Years ago when New Bedford was still a whaling port a group of
Portuguese sailors from the Azores settled there. This formed the
nucleus of the Portuguese immigration which, in the last decade,
included over 80,000 persons. Two-thirds of these live in New England
factory towns, the remaining third, strange to say, have found their
way to the other side of the continent, where they work in the gardens
and fruit orchards of California. New Bedford is still the center of
their activity. They are a hard-working people whose standard of
living, according to official investigations "is much lower than that
of any other race," of whom scarcely one in twenty become citizens,
and who evince no interest in learning or in manual skill.
Finally, American cities are extending the radius of their magnetism
and are drawing ambitious tradesmen and workers from the Levant. Over
100,000 have come from Arabia, Syria, Armenia, and Turkey. The
Armenians and Syrians, forming the bulk of this influx, came as
refugees from the brutalities of the Mohammedan regime. The Levantine
is first and always a bargainer. His little bazaars and oriental rug
shops are bits of Cairo and Constantinople, where you are privileged
to haggle over every purchase in true oriental style. Even the
peddlers of lace and drawn-work find it hard to accustom themselves to
the occidental idea of a market price.
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