town of Arnot, a place named for John Arnot, a New York business man who was president of a big coal company there. Arnot is about five miles from Blossburg and in the same county of Tioga. The nearest large city is Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

No one who has not spent some time in a mining town can appreciate the loneliness and barrenness of one of these communities. Arnot was as good as many and perhaps better than some because the workers there were mostly from England and Scotland. The worst towns are those in which the workers are from southern Europe. God forbid that any more such towns should be built. No, they are not really built; they are simply thrown together.

Arnot, in those days, consisted of three or four narrow streets with matched board huts along them. None of these huts were shingled; only strips of board were nailed over the cracks to keep out the rain, snow, and wind. Not a shack in town was painted, and then none had even vines or trees. There was a little Presbyterian church which William's father attended the first Sunday he was in Arnot, and in which he continued to worship with his family as long as they lived in that place. There were the railroad station, the company store, the company doctor, the various. saloons and places of sin and crime. Everything was owned by the company, from the railroad station to the last house. Everything must be bought from the company, from the baby's nursing bottle to the aged man's coffin.

The two or three main streets led to the mines, which were about ten minutes' walk from the center of the village. The father found a humble place to board and went to work at once. The hours were from

six o'clock in the morning to five o'clock in the evening. The pay was seventy cents for each ton of coal mined and loaded.

It was very fortunate for the people of the United States, yes, for the people of the world, that the Immigration Service of this country was placed under the Department of Labor, and that the first Secretary of Labor was W. B. Wilson. I say this because W. B. Wilson was an immigrant himself and knows from experience the trials and temptations besetting the stranger who comes to this land. Furthermore, he understands the feelings of labor leaders in their desire to restrict immigration. As almost no other high official, he has had a training and experience in both these opposed directions. He understands the feeling of the immigrant who is desirous of getting into the country and also the feeling of the labor leaders who desire to keep the immigrant out.

Immediately upon becoming Secretary of Labor, Mr. Wilson looked into the immigration situation. Most of the cases he personally handled, and was always the court of last resort that decided what should be done in each instance. He also took a great personal interest in the Bureau of Naturalization, whose work harmonized with that of the Bureau of Immigration. He immediately sought the best men available to place in charge of the Immigration and Naturalization Bureaus. He realized that these men must have hearts as well as judgment, and must have judgment as well as hearts. He first sought men who were just, but he knew that there must be more than justice. Unless justice is tempered with sympathy and understanding, it cannot accomplish the desired end.

CHAPTER III

BILLY ARRIVES AT CASTLE GARDEN

IT WAS a wonderful, wonderful moment. The mother of William B. Wilson, in the little town of Haughhead, Scotland, received a letter from America, inclosing a sufficient sum of money to enable her and the three children to join their father. Of course, it wasn't much money, much less for those four than one of us would spend for an ordinary journey today. But they were going to see Father. They cared not that they were going steerage; they cared not what a terrible two weeks lay ahead of them. All they could think of was America and Father. This letter arrived in the last month of summer in 1870, the same year in which the father set sail. In these few months in America he had been able to save enough to bring his wife and three children to this land of freedom.

William B. Wilson, at the age of eight, left his home in Scotland, with his little brother and sister holding tight to his hands, and trudged along behind the mother, who was carrying the baggage and all their possessions. They sailed from Glasgow on the 27th day of August, 1870. They came over in the steerage of a small ship. Only those who have traveled in the steerage know what that means, and only persons who came in those early days can appreciate what that mother and the three children went through during that trip. However, they were coming to America! They were coming to meet Father! Nothing else mattered.

At the end of about two weeks they landed at Castle Garden, New York, with a boat load of other poor immigrants. They had no idea of the size of the State of Pennsylvania, nor of the size of America. The father had written that Arnot was near New York, while Arnot is about 250 miles from New York. It is very near compared with Chicago, Denver, and the Pacific Coast. When, however, you compare that distance with the distance from the northern tip of Scotland to the southern tip of England, which all together is only about 500 miles, we see how easy it is to mislead our immigrants.

Father had written that he would be in New York to meet them when they arrived, but the boat landed before it was expected. When Mother and the three children reached New York, no one had seen or heard of Father.

"I shall never forget," said the Secretary to me, "when we landed at Castle Garden with that boatload of immigrants. We expected Father to meet us, but after looking everywhere, we could not find him. I shall never forget how my poor mother sat down on the wharf and cried and cried. Then one by one we all began to cry; but before long we heard some one going up and down the wharf, calling: 'Mrs. Helen N. Wilson! Mrs. Helen N. Wilson!'"'

This, however, was not the father. He had sent so much money to Scotland to pay for their tickets, that he had not the money to come to New York. This was merely a letter from him. Mother quickly tore it open and in it found just enough money to take the family to Corning, New York. So they went from Castle Garden over to the Erie Railroad, crossed

the ferry, and took a train for Corning. Meanwhile, the father was on his way from Arnot to Corning. Surely that was a happy reunion of the Wilson family at Corning. They, however, did not stay long in Corning, but kept on in the dirty little day coach. till they reached the town of Arnot very late Saturday night.

I once asked the Secretary to tell me about his first view of America. I supposed he would talk about his entrance into the harbor and his experience at Castle Garden. I forgot that he was down in the hold of the ship where there are no port holes, so he could not see the harbor; and that they quickly left Castle Garden for Corning. This was his answer to my question:

"Really my first view of America was early that Sunday morning following my arrival in Arnot. We did not get to bed until after two o'clock, but boylike, I was awake and dressed at daybreak. My first impression was one of tomatoes. There was a row on the window sill of the room in which I slept, placed there to ripen in the sun. They were the first I had ever seen. I had not had anything to eat for twenty-four hours, and I could not resist the temptation to bite into one of those tomatoes, thinking it must taste as good as it looked. I thought I was poisoned! I gave one yell and ran out doors. But after getting a good drink of water, I felt able to come in and help the family get breakfast. This was my first American breakfast, and it certainly did taste good after having nothing to eat for so long. But we were awfully poor. Mother had spent all the money for the passage. Father had sent enough to us at