“One of the commonest errors of writers on sociological topics is to allow too little time for the action of social forces. We are inclined to think that the effects of a certain social phenomenon, which we are able to detect in our lifetime, are the permanent and final effects. We forget that these matters may require many generations to work themselves out. No better illustration of this could be asked for than that furnished by the case of the negroes in the United States. The importation of these people began many generations ago. To our ancestors it undoubtedly seemed a perfectly natural thing to do, and for centuries it did not occur to anybody to even question its rightfulness or its expediency. When objections began to be raised, they were feeble and easily put aside. But at last the presence of this peculiar class of people in the country involved the nation in a terrible and bloody conflict, which worked irreparable injury to the American stock by the annihilation of the flower of southern manhood, and left us a problem which is probably the greatest one before the American people to-day—one which we have hardly begun to solve. There is much of similarity between the case of the negroes and that of the modern immigrants. To be sure, the newcomers of to-day are for the most part white-skinned, instead of colored, which gives a different aspect to the matter. Yet in the mind of the average American, the modern immigrants are generally regarded as inferior peoples—races which he looks down on, and with which he does not wish to associate on terms of social equality. Like the negroes, they are brought in for economic reasons, to do the hard and menial work to which an American does not wish to stoop.”[132] Even in the case of the old immigration, then, the effects are largely in the future; in the case of the new immigration they are almost wholly so. We have seen that in regard to racial stock the new immigration has been predominant for scarcely half a generation. There are a number of circumstances besides this which make the immigration problem practically a new one. Certain of the most important factors which condition it, and many of the aspects which it presents to the public mind, are new to the men of this generation. The verification of this statement is to be found in the following pages; in the present connection it must suffice merely to suggest the circumstances in which these differences may be looked for. These may be grouped under six main heads, as follows: (1) the racial stock of the immigrants; (2) the volume of the immigration current; (3) the distribution of immigrants in the United States; (4) the economic conditions of this country; (5) the native birth rate; (6) the quality of the immigrants.