nce,
its defiance of parental authority, its selfishness, rudeness, and
vices, while they lacked the reverence, courtesy, and spirit of
obedience native to the Italian-born. This is substantiated by many
witnesses who have labored among the foreign element. The
Americanization these children are getting is largely of the worst
type--the type that we should like to see emigrate to European
countries. And it is confined to no one race, but common to all.
Professor Boyesen, for instance, a Norwegian-American, who blamed the
ideas gained in the public schools for some of the results seen in the
young hoodlums and roughs of foreign parentage, said that worthy German
and Scandinavian fathers complained bitterly that they could not govern
their children in this country. Their sons took to the streets, and if
disciplined left home entirely; and they attributed this to the spirit
of irresponsible independence in the air. This is perhaps one of the
inevitable penalties of individual liberty.

_III. Various Effects of Immigration_

[Sidenote: Making Life too Cheap]

The introduction through immigration of a lower standard of living has
been shown in preceding chapters. The point to be appreciated is that in
this matter we are not dealing with the immigration of individual
paupers and cheap workingmen, but with the influx of whole classes that
threaten to degrade our material civilization. There are in America
entire communities which live on a different plane, and form colonies
as foreign to American ideas and life as anything in Europe can show.
They have organized their own social life and fixed their own standards,
instead of rising to ours. The results are plain all over the country.
Immigration has cheapened more than wages in certain lines, it has
cheapened life, until the coal barons could say, "It is cheaper to store
men than coal." But men may be too cheap.

[Sidenote: Good Qualities Bad if Abused]

Some of the best qualities in the immigrants are liable to abuse.
Thrift, for instance, is commendable, but not when it is exercised at
the expense of decent living. Economy is an admirable trait, but not
when practiced at the expense of manhood and decent conditions. A
distinct deterioration of the masses displaced by the cheaper labor has
marked the advent of the new immigration. While some of the workingmen
thrown out of employment by immigration rise with the increase in the
number of superior positions, the great