The
ramifications of this transportation system are wonderful. It has a
direct bearing, too, upon the character of the immigrants. Easy and
cheap transportation involves deterioration in quality. In the days when
a journey across the Atlantic was a matter of weeks or months and of
considerable outlay, only the most enterprising, thrifty, and
venturesome were ready to try an uncertain future in an unknown land.
The immigrant of those days was likely, therefore, to be of the
sturdiest and best type, and his coming increased the general prosperity
without lowering the moral tone. Now that the ocean has become little
more than a ferry, and the rates of railway and steamship have been so
reduced, it is the least thrifty and prosperous members of their
communities that fall readiest prey to the emigration agent.
[Sidenote: Assisted Immigration]
Assisted immigration is the term used to cover cases where a foreign
government has eased itself of part of the burden of its paupers,
insane, dependents, and delinquents by shipping them to the United
States. This was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, especially in
the case of local and municipal governments. Our laws were lax, and for
a time nearly everybody, sane or insane, sound or diseased, was passed.
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