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Title: Aliens or Americans?
Author: Grose, Howard B. (Howard Benjamin), 1851-1939
Language: English
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[Illustration: COMING AMERICANS]
FORWARD MISSION STUDY COURSES
EDITED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
ALIENS
OR
AMERICANS
?
HOWARD B. GROSE With Introduction BY JOSIAH STRONG
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY YOUNG PEOPLE'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT NEW
YORK
UNGUARDED GATES
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them presses a wild, motley throng--
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Celt, and Slav,
Flying the old world's poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In street and alley what strange tongues are these,
Accents of menace alien to our air,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
O Liberty, White Goddess! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate,
Lift the downtrodden, but with the hand of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn
And trampled in the dust. For so of old
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome.
And where the temples of the Cæsars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.
_--Thomas Bailey Aldrich._
* * * * *
TO ONE
WHO CHERISHES AMERICAN
IDEALS, WHO HAS INCULCATED LOVE OF
COUNTRY IN HER CHILDREN, AND
SOUGHT TO INSPIRE IT IN
ALL--MY WIFE
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface 9
Introduction, by Josiah Strong 13
I. The Alien Advance 15
II. Alien Admission and Restriction 51
III. Problems of Legislation and Distribution 87
IV. The New Immigration 121
V. The Eastern Invasion 157
VI. The Foreign Peril of the City 193
VII. Immigration and the National Character 231
VIII. The Home Mission Opportunity 267
APPENDIXES
A. Tables of Immigrants Admitted and Debarred 305
B. The Immigration Laws 309
C. Work of Leading Denominations for the Foreign Population 314
D. Bibliography 321
ILLUSTRATIONS
Coming Americans Frontispiece
The Inflowing Tide 18
Ellis Island Immigration Station 34
Receiving Room at Ellis Island 59
Detained for Special Examination 74
An Appeal from the Special Inquiry Board to Commissioner Watchorn 94
The Landing at the Battery in New York 102
A German Family 128
Italian and Swiss Girls 144
A Group of Twelve Different Nationalities 166
Three Types of Immigrants 180
A Group of Immigrants Just Arrived at Ellis Island 198
An Italian Family Crowded in a New York Tenement 210
Four Nationalities 236
Portuguese and Spanish Children 256
An Italian Sunday School in New England 283
_Sketch Maps and Charts_
Immigration at the Port of New York for 1906 32
Immigrant Distribution by States for 1905 106
Immigrant Distribution by Races:
Scandinavian 108
Canadian and British 109
Irish 114
Germanic 115
French and Iberic 146
Slavic 171
Changes in Sources of Immigration Causing Increase of Illiteracy 125
Countries from which the Slavs Come 161
Distribution of Slavs in the United States 163
Wave of Immigration for Eighty-seven Years 308
Colored Chart of Races of Immigrants for 1905 End
PREFACE
It is not a question as to whether the aliens will come. They have come,
millions of them; they are now coming, at the rate of a million a year.
They come from every clime, country, and condition; and they are of
every sort: good, bad, and indifferent, literate and illiterate,
virtuous and vicious, ambitious and aimless, strong and weak, skilled
and unskilled, married and single, old and young, Christian and infidel,
Jew and pagan. They form to-day the raw material of the American
citizenship of to-morrow. What they will be and do then depends largely
upon what our American Protestant Christianity does for them now.
Immigration--the foreign peoples in America, who and where they are,
whence they come, and what under our laws and liberties and influences
they are likely to become--this is the subject of our study. The subject
is as fascinating as it is vital. Its problems are by far the most
pressing, serious, and perplexing with which the American people have to
do. It is high time that our young people were familiarizing themselves
with the facts, for this is preëminently the question of to-day.
Patriotism and religion--love of country and love of Christ--unite to
urge thoughtful consideration of this great question: Aliens or
Americans? One aim of this book is to show our individual responsibility
for the answer, and how we can discharge it.
Immigration may be regarded as a peril or a providence, an ogre or an
obligation--according to the point of view. The Christian ought to see
in it the unmistakable hand of God opening wide the door of evangelistic
opportunity. Through foreign missions we are sending the gospel to the
ends of the earth. As a home mission God is sending the ends of the
earth to our shores and very doors. The author is a Christian optimist
who believes God has a unique mission for Christian America, and that it
will ultimately be fulfilled. While the facts are in many ways
appalling, the result of his study of the foreign peoples in our country
has made him hopeful concerning their Americanization and
evangelization, if only American Christians are awake and faithful to
their duty. The Christian young people, brought to realize that
immigration is another way of spelling obligation, must do their part to
remove that tremendous IF.
These newcomers are in reality a challenge to American Christianity. The
challenge is clear and imperative. Will we give the gospel to the
heathen in America? Will we extend the hand of Christian brotherhood and
helpfulness to the stranger within our gates? Will we Christianize,
which is the only real way to Americanize, the Aliens? May this book
help to inspire the truly Christian answer that shall mean much for the
future of our country, and hence of the world.
The author makes grateful acknowledgment to all who have assisted by
suggestion or otherwise. He has tried to give credit to the authors
whose works he has used. He is under special obligation for counsel and
many courtesies to Josiah Strong, one of the modern patriot-prophets who
has sought to awaken Americans to their Christian duty and privilege.
HOWARD B. GROSE.
_Briarcliff Manor, June, 1906._
INTRODUCTION
A million immigrants!
A million opportunities!
A million obligations!
This in brief is the message of _Aliens or Americans?_
A young man who came to this country young enough to get the benefit of
our public schools, and who then took a course in Columbia University,
writes: "Now, at twenty-one, I am a free American, with only one strong
desire; and that is to do something for my fellow-men, so that when my
time comes to leave the world, I may leave it a bit the better." These
are the words of a Russian Jew; and that Russian is a better American,
that Jew is a better Christian, than many a descendant of the Pilgrim
Fathers.
In this country every man is an American who has American ideals, the
American spirit, American conceptions of life, American habits. A man is
foreign not because he was born in a foreign land, but because he clings
to foreign customs and ideas.
I do not fear foreigners half so much as I fear Americans who impose on
them and brutally abuse them. Such Americans are the most dangerous
enemies to our institutions, utterly foreign to their true spirit. Such
Americans are the real foreigners.
Most of those who come to us are predisposed in favor of our
institutions. They are generally unacquainted with the true character of
those institutions, but they all know that America is the land of
freedom and of plenty, and they are favorably inclined toward the ideas
and the obligations which are bound up with these blessings. They are
open to American influence, and quickly respond to a new and a better
environment.
They naturally look up to us, and if with fair and friendly treatment we
win their confidence, they are easily transformed into enthusiastic
Americans. But if by terms of opprobrium, such as "sheeny" and "dago,"
we convince them that they are held in contempt, and if by oppression
and fraud we render them suspicious of us, we can easily compact them
into masses, hostile to us and dangerous to our institutions and
organized for the express purpose of resisting all Americanizing
influences.
Whether immigrants remain _Aliens_ or become _Americans_ depends less on
them than on ourselves.
JOSIAH STRONG.
_New York, June 26, 1906._
_We may well ask whether this insweeping immigration is to
foreignize us, or we are to Americanize it. Our safety demands the
assimilation of these strange populations, and the process of
assimilation becomes slower and more difficult as the proportion of
foreigners increases._
--Josiah Strong.
THE ALIEN ADVANCE
"And ELISHA prayed, and said, Jehovah, I pray thee, open his
eyes, that he may see. And Jehovah opened the eyes of the young man: and
he saw" (2 Kings vi. 17). Elisha's prayer is peculiarly fitting now. The
first need of American Protestantism is for clear vision, to discern the
supreme issues involved in immigration, recognize the spiritual
significance and divine providence in and behind this marvelous
migration of peoples, and so see Christian obligation as to rise to the
mission of evangelizing these representatives of all nations gathered on
American soil.--_The Author._
Out of the remote and little-known regions of northern, eastern, and
southern Europe forever marches a vast and endless army. Nondescript and
ever-changing in personnel, without leaders or organization, this great
force, moving at the rate of nearly 1,500,000 each year, is invading the
civilized world.--_J. D. Whelpley._
Political optimism is one of the vices of the American people. There is
a popular faith that "God takes care of children, fools, and the United
States." Until within a few years probably not one in a hundred of our
population has ever questioned the security of our future. Such optimism
is as senseless as pessimism is faithless. The one is as foolish as the
other is wicked.--_Josiah Strong._
I
THE ALIEN ADVANCE
_I. A Year's Immigration Analyzed_
[Sidenote: A Million a Year]
What does a million of immigrants a year mean? Possibly something of
more significance to us if we put it this way, that at present one in
every eighty persons in the entire United States has arrived from
foreign shores within twelve months. Of this inpouring human tide one of
the latest writers on immigration says, in a striking passage:
[Sidenote: The Peaceful Invasion]
"Like a mighty stream, it finds its source in a hundred rivulets. The
huts of the mountains and the hovels of the plains are the springs which
feed; the fecundity of the races of the old world the inexhaustible
source. It is a march the like of which the world has never seen, and
the moving columns are animated by but one idea--that of escaping from
evils which have made existence intolerable, and of reaching the free
air of countries where conditions are better shaped to the welfare of
the masses of the people.
[Sidenote: Variety of Peoples]
"It is a vast procession of varied humanity. In tongue it is polyglot;
in dress all climes from pole to equator are indicated, and all
religions and beliefs enlist their followers. There is no age limit, for
young and old travel side by side. There is no sex limitation, for the
women are as keen as, if not more so than, the men; and babes in arms
are here in no mean numbers. The army carries its equipment on its back,
but in no prescribed form. The allowance is meager, it is true, but the
household gods of a family sprung from the same soil as a hundred
previous generations may possibly be contained in shapeless bags or
bundles. Forever moving, always in the same direction, this marching
army comes out of the shadow, converges to natural points of
distribution, masses along the international highways, and its vanguard
disappears, absorbed where it finds a resting-place."[1]
[Sidenote: The Ellis Island Inflow]
See the living stream pour into America through the raceway of Ellis
Island.[2] There is no such sight to be seen elsewhere on the planet.
Suppose for the moment that all the immigrants of 1905 came in by that
wide open way, as eight tenths of them actually did. If your station had
been by that gateway, where you could watch the human tide flowing
through, and if the stream had been steady, on every day of the 365 you
would have seen more than 2,800 living beings--men, women, and children,
of almost every conceivable condition except that of wealth or
eminence--pass from the examination "pens" into the liberty of American
opportunity. Since the stream was spasmodic, its numbers did reach as
high in a single day as 11,343.
[Sidenote: A Motley Procession]
Imagine an army of nearly 20,000 a week marching in upon an unprotected
country. At the head come the motley and strange-looking
migrants--largely refugee Jews--from the far Russian Empire and the
regions of Hungary and Roumania. At the daily rate of 2,800 it would
take this indescribable assortment more than 166 days to pass in single
file. Then the Italians would consume about eighty days more. For over
eight months you would have watched so large a proportion of illiteracy,
incompetency, and insensibility to American ideals, that you would be
tempted to despair of the Republic. Nor would you lose the sense of
nightmare when the English and Irish were consuming forty-two days in
passing, for the "green" of the Emerald Isle is vivid at Ellis Island,
and the best class of the English stay at home. The flaxen-haired and
open-faced Scandinavians would lighten the picture, but with the equally
sturdy Germans they would get by in only a month and four days.
[Sidenote: A Process of Enlightenment]
This much is certain, whatever may be thought of the fanciful
procession. No American who spends a single day at Ellis Island, when
the loaded steamships have come in, will afterward require awakening on
the subject of immigration and the necessity of doing something
effective in the way of Americanization. A good view of the steerage is
the best possible enlightener.
[Sidenote: A Graphic Grouping]
A million a year and more is the rate at which immigrants are now coming
into the United States.[3] It is not easy to grasp the significance of
such numbers: yet we must try to do so if we are to realize the problem
to be solved. To get this mass of varied humanity within the mind's eye,
let us divide and group it. First, recall some small city or town with
which you are familiar, of about 10,000 inhabitants; say Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, where the treaty of peace between Japan and Russia was agreed
upon; or Saratoga Springs, New York; or Vincennes, Indiana; or Ottawa,
Illinois; or Sioux Falls, South Dakota; or Lawrence, Kansas. Settle one
hundred towns of this size with immigrants, mostly of the peasant class,
with their un-American languages, customs, religion, dress, and ideas,
and you would locate merely those who came from Europe and Asia in the
year ending June 30, 1905. Those who came from other parts of the world
would make two and a half towns more, or a city the size of Poughkeepsie
in New York, seat of Vassar College, or Burlington in Iowa, of about
25,000 each.
[Sidenote: Grouped by Nationality]
[Sidenote: Queer Towns these would be]
Gather these immigrants by nationality, and you would have in round
numbers twenty-two Italian cities of 10,000 people, or massed together,
a purely Italian city as large as Minneapolis with its 220,000. The
various peoples of Austria-Hungary--Bohemians, Magyars, Jews, and
Slavs--would fill twenty-seven and one half towns; or a single city
nearly as large as Detroit. The Jews, Poles, and other races fleeing
from persecution in Russia, would people eighteen and one half towns, or
a city the size of Providence. For the remainder we should have four
German cities of 10,000 people, six of Scandinavians, one of French, one
of Greeks, one of Japanese, six and a half of English, five of Irish,
and nearly two of Scotch and Welsh. Then we should have six towns of
between 4,000 and 5,000 each, peopled respectively by Belgians, Dutch,
Portuguese, Roumanians, Swiss, and European Turks; while Asian Turks
would fill another town of 6,000. We should have a Servian, Bulgarian,
and Montenegrin village of 2,000; a Spanish village of 2,600; a Chinese
village of 2,100; and the other Asiatics would fill up a town of 5,000
with as motley an assortment as could be found under the sky. Nor are we
done with the settling as yet, for the West Indian immigrants would make
a city of 16,600, the South Americans and Mexicans a place of 5,000, the
Canadians a 2,000 village, and the Australians another; leaving a
colony of stragglers and strays, the ends of creation, to the number of
2,000 more. Place yourself in any one of these hundred odd cities or
villages thus peopled, without a single American inhabitant, with
everything foreign, including religion; then realize that just such a
foreign population as is represented by all these places has actually
been put somewhere in this country within a twelvemonth, and the
immigration problem may assume a new aspect and take on a new concern.
[Sidenote: Grouped by Illiteracy]
But let us carry our imagination a little further. Suppose we bring
together into one place the illiterates of 1905--the immigrants of all
nationalities, over fourteen years of age, who could neither read nor
write. They would make a city as large as Jersey City or Kansas City,
and 15,000 larger than Indianapolis. Think of a population of 230,000
with no use for book, paper, ink, pen, or printing press. This mass of
dense ignorance was distributed some way within a year, and more
illiterates are coming in by every steamer. Divide this city of
ignorance by nationalities into wards, and there would be an Italian
ward of 100,000, far outnumbering all others; in other words, the
Italian illiterates landed in America in a year equal the population of
Albany, capital of the Empire State. The other leading wards would be:
Polish, 33,000; Hebrew, 22,000, indicating the low conditions whence
they came; Slav, 36,000; Magyar and Lithuanian, 12,000; Syrian and
Turkish, 3,000. These regiments of non-readers and writers come almost
exclusively from the south and east of Europe. Of the large total of
illiterates, 230,882 to be exact--it is noteworthy that only
seventy-five were Scotch; and only 157 were Scandinavian, out of the
more than 60,000 from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. That almost one
quarter of a total million of newcomers should be unable to read or
write is certainly a fact to be taken into account, and one that throws
a calcium light on the general quality of present-day immigration and
the educational status of the countries from which they come. Illiteracy
is a worse reflection upon the foreign government than upon the foreign
immigrant.
[Sidenote: The Army of the Unskilled]
To complete this grouping, we should go one step further, and make up a
number of divisions according to occupation and no-occupation, skilled
and unskilled labor. To begin with, the unskilled laborers would fill a
city of 430,000, or about the size of Cincinnati. Those classified as
servants, with a fair question mark as to the amount of skill possessed,
numbered 125,000 more, equal to the population of New Haven. Those
classified as without occupation, including the children under fourteen,
numbered 232,000, equal to the population of Louisville. Gathering into
one great body, then, what may fairly be called unskilled labor, the
total is not far from 780,000 out of the 1,026,499 who came. This mass
would fill a city the size of Boston, Cambridge, and Lynn combined, or
of Cleveland and Washington. Imagine, if you can, what kind of a city it
would be, and contrast that with these centers of civilization as they
now are.
[Sidenote: Whole States Equaled in Numbers]
To put all the emphasis possible upon these facts, consider that the
immigration of a single year exceeded by 26,000 the population of
Connecticut, which has been settled and growing ever since early
colonial days. It exceeded by 37,000 the combined population of Alaska,
Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. These immigrants would have
repopulated whole commonwealths, but they would hardly be called
commonwealths in that case. If such immigrant distribution could be
made, how quickly would the imperative necessity of Americanization be
realized. The Italians who came during the year would exceed the
combined population of Alaska and Wyoming. The Hungarians and Slavs
would replace the present population of New Hampshire, or of North
Dakota, and equal that of Vermont and Wyoming together. The Russian Jews
and Finlanders would replace the people of Arizona. The army of
illiterates would repeople Delaware and Nevada. And the much larger army
of the unskilled would exceed by 50,000 the population of Maine, that
of Colorado by about 80,000, and twice that of the District of Columbia.
[Sidenote: The Race Proportions]
The diagram at the end of the book, taken from the Report of the
Commissioner-General of Immigration for 1905, will help us to fix in
mind the race proportions of the present immigration. The increase of
1905 over 1904 was 213,629. Almost one half of this was from
Austria-Hungary, and all of it was from four countries, the other three
being Russia, Italy, and the United Kingdom. There was a decrease from
Germany, Sweden, and Norway.
_II. The Inflow Since 1820_
[Sidenote: Immigration Totals since 1820]
We have been considering thus far the immigration of a single year. To
make the effect of this survey cumulative, let us include the totals of
immigration from the first.[4] The official records begin with 1820. It
is estimated that prior to that date the total number of alien arrivals
was 250,000. In 1820 there were 8,385 newcomers, less than sometimes
land at Ellis Island in a single day now, and they came chiefly from
three nations--Great Britain, Germany, and Sweden. The stream gradually
increased, but with many fluctuations, governed largely by the economic
conditions. The highest immigration prior to the potato famine in
Ireland in 1847 was in the year 1842, when the total for the first time
passed the 100,000 mark, being 104,565. In 1849 the number leaped to
297,024, with a large proportion of the whole from Ireland; in 1850 it
was 310,000; while 1854 was the high year of that period, with 427,833.
Then came the panic and financial depression in America, and after that
the civil war, which sent the immigration figures down. It was not until
1866, after the war was over, that the total again rose to 300,000. In
1872 it was 404,806; in 1873, 459,803; falling back then until 1880,
when a high period set in. The totals of 1881 (669,431) and of 1882
(788,992) were not again equaled until 1903, when for the first time the
800,000 mark was passed.
[Sidenote: The Totals by Decades]
Taking the figures by decades, we have this enlightening table:
1821 to 1830 143,439
1831 to 1840 599,125
1841 to 1850 1,713,251
1851 to 1860 2,598,214
1861 to 1870 2,314,824
1871 to 1880 2,812,191
1881 to 1890 5,246,613
1891 to 1900 3,687,564
1901 to 1905 3,833,076
----------
Total, 1821 to 1905 22,948,297
From this it appears that more aliens landed in the single decade from
1880 to 1890 than in the period of forty-five years from 1820 to 1865.
Indeed, the immigration of the past six years more than outnumbers that
of the forty years from 1820 to 1860.
[Sidenote: A Startling Total of 23,000,000]
Thus, from colonial days above twenty-three millions of aliens have been
received upon these hospitable shores. And more than thirteen millions
of them have come since 1880, or in the last quarter century. No wonder
it is said that the invasion of Attila and his Huns was but a side
incident compared to this modern migration of the millions.
[Sidenote: Impressive Comparisons]
Canada, our northern neighbor, is a prosperous colony of 5,371,315,
according to her latest census. We could almost have peopled Canada
entire with as large a population out of the immigration of the decade
1880-1890. More than that, the whole population of Scotland, or that of
Ireland, above four and a quarter millions, could have moved over to
America, and it would only have equaled the actual immigration since
1900. If the whole of Wales were to come over, the 1,700,000 odd of them
would not have equaled by 100,000 the total immigration of the two years
1904-05. If all Sweden and Norway packed up and left the question of one
or two kingdoms to settle itself, the 7,300,000 sturdy Scandinavians
would fall short of the immigrant host that has come in from
everywhither since 1891. More people than the entire population of
Switzerland (3,315,000) have landed in America within four years. If
only the majority of these aliens had possessed the love of liberty and
the characteristic virtues of the Protestant Swiss, our problem would be
very different. These comparisons strongly impress the responsibility
and burden imposed upon America by practically free and wide-open gates.
[Sidenote: The Problem of Assimilation]
Here are the totals which we have now reached. Of the 23,000,000 aliens
who have come into America since the Revolution, the last census (1900)
gave the number then living at 10,256,664. A census taken to-day would
doubtless show about 14,000,000. Add the children of foreign parentage
and it would bring the total up to between 35,000,000 and 40,000,000.
Mr. Sargent estimates this total at forty-six per cent. of our entire
population. The immigration problem presents nothing less than the
assimilation of this vast mass of humanity. No wonder thoughtful
Americans stand aghast before it. At the same time, the only thing to
fear is failure to understand the situation and meet it. As Professor
Boyesen says: "The amazing thing in Americans is their utter
indifference or supine optimism. 'Don't you worry, old fellow,' said a
very intelligent professional man to me recently, when I told him of my
observations during a visit to Castle Garden.[5] 'What does it matter
whether a hundred thousand more or less arrive? Even if a million
arrived annually, or two millions, I guess we could take care of them.
Why, this country is capable of supporting a population of two hundred
millions without being half so densely populated as Belgium. Only let
them come--the more the merrier!' I believe this state of mind is fairly
typical. It is the sublime but dangerous optimism of a race which has
never been confronted with serious problems." But we believe it is the
optimism of a race which, when fairly brought face to face with crises,
will not fail to meet them in the same spirit that has won the victories
of civil and religious liberty and established a free government of, by,
and for the people in America.
_III. Why They Come_
[Sidenote: The Causes of Immigration]
[Sidenote: Expulsion]
[Sidenote: Attraction]
The causes of immigration are variously stated, but compressed into
three words they are: Attraction, Expulsion, Solicitation. The
attraction comes from the United States, the expulsion from the Old
World, and the solicitation from the great transportation lines and
their emissaries. Sometimes one cause is more potent, sometimes another.
Of late, racial and religious persecution has been active in Europe, and
America gets the results. "In Russia there is an outbreak, hideous and
savage, against the Jew, and an impulse is started whose end is not
reached until you strike Rivington Street in the ghetto of New York. The
work begun in Russia ends in the seventeenth ward of New York." Cause
and effect are manifest. Military service is enforced in Italy; taxes
rise, overpopulation crowds, poverty pinches. As a result, the stream
flows toward America, where there is no military service and no tax, and
where steady work and high wages seem assured. The mighty magnet is the
attractiveness of America, real or pictured. America is the magic word
throughout all Europe. No hamlet so remote that the name has not
penetrated its peasant obscurity. America means two things--money and
liberty--the two things which the European peasant (and often prince as
well) lacks and wants. Necessity at home pushes; opportunity in America
pulls. Commissioner Robert Watchorn, of the port of New York, packs the
explanation into an epigram: "American wages are the honey-pot that
brings the alien flies." He says further: "If a steel mill were to start
in a Mississippi swamp paying wages of $2 a day, the news would hum
through foreign lands in a month, and that swamp would become a beehive
of humanity and industry in an incredibly short space of time." Dr. A.
