place, sometimes a third or a fourth, each with a brood of children
and often a boarder or two. The American families left in the
neighborhood are scandalized by this promiscuity, by the bare feet and
bare heads, by the unspeakable fare, the superstition and credulity,
and illiteracy and disregard for sanitary measures, and by the
ant-like industry from starlight to starlight. Old Hadley has become a
prototype of what may become general if this racial infiltration is
not soon checked. In 1906 the Poles numbered one-fifth of the
population in that town, owned one-twentieth of the land, and
produced two-thirds of the babies. Dignified old streets that
formerly echoed with the tread of patriots now resound to the din of
Polish weddings and christenings, and the town that sheltered William
Goffe, one of the judges before whom Charles I was tried, now houses
Polish transients at twenty-five cents a bed weekly.

The transient usually returns to Europe, but the landowner remains.
His kind is increasing yearly. It is even probable that in a
generation he will be the chief landowner of the Connecticut Valley.
It will take more than an association of old families, determined on
keeping the ancient homes in their own hands, to check this
transformation.

The process of racial replacement is most rapid in the smaller
manufacturing towns. In the New England mills the Yankee gave way to
the Irish, the Irish gave way to the French Canadian, and the French
Canadian has been largely superseded by the Slav and the Italian.
Every one of the older industrial towns has been encrusted in layer
upon layer of foreign accretions, until it is difficult to discover
the American core. Everywhere are the physiognomy, the chatter, and
the aroma of the modern steerage. Lawrence, Massachusetts, is typical