A list of the principal racial organizations in the United States is included in the Appendix. Information about local branches of these organizations can usually be secured by correspondence. LOCAL BENEFIT SOCIETIES The first incentive to organization among all the groups seems to have been the precarious economic situation during the years of effort to get a foothold here. The first association of the newly arrived immigrant is one of mutual aid. "Benefit" will be found as the basis of the important foreign-born organizations, no matter what new purposes may have been taken on with the establishment and progress of the group as a whole. [Illustration: WHO WILL WELCOME THEM?] In the interviews we have had with the leaders among the groups the point has been repeatedly emphasized that Americans can never appreciate the situation of immigrants during their first ten years in this country. The strangeness, the poverty, the pressure to send money home, the inadequate, irregular income, the restriction to the low-skilled job--"there is in America, at first, nothing for an immigrant but the shovel"--the lack of knowledge of money values and ignorance of American domestic and social practices--these conditions drive the immigrants into co-operative effort. The appeal sent out by a Russian national society organized in 1912 begins with some such words as these: While we are in this country we are doing the lowest kind of work, and many accidents happen to us; if we do not belong to an organization we are without help.... The purpose of our brotherhood is to help our brethren in a strange country. Not even in associated effort can they always find security, however. One of the reasons now being given very often by immigrants seeking passage back to Europe is their feeling of uncertainty about their future here. They say that America is all right so long as a man is young and strong enough to do the hard work in the industries, but they cannot see what is in store for them as they grow older, for they cannot save enough to provide for themselves; in Europe, a little land and a cottage are assurance of the necessities for old age. There are, of course, many cases in which there is failure within the group as there is neglect without. Exploitation of immigrants by their fellow countrymen, and the evils of fraudulent banks, steamship companies, "tally-men," are well known. At the same time there is a great mass of neighborly service and of kindness of the poor to the poor, and of the stranger to the more recent comer.