[7] Our prosperity not only induces desire to come
but makes coming possible. The testimony before the Industrial
Commission showed that from forty to forty-five per cent. of the
immigrants have their passage prepaid by friends or relatives in this
country, and from ten to twenty-five per cent. more buy their tickets
abroad with money sent from the United States. In 1902 between
$65,000,000 and $70,000,000 was sent home to Italy alone from the United
States, and the stream of earnings flowing out to Ireland and Germany
and Sweden and Hungary has been not less steady. American prosperity has
been feeding and paying taxes for millions of people who owe far more to
our government than to their own, and foreign governments have been
reaping the benefit. The United States has a small standing army of its
own, but through the gold sent abroad by the alien wage earners here we
have been helping maintain the vast armaments of Europe. The letters and
the money sent by immigrants to the home folks awaken the desires and
dreams that mean more immigrants. The United States Post-office is a
marvelous immigration agent in Europe. Immigrants are not the only
persons induced to migrate through the feeling that where one is not
will prove a much better place than where one is.
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