Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/12

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8
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Examining Eyes on the Line at Ellis Island.

said that America is their workshop, Europe their home. Thirty per cent. of them return to their former homes.

As a class, they contribute little of lasting value but the work of their hands for which they are well paid. And from what they earn they send home no small part. In 1907 they sent $275,000,000 out of the country. True, this money was earned, but its greater value in investment and development was lost. In contrast to their predecessors, the immigrants since 1883 tend to form a floating population. They do not amalgamate. They are here in no small degree for what they can get. It is not always true that they come to supply a real demand. The periodical advertisement of a national demand for cheap labor does not spring from a true economic need, even though the influx of cheap labor might put more money in the employer's pocket.

Such is the type of the newer immigration, and its changing and deteriorating character makes restriction justifiable and necessary. No one can stand at Ellis Island and see the physical and mental wrecks