Life for that mate was a battle with filthy _cargadores_ in stifling heat; he snatched his sleep when he might between ports. The steamer was in Hamburg to dock and refit once a year. Then he saw his wife and children for at most a month; sometimes for only a week. In any essay-contest on “Is Life Worth Living?” it seemed to me he ought to win the prize for the negative side. “Since I have been on this run I have seen California ranches,” he said. “If I had come out to California fifteen years ago, when I thought of emigrating to America, by working half as hard as I have worked--and that would be harder than most California ranchers work--I could have had my own plot of ground and my own house and lived at home with my family. But when I spoke of emigrating I was warned against it. Maybe you don’t know that the local officials have orders to dissuade intending emigrants from their purpose. They told me that the United States and Canada were lands of graft, injustice, and disorder, where native Americans formed a caste which kept all immigrants at manual labour. I should be robbed and forced to work for the trusts for a pittance. Instead of an imperial government to protect me, I should be exploited by millionaire kings. Wasn’t I a German? Wasn’t I loyal to my Kaiser? Would I forfeit my nationality? This appeal decided me. And I am too old, now, to start at ranching.” Had I been one of those wicked millionaire kings of the United States or Canada, I should have set this man up on a ranch, believing that he was not yet too old to make good in a new land if he were given a fair start, knowing that he would pay back the capital with interest; and I have known wicked millionaire kings to be guilty of such lapses as this from their tyranny. The imperial German system wanted his earning power and energy back of the sea wedge. German steamship companies promoted emigration from Hungary, Russia, and Italy for the fares it brought. The German government, however, took care that the steamship companies carried no German emigrants; and it ruled that no Russian peasant or Polish Jew bound for Hamburg or Bremen on the way to America might stop over _en route_ across Germany, lest he stay. Russians and Poles and Jews were not desirable material for the German sea wedge. Let them go into the _pot-au-feu_ of the capacious and indiscriminating American melting-pot, which may yet make something of them that will surprise the chauvinists.