ng. Some things to be sure, these people
miss--the blue skies of Italy and the vineyards on the hillside. But
they have for them the compensation of such a liberty as they never knew
before. The real reason why all southern Europe is in a turmoil to-day,
is that American ideas of liberty are working there like leaven. We get
our notions of liberty from the Bible and from the men who forced the
Magna Charta from King John at Runnymede, but all other peoples in the
world seem to be getting their ideas of liberty from us. That is what is
the matter with the Old World to-day. The American idea is working like
leaven. That is the force at work in France, where absolute divorce has
just been proclaimed between Church and State. That is at the bottom of
the movements in Russia, where the Stundists have just won religious
liberty, and where, let us hope, all classes of people ere long will
have won complete civil liberty. These people have felt the uplift of
our American free institutions and they want them for themselves. They
have heard 'Yankee Doodle,' and the 'Star Spangled Banner,' and 'My
Country, 'tis of Thee,' and they cannot get the music of liberty out of
their ears and their hearts. Broughton Brandenburg tells us that he
heard some Italians who had been in America singing our classic song
'Mr. Dooley' in the vineyards near Naples."

_IV. What the Immigrants Say_

[Sidenote: Personal Testimony]

Let the immigrants themselves tell why they come. These testimonies are
typical, condensed from a most interesting volume of immigrant
autobiography,[9] fresh and illuminating.

[Sidenote: A German]

A German nurse girl says: "I heard about how easy it was to make money
in America and became very anxious to go there. I was restless in my
home; mother seemed so stern and could not understand that I wanted
amusement. I sailed from Antwerp, the fare costing $35. My second eldest
sister met me with her husband at Ellis Island and they were glad to see
me and I went to live with them in their flat in West Thirty-fourth
Street, New York. A week later I was an apprentice in a Sixth Avenue
millinery store earning four dollars a week. I only paid three for
board, and was soon earning extra money by making dresses and hats at
home." Friends in Germany would be sure to hear of this new condition.

[Sidenote: A Pole]

Why do the Poles come? A Polish sweat-shop girl, telling her life story,
answers. The father died, then troubles