The bad effects of the gregariousness of the foreigner in America have frequently been pointed out and deplored; most writers on immigration have failed to see or mention any of its benefits. It is interesting to know the opinion on this vexing question of one who has himself passed safely through a critical transition period. Speaking of his own experience he says that the Syrian colony in New York “was a habitat so much like the one I had left behind me in Syria that its home atmosphere enabled me to maintain a firm hold on life in the face of the many difficulties which confronted me in those days, and just different enough to awaken my curiosity to know more about the surrounding American influences.” Impelled by the question, “Where is America?” and longing for “something more in the life of America than the mere loaves and fishes,” he determined to leave New York and “seek the smaller centers of population, where men came in friendly touch with one another, daily.” AMERICA OFFERS SOMETHING BETTER THAN MONEY I was told while in Syria that in America money could be picked up everywhere. That was not true. But I found that infinitely better things than money--knowledge, freedom, self-reliance, order, cleanliness, sovereign human rights, self-government, and all that these great accomplishments imply--can be picked up everywhere in America by whosoever earnestly seeks them. And those among Americans who are exerting the largest influence toward the solution of the “immigration problem” are, in my opinion, not those who are writing books on “good citizenship,” but those who stand before the foreigner as the embodiment of these great ideals. The occasions on which I was made to feel that I was a foreigner--an alien--were so rare that they are not worth mentioning. My purpose in life, and the large, warm heart of America which opens to every person who aspires to be a good and useful citizen, made me forget that there was an “immigration problem” within the borders of this great Commonwealth. When I think of the thousand noble impulses which were poured into my soul in my early years in this country by good men and women in all walks of life; when I think of the many homes in which I was received with my uncomely appearance and with my crude manners, where women who were visions of elegance served me as an honored guest, of the many counsels of men of affairs which fed my strength and taught me the lasting value of personal achievements, and that America is the land of not only great privileges, but great responsibilities, I feel like saying (and I do say whenever I have the opportunity) to every foreigner, “When you really know what America is, when you are willing to share in its sorrows, as well as its joys, then you will cease to be a whining malcontent, will take your harp down from the willows, and will not call such a country ‘a strange land.’”