1900, 1890, and 1880, respectively, for continental United States, is shown in the following table: This table shows a steady and rapid increase in the proportion of urban population. While the increase in the percentage of urban population from 1900 to 1910 was appreciably greater than from 1890 to 1900, it was not so great as from 1880 to 1890. . . . Increase in urban and rural population. In order to compare the rate of growth in urban and rural communities, it is necessary in each case, as previously explained, to consider the changes in population which have occurred in the same territory from one decennial census to another. For this purpose communities are classed as urban or rural according to their population in 1910, and the population of the places as thus classified is then determined for 1900 for purposes of comparison. The increase from 1900 to 1910 in urban and rural population on this basis is shown, for continental United States, in the following table: The rate of increase for the population of urban areas was over three times that for the population living in rural territory. II. IMMIGRATION A. Immigration, 1882–19101 The exhaustion of available free land for settlement, together with the rapid growth of the population, directed attention about 1910 to the increase in immigration of the previous decade, and especially to the changing character of the immigration. Accordingly a commission of nine persons was created to investigate and report upon the subject. They made an exhaustive report in forty-two volumes. SOURCES OF IMMIGRATION AND CHARACTER OF IMMIGRANTS From 1820 to June 30, 1910, 27,918,992 immigrants were admitted to the United States. Of this number 92.3 per cent came from European countries,2 which countries are the source of about 93.7 per cent of the present immigration movement. From 1820 to 1883 more than 95 per cent of the total immigration from Europe originated in the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. In what follows the movement from these countries will be referred to as the "old immigration." Following 1883 there was a rapid change in the ethnical character of European immigration, and in recent years more than 70 per cent of the movement has originated in southern and eastern Europe. The change geographically, however, has been somewhat greater than the change in the racial character of the immigration, this being due very largely to the number of Germans who have come from AustriaHungary and Russia. The movement from southern and eastern Europe will be referred to as the "new immigration." In a single generation Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia have succeeded the United Kingdom and Germany as the chief sources of immigration. In fact, each of the three countries first named furnished more immigrants to the United States in 1907 than came in the same year from the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland combined. The old immigration movement in recent years has rapidly declined, both numerically and relatively, and under present conditions there are no indications that it will materially increase. The new 1 Reports of the Immigration Commission. (Washington, 1911), I, 23–6, 37-8, 42, 60, 139, 45-8. 2 Including Turkey in Asia. immigration movement is very large, and there are few, if any, indications of its natural abatement. The old immigration movement was essentially one of permanent settlers. The new immigration is very largely one of individuals a considerable proportion of whom apparently have no intention of permanently changing their residence, their only purpose in coming to America being to temporarily take advantage of the greater wages paid for industrial labor in this country. This, of course, is not true of all the new immigrants, but the practice is sufficiently common to warrant referring to it as a characteristic of them as a class. From all data that are available it appears that nearly 40 per cent of the new immigration movement returns to Europe and that about twothirds of those who go remain there. This does not mean that all of these immigrants have acquired a competence and returned to live on it. Among the immigrants who return permanently are those who have failed, as well as those who have succeeded. Thousands of those returning have, under unusual conditions of climate, work, and food, contracted tuberculosis and other diseases; others are injured in our industries; still others are the widows and children of aliens dying here. These, with the aged and temperamentally unfit, make up a large part of the aliens who return to their former homes to remain. The old immigration came to the United States during a period of general development and was an important factor in that development, while the new immigration has come during a period of great industrial expansion and has furnished a practically unlimited supply of labor to that expansion. CAUSES OF THE MOVEMENT As a class the new immigrants are largely unskilled laborers coming from countries where their highest wage is small compared with the lowest wage in the United States. Nearly 75 per cent of them are males. About 83 per cent are between the ages of 14 and 45 years, and consequently are producers rather than dependents. They bring little money into the country and send or take a considerable part of their earnings out. More than 35 per cent are illiterate, as