It is not that the immigrants love streets and crowds. Two-thirds of them are farm bred, but they are dropped down in cities, and they find it easier to herd there with their fellows than to make their way into the open country. Our cities would be fewer and smaller had they fed on nothing but country-bred Americans. The later alien influx has rushed us into the thick of urban problems, and these are gravest where Americans are fewest. Congestion, misliving, segregation, corruption, and confusion are seen in motley groups like Pittsburgh, Jersey City, Paterson, and Fall River rather than in native centers like Indianapolis, Columbus, Nashville, and Los Angeles. PAUPERISM Ten years ago two-fifths of the paupers in our almshouses were foreign-born, but most of them had come over in the old careless days when we allowed European poorhouses to send us their inmates. Now that our authorities turn back such as appear likely to become a public charge, the obvious pauper is not entering this country. We know that virtually every Greek in America is self-supporting. The Syrians are said to be singularly independent. The Slavs and the Magyars are sturdy in spirit, and the numerous indigent Hebrews are for the most part cared for by their own race. [Illustration: Distribution of Foreign-Born Whites in the United States--1910] Nevertheless, dispensers of charity agree that many South Italians are landing with the most extravagant ideas of what is coming to them. They apply at once for relief with the air, "Here we are. Now what are you going to do for us?" They even _insist_ on relief as a right. At home it had been noised about that in foolish America baskets of food are actually sent in to the needy, and some are coming over expressly to obtain such largess. Probably none are so infected with spiritual hookworm as the immigrants from Naples. It will be recalled that when Garibaldi and his thousand were fighting to break the Bourbon tyranny in the South, the Neapolitans would hurrah for them, but would not even care for the wounded. Says the Forty-seventh Annual Report of the New York Juvenile Asylum: It is remarkable that recently arrived immigrants who display small adaptability in American standards are by no means slow in learning about this and other institutions where they may safely leave their children to be fed, clothed, and cared for at the public expense. This is one of the inducements which led them to leave their native land. Charity experts are very pessimistic as to what we shall see when those who come in their youth have passed their prime and met the cumulative effects of overwork, city life, drink, and vice. Still darker are their forebodings for a second generation, reared too often by ignorant, avaricious rustics lodging in damp cellars, sleeping with their windows shut, and living on the bad, cheap food of cities. Of the Italians in Boston Dr. Bushee writes: