obtained for the German cities, to the great industrial and commercial centers of America, for conditions here are not more favorable to the maintenance of human life. We may assume, therefore, that the families that are now living in our large cities will, with few exceptions, die out in the course of two or three generations. It is only through the constant supply which the cities draw from the country that they are able to maintain and increase their population. If a modern city had to rely solely on its own natural increase, its population would steadily decline and finally shrink to an insignificant number. But if the disappearing portion of the American city population were constantly replenished by new immigration from Europe there would be no change in the actual conditions. However, the time is near at hand when the government of the United States will be compelled, for economic reasons, to close the gates to the great mass of poor immigrants from Europe. When that time comes the cities will have to rely exclusively on the country to replenish their dwindling population. Then the unceasing stream of people, which even now is constantly flowing from the country towards the towns, will reconquer the cities from that alien population which now holds them.[1] It is clear that the longer this process of conquering the cities by the rural population is going on the more thorough will be the elimination of the alien races. A few elements of the new immigration will doubtless persist and form a permanent part of the future American race, but they will be a desirable acquisition, for by the law of the survival of the fittest they must be considered a superior type of humanity.
We have thus shown that no general intermixture of the old with the new immigration will take place, and that instead of the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic settlers "are working for inferior races," who will some day displace them, the reverse is true. There is no doubt that these later immigrants, as laborers, have performed and are performing an important part in this country; they have contributed not a small part to the wealth of this nation.[2]
It was not the purpose of this article to minimize the disadvantages and dangers of this later immigration. The presence, in our large cities, of great numbers of these illiterate strangers, who neither understand nor sympathize with the political institutions of this country, is an impediment to municipal reform. So many of these heterogeneous
- ↑ This is what one of the orators at the last Congress of Catholic Missionaries had in mind when he said that if the Catholics did not make headway in the country districts, the time was coming when their churches in the great cities would be empty. It is well known that most of the adherents of that denomination live in the great cities.
- ↑ Emerson, who certainly spoke with no cynical or mocking motive, did not hesitate to affirm that these laboring emigrants "have a good deal of guano in their destiny."