compared with less than 3 per cent of the old immigrant class. Immigration prior to 1882 was practically unregulated, and consequently many were not self-supporting, so that the care of alien paupers in several States was a serious problem. The new immigration has for the most part been carefully regulated so far as health and likelihood of pauperism are concerned, and, although drawn from classes low in the economic scale, the new immigrants as a rule are the strongest, the most enterprising, and the best of their class. Unlike Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, and other immigrant-receiving countries, the United States makes no effort to induce immigration. A law for the encouragement of immigration by guaranteeing in this country labor contracts made abroad was enacted in 1864 but repealed in 1868. Later legislation has tended to prevent the introduction of contract laborers and assisted or induced immigration, the purpose of the Government being that the movement should be a natural one. The law respecting assisted immigration, however, does not deny the right of a person already in this country to send for an otherwise admissible relative or friend, and a large part of the present movement, especially from southern and eastern Europe, is made possible through such assistance. The immediate incentive of the great bulk of present-day immigration is the letters of persons in this country to relatives or friends at home. Comparatively few immigrants come without some reasonably definite assurance that employment awaits them, and it is probable that as a rule they know the nature of that employment and the rate of wages. A large number of immigrants are induced to come by quasi labor agents in this country, who combine the business of supplying laborers to large employers and contractors with the so-called immigrant banking business and the selling of steamship tickets. Another important agency in promoting emigration from Europe to the United States is the many thousands of steamship-ticket agents and subagents operating in the emigrant-furnishing districts of southern and eastern Europe. Under the terms of the United States immigration law, as well as the laws of most European countries, the promotion of emigration is forbidden, but nevertheless the steamshipagent propaganda flourishes everywhere. It does not appear that the steamship lines as a rule openly direct the operations of these agents, but the existence of the propaganda is a matter of common knowledge in the emigrant-furnishing countries and, it is fair to assume, is acquiesced in, if not stimulated, by the steamship lines as well. With the steamship lines the transportation of steerage passengers is purely a commercial matter; moreover, the steerage business which originates in southern and eastern Europe is peculiarly attractive to the companies, as many of the immigrants travel back and forth, thus insuring east-bound as well as west-bound traffic. . . . IMMIGRATION OF DISEASED ALIENS Prior to 1882, when the federal Government first assumed control of immigration, the movement was practically unregulated. No process of selection was exercised among the immigrants who came between 1819 and 1882, and as a result the diseased, defective, delinquent, and dependent entered the country practically at will. With the development of federal immigration laws the situation in this respect has entirely changed, and while, unfortunately, the present law, from the difficulty in securing proof, is largely ineffectual in preventing the coming of criminals and other moral delinquents, it does effectively debar paupers and the physically unsound and generally the mentally unsound. ... IMMIGRANTS IN MANUFACTURING AND MINING A large proportion of the southern and eastern European immigrants of the past twenty-five years have entered the manufacturing and mining industries of the eastern and middle western States, mostly in the capacity of unskilled laborers. There is no basic industry in which they are not largely represented and in many cases they compose more than 50 per cent of the total number of persons employed in such industries. Coincident with the advent of these millions of unskilled laborers there has been an unprecedented expansion of the industries in which they have been employed. Whether this great immigration movement was caused by the industrial development or whether the fact that a practically unlimited and available supply of cheap labor existed in Europe was taken advantage of for the purpose of expanding the industries, can not well be demonstrated. Whatever may be the truth in this regard it is certain that southern and eastern European immigrants have almost completely monopolized unskilled labor activities in many of the more important industries. This phase of the industrial situation was made the most important and exhaustive feature of the Commission's investigation, and the results show that while the competition of these immigrants has had little, if any, effect on the highly skilled trades, nevertheless, through lack of industrial progress and by reason of large and constant reinforcement from abroad, it has kept conditions in the semiskilled and unskilled occupations from advancing. . . . ASSIMILATION OF IMMIGRANTS It is difficult to define and still more difficult to correctly measure the tendency of newer immigrant races toward Americanization, |