One of the chief objections to unrestricted immigration has always been the belief that it seriously increased the amount of pauperism and crime in the country, and added to the burden of relief and correction. We have seen how large a part this objection played in the early opposition to immigration, not only in colonial days, but during the first half of the nineteenth century. Even in our day, in spite of the laws prohibiting the entrance of criminals, paupers, and persons likely to become a public charge, there is a widespread impression that these two evils are increased through immigration. The prominence of pauperism as an item in the immigration agitation has led to the production of a large amount of material on the subject. Nevertheless, most of it has been fragmentary and untrustworthy. This has been largely due to the incompleteness and lack of uniformity of the records of various eleemosynary institutions, and the difficulty of securing returns from all the manifold agencies of relief. At the present time, however, as a result of careful studies by the Immigration Commission, this is one of the very few effects of immigration about which we may feel justified in setting down definite conclusions. According to statistics for the year 1850 a native-born population of 21,947,274 contributed 66,434 of the paupers who were wholly or partially supported in the country, while a foreign-born population of 2,244,602 contributed 68,538.[280] This was manifestly enough to arouse deep consternation, and had not the current of immigration fallen off in the latter fifties we should probably have had a pauper restriction clause in the federal statutes long before we did. The enactment and enforcement of such a statute has prevented the recurrence of any such state of affairs in recent years. Nevertheless, as one glances at random over the reports of various charitable organizations he is impressed with the fact that the number of foreign-born paupers is out of all proportion to the total number of foreign-born inhabitants. Thus in Massachusetts in 1895 a foreign-born population of 30.6 per cent furnished 47.1 per cent of the paupers.[281] The report of the Associated Charities of Boston for 1894 stated that nearly all of their applicants were of foreign birth or parentage,[282] while in the same city, three years later, the Industrial Aid Society reported that 56 per cent of the men given work in the men’s department were foreign-born, while 66 per cent of those aided by the Provident Aid Society were of this class.[283] The reports of the Wisconsin State Board of Charities for the years 1871 to 1898 show that, on the average, the foreign-born paupers considerably outnumber the native-born. Similar figures may be obtained from many sources.[284]