The introduction through immigration of a lower standard of living has been shown in preceding chapters. The point to be appreciated is that in this matter we are not dealing with the immigration of individual paupers and cheap workingmen, but with the influx of whole classes that threaten to degrade our material civilization. There are in America entire communities which live on a different plane, and form colonies as foreign to American ideas and life as anything in Europe can show. They have organized their own social life and fixed their own standards, instead of rising to ours. The results are plain all over the country. Immigration has cheapened more than wages in certain lines, it has cheapened life, until the coal barons could say, "It is cheaper to store men than coal." But men may be too cheap. [Sidenote: Good Qualities Bad if Abused] Some of the best qualities in the immigrants are liable to abuse. Thrift, for instance, is commendable, but not when it is exercised at the expense of decent living. Economy is an admirable trait, but not when practiced at the expense of manhood and decent conditions. A distinct deterioration of the masses displaced by the cheaper labor has marked the advent of the new immigration. While some of the workingmen thrown out of employment by immigration rise with the increase in the number of superior positions, the great mass are obliged to accept the lower standard or are forced out of the industry into misery, pauperism, and crime. The greater tendency of immigrants, by reason of their poverty, to permit or encourage the employment of their wives or children, still further increases the intensity of the competition for employment. In view of all the facts, a recent writer argues that the limitation or restriction which would reduce the volume and improve the economic quality of immigration would greatly improve labor conditions in this country. [Sidenote: Deterioration a Result of too Large Immigration] Under the present free inflow, says this writer, "the condition of the great mass of the working classes of this country is being permanently depressed, and the difference between the industrial condition of the unskilled workers in our country and of other countries is being steadily lessened to our permanent and great detriment."[80] [Sidenote: False Reasoning]