The Washington herald., 1914-08-11
The High Tide Of immigration.
By wILIIAsI WRIT Mills.

In the eongested metropolis where the hand of the
unemployed IS held out to you with plea for some
thing to eat one is likely to shake his head dubious
ly over the record of the years immigration.
The inflow Of the human tide was greater in
volume than in any previous year in the countrys
history. Into the ports of America sailed ships bear
ing I3ssooo foreigners who came hther not to travel
or to visit but to stay-to make their homes in the
land of opportunity And of these round million
landed in New York.
Hence the view so often held here in the most
thickly settled section of the East to the need
for obstruction of immigration.
One is alarmed by the figures. A million new
cornerstone for every FIVE nhabitahts-looks threat
ening to New York They did not all stay there, it
is true, but 100000 Of them had New York City as
their immediate destination, with no knowledge or
thought of any place beyond the magic circle of the
worlds greatest city.
The city took them in and they added to the human
hubbub to the citys congestion, and only gradually
ltering out and away into the places where there is
more room for them.
Taking restricted view of the problem one is
awed by the fact that there are thousands of out
Of work in this great castellated workshop that
call Manhattan. The temptation is strong to urge
the putting up of bars strong and high of ding up
the port against the high tide of immigration.
But days journey out into the country beyond
shows fields crying for labor, arabic lands rich and
ready yield the food supplies that the city cries for
and that it pays for dearly because of the lack of
the labor essential to production.
Take another days journey or two, and the ex-
panses of land unused for lack of labor spread out
in all directions In the East the acres need tlling
in the Middle West the uncultvaed lands counted
by the hundred acre. in the Far West the reckoning
is hv sections mile and r1uififrfdes Of
them.
Where shall we get the men and women to people
these vast uninhabted ranges the labor to till them
and to turn them to the nations accountl
The unemployed of the cities will have none Of
this golden opportunity:
They prefer to hang starving upon the fringe of
the cis greatness. They prefer hold out the hand
for aims instead of to bend the back the furrow
But there are people, strong, sturdy, brought up
close to the SOIL ready to wrest from the untitled
lands of the great West the food to supply the world
ready to- multiply hundredfold the harvests that
the sustenance of the nation
We serve neither ourselves nor these hopeful
immigrants by letting them loose here in the East
where they are not needed. We would serve the
country the world, and these people by guiding them
to the States where their labor is sought where lands
can be had almost for the asking where the soil is
make it blossom and yield returns that to most of
these people would be wealth beyond their dreams.
The problem of immigration has naught to do with
numbers. 1t is one of ultimate destination
America has absorbed over 100000 immigrants
in ninety years, 2,ss2ooo of them in the past two
years.
Thirty of the fortyeight States could readily take
an average of million people each and the land now
unused would maintain them
America still is the land of opportunity all the
people of all the world-to all who want to work.
But the opportunities not where the human herd
densest in the great cities but way out beyond the
dividing river where mans footprints few, where
natures stores have scarcely been touched where the
whole landscape is without human habitation.
The problem is not one of restriction but of dis
tribution. And there is problem that ought to en-
gage the earnest attention of governments, States
and national for it is to the interest of both that the
great ranges be peopled and titled that the farming
lands bear the grains and that the pasture lands be
made musical with the lowing of the kline.
The cost of living is going up and up and ever up
will go till the resources of the nation be developed
by the peopng and the blowing of the great domain
that was given to America that it might feed the
world.