F. Schauffler says, with equal pith, that "the great cause of
immigration is, after all, that the immigrants propose to better
themselves in this country. They come here not because they love us, or
because we love them. They come here because they can do themselves
good, not because they can do us good."[6] That is natural and true; and
it furnishes excellent reason why we must do them good in order that
they may not do us evil. To make their good ours and our good theirs is
both Christian and safe.
[Sidenote: Three Classes]
The three causes produce three classes of immigrants: 1. Natural; 2.
Assisted; and 3. Solicited.
[ILLUSTRATION: IMMIGRATION AT THE PORT OF NEW YORK FOR 1906.]
[Sidenote: Normal Motives and Conditions]
The prosperity of this country has undoubtedly chiefly influenced
immigration in the past. This is shown by the marked relationship
between industrial and commercial activity in the United States and the
volume of immigration.[7] Our prosperity not only induces desire to come
but makes coming possible. The testimony before the Industrial
Commission showed that from forty to forty-five per cent. of the
immigrants have their passage prepaid by friends or relatives in this
country, and from ten to twenty-five per cent. more buy their tickets
abroad with money sent from the United States. In 1902 between
$65,000,000 and $70,000,000 was sent home to Italy alone from the United
States, and the stream of earnings flowing out to Ireland and Germany
and Sweden and Hungary has been not less steady. American prosperity has
been feeding and paying taxes for millions of people who owe far more to
our government than to their own, and foreign governments have been
reaping the benefit. The United States has a small standing army of its
own, but through the gold sent abroad by the alien wage earners here we
have been helping maintain the vast armaments of Europe. The letters and
the money sent by immigrants to the home folks awaken the desires and
dreams that mean more immigrants. The United States Post-office is a
marvelous immigration agent in Europe. Immigrants are not the only
persons induced to migrate through the feeling that where one is not
will prove a much better place than where one is. That seems to inhere
in human nature.
[Sidenote: American Leaven]
[Sidenote: The American Idea]
"Not only the American money and letters, but the American ideas are at
work abroad," says the Rev. F. M. Goodchild, D.D.,[8] in a recent
address: "The praises of America are told abroad by every person who
comes here and gets along. Some things to be sure, these people
miss--the blue skies of Italy and the vineyards on the hillside. But
they have for them the compensation of such a liberty as they never knew
before. The real reason why all southern Europe is in a turmoil to-day,
is that American ideas of liberty are working there like leaven. We get
our notions of liberty from the Bible and from the men who forced the
Magna Charta from King John at Runnymede, but all other peoples in the
world seem to be getting their ideas of liberty from us. That is what is
the matter with the Old World to-day. The American idea is working like
leaven. That is the force at work in France, where absolute divorce has
just been proclaimed between Church and State. That is at the bottom of
the movements in Russia, where the Stundists have just won religious
liberty, and where, let us hope, all classes of people ere long will
have won complete civil liberty. These people have felt the uplift of
our American free institutions and they want them for themselves. They
have heard 'Yankee Doodle,' and the 'Star Spangled Banner,' and 'My
Country, 'tis of Thee,' and they cannot get the music of liberty out of
their ears and their hearts. Broughton Brandenburg tells us that he
heard some Italians who had been in America singing our classic song
'Mr. Dooley' in the vineyards near Naples."
_IV. What the Immigrants Say_
[Sidenote: Personal Testimony]
Let the immigrants themselves tell why they come. These testimonies are
typical, condensed from a most interesting volume of immigrant
autobiography,[9] fresh and illuminating.
[Sidenote: A German]
A German nurse girl says: "I heard about how easy it was to make money
in America and became very anxious to go there. I was restless in my
home; mother seemed so stern and could not understand that I wanted
amusement. I sailed from Antwerp, the fare costing $35. My second eldest
sister met me with her husband at Ellis Island and they were glad to see
me and I went to live with them in their flat in West Thirty-fourth
Street, New York. A week later I was an apprentice in a Sixth Avenue
millinery store earning four dollars a week. I only paid three for
board, and was soon earning extra money by making dresses and hats at
home." Friends in Germany would be sure to hear of this new condition.
[Sidenote: A Pole]
Why do the Poles come? A Polish sweat-shop girl, telling her life story,
answers. The father died, then troubles began in the home in Poland.
Little was needed by the widow and her child, but even soup, black
bread, and onions they could not always get. At thirteen the girl was
handy at housekeeping, but the rent fell behind, and the mother decided
to leave Poland for America, where, "we heard, it was much easier to
make money. Mother wrote to Aunt Fanny, who lived in New York, and told
her how hard it was to live in Poland, and Aunt Fanny advised her to
come and bring me." Thousands could tell a similar story to that.
"Easier to make money" has allured multitudes to leave the old home and
land.
[Sidenote: A Russian]
A Lithuanian (Russian) tells how it was the traveling shoemaker that
made him want to come to America. This shoemaker learned all the news,
and smuggled newspapers across the German line, and he told the boy's
parents how wrong it was to shut him out of education and liberty by
keeping him at home. "That boy must go to America," he said one night.
"My son is in the stockyards in Chicago." These were some of his reasons
for going: "You can read free papers and prayer books; you can have free
meetings, and talk out what you think." And more precious far, you can
have "life, liberty, and the getting of happiness." When time for
military service drew near, these arguments for America prevailed and
the boy was smuggled out of his native land. "It is against the law to
sell tickets to America, but my father saw the secret agent in the
village and he got a ticket from Germany and found us a guide. I had
bread and cheese and vodka (liquor) and clothes in my bag. My father
gave me $50 besides my ticket." Bribery did the rest, and thus this
immigrant obtained his liberty and chance in America. The American idea
is leavening Russia surely enough.
[Sidenote: An Italian]
An Italian bootblack who already owns several bootblacking
establishments in this country, was trained to a beggar's life in
Italy, and ran away. "Now and then I had heard things about
America--that it was a far-off country where everybody was rich and that
Italians went there and made plenty of money, so that they could return
to Italy and live in pleasure ever after." He worked his passage as a
coaler, and was passed at Ellis Island through the perjury of one of the
bosses who wring money out of the immigrants in the way of commissions,
getting control of them by the criminal act at the very entrance into
American life.
A Greek peddler, a graduate of the high school at Sparta--think of a
modern high school in ancient Sparta!--after two years in the army, was
ready for life. "All these later years I had been hearing from America.
An elder brother was there who had found it a fine country and was
urging me to join him. Fortunes could easily be made, he said. I got a
great desire to see it, and in one way and another I raised the money
for fare--250 francs--($50) and set sail from the old port of Athens. I
got ashore without any trouble in New York, and got work immediately as
a push-cart man. Six of us lived together in two rooms down on
Washington Street. At the end of our day's work we all divided up our
money even; we were all free."
[Sidenote: A Swede]
A Swedish farmer says: "A man who had been living in America once came
to visit the little village near our cottage. He wore gold rings set
with jewels and had a fine watch. He said that food was cheap in America
and that a man could earn nearly ten times as much there as in Sweden.
There seemed to be no end to his money." Sickness came, with only black
bread and a sort of potato soup or gruel for food, and at last it was
decided that the older brother was to go to America. The first letter
from him contained this: "I have work with a farmer who pays me
sixty-four kroner[10] a month and my board. I send you twenty kroner,
and will try to send that every month. This is a good country. All about
me are Swedes, who have taken farms and are getting rich. They eat white
bread and plenty of meat. One farmer, a Swede, made more than 25,000
kroner on his crop last year. The people here do not work such long
hours as in Sweden, but they work much harder, and they have a great
deal of machinery, so that the crop one farmer gathers will fill two big
barns."
[Sidenote: An Irish Woman]
An Irish cook, one of "sivin childher," had a sister Tilly, who
emigrated to Philadelphia, started as a greenhorn at $2 a week, learned
to cook and bake and wash, all American fashion, and before a year was
gone had money enough laid up to send for the teller of the story. The
two gradually brought over the whole family, and Joseph owns a big
flour store and Phil is a broker, while his son is in politics and the
city council, and his daughter Ann (she calls herself Antoinette now) is
engaged to a lawyer in New York. That is America's attractiveness and
opportunity and transformation in a nutshell.
[Sidenote: Foreign Mission School, Cause of Immigration]
A Syrian, born on the Lebanon range, went to an American mission school
at fifteen, learned much that his former teacher the friar had warned
him against, had his horizon broadened, gave up his idea of becoming a
Maronite monk when he learned that there were other great countries
beside Syria, and had all his old ideas overthrown by an encyclopedia
which said the United States was a larger and richer country than Syria
or even Turkey. The friar was angry and said the book told lies, and so
did the patriarch, who was scandalized to think such a book should come
to Mount Lebanon; but the American teacher said the encyclopedia was
written by men who knew, and the Syrian boy finally decided to go to the
United States, where "we had heard that poor people were not oppressed."
His mother and uncle came, too, and as the boy was a good penman he
secured work without difficulty in an Oriental goods store. As for his
former religious teaching he says: "The American teacher never talked to
me about religion; but I can see that those monks and priests are the
curse of our country, keeping the people in ignorance and grinding the
faces of the poor, while pretending to be their friends." In his case it
was the foreign mission school that was the magnet to America.
[Sidenote: A Japanese]
A Japanese says: "The desire to see America was burning in my boyish
heart. The land of freedom and civilization of which I had heard so much
from missionaries and the wonderful story of America I had heard from
those of my race who returned from there made my longing ungovernable."
A popular novel among Japanese boys, "The Adventurous Life of Tsurukichi
Tanaka, Japanese Robinson Crusoe," made a strong impression upon him,
and finally he decided to come to this country to receive an American
education.
[Sidenote: A Chinese]
A representative Chinese business man of New York was taught in
childhood that the English and Americans were foreign devils, the latter
false, because having made a treaty by which they could freely come to
China and Chinese as freely go to America, they had broken the treaty
and shut the Chinese out. When he was sixteen, working on a farm, a man
of his tribe came back from America "and took ground as large as four
city blocks and made a paradise of it." He had gone away a poor boy, now
he returned with unlimited wealth, "which he had obtained in the country
of the American wizards. He had become a merchant in a city called Mott
Street, so it was said. The wealth of this man filled my mind with the
idea that I, too, would go to the country of the wizards and gain some
of their wealth." Landing in San Francisco, before the exclusion act, he
started in American life as a house servant, but finally became a Mott
Street merchant, as he had intended from the first.
[Sidenote: Fortune and Freedom]
Thus we have gone the rounds of immigrants of various races. The two
ideas--fortune and freedom--lie at the basis of immigration, although
the money comes first in nearly all cases. These testimonies could be
multiplied indefinitely. Ask the first immigrant you can talk with what
brought him, and find out for yourself. Mr. Brandenburg says a Greek who
was being deported told him that all Greece was stirred up over the
matter of emigration, and that in five years the number of Greeks coming
to the United States would have increased a thousand per cent.[11] The
reasons are the too onerous military duties in Greece and prosperity of
Greeks in America. The remittances fired the zeal of the home people to
follow, and the candymakers' shops were full of apprentices, because the
idea had gone abroad that candymakers could easily gain a fortune in
America.
[Sidenote: Showing only the Bright Side]
From these illustrations, it can readily be seen how widespread is the
knowledge of America as a desirable place. The other side is rarely
told and that is the pitiful side of it. The stories that go back are
always of the fortunes, not of the misfortunes, of the money and not of
the misery.
_V. Solicitation an Evil_
[Sidenote: Evils of Solicitation]
If immigration were left to the natural causes, there would be little
reason for apprehension. It is in the solicited and assisted immigration
that the worst element is found. Commercial greed lies at the root of
this, as of most of the evils which afflict us as a nation. The great
steamship lines have made it cheaper to emigrate than to stay at home,
in many cases; and every kind of illegal inducement and deceit and
allurement has been employed to secure a full steerage. The
ramifications of this transportation system are wonderful. It has a
direct bearing, too, upon the character of the immigrants. Easy and
cheap transportation involves deterioration in quality. In the days when
a journey across the Atlantic was a matter of weeks or months and of
considerable outlay, only the most enterprising, thrifty, and
venturesome were ready to try an uncertain future in an unknown land.
The immigrant of those days was likely, therefore, to be of the
sturdiest and best type, and his coming increased the general prosperity
without lowering the moral tone. Now that the ocean has become little
more than a ferry, and the rates of railway and steamship have been so
reduced, it is the least thrifty and prosperous members of their
communities that fall readiest prey to the emigration agent.
[Sidenote: Assisted Immigration]
Assisted immigration is the term used to cover cases where a foreign
government has eased itself of part of the burden of its paupers,
insane, dependents, and delinquents by shipping them to the United
States. This was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, especially in
the case of local and municipal governments. Our laws were lax, and for
a time nearly everybody, sane or insane, sound or diseased, was passed.
The financial gain to the exporting government can be seen in the fact
that it costs about $150 per head a year to support dependents and
delinquents in this country, while it would not cost the foreign
authorities more than $50 to transport them hither. This policy seems
scarcely credible, but Switzerland, Great Britain, and Ireland followed
it thriftily until our laws put a stop to it, in large part, by
returning these undesirable persons whence they came, at the expense of
the steamship companies bringing them. It was not until 1882, however,
that our government passed laws for self-protection, and in 1891 another
law made "assisted" immigrants a special class not to be admitted.
[Sidenote: Other Causes]
Other and incidental causes there are, such as the influence of new
machinery, opening the way for more unskilled labor, such as the
ordinary immigrant has to sell; the protective tariff, which shuts out
foreign goods and brings in the foreign producers of the excluded goods;
the thorough advertising abroad of American advantages by boards of
agriculture and railway companies interested in building up communities;
and a fear of restrictive legislation. But undoubtedly, ever back of all
other reasons is the conviction that America is the land of plenty and
of liberty--a word which each interprets according to his light or his
liking.
[Sidenote: The Christian Attitude]
[Sidenote: Colonists and Immigrants Distinguished]
Having thus considered the remarkable proportions of immigration, and
the causes of it, it will be well at this point to say a cautionary word
as to the attitude of mind and heart in which this subject should be
approached. Impartiality is necessary but difficult. There is a natural
prejudice against the immigrant. A Christian woman, of ordinarily gentle
and sweet temper, was heard to say recently, while this very subject of
Christian duty to the immigrant was under discussion at a missionary
conference: "I hate these disgusting foreigners; they are spoiling our
country." Doubtless many would sympathize with her. This is not uncommon
prejudice or feeling, and argument against it is of little avail.
Nevertheless, as Christians we must endeavor to divest ourselves of it.
We must recognize the brotherhood of man and the value of the individual
soul as taught by Jesus. It may aid us, perhaps, if we remember that we
are all--with the exception of the Indians, who may lay claim to
aboriginal heritage--in a sense descendants of immigrants. At the same
time, it is essential to draw a clear distinction between colonists and
immigrants. Colonization, with its attendant hardships and heroisms,
steadily advanced from its beginnings in New England, New Amsterdam, and
Virginia, until there resulted the founding of a free and independent
nation, with popular government and fixed religious principles,
including the vital ones of religious liberty and the right of the
individual conscience. In other words, colonization created a nation;
and there had to be a nation before there could be immigration to it.
"In discussing the immigration question," says Mr. Hall, "this
distinction is important," for it does not follow that, because, as
against the native Indians, all comers might be considered as intruders
and equally without claim of right, those who have built up a
complicated framework of nationality have no rights as against others
who seek to enjoy the benefits of national life without having
contributed to its creation."[12]
[Sidenote: Colonist and National Rights]
It ought clearly to be recognized that the colonists and their
descendants have sacred rights, civil and religious, with which aliens
should not be permitted to interfere; and that these rights include all
proper and necessary legislation for the preservation of the liberties,
laws, institutions, and principles established by the founders of the
Republic and those rights of citizenship guaranteed under the
constitution. If restriction of immigration becomes necessary in order
to safeguard America, the American people have a clear right to pass
restrictive or even prohibitory laws. In other words, America does not
belong equally to everybody. The American has rights which the alien
must become American to acquire.
[Sidenote: Sympathetic and Open Mind]
At the same time, our attitude toward the alien should be sympathetic,
and our minds should be open and inquiring as we study the incoming
multitudes. We do not wish to raise the Russian cry, "Russia for the
Russians," or the Chinese shibboleth, "China for the Chinese." The
Christian spirit has been compressed into the epigram, "Not America for
Americans, but Americans for America." We must see to it that the
immigrants do not remain aliens, but are transformed into Christian
Americans. That is the true missionary end for which we are to work; and
it is in order that we may work intelligently and effectively that we
seek to familiarize ourselves with the facts.
[Sidenote: The Personal Responsibility]
The facts already brought out are surely sufficient to arrest attention.
Suppose this million-a-year rate should continue for a decade--and
there is every reason to believe it will, unless unusual and unlikely
restrictive measures are taken by our government. That would mean ten
millions more added, and probably seventy per cent. of them from
southeastern Europe. Add the natural increase, and estimate what the
result of these millions would be upon the national digestion.
Politically, the foreign element would naturally and inevitably assume
the place which a majority can claim in a democracy, and not only claim
but maintain, by the use of votes--a use which the immigrant learns full
soon from the manipulators of parties. Religiously, unless a great
change should come over the spirit of American Protestantism, and the
work of evangelization among foreigners be conducted along quite
different lines from the present, is it not plain that our country would
cease to be Christian America, as we understand the term? There is
enough in these questions to set and keep the patriotic American
thinking.
The personal inquiry for each one to make is, "As an American and a
Christian, have these facts and queries any special message for me, and
have I any direct responsibility in relation to them?"
SUGGESTIONS FOR USING THE QUESTIONS
These questions have been prepared to suggest to the leader and student
the most important points in the chapter, and to stimulate further
meditation and thought. Those marked * should encourage discussion. The
leader is not expected to use all of these questions, and should use his
judgment in eliminating or adding others that are in harmony with the
aim of the lesson. For helps for conducting each class session, the
leader should not fail to write to the Secretary of his Home Missionary
Board.
QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER I
AIM: TO REALIZE OUR RESPONSIBILITY IN RECEIVING ONE MILLION ALIENS A
YEAR
I. _To Learn by Comparison the Magnitude of a Million Aliens._
1. At what rate per annum is our population now being increased by
immigration?
2. What are the sources of this invasion? Its principal gateway?
3. What comparison helps you most to realize the number of
immigrants?
4. What are some of the largest groups in the mass, as classified
by nationality? By race? By knowledge or ignorance? By fitness for
labor?
5. What states may be compared with last year's arrivals?
II. _To Realise the Proportion of Our Population that has Immigrated
since 1820._
6. How does the total number of our immigrants compare with the
population of Germany? England? Canada?
7. Has the number of immigrants been increasing steadily? Will it
tend to increase?
8. Has the present rate been long continued? What proportion of the
population of the United States is derived from immigration
subsequent to the American Revolution?
9. * Do you think there is any serious menace in such large numbers
of immigrants? Why?
III. _Why do Aliens Come_?
10. Name the principal causes of immigration. The principal
classes.
11. What American ideals have the greatest attractive power? What
opportunities?
12. Give some typical instances of immigrants' stories. * Would you
have wished to come under the same circumstances?
13. What other forces stimulate immigration to the United States?
What agencies?
IV. _What Should be our Attitude toward Aliens, and What is our
Individual Responsibility for Them_?
14. * What is the Christian attitude toward these newcomers? How
can we remove prejudice?
15. * What is our personal responsibility as Christians in
improving the condition of aliens?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER I
I. Compare modern immigration with the migration of peoples in
earlier times; for example, those of the Hebrews, Aryans, Goths,
Huns, Saracens, and other races.
Any good Encyclopedia or General History.
II. What resemblances and what differences between the Colonial
settlement of America, and the later immigration, say, during the
Nineteenth Century?
III. _The Causes of Immigration._
Hall: Immigration, II.
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, III, VIII.
Warne: The Slav Invasion, III, IV; 78, 83.
Holt: Undistinguished Americans, 35, 244-250.
IV. What agencies can you name and describe that are trying to
receive the immigrants in a humane and Christian spirit? For
example, the United States Government, American Tract Society, New
York Bible Society, Society for Italian Immigrants, and other
organizations and agencies. Study especially any that work in your
own neighborhood.
_As for immigrants, we cannot have too many of the right kind, and
we should have none of the wrong kind. I will go as far as any in
regard to restricting undesirable immigration. I do not think that
any immigrant who will lower the standard of life among our people
should be admitted._--President Roosevelt.
II
ALIEN ADMISSION AND RESTRICTION
Unrestricted immigration is doing much to cause deterioration in the
quality of American citizenship. Let us resolve that America shall be
neither a hermit nation nor a Botany Bay. Let us make our land a home
for the oppressed of all nations, but not a dumping-ground for the
criminals, the paupers, the cripples, and the illiterate of the world.
Let our Republic, in its crowded and hazardous future, adopt these
watchwords, to be made good all along our oceanic and continental
borders: "Welcome for the worthy, protection to the patriotic, but no
shelter in America for those who would destroy the American shelter
itself."--_Joseph Cook._
It is not the migration of a few thousand or even million human beings
from one part of the world to another nor their good or bad fortune that
is of interest to us. We are concerned with the effect of such a
movement on the community at large and its growth in civilization.
Immigration, for instance, means the constant infusion of new blood into
the American commonwealth, and the question is: What effect will this
new blood have upon the character of the community?--_Professor
Mayo-Smith._
It is advisable to study the influence of the newcomers on the ethical
consciousness of the community--whether there is a gain or a loss to us.
In short, we must set up our standard of what we desire this nation to
be, and then consider whether the policy we have hitherto pursued in
regard to immigration is calculated to maintain that standard or to
endanger it.--_Idem._
II
ALIEN ADMISSION AND RESTRICTION
_I. Method of Admission_
[Sidenote: Chief Ports of Entry]
How do immigrants obtain entrance into the United States? New York is
the chief port of entry, and if we learn the conditions and methods
there we shall know them in general. The great proportion coming through
New York is seen by comparison of the total admissions for 1904 and 1905
at the larger ports:
Port 1904 1905
New York 606,019 788,219
Boston 60,278 65,107
Baltimore 55,940 62,314
Philadelphia 19,467 23,824
Honolulu 9,054 11,997
San Francisco 9,036 6,377
Other Ports 22,702 24,447
Through Canada 30,374 44,214
[Sidenote: The Floating Gateway]
The proportion for New York is not far from eight tenths of the whole.
Hence it is true, that while the "dirty little ferryboat _John G.
Carlisle_ is not an imposing object to the material eye, to the eye of
the imagination she is a spectacle to inspire awe, for she is the
floating gateway of the Republic. Over her dingy decks march in endless
succession the eager battalions of Europe's peaceful invaders of the
West. That single craft, in her hourly trips from Ellis Island to the
Battery,[13] carries more immigrants in a year than came over in all the
fleets of the nations in the two centuries after John Smith landed at
Jamestown."[14]
[Sidenote: Human Storage Reservoirs]
Reading about the arrivals at Ellis Island, no matter how realistic the
description, will not give a vivid idea of what immigration means nor of
what sort the immigrants are. For that, you must obtain a permit from
the authorities and actually see for yourself the human stream that
pours from the steerage of the mighty steamships into the huge human
storage reservoirs of Ellis Island.[15] We know that however perfect the
system, human nature has to be taken into account, both in officials and
immigrants, and human nature is imperfect; much of it at Ellis Island
is exceedingly difficult to deal patiently with. Hence, from the very
nature of things and men, the situation is one to develop pathos, humor,
comedy, and tragedy, as the great "human sifting machine" works away at
separating the wheat from the chaff. The tragedy comes in the case of
the excluded, since the blow falls sometimes between parents and
children, husband and wife, lover and sweetheart, and the decree of
exclusion is as bitter as death.
