ns of souls makes its
own problems, and there is no other like it. After all, the chief
function of the license must, in the end, be to show that it cannot be
done so--safely. Even with the active cooeperation of the Board of
Health, and with the nearly two hundred tenement-house inspectors that
are being turned loose this summer, full of new zeal and desire to make
a record, we shall yet be whipping the devil around the stump until the
public sentiment fostered by the Consumers' League and its allies heads
him off on the other side. The truth of the matter is that the job is
too big for the law alone. It needs the gospel to back it up. Together
they can do it.

CHAPTER VIII

ON WHOM SHALL WE SHUT THE DOOR?

The Jew and the Italian have filled the landscape so far, because, as a
matter of fact, that is what they do. Yesterday it was the Irishman and
the Bohemian. To-morrow it may be the Greek, who already undersells the
Italian from his push-cart in the Fourth Ward, and the Syrian, who can
give Greek, Italian, and Jew points at a trade. The rebellious Slovak
holds his own corner in our industrial system, though never for long. He
yearns ever for the mountain sides of his own Hungary. He remembers,
where the Jew tries only to forget. From Dalmatia comes a new
emigration, and there are signs that the whole Balkan peninsula has
caught the fever and is waiting only for cheap transportation to be
established on the Danube to the Black Sea, when there is no telling
what will be heading our way. I sometimes wonder what thoughts come to
the eagle that perches over the great stone gateway on Ellis Island, as
he watches the procession that files through it into the United States
day after day, and never ends. He looks out of his grave, unblinking
eye at the motley crowd, but gives no sign. Does he ask: "Where are the
Pilgrim Fathers, the brave Huguenots, the patient Puritans, the sturdy
priests, and the others that came for conscience' sake to build upon
this continent a home for freedom? And these, why do they come with
their strange tongues--for gold?" True, eagle! but look to the roster of
those who fought and died for the freedom those pioneers planted, who
watered the tree with their life blood, and see how many you find
inscribed there who came through that gate. Go to the public school and
hear their children speak the tongue that is sweet to your ear; hear
their young voices as they salute the flag that is _the