In writing on the social aspect of this evil, it is well to make one's meaning quite plain. I do not of course mean to say--no one can say--that to restrict the immigration of the destitute, the criminal, or the worthless, would be a panacea for all our social ills. Far from it; but it would at least remove from their way, one of the most potent causes of degradation in the material and social condition of the poor in our large cities. Until something has first been done to check this evil, charitable agencies, religious movements, colonization and emigration schemes will be beside the mark. However much good they may do here and there--and I freely admit the amount of good that such movements have done, and are doing every day--they will fail to go to the root of the evil, since they deal with effects and not with causes; they treat the symptoms, but not the disease.
Emigration is worthless while this continuous influx is allowed to go on. At the best, emigration is a drastic remedy only to be applied in the last resource. If, like the Great Plague, or Fire of London, emigration carried off the diseased, or swept away foul and unhealthy tenements, it might possibly be regarded with more complacency. But under existing circumstances this is just what emigration does not do. We must bear in mind that we can no longer draft off our social failures to other countries. Even our colonies now refuse to take the "wreckage" of the mother country. The people we emigrate now, are just those we can least afford to lose. And there is another consideration. Of the thousands we emigrate yearly, most are men, young, healthy, and vigorous. Of the women, all--or nearly all--are virtuous and industrious. In either sex the residuum, both men and women, and more especially women, remain behind. "Bad men die, but bad women multiply," once said a lady whose name is a synonym for all that is charitable and good, when urging the advisability of giving the fallen sisterhood of our great cities a chance of beginning life over again in some new land beyond the seas. These are pregnant words, but under our present system little or no provision is made for carrying them into effect. Things have come to such a pass, that while we emigrate the flower of our population, the industrious, the vigorous, and the courageous; the feeble, the idle, and the worthless remain with us; and this undesirable increment is ever being augmented by the refuse population of other countries.