[Sidenote: Make Yourself an Imaginary Immigrant]
To make the manner and method of getting into America by the steerage
process as real as possible, try to put yourself in an alien's place,
and see what you would have to go through. Do not take immigration at
its worst, but rather at its best, or at least above the average
conditions. Assume that you belong to the more intelligent and desirable
class, finding a legitimate reason for leaving your home in Europe,
because of hard conditions and poor outlook there and bright visions of
fortune in the land of liberty, whither relatives have preceded you.
Your steamship ticket is bought in your native town, and you have no
care concerning fare or baggage. A number of people of your race and
neighborhood are on the way, so that you are not alone.
[Sidenote: The Ship's Manifest]
Before embarking you are made to answer a long list of questions,
filling out your "manifest," or official record which the law requires
the vessel-masters to obtain, attest, and deliver to the government
officers at the entrance port.[16]
[Sidenote: Numbered and Lettered]
Your answers proving satisfactory to the transportation agents, a card
is furnished you, containing your name, the letter of the group of
thirty to which you are assigned, and your group number. Thus you
become, for the time being, No. 27 of group E. You are cautioned to keep
this card in sight, as a ready means of identification.
[Sidenote: The Voyage]
Partings over, you enter upon the strange and unforgetable experiences
of ten days or more in the necessarily cramped quarters of the
steerage--experiences of a kind that do not invite repetition.
Homesickness and seasickness form a trying combination, to say nothing
of the discomforts of a mixed company and enforced companionship.
[Sidenote: First Experiences in the New World]
Your first American experience befalls you when the steamship anchors at
quarantine inside Sandy Hook, and the United States inspection officers
come on board to hunt for infectious or contagious diseases--cholera,
smallpox, typhus fever, yellow fever, or plague. No outbreak of any of
these has marked the voyage, fortunately for you, and there is no long
delay. Slowly the great vessel pushes its way up the harbor and the
North River, passing the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, that
beacon which all incomers are enjoined to see as the symbol of the new
liberty they hope to enjoy.
[Sidenote: Ship Landing]
At last the voyage is done, your steamship lies at her pier, and you are
thrust into the midst of distractions. Families are trying to keep
together; the din is indescribable; crying babies add to the general
confusion of tongues; all sorts of people with all sorts of baggage are
making ready for the landing, which seems a long time off as you wait
for the customs officers to get through with the first-class passengers.
At last word is given to go ashore, and the procession or pushing
movement rather begins. You are hurried along, up a companionway,
lugging your hand baggage; then down the long gangway on to the pier and
the soil of America.
[Sidenote: Unnecessary Cruelty]
It is not a pleasant landing in the land of light and liberty. You have
been sworn at, pushed, punched with a stick for not moving faster when
you could not, and have seen others treated much more roughly. Just in
front of you a poor woman is trying to get up the companionway with a
child in one arm, a deck chair on the other, and a large bundle besides.
She blocks the passage for an instant. A great burly steward reaches up,
drags her down, tears the chair off her arm, splitting her sleeve and
scraping the skin off her wrist as he does so, and then in his rage
breaks the chair to pieces, while the woman passes on sobbing, not
daring to remonstrate.[17] This is not the first treatment of this sort
you have seen, and you feel powerless to help, though your blood boils
at the outrage.
[Sidenote: Unpleasant Beginnings]
As you pass down the gangway your number is taken by an officer with a
mechanical checker, and then you become part of the curious crowd
gathered in the great somber building, filled with freight, much of it
human. Here there is confusion worse confounded, as separated groups try
to get together and dock watchmen try to keep them in place. Many
believe their baggage has been stolen, and mothers are sure their
children have been kidnaped or lost. The dockmen are violent, not
hesitating to use their sticks, and you find yourself more than once in
danger, although you strive to obey orders you do not understand very
well, since they are shouted out in savage manner. The inspector reaches
you finally, and you are hustled along in a throng to the barge that is
waiting. You are tired and hungry, having had no food since early
breakfast. Your dreams of America seem far from reality just now. You
are almost too weary to care what next.
[Sidenote: America's Gateway]
The next is Ellis Island, whose great building looks inviting. Out of
the barge you are swept with the crowd, baggage in hand or on head or
shoulder, and on to the grand entrance. As you ascend the broad stairs,
an officer familiar with many languages is shouting out, first in one
tongue and then another, "Get your health tickets ready." You notice
that the only available place many have in which to carry these tickets
is in their mouths, since their hands are full of children or baggage.
[Sidenote: Medical Inspection]
At the head of the long pair of stairs you meet a uniformed officer (a
doctor in the Marine Hospital Service), who takes your ticket, glances
at it, and stamps it with the Ellis Island stamp. Counting the
quarantine officer as number one, you have now passed officer number
two. At the head of the stairs you find yourself in a great hall,
divided into two equal parts, each part filled with curious railed-off
compartments. Directed by an officer, you are turned into a narrow
alleyway, and here you meet officer number three, in uniform like the
second. The keen eyes of this doctor sweep you at a glance, from feet to
head. You do not know it, but this is the first medical inspection by a
surgeon of the Marine Hospital Service, and it causes a halt, although
only for a moment. When the person immediately in front of you reaches
this doctor, you see that he pushes back the shawl worn over her head,
gives a nod, and puts a chalk mark upon her. He is on the keen lookout
for favus (contagious skin disease), and for signs of disease or
deformity. The old man who limps along a little way behind you has a
chalk mark put on his coat lapel, and you wonder why they do not chalk
you.
[Sidenote: Examination of Eyes]
You are now about ten or fifteen feet behind your front neighbor, and as
you are motioned to follow, about thirty feet further on you confront
another uniformed surgeon (officer number four), who has a towel hanging
beside him, a small instrument in his hand, and a basin of disinfectants
behind him. You have little time for wonder or dread. With a deft motion
he applies the instrument to your eye and turns up the lid, quickly
shutting it down again, then repeats the operation upon the other eye.
He is looking for the dreaded contagious trachoma or for purulent
ophthalmia; also for disease of any kind, or any defect that would make
it lawful and wise to send you back whence you came. You have now been
twice examined, and passed as to soundness of body, freedom from
lameness or defect, general healthfulness, and absence of eye disease or
pulmonary weakness.
[Sidenote: Detention Room]
[Sidenote: The Wicket Gate]
As you move along to the inclosed space of your group E, you note that
the lame man and the woman who were chalk-marked are sent into another
railed-off space, known as the "detention pen," where they must await a
more rigid medical examination. One other inspector you have faced--a
woman, whose sharp eyes seem to read the characters of the women as they
come up to her "wicket gate;" for it is her duty to stop the suspicious
and immoral characters and send them to the detention rooms or special
inquiry boards. Thus you have passed five government officers since
landing on the Island. They have been courteous and kindly, but impress
you as knowing their business so well that they can readily see through
fraud and deception.
[Sidenote: Entrance Examination]
The entrance ordeal is not quite over, but for a little while you rest
on the wooden bench in your E compartment, waiting until the group is
assembled, all save those sent away for detention. Suddenly you are told
to come on, and in single file E group marches along the narrow railed
alley that leads to officer number six, or the inspector who holds E
sheet in his hand. When it comes your turn, your manifest is produced
and you are asked a lot of questions. A combined interpreter and
registry clerk is at hand to assist. The interpreter pleases you greatly
by speaking in your own language, which he rightly guesses, and notes
whether your answers agree with those on the manifest.
[Sidenote: The Ticket System]
As you have the good fortune to be honest, and have sufficient money to
escape being halted as likely to become a public charge, you are
ticketed "O. K." with an "R" which means that you are bound for a
railroad station. You see a ticket "S. I." on the lame man, which means
that he is to go to a Board of Special Inquiry, with the chances of
being debarred, or sent back home. On another, as you pass, you notice a
ticket "L. P. C.," which signifies the dreaded decision, "liable to
become public charge"--a decision that means deportation.
[Sidenote: The Three Stairs of Separation]
All this time you have been guided. Now you are directed to a desk where
your railroad ticket-order is stamped; next to a banker's desk, where
your money is exchanged for American money; and finally you are motioned
to the right stairway of three, this leading to the railroad barge room.
Here your baggage is checked and your ticket provided, a bag of food is
offered you, and then you are taken on board a barge which will convey
you to the railroad station. You have left your fellow-voyagers
abruptly, all save the railroad-ticketed like yourself. Had you been
destined for New York, you would have gone down the left stairway and
been free to take the ferryboat for the Battery. If you had expected
friends to meet you, the central stairway would have led you to the
waiting room for that purpose. Those three stairways are called "The
Stairs of Separation," and there families are sometimes ruthlessly
separated without warning, when bound for different destinations.
[Sidenote: Careful Supervision]
The officers, who have treated you courteously, in strong contrast to
the steamship and dock employees, keep track of you until you are safely
on board an immigrant car, bound for the place where your relatives are.
Your ideas of great New York are limited, but you have been saved by
this official supervision from being swindled by sharpers or enticed
into evil. You are practically in charge of the railway company, as you
have been of the steamship company, until you are deposited at the
station where you expect to make your home. You are ready to believe, by
this time, that America is at least a spacious country, with room enough
in it for all who want to come. At the same time you will admit, as you
recall some of your fellow-passengers in the steerage, that there should
not be room in the country for those who ought not to come--not only the
diseased and insane, crippled and consumptive, who are shut out by the
law, but also the delinquent and depraved, whose presence means added
ignorance and crime. You only wish the inspectors could have seen some
of those shameless men on shipboard, so that in spite of their smooth
answers they might have been sent back whence they came, to prey upon
the innocent there instead of here. Now that it is all over, you
shudder for a long time at night as memory recalls the steerage scenes,
through which your faith in God and your constant prayers preserved
you.[18]
[Sidenote: The Alien's Chance]
In such manner the alien gains his chance to become an American. What he
will make of that chance is a matter of grave importance to the land
that has opened to him the doors of opportunity and liberty. Having seen
how the immigrants get into the United States, let us now see how they
are kept out. When we know what the restrictive laws are, and how they
are enforced or evaded, we shall be in a position to judge as to their
sufficiency, and the need of further legislation.
_II. Governmental Regulation_
[Sidenote: Evasion and Violation]
The United States has some excellent immigration laws, the best and most
extensive of any nation, as one would expect, since this is the nation
to which nearly all immigrants come. The trouble is that every attempt
is made to evade these laws, and where they cannot be evaded they are
violated. The laws are of two classes: 1. Protective, in favor of the
immigrant; and 2. Restrictive, in favor of the country.
[Sidenote: Protection for the Immigrant]
There is a law against overcrowding on shipboard, going back as far as
1819, but overcrowding has gone on ever since.[19] There seems to be no
doubt that even on the best steamships of the best lines there is ready
disregard of the law when it interferes with the profits to be made out
of the steerage. Strong evidence to this effect is given by Mr.
Brandenburg. Here is a condensed leaf from his own experience which
shows how much regard is paid to the comfort and health of the steerage
passengers:[20]
[Sidenote: Steerage Horrors]
"In a compartment from nine to ten feet high and having a space no
larger than six ordinary rooms, were beds for 195 persons, and 214 women
and children occupied them. The ventilation was merely what was to be
had from the companionway that opened into the alleyway and not on the
deck, the few ports in the ship's sides, and the scanty ventilating
shafts. The beds were double-tiered affairs in blocks of from ten to
twenty, constructed of iron framework, with iron slats in checker
fashion to support the burlap-covered bag of straw, grass, or waste
which served as a mattress. Pillows there were none, only cork jacket
life-preservers stuck under one end of the mattress to give the
elevation of a pillow. One blanket served the purpose of all
bedclothing; it was a mixture of wool, cotton, and jute, predominantly
jute; the length of a man's body and a yard and a half wide. For such
quarters and accommodations the emigrant pays half the sum that would
buy a first-class passage. A comparison of the two classes shows where
the steamship company makes the most money.
[Sidenote: Feeding Like Animals]
"Enrolled in the blanket each person found a fork, spoon, pint tin cup,
and a flaring six-inch-wide, two-inch-deep pan out of which to eat. The
passengers were instructed to form groups of six and choose a
mess-manager, who was supposed to take the big pan and bucket, get the
dinner and drinkables, and distribute the portions to his group. After
the meal, some member was supposed to collect the tin utensils and wash
them ready for next time. But the crowd in the wash-room was so great
that about one third of the people chose to rinse off the things with a
dash of drinking water, others never washed their cups and pans. Yet the
emigrant pays half the first-cabin rate for fighting for his food,
serving it himself, and washing his own dishes. The food was in its
quality good, but the manner in which it was messed into one heap in the
big pan was nothing short of nauseating. After the first meal the
emigrants began throwing the refuse on the deck instead of over the side
or into the scuppers. The result can be imagined. It was an extremely
hot night, and the air in the crowded compartment was so foul I could
not sleep. The men and boys about me lay for the most part like logs,
hats, coats, and shoes off, and no more, sleeping the sleep of the
tired.
[Sidenote: Remedy Proposed]
"My wife said the babies in her compartment were crying in relays of
six, the women had scattered bits of macaroni, meat, and potatoes all
over the beds and on the floor, and added dishwater as a final
discomfort. Two thirds of the emigrants were as clean as circumstances
would permit, but the other third kept all in a reign of uncleanliness.
The worst could not be put into print. The remedy for the whole matter
is to pack fewer people in the same ship's space, and a regular service
at tables. The big emigrant-carriers should be forced to give up a part
of their enormous profits in order that sanitary conditions at least may
prevail."
[Sidenote: Laws Rigidly Enforced]
[Sidenote: Steerage Reforms Needed]
This certainly is not an unreasonable demand, and proper laws with
regard to the steerage rigidly enforced would tend to discourage
immigration, instead of the reverse, since the rates would doubtless be
raised as the numbers were lowered. Cruel treatment of the helpless
aliens by the stewards and ship's officers should be stopped. Mr
Brandenburg's description, which by no means tells the whole story of
steerage horrors, should serve to institute reform through the creation
of a public sentiment that will demand it. There is no other way to
reach such conditions; and here is where the young people can exert
their influence powerfully for good. Money greed should not be allowed
to make the steerage a disgrace to Christian civilization and an offense
to common decency. Of course it is difficult to detect what goes on in
the hold of a great steamship, and when immigrants make complaint they
frequently suffer for it. It is possible, however, to provide government
inspectors, and inspectors who will inspect and remain proof against
bribes. The one essential is a sufficiently strong and insistent public
opinion.
_III. Putting up the Bars_
[Sidenote: Protection for the Country]
The need of some regulation and restriction of immigration was felt
early in our national life. The fathers of the Republic did not agree
about the matter, and in this their descendants have been like them.
Washington questioned the advisability of letting any more immigrants
come, except those belonging to certain skilled trades that were needed
to develop the new country. Madison favored a policy of liberality and
inducement, so that population might increase more rapidly. Jefferson,
on the other hand, wished "there were an ocean of fire between this
country and Europe, so that it might be impossible for any more
immigrants to come hither." We can only conjecture what his thoughts
would be if he were to return and study present conditions. Franklin,
certainly one of the wisest and most far-seeing of the earlier
statesmen, feared that immigration would tend to destroy the homogeneity
essential to a democracy with ideals. Equally great and good men in our
history have taken one or the other side of this question, from the
extreme of open gates to that of prohibition, while the people generally
have gone on about their business with the comfortable feeling that
matters come out pretty well if they are not too much interfered with.
[Sidenote: First State Law in 1824]
While statesmen were theorizing and differing, conditions made the need
of some actual regulations and restrictions felt as early as 1824,
although the total immigration of that year was only 7,912, or less than
that of a single day at present. The first law resulted from abuse of
free admission. It was found that some foreign governments were shipping
their paupers, diseased persons, and criminals to America as the easiest
and most economical way to get rid of them. This it undoubtedly was for
them; but the people of New York did not see where the ease and economy
came in on their side of the ledger, and in self-defense, therefore, the
state passed the first law, with intent to shut out undesirables.[21]
This state legislation was the genesis of national enactment. The
history of federal laws concerning aliens is covered compactly by Mr.
Hall, and those interested in the details of this important phase of the
subject are referred to his book.[22] A comprehensive table, by means of
which all the significant legislation can be seen at a glance, will be
found in Appendix B.
[Sidenote: Government Control]
In 1882 there came a tremendous wave of immigration, with effects upon
the labor market that largely induced the passage in that year of the
first general immigration law. The Federal Government now assumed entire
control of the ports of entry, as it was manifestly essential to have a
national policy and supervision. Since 1862, when the Chinese coolies
were excluded, under popular pressure, Congress has passed eight Acts of
more or less importance, culminating in the Act of 1903,[23] which is
said by Mr. Whelpley, who has collected all the immigration laws of all
countries, and is therefore competent to judge, to be "up to the
present time the most far-reaching measure of its kind in force in any
country; and the principles underlying it must serve as the foundation
for all immigration restriction." Under this law we have practically
unrestricted immigration, with the important exceptions that the Chinese
laborers are not admitted, and that persons suffering from obvious
contagious diseases, insane persons, known anarchists and criminals, and
a certain small percentage likely to become public charges are debarred.
The law does not fix a property, income, or educational qualification,
does not insist upon a knowledge of a trade, nor impose a tax. In other
words, we have at present a more or less effective police regulation of
immigration, but we are not pursuing a policy of restriction or
limitation.
[Sidenote: Un-American Discrimination]
As to the Chinese, we have made an exception, and one that fails to
commend itself to many. Grant that there is much to be said in favor of
the proper restriction of Chinese immigration, especially on the ground
that the immigrants would come only to earn money and return home, not
to become Americans; that there can be no race assimilation between
Chinese and Americans; and that such bird-of-passage cheap male labor is
a detriment to the best interests of the country. All the force in these
arguments applies equally to a large proportion of the immigration from
southeastern Europe which is admitted. The laws should be uniform. The
right to shut out the Chinese coolies is not questioned; but if these be
debarred, why not debar the illiterate and unskilled laboring class that
comes from Ireland, Italy, and Austria-Hungary? The Chinese certainly
can fill a place in our industries which the other races do not fill
equally well. Their presence in the kitchen would tend to alleviate
domestic conditions that are responsible in large measure for the
breaking up of American home life. It is a ludicrous error to suppose
that all the Chinese who come to America are laundrymen at home. Let
Mrs. S. L. Baldwin, a returned missionary who labored in China for
eighteen years and knows the people she pleads for, bear her witness:
[Sidenote: A Missionary's Plea for the Chinese]
"The Chinese are exactly the same class as the immigrants from other
lands. The needy poor, with few exceptions, must ever be the immigrant
class. Those who come to us across the Pacific are largely from the
respectable farming class, who fall into laundry work, shoemaking, etc.,
because these branches of industry are chiefly open to them. I have no
fear of the Chinese immigrants suffering in comparison with those who
come across the Atlantic. It is not the Chinaman who is too lazy to
work, and goes to the almshouse or jail. It is not he who reels through
our streets, defies our Sabbath laws, deluges our country with beer,
and opposes all work for temperance and the salvation of our sons from
the liquor curse. It is not the man from across the Pacific who commits
the fearful crimes, and who is longing to put his hand to our political
wheel and rule the United States. There are no healthier immigrants
coming to this country. It is with difficulty, and only under pressure
of necessity they are induced to leave China, so that the bugbear of
millions of coolies overrunning America is absurd."
[Sidenote: Call for Fair Play]
Workers in the Chinese missions and Sunday-schools in this country will
assent to Mrs. Baldwin's words. And Americans will appreciate her sense
of the ludicrous when an Irish washerwoman in San Francisco, indignant
that a Chinese servant had been brought to America by the missionary,
said to her, "We have a right here and they haven't." As for the
Chinese, the time will come when the injustice of discriminating against
a single nation will be recognized and the wrong be righted. There are
no more stable converts to Christianity, no more generous givers and
zealous missionaries, than the Chinese converts. Let us have American
fair play, about which President Roosevelt says so much, in our
treatment of them. Recent developments prove that the United States is
unwilling to imperil the relations of friendship which have existed with
China.
_IV. Excluding the Unfit_
[Sidenote: Intelligence of Inspectors]
[Sidenote: Trickeries Attempted]
At Ellis Island one may see what is aptly termed "the tragedy of the
excluded."[24] The enforcement of the laws comes into operation at the
ports of entry. Practically everything depends upon the intelligence and
faithfulness of the inspectors, who are charged with grave
responsibility. Immigrant and country are equally at their mercy.
Necessarily a large margin must be left to their judgment when it comes
to the question, Will the applicant now before me probably become a
public charge--that is, fall into the pauper or criminal class--or is he
of the right stuff to make a respectable and desirable American citizen?
In cases of plain insanity or idiocy or disease the decision is easy;
but when it comes to the moral and economic sphere an expert opinion is
required. Then, the inspectors have to be constantly on the lookout for
deception and fraud. Immigrants who belong to the excluded classes have
been carefully coached by agents interested in getting them through the
examination. Diseased eyes have been doctored up for the occasion; lame
persons have been trained to avoid the fatal limp during that walk
between the two surgeons. Lies have been put into innocent mouths and
the beginnings of falsehood into the heart. Mr. Adams gives this
instance showing how the mind of the inspector works. The line is
passing steadily, ceaselessly. A flashily dressed French girl has plenty
of money but unsatisfactory references and destination, and back she is
turned.
[Sidenote: Discretion]
[Sidenote: Picking the Winning Man]
"Next comes a bookkeeper, so he says. His father gave him money and he
was coming here to make his fortune. The inspector is not satisfied and
he is turned over to the 'S. I.' Board. But his papers, money, and
statements are clear and he is admitted; they give him the benefit of
the doubt as they always do. But next in line comes a well built stocky
Pole, with nothing in the world but a carpet bag, a few bundles, and a
small showing of money. Ambition is written all over his face and he is
admitted. 'Now,' says the recorder, pausing for a moment, 'see the
difference between these two gents. The first duffer will look around
for a job, spend time and money to get something to suit him, and keep
his job for a short time; then he will give it up, run through his
money, borrow from his friends, and then give them all the cold hand. He
won't wear well, and his dad knew it when he sent him over, but he was
glad to get rid of him. So lots of them are. Now look at the difference
between him and that Pole. He knows nothing but work. Look at his eyes,
mild but good. He has been brought up next to mother earth; turn him
loose from the train when he reaches his destination and he will dig.
He won't hang around looking for a job, but he will till the soil and
before you or I know it he will have crops and that is what he will live
on. He comes from a hard country, is tough, and when you and I are going
around shivering in an overcoat, he will be going around in his shirt
sleeves. That is the stuff we want here, not the first kind, with flabby
hands and sapped vitality.' Sure enough the bookkeeper did not wear
well, and falling into the hands of the police, some months later, he
was deported under the three-year limitation law, and the country was
better for it."
[Sidenote: Wise Partiality, and Work Praised]
The inspectors are wise in showing partiality to the men who have plenty
of days' work in them, even if they have less money. It is not at all
safe to judge the immigrants as desirable or otherwise according to the
amount of money per capita they bring. It is the head and not the
head-money that should be looked at. Think of the responsibility. More
than 300,000 women passed through the "moral wicket" at Ellis Island
last year. Of course many of bad quality, men and women both, get
through, for inspectors on too meager salaries are not omniscient, but a
good word should be said for these public servants, who in the main are
conscientiously performing a delicate and difficult task.[25] Let us see
some of the results of their work. This will give an idea of the large
numbers who ought never to have been allowed to leave home.
