e
deterioration of the second generation have brought forth various
proposals for inducing them to settle upon the farms. The commissioners
of immigration[142] at various times have advocated an industrial museum
at Ellis Island, wherein the resources and opportunities of the several
states could be displayed before the eyes of the incoming thousands.
They and others have gone further and advocated the creation of a bureau
of immigrant distribution to help the immigrants out of the crowded
cities into the country districts. Still others have urged the
establishment of steamship lines to Southern ports and the Gulf of
Mexico, so that immigrants may be carried directly to the regions that
"need them." Very little can be expected from projects of this
kind,[143] for the present contingent of immigrants from Southeastern
Europe is too poor in worldly goods and too ignorant of American
business to warrant an experiment in the isolation and self-dependence
of farming. The farmers of the South and West welcome the settler who
has means of purchase, but they distrust the newly arrived immigrant.
Scandinavians and Germans in large numbers find their way to their
countrymen on the farms, but the newer nationalities would require the
fostering care of government or of wealthy private societies. The Jews
have, indeed, taken up the matter, and the Jewish Agricultural and
Industrial Aid Society of New York, by means of subventions from the
Baron de Hirsch fund, has distributed many families throughout the
country, partly in agriculture, but more generally in trade. The Society
for the Protection of Italian Immigrants is doing similar work. Great
railway systems and land companies in the South and West have their
agricultural and industrial agents on the lookout for eligible settlers.
All of the Southern states have established bureaus of immigration, and
they are advertising the North and Europe for desirable immigrants. But
these agencies seek mainly those immigrants who have resided in the
country for a time, and have learned the language and American
practices, and, in the case of the railroad and land companies, those
who have accumulated some property.

The immigration bureaus of the Southern states and railways, the most
urgent applicants at the present time for immigrants, are strongly
opposed to the plan of federal distribution. They want farmers who will
do their own work. From the standpoint of the immigrant himself this
p