We are talking and behaving now about the immigration of the past few years--allowing for the vastly greater bulk of it and the intensified peril involved in its bulk--just as we talked and behaved about the Irish immigration that began in the early ’30’s and the German immigration that began to bulk large in the early ’40’s. Comparatively small as was the size of that joint inflow, it made the problem that awakened the Know-Nothing and Native-American movement of the mid-century, and eventually culminated in the naturalization legislation now in force. Each phase of immigration has been “the new immigration” at its time; each has been viewed with alarm; each has been described as certain to deteriorate the physical quality of our people and destroy the standards of living and of citizenship. The Scandinavians, who began to come in considerable numbers in 1879; the Italians, whose immigration became impressive in the late ’80’s; the Russians and Austrians, whose surge became formidable about 1890; the Greeks, never very numerous, but swelling in numbers from 2,339 in 1898 to 36,580 in 1907, their highest tide--each in turn passed or are passing now through the same stages; of comparatively good-natured welcome at the outset, when they were few, and viewed with curiosity; of increasing resentment, as they became noticeable in competition for jobs; at last of angry and vociferous denunciation as a “peril”; then subsiding into acceptance and assimilation into the body social. “Paddy the clodhopper,” butt of the comedian and the newspaper jokesmith, came over from Ireland as green as shamrock, worked at unskilled labor with pick and shovel on railroads and elsewhere, was herded and bribed into citizenship and politics, got on the police force and into the contracting business, increased in prosperity, bought real estate, and has sent down through the years and into the fabric of our population a posterity whose substantial contribution to our life no one now questions. He did not have to learn the language, and that fact greatly facilitated his assimilation. Fritz and Gretchen--we called them “Dutchmen” then--had to climb over the language barrier, but they did it, and their progress has followed the same general course. So did Ole and Chris and Sven and Hilda from Scandinavia, and Salvatore, then the “Dago.” Salvatore already owns apartment houses. Russian and Austrian, Greek, Rumanian, Portuguese, and so on, the latest comers, are in the midst of the same process.