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.

4

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

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.

In establishing the commission, California had no definite precedent to follow. The experiment was new to herself, new to America, new even to the world at large. And, as in the case of all experiments, confidence in its success was not unmixed with doubts.

And then came the war, came war work, came the cry for Americanization. California found herself a Prophet and a Pioneer, found herself five years in advance of the times, found the country as a whole frantically organizing for the tasks which she had undertaken long before. And she had undertaken them not as a hasty war measure for the world had not yet dreamed of war—but as her plain and simple duty to the immigrant, to herself, and to America.

From the start, in the scheme of the commission, these tasks outlined themselves, following the belief that before a man should be asked to become a good American by being worthy of his surroundings, those surroundings should be made worthy of a good American.

The immigrant did not understand his rights, did not understand our laws, his ignorance was exploited on every hand; so the commission's Bureau of Complaints came into being, to advise him, to adjust his difficulties, and to remove the causes for those difficulties.

In the labor camps he worked for the most part - under wretched conditions which he could not change, and the remedy for this was the commission's Bureau of Labor Camp Inspection which, in five years, has revolutionized the labor camps of the state.

He lived by his work and little help could be given him if he were deprived of that work; and the question of unemployment with the problems leading up to it, the problems arising from it, and possible solutions, became part of the commission's undertaking.

From the moment of his arrival he was crowded into the badly congested quarters of the city and so the problem of Housing was accepted as part of the bigger problem of immigration, and the commission set about the task of awakening the state to its obligation of furnishing proper living conditions even for those who can pay little rent.

He did not know the English language, and the commission's Bureau of Immigrant Education turned to this new task of education.

Even so, he could not wait to learn the language of America before assuming some of the duties toward her; her ideals and hopes had to be made clear to him in his own tongue; and the commission's Foreign-Language Speakers set out upon their mission of enlightenment.

Now the labor camps of Oregon and Washington are being inspected under the federal government's program of war necessity. Housing surveys are now being undertaken as part of the country-wide Americanization movement, and yet there was much wondering when, five years ago, California linked the two. Educators throughout America are realizing that teaching English to the foreign-born is a new profession for which new provision has to be made. And the coöperation of the leaders of these foreign-born is being enlisted in carrying America's message to their countrymen in their own tongue, a measure which has long been a vital part of California's plan for assimilation,

It is the hope of the commission that the brief pages which follow will give a clearer interpretation of its work in these several departments.

THE BUREAU OF COMPLAINTS

The purpose of the commission was clear from the start: to protect and aid immigrants in California.

The method of procedure was not so simple. To protect against whom and against what? To aid to what end and by what means?

There were many books and many reports on the subject of immigration. And the commission laid them all aside and opened its Bureau of Complaints.

"Not to theorize concerning the problems and difficulties met with by newly arrived immigrants, but to find out from the immigrants themselves what those facts and problems are." This statement went into the first annual report of the commission, and there has been no occasion, in the years which followed, to change the words.