But the bomb-thrower and the gambler are extremely undesirable. Look at the Black Hand outrages, look at the Rosenthal case!
Aye, I have looked, and I see plainly that these horrible examples are due to the same causes as any shining example that could be named. Each is the product of the qualities the immigrant brought with him and the opportunities he found here to exercise them. The law-abiding, ambitious immigrant who came here a beggar and worked himself into the ranks of the princes found his opportunity in our laws and customs, which enable the common man to make the most of himself. The blackmailer's opportunity was provided by the operation of corrupt politics, which removes police commissioners and impeaches governors for trying to enforce the law. The Rosenthal case brought forth Lieutenant Becker, and an investigation of the spread of the Black Hand terror discovers political bosses behind the scenes.(5) We have laws providing for the deportation of alien criminals. Why are they not always enforced? When we have found the broom that will sweep the political vermin from our legislatures, we shan't need to look around for a shovel to keep back the scum of Europe. The two will go together.
(5) See _The Outlook_, August 16, 1913; article by Frank Marshall White.
In the whole catalogue of sins with which the modern immigrant is charged, it is not easy to find one in which we Americans are not partners,--we who can make and unmake our world by means of the ballot. The immigrant is blamed for the unsanitary conditions of the slums, when sanitary experts cry shame on our methods of municipal house-cleaning. You might dump the whole of the East Side into the German capital and there would be no slums there, because the municipal authorities of Berlin know how to enforce building regulations, how to plant trees, and how to clean the streets. The very existence of the slum is laid at the door of the immigrant, but the truth is that the slums were here before the immigrants. Most of the foreigners hate the slums, and all but the few who have no backbone get out of them as fast as they rise in the economic scale. To "move uptown" is the dearest ambition of the average immigrant family.