Excerpt from Immigration and Labor: The Economic Aspects of European Immigration to the United States There is no real ground for the popular opinion that the immigrants of the present generation are drawn from a poorer class than their predecessors. It is a historical fact that prior to 1820 the great maj ority of the immigrants were too poor to prepay their passage, which never cost as much as $50 per steerage passenger; the usual way for a poor man to secure transportation for himself and family was to con tract to be sold into servitude after arrival. The next gene ration of immigrants was not much better 03. According to contemporary testimony, the millions of Irish and Germans who came in the middle of the nineteenth century were ignorant and accustomed to a very low standard of living. Since the races of Southern and Eastern Europe have become predominant among immigrants to the United States, the steerage rates have been doubled, the increase being equivalent to a heavy head tax. The higher cost of transportation must have raised the financial standard of the new immigration, as compared with the immigrants of the 7o's and the early 80's. This inference is borne out by the fact that the percentage of illiteracy is much lower among the immigrants than among their countrymen who remain at home. Illiteracy is generally the effect of pov arty. The higher literacy of the immigrant may be accep ted as evidence that economically the immigrant must be above the average of his mother country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.