been realized. Since 1870 wages have steadily risen, the conditions of employment have been improved, and the hours of labor reduced. The purchasing power of every dollar earned has been increased by 60 per cent, and this during the period of heaviest immigration. It would be unfair to claim that immigration had any influence in this connection; rather we should attribute it to the organiza- tion of labor ; and, broadly speaking, labor organizations have been supported by and have found their best members among the immigrants. Whatever dan- ger there may be is in the undue pre- ponderance of criminals, insane, and those becoming public charges. There is no means of accurately determining how much damage has been done in this direction, or whether the undoubted beneficial effects, which have been dem- onstrated in a thousand directions, can be offset. Immigrants come here at the age when people are most liable to com- mit crimes. They are freed from moral restraint and all fear of loss of caste, which, even in the lowest order of so- ciety, is, next to religion, the strongest deterrent to crime. Some day we may hope to see both sides fairly weighed and an exact judgment rendered, which, with our defective sources of informa- tion, is not possible today.
When we consider this question it compels us to pause in wonder as to what its effect will be on the future of the American people. If, in spite of our institutions and forms of govern- ment, the alien races that have already come and are still coming can succeed in undermining our religious, political, and economic foundations, it will be because we willingly succumb, through inertia, to their influences. Rome, Babylon, and all the nations of the world that have fallen have done so because they abandoned their moral, religious, and social ideals, their de- cline in most cases being contemporane- ous with the introduction of alien races. If such is to be the result in this coun- try, it will simply be history repeating itself ; but I have confidence enough in the morals and character of the Ameri- can people to believe that the races in- troduced among us will take from us only that which is good, and through education we will give them stability and the power to become thoroughly assimilated.
The privilege of intercourse with na- tive children and school instruction lifts up the immigrant in the second generation to the level of his fellows. The children of the ignorant, illiter- ate, and once despised German and Irish have grown up to match the native American of several generations in brawn and brain, wit and culture, and are today working with them, side by side, in every line of social, scientific, intellectual, political, and mechanical endeavor.
This is easily understood when we watch the avidity with which foreign children embrace the educational ad- vantages of our schools, and especially note their docility and amenability to discipline. They have a practical idea of the value of education and regard it as an asset to increase their earning capacity. During the past few years in New York the end of each school term shows that the Jewish children have obtained more honors than all the others put together.
CONTRACT-LABOR LAW
I have not the time to take up in detail the question of the violation of the alien contract-labor law by aliens, but it is a most important matter and is de- serving of attention. For a number of years after its passage but little effort was made in the direction of its en- forcement. Subsequently, after the service passed under federal control, a vigorous attempt was made to show re- sults that afterward were found by the labor organizations to be worthless,