[Sidenote: Record of the Debarred]
The following table shows the principal classes of excluded for the past
fourteen years, with the total debarred for each year, and the
percentage:
THE DEBARRED FOR THE YEARS 1892-1905
Table headings:
Col A: Year
Col B: Immigrants
Col C: Idiots
Col D: Insane persons
Col E: Paupers, or likely to become public charges
Col F: Loathsome or dangerous or contagious diseases
Col G: Convicts
Col H: Assisted Immigrants
Col I: Contract laborers
Col J: Total Debarred
Col K: Percentage of whole
A B C D E F G H I J K
----+---------+--+---+-----+-----+----+----+------+------+------+
1892| 579,663| 4|17 |1,002| 80| 26 | 23 | 932 | 2,164| 0.4
1893| 439,730| 3| 8 | 431| 81| 12 | .. | 518 | 1,053| 0.2
1894| 285,631| 4| 5 | 802| 15| 8 | .. | 553 | 1,389| 0.5
1895| 258,536| 6|.. |1,714| ..| 4 | 1 | 694 | 2,419| 0.9
1896| 343,267| 1|10 |2,010| 2| .. | .. | 776 | 2,799| 0.8
1897| 230,832| 1| 6 |1,277| 1| 1 | 3 | 328 | 1,617| 0.7
1898| 229,299| 1|12 |2,261| 258| 2 | 79 | 417 | 3,030| 1.3
1899| 311,715| 1|19 |2,599| 348| 8 | 82 | 741 | 3,798| 1.2
1900| 448,572| 1|32 |2,974| 393| 4 | 2 | 833 | 4,246| 1.0
1901| 487,918| 6|16 |2,798| 309| 7 | 50 | 327 | 3,516| 0.7
1902| 648,743| 7|27 |3,944| 709| 9 | .. | 275 | 4,974| 0.8
1903| 857,046| 1|23 |5,812|1,773| 51 | 9 |1,086 | 8,769| 1.0
1904| 812,870|16|33 |4,798|1,560| 35 | 38 |1,501 | 7,994| 1.0
1905|1,026,499|38|92 |7,898|2,198| 39 | 19 |1,164 |11,480| 1.2
----+---------+--+---+-----+-----+----+----+------+------+-----+
Total debarred in the fourteen years, 59,248.
[Sidenote: Right of Appeal]
The debarred have the right of appeal, from the Special Inquiry Board
which excludes them, to the Commissioner of the Port, then to the
Commissioner-General, and finally to the Secretary[26] of Commerce and
Labor. The steamship lines that brought them have to pay costs of
detention and deportation, which is one means of making these lines
careful.
[Sidenote: Exclusion by Races]
A second table, which shows the exclusion by races, will repay study. It
is given in Appendix A. It not only shows where the bulk of the excluded
belong, but reveals not a little concerning the character of those
admitted who come from the same races. The intention of the present
Commissioner-General is to enforce the laws strictly, yet in a humane
spirit. Comparing the figures for the two years 1903-1904, he says:
[Sidenote: Increase of Undesirable]
"The most significant feature of this statement is the large increase in
the number of idiots, insane persons, and paupers during 1905, which,
coupled with an increase of twenty-five per cent. in the number of
diseased aliens, justifies the Bureau in directing attention to the
flagrant and wilful disregard by the ocean carriers of the laws for the
regulation of their business of securing alien passengers destined for
the United States."[27]
[Sidenote: Fraud of Transportation Companies]
This brings up a point of vast importance in more ways than one. The
official reports charge wholesale deception, evasion, and fraud upon the
great transportation companies. The fact stands for itself that in 1904
they were fined more than $31,000 under the section of the law imposing
a $100 penalty for bringing a diseased alien whose disease might have
been detected by a competent medical examination at the port of
departure. For many years these companies have in doubtful cases
demanded double passage money, so that they might make a profit both
ways if the alien were rejected. The Italian government has passed an
Act giving an alien right to recover the money illegally retained in
this way, showing the practice, and the government opinion of it.
[Sidenote: Artificial Swelling of Passage Fees]
The truth is, the transportation agent has become a figure of
international consequence and concern. The artificial cause behind the
present unprecedented exodus from Europe, according to Whelpley, is the
abnormal activity of the transportation companies in their effort to
secure new and profitable cargo for their ships. In 1900 over
$118,000,000 was invested in trans-atlantic steamship lines, which are
largely owned by foreigners. New lines to the Mediterranean have been
put on with distinct purpose to swell the Italian and Slav immigration.
Rate cutting has at times made it possible for the steerage passenger to
go from Liverpool to New York for as low as $8.75. The average rate is
not high enough to deter anyone who really wants to come. An English
line, in return for establishing a line direct from a Mediterranean
port, has secured from the Hungarian government a guarantee of 30,000
immigrants a year from its territory.
[Sidenote: Solicitation Law Violated]
The law forbids transportation companies or the owners of vessels to
"directly or through agents, either by written, printed, or oral
solicitations, solicit, invite, or encourage the immigration of any
aliens into the United States except by ordinary commercial letters,
circulars, advertisements, or oral representations, stating the sailings
of their vessels and terms and facilities of transportation therein."
That this restrictive provision is persistently evaded is made plain by
the reports of government inspectors sent abroad to investigate. The
annual migration involves more than a hundred millions of dollars, and
where money is to be made law is easily disobeyed.
[Sidenote: The Ubiquitous and Unscrupulous "Runner"]
One of the inspectors says the chief evil in this solicitation business
is the so-called "runner." Here is his description of this mischievous
_genus homo_. "It is he who goes around in eastern and southern Europe
from city to city and village to village telling fairy tales about the
prosperity of many immigrants in America and the opportunities offered
by the United States for aliens. The runner does not know of anyone who
is undesirable; he claims to be all-powerful, that he has
representatives in every port who can 'open the door' of America to
anyone. It is he who induces many a diseased person to attempt the
journey, and it is also he and his associates who do their best to have
the undesirables admitted. The steamship companies, as a rule, do not
deal with these runners directly and disclaim all responsibility for
their nefarious practices. But the official agents of the steamship
companies do pay their runners commissions for every immigrant referred
to them. I have especially studied this problem along the borders of
Germany, Russia, and Austrian Galicia. Here most of the emigrants are
smuggled across the frontiers by these runners and robbed of the greater
part of their cash possessions. When they arrive at the 'control
station' it is remarkable that most emigrants have cards with the
address of a certain steamship ticket agent, and the agent, on the other
hand, has a list of all the individuals who were smuggled across the
frontiers. When I asked one of these representatives how this was done,
he told me that he paid 'good commissions' to the runner on the other
side of the frontier for each case. When steamship companies and their
agents stop paying commissions to runners for emigrants referred to
them, individuals will only by their own initiative attempt to come to
the United States, and most of those considered undesirable will remain
at their native homes."[28]
[Sidenote: Law in Contempt]
Violations of law abound. Smuggling persons is regarded with much the
same moral leniency as smuggling goods. The law forbids importation of
persons under contract to work. In April last two Italian steamships
carried back to Europe more than 1,000 laborers, who had been brought
over in violation of the contract-labor laws. Commissioner Watchorn had
word from his special investigators abroad that the men had been
collected in the Balkan States to work for padrones in this country. So
back went the thousand Slavs; but it was a chance discovery. The men
admitted that the padrones had paid their passage and agreed to furnish
them work. They said the rosiest conditions had been painted before
their eyes, and they believed "big money" was to be made here. The
steamship companies had to bear the expense of taking them back, but the
padrones have not suffered any penalty, and will go on with their
unlawful work.
[Sidenote: How the Laborers are Engaged]
Mr. Brandenburg learned from an Italian woman that her husband had been
commissioned by a contractor in Pittsburg to go into the Italian
provinces of Austria and engage 200 good stonemasons, 200 good
carpenters, and an indefinite number of unskilled laborers. These people
were to be put in touch with sub-agents of lines sailing from Hamburg,
Fiume, and Bremen, and these agents were to be accountable for these
contract laborers being got safely into the United States. This woman
said many of her neighbors in Pittsburg had come into the country as
contract laborers and held the law in great contempt, as it was merely
a matter of being sufficiently instructed and prepared, and no official
at Boston or Ellis Island could tell the difference.[29] Why should not
the law be held in contempt, not only this one but all law, by the
immigrant who is introduced to America through its violation, and
trained to perjure himself at the outset of his new career? Does not the
Commissioner-General sound a note of warning when he says:
[Sidenote: The Christian Duty]
"It is not reasonable to anticipate that if the great transportation
lines do not respect the laws of this country their alien passengers
will do so, nor can it be conceded that those aliens whose entrance to
the United States is effected in spite of the law are desirable or even
safe additions to our population."[30]
[Sidenote: Remedy Demanded]
It is painful to think that such conditions can exist in connection with
so vital a matter as immigration. But it is better to have the facts
known, in order that a remedy may be found. Publicity is the safety of
republics and communities. And the disclosures of the lengths to which
men will go in order to make money should give new and mighty impulse to
those who believe in righteousness and have not bowed to the god mammon.
If the work of Christianizing the aliens is made harder by the
experiences through which they pass and the examples they have set
before them by unscrupulous persons, it must be undertaken with so much
the more zeal. Respect for law must be preserved, and one of the best
ways to accomplish this is to see to it that the laws are enforced and
the violators of them punished, even though they represent giant
corporations and vast capital.
QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER II
AIM: TO REALIZE THE NECESSITY OF JUST AND ADEQUATE LAWS FOR THE
ADMISSION AND RESTRICTION OF IMMIGRANTS
I. _Method of Admission._
1. What proportion of the immigrants now coming land at New York?
2. What is Ellis Island like--materially--spiritually?
3. Suppose yourself an immigrant: what steps would you take to
reach New York? What processes would you undergo on landing? How
would you be directed?
II. _Governmental Regulation._
4. What two kinds of government regulation are practicable? Are
both in force?
5. Do the steamship companies obey the law? with regard to its
letter? to its real intent?
III. _Restriction._
6. * Do you think unrestricted immigration is best for our country?
7. Why is the present discrimination against the Chinese not just?
8. When and to what extent was control over immigration assumed by
the United States Government?
9. What measures were passed in 1903? Has there been any action
since?
10. What classes of immigrants are excluded as unfit? Who decides
in case of doubt?
11. Are many immigrants sent back? Why do the steamship companies
bring the unfit?
IV. _Violation._
12. How is immigration solicited? How is it coerced?
13. What is the purpose and what the actual working of the
"Contract-Labor Law"?
V. _What Can the Christian Public do to Improve Conditions?_
14. * Can we expect immigrants to obey our laws, if they are
started in such ways? Why not?
15. Has Christian public opinion any special duty in this matter?
What is it?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER II
I. Visit and inspect if possible, some receiving station for
immigrants, and report; or else consult the statements and charts
of Reports of the Commissioner of Immigration, for the year ending
June 30, 1905.
II. Describe the Brandenburgs during life among Italians, and
journey to this country as immigrants; their aims, and the results
achieved. Brandenburg: Imported Americans, IV, XIII, XV, XXII.
III. The present regulation of immigrants, with special reference
to "The Excluded." Laws for 1903. Hall: Immigration, 216-231.
Brandenburg: Imported Americans, 248-274.
IV. Is there need for further restriction? Hall: Immigration, XI,
XII. Hunter: Poverty, VI. Charities and The Commons, issue for
March 31, 1906.
_The evils attendant upon unrestricted immigration are not
theoretical but actual. Emigration from one place becomes
immigration into another. It is an international affair of greatest
importance, and should be speedily recognized as such._--J. D.
Whelpley.
III
PROBLEMS OF LEGISLATION AND DISTRIBUTION
The immigration question in this country has never had the attention to
which its importance entitles it. It has sometimes been the scapegoat of
religious and racial prejudices, and always, in recent years, an annual
sacrifice to the gods of transportation.--_Prescott F. Hall._
It is exasperating to any patriotic American to have brought
convincingly before him the proofs of a wholesale evasion of a very
carefully planned code of laws which he fain would think is a sufficient
protection of his country's best interests. It is more annoying to
realize that the successful evaders are for the most part foreigners,
and those, too, of commonly despised races. The conclusion is plain:
Seek the grounds on which to deny passage to undesirable emigrants who
wish to come to the United States, in the villages from which they
emanate. In the communes of their nativity the truth is known and cannot
be hidden.--_Broughton Brandenburg._
The mesh of the law needs to be stiffened rather than relaxed. The
benefit of the doubt belongs to the United States rather than to the
alien who clamors for admittance.--_Commissioner-General Sargent._
Distribution, rather than wholesale restriction, is being more and more
recognized as the real way out of the difficulties presented by our
immense unassimilated immigration.--_Gino C. Speranza._
The need is to devise some system by which undesirable immigrants shall
be kept out entirely, while desirable immigrants are properly
distributed throughout the country.--_President Roosevelt._
III
PROBLEMS OF LEGISLATION AND DISTRIBUTION
_I. The Present Situation_
[Sidenote: Difficulties in the Way]
There is a growing conviction that something ought to be done to check
the present enormous inflow of immigrants. But when it comes to what
that something is, difficulties at once arise. There are so many
foreigners already in America, and so many children of foreign-born
parents, that it is impossible to touch the stream at any point without
protest from some source. As some one says, "You do not have to go very
far back in the family line of any of us to find an immigrant. Scratch
an American and you find a foreigner." And not a few of these foreigners
sympathize with the Irishman who said to a lady against whom he had a
grievance because she insisted on having a Chinese servant, "We have a
right here that those who are here by the mere accident of birth have
not." On the other hand, it was a foreigner of wide vision who said: "I
do not believe there is any peculiar virtue in American birth, or that
Americans are (_per se_) superior to all other nations; but I do believe
that they are better fitted than all others to govern their own
country. They made the country what it is, and ought to have the first
voice in determining what it is to be. In this alone consists their
superiority."[31]
[Sidenote: The Immigration Conference of 1905]
It is significant and hopeful that men are thinking upon the subject.
What we want is full and fair discussion and thorough information.
Nothing is so perilous in a democracy as ignorance and indifference. It
is far better for men to disagree thoughtfully than to agree
thoughtlessly. What all patriotic and Christian men seek is the best
good of this country, which means so much to the whole world as the
supreme experiment of self-government. That the people are awakening was
shown by the Immigration Conference in New York in December of 1905,
when five hundred men, most of them appointed by their state governors,
gathered under the auspices of the National Civic Federation to discuss
the whole question of immigration. The immigration experts of the
country were present, and the company included United States Senators
and Representatives, college presidents and professors, leading editors,
lawyers and clergymen, and prominent labor leaders.
[Sidenote: Conclusions Reached]
No such conference on this subject has before been held, and the results
of the discussion, which was for the most part as temperate and sensible
as it was straightforward, were such as to bring about a better
understanding between the men who are supposed to be theorists and the
representatives of American labor. The resolutions unanimously adopted
were conservative and practical. The most important recommendations call
for admission tests in Europe rather than after the alien has reached
America, for the spread of information leading to better distribution,
and for the establishment of a commission to investigate the subject of
immigration in all its relations, including the violations and evasions
of the present law. Undoubtedly such a commission, appointed by the
president and possessed of competent authority, could accomplish much
good. For one thing, it could keep the matter before the people and
wisely guide public sentiment.
[Sidenote: The Right of Self-Protection]
However much men may differ in view as to specific legislation, one
point ought to be regarded as settled. That is, the right of Congress to
pass such laws as may be deemed essential to safeguard American
institutions and liberties. A nation has the inalienable right to
protect itself against foreign invasion; and it does not matter whether
the invasion be armed or under the guise of immigration. No foreign
nation has the right to send its peoples to America, or by persecution
to drive them forth upon other nations, and no foreigner has any
inherent right to claim admission to the United States.
[Sidenote: Welfare of the State Supreme]
Right is determined, in migration as in civic relations, not by the will
or whim of the individual, but by the welfare of the state. Further than
this, the government has the right to deport at any time any aliens who
may be regarded as unfit to remain. There ought to be no confusion as to
rights in this matter.
[Sidenote: Cases that call for Reform]
The question recurs, however, is there need of doing anything? As to
this President Roosevelt and the Commissioner-General of Immigration are
agreed. In his last annual message the President recommended the
prohibition of immigration through Canada and Mexico, the strengthening
of our exclusion laws, heavier restraints upon the steamship companies,
and severer penalties for enticing immigrants. It is a striking fact
that nearly all of the proposed additions to our laws are intended to
stop the evasion and violation of the laws we have, which are made
ineffective by fraud and questionable practices of the most extensive
kind. A recent writer[32] presents this matter in condensed form worthy
of study, giving this "astonishing catalogue of abuses," brought to
light by special inspectors in the employ of the Immigration Bureau:
[Sidenote: Astonishing Abuses]
"1. The importation of contract laborers, usually under the
direction of padrones, from Greece, Italy, and Austria-Hungary.
"2. The smuggling of immigrants across the Canadian and Mexican
borders who would be certain of rejection at our Atlantic ports.
"3. The 'patching up' of immigrants afflicted with favus, trachoma,
and other loathsome or contagious diseases so that they can get
past the inspectors without detection, even though the process is
likely to augment their sufferings later.
"4. The forgery and sale of spurious naturalization certificates
and the repeated use of the same certificates passed back and forth
between relatives and friends.
"5. The assisting of immigration, either by local authorities in
Europe or by earlier comers in America.
"6. The stimulating of immigration by transportation companies and
their armies of paid agents and sub-agents in Europe."
[Sidenote: A Plain Necessity]
As a result, Mr. Ogg says, of the widespread operations through these
underground channels there is an abnormal immigration movement so vast
as "to override and all but reduce to a mere joke our whole restrictive
system. That an appalling number of aliens who are on the verge of
dependency, defectiveness, and delinquency do somehow contrive to get
into the country every year is a fact too well known to call for
verification here. Nobody undertakes to deny it." There is plain
necessity, therefore, that some means of redeeming the situation should
be found.
_II. Proposed Legislation_
[Sidenote: Three Recommendations]
The Commissioner-General of Immigration, in his report for 1905, devotes
much space to new or amendatory legislation, which he regards as a
necessity.[33] To bring the steamship companies to stricter regard for
law, he would raise the penalty for carrying diseased persons from $100
to $500. He favors the debarring of illiterates, and as a special
recommendation proposes an international conference of immigration
experts, with a view to secure by treaty or convention the coöperation
of foreign countries from which aliens migrate hither, both in reducing
the number of immigrants and preventing the inadmissible and undesirable
classes from leaving their own homes.
[Sidenote: Value of International Conference]
Such a conference would certainly be conducive to a good understanding
between nations, would doubtless secure an effective restraint of the
transportation agencies, and throw such light upon the attitude of
foreign governments toward our present system of immigration restriction
as would enable Congress to decide intelligently what additional
measures are necessary to protect this country from the dangers of an
increasing influx of aliens. This is an admirable recommendation. As Mr.
Whelpley says, it is a question of emigration as well as immigration,
and since two countries are interested in the migrants, the whole matter
is properly one for international conference and action.
[Sidenote: Immigration Bills in Congress]
The interest taken by Congress in immigration is indicated by the
introduction in the House during the session of 1906 of nineteen bills
to regulate or restrict immigration, while a number were introduced in
the Senate also. The House Committee on Immigration, of which Mr.
Gardner, of Massachusetts, is chairman, took all the bills into
consideration and reported a comprehensive Bill to Regulate the
Immigration of Aliens into the United States. This proposed law advances
considerably beyond the Act of 1903, which it is designed to replace. It
raises the head tax from $2 to $5, introduces the reading test,[34] and
practically creates a money test also, by requiring every male immigrant
to have $25 in hand at the time of examination.[35] The money from the
head tax is to constitute a permanent immigration fund, to defray not
only the cost of the Immigration Bureau, but also that of maintaining an
information bureau, to save immigrants from being deceived and show them
where they are most wanted and likely to succeed.[36]
[Sidenote: The Reading Test Pro and Con]
The section in this proposed legislation that has caused most
discussion and dissension is the illiteracy test. This measure has been
pressed upon Congress by the Immigration Restrictive League ever since
the organization of that Society in 1894. Senator Lodge fathered it and
it was passed once and vetoed by President Cleveland. President
Roosevelt recommended it in his message of December 3, 1901, and it has
received the endorsement of many boards of charities and many leading
men. The strongest argument in favor of it is contained in a resolution
passed by the Associated Charities of Boston, although the same argument
applies broadly to the question of restriction. The reading test was
discussed by speakers at the National Immigration Conference, but that
meeting did not include it in the resolutions adopted. The Jewish
influence is thrown strongly against it, since the Russian Jews who are
fleeing from oppression are among the most illiterate of the present
immigration. This is due to lack of school facilities, however, for the
Jews naturally take to education and the Jewish children in the public
schools and high schools are carrying off the prizes. "Not long ago I
saw a Jewish girl in a New England academy win the prize in
constitutional history over the heads of the boys and girls from
American families, though her father was an illiterate Russian
Jew."[37]
[Sidenote: In Favor of Illiterates]
That is not by any means an unusual testimony. Another fact worthy of
note is that many of those who have worked most closely among the
immigrants do not favor the reading test. Mr. Brandenburg, for example,
suggests that the illiterates often prove less opinionated and more
easily assimilable than others of the same race who can read and write,
and says that so far as his experience goes the great proportion of the
rascals and undesirables can read and write; that if he had his choice
between admitting to this country a wealthy educated Roman nobleman or
an illiterate Neapolitan or Sicilian laborer, he would take the laborer
every time, for his brain and brawn and heart make the better foundation
on which to build the institutions of our Republic. Miss Kate Claghorn
and other experienced workers agree in this view, and think it would be
a positive misfortune to make ability to read the deciding test. Nor
would these experts favor the money test. They believe the inspectors
should have more leeway, as judges of human nature, and would rather
rely on their judgment as to the character of the applicant than upon
any arbitrary tests. So this is an open question for discussion, with
good arguments on both sides.
[Sidenote: Three Further Propositions]
There are three propositions further. The first is a measure introduced
into the House by the late Congressman Adams of Pennsylvania. This
would restrict by law the total number of immigrants from any given
country in any one year to 80,000. This would decrease the south of
Europe quota, and might increase that from northern Europe. It would at
any rate tend to stop the million a year rate.
[Sidenote: Itinerant Boards]
The second measure is proposed by Mr. Brandenburg, who feels sure it
would prove the desired remedy. His opinion carries a good deal of
weight. His proposal is to "select emigrants before itinerant boards of
two, three, or more native-born Americans who speak fluently and
understand thoroughly the language and dialects of the people who come
before them--these boards to be on a civil service basis," and to sit at
stated times in the central cities of the countries whence aliens
come.[38] This he believes to be "a correct solution of the gigantic
problem." It would keep expense down, avoid opportunities for wholesale
corruption of American officials by the transportation interests and the
immigrants themselves, and enable the examiners to deny passage to
persons desirous of going to districts already over-populated with
aliens.
[Sidenote: Inspection Abroad]
The third measure is in line with the second, but instead of
establishing itinerant boards of examiners, it proposes to select
fifteen or twenty ports abroad which shall be made exclusive points for
the embarkation of emigrants bound for the United States. Mr. Ogg states
the plan as follows:
[Sidenote: List of Cities]
"Perhaps an adequate list would be Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin, Rotterdam,
Antwerp, London, Southampton, Liverpool, Havre, St. Nazaire, Marseilles,
Fiume, Trieste, Naples, Genoa, and Odessa. At each of these ports should
be located an immigrant station, similar, in a general way, to the
immigrant stations at our larger Atlantic ports to-day, and it should be
made the duty of the resident commissioners, with their staffs of
inspectors and medical attachés, to examine carefully and minutely every
man, woman, and child of alien nationality who applies for passage to
the United States. Successful applicants should be given a certificate
which alone would enable them to land at the port of destination; those
unsuccessful should be made to understand then and there that, in their
present state at least, there is no chance for them to carry out their
intention of migration, and that the best thing for them to do is to
return to their homes."[39]
[Sidenote: Do the Sifting in Europe]
This radical plan proposes to transfer Ellis Island, in effect, to a
score of points in Europe, and do the sifting before the starting. That
would be sensible. Then only the desirable portion would get here. While
the idea is radical, it is the outgrowth of years of experience and
reflection, and Mr. Ogg says, immigration officials are generally
agreed upon its wisdom and practicability. This system, thoroughly
carried out, would not only stop all immigration that is illegal, but as
much as possible of that which, though not illegal, is questionable and
undesirable. More tests applied at this end of the route will be only
partially effective, since experience proves that the present tests are
evaded. The means of reform, upon which all other immigration reforms
must wait, lies in this shifting of the main work of supervision and
inspection to Europe. The foreign governments would welcome the plan, or
at least accept it if proposed by this country.
