Speech #620137140

When you remember that onethird of all who come from abroad return to Europe and disclose the difference between the conditions in the United States and those abroad. and that news travels from village to village with remarkable dispatch. you can understand why it is that those who are living in poverty and under hard conditions. but who are ambitious to improve their condition. become interested. Then. too. letters are constantly going from those who have employment in this country to their brothers. their fathers. and their friends. and when a letter is received in a European village it passes throughout the length and breadth of the place. everybody reads it. and the man there who is the pioneer in spirit and in instinct. the man who has courage to nssume risks. is the man who hoards his small earnings and seeks the opportunity which conditions in the United States offer. That immigration is the result of careful thought and preparation is illustrated by an incident connected with the debarkation at Ellis Island of 4.000 immigrants in a single day. I noticed that a large number of* them had in their possession railroad tickets entitling them to transportation from New York to their several points of destination in tie United Stale--. It occurred to me that they must have come intelligently and with a definite purpose in view. In reply to an inquiry of Mr. Watchorn. who was then commissioner of the port. he informed me that while he could not give the exact number he was under the impression that 0 per cent of all whose destination was beyond New York had prepared in advance for such transportation from New York to those points in the United States where they expected to find their homes. The next year he caused a record to be made of the number holding railroad tickets when arriving. and reported to me that 79 per cent of all the immigrants who were admitted and whose destination was beyond the city of New York were so supplied. This clearly indicates that they had been in correspondence with friends in the United States. that every detail of the journey had been arranged and provided for. and it indicated the further fact that when they reached their destination they were morally sure of employment. This assumption is verified by the fact that the official records of 1908 show that 94 per cent of all who were admitted during that year reported that they had come to join friends or relatives. which indicates the same fact. that the cominglof all these different classes was the result of forethought and painstaking preparation. But a still more potent argument to that effect is found in the statistics which are published by the Bureau of Immigration showing the number who enter the United States in each given year. An examination of those figures will show that in every period of industrial depression in this country the number of arrivals from abroad decreases. After the panic of 1S5" the number decreased from 251.000 in that year to 153.000 in 1860.