Seven years into the century a remarkable figure was produced. Foreigners in America sent home $275m in a single year, a total not far short of the value of all the gold mined in America. They used 2,625 money agents to do so, mostly through grocers, bakers and other small immigrant shops. New York alone had 500, Chicago 75 and Pittsburg 50. The New York Times gasped at the numbers a little later, in 1910, and noted that migrants were shunning bigger banks as "the Italian and the Magyar and the Croat and the Slovak [are] simple, ignorant foreigners".
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