het, but no
disturbance. They mind their own business as no other nation, and carry
it to the point of crime when they protect the criminal."[73]

[Sidenote: Possibilities of Uplifting]

This is testimony directly from life and has especial value. It reveals
the difficulties, and at the same time the possibilities, of reaching
and Americanizing these immigrants, who are better than their
surroundings, and promising if properly cared for.

[Sidenote: Sources of Degradation]

The impression that steadily deepens with observation and study is that
of the evil and degrading surroundings. Not only are there the evil
moral influences of overcrowding, but also the contact with elements of
population already deteriorated by a generation of tenement house life.
The fresh arrivals are thrown into contact with the corrupt remnants of
Irish immigration which now make up the beggars, drunkards, thugs, and
thieves of those quarters. The results can easily be predicted. The
Italian laboring population is temperate when it comes to this country;
but under the evil conditions and influences of the tenement district
disorderly resorts have been opened, and drinking and other vices are
spreading. The Hebrews show tendencies to vices from which formerly they
were free. The law does not protect these immigrants, and it is charged
that the city permits every kind of inducement for the extension of
immorality, drunkenness, and crime. Thus the immigrant is likely to
deteriorate and degenerate in the process of Americanization, instead of
becoming better in this new world. He has indeed little chance. If he
does not become a pauper or criminal or drunkard, it will be because he
is superior to his environment.

_III. The Sweat-shop Peril_

[Sidenote: An Awful Peril]

An immigrant peril is the sweat-shop labor which this class performs.
"Sweating" is the system of sub-contract wherein the work is let out to
contractors to be done in small shops or at home. According to the
Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, "in practice sweating consists of
the farming out by competing manufacturers to competing contractors of
the material for garments, which in turn is distributed among competing
men and women to be made up." This system is opposed to the factory
system, where the manufacturer employs his own workmen, sees the goods
made, and knows the conditions. The sweating system is one of the
iniquities of commercial greed, and the helpless fore