Appreciating the importance of having the family begin life in their new environment with dignity and self-respect, an offer was made to loan him money if he would recall the women who were begging for him. Together we figured out the minimum sum needed, and within an hour the twenty-five dollars was in his hands and he had recalled the women with joy. He took the loan without exaggerated protest or gratitude, merely saying: “As there is a God in heaven you will not regret this.” He was a skillful cobbler and the wife a good housekeeper, and in six months they brought back the twenty-five dollars. It was pleasanter not to think of the pinching in the household that made this prompt repayment possible. Some time later he brought me forty dollars which the family had saved, saying he knew it would give me pleasure to start the savings-bank account which they would need for the education of the children. The subsequent history of this family, like many another known to us in Henry Street, shows the real contribution brought into American life by immigrants of this character. * * * * * In discussions throughout the country of the problems of immigration it is significant that few, if any, of the men and women who have had extended opportunity for social contact with the foreigner favor a further restriction of immigration. The government’s policy regarding the immigrant has been negative, concerned with exclusion and deportation, with the head tax and the enforcement of treaties and international agreements. By our laws we are protected from the pauper, the sick, and the vicious; but only within recent years has a hearing been given to those who have asked that our government assume an affirmative policy of protection, distribution, and assimilation. [Illustration] The need of constructive social measures has long been indicated. The planting of roots in the new soil can best be accomplished through an intercourse with the immigrant in which the dignity of the individual and of the family is recognized. Heroic measures may be necessary to establish a satisfactory system of distribution, and these measures must be based on a philosophic understanding of democracy. Among them should be provision for giving instruction to the prospective immigrant in regard to those laws, customs, or prohibitions with which he is liable to come in contact, and also in regard to the industrial opportunities open to him. Then, with competent medical examination at the port of departure and humane consideration there and here, the tragedies now so frequent at the port of arrival might be diminished, or even eliminated altogether.