There are in America
entire communities which live on a different plane, and form colonies
as foreign to American ideas and life as anything in Europe can show.
They have organized their own social life and fixed their own standards,
instead of rising to ours. The results are plain all over the country.
Immigration has cheapened more than wages in certain lines, it has
cheapened life, until the coal barons could say, "It is cheaper to store
men than coal." But men may be too cheap.
[Sidenote: Good Qualities Bad if Abused]
Some of the best qualities in the immigrants are liable to abuse.
Thrift, for instance, is commendable, but not when it is exercised at
the expense of decent living. Economy is an admirable trait, but not
when practiced at the expense of manhood and decent conditions. A
distinct deterioration of the masses displaced by the cheaper labor has
marked the advent of the new immigration. While some of the workingmen
thrown out of employment by immigration rise with the increase in the
number of superior positions, the great mass are obliged to accept the
lower standard or are forced out of the industry into misery, pauperism,
and crime. The greater tendency of immigrants, by reason of their
poverty, to permit or encourage the employment of their wives or
children, still further increases the intensity of the competition for
employment.
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