ur own
country. To live in one of these foreign communities is actually to live
on foreign soil. The thoughts, feelings, and traditions which belong to
the mental life of the colony are often entirely alien to an
American.--_Robert Hunter._

The vastness of the problem of the city slum, and the impossibility,
even with unlimited resources of men and money, of permanently raising
the standards of living of many of our immigrants as long as they are
crowded together, and as long as the stream of newer immigrants pours
into these same slums, has naturally forced itself upon the minds of
thinking persons.--_Robert D. Ward._

VI

THE FOREIGN PERIL OF THE CITY

_I. The Evils of Environment_

[Sidenote: Tendency Toward the Cities]

As is the city, so will the nation be. The tendencies all seem to be
toward steady concentration in great centers. The evils of congestion do
not deter the thronging multitudes. The attractions of the city are
irresistible, even to those who exist in the most wretched conditions.
The tenement districts baffle description, yet nothing is more difficult
than to get their miserable occupants to leave their fetid and squalid
surroundings for the country. To the immigrants the city is a magnet.
Here they find colonies of their own people, and prize companionship
more than comfort. "Folks is more company than stumps," said an old
woman in the slums to Dr. Schauffler. In the great cities the immigrants
are massed, and this constitutes a most perplexing problem. If tens of
thousands of foreigners could somehow be gotten out of New York, Boston,
Chicago, and other cities, and be distributed where they are needed and
could find work and homes, immigration would cause far less anxiety. But
when the immigrant prefers New York or Chicago, what authority shall
remove him to Louisiana or Oklahoma?

[Sidenote: Perils Due to Environment]

The foreigner is in the city; he will chiefly stay there; and the
question is what can be done to improve his city environment; for the
perils to which we refer are primarily due not to the foreigner himself
but to the evil and vice-breeding conditions in which he has to exist.
These imperil him and make him a peril in turn. The overcrowded
tenements and slums, the infection of long-entrenched corruption, the
absence of light, fresh air, and playgrounds for the children, the
unsanitary conditions and exorbitant rents, the political heelers
teaching civic corrupti