DISTRIBUTION OF AGRICULTURAL IMMIGRANTS1 NE of the first problems of the conservation of the agricultural industry is the maintenance of a wholesome, happy rural population. Upon the character of the rural people their intelligence, morality, ideals, and material well-being — more than on any other one factor depends the general welfare of the nation as a whole. A second but less important problem is the conservation and efficient utilization of natural resources, the restoration and maintenance of soil fertility. With these two problems the question of immigrant distribution is very closely interwoven. Rightly settled, even on mediocre land, the foreigner from the agricultural districts of the old world has proved his capacity for agricultural development as well as for rural citizenship in a hundred instances. Under present conditions the capable hard-working foreigner with his family is able to out-compete the industrious American, with a smaller family, a higher standard of living, and a stronger desire for the "appurtenances of leisure." The ultimate settlement of rural New England by foreign farmers - Italian, Slavic, Hebrew, perhaps Teuton seems inevitable. Gradually they are dotting the rural districts with their farms, slipping quietly but surely into the homes vacated by native New England farmers. The movement has up to the present been sporadic, unorganized, geographically scattered, and officially unrecognized - though it has been going on in the East for about twenty years. State departments of agriculture in the East have been strangely blind to any duty or responsibility in the matter of immigrant distribution. Maine and New Jersey have taken occasion in their reports to describe and praise the industry, thrift, and foresight of certain large colonies settled within their borders. New York maintains a sort of bureau of immigration 1 From The Survey, October 7, 1911. but so far from rendering any material recognition, aid, or assistance, they have held it no part of their business. The federal authorities consider their duty well done when they have safely landed the newcomers in New York city. With very few exceptions privately organized colonization companies have been formed with a single eye to personal gain, regardless of the present or ultimate well-being of the colonized; of public colonization schemes there are none. The results of this haphazard, devil-may-care method of settling our worn-out lands may be seen by any one who cares to investigate even casually the scattered foreign farm communities in New England. Exploitation by real estate agents, settlement on unprofitable soils, fruitless endeavor to wrest a living from exhausted acres, discouragement, disappointment, economic disaster, are the too frequent accompaniments of this form of settlement. The essentials of successful immigrant occupation are a fairly compact settlement in groups large enough to maintain a church and perhaps a school; land sufficiently fertile to produce the staple crops; capital to purchase a minimum equipment for the type of agriculture adopted; day labor or some other immediately available form of income to enable the foreign settler to support his family until his farm becomes self-supporting. Let the foreigner pay for his purchase not more than 25 per cent above its productive value, and nine times out of ten he will win out on these terms. As long as New England or any other region permits the exploitation of the rural immigrant for private gain, the results of immigration will be disastrous both to agriculture and to the foreigner. But beyond assistance in settlement and information concerning the character, uses, and values of farm land which every State Board of Agriculture should make easily and practically available to all home-seekers, it seems reasonable that the state colleges of agriculture and experiment stations should put their foreign-born farmers and prospective citizens in vital touch with the best methods and materials of agriculture. Successful agriculture in New England is specialized, intensive, and commercial. Careful preparation and tillage of the soil; selection of seeds; selection, mixing, and application of fertilizers; up-to-date methods of preparing, packing, handling, and marketing the products of the farm must be studied carefully and continually. The colleges have this information; it is free for the asking; but the immigrant knows nothing about experiment stations, and a bulletin in English is a sealed book. Massachusetts Agricultural College is one of the first, perhaps the only one, of the state colleges to recognize and make such provision, in a small way, by inaugurating a Polish-American "Farmers' Day," in the spring of 1911, for foreigners in the Connecticut Valley onion and tobacco district. Seventy-five Polish farmers visited the college, inspected the plant, listened to practical talks delivered through an interpreter, and asked questions on onion culture, dairy feeds, and good citizenship. No body of men who come to that college listened more eagerly or derived more benefit from a day's instruction than those Polish onion growers. But this is only a beginning. Perhaps the nearest approach to an ideal method of supervised colonization is that of the Carolina Trucking and Development Company at St. Helena, North Carolina, where the promoters build the houses; sell the land on easy