Sometimes one cause is more potent, sometimes another.
Of late, racial and religious persecution has been active in Europe, and
America gets the results. "In Russia there is an outbreak, hideous and
savage, against the Jew, and an impulse is started whose end is not
reached until you strike Rivington Street in the ghetto of New York. The
work begun in Russia ends in the seventeenth ward of New York." Cause
and effect are manifest. Military service is enforced in Italy; taxes
rise, overpopulation crowds, poverty pinches. As a result, the stream
flows toward America, where there is no military service and no tax, and
where steady work and high wages seem assured. The mighty magnet is the
attractiveness of America, real or pictured. America is the magic word
throughout all Europe. No hamlet so remote that the name has not
penetrated its peasant obscurity. America means two things--money and
liberty--the two things which the European peasant (and often prince as
well) lacks and wants. Necessity at home pushes; opportunity in America
pulls. Commissioner Robert Watchorn, of the port of New York, packs the
explanation into an epigram: "American wages are the honey-pot that
brings the alien flies.
Pages:
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35