The extent to which we have departed from the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is best measured by the way we have come to regard and to treat the most helpless and trusting of our people--the immigrants who come to our shores. Our early policy at Castle Garden was to meet them, advise them, protect them by laws, safeguard their journey, and to consider them as a valuable asset to America and its future development. Compare with this the route of the immigrant in America to-day, keeping in mind our forefathers’ conception of American guarantees of life, liberty, and happiness. The immigrant arrives at the port of entry. After passing his examination (during which time not a friendly word of greeting is given him, or a personal interest taken in him) he is turned loose upon the city to be met at the gate by cabmen, porters, runners, crooks, thieves, and every conceivable kind of exploiter interested in getting his cash money. This is America’s first reception line. He then meets our second reception line--the employment agent, the private banker, and “steering agent” who derive profit from his labor before it has even become productive. When the immigrant actually goes to work, he has generally lost his money and is in debt. He then meets our third American reception line, the employer interested only in his labor output, and he is treated accordingly. He is generally left alone, to live as best he can, until he begins to save money. This immediately calls forth our fourth reception line--the private banker who renews his acquaintance and offers to help him send his money home; the speculator in land who looks him up; the get-rich-quick concerns that advertise in the papers he reads, and the medical quack who sells him so-called “American” medicines. Some one tells him he may be better off as a citizen, and then appears our fifth American reception line--the politician willing to buy his vote because he needs it, the notary public who is ready to settle his affairs at home so that he can “cut loose,” and the labor leader who thinks now he ought to be organized. By the time the immigrant has shaken hands along these various reception lines he feels he knows everybody, and he has a very definite idea of liberty, justice, freedom, law, order, and measures of happiness which in no sense accords with our forefathers’ ideal of America.