[Sidenote: What this would Accomplish.]
This system would serve to prevent the tragedies of the excluded; would
go far toward stopping the pernicious activity of the steamship
companies and their enticing emissaries; would facilitate the detection
and punishment of those breakers and evaders of the law who are now
immune; and it would make possible a quite different and more searching
examination of intending immigrants than is possible when the mass of
them is poured out at Ellis Island, as through the small end of a
funnel. Back to the sources is humane and wise. The expense involved
could easily be met by an increased head tax; and if not, this is a case
where expense in money is not to be counted in comparison with the
country's welfare.
[Sidenote: International Regulation]
These are interesting propositions. Mr. Whelpley agrees with Mr.
Brandenburg as to the necessity of dealing with the migrant before he
reaches port, either of embarkation or disembarkation. He says our laws
and restrictions are severe, and thoroughly and intelligently enforced,
but fall short of their purpose for the simple reason that there is
little or no control over the source of supply. "It is an effort to beat
back the tide after it has rolled upon the shore, and in the vast
multitude of arrivals many gain entrance legally whom the country would
be better off without."[40] His plan is to have an international
regulation of migration, so that each government will do its part to
check the present conditions and regulate the matter at its starting
point.
[Sidenote: A Higher Standard]
This subject of legislation is confessedly delicate and difficult. The
diversity of opinion is confusing. Yet we cannot escape the conviction
that the present immigration is altogether too vast for the good of the
country. Suspension is not to be seriously considered, but surely it
could do no harm to make the laws more stringent, to insist upon a
higher physical standard, to debar degenerates, and to stop at any cost
the solicitation and "assisted" immigration abuses which have caused so
much suffering to the deceived and excluded victims of greed.
_III. The Problem of Distribution_
[Sidenote: The Crucial Point]
No phase of the immigration question is receiving more attention at
present than that of distribution. There is a common opinion that if the
proper distribution could be made, the chief evils of the tremendous
influx would disappear. We are told that it is the congestion of aliens
in already crowded centers of population that creates the menace to
civilization; that there is land enough to be cultivated; and that vast
enterprises are under way calling for the unskilled labor that is coming
in. But the puzzling problem is how to get the immigrants where they are
wanted and needed, and can be of value. On this point, Mr. Max Mitchell,
Superintendent of the Federation of Jewish Charities, says:
[Sidenote: An Expert Opinion]
"The problem is that of overcrowding. We must not close our ports to the
people of the Old World who seek a haven and a home in the land of
liberty and plenty, but we must see to it that when they arrive here
they are directed out of the city and into the country places where
ordinary human industry is rewarded abundantly. The inclination of the
immigrants themselves to stick so closely to the great centers of
population must be overcome. If the great crowds of foreigners that
inundate these shores every year could be distributed in a sensible and
logical way over all the vast uncultivated territory in which this
nation is so rich, we should never hear any complaint of too much
immigration. No better farmers can be found anywhere than among the
foreign peoples who seek America."
[Sidenote: Legislation Required]
Very likely, but the trouble is, they do not want to farm and they are
free to prefer the squalor of the slums to the green of the fields. Nor
is there much hope that this singular but strong inclination can be
overcome save by government regulation, which shall settle the matter of
location for those who have no specific destination or occupation. It is
probable that on this point some reasonable legislation could be
secured; especially if the various distribution societies and railroad
companies should fail in their efforts to induce the aliens to go where
they are needed. Commissioner-General Sargent has dealt plainly with
this matter in his Reports for the last three years, and rightly
estimates its importance. He says:[41]
[Sidenote: Distribution of Prime Importance]
"In my judgment the smallest part of the duty to be discharged in
successfully handling aliens, with a view to the protection of the
people and the institutions of this country, is that part now provided
for by law. Its importance, though undeniable, is relatively of
secondary moment. It cannot compare in practical value with, nor can it
take the place of, measures to secure the distribution of the many
thousands who come in ignorance of the industrial needs and
opportunities of this country, and colonize alien communities in our
great cities."
[Sidenote: Information Agencies Proposed]
Suitable legislation is strongly urged to establish agencies through
which, either with or without the coöperation of the states, aliens
shall be made acquainted with the resources of the country at large, and
the industrial needs of the various sections, in both skilled and
unskilled labor, the cost of living, the wages paid, the price and
capabilities of the land, the character of the climates, the duration of
the seasons--in short, all that information furnished by some of the
great railway lines through whose efforts the territory tributary
thereto has been transformed from a wilderness within a few years to the
abiding place of a happy and prosperous population.
[Sidenote: A Growing Evil]
"Again the importance of undertaking to distribute aliens now
congregating in our large cities to those parts of the United States
where they can secure employment without displacing others by working
for a less wage, and where the conditions of existence do not tend to
the fostering of disease, depravity, and resistance to the social and
political security of the country, is urged. The Bureau is convinced
that no feature of the immigration question so insistently demands
public attention and effective action. The evil to be removed is one
that is steadily and rapidly on the increase, and its removal will
strike at the roots of fraudulent elections, poverty, disease, and crime
in our large cities, and on the other hand largely supply that
increasing demand for labor to develop the natural resources of our
country. Too much encouragement cannot be given to the reported efforts
of certain railway companies to divert a portion of the tide of
immigration to the Southern states. It is impossible, in the opinion of
the Bureau, to overestimate the importance of this subject as bearing
upon the effect of immigration on the future welfare of this
country."[42]
[Sidenote: Chart of Distribution]
What are the facts concerning the present location and distribution of
immigrants? The answer involves a most interesting study. Taking the
immigration of 1905, the chart[43] on the next page illustrates the
distribution by states.
[Illustration: PROPORTION OF IMMIGRATION AND NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS
GOING TO EACH STATE DURING THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1905
BY PERMISSION OF THE BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION]
[Sidenote: Where the Masses Stay]
The enormous proportion going to New York, Pennsylvania, and the North
Atlantic section shows prominently. They got ninety per cent. of the
whole, while the South received but four per cent. of the total, and
only one per cent. of that went to the South Central States. The Great
West had only four per cent. as against five the year preceding; showing
conclusively how few of the million went where it would have been far
better for the entire million to have gone. It is safe to say that there
was little or no legitimate demand in New York, Pennsylvania, or New
England for any of them. At the same time, there is some encouragement
in the fact that the distribution of the past fourteen years shows that
smaller proportions are now remaining in the states in which are located
the principal ports of entry. For example, the percentage of New York
State has steadily decreased from forty-two per cent. in 1892 to thirty
per cent. in 1905. Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio have gained
proportionately.
[Sidenote: Diagrams to be Studied]
A series of diagrams which show the distribution of the foreign-born
living in the United States in 1900, was prepared by Mr. F. W. Hewes,
for the _World's Work_, and published in October, 1903. By the courtesy
of Doubleday, Page and Company, publishers, they are reproduced. Each
dot in them represents a thousand persons. They show at a glance where
the immigrants were in 1900, and the totals by race or nationality. By
adding to these totals the remarkable figures of the last five years,
one can appreciate the great increase in the Italian and Slavic totals,
and an idea of the present situation may be obtained, for as to locality
the percentages have not materially changed.
[Sidenote: Protective Societies]
[Illustration: Born in Sweden, Norway, Denmark--Resident in the United
States 1900
Reproduced by special permission from "The World's Work" Copyright,
1903.]
[Illustration: Born in Canada, England, Scotland, Wales--Resident in the
United States 1900
Reproduced by special permission from "The World's Work." Copyright,
1903.]
The further point to be considered as to distribution is the effort now
being made to accomplish desired results. In lieu of legislation or
government provision, these are (1) Societies organized by
individuals, and (2) Railway companies. The Bureau of Information[44]
proposed by the bill now in Congress would, if established, closely
coöperate with the state agencies and all other bodies promoting
distribution.
[Sidenote: Italian Society]
One of the most active and efficient of these organizations, which will
serve as an illustration, is the Society for Italian Immigrants, with
headquarters in New York, near the Battery. The Society thus states its
purpose and methods:
"About 200,000 Italian immigrants are now landing at this port during
every twelve months. These immigrants are almost entirely poor peasants
who cannot speak our language. In order that these people may get a fair
start in this new and, to them, strange country, and that they may
become familiar as soon as possible with our laws, habits, and customs,
help and instruction of various kinds must be given them. To furnish
these either freely or at the lowest possible cost, is the object of The
Society for Italian Immigrants.
[Sidenote: A Real Service]
"Accordingly, in its work the Society employs agents to look after the
needs of the immigrants at Ellis Island; it runs an escort service, by
which competent persons are furnished, at nominal cost, to take
immigrants to their destination; it conducts an employment agency; it
maintains an information bureau; it coöperates with the United States
authorities to enforce the Immigration Laws; it manages labor camps for
contractors; it wages war on all persons engaged in swindling
immigrants; it is engaged in breaking up the padrone system in all its
forms; and lastly and generally, it does all it can to help immigrants,
so that as soon as possible they may become self-supporting and
self-respecting citizens, a benefit and not a detriment to this
country."
[Sidenote: Grants from Italian Government]
The Society is supported by voluntary contributions, and by grants to
the amount of about $7,000 a year from the Italian government. The
Society has met with the approval of the police department of the city,
the United States authorities at Ellis Island, and the Italian Royal
Department of Emigration, and of all individuals who have made
themselves familiar with what it is doing. There is also a Boston
Italian Society, organized in 1902, to protect newcomers from sharpers,
thieves, and fraudulent persons; also from the frauds of bankers and
padrones. The Italian government has given $1,000 a year to this
Society.
[Sidenote: Hebrew and Other Societies]
A similar work is done by the United Hebrew Charities, and the Removal
Bureau established by the Jews in New York in 1901. Through this agency
in the past three years over 10,000 of the Russian or Roumanian Jews
have been kept from increasing the overcrowded population of the ghetto
and swelling the sum of sweat-shop misery. While the number distributed
is small compared with the steady inflow (5,525 sent out in 1903, while
43,000 settled in New York), the work bids fair to make itself felt, and
shows an appreciation by the Jews already here of the situation and the
necessity of changing it, for the sake both of the immigrants and the
country. Industrial removal is now known wherever Jews are found, and
all that is possible is being done to stimulate artificial distribution
as the remedy for the worst evils of unassimilated and congested
immigration.[45] There are also German, Scandinavian and other
societies, benevolent and protective, which aid in distribution.
[Sidenote: A Chief Obstacle]
The principal difficulty with the distribution scheme, so far as most of
the present-day immigrants are concerned, is that with the exception of
the Italians they are not fitted for agriculture, while it is the farms
that most need workers. Another difficulty[46] is that the authorities
of the various states object to receiving shipments of immigrants from
the city tenement districts, regarding them as decidedly undesirable
additions to the population. The United States Immigration
Investigating Commission asked the governors of the different states
what nationalities of immigrants they desired, and in only two cases was
any desire expressed for Slavs, Latins, Jews, or Asiatics, and these two
related to Italian farmers with money, intending to become permanent
settlers. The officials protest against the shipment of southern and
eastern Europeans from the city slums into the states. Care must be
taken, too, that the immigrants do not settle in country colonies, which
would render them almost as difficult of Americanization as though they
were colonized in the city.
[Sidenote: What the South is Doing]
The New South is already giving object lessons to the country at large
in the successful attraction and utilization of the alien influx. The
Four States Immigration League, composed of representatives of business
organizations in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, was
organized in 1903 to secure desirable immigrants for those states. "It
was keenly realized," observed the Chattanooga Times, "that of the
enormous inflow from the old country, the number seeking homes in the
South was ridiculously small and out of all proportion to the importance
of the country and the inducements our productive fields hold out to
home seekers." An Immigration Bureau has been established in
Chattanooga, and South Carolina and other states have organized active
departments of agriculture and immigration.
[Illustration: Born in Ireland--Resident in the United States 1900
The small dots grouped about N.Y. City, include, also, the totals of
Conn. and N.J.--Chart Boston: of Mass. and R.I.
Reproduced by special permission of "The World's Work." Copyright
1909.]
[Illustration: Born in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium,
Luxembourg. Resident in the U.S. 1900
Reproduced by special permission from "The World's Work." Copyright
1903.]
The leading railway lines promise active coöperation, as their interests
lie positively in this direction. Some, indeed, have actively engaged in
the work of securing distribution.
[Sidenote: New Zealand Plan]
The suggestion is a good one that we might study with profit, in this
connection, the methods of New Zealand.[47] There the established
Department of Labor has regarded as "its vital duty the practical task
of finding where labor was wanted and depositing there the labor running
elsewhere to waste." To this end a widely extended system of agencies is
maintained for bringing workers and work together, the unemployed are
scattered through the colony, and charity is refused. The experience
there shows that city people and men of trades have been successful as
farmers and farm workers. Mr. Lord says: "It may be a novel function of
government to undertake the distributing of labor, but it is none the
less more rational than an edict of exclusion would be, or the tolerance
of congestion and slums now is."
[Sidenote: Information Before Embarking]
One thing that government can do is to make sure that intending
immigrants are fully informed, in their own countries, before they
start, concerning the laws of the United States, the conditions of the
various sections, the advantages and drawbacks, the demand for labor and
of what kind. An official bureau of correspondence and information would
help check undesirable immigrants from coming, and distribute desirable
ones when they do come.
[Sidenote: Looking on the Bright Side]
While the question of distribution has only recently been taken up in
earnest, its importance is now realized, and there is every reason to
believe that it will receive henceforth large attention, and that wise
measures will be vigorously pushed. Remedied congestion will mean
increased assimilation and decreased danger. As we review the situation,
while there is much in it that requires serious consideration and wise
action, we agree heartily with these words of Dr. Charles L. Thompson:
[Sidenote: Not Bars but Guides]
"There is no need of becoming pessimistic. Above all we should not go
back on the history of our Country. We have grown great by assimilation.
Let us have a dignified confidence in the power of our institutions and
of our Christianity to continue the process which has developed the
strength of the Republic. If we are true to our principles we will be
equal to any strain that may be put upon them. Only let us see to it
that our principles--both civic and religious--are at work in full vigor
on the questions which the floodtide of immigration raises. What we need
is not more bars to keep foreigners out but more laborers to work with
them and teach them how to gather the harvest of American and Christian
liberty."[48]
QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER III
AIM: TO STUDY THE PROBLEMS OF LEGISLATION AND DISTRIBUTION REGARDING
ALIENS
I. _The Opinions of Capable Observers Regarding Legislation_.
1. Give the names and opinions of some who favor restriction of
immigration. Of some who are opposed. With which do you agree?
2. The Immigration Conference of 1905: What was it? What did it
recommend?
3. As to free admission: What are the rights of the government? Of
the individual?
4. What does President Roosevelt recommend?
II. _Proposed Legislation_.
5. What abuses specially need to be corrected?
6. Name the chief provisions of the "Gardner Bill," before Congress
in 1906.
7. * Give reasons for and against a reading test. Would you have
voted for it or against?
8. Describe and give your opinion of other proposed methods of
restricting immigration.
9. Would it be possible to sift immigrants before they leave
Europe?
III. _Distribution._
10. How much can be done toward a wider distribution of the stream
of immigrants?
11. Where do the larger numbers now settle? In what cities? What
states?
12. What Societies are helping them to find better locations?
13. What special efforts are being made by some Southern states?
14. How does New Zealand deal with this question? Can we copy that
plan?
15. * What spirit is needed in dealing with the whole problem?
16. Can you tell of any special endeavors to bring about better
control or direction of immigration?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER III
I. _Further Study of Opinions of United States Immigration
Officials._
See Commissioner-General's Annual Report, furnished free from
Washington upon application to the "Commissioner of Immigration."
Report of 1902, pp. 59, 60. Report of 1904, pp. 37-47, 123-136.
Report of 1904, pp. 61-70. Report of 1905, pp. 58, 75-78.
II. _Provisions and Fate of Legislation of 1906 Proposed in
Congress._
Text of "Gardner Bill" and Journal of the House for June 25, 1906,
can be secured by writing to Washington.
III. _Evils of Undistributed Immigration._
Warne: The Slav Invasion, IV, V.
Hunter: Poverty, VI.
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, IV, X.
IV. _Efforts to Secure Wider Distribution of Immigrants._
Hall: Immigration, XIII.
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, VII, IX.
_To know anything about the actual character of recent and present
immigration, we must distinguish the many and very diverse elements
of which it is composed._--Samuel McLanahan.
IV
THE NEW IMMIGRATION
The world never before saw anything comparable to this tremendous
movement of people in so short a space of time. The population Europe
has lost in a hundred years is greater than the total number of
inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland in 1860, and only a little less
than that of the United States in the same year. It is equal to three
fifths of the total population of Europe in the time of Augustus Cæsar.
If the ships carried five hundred passengers on the average, about fifty
thousand trips have been made in the transfer.
Emphatically too many people are now coming over here; too many of an
undesirable sort. In 1902 over seven tenths were from races who do not
rapidly assimilate with the customs and institutions of this
country.--_Prescott F. Hall._
There are two classes who would pass upon the immigration question. One
says, "Close the doors and let in nobody;" and the other says, "Open
wide the doors and let in everybody." I am in sympathy with neither of
these classes. There is a happy middle path--a path of discernment and
judgment.--_Commissioner Robert Watchorn of New York._
Just as a body cannot with safety accept nourishment any faster than it
is capable of assimilating it, so a state cannot accept an excessive
influx of people without serious injury.--_H. H. Boyesen._
It seems to me our only concern about immigration should be as to its
character. We do not want Europe's criminals or paupers. The time to
make selection is in Europe, prior to embarkation.--_United States
Senator Hansbrough._
IV
THE NEW IMMIGRATION
_I. New Peoples and New Problems_
[Sidenote: Change of Racial Type]
So great has been the change in the racial character of immigration
within the last ten years that the term "new immigration" has been used
to distinguish the present prevailing type from that of former years. By
new immigration we mean broadly all the aliens from southeastern
Europe--the Italians, Hungarians, Slavs, Hebrews, Greeks, and
Syrians--as distinguished from the northwestern Europeans--the English,
Scotch, Welsh, Irish, French, Germans, and Scandinavians. The ethnic
authorities at Washington make the following racial division, which is
used in the official reports:
[Sidenote: Race Classification]
"Ninety-five per cent. of the immigration to this country comes from
Europe. Most of these different races or peoples, or more properly
subdivisions of race, coming from Europe have been grouped into four
grand divisions, as follows:
"Teutonic division, from northern Europe: German, Scandinavian,
English, Dutch, Flemish, and Finnish.
"Iberic division, from southern Europe: South Italian, Greek,
Portuguese, and Spanish: also Syrian from Turkey in Asia.
"Celtic division, from western Europe; Irish, Welsh, Scotch,
French, and North Italian.
"Slavic division, from eastern Europe: Bohemian, Moravian,
Bulgarian, Servian, Montenegrin, Croatian, Slovenian, Dalmatian,
Bosnian, Herzegovinian, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Polish, Roumanian,
Russian, Ruthenian, and Slovak.
"The Mongolic division has also been added, to include Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, East Indian, Pacific Islander, and Filipino.
"Under 'all others' have been included Magyar, Turkish, Armenian,
African (black), and subdivisions native to the Western
Hemisphere."
[Sidenote: The New Immigration]
This new immigration has been commonly regarded as either decidedly
undesirable or at least distinctly less desirable than the Teutonic and
Celtic, which for so many years practically had the field of America to
itself. It has not been uncommon to group the Italians and Slavs, and
denominate them as the "offscouring and refuse of Europe," now dumped
into America, which is described as a sort of world "garbage bin."
Extremists have drawn in gloomy colors the effects of this inrush of the
worst and most illiterate and unassimilable elements of the Old World. A
distinct prejudice has undoubtedly been created against these later
comers.
[Sidenote: Reasons for Adverse Opinion]
[Illustration: CHANGES IN SOURCES OF IMMIGRATION WHICH HAVE CAUSED HEAVY
INCREASE OF ILLITERACY
This chart shows what a mass of illiteracy is coming in from Italy,
Austria-Hungary, and Russia. Only those above the age of fourteen are
counted as illiterates. The change in the source of immigration from
northern and western Europe to southern and eastern Europe is
responsible for this radical change in the number of those who cannot
read or write. Of the southern Italians who came in 1905, 56 per cent.
were illiterate; and of the Ruthenians, 63 per cent. Most of these
illiterates will never learn to read, as they are beyond the school
age.]
There is unquestionably some ground for the feeling that the new
immigration is in many respects less desirable than the older type.
These peoples come out of conditions of oppression and depression,
illiteracy and poverty. Far more important than this, they have had no
contact with Anglo-Saxon ideas or government. They are consequently
almost wholly ignorant of American ideals and standards. There is a vast
difference between the common ideas of these immigrants and those from
the more enlightened and progressive northern nations. So there is in
the type of character and the customs and manners.
[Sidenote: The Older Type of Immigration]
We are sufficiently familiar with the older type, and do not need here
to dwell upon it. We know how large a part has been played in the
development of our national material enterprises by the Germans, the
English and Irish, the Scotch and Welsh, the Swedes and Norwegians.
Millions of them are among the loyal Americans of to-day. The Irish
originally came to perform the unskilled labor of America. Their women
made the domestics, and many of them still rule the American kitchen.
But the Irish men have moved up, into bosses and contractors, into the
stores and trades and professions, and especially into politics, until
they practically run the cities and have a lion's share of the
governmental positions. The Germans have always been among the best of
our immigrant population in intelligence, thrift, and other qualities
that make the German nation strong and stable. They have Germanized us
more than we have Americanized them. The Scandinavians have with
excellent judgment distributed themselves and gone largely into
agriculture. All these north of Europe peoples belong to a common
inheritance of principles and ideas, and all have found it natural to
assimilate into American life. America owes a large debt to them, as
they do to the land that has become their own by adoption.
[Sidenote: Necessity of Discrimination]
But what can be said about this new immigration? First let us see how
great the change in racial character has been, and then differentiate
these new races. It will not do to brand any race as a whole.
Discrimination is absolutely necessary if we are to deal with this
subject practically and justly. There are Italians and Italians, Slavs
and Slavs, just as there are all sorts of Irish, Germans, and Americans.
No race has a monopoly of either virtue or vice. This table will help us
to differentiate the millions of immigrants since 1820 as to race:
Netherlands 146,168
France 428,894
Switzerland 220,199
Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden 1,730,722
Italy 2,000,252
Japan 88,908
Germany 5,187,092
United Kingdom,
Great Britain
and Ireland 7,286,434
Russia 1,452,629
Countries not
specified 2,130,756
China 288,398
[Sidenote: A Remarkable Shifting]
To appreciate the significance of these figures, it must be remembered
that while the totals from the United Kingdom and Germany amount to
nearly twelve and a half millions, or considerably more than one half of
the entire immigration down to 1905, the proportions have been rapidly
changing. The immigration from the United Kingdom, for example, reached
its highest point in 1851, when the total was 272,740, predominantly
from Ireland. The German immigration reached high mark in 1887, the
total being 250,630. On the other hand, the immigration from Italy did
not reach 10,000 until 1880, and passed the 100,000 mark first in 1900.
