cart filled with fruit or chocolates; or he may turn a jolly
hurdy-gurdy or grind scissors. In spite of his native sociability,
the south Italian is very slow to take to American ways. As a rule, he
comes here intending to go back when he has made enough money. He has
the air of a sojourner. He is picturesque, volatile, and incapable of
effective team work.

About 300,000 Greeks have come to America between 1908 and 1917,
nearly all of them young men, escaping from a country where they had
meat three times a year to a land where they may have it three times a
day. "The whole Greek world," says Henry P. Fairchild, writing in
1911, "may be said to be in a fever of emigration.... The strong young
men with one accord are severing home ties, leaving behind wives and
sweethearts, and thronging to the shores of America in search of
opportunity and fortune." Every year they send back handsome sums to
the expectant family. Business is an instinct with the Greek, and he
has almost monopolized the ice cream, confectionery, and retail fruit
business, the small florist shops and bootblack stands in scores of
towns, and in every large city he is running successful restaurants.
As a factory operative he is found in the cotton mills of New England,
but he prefers merchandizing to any other calling.

Years ago when New Bedford was still a whaling port a group of
Portuguese sailors from the Azores settled there. This formed the
nucleus of the Portuguese immigration which, in the last decade,
included over 80,000 persons. Two-thirds of these live in New England
factory towns, the remaining third, strange to say, have found their
way to the other side of the continent, where they work in the gardens
and fruit orchards of California. New Bedford is still the center of
their activity. They are a hard-working people whose standard of
living, according to official investigations "is much lower than that
of any other race," of whom scarcely one in twenty become citizens,
and who evince no interest in learning or in manual skill.

Finally, American cities are extending the radius of their magnetism
and are drawing ambitious tradesmen and workers from the Levant. Over
100,000 have come from Arabia, Syria, Armenia, and Turkey. The
Armenians and Syrians, forming the bulk of this influx, came as
refugees from the brutalities of the Mohammedan regime. The Levantine
is first and always a bargainer. His little bazaars and oriental rug
shops are bits