The United States Immigration Commission informs the American
Congress that savings of immigrants to the amount of
$275,000,000 are annually sent abroad to be used in foreign
countries, and the commission says in its report: “The sum is
sent abroad for the purpose of supporting families in foreign
countries, for bringing other immigrants to the United States,
for the payment of debts or for savings and investment in the
countries from which the immigrants come.”
More than 2,300,000 persons throughout the United States are
doing an unregulated banking business, handling yearly hundreds
of millions of dollars, their customers being found wholly among
immigrant laborers who for the most part do not speak English.
The money actually sent abroad is thus distributed according to
countries: Italy, $85,000,000; Austria-Hungary, $75,000,000;
Russia, including Finland, $25,000,000; Great Britain,
$25,000,000; Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, $25,000,000; Germany,
$15,000,000; Greece, $5,000,000; the Balkan States, $5,000,000;
Japan, $5,000,000; China, $5,000,000; all other countries,
$5,000,000.
Even reducing the amount estimated as being too large, there
must be an immense outflow of money from the United States in
the direction indicated, and it helps explain why there is an
excess of commodity exports, averaging $400,000,000 annually,
over imports, to settle the invisible indebtedness of the
country abroad.
The great outflow of cash sent home by immigrants serves one
useful purpose: it advertises the general prosperity of the
great republic, and so helps keep up the volume of emigration
from Europe. A growing country requires people as well as
capital.
It has been estimated that every able-bodied immigrant is worth
to the country $5,000; the Northern republic is receiving nearly
a million immigrants annually, and allowing that a fifth part
are workers of sound physique the gain to the United States is
$1,000,000,000, gold, value a year.--_Mexican Herald._
(2564)