The tenement districts baffle description, yet nothing is more difficult
than to get their miserable occupants to leave their fetid and squalid
surroundings for the country. To the immigrants the city is a magnet.
Here they find colonies of their own people, and prize companionship
more than comfort. "Folks is more company than stumps," said an old
woman in the slums to Dr. Schauffler. In the great cities the immigrants
are massed, and this constitutes a most perplexing problem. If tens of
thousands of foreigners could somehow be gotten out of New York, Boston,
Chicago, and other cities, and be distributed where they are needed and
could find work and homes, immigration would cause far less anxiety. But
when the immigrant prefers New York or Chicago, what authority shall
remove him to Louisiana or Oklahoma?
[Sidenote: Perils Due to Environment]
The foreigner is in the city; he will chiefly stay there; and the
question is what can be done to improve his city environment; for the
perils to which we refer are primarily due not to the foreigner himself
but to the evil and vice-breeding conditions in which he has to exist.
These imperil him and make him a peril in turn.
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