In the past five years nearly a million Italians--or one half of the
entire Italian immigration--have entered the country, and the number in
1906 promises to exceed a quarter of a million more. The highest mark
was 233,546 in 1903; but even this did not equal the birth-rate in
Italy. In Hungary and Russia, also, the birth-rate is greater than the
immense drain of immigration, so that this stream will continue to flow
and increase, unless some check is put upon it, or some legislative dam
built. The immigration from Russia, consisting chiefly of Jews, did not
become appreciable until 1887, when it reached 30,766. It passed 100,000
in 1902; and from 1900 to 1905 the total arrivals were 748,522, or just
about one half the entire number of Jews in the United States. The same
is true of the Hungarian and Slav immigration. Its prominence has come
since 1890.
[Sidenote: The Inferior Checks the Superior]
The point of importance to be considered is that as the immigration from
southeastern Europe has increased, that from northwestern Europe has
decreased. In 1869 not one per cent. of the total immigration came from
Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Russia, while in 1902 the percentage
was over seventy. In 1869 nearly three quarters of the total immigration
came from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Scandinavia; in 1902
only one fifth was from those countries. The proportion has held nearly
the same since.
[Sidenote: Change in Source]
The change is indicated most plainly in this table, which compares the
total immigration of certain nationalities for the period 1821 to 1902
with that for the year 1903:
1821 to 1902 1903
Country Number Per cent Number Per cent
Austria-Hungary 1,316,914 6.5 206,011 24.00
England, Wales 2,730,037 13.4 26,219 3.1
Germany 5,098,005 25.0 40,086 4.7
Ireland 3,944,269 19.3 35,300 4.1
Italy 1,358,507 6.7 230,622 26.9
Norway, Sweden 1,334,931 6.5 70,489 8.2
Russia, Poland 1,106,362 5.4 136,093 15.9
This table shows not only the nations which have added chiefly to our
population in the past, and which are adding to-day, but how the
percentage of each has varied in the period before 1903 compared with
1903. Mr. Hall says: "If the same proportions had obtained in the
earlier period as during the later how different might our country and
its institutions now be!"
[Sidenote: The Problem of Diverse Race Stocks]
This brings up the question of type, of character, and of homogeneity.
The new immigration introduces new problems. The older immigration,
before 1870, was chiefly composed of races kindred in habits,
institutions, and traditions to the original colonist.[49] To-day we
face decidedly different conditions. At the same time study of these
comparatively unknown races will bring us many surprises, and knowledge
of the facts is the only remedy for prejudice and the only basis for
constructive Christian work. We must know something, moreover, of the
Old World environment before we can judge of the probable development of
these peoples in America, or learn the way of readiest access to them.
For they will not become Americanized unless they are in some way
reached by Americans; and they will never be reached until they are
understood.
_II. The Italians_
[Sidenote: Extremes of Opinion]
In our more detailed study of the new immigration we take first the
Italians, who are seen wherever one turns in our cities, and are perhaps
the most conspicuous of the immigrants. Here we come at once upon two
extremes of opinion. One extreme finds little or nothing that is
favorable to the Italians, who are classed all together and judged in
the light of the Mafia, or "black hand," ready for all deeds of
darkness. The other lauds these aliens so highly that an Italian
himself said to the writer, referring to a recent book about his people
in America:[50] "I suppose I ought to be glad to have us all made out to
be saints, but I am afraid there is another side to the story." We shall
hope to find the truth between these extremes. This has to be admitted,
on the start, that in most cases those who have most to do with the
Italians, of whatever class, become warmly interested in them, and
believe both in their ability and in their adaptability to American
life.
[Sidenote: A Gifted Race]
When so keen a writer as Emil Reich, in discussing "The Future of the
Latin Races," in the _Contemporary Review_, says, "there can be little
doubt that the Italians are the most gifted nation in Europe," we see
that it is a mistake to class all Italians as alike and put them under
the ban of contempt as "dagoes." They differ from one another almost as
much as men can differ who are still of the same color, says a recent
writer.[51]
[Sidenote: Marked Differences Between North and South]
Most northern Italians are of the Alpine race and have short, broad
skulls; southern Italians are of the Mediterranean race and have long,
narrow skulls. Between the two lies a broad strip of country, peopled by
those of mixed blood. In appearance the Italians may be anything from a
tow-headed Teuton to a swarthy Arab. Varying with the district from
which he comes, in manner he may be rough and boisterous; suave,
fluent, and gesticulative; or grave and silent. These differences extend
to the very essentials of life. The provinces of Italy are radically
unlike, not only in dress, cookery, and customs, but in character,
thought, and speech. A distinct change of dialect is often found in a
morning's walk. An ignorant Valtellinese from the mountains of the
north, and an ignorant Neapolitan have as yet no means of understanding
each other; and what is yet more remarkable, the speech of the
unschooled peasant of Genoa is unintelligible to his fellow of Piedmont,
who lives less than one hundred miles away.
[Sidenote: Different Environment]
The northern Italian is the result of a superior environment. His
section is more prosperous, intelligent, orderly, and modern. The
industrially progressive, democratic north presents a striking contrast
to the industrially stagnant, feudal south. The northern division is
full of the spirit of the new Italy, and its people are less prone to
leave home. Central Italy, too, is making steady advances in agriculture
and education, and the peasant farmer is a stay-at-home. In southern
Italy agriculture is practically the sole reliance of the people, the
lot of the day laborers is wretched, and the failure of a wheat crop is
as disastrous as the potato famine in Ireland was to the Irish in 1847.
United Italy is undoubtedly making progress in education and industry,
the standards of living are rising, and the money sent or carried back
to Italy from America has helped to some degree in this advancement.
Religiously, of course, the domination of the Roman Catholic Church
continues over all Italy, and in illiteracy as in other respects Italy
is an example of what this ecclesiastical rule means where it has power
over the people sufficient to enable it to work its will.
[Sidenote: Common Poverty of the Peasants]
In view of these facts regarding the home environment and difference in
peoples, it will not do, evidently, to use sweeping generalizations, or
to regard the organ-grinder and fruit-peddler as the representatives of
Italy in America. We receive all grades, from cultured professionals to
illiterate peasants, though mainly, of course, the peasant class. The
one common feature of the Italian provinces is the poverty produced by
the crushing taxes and agricultural depression. Absentee landlordism has
blighted southern Italy as it has Ireland. Yet with great tracts of
fertile soil thus held away from the people, and with no new territory
to cultivate, the population of Italy has increased within twenty years
from twenty-eight and a half to thirty-two and a half millions, an
average density of 301 per square mile, and the excess of births over
deaths amounts to nearly 350,000 a year. Hence the question with the
people in overcrowded districts is simply emigration or starvation. The
southern Italian is driven from home by necessity to work, and work is
to be found in America, so he comes. His labor is mostly unskilled, and
this is in demand here. The result is that almost eighty per cent. of
the Italian immigrants are males; over eighty per cent. are between
fourteen and forty-five, the working age; over eighty per cent. are from
the southern provinces, and nearly the same percentage are unskilled
laborers, and a large majority of these are illiterates. The eighty per
cent. of "human capital of fresh, strong young men" is Italy's
contribution to America, and is a force winning its way to recognition.
[Sidenote: Figures of Italian Immigration]
Let us note the growth of Italian immigration, its sources, and its
distribution. In the sixty years from 1820 to 1880 only 68,633 Italians
made their way to America, while during this period the total foreign
immigration was over ten millions. The census of 1890 gave the Italian
population of the United States as only 182,580, and at that date not
over a half million in all had come here. The rapid increase during
recent years is shown in the following table:
IMMIGRATION FROM ITALY TO THE UNITED STATES
1890 52,003 1898 58,613
1891 76,055 1899 77,419
1892 61,631 1900 100,135
1893 72,145 1901 135,996
1894 42,977 1902 178,375
1895 35,427 1903 230,622
1896 68,060 1904 193,296
1897 59,431 1905 221,479
[Sidenote: Remarkable Increase]
This shows how steady and remarkable the immigration has been since
1900. In five years 959,768 Italians have come to this country. Surely
it is worth our while to know more particularly the character of this
million and their promise as an element in our civilization. Thousands
of them are "birds of passage"--that is, they come and go, earning money
here and going back home to spend it and then returning to earn more;
but tens of thousands come to stay, and will play their part in shaping
our future.
[Sidenote: Distribution of Italians]
The distribution of the Italians is shown partially in the accompanying
diagram.[52] This, however, is based upon the Census of 1900, and does
not account for the million arrivals since 1900. The destination clause
in the immigrant's manifesto gives light upon the matter of
distribution, although the incomer does not always get to the point
named in his papers. From the official report for 1905 these results are
drawn:
North South
Locality Italian Italian Total
New York 9,733 81,572 91,305
New Jersey 1,272 11,494 12,766
Pennsylvania 7,554 43,078 50,632
Connecticut 1,626 5,835 7,461
Massachusetts 2,011 11,747 13,758
Rhode Island 196 2,422 2,618
Illinois 3,663 6,685 10,348
Ohio 861 6,230 7,091
Michigan 1,330 1,649 2,979
West Virginia 421 2,987 3,408
Louisiana 177 2,631 2,808
Missouri 769 1,477 2,246
Mississippi 674 213 887
Eight Southern States 467 1,036 1,503
California 4,513 1,081 5,594
Colorado 824 881 1,705
[Sidenote: Largely in Cities]
It is interesting to note that at least one Italian immigrant was
destined to every state and territory. Of the total Italian population
in this country in 1900, 62.4 per cent. was in the 160 principal cities,
and nearly one half in New York alone. The percentage of Italians
attracted to the cities is about the same as that of the Irish.
[Sidenote: Italians and Irish Compared]
An interesting parallel, indeed, may be drawn between these races. The
Italians to-day occupy largely the place occupied by the Irish of
yesterday. The Irish came in the earlier years by reason of distressing
conditions at home, forcing them to seek a living elsewhere; this is now
true of the Italians. The Irish were chiefly peasants, unskilled
laborers and illiterate; so are the Italians. The Irish came mainly from
agricultural sections and herded in the great cities; so do the
Italians. The handy weapon of the Irish was the shillalah, that of the
Italian is the stiletto. The Irish found ready employment by reason of
the demand for cheap unskilled labor created by the vast material
enterprises of a swiftly developing country, with cities and towns and
railroads to build; this work is done by the Italians now, and they are
commonly conceded to be in many respects better at the job. Here is a
sample of the kind of testimony frequently given concerning them as
workers:[53]
[Sidenote: Good Workers]
"I have learned to be cautious in comparing races. I find good, bad,
and indifferent people in all races. But I dissent from the current
notion that the southern Italian is so much inferior to the northern. As
a people there is more illiteracy among them; but when he goes to school
the southern Italian holds his own with the northern. Another fact of
promise is that Italians have not lost the spirit of service. They are
good workmen. Not long since, asking a contractor who was building a
sewer in the city why he had only Italians in his employ, he replied,
'Because they are the best workmen, and there are enough of them. If an
Italian down in that ditch has a shovelful of earth half way up when the
whistle blows for dinner, he will not drop it; he will throw it up; the
Irishman and the French-Canadian will drop it. And when the lunch hour
is over, when the clock strikes the Italian will be leaning on his
shovel ready to go to work, but the Irishman will be out under that tree
and he will be three minutes getting to his job, and three minutes each,
for 150 men, is not a small item. The Italian does not regard his
employer as his natural enemy. He has the spirit of kindly service."
[Sidenote: Cheerful and Responsive]
The writer can confirm this from personal observation. The Italians are
cheerful workers, and on hand ten to fifteen minutes before the hour to
begin work. They relish a kind word, and can give lessons in politeness
to many an American-born. Ask anyone brought in contact with them and
you will get the same testimony.
[Sidenote: Flower of the Peasantry]
According to Adolfo Rossi, Supervisor of the Italian Immigration
Department, who is deeply interested in the proper distribution and
welfare of his countrymen in America, these immigrants are the flower of
the laboring class of Italy. Economically they are doubtless of value at
so many dollars per head. But of far more importance is the question,
what are they in the social fabric? If, as some assert, the Italian race
stock is inferior and degraded, if it will not assimilate naturally with
the American, or will tend to lower our standards, then it is
undesirable, even though the immigrant had a bank account in addition to
his sturdy body. The further one investigates the subject, the less
likely is he to conclude that the Italian is to be adjudged undesirable,
as a race. He must be judged individually on his merits.
[Sidenote: Demand for Unskilled Labor]
Mr. Carr draws a decidedly favorable picture of the Italians, whether
from north or south. He says that immediate work and high wages, and not
a love for the tenement, create our "Little Italies." The great
enterprises in progress in and about the city, the subway, tunnels,
water-works, railroad construction, as well as the ordinary building
operations, call for a vast army of laborers. It is the educated Italian
immigrant without a manual trade who fails in America. The illiterate
laborer takes no chances. The migratory laborer--for more than 98,000
Italians went back to Italy in 1903, and 134,000 in 1904--confers an
industrial blessing by his very mobility. Then, in his opinion, there is
something to be said for the illiterates who remain here. They are never
anarchists; they are guiltless of the so-called "black hand" letters.
The individual laborer is, in fact, rarely anything but a gentle and
often a rather dull drudge. More than this, our school system deprives
us of unskilled laborers. The gangs that dig sewers and subways and
build railways are recruited from the illiterate or nearly so, and for
our supply of the lower grades of labor we must depend upon countries
with a poorer school system than ours.
[Sidenote: Favorable Comparison]
[Sidenote: Italians Not Beggars]
Concerning the charge that the Italian is a degenerate, lazy and a
pauper, half a criminal, a menace to our civilization, it is shown that
in New York the Italians number about 450,000, the Irish over 300,000.
In males the Italians outnumber the Irish two to one. Consider these
facts: In 1904 one thousand five hundred and sixty-four Irish, and only
sixteen Italians, were admitted to the almshouse on Blackwell's
Island.[54] Mr. James Forbes, chief of the Mendicancy Department of the
Charity Organization Society, says he has never seen or heard of an
Italian tramp. In reply to this, those who dislike the Italians say that
their cheap labor has made tramps of many who would otherwise be
employed. As for begging, between July 1, 1904, and September 30, 1905,
the Mendicancy Police in New York took into custody 519 Irish and only
92 Italians. This table will be found interesting:
NATIVITY OF PERSONS ADMITTED TO ALMSHOUSE (NEW YORK) IN
1900
Male Female Total
United States 355 199 554
Ireland 808 809 1,617
England and Wales 111 87 198
Scotland 25 14 39
France 19 2 21
Germany 290 84 374
Norway, Sweden and Denmark 22 6 28
Italy 15 4 19
Other Countries 50 36 86
----- ----- -----
1,695 1,241 2,936
This ought to correct some ideas as to where the pauperism comes from.
Certainly the Italians are not to be charged with it. Conditions in
Boston show equally well for the Italians. The proportions for the whole
country also give them a remarkably low degree as compared with other
races.
[Sidenote: Few Insane]
As to insanity, the figures tell their own story: In the charitable
institutions of the country, there were of the insane: Irish, 5,943;
Germans, 4,408; English, 1,822; Scandinavians, 1,985; and Italians, 718.
As shown by the analysis of the Bureau of Immigration, the proportion of
Irish in the charitable institutions is 30 per cent., of Germans 19, of
English 8.5, while the Italians and Hebrews are each 8 per cent.
[Sidenote: Criminal Record]
The important point of crime remains to be considered. Here the Italian
is commonly rated very high, by reason of the violent and conspicuous
nature of most of his crimes, which are against the person. We hear of
the brutal murders, the threats of the Mafia, the secret assassinations,
and frequent sanguinary stiletto affrays, and are apt to regard the
whole race as quarrelsome and murderous. The facts do not bear out this
opinion. Here again they appear rather to the disadvantage of the older
type of immigrant. The United States Industrial Commission on
Immigration shows, by its statistical report,[55] that "taking the
United States as a whole, the whites of foreign birth are a trifle less
criminal than the total number of whites of native birth." This report
further says: "Taking the inmates of all penal and charitable
institutions, we find that the highest ratio is shown by the Irish,
whose proportion is more than double the average for the foreign-born,
amounting to no less than 16,624 to the million."
[Sidenote: Italians Temperate]
By far the greatest proportion of crime is caused by intemperance, and
here the Italians are at a decided advantage, for they are among the
least intemperate of the foreign peoples, and far less so than the
average native-born. Arrests for drunkenness are exceedingly rare among
them, and a drunken Italian woman is as rare as one of immoral
character. While in Massachusetts three in a hundred of the northern
races, including the Scotch, Irish, English, and Germans, were arrested
for intemperance in a given year, only three in a thousand of the
Italians were arrested on this charge. In these respects the race is
deserving of great commendation, especially in face of the tenement
conditions into which most of the newcomers are thrust. If they become
worse in America than they were when they came, we ought to take heed to
the sins of greed, and not put all the blame on the aliens.
[Sidenote: Crimes of Assault]
In crimes against the person the Italians are at their worst, but the
affrays with knives and pistols are confined mostly to their own
nationality, and grow out of jealousy or rivalry or resentment at
fancied injuries. "There are, no doubt," says Dr. S. J. Barrows,[56]
"murders of sheer brutality, or those committed in the course of
robbery. There are known instances also of blackmail and dastardly
assassination by individuals or bands of ruffians. But such outrages are
utterly at variance with the known disposition of the great mass of the
Italians in this country. There are vile men in every nationality, and
it does not appear by any substantial evidence that the Italian is
peculiarly burdened, though it has been unwarrantably reproached through
ignorance or prejudice." This is the opinion of an expert in
criminology, who has traveled extensively in Italy and knows the people
on both sides of the sea.
[Sidenote: Italians not all Unskilled]
It is a fact of importance that the great majority of the Italian
immigrants, while classed as unskilled, have had some experience in
farming or gardening or home industries of some kind. There is a larger
percentage of skilled labor than is commonly supposed, and the list is
interesting. The Annual Report on Immigration for 1905, for example,
gives the distribution by occupation, from which we take some of the
leading classes:
PROFESSIONS, TRADES AND INDUSTRIES OF THE ITALIANS
ADMITTED IN 1905
North South North South
Occupation Italy Italy Italy Italy
Architects 10 10 Carpenters and cabinet
Clergy 52 69 makers 367 1,857
Editors 9 6 Dressmakers 161 615
Electricians 24 20 Gardeners 30 165
Engineers, professional 20 24 Masons 1,374 3,161
Lawyers 12 25 Miners 1,843 492
Literary and scientific Shoemakers 287 4,004
persons 19 15 Stonecutters 409 567
Musicians 38 240 Tailors 239 2,591
Physicians 34 72 Farm laborers 6,181 60,529
Sculptors and artists 116 52 Farmers 1,397 4,814
Teachers 31 45 Manufacturers 14 32
Bakers 201 571 Merchants and dealers 557 1,415
Barbers 82 1,718 Servants 2,752 8,669
Blacksmiths 168 909 Laborers 14,291 56,040
Butchers 65 278 No occupation, including
children under 14 7,632 32,115
[Sidenote: Tendency to Advance]
[Sidenote: Desire for Education]
It will be seen that not all the Italians who come are mere hewers of
wood and drawers of water; while there is a distinct tendency on the
part of those who begin at the bottom of drudgery, in the subways of
American civilization, to advance. The desire for education and
betterment is as manifest as it is hopeful. No parents are more
ambitious for their children, or more devotedly attached to them, than
are the Italian immigrants who have brought over their families, and no
children in our schools are brighter or more attentive. There is good
blood in the Italian strain. They are an art and music-loving people,
and in this respect the southern Italians take the lead. They come from
a land of beauty and fame, song and sunshine, and bring a sunny
temperament not easily soured by hardship or disappointment. Otherwise
the tenement and labor-camp experiences in America would soon spoil
them. With the exception of the money they earn, the change has been for
the worse.
[Sidenote: Amazing Thrift]
The thrift of the Italians is proverbial. To earn and save money they
will live in conditions unsanitary, unhealthy, and degrading. It is not
because they love dirt and degradation, but that they want money so much
that they will put up with anything to get it. They can live and save a
bit where an American family would starve. They have fairly monopolized
for a time certain lines into which they entered--as the small fruit
trade, the bootblacking business, and other pursuits. It is said that
they have made the Americans a fruit-eating people. Supplanted in the
street-vending of fruit by the Greek, the Italian has gone into business
in earnest, and you find the small fruit stands everywhere, with always
a good stock, and by no means a low price. As barbers and tailors, too,
the Italians are becoming known. They have a passion for land, and
acquire property rapidly. Take the increase of their real estate
holdings in New York as an example. Mr. G. Tuoti, a representative
Italian operator in real estate, says that twenty years ago there was
not a single Italian owner of real estate in the districts where such
owners now predominate. He has a list of more than 800 landowners of
Italian descent, whose aggregate holdings in New York are approximately
$15,000,000.[57]
[Illustration: Born in Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Greece--Resident
in the United States 1900
Reproduced by special permission from "The Worker's
World." Copyright 1903.]
[Sidenote: Property Holdings]
As to Italian savings and investments in the same city, Mr. Gino C.
Speranza, vice-president of the Society for Italian Immigrants, finds on
computation the Italian investments in the city savings-banks to total
more than $15,000,000. He puts the real estate holdings at 4,000, of the
clear value of $20,000,000. He estimates that 10,000 stores in the city
are owned by Italians, and sets their value at $7,000,000, with a
further investment of as much more in wholesale business. He makes the
total material value of the property of the Italian colony in New York
to be over $60,000,000, and says this value is relatively below that of
the Italian possessions in Saint Louis, Boston, and Chicago. The Italian
Chamber of Commerce has over two hundred members, and has done much to
promote the interests of the immigrants. There is one distinctively
Italian Savings Bank, with an aggregate of deposits approximating
$1,100,000, and about 7,000 open accounts. Sixteen daily and weekly
Italian newspapers in New York alone indicate that the people are
reading, and that not all are illiterates by any means. The Italian
Hospital, the Italian Benevolent Institute, and over 150 Italian
societies for mutual aid and social improvement--all this in New
York--indicate a degree of enterprise and progress. In the smaller
cities the condition of the Italians is in many respects much better
than in the great centers, since the tenement evils are escaped. The
reports from such cities as Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Schenectady,
New York, are most favorable as to the general character of the Italians
as faithful workers and peaceful residents.
[Sidenote: Increasing Land Values]
In the cities and on the small farms of the South and West the
prosperity of the Italians is marked. They take unproductive land and
make it fertile soil for truck-gardening, and have increased the value
of surrounding lands in Louisiana and other states by showing what can
be done. If they can be distributed properly, and gotten out of the
congested city wards, there is unquestionably a future of prosperity for
them. A Texas colony described by Signor Rossi, who recently
investigated conditions with view to securing a better distribution by
informing intending emigrants as to the openings for them in
agricultural sections, illustrates the success of the Italians as
gardeners and farmers.
[Sidenote: Successful Truck Farmers]
In the neighborhood of San Francisco Italians have cultivated about 250
truck farms. They "obtain the manure from the city stables gratis, and
transform into fertile farms the original sand dunes." Nearly all our
cities where Italians have settled are receiving vegetables and fruit as
the product of Italian labor, and the Italian is first in the market.
They are found on Long Island and Staten Island, in New Jersey and
Delaware, in Virginia, and in all the New England states. Near Memphis,
Tennessee, there is a large and noted colony of truck farmers, and they
have done much to remove the prejudice formerly existing against Italian
labor in the South.[58] In this connection we give hearty second to the
statesmanlike proposition made by a Christian worker who has been
brought into close touch with the Italians and other foreign peoples in
Brooklyn:[59]
[Sidenote: A Good Proposition]
"Pure philanthropy could not find a better field for the investment of a
few hundred thousand dollars than in the organization of farm and
garden colonies a few miles out from our great city. On Long Island
there are many thousands of acres of light, arable land perfectly
adapted to the raising of small fruits and garden products. Irrigation
plants could be provided at moderate cost, insuring generous crops. The
Italian is prepared by nature, and by training in his own home land, for
the cultivation of the soil. In a small way he has demonstrated his
ability in the land of his adoption to do the very things here
suggested. What he needs is a fair chance.
[Sidenote: Strong Guiding Hand Needed]
[Sidenote: The Crucial Point]
"What is needed is the guiding hand of 'philanthropy and five per cent.'
to lead out of the congested and squalid tenement districts thousands of
these poor yet industrious people who could make our deserts of Long
Island sand and scrub oak blossom as the rose. Let the modern method
find illustration here. Let our philanthropist choose for himself a
board of trustees to whom should be delegated the management of a
generous fund toward the end proposed. Keen-minded and great-hearted
business men there are who would delight to give time and care to so
worthy an object; and within five years a colony of 25,000 Italians
could be transported and translated from the ghettos and filthy, crowded
tenement districts of our great city into God's open country, there to
be speedily transformed into industrious, self-supporting American
citizens. Having studied this problem for years, I believe it is
entirely feasible. Brain and heart, time and talent, land and water,
enlarging markets demanding produce, men, women, and children begging
for an opportunity to earn a decent living--all these are ready and
waiting for use and service. All that is lacking is an adequate supply
of good money to set the enterprise in motion. We have millions invested
at Coney Island, at Gravesend racing track, and at the new Belmont Park,
to beguile and hypnotize the masses. God must have in his keeping
somewhere millions to uplift and redeem the masses. There is unspeakable
need that they be ministered unto in the spirit of the Master."
[Sidenote: Opportunity of Wealth]
These are weighty and practical words, and some day Christian men of
wealth will see the wisdom of them. How could American prosperity better
insure itself and all it represents for the future?
[Sidenote: Favorable Conclusion]
What, then, is the conclusion of our study? On the whole, decidedly
favorable to the Italian, while recognizing the vicious and undesirable
element that forms a comparatively small part of the whole. The Italian
in general is approachable, receptive to American ideas, not criminal by
nature more than other races, not difficult to adapt himself to new
environment, and eager to earn and learn. He furnishes excellent raw
material for American citizenship, if he does not come too rapidly to be
Americanized. But what he will mean to America, for good or ill,
depends almost wholly upon what America does for and with and through
him. Thus far, there has been too much of prejudice and neglect. Better
acquaintance is the first step toward the transformation of the Italian
alien into the Italian-American.
[Sidenote: Roman Catholic Testimony]
As for the religious side, here is testimony from a Roman Catholic
source. Mrs. Betts says:[60]
"The relation between the Roman Catholic Church and the mass of the
Italians in this country is a source of grief. Reluctantly the writer
has to blame the ignorance and bigotry of the immigrant priests who set
themselves against American influence; men who too often lend themselves
to the purposes of the ward heeler, the district leader in controlling
the people, who too often keep silence when the poor are the victims of
the shrewd Italians who have grown rich on the ignorance of their
countrymen. One man made $8,000 by supplying 1,000 laborers to a
railroad. He collected $5 from each man as a railroad fare, though
transportation was given by the road, and $3 from each man for the
material to build a house. The men supposed it was to be a home for
their families. They found as a home the wretched shelters provided by
contractors, with which we are all familiar. This transaction, when
known, did not disturb the Church or social relations of the offender,
but it increased his political power, for it showed what he could do. He
is recognized to-day as the Mayor of---- street; his influence is met
everywhere."
[Sidenote: Accessible to Evangelism]
There is no doubt that the Italians are accessible to evangelical
Christianity. Thousands of them appreciate the true character of the
Church that tried to prevent Italian unity and liberty, and they are
peculiarly open to the truths of democracy and the gospel. The home
missionary finds among them a fruitful field. Dr. Lee expresses the
conclusions of many observers, and indicates also a gate of personal
opportunity to serve, when he says, as a result of personal observation
and effort:
[Sidenote: Exceptionally Open-minded]
"Incident to the general recoil from the papal control, an enormous
number of the Italians coming to this country are out of the old Church;
they are without religion, yet are in a way groping after one. As a
consequence the Italian is exceptionally open-minded. You can talk with
him. He is not suspicious--not apprehensive lest you mislead him. He may
have no respect for any kind of religion, but he is not afraid that you
will lure him into forbidden paths. He is beginning to think--a
privilege which he has been denied in the past. This open-mindedness is
readiness to accept the spirit and theories of American life; for
open-mindedness is an American characteristic."
And open-mindedness toward the gospel is the vestibule to conversion.
QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER IV
AIM: TO CONSIDER THE DESIRABILITY OF THE ITALIANS AS IMMIGRANTS, AND
THE OPPORTUNITY FOR CHRISTIAN WORK AMONG THEM.
I. _Contrast the Old and New Immigration._
1. What is the New Immigration?
2. What has become of the earlier immigrants? Was their coming a
benefit to the United States?
3. Would your judgment concerning it have been the same when they
were coming?
4. What races have gained and what have lost in their respective
proportions?
II. _The Italians._
5. What are the leading types at present? What are they likely to
be in the future?
6. Mention opposing opinions as to the Italians? Which seem to you
nearer the truth?
7. What differences are there between Italians from different parts
of Italy?
8. From what class come most of the Italians now arriving? Of what
sex? What age? What skill?
9. How has Italian immigration grown in numbers? How has it been
distributed?
10. What proportion go West and South? Are efforts being made to
attract them anywhere?
III. _Are the Italians a Desirable Class of Immigrants_?
11. How do they compare with the early Irish immigrants? With other
nationalities?
12. What is the record of Italians in this country; as to work,
citizenship, self-support, crime, temperance, thrift, care for
education, financial ability?
13. Have many Italians taken to farming? Do they succeed? What sort
of farming?
14. What efforts are being made to direct and distribute the
Italian immigrants?
IV. _What is the Opportunity of the Christian Church Among Them_?
15. Do you know of any specific effort to uplift them through
Christian influences?
16. Does this chapter make you feel that the churches can do more
for them? How?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER IV
I. _Further Study of Contrasts Between Different Types of Italians._
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, I, III, V.
Brandenburg: Imported Americans, IV, VI, XII.
Holt: Undistinguished Americans, III.
II. _Illiteracy Among the Northern and Southern Italians._
(1) Its bearing on their desirability as immigrants.
Brandenburg: Imported Americans, IV, XII, XX.
Hall: Immigration, 54-58, 80-83.
(2) Its relation to the probable effect of a reading
test for admission.
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, VIII, XI.
Hall: Immigration, 262-280.
(3) Its bearing on their accessibility to the gospel.
McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, 69-74.
Wood: Americans in Process, IX.
III. _Location of Italians After Their Arrival and Length of Their
Stay._
Brandenburg: Imported Americans, II, XIX, XXII.
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, VI, VII, IX.
IV. _The Italians in New York City and State._
Benefits and dangers arising from their presence,
and efforts made to help them.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, V, XXIV.
University Settlement Studies, Vol. I, Numbers
3 and 4, issue January, 1906.
Reports of the Society for Italian Immigrants, 17
Pearl Street, New York City.
_Yesterday the Slav was a pauper immigrant; to-day he is what the
English, Welsh, Irish, and German miner was a quarter of a century
ago--on the way to becoming an American citizen. What sort of a
citizen he will be will depend upon the influences brought to bear
upon him._--F. J. Warne.
V
THE EASTERN INVASION
My people do not live in America. They live underneath America. America
goes on over their heads.--_Paul Tymkevich, a Ruthenian Priest._
"My people do not love America. Why should they, from what they see of
it?" This is the profoundly suggestive question of a Ruthenian
Greek-Catholic priest, of Yonkers, N. Y., who says his people do not
come in contact with the better classes of Americans, but do come in
contact with everyone who hopes to exploit them.
The subject of immigration is the most far-reaching in importance of all
those with which this government has to deal. The history of the world
offers no precedent for our guidance, since no such peaceful invasion of
alien peoples has ever before occurred. It must have great and largely
unforeseen effects upon our form of civilization, our social and
political institutions, and, above all, upon the physical, mental, and
moral characteristics of our people. Can such a subject be considered
too seriously or too minutely? I cannot think it possible. The danger
lies in the opposite direction.--_F. P. Sargent._
It must not be forgotten that the Slav immigrants, and especially their
descendants, are impressionable and adaptable; that forces are at work
which have already done much for them, and will do more. The results of
the public school are sure though slow. The full-grown individual must
be brought under the influence of a yet more powerful agency, one which
makes also for civilization and for Americanism in the best sense.--_F.
J. Warne._
V
THE EASTERN INVASION
[Sidenote: Mistaken Opinion]
Least known, least liked, and least assimilable of all the alien races
migrating to America are the Slavs. That expresses the general opinion,
based on ignorance and dislike. To the common view they seem to combine
all the undesirable elements--low living, low intelligence, low
morality, low capacity, low everything, including wages--this explaining
in large measure their presence. The very name Slav excites prejudice.
If an exclusion act of any kind were to be passed it would probably be
easier to aim it at the Slavs than any other class of immigrants. We are
now to submit this common opinion to the test of investigation, and see
whether it is warranted in fact. Nowhere is discrimination based on
knowledge more necessary than in dealing with this Slavic race division.
First let us learn who the Slavs are. The following table shows this,
and also how many of them entered our ports in 1905:
Poles 102,437 Servians, Bulgarians, and
Slovaks 52,368 Montenegrins 5,823
Croatians and Slovenians 35,104 Dalmatians, Bosnians, and
Lithuanians 18,604 Herzegovinians 2,639
Ruthenians 14,473 Bohemians and Moravians 11,757
Roumanians 7,818 Russians proper 3,746
Magyars 46,030 Russian Jews[61] 92,388
[Sidenote: A Large Element in Europe]
The Slavs proper number about 125,000,000, or more than one twelfth of
the total population of the world. They have been concentrated, until
the recent migration began, in the eastern and larger part of Europe.
They make up the bulk of Russia, the great Slav power (numbering about
70,000,000), and of the Balkan States, and form nearly half of the
population of Austria-Hungary. The various Slavic languages and dialects
are closely related but differ as do German and Swedish, so that the
different races cannot understand each other.[62]
[Illustration: COUNTRIES FROM WHICH THE SLAVS COME]
[Sidenote: The Slavs in the Mines]
The Slav immigration is of comparatively recent date. Before 1880 it was
unnoticeable. A small number of Bohemians and Poles had come, settling
in the larger cities. But suddenly the thousands began to pour in.
Demand for cheap labor in the coal fields of Pennsylvania drew this
class, and presently the American, Canadian, English, Welsh, Irish,
Scotch, and German mine-workers found themselves being supplanted by the
men from Austria-Hungary and Russia--men who were mostly single and
alone, who could live on little, eat any sort of food, wear any kind
of clothes, and sleep in a hut or store-house, fourteen in a room. Of
course the home of the English-speaking miner, with its carpet on the
best room, its pictures and comforts, had to go, as did the miner and
his wife and children, also the school and the church--for how could
these stay when the Slav, homeless and familyless, could bunk in with a
crowd anywhere, or build himself a hillside hut out of driftwood, and
subsist on from four to ten dollars a month. The one conspicuous thing
about the Slav was his ability to save money. Dr. Warne gives a graphic
and pathetic picture of the struggle caused by the introduction of the
Slavs into Pennsylvania, and his investigations may profitably be
studied.[63]
[Sidenote: Slav domination]
The results in Pennsylvania thus far are the reverse of satisfactory.
The cheap labor has become dear in more senses than one. Where in 1880
the English-speaking foreign-born composed nearly ninety-four per cent.
of the mine workers, in 1900 they were less than fifty-two per cent.,
and to-day are much less still. The Slavs dominate in the mines. Strikes
are not less frequent, but more difficult to control, and the necessity
of frequent state control by militia, the riots and bloodshed, mark the
failure to Americanize this growing class of aliens. A striking
illustration of non-assimilation and the attendant perils may be found
in Pennsylvania. Fortunately all the Slavs do not go to the mines, and
those who follow agriculture or trades afford a pleasanter study. The
census of 1900 gave a million and a quarter of foreign-born Slavs and
the number has been largely increased. In 1903 221,000 came, not
counting the 67,000 Russian and Roumanian Jews. Since these peoples are
all prolific, with an oversupply at home, there is every prospect that
immigration will increase, unless some check is put upon it. The Slavs
will have to be reckoned with, most assuredly, as an element in our
civilization.
[Illustration: SLAV DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES]
The maps here given, by the courtesy of _Charities_, show the sections
from which the Slavs come and how they disperse in this country.
[Sidenote: Chiefly Unskilled and Illiterate]
An analysis of the official statistics shows that, with the exception of
the Bohemians, these newest immigrants are mainly unskilled, illiterate
peasants from country districts, and with little money in their pockets
when they land. Of the Bohemians and Moravians forty-four per cent. are
skilled laborers, and only 1.50 per cent. over fourteen are unable to
read and write; but of the Poles eighty-five per cent. are unskilled,
and thirty per cent. can neither read nor write; and this represents the
average. We are getting in an illiterate mass, therefore, and the amount
of money they bring per capita averages about $10. But on this point a
writer says, speaking from a wide observation:[64]
[Sidenote: A Hopeful View]
"This does not necessarily mean that they are undesirable immigrants.
The illiterate, unskilled immigrant may be, in fact, more desirable than
the better educated skilled laborer, or the still better educated
professional or business man. There may be a great demand here for
unskilled labor. Again, the moral qualities of the untaught but
industrious, simple-minded, unspoiled countryman may be far more
wholesome for the communities to which he comes than those of the
educated, town-bred, unsuccessful business or professional man, the
misfit skilled laborer, or the actual loafer and sharper of the cities,
who comes over here when home gets too hot for him. As to illiteracy,
moreover, the peasant is improving. The great mass of this unskilled
labor pushes directly through the great gateway of New York, where
unfortunately so many other races stop. They go to the eastern, middle,
and northern states, mainly into our coal and iron mines, and our steel
mills, but also to the farming regions, where they work patiently and
thriftily, first as farm laborers, then as owners of abandoned farming
lands or cut-over timber lands, reclaiming and making them fertile to
the great advantage of the markets they supply."
Let us now look at this conglomerate immigration a little more in
detail, and no longer class these peoples indiscriminately as "barbarian
Huns."
_I. The Bohemians_
[Sidenote: The Czechs and their History]
We may well begin with the Bohemians, who are among the most skilled,
least illiterate, and, to Protestants, most interesting of the Slavs. In
studying any group of "strangers within our gates," it is necessary to
know its preëmigration history. These people, who call themselves
Czechs, are a principal branch of the Slav family and one of the large
constituents of the Austria-Hungarian empire, numbering 6,318,697 in
1901. At home they are chiefly agriculturists. In 1900 there were in
this country 325,400 persons of Bohemian parentage, of whom 156,991 were
born in Bohemia. Since 1900 above 50,000 more have come. Three fourths
of them all are in the north central states of the Mississippi Valley,
with Chicago as their great center. Cleveland has about 15,000, New York
about the same number; while in agriculture there are in round numbers
16,000 in Nebraska, 14,000 in Wisconsin, 11,000 in Iowa, and 9,000 in
Texas.
[Sidenote: Stormy National Struggle]
As to their history in the old world, the Bohemians have had such a
stormy national struggle, and the bitterness of it has so entered into
their lives, that it is impossible rightly to judge them apart from it.
It has some instructive lessons for us. These are the conditions, as Mr.
Nan Mashek, himself a Bohemian, states them:[65]
[Sidenote: John Huss and Jerome of Prague]
"For two hundred and fifty years they have been oppressed by a
pitilessly despotic rule. In the day of their independence, before 1620,
they were Protestants, and the most glorious and memorable events of
their history are connected with their struggle for the faith. The
history of their Church is the history of their nation, for on the one
hand was Protestantism and independence, on the other, Catholicism and
political subjection. For two centuries Bohemia was a bloody
battleground of Protestant reform. Under the spiritual and military
leadership of such men as Jerome of Prague, John Huss, and Ziska, the
Bohemians fought their good fight and lost. After the battle of White
Mountains, in 1620, national independence was completely lost, and
Catholicism was forcibly imposed upon the country. All Protestant
Bibles, books, and songs were burned, thus depriving the nation of a
large and rich literature. Those who still clung to their faith publicly
were banished, their property becoming forfeited to the state. After 150
years, when Emperor Joseph II. of Austria gave back to the Protestants
some measure of their former freedom, many of the churches were
reëstablished; but Protestantism had lost much of its strength. The
political revolution of 1848 led to new subjugation, and emigration was
the result. Large numbers left the country in quest of freedom, and some
of these found their way to America."
[Sidenote: Farmer Settlers in the West]
The first Bohemian settlers were of the most intelligent and more
prosperous classes. They went West, chiefly to Wisconsin, where their
farms are among the finest in the state. In Kewaunee County they
constitute over one third of the population, or 6,000 out of 17,000.
They have developed into an excellent type of American citizenship, have
looked well after the education of their children, many of whom have
gone to college, and are in every way progressive. Read thoughtfully
what Mr. Mashek says:
[Sidenote: Easy Assimilation Through Religion]
"In the country the assimilation of Bohemians is not a problem which
offers difficulties. The public school is everywhere so potent an
Americanizer that it alone is adequate. There is, however, one other
influence which if brought to bear, especially in the large communities,
would be helpful. _I refer to the Protestant faith._ For the most part
Bohemians conversant with their history as a people are naturally
hostile to the Catholic Church, and when the restraints which held them
in their own country are removed by emigration, many of the more
enlightened quietly drop their allegiance, and, through lack of desire
or opportunity, fail to ally themselves with any other. So strong is
this non-religious tendency among the Bohemians--especially in the
cities--that it has resulted in active unbelief, and hostility to Church
influence. _This spiritual isolation_, with its resultant social
separation, _is doing great harm in retarding assimilation_. Aside from
this matter of religion, the Bohemian falls into American customs with
surprising readiness."
[Sidenote: Protestant Opportunity]
Thus a member of this race points out to Protestants their opportunity.
Here is a people with inherited Protestant tendencies. They have been
driven in Bohemia by an enforced Roman Catholicism into antagonism to
the Church as they know it.
[Sidenote: Freethinkers' Society]
In Chicago, where over 100,000 of them make of that city the third
largest Bohemian center in the world, they have a strongly organized
Freethinkers' Society, with three hundred branches, which issues an
atheistic catechism, and has it taught in its numerous Sunday-schools,
as they are called. But there are thousands who do not belong to this
cult, and who are open to the gospel. The same is true of the Bohemians
in New York, Cleveland, and elsewhere who have not advanced to the
Chicago infidel standpoint. Their character has not been well
understood. They possess excellent qualities for the making of good
Americans. Christianity in pure and true form is all they need.
[Sidenote: A Home-loving and Musical People]
The Bohemians are a home people, social, and fond of organizations of
every kind. Music is their passion, and their clubs, mutual benefit
societies, and loan associations, successfully run, show large capacity
for management. They have forty-two papers, seven of them religious, two
Protestant. Their freethinking is not all of it by any means of the
dogmatic sort which has its catechism of atheism. There is another
class, represented by an old woman with a broad brow over which the
silvery hair is smoothly parted, who says to the missionary, "I have my
God in my heart, I shall deal with him. I do not want any priest to step
between us." That is the class which the gospel can reach and ought to
reach speedily.
[Sidenote: Where Located]
About seventy-five per cent, of the Bohemians live in the northwest. In
Cleveland they have entered into various industries. In New York they
are largely employed in cigar-making, at which the women and girls work
under conditions not calculated to inspire them with regard for God or
man. The home life cannot be what it should when the mothers are
compelled to work in the factories, besides having all the home cares
and work. The testimony of the tenement inspectors is that the Bohemians
are perhaps the cleanest of the poor people in the city, and are
struggling heroically against the pitiful conditions of the
tenement-houses in which they are compelled to exist.
_II. The Poles_
[Sidenote: A Large Element]
The Poles form one of the oldest and largest elements of the Slav
immigration. In 1900 the census gave 668,536 persons whose parents were
born in Poland, and of these 383,510 were themselves born there. Nearly
a quarter of a million of the latter came to this country between 1890
and 1900, and in the five years following, 1900-5, about 350,000 more
arrived. A third of a million Poles now in America do not understand
English. The Polish strength is indicated by the Polish National
Alliance, with 50,000 members, and by a list of fifty newspapers
published in the Polish tongue, four of them dailies, printed in
Chicago, Buffalo, and Milwaukee, the largest centers.
[Illustration: Born in Russia, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary--Resident
in the United States 1900
Reproduced by special permission from "The World's Work"
Copyright, 1903.]
[Sidenote: Religious Tolerance]
"The higher classes of Poland were touched by the pre-Reformation
movement of Huss at Prague, where they were generally educated.
Reformation ideas did not gain as great currency as in Bohemia, but both
Calvin and Luther were interested in their progress in Poland. A Jesuit
authority complained that two thousand Romanist churches had become
Protestant. A Union Synod was formed and consensus of doctrine adopted.
Poland is described as the most tolerant country of Europe in the
sixteenth century. It became an asylum for the persecuted Protestants of
other lands, notably the Bohemian brethren. Later on, under the
influence of Protestantism, literature and education were stimulated.
But under succeeding Swedish and Saxon dynasties, and through Jesuit
instrumentality, religious liberty and national independence were lost,
and Poland disappeared from the map of Europe. As a race the Poles boast
such names as Copernicus the astronomer, Kosciusko the patriot warrior,
and Chopin the composer."[66]
[Sidenote: Distribution]
The distribution in America in 1904 was as follows: Illinois, 123,887,
of whom 107,669 were in the vicinity of the Chicago stockyards;
Pennsylvania, 118,203, mainly in the anthracite coal regions and about
Pittsburg, with 11,000 in Philadelphia; New York, 115,046, 50,000 of
them in New York City and 35,000 in Buffalo; Wisconsin, 70,000, 36,000
in Milwaukee; Michigan, 59,075, 26,869 in Detroit; Ohio, 31,136, 15,000
in Cleveland and 9,000 in Toledo; in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New
Jersey, between 20,000 and 30,000 each; in Connecticut and Indiana, over
10,000 each; and in smaller numbers widely distributed. Their preference
for the larger cities is shown by these figures. Recent immigrants are
going more into the New England States. Already there is a second
generation of them in the cities and the farming country of the Middle
West, and they have their own teachers and doctors. In New England they
are spreading in the factory towns, and Chicopee, Massachusetts, has six
thousand of them; while in the tobacco belt of Connecticut they furnish
a majority of the farm hands. Ten years ago Hartford had only three or
four hundred Polish families; to-day there is a parish of a thousand
people, and they have built a Catholic church and given $20,000 toward a
school.
[Sidenote: Independent in Spirit; Open to the Gospel]
Like most of the Slavs, the Poles who come here are commonly poor, and
of the peasant class; about one third of them are illiterate. They are
clannish, and clash with the Lithuanians and other races. Lovers of
liberty, they clash also with the Catholic authorities, going so far
even as organized rebellion to obtain control of their church properties
and freedom in the choice of priests. They have a superstitious dread of
Protestantism, which has been misrepresented to them as extremely
difficult. "Polish priests about Pittsburg are said to boast of the
number of Bibles, distributed by Protestants, which they gather from the
people and burn." If once Protestantism gets a grip upon them, rapid
defection from ecclesiastical tyranny will follow. Dr. H. K. Carroll
figures that the Polish Catholics as distinct from Roman Catholics, have
forty-three churches and 42,859 communicants, with thirty-three
priests--this representing the extent of revolt against the Romish
Church. It must be granted that comparatively little has been done to
reach this people, and it is not strange that as yet the number of
Protestant Poles is small. It takes a larger and more imposing movement
to make a definite impression upon those accustomed to the size and
strength of the Catholic organizations.
