CHAPTER II 
CAUSES OF IMMIGRATION 
There are two basal facts upon which rests 
immigration to the United States. One, vast 
areas of virtually free land without people; the 
other, oppressed populations in Europe without 
land or access to it. No view of the causes of 
immigration that does not have for its back 
ground these two central facts can secure the 
proper perspective of this great movement of 
European populations to the United States. 
At the opening of the nineteenth century the 
sparse population of the United States was 
largely confined to the Atlantic seaboard. 
Westward from the Alleghenies stretched an 
unexplored and virtually an uninhabited coun 
try whose extent was unknown but into whose 
plains and prairies and forests the explorer, the 
surveyor, the trapper, the pioneer, and the 
frontiersman had already gone to prepare it for 
habitation. Here lay trackless forests and un 
tilled plains; great lakes, and rivers equally 
great; a region rich in soil and mineral deposits 
and possessing a climate suitable to man’s wel 
fare. Briefly, here was a virgin empire needing 
only the labour of man to yield forth a super 
abundance of material wealth. 
Erom an elevation of nearly six hundred feet 
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