rchant in a city called Mott
Street, so it was said. The wealth of this man filled my mind with the
idea that I, too, would go to the country of the wizards and gain some
of their wealth." Landing in San Francisco, before the exclusion act, he
started in American life as a house servant, but finally became a Mott
Street merchant, as he had intended from the first.

[Sidenote: Fortune and Freedom]

Thus we have gone the rounds of immigrants of various races. The two
ideas--fortune and freedom--lie at the basis of immigration, although
the money comes first in nearly all cases. These testimonies could be
multiplied indefinitely. Ask the first immigrant you can talk with what
brought him, and find out for yourself. Mr. Brandenburg says a Greek who
was being deported told him that all Greece was stirred up over the
matter of emigration, and that in five years the number of Greeks coming
to the United States would have increased a thousand per cent.[11] The
reasons are the too onerous military duties in Greece and prosperity of
Greeks in America. The remittances fired the zeal of the home people to
follow, and the candymakers' shops were full of apprentices, because the
idea had gone abroad that candymakers could easily gain a fortune in
America.

[Sidenote: Showing only the Bright Side]

From these illustrations, it can readily be seen how widespread is the
knowledge of America as a desirable place. The other side is rarely
told and that is the pitiful side of it. The stories that go back are
always of the fortunes, not of the misfortunes, of the money and not of
the misery.

_V. Solicitation an Evil_

[Sidenote: Evils of Solicitation]

If immigration were left to the natural causes, there would be little
reason for apprehension. It is in the solicited and assisted immigration
that the worst element is found. Commercial greed lies at the root of
this, as of most of the evils which afflict us as a nation. The great
steamship lines have made it cheaper to emigrate than to stay at home,
in many cases; and every kind of illegal inducement and deceit and
allurement has been employed to secure a full steerage. The
ramifications of this transportation system are wonderful. It has a
direct bearing, too, upon the character of the immigrants. Easy and
cheap transportation involves deterioration in quality. In the days when
a journey across the Atlantic was a matter of weeks or months and of
considerable outlay, only the mo