trays, the ends of creation, to the number of
2,000 more. Place yourself in any one of these hundred odd cities or
villages thus peopled, without a single American inhabitant, with
everything foreign, including religion; then realize that just such a
foreign population as is represented by all these places has actually
been put somewhere in this country within a twelvemonth, and the
immigration problem may assume a new aspect and take on a new concern.

[Sidenote: Grouped by Illiteracy]

But let us carry our imagination a little further. Suppose we bring
together into one place the illiterates of 1905--the immigrants of all
nationalities, over fourteen years of age, who could neither read nor
write. They would make a city as large as Jersey City or Kansas City,
and 15,000 larger than Indianapolis. Think of a population of 230,000
with no use for book, paper, ink, pen, or printing press. This mass of
dense ignorance was distributed some way within a year, and more
illiterates are coming in by every steamer. Divide this city of
ignorance by nationalities into wards, and there would be an Italian
ward of 100,000, far outnumbering all others; in other words, the
Italian illiterates landed in America in a year equal the population of
Albany, capital of the Empire State. The other leading wards would be:
Polish, 33,000; Hebrew, 22,000, indicating the low conditions whence
they came; Slav, 36,000; Magyar and Lithuanian, 12,000; Syrian and
Turkish, 3,000. These regiments of non-readers and writers come almost
exclusively from the south and east of Europe. Of the large total of
illiterates, 230,882 to be exact--it is noteworthy that only
seventy-five were Scotch; and only 157 were Scandinavian, out of the
more than 60,000 from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. That almost one
quarter of a total million of newcomers should be unable to read or
write is certainly a fact to be taken into account, and one that throws
a calcium light on the general quality of present-day immigration and
the educational status of the countries from which they come. Illiteracy
is a worse reflection upon the foreign government than upon the foreign
immigrant.

[Sidenote: The Army of the Unskilled]

To complete this grouping, we should go one step further, and make up a
number of divisions according to occupation and no-occupation, skilled
and unskilled labor. To begin with, the unskilled laborers would fill a
city of 430,000, or about the size of Cincinn