It is the same with contract work. The contractor, in figuring the cost of road building, includes not only materials, grades, etc., but the cost of decent housing for his American workmen. The immigrant workman he leaves to the padrone. The padrone is one of the most anti-American forces in this country, and he exists only by the grace of the native-born American employer. No immigrant body can impose him upon an employer who does not find him useful. I am invariably met with the fact that native Americans refuse to rent to immigrants because of their alleged defacement of property. The one remedy seems to be eviction and refusal to rent. I have not yet found that a limitation on boarders in the rental clause has been tried or that any effort has been made to teach these tenants the meaning and methods of an American standard of living. I have not found that such conveniences as an adequate and accessible water supply, garbage collection, prompt repairs, and interest in the well-being of the tenants bear in the mind of the landlord much relation to care of person and property. The native American thinks of the immigrant tenant as an inferior human being, used to something quite different, and almost unconsciously brings the American standard down to his own idea of the immigrant’s capacities. There are, of course, many people--not confined to immigrants--who are indifferent to or incapable of maintaining an American standard of living. Eliminating these, I believe that the native American can and must set the standard, pay decent enough wages to make it possible, and then admit no excuses whatever for non-performance. In my judgment it is a fallacy to suppose that increased wages and shorter hours alone will Americanize America, unless there goes with these things some education as to their use. Paternalism? I have in mind a steel mill where the employer has increased wages 50 per cent, and established eight-hour shifts; where the most perfect conditions prevail in his plant, where his first-aid and safety-first work are excellent. He believes that to build company houses would be paternalism. Almost every one in the town works in his mill. He has added 5000 workmen to the village within a year. No private capital will take the risk of building houses for his war industry. His men sleep 5 to 15 in a room, often on the floor and in their clothing; they have no care and eat badly prepared food. They crowd family houses, destroying privacy and morality. That plant employed last year 34,000 men to keep an average of 15,000. This registers the immigrant’s protest,--the only one possible,--moving on. Yet one native-born American controls the health, decency, morality, and efficiency of some 8000 immigrant workmen whose only protest is to move on, and whose only future is high enough wages to return to his home country.