed day and night. Ît is not only that they encourage the immigrant to leave his own country, but he is looked after when he arrives on this side of the Atlantic. I crossed over on the Allan liner Virginian with 1,500 well-to-do immigrants on board. They came from Scandinavia, Germany, and Great Britain. Each one had a little money.

On

The steamship companies will not book immigrants from southern Europe, and advertise in their circulars to that effect. the arrival of the liner at St. John, New Brunswick-the winter port of disembarkation-there were a number of Canadian cfficials to look after the people, see that they were not swindled, and that they got on the right train.

This is a process of distribution as well as of selection. Mr. Carson is probably correct in saying that America must carry it on by State, rather than by Federal, action. For the States that need the immigrants are the ones to select the immigrants. The matter might well claim the attention of the next meeting of the Governors of the States. To this result, also, the Immigration Commission were brought by their investigation: "No satisfactory or permanent distribution of immigrants can be effected through any Federal employment system, no matter how widespread, because the individual. will seek such social and economic conditions as best suit him, no matter where sent. What is needed is a division of information which would co-operate with States desiring immigrant settlers."

III. Equally important is just, fair, and humane treatment of the immigrant laborers, skilled and unskilled, who arrive here. We are glad to be assured by the Commission that the padrone system is disappearing. "The only class of aliens under the control of padrones in any considerable numbers are the Greek boys employed in shoe-shining establishments or in peddling flowers, fruit, or vegetables in the larger cities." But there are other abuses which need correction: the steerage conditions. which are excellent on some lines but are still bad in many trans

atlantic ships; the immigrant homes and aid societies, which are sometimes excellent, but sometimes so bad as to be a fraud, and sometimes are even “ ready to furnish to keepers of disreputable houses young girls as servants in such houses;" and immigrant banks, which are usually kept by steamship ticket agents, small merchants, saloon-keepers, or labor agents, and, except in three or four States, are entirely unregulated by law. But still worse are the social and labor conditions under which the newcomers are often allowed, perhaps we should say compelled, to live. "The condition of many who toil in the coal mines and iron furnaces of Pennsylvania is described as wretched," says James Bryce. Bad as they are in some of our great cities, "a comparison of the conditions in a great city like New York or Chicago," says the Immigrant Commission, "with those in some of the smaller industrial centers, such as mining and manufacturing towns, shows that average conditions, as respects overcrowding, are very materially worse in some of the smaller towns than in the large cities." No wonder that the laborer goes back to his native land as soon as he has earned money enough to satisfy his modest ambition; or that, if he remains, it is to add to the discontented and the revolutionary element in the population of the country.

For this condition the great employing corporations are primarily responsible. But the State Legislatures, and even the churches, are not wholly exempt from responsibility—the former for not preventing them by law, the latter for not arousing public opinion against them and improving them by philanthropic effort.1 The policy of one class of employersfor not all are of this class is as shortsighted as narrow and selfish policies usually are. "The first question," says Mr. Bryce, which really lays hold on and appeals directly to the newcomer from strange lands, the first thing that brings him into direct touch with American life, is a labor dispute. . . . Employers who have brought together foreigners and put

What these conditions are and what could be done and ought to be done by the State, by the employer, and by the churches, are indicated by Mr. Roosevelt in his article "The Coal Miner at Home," in The Outlook for December 24, 1910.

strike-breakers

their faith in them as have sometimes been woefully disappointed. Indeed, the Pole or Slovak follows a militant chief more blindly than a native American would. He has less to lose; and his standard of comfort is so low that the privations of a strike affect him less." The labor unrest, the chronic discontent occasionally breaking out into open and costly results, and the Socialistic and Anarchistic theories which they promote, are among the products of that "cheap labor" which modern immigration is bringing to our shores. The employers who

impose on their workingmen such conditions are quite as responsible for these results as are the labor leaders to whose supposed unscrupulous demagoguery they are often charged.

The immigrant problem is not merely how to exclude undesirable immigrants; it is not less how to select desirable immigrants, and how to treat them justly and humanely when they come.

1911

As the year closes the citizen recalls its events in such domains as agriculture, manufactures, education, labor, science, art, law, politics, and religion. He asks himself, "Was the twelvemonth darker and drearier than its predecessor, or brighter and better?" There can be but one answer—an emphatic "Brighter and better."

If this is true of society in general, is it true of the individual? It ought to be; for there are perpetual correspondences between the world and the individual. Heaven knows that in the world there are still falsehood and indecency and inhumanity and meanness and selfishness a-plenty. But we also know that never has the searchlight been so effectively turned on these things as during the past year; that never have truth and decency and justice and righteousness and peace held as much sway. If this is true in the world in general, it ought, of course, to be true of the average man. His individual life, we must believe, is growing richer, not poorer; stronger, not weaker.

And this is something that every man can do for his country: he can be strong and noble himself. For the country is

made up of ninety millions of individuals, and it can be made strong and noble only as they are strong and noble. No sound house can be made of unsound timber. No honest country can be made of dishonest individuals. We are constantly tempted to put too much emphasis on methods and too little on character. The saying of Stevenson, which we quote from memory, not with verbal accuracy, is worth constantly recalling: "There is but one person whom it is my duty to make goodmyself. My duty toward the rest of mankind is rather to make them happy."

