Im reading a charming book called Tramps and Ladies, an autobiography of a ship captain of the Cunard line in the transition from sail to steam. The last chapter I read paints a picture of the unrestricted immigration of the 1900s - anyone with 5 pounds could hop on a ship in Hamburg, Liverpool, or Piraeus and start a new life in the States, and people poured into New York in the millions. I wonder if the mass emigration was a factor leading up to the Great War.

Anyhow consider me demoralized, i cant picture anything the US could do in the next decade to turn the ship around from the fuck-it-all perestroika we've adopted as federal policy. (Speaking of turning the ship around, I'm looking forward to my 8 day east bound crossing from NYC to Southampton at the end of the month. The ship is capable of doing it in 5 days but the demand isn't there to pay the extra cost to run the turbines at full steam.)