The overcrowded
tenements and slums, the infection of long-entrenched corruption, the
absence of light, fresh air, and playgrounds for the children, the
unsanitary conditions and exorbitant rents, the political heelers
teaching civic corruption, the saloons with their attendant temptations
to vice and crime, the fraudulent naturalization--these work together
upon the immigrant, for his undoing and thus to the detriment of the
nation. When we permit such an environment to exist, and practically
force the immigrant into it because we do not want him for a next-door
neighbor, we can hardly condemn him for forming foreign colonies which
maintain foreign customs and are impervious to American influences. It
has too long been the common practice to lay everything to the
foreigner. Would it not be fairer and more Christian to distribute the
blame, and assume that part of it which belongs to us. In the study of
the facts contained in this chapter, put yourself persistently in the
place of the immigrant, suddenly introduced into the conditions here
pictured, and ask yourself what you would probably be and become in like
circumstances.
[Sidenote: A Call for Reform]
How the other half lives is not the only mystery.
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