Warne: The Slav Invasion, IV, V. Hunter: Poverty, VI. Lord, et al: The Italian in America, IV, X. IV. _Efforts to Secure Wider Distribution of Immigrants._ Hall: Immigration, XIII. Lord, et al: The Italian in America, VII, IX. _To know anything about the actual character of recent and present immigration, we must distinguish the many and very diverse elements of which it is composed._--Samuel McLanahan. IV THE NEW IMMIGRATION The world never before saw anything comparable to this tremendous movement of people in so short a space of time. The population Europe has lost in a hundred years is greater than the total number of inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland in 1860, and only a little less than that of the United States in the same year. It is equal to three fifths of the total population of Europe in the time of Augustus Caesar. If the ships carried five hundred passengers on the average, about fifty thousand trips have been made in the transfer. Emphatically too many people are now coming over here; too many of an undesirable sort. In 1902 over seven tenths were from races who do not rapidly assimilate with the customs and institutions of this country.--_Prescott F. Hall._ There are two classes who would pass upon the immigration question. One says, "Close the doors and let in nobody;" and the other says, "Open wide the doors and let in everybody." I am in sympathy with neither of these classes. There is a happy middle path--a path of discernment and judgment.--_Commissioner Robert Watchorn of New York._ Just as a body cannot with safety accept nourishment any faster than it is capable of assimilating it, so a state cannot accept an excessive influx of people without serious injury.--_H. H. Boyesen._ It seems to me our only concern about immigration should be as to its character. We do not want Europe's criminals or paupers. The time to make selection is in Europe, prior to embarkation.--_United States Senator Hansbrough._ IV THE NEW IMMIGRATION _I. New Peoples and New Problems_ [Sidenote: Change of Racial Type] So great has been the change in the racial character of immigration within the last ten years that the term "new immigration" has been used to distinguish the present prevailing type from that of former years. By new immigration we mean broadly all the aliens from southeastern Europe--the Italians, Hungarians, Slavs, Hebrews, Greeks, and Syrians--as distinguished from the northwestern Europeans--the English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, French, Germans, and Scandinavians. The ethnic authorities at Washington make the following racial division, which is used in the official reports: [Sidenote: Race Classification] "Ninety-five per cent. of the immigration to this country comes from Europe. Most of these different races or peoples, or more properly subdivisions of race, coming from Europe have been grouped into four grand divisions, as follows: