land, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
and the South; it was the same stock that settled Ohio and the Middle West,
Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.

The "old immigration" from northern Europe ceased to be predominant in the
closing years of the last century. Then the tide shifted to southern
Europe, to Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Poland, and the Balkans. A new
strain was being added to our Anglo-Saxon, Germanic stock. The "new
immigration" did not speak our language. It was unfamiliar with
self-government. It was largely illiterate. And with this shift from the
"old immigration" to the "new," immigration increased in volume. In 1892
the total immigration was 579,663; in 1894 it fell to 285,631. As late as
1900 it was but 448,572. Then it began to rise. In 1903 it was 857,046; in
1905 it reached the million mark; and from that time down to the outbreak
of the war the total immigration averaged close on to a million a year, the
total arrivals in 1914 being 1,218,480. Almost all of the increase came
from southern Europe, over 70 per cent of the total being from the Latin
and Slavic countries. In 1914 Austria contributed 134,831 people; Hungary
143,321; Italy 283,734; Russia 255,660; while the United Kingdom
contributed 73,417; Germany 35,734; Norway 8,329; and Sweden 14,800.

For twenty years the predominant immigration has been from south and
central Europe. And it is this "new immigration," so called, that has
created the "immigration problem." It is largely responsible for the
agitation for restrictive legislation on the part of persons fearful of the
admixture of races, of the difficulties of assimilation, of the high
illiteracy of the southern group; and most of all for the opposition on the
part of organized labor to the competition of the unskilled army of men who
settle in the cities, who go to the mines, and who struggle for the
existing jobs in competition with those already here. For the newcomer has
to find work quickly. He has exhausted what little resources he had in
transportation. In the great majority of cases his transportation has been
advanced by friends and relatives already here, who have lured him to this
country by descriptions of better economic conditions, greater
opportunities for himself, and especially the new life which opens up to
his children. And this overseas competition _is_ a serious problem to
American labor, especially in the iron and steel industries, in the mining
districts, i