All the complaints heard against immigration, and all the pressure that is brought to bear upon the government to restrict it, do not come from the rural districts, but from the large cities; and it is generally overlooked that the competition, which presses down the compensation for labor to such a degree that the wages earned for hard work are sometimes not sufficient to support one person, and far less a family, is not brought about solely by the immigrant who comes from abroad, but is, to a very great extent, the consequence of inter-migration, of the influx of villagers into the cities. While in country places there is a scarcity of labor, thus in New England, for example, while many farms are vacant, there are people starving in the cities, unable to obtain work. The increase of large cities and of their population is beyond the proportion in which it formerly stood to that of the country. This has aroused the thoughts of many long-headed people, and investigations are being made on every hand, especially because some people are moved by fear that city life will corrupt morality. They take it for granted that country people are virtuous, and that vice finds its domicile only in the large centres of population, and having established these premises, they argue that the tendency of country people to move into cities shows a degeneracy on their part, or that the abnormal growth of cities is a sure token of the moral depravity which has taken hold of the people. This, however, is not true. There is as much iniquity in proportion in small communities as in large ones, and not unfrequently wickedness and viciousness are attributed to actions which, after all, are neither wicked nor vicious, but merely strange to one who is not accustomed to them. The tide of inter-migration, which swells the population of the cities, has its natural causes, of which moral corruption is the least.