es suggest striking comparisons. In New York,
computations based on the census show 785,035 persons of German
descent, a number nearly equal to the population of Hamburg, and larger
than the native element in New York (737,477). New York has twice as
many Irish (710,510) as Dublin, two and one-half times as many Jews as
Warsaw, half as many Italians as Naples, and 50,000 to 150,000 first and
second generations from Scotland, Hungary, Poland, Austria, and
England.[92] Chicago has nearly as many Germans as Dresden, one-third as
many Bohemians as Prague, one-half as many Irish as Belfast, one-half as
many Scandinavians as Stockholm.[93]

The variety of races, too, is astonishing. New York excels Babel. A
newspaper writer finds in that city sixty-six languages spoken,
forty-nine newspapers published in foreign languages, and one school at
Mulberry Bend with children of twenty-nine nationalities. Several of the
smaller groups live in colonies, like the Syrians, Greeks, and Chinese.
But the colonies of the larger groups are reservoirs perpetually filling
and flowing.[94]

The influx of population to our cities, the most characteristic and
significant movement of the present generation, has additional
significance when we classify it according to the motives of those who
seek the cities, whether industrial or parasitic. The transformation
from agriculture to manufactures and transportation has designated city
occupations as the opportunities for quick and speculative accumulation
of wealth, and in the cities the energetic, ambitious, and educated
classes congregate. From the farms of the American stock the sons leave
a humdrum existence for the uncertain but magnificent rewards of
industrialism. These become the business men, the heads of great
enterprises, and the millionaires whose example hypnotizes the
imagination of the farm lads throughout the land. Many of them find
their level in clerical and professional occupations, but they escape
the manual toil which to them is the token of subordination. These
manual portions are the peculiar province of the foreign immigrant, and
foreign immigration is mainly a movement from the farms of Europe to the
cities of America. The high wages of the industries and occupations
which radiate from American cities are to them the magnet which
fortune-seeking is to the American-born. The cities, too, furnish that
choice of employers and that easy reliance on charitable and friendly
assista