Once upon a time a lady set up housekeeping in a very large mansion. Indeed there was so much unoccupied space in it, that she was quite pleased when a number of people came to live with her and she treated them so hospitably, that they sent back good reports to the various corners of the earth from which they had come, and others were encouraged to move in also.

Map of Europe.1

The family grew and grew, and the new members who were being constantly added, took kindly to the laws and customs of their adopted mother, and in a little while after they came, it was always quite difficult to distinguish the new from the old. Nearly all who came were hard-working, earnest men and women who did everything in their power to promote the welfare and happiness of the great family.

At last a time came, however, when the lady with the big house, whose rooms were rapidly filling, began to wonder if she had not been a little too free in her hospitality, for she found it was being abused. People were coming in great numbers who did little or no work and who were very active in vice and crime. They would not take the trouble to learn the language spoken in their new home, and they would not mingle with the other residents, but kept by themselves and continued the evil, shiftless ways that had made them undesirable members of the communities they had left.

This allegory fitly applies to much of the immigration that is pressing down very hard on certain parts of the country. From Italy and Sicily are coming to us in great hordes, lawless, ignorant men and women, who have been taught just enough in their native land to enable them to pass the immigrant inspection at Ellis Island. One million lira ($200,000) is spent annually on the education of the Neapolitans and Sicilians who intend to emigrate to the United States, in order to prevent their rejection by the American authorities. Of the 1,400, immigrants on the steamship Belgravia, which arrived here in December, 1902, 256 individuals whose names appeared on the ship's manifest, it was found upon a test investigation, had given fictitious addresses of alleged relatives and friends in this city who would be responsible for them. They resort to any means, dishonest or not, to slip into the country, and they are coming in at the rate of nearly 1,000 a day.

The better class of Italians and Sicilians say they themselves would be glad to have their worthless countrymen excluded from the United States, because they bring their mother country into disrepute in the land of their adoption, by all sorts of crime and dishonesty.

From the New York Herald. A Sicilian in native costume.

Germany, England, Ireland, Russia, Norway, Sweden and Denmark continue to send us great armies of men, women and children, but the great majority of the people from these countries are desirable, and are as welcome now as were their forefathers when they came long ago to help build the nation when the gracious lady of the Western Hemisphere first threw open her doors to the world.

In the fiscal year ending July 1, 1903, 195,439 more immigrants came to our shores from Europe than during the preceding twelve months.

More than one-fourth of this entire European increase of emigration occurred within the narrow boundaries of Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia.

Meanwhile, as ignorant outcasts from the mother country continue to crowd into our already congested cities, a cry keeps coming from the wheat-growing West for men to harvest the crops.

Every year, in the fall, thousands of able-bodied immigrants are to be found suffering in over-packed tenements—choking the labor-markets of great cities; while farmers, short of hands, are facing the loss of at least part of their crops because they cannot get labor.

We are indebted to the Little Chronicle, of Chicago, for the above article.

It is interesting to note the periods of fluctuation that mark the extent of immigration into the United States. There was a steady increase from the close of the Civil War until the panic of 1873. Then a decrease took place, with no reaction until 1880. In 1882, the number of immigrants was 788,992, which is the maximum number from 1867 up to 1902. The following table of figures shows the total number of immigrants arriving on our shores from 1867 until June 30, 1903:

¹North of line Emigration to America has decreased in the last 10 years. South of line Emigration has increased. Black portion shows where the worst Italian element comes from.
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