half-century.27 "It is reasonable," he thinks, "to expect an early falling off in the frequency of good looks in the American people." A diminution of stature, a depreciation of morality, an increase in gross fecundity, and a considerable lowering of the level of average natural ability are among other results that he considers probable. Not only are the races represented in the later immigration in many cases inferior in average ability to the earlier immigrant races, but America does not get the best, or even a representative selection,28 from the races which are now contributing to her population. "Europe retains most of her brains, but sends multitudes of the common and sub-common. There is little sign of an intellectual element among the Magyars, Russians, South Slavs, Italians, Greeks or Portuguese" who are now arriving. "This does not hold, however, for currents created by race discrimination or oppression. The Armenian, Syrian, Finnish and Russo-Hebrew streams seem representative, and the first wave of Hebrews out of Russia in the eighties was superior."
While the earlier immigration brought a liberal amount of intelligence and ability, the later immigration (roughly, that of the last half century) seems to have brought distinctly less. It is at present principally an immigration of unskilled labor, of vigorous, ignorant peasants. Some of this is "promoted" by agents of transportation companies and others who stand to gain by stirring up the population of a country village in Russia or Hungary, excite the illiterate peasants by stories of great wealth and freedom to be gained in the New World, provide the immigrant with a ticket to New York and start him for Ellis Island. Naturally, such immigration is predominantly male. On the whole, females make up one-third of the recent inflow, but among some races—Greeks, Italians and Roumanians, for example—only one-fifth.