What can I do to make the Government honest? One thing I can do is to treat the Government with honesty-not cheat the tax collector or the CustomHouse. What can I do to put an end to this detestable graft? One thing I can do is neither to pay it nor to receive it. What can I do to purify politics? One thing I can do is to vote for the public welfarenot for any private interest.

Moral reform, like charity, begins at home. One way to make the next year the best year that America has ever seen is for each individual to make his own year the best in character that he has ever lived. That is a very simple recipe; but it is as radical and as far-reaching as it is simple.

THE LONG VIEW OF LIFE

A young man gets a position in a business of some kind, and secures his opportunity, which is all he has a right to ask for. There are two ways in which he can deal with it: He can do his work honestly day by day for his wages at the end of the week, filling up exactly the measure of work assigned to him. This will make him a trustworthy employee, who can be counted on to do conscientiously what he is told to do; he becomes a good soldier in the army of workers. Or (and this is the turning-point in his career) he can fill the measure to overflowing, pouring all his intelligence and energy into it, without much thought of the amount he is to be paid. If he chooses this way, he presently gets out of the ranks and becomes a leader, a captain in the army of workers.

He may be satisfied with doing well what falls to him each day, or he may push on by mastering the details of his

business, making himself familiar with every part of it, and fitting himself for steady advancement by keeping ahead of the work required of him. Most men are content with what comes to them, and remain employees; a few make themselves masters of the secrets, methods, and conditions of their business and become employers. A man fixes his place in life by the amount of time and work he is willing to put into preparation for larger tasks and greater responsibilities.

In this country few young men need to be urged to work harder; for work already fills an immoderate and excessive portion of the time of most Americans. But young men and older men in this country need to be urged to plan their work on longer lines and to do it with greater intelligence. One of the most interesting directions which scientific experiment is taking to-day is that of intensive farming; this means, not adding acre to acre, but doubling and quadrupling the yielding capacity of the acres under cultivation. And this is supplemented in the business world, especially in the great industries, by the scientific management of business, the end of which is, by more intelligent methods of work, to reduce the labor and at the same time greatly increase production. These two principles every additional work, he can get more effective young man ought to study: how, without work out of himself; how, without the expenditure of increased force, he can make himself more fruitful.

The vital defect of the young man who plans his work for the day instead of for the decade is that he works like an artisan instead of like an artist; he does what is set before him and obeys orders instead of looking ahead and making himself an expert. He does not apply ideas to his work, but pursues it in routine fashion, without individuality of method. The problem which the young man who is to be successful, not only in the practical but in the fuller and nobler sense of the term, must face, is to reduce the expenditure of physical and nervous strain while increasing his productivity and bringing out of himself the finer fruits which scientific methods have developed. There is an enormous undeveloped force in the human race that some day, by more thor

ough training and more intelligent use of faculties, will be at the service of humanity. As we are now drawing energy from the air and the earth to do the work and carry the burdens of humanity, so some day we shall draw from the unused and ill-directed capacity of men a finer and greater efficiency. The end of life is not to toil like a slave, but to work like a free man, with a vision of what one means to do with one's life, with intelligence of method, with concentration of power.

THE SOURCE OF MORAL

AUTHORITY

A correspondent, on another page, gives to our readers his idea of the way in which the Moral Law was communicated to men. His view may be summarized in a sentence thus: God gave it to Adam, Adam gave it to Methuselah, Methuselah gave it to Noah, Noah gave it to Abraham, Abraham gave it to Moses, and Moses gave it to the rest of us.

According to this view, we have to go back four thousand years to get the first publishing of the Law, and an indefinite number of years prior to that time to get the first giving of the Law. Our correspondent seems to think that this view gives the Law direct authority. We think it requires us to travel a long way back to get to the Law, and still further back to get to God.

We hold a very different view. We agree with the author of the Book of Deuteronomy:

For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off.

It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?

Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?

But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest

do it.

Our correspondent goes not only across the sea to bring us the Law, but across many centuries. We believe that the Law is very nigh unto us-in the hearts of men, that they may do it.

The

The law of gravitation is written in the nature of material things. Isaac Newton did not give the law; he found it. laws of health are written in man's constitution; they are not given by the treatise on physiology, they are simply interpreted by that treatise. The Moral Law is written in the constitution of man. Moses is not, properly speaking, a lawgiver; he is an interpreter of the law previously written, as Paul says, "in the hearts of men." When the Decalogue says, Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, it simply interprets the laws of the social order; it simply means that men are so constituted that if they are to live happily and peacefully together, they must obey these laws. Much as the doctor means when he says to his patient, You must not smoke, or, You must take more exercise; he means that you are so constituted that if you are to have a healthy life you must forego the smoking, and you must take up the exercise. The law, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, simply means: This is your constitution; you are made for love; not to love is to be unnatural; to love is to be in accordance with your own nature. You and God are made for one another; you have sprung from him; you can walk in fellowship with him; if you understand him aright and understand yourself aright, you will be knitted to him indissolubly by a great love.

We do not, therefore, go back four thousand years to Mount Sinai, nor, an indefinite number of years prior to Mount Sinai, to Adam. We do not go back at all. We look into our heart and our conscience, and we look into the hearts and consciences of our fellow-men, and we there see written in invisible ink-but ink that nothing can erase-the laws of right and wrong. The authority of that law is in the spirit of man because God is in the spirit of man, and the Bible is an authority because, and only because, it is an expression of the experiences of men who recognized this law and interpreted it; who saw this God, who is the Lawgiver, and were obedient to him, and loved him, and lived with him.