This importation of the poor and destitute does not much benefit European countries, if indeed it helps them at all. A country, which, like Italy or Belgium, is primarily industrial in character, has long since reached its limit of population. Remove a million Belgians or a million Italians to America, and their places are at once refilled by a million more births at home. Hence the creation of Italian or Belgian slums in Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago does not ultimately decrease the size of the slums in Brussels or Naples. Nor does the overflowing tide help the home country where, as from Poland or Hungary, the emigrants are largely peasants. The land of Poland and Hungary is held in large estates. Every peasant who deserts the soil of Europe to fester in our cities merely postpones the change in the land system which denies him opportunity in his own country. Furthermore, in Poland, Hungary, Rumania, etc., this peasant is now needed more than ever before to raise food crops. He leaves his country because conditions are bad. These evil conditions are due, in part, to the aftermath of war. But this is only secondary. The primary cause of poverty among the peasants of Southern and Eastern Europe has been large holdings of land and conditions of practical serfdom, but, above all, primitive and backward means of production. Instead of plowing his land with a plow, this backward peasant turns it up with a hoe three times the weight and with only half the cutting edge of an American garden hoe. Instead of reaping his grain with a reaper, the Polish or Russian peasant reaps with a scythe of about the size, weight and shape of an American fence rail. So, to compensate for his own ignorance, backwardness, and the crude mediaevalism of his whole environment, this peasant escapes responsibility by rushing to the United States. His case is exactly the same as that of the city wastrel from Belgium or Italy. In leaving his own country he does not help it in the least. In coming to America he drags us down to the pit of Hell.