Although the effects of immigration are largely a matter of speculation and debate, one step may be taken which will help to make the deductions arrived at as reliable as is possible under the circumstances. This is a careful investigation of the actual conditions which surround immigration at the present time, and a comparison of them with those of the past. Only upon a solid basis of such facts can any trustworthy predictions be made as to what may be expected to come about in the future. Accordingly, in preparation for the discussion of effects, we will attempt to get a clear picture of the circumstances which surround the immigrant on his journey from the old world to the new; of his condition when he arrives; of the character of his life and labor in his new home. In general, the plan followed will be to take up each set of conditions in turn, and having ascertained the facts, to try to determine what bearing these seem likely to have upon the final effects of immigration. This will at times involve a departure from the strictly logical method of treatment, but this is unavoidable in such a complicated discussion. With the sources of our present immigration we are already familiar. We have seen how they have shifted from the north and west of Europe to the south and east. It has been stated that the movement is essentially a European one. This is still emphatically true. In 1912, 85.8 per cent of all our immigrants came from Europe, and if we exclude Turkey in Asia (which really is a part of Europe in the ethnical sense), British North America, Mexico, and the West Indies, there is very little left of the non-European portion. So it is still correct, for all important purposes, to regard immigration to the United States as having its origin in Europe. How long this will continue, it is of course impossible to say. There are vast reservoirs of population in Asia, to say nothing of the other continents, which we have scarcely as yet tapped, and which may reach the point of emigration with advancing civilization. Whether or not we are to receive large contingents from these countries in the future will depend largely upon the attitude of our government. So far, we have put up the bars before the Chinese, and unless they are lowered, which hardly seems likely, we need not anticipate any considerable number of arrivals of this race. Up to 1900 there were only a comparatively few Japanese in this country. Since then, the rising tide of immigration from Japan, which threatened to reach large proportions, has been checked, partly by “a series of measures which permits the greater part of the administrative problem to rest with the Japanese government,”[133] which is avowedly opposed to the emigration of its laboring population, and partly by a presidential order from the White House on March 14, 1907,[134] denying admission to Japanese and Korean laborers, who had received passports to go to