Upon careful consideration it would appear that the immigrant problem is only a slightly varied expression of the general social and economic problem.  It focuses public attention because the case of the immigrant is so extreme.  For instance, whatever conditions, industrial or civic, press hardly upon the American worker, these conditions press with yet greater hardship upon the alien.  The alien and his difficulties form therefore a first point of contact, the point where the social reformer begins with his suggestions for improvement.  The very same thought unconsciously forms the basis of many of the proposed methods of dealing with the immigrant, however startlingly these may differ from one another in expression.  On the one hand we have such suggestions as that of Mr. Paul Kellogg, which he called “A Labor Tariff, A Minimum Wage for the Immigrant.”  It does not take very acute reasoning to perceive that if such a proposal were ever to become law, it would not be very long before there would have to be a universal minimum wage for everyone.

On the other hand, Mr. Edward B. Whitney in his Memorandum appended to the Report of the Commission of the State of New York argues thus in discussing the claim made by the majority of the Commission that certain special help and protection is needed by the alien.  He asks “whether, if a further extension of this kind of state charity is to be made, it would not be better to take up something for the benefit of our own citizens or for the benefit of citizen and alien alike.”  Mr. Whitney is entirely logical.  Only progress rarely takes place for logical reasons, or on lines dictated by logic, but it does in almost all cases follow the line of least resistance, and the wise progressive accepts gratefully whatever he can get, without being too anxious as to whether it seems to be logically the next step or not.

The immigrant has hitherto been used as an excuse to permit the dehumanizing of our cities; he has been used industrially as an instrument to make life harder for the hardly pressed classes of workers whom he joined on his arrival here.  That such has been his sorry function has been his misfortune as well as theirs.  Would it not be equally natural and far more fair to utilize his presence among us to raise our civic and economic and industrial standards?  It is no new story, this.  Out of every social problem we can construct a stepping-stone to something better and higher than was before.  The most that we know of health has been learned through a study of the misadjustments that bring about disease.  What has been done educationally to assist the defective, the handicapped and the dependent has thrown a flood of light upon the training of the normal child.  Through work undertaken in the first instance for the benefit of the exceptions, the minority, the whole community has benefited.