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

WIT

7ITHIN 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. The quotations have been arranged in chronological order.

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 cities, 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

resources, products, and manufactures of each State, Territory, and District of the United States; the prices of land and the character of the soils therein; the routes of travel thereto; the cost of transportation thereto; the opportunities for employment in the various skilled and unskilled occupations in each of said States, Territories, and Districts; the rates of wages paid for such labor, respectively, in each of said States, Territories, and Districts; the cost of living therein, and all other information that in the judgment of said Commissioner-General of Immigration might tend to enlighten the alien immigrants coming to such immigrant stations as to the inducements to settlement in each of the various States, Territories, and Districts of the United States: Provided, That the Bureau provided for in this section may, at the discretion of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, furnish such other information to alien immigrants as may be useful and proper.

From the foregoing quotations the following statements of the prevalent opinion, and, so far as I have noticed, the only opinion to find frequent expression in the public prints, may be framed.

I. The foreign-born population of the United States has a stronger tendency towards cities than the native population.

II. This tendency is much stronger among recent immigrants than among those who entered the country a generation ago. III. It is much stronger among illiterate immigrants than it is among those who are able to write some language.

IV. This tendency is disadvantageous to the immigrants and an economic and social danger to the United States.

V. The evil results of this tendency are so great as to necessitate the creation of agencies, Federal, State, or private, to counteract or correct it.

I. The evidence in support of the first proposition is stated clearly and effectively in the Report of the Industrial Commission, under the heading "Tendency of Foreign-born towards Cities." The figures for 1890 there presented show that in the 124 cities of the United States, each of which had at least 25,000 inhabitants, the foreign-born were 29.2 per cent, and in the rest of the country only 10.6 per cent of the population. The figures for 1900, since published, show that in the 160 cities of like size the foreign-born were 26.0 per cent, and in the rest of the country

only 9.4 per cent of the population. These figures seem to show beyond question that in cities the proportion of foreign-born is almost thrice that in the rest of the country, and consequently to demonstrate that the immigrant has a tendency towards cities stronger than that of the native.

To the figures in this form, however, it may be objected that they include the South as well as the North, and the South is mainly rural and also comparatively unattractive to the immigrant. A fairer measure of the difference between the tendencies towards cities on the part of the immigrant and the native may be had by excluding from the figures those for the Southern States and confining the comparison to the North and West. The following table shows the results of a comparison in this form:1

These figures show that the smallest proportion of foreignborn is found in the country districts and the largest proportion in the largest cities, and that, as a rule, with only one exception out of fifteen cases, the smaller the population of a place, the smaller the proportion of foreign-born in its population. They show, also, that the proportion of foreign-born in the population of the large cities of the United States is about two and one half times as great as that in the country districts. These figures seem to confirm and establish the conclusion that the foreignborn have a stronger tendency towards cities than the native population.

1 For the figures from which these percentages are derived and for much fuller details see Supplementary Analysis and Derivative Tables, Twelfth Census (1906), Tables X and XII.