country, a policy in which our people have conceived the very character of their government to be expressed, the very mission and spirit. of the nation in respect of its relations to the peoples of the world outside their borders. It seeks to all but close entirely the gates of asylum, which have always been open to those who could find nowhere else the right and opportunity of constitutional agitation for what they conceived to be the natural and inalienable rights of men, and it excludes those to whom the opportunities of elementary education have been denied without regard to their character, their purposes, or their natural capacity.

The immigrant brings in a steady stream of new life and new blood to the nation. The unskilled have made possible the construction of great engineering works, have helped to build bridges and roadways above and under ground. The number of skilled artisans and craftsmen among immigrants and the contribution they make to the cultural side of our national life are too rarely emphasized. Alas for our educational system! we must still look abroad for the expert cabinetmaker or stonecarver, the weaver of tapestry, or the artistic worker in metals, precious or base.

In another place I have spoken of the rise of certain needle trades from those of sweaters and sweaters' victims to a standardized industry, with an output estimated at hundreds of millions yearly. The industry of cloak and suit making has been to a large extent developed by the immigrants themselves. When the stranger looks upon the lofty buildings in other parts of the city, gigantic beehives with the swarms of workers going in and out, he seldom comprehends that great wealth has been created for the community by these humble workers.

The man who now stands at the gates of Ellis Island turns his socially trained mind toward the development of methods for the protection and assimilation of the immigrant after the gates have closed upon him. But the best conceived plans of this Commissioner of Immigration and others who have long studied the question will be fruitless unless, throughout the country, an intelligent and respectful attitude toward the stranger is sedulously cultivated.

In the early glow of our enthusiasm, when we were first brought in contact with the immigrant, we dreamed of making

his coming of age - his admission to citizenship - something of a rite. Many who come here to escape persecution or the hardships suffered under a militaristic government idealize America. They bring an enthusiasm for our institutions that would make it natural to regard admission to the rights and responsibilities of citizenship with seriousness. Years ago we urged the use of school buildings, that registration and the casting of the ballot might be dignified by formal surroundings. This has been done in several cities, although not yet in New York.

The foreign press, particularly the Yiddish, has a distinct Americanizing influence. Many adults never learn the new language and, indeed, acquire here the habit of newspaper reading. The history of the United States, biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and other distinguished Americans appear in the pages of these papers, and one. Italian daily published serially the Constitution of the United States. Effective, too, as an educational and assimilating measure have been the lectures in foreign languages conducted for many years by the Educational Alliance on East Broadway and by the various settlements, and included, for some years past, in the evening courses of the Department of Education.

In our neighborhood the physical changes of the last twenty years have been great. Since that first disturbing walk with the little girl to the rear tenement on Ludlow Street asphalt has replaced unclean, rough pavements; beautiful school buildings (some the finest in the world) have been erected; streets have been altered, and rows of houses demolished to make room for new bridges and small parks. Subway tubes take the working population to scattered parts of the greater city; piers have been built for recreation purposes, and a chain of small free libraries of beautiful design. A Tenement House Department has been created, charged with supervision and enforcement of the laws regulating the housing of 80 per cent of the city's population, and so far assaults upon this protective legislation have been repulsed, despite the tireless lobby of the owners year after year.

As our neighbors have prospered many have moved to quarters where they find better houses, less congestion, more bathtubs;

but an enormous working population still finds occupation in the lower part of the city. Carfare is an expense, and time spent in overcrowded cars, which scarcely afford standing-room, adds to the exhaustion of the long day, and these considerations keep many near the workshop. Despite the exodus, we still remain an overcrowded region of overcrowded homes. Through the tenements there is a stream of inflowing as well as outflowing life. The newcomer finds a lodging-place most readily in this vicinity, and the East Side is the shore of the harbor.

The settlements have been before the public long enough to have lost the glamour of moral adventure that was associated with their early days. Many who were identified with them then have steadfastly remained, although realizing, as one of them has said, that high purpose has often been mocked by petty achievement.

A characteristic service of the settlement to the public grows out of its opportunities for creating and informing public opinion. Its flexibility as an instrument makes it pliant to the essential demands made upon it; uncommitted to a fixed program, it can move with the times.

Out of the enthusiasms and out of the sympathies of those who come to it, though they be sometimes crude and formless, a force is created that makes for progress. For these, as well as for the helpless and ignorant who seek aid and conusel, the settlement performs a function.

The visitors who come from all parts of the world and exchange views and experiences prove how absurd are frontiers between honest-thinking men and women of different nationalities or different classes. Human interest and passion for human progress break down barriers centuries old. They form a tie that binds closer than any conventional relationship.

THE IMMIGRANT AND THE STATE

A. THE WORK OF THE CALIFORNIA IMMIGRATION

COMMISSION

FOREWORD

URING the whole period of the war, even when it seemed

DURI

far removed from America, the Commission of Immigration and Housing was in intimate touch with the world conflict. It knew the changes as they came in the early days in the foreign quarters, in the camps, in the night schools. It knew when the first groups drew apart, when the first contingents mobilized, where the families were left and how. It knew this in many ways but particularly because the whole story came in scraps through the interpreters to whom the men and women came for help in adjusting wage claims, contracts, life insurance, and tickets. For in those days the war was essentially an unsettler of the immigrant and his activities - an immigrant problem.

Thus, while America was still but an observer of the whole war, the commission anticipated the necessities of the state as a whole as well as those of the people whom it was created to serve, and flexed its machinery for that service.

In face of a sweeping sentiment for "the English language only" "and for the suppression of the foreign press, the commission installed more foreign-speaking agents in its various offices and used the foreign language as a medium of communication with the immigrant population.

When this country entered the war and the first registration was ordered, the commission was ready with a foreign language policy. It knew the uneasiness, the suspicion, the utter helplessness of a great part of the population ignorant of our language it knew that no war order in English only would reach these people, and so it prepared a sign which in sixteen languages carried a notice explaining the order and its importance.

These signs were distributed throughout the state wherever they could reach non-English speaking people.

And in this way, and at this time, began the definite war program which finally took possession of the various departments. As each government order was issued, whether it related to food or fishing, to baby weighing or naturalization, to education or Liberty Bonds, to housing or shipbuilding, it became the mission not only of the foreign-speaking agents, but of every officer of the commission. And so the commission became a government messenger and carried the federal orders through the length and breadth of the state.

This campaign won the interest and coöperation of the immigrants of California for each federal order, for each national drive. In one short year the major part of the citizenry of the state was welded together for a common cause by coöperation and education - vigorous, persistent, intelligent. Best of all, mutual understanding was established, and now the commission has a new vision of its duties and its opportunities. All that it has learned of service, and coöperation, all that it has learned of organization for war, must now be used to set in motion the forces that make for better living and working conditions, for broader educational opportunities in California.

THE STORY OF THE COMMISSION

Five years ago California established her Commission of Immigration and Housing to protect and aid immigrants within the state.

This commission was built upon the conviction that all the problems which touch the immigrant take on a distinct aspect peculiar to no problem of the native-born. It was built upon the conviction that the foreign-born suffers great hardships because, from the moment of his arrival, he is placed at a disadvantage, and that, in order that he may be placed upon an equal footing with his native-born neighbor, definite constructive aid must be given him in overcoming his handicaps. Furthermore, it was built upon the conviction that as the immigrant suffers from his shortcomings so does the community in which he lives suffer with him.