terms; provide work for the newcomers at fair wages; buy the timber cut from the individual clearings, at a remunerative price; provide expert farmers who teach the settlers in their own tongue how to clear the land, prepare it, plant the proper seed, and care for the crop in the most approved fashion. The company further gives personal and expert attention to the marketing of the perishable truck crops raised, and maintains an experiment station for the determination of practical methods, plants, and fertilizers, the results of which are at once communicated to the foreign farmers for whose benefit the station exists. The scheme is elaborate and detailed, but it seems likely to prove profitable and to result in a few years in a semi-foreign community of very superior small landowners, settled on land made valuable by their own intelligently directed industry. The day is coming when the needs of the south-European farmer in the Eastern states must be recognized and ministered to by our federal and state institutions of agriculture in some such far-reaching, definite, systematic, and intelligent manner. THE DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES1 WALTER F. WILLCOX, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS CORNELL UNIVERSITY WITH ITHIN the last fifteen years the statement that recent immigrants, and above all illiterate immigrants, cling to the great cities, especially those of the Atlantic seaboard, and swarm in the slum districts of those cities, has been made and repeated until it has become accepted. The emphasis laid upon this aspect of the immigration question has increased rapidly, and is still increasing. Some writers believe it is the most serious phase of our immigration problem, many that it is so serious as to demand the attention, and even the intervention, of the Federal government or of the State governments. The object of this paper is to examine the evidence on which this opinion has been based. I begin with a summary of important statements of it which have fallen under my eye. quotations have been arranged in chronological order. The The persons of foreign birth in the United States seem to seek the large cities. The proportion of foreign-born in the principal cities is very nearly twice as great as the proportion of foreign-born in the country at large. If we go a step further, and contrast the proportions of foreign-born in the principal cities and in the remainder of the country outside of these 124 cities, it is seen that the proportions are very nearly as 3 to 1. . . . It appears then from these figures that, taken as a whole, the element of foreign birth seeks the cities with far greater avidity than does the element of native birth. Illiterates largely stagnate near the Atlantic seacoast, while the more educated nations move on to build up the new States. The illiterate races, such as the Hungarians, Galicians, and Italians, remain to lower the standard of the already crowded Atlantic territory. 1 From The Quarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1906. The need is to devise some system by which undesirable immigrants shall be kept out entirely, while desirable immigrants are properly distributed throughout the country. The illiterate immigrants congregate chiefly in the slums of our great cities. Under present conditions, immigrants are becoming concentrated in the East, for the most part in the large cities, and especially in and about the city of New York. This congestion of aliens is very nearly, if not altogether, the most menacing feature of the present immigration. The problem of immigration with us is essentially one of distribution. The demand for laborers is great outside of the cities, but the gregarious Italian prefers to increase our menacing urban congestion instead of going to the country. Since we cannot depend on the immigrants to scatter, means must be taken to diffuse them throughout the country and to localize them away from the great cities. Instead of going to those sections where there is a sore need for farm labor, they [sc. the immigrants] congregate in the larger c.ties, mostly along the Atlantic seaboard, where they constitute a dangerous and unwholesome element of our population. Landing in the large cities, they [sc. the average emigrants of today] seldom move on to the greater air spaces of the country. As much as possible should be done to distribute the immigrants upon the land, and keep them away from the congested tenementhouse districts of the great cities. Some pressure must be brought to bear upon the immigrants to secure distribution, because under the present system they do not voluntarily distribute themselves. This opinion bids fair before the present article is printed to give rise to legislation. The bill to regulate immigration, which passed the Senate May 24, 1906, contained a new section, of which the following is the material part: SECT. 39. That the Commissioner-General of Immigration, under the direction of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to establish and maintain at each of the immigrant stations within the United States a bureau of information. Such bureau shall be properly officered, and shall, under such rules and regulations as the Commissioner-General of Immigration may from time to time establish, collect and furnish to all incoming aliens, who may ask for the same, data as to the |