_III. The Slovaks_
[Sidenote: A Farming People]
The Slovaks of northern Hungary number about two millions, and are
closely akin to the Bohemians and Moravians. According to Mr. Rovinanek,
editor of the Pittsburg _Slovak Daily_, they constitute the trunk of the
great Slavonic national tree, from which have branched so many of the
Slav people, at the head of whom now stands the powerful Russian empire.
From prehistoric time they were celebrated as a peaceful, industrious
people, fond of agricultural and pastoral life. The immigration has been
from the agricultural class, and at first settlement was made in the
mining regions of Pennsylvania. Farming had its inherited attractions,
however, and there are hundreds of Slovak farmers in Pennsylvania,
Connecticut, and Ohio; while in Minnesota, Arkansas, Virginia, and
Wisconsin there are colonies of them, where for many miles on every side
the land is entirely in their possession. Kossuth was a Slovak, to their
lasting pride. Over 100,000 of them have come to America since 1900, one
fourth of them illiterates. They had little opportunity to be otherwise
at home, but since coming here their advancement educationally has been
marked.
[Sidenote: Religious in Spirit]
"This is due," says Mr. Rovinanek, "largely to the intensely religious
spirit which prevails among the Slavic peoples, and to the fact that
here they have been able to combine schools with their churches." The
total number now in the country is estimated at 250,000, of whom 150,000
are in Pennsylvania. Two thirds of the immigrants are men.
[Sidenote: Industrial Enterprise]
They live usually in very poor and crowded quarters, one family having
sometimes from fifteen to twenty boarders, and under conditions far from
cleanly or sanitary. There are nearly as many newspapers in the United
States in the Slovak language as in Hungary, with a much larger total
circulation. This press has stimulated industrial and business
enterprises in the Slovak communities. There are numerous small
mercantile establishments. In Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago, wire
and tinware factories established with Slovak capital and conducted with
Slovak labor are securing the cream of this trade in the country. For
centuries the tinware of Europe was made largely by the Slovaks. They
have a high position also for electrical designs and other skilled work.
[Sidenote: Organizations]
They are a great people for organization. The National Slavonic Society
was organized in Pittsburg in 1890, with 250 members; it now has 20,000
active members and 512 lodges. It is primarily a beneficial
organization, but has done a valuable work in educating its members and
inducing them to become American citizens. The society requires its
members, after a reasonable time, to obtain naturalization papers and
thus promotes Americanization. It has paid out nearly a million dollars
in death benefits, and much more in sick benefits; has aided students in
this country and Hungary, and national literary and patriotic workers as
well, besides coming to the rescue of Slavs in Hungary persecuted by the
government. Many other societies have sprung from this parent
organization, including a Presbyterian Slavistic Union, and hundreds of
literary, benevolent, and political clubs, so that there are between
100,000 and 125,000 organized Slovaks in the United States.
_IV. The Magyars or Hungarians_
[Sidenote: Conquerors of Hungary]
The Magyars belong properly in a division by themselves. These people,
who are Hungarians proper, do not class strictly with the Germans and
Slavs of Hungary. They drove out their Slavic predecessors or subjugated
them in the ninth century, and became masters of the Danubian plains.
Roman Catholicism became the state religion about the year 1000, but
during the Reformation period the Lutheran and Reformed types of
Protestantism gained a large following and were granted liberty. This
was afterward denied them, and bloody struggles followed, as in Bohemia.
Protestants were again placed on equal footing with Roman Catholics in
1791. The Magyars number over eight millions and comprise a little more
than one half the population of Hungary.
[Sidenote: Good and Bad Qualities]
There are at present between 250,000 and 300,000 Hungarians in America.
They have a fair degree of education, are generally reputed to be
honest, and as compared with the Slavs (with whom they are commonly
confused) are more intelligent and less industrious, "more agile in limb
and temper." Many are addicted to drink and quarreling. It is noticeable
that the Protestants are morally and intellectually superior to the
Catholics. The bulk of the Magyars (eighty-six per cent.) are in the
Pennsylvania mining regions, in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. At home
chiefly agriculturists, here they work mostly in mines, mills, and
factories. The Roman Catholic Hungarians are said to lapse easily from
the Church, going into indifferentism and nothingism. This gives opening
for Protestant mission work.
[Sidenote: The City Colony]
A writer who has made special investigations, in the line of social
settlement studies,[67] says that eighty per cent. of the Magyars
arriving in New York go at once to the farms and mines. The New York
colony numbers 50,000 to 60,000, including the Hungarian Jews, who are
scarcely distinguishable from the Gentiles. The life of their quarter is
one continuous whirl of excitement. Pleasure seems the chief end. The
café is their club room. Intensely social, fond of conviviality and
gaiety, bright, polished, graceful, the Magyar soon learns English, and
adapts himself to his new surroundings. The newspaper, literary society,
and charitable organization are the only institutions he cares to
support. Pride, independence, fertility of resource, lack of
perseverance, love of ease rather than of a strenuous life--these are
his qualities. Tailoring is the chief occupation in New York, though
Hungarians are also furriers, workers in hotels and restaurants and
various kinds of light factories, and some are shopkeepers and
merchants. Those who speak from close knowledge call them excellent
"citizen-material." In one of these typical East Side Hungarian cafés,
as a guest of the Hungarian Republican Club, President Roosevelt spent
the evening and made a noteworthy address on February 14, 1905. Among
other things, he told them that "Americanism is not a matter of
birthplace or race, but of the spirit that is in the man."
_V. The Lithuanians and Letts_
[Sidenote: Mine and Mill Workers]
The Lithuanians in Russia number about two millions. They began to come
in 1868, driven out by famine at home, and the first comers went to the
northern Pennsylvania mines. At present there are about 200,000 in
America; 50,000 of them in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania,
25,000 in the soft coal mines of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia;
10,000 in Philadelphia and Baltimore; 15,000 in New York; 25,000 in New
England; mainly in Boston, Worcester, Brockton, Hartford, and
Bridgeport; 10,000 in Ohio and Michigan; 50,000 in Illinois and
Wisconsin; while several thousand are scattered over the western states.
Though nearly all raised on farms, they do not take to farming here, nor
do they like open air work, preferring the mines, factories, foundries,
and closed shops. In the cities many of them are tailors, and many are
found in packing-houses, steel plants, hat and shoe factories, and
mills. Their chief curse is intemperance, and they are not of strong
character, having little of the quality of leadership. Generally they
are devout Roman Catholics; when not they are apt to become
freethinkers, and a freethinkers' alliance has been formed among them.
They are described as commonly peaceable, well dressed, and
good-natured. Their children are mostly in public schools. Little
Protestant work has been done among them.
[Sidenote: Less Favorable Repute]
The Lettish people, like the Lithuanians, their neighbors and kinsmen,
are among the oldest races of Europe. They are clearly distinguished
from the southern Slavs, being tall and fair, like the Swede, in
complexion. The Letts at home number about a million and a half. Since
1900 nearly 35,000 of them have come to America, settling mostly in the
anthracite coal regions. They are also found in New York, Massachusetts,
Illinois, Connecticut, and New Jersey. About one half are illiterate,
and in the coal fields both Lithuanians and Letts have a poor
reputation. In Boston, however, there is an encouraging mission work
among the Lettish people.
_VI. The Ruthenians_
[Sidenote: From a Poor Environment]
The Ruthenians, or Ukrainians, called also the Little Russians, at home
occupy the southern part of Russia, eastern and southwestern Galicia,
and part of Bukovina in Austria-Hungary. Their number in Europe is
computed at over 30,000,000. They are darker and smaller than the
typical Slav. Roman Catholic in religion, they are generally poor,
illiterate, backward in civilization, and oppressed. Immigration began
perhaps thirty years ago, but not in appreciable numbers until recent
years. In the four years ending in June, 1903, there were 26,496
arrivals, two thirds men, nearly all unskilled laborers, and one half
unable to read or write. The number in 1905 was 14,473. Pennsylvania is
their common destination. Estimates as to their present numbers in the
country vary from 160,000 to 350,000, the latter figures given by Ivan
Ardan, editor of their paper, _Svoboda_, at Scranton. He says there are
60,000 more in Canada, and as many in Brazil and other South American
republics, or about half a million altogether in the new world. Probably
there are 90,000 of them in Pennsylvania. They are said to be accessible
to missionary influences, but their ignorance and crowded conditions of
living make work difficult.
[Sidenote: Mostly Laborers]
About eight tenths of the Ruthenians here are laborers, chiefly in the
mines; and about one tenth are farmers. The young women work in shops
and factories, but prefer domestic service, and are efficient. The
people are very saving, and scarcely one but has from $50 to $200 at
least saved and put away in some hidden corner or in a bank. They buy
lots and build houses, or take up farming. They have beneficial
societies for sickness, injury, and death, including wife and mother as
well as husband and father. Mr. Ardan says Ruthenian men and women
drink, "_farmers and Protestants being exceptions_." What a notable
exception and testimony that is.
[Sidenote: Greek Catholics]
Superstitious, devout, attached to their churches, the majority are
Greek Catholics, with a few Protestants from Russian Ukraine, where
Protestants are bitterly persecuted. There are 108 Ruthenian churches,
composed of eighty Greek Catholic, twenty-six Greek Orthodox (Russian
State Church), and two Protestant, besides several Protestant missions.
[Sidenote: Hopeful Features]
The people are as a rule very eager to learn both their native and the
English language. They have their adult schools for this purpose. Their
children go to the public schools. There are four Ruthenian weeklies and
one monthly published in this country, and some books. Education is
prompted by reading circles, lectures, and societies for
self-improvement. The race has a fine physique, with great physical
endurance. Individuality is more marked in it than in many Slavonic
races, and assimilation is comparatively rapid. In this country they
rapidly wake up to a new life and promise to make a worthy addition to
citizenship. Such missionary opportunities should move our Christian
churches to active efforts.
_VII. Other Nationalities_
[Sidenote: Croatians and Dalmatians]
We can only mention the remaining nationalities of the Slavic group. The
Croatians and Dalmatians, unable to make a living at home, are fleeing
from starvation and mismanagement, and seeking work in America. Croatia
is a kingdom of Austria-Hungary. Dalmatia is the seacoast province of
Austria.
[Sidenote: Slovenians]
The Slovenians come from the provinces northwest of Croatia. The three
nationalities have probably sent between 200,000 and 300,000 persons to
America. Dalmatians are oyster fishermen at New Orleans, make staves in
Mississippi, are wine dealers in San Francisco, and vine growers and
miners in other parts of California. The Slovenians are chiefly found in
the Pennsylvania mines and other mining regions. The Croatians are
mostly in the same regions and work, although in New York there are
about 15,000 of them engaged as longshoremen and mechanics, and a small
number are farmers out West. They are Roman Catholic, largely illiterate
and unskilled. The Catholics do little for them, and the Protestant
denominations have undertaken no specific work in their behalf.
[Sidenote: A Needy Group]
The Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Montenegrins are
just beginning to come in appreciable numbers. They represent much the
same home conditions as the nationalities mentioned more in detail.
Catholicism, Greek or Roman, has cast them pretty much in the same mold.
Ignorant, semi-civilized many of them, they have everything to get and
learn in their new home, and afford still larger opportunity for
Protestant Christianity in its mighty work of making and keeping America
the land of righteousness and progress.
[Sidenote: A Hopeful View]
An interesting series of articles appeared in 1906 in a magazine devoted
to social betterment,[68] the writer having spent a year in studying
conditions in the Slav districts of Austria-Hungary. Living among the
people, she has become profoundly interested in them, and takes a most
hopeful view of their possibilities in America. She says the life from
which the peasants mostly come to us is the old peasant life, but a
little way removed from feudalism and serfdom. Each little village is a
tiny world in itself, with its own traditions and ways, its own dress,
perhaps even its own dialect. The amazing gift of the Slav for color and
music permeates the whole home life with poetry. The Slav immigrants
have the virtues and faults of their primitive world. They come to
America to make money. The majority come with intent to earn money to
take back home, rather than with expectation to settle here permanently.
Unenterprising, unlettered, they are at the same time hardy, thrifty
and shrewd, honest and pious. They are undoubtedly highly endowed with
gifts of imagination and artistic expression for which in their American
conditions they find little or no outlet.
[Sidenote: Necessity of Christian Environment]
And here again is the point we are constantly having impressed upon us.
What the immigrant shall become, for good or ill, depends chiefly upon
what conditions are made for him, and whether he is given a chance to
express his best self in this country. Grinding monopoly, harsh
treatment, prejudice that drives into clannishness and race
hatred--these will make of the Slavs a peril. A genuinely Christian
environment and treatment will find them receptive and ready for
Americanization through evangelization.
_VIII. The Russian Jews_
[Sidenote: An Interesting Group]
In some respects the most interesting immigrants from the Slav countries
are the Jews from Russia and Roumania. The German Jew and the Russian
Jew must not be confounded; they are as distinct as any two races in the
entire immigrant group. The German Jew came to America to make more
money, and is making it. The Russian Jew, who comes from persecution, is
rigidly orthodox, and regards the commercial German class as apostate.
He forms a picturesque, vigorous, _sui generis_ member of the alien
procession.
[Sidenote: Coming Rapidly]
Since the year 1881 not less than 750,000 Jewish immigrants have arrived
at the port of New York alone. On Manhattan Island more than every
fourth person you meet is a Jew. The Jews admitted at Ellis Island
during the past five years outnumbered all the communicants in the
Protestant churches in Greater New York.
[Sidenote: Where they Come from]
Of the 106,000 Jews admitted in 1904, a large proportion of whom settled
in New York, 77,000 came from the Russian Empire, 20,000 from
Austria-Hungary, and 6,000 from Roumania. Jewish immigrants from eastern
Europe are all one people.
[Sidenote: Occupation]
They show a larger proportion with skilled, professional and commercial
training and experience than do any of the other newer immigrants except
the Finns. Nearly twenty per cent. of the Hebrew immigrants are tailors,
nearly five per cent. mechanics, merchants, or clerks, and almost one
per cent. follow the professions. Of the remainder a very considerable
proportion, though not a majority, are skilled workers such as bakers,
tobacco workers, carpenters, painters, and butchers. The garment trades,
to which they find themselves adapted, and for which New York is the
world center, engages perhaps 100,000 of them, men, women, and children,
many of them in the sweat-shops, which they created. For the first time
in their history, the Jews have built up a great industrial class, this
being an American development. According to a Jewish authority,[69] the
"unspeakable evils of the tenements and sweat-shops" of the ghetto are
undermining their physical and moral health.
[Sidenote: Location]
The newly arrived Russian Jew is kept in the ghetto of the larger
cities--New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston--not only by his
poverty and ignorance but by his orthodoxy. In this district the rules
of his religion can more certainly be followed. Here can be found the
lawful food, here the orthodox places of worship, here neighbors and
friends can be visited within "a sabbath day's journey." The young
people, however, rapidly shake off such trammels, and in the endeavor to
be like Americans urge their parents to move away from this "foreign"
district. When they succeed, the Americanizing process may be considered
well under way. Concerning the religious change that comes over the
young Jew after he reaches this country, a writer says:[70]
[Sidenote: Become Estranged from Judaism]
"Many a young man, who was firm in his religious convictions in his
native village, having heard of the religious laxity prevalent in
America, had fully made up his mind not to be misled by the temptation
and allurements of the free country, but he succumbed in his struggle
and renounced his Judaism when first submitting his chin to the barber's
razor, at the entreaties and persuasions of his Americanized friends
and relatives. Religion then appeared to him not only distinct from
life, but antagonistic to it, and since it was life, a free, full,
undisturbed life he sought in coming here, he felt compelled to divorce
himself from all the religious ties that had hitherto encompassed him.
Thus it is that the immigrant Jewish youth, even those faithful and
loyal to the institutions of old and who desired to conduct their lives
in accordance with the precepts of their religion, became estranged from
Judaism and suffered themselves to be swept along by the tide. Thus the
immigrant Jew in America has frequently become callous and indifferent,
and sometimes cynical and antagonistic to everything pertaining to
Judaism." While they are thus lost to Judaism they are not won to
Christianity, but they ought to be. The older people become reconciled
with difficulty to this irreligious attitude and "the old Jewess still
curses Columbus for his great transgression in discovering America,
where her children have lost their religion."
[Sidenote: Ambitious for Wealth and Education]
The Russian Jews usually come in great poverty, but do not stay poor
very long. In New York's East Side many tenements in Jewish quarters are
owned by persons who formerly lived in crowded corners of others like
them; and from this population comes many a Broadway merchant, and
professional men in plenty. It is certain that the adult Hebrew
immigrant has definite aspirations toward social, economic, and
educational advancement. The poorest among them will make all possible
sacrifices to keep his children in school; and one of the most striking
social phenomena in New York City is the way in which the Jews have
taken possession of the public schools, in the highest as well as lowest
grades. The city college is practically filled with Jewish pupils. In
the lower schools Jewish children are the delight of their teachers for
cleverness at their books, obedience, and general good conduct; and the
vacation schools, night schools, social settlements, libraries, bathing
places, parks, and playgrounds of the East Side are fairly besieged with
Jewish children. Jewish boys are especially ambitious to enter
professions or go into business. For example, the head of one of the
largest institutions of the East Side tells a story of a long interview
with a class of boys in which all spoke of the work they intended to do.
Law, medicine, journalism, and teaching came first. There were even some
who intended to become engineers. A smaller number were going into
business, and not one intended to learn any manual trade. Some were
going in for music, and occasionally one is found who intends to make
his living by art. But above all, the young Jew is ambitious and intends
to rise. This is true in all cities.
[Sidenote: Worthy Qualities]
The strong good qualities of the Jews are absence of the drink evil,
love of home, desire to preserve the purity of the family, and
remarkable eagerness for self-improvement. They easily adapt themselves
to the new environment and assimilate the customs and language of the
new country. This leads to the danger of readily falling in with the
vices found in the tenement districts--the children showing this in the
large numbers of them that appear in the Juvenile Court. The remedy is
removal, and this the Jewish parents seek as soon as they are able.
[Sidenote: Good Citizens, but Poor Americans]
With decent environment and a fair chance, the Russian Jew promises to
become a good citizen, intellectually keen, commercially shrewd,
professionally bound to shine. But that he will ever, except in rare
instances, imbibe the real American spirit or understand the American
ideals is a question. At the same time, the Jews are believers in the
principle of democracy, and in case of an issue arising on the
separation of Church and State, would be found standing with American
Protestantism for the religious liberties of the American people.
QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER V
AIM: TO CONSIDER THE DESIRABILITY OF THE SLAVS AS IMMIGRANTS.
I. _The Slavic People as a Whole._
1. What nationalities are generally included under the term Slavs?
Are they numerous in population? Are they strictly of one race?
2. What grounds are there to justify popular prejudice against
them? Or to show it to be ill founded?
3. When did they begin to come in large numbers?
4. Where have they largely settled, and with what results?
II. _Racial Divisions of the Slavic Immigrants._
5. What can you tell about the Bohemians, as to their religious
history, political sufferings, and coming to America? What are
their conditions here? Their accessibility? Their location?
6. Tell about the Poles in the same way.
7. Tell about the Slovaks in the same way.
8. Tell about the Magyars in the same way.
9. Who and what are the Lithuanians?
10. Who and what are the Ruthenians?
III. _Slavic Elements of Strength and American Outlook._
11. Mention some encouraging features with reference to the
above-named and other Slavs.
12. * If you had been born a Slav in Europe, would you be likely to
prefer America to Europe? Protestantism to Roman Catholicism? The
country or the city?
IV. _Social, Moral, and Religious Aspects of the Jewish and Slavic
Population._
13. How many Jews are there in New York City?
14. What keeps the new arrivals in the larger cities?
15. Are they religious, quick to learn, temperate?
16. Mention some form of Christian work for Slavs or Jews about
which you know.
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER V
I. _Further Study as to Race Origin and Inter-relationship of the
Slavs._
Warne: The Slav Invasion, III.
McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, IV.
II. _National Conditions in Europe which the Slavs Seek to Escape._
Hall: Immigration, 60-65.
III. _Social and Moral Effects Produced by the Slav Invasion of the
Anthracite Regions._
Warne: The Slav Invasion, IV, VII.
IV. _Factors in Slavic History and Conditions Favoring and
Hindering the Access of the Gospel._
McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, 34-58.
Charities and Commons, issues 1905-06.
V. _Conditions Among Russian Jews._
Statements of Jewish authors as to conditions
among Russian Jews in their native lands and in
America.
Bernheimer: The Russian Jew in the United
States, I (B), IV (A), VI (A).
_The city is the nerve center of our civilization. It is also the
storm center. The city has a peculiar attraction for the immigrant.
Here is heaped the social dynamite; here the dangerous elements are
multiplied and concentered._--Josiah Strong.
VI
THE FOREIGN PERIL OF THE CITY
The city is the most difficult and perplexing problem of modern
times.--_Francis Lieber._
We must save the city if we would save the nation. Municipal government
and city evangelization together constitute the distinctive problem of
the city, for this generation at least.--_Josiah Strong._
Talk of Dante's Hell, and all the horrors and cruelties of the torture
chamber of the lost! The man who walks with open eyes and bleeding heart
through the shambles of our civilization needs no such fantastic images
of the poet to teach him horror.--_General Booth._
With the influx of a large foreign population into the great cities,
there have come also foreign customs and institutions, laxity and
license--those phases of evil which are the most insidious foes of the
purity and strength of a people. The slums of our large cities are but
the stagnant pools of illiteracy, vice, pauperism, and crime, annually
fed by this floodtide of immigration.--_R. M. Atchison._
You can kill a man with a tenement as easily as with an ax.--_Jacob
Riis._
Our foreign colonies are to a large extent in the cities of our own
country. To live in one of these foreign communities is actually to live
on foreign soil. The thoughts, feelings, and traditions which belong to
the mental life of the colony are often entirely alien to an
American.--_Robert Hunter._
The vastness of the problem of the city slum, and the impossibility,
even with unlimited resources of men and money, of permanently raising
the standards of living of many of our immigrants as long as they are
crowded together, and as long as the stream of newer immigrants pours
into these same slums, has naturally forced itself upon the minds of
thinking persons.--_Robert D. Ward._
VI
THE FOREIGN PERIL OF THE CITY
_I. The Evils of Environment_
[Sidenote: Tendency Toward the Cities]
As is the city, so will the nation be. The tendencies all seem to be
toward steady concentration in great centers. The evils of congestion do
not deter the thronging multitudes. The attractions of the city are
irresistible, even to those who exist in the most wretched conditions.
The tenement districts baffle description, yet nothing is more difficult
than to get their miserable occupants to leave their fetid and squalid
surroundings for the country. To the immigrants the city is a magnet.
Here they find colonies of their own people, and prize companionship
more than comfort. "Folks is more company than stumps," said an old
woman in the slums to Dr. Schauffler. In the great cities the immigrants
are massed, and this constitutes a most perplexing problem. If tens of
thousands of foreigners could somehow be gotten out of New York, Boston,
Chicago, and other cities, and be distributed where they are needed and
could find work and homes, immigration would cause far less anxiety. But
when the immigrant prefers New York or Chicago, what authority shall
remove him to Louisiana or Oklahoma?
[Sidenote: Perils Due to Environment]
The foreigner is in the city; he will chiefly stay there; and the
question is what can be done to improve his city environment; for the
perils to which we refer are primarily due not to the foreigner himself
but to the evil and vice-breeding conditions in which he has to exist.
These imperil him and make him a peril in turn. The overcrowded
tenements and slums, the infection of long-entrenched corruption, the
absence of light, fresh air, and playgrounds for the children, the
unsanitary conditions and exorbitant rents, the political heelers
teaching civic corruption, the saloons with their attendant temptations
to vice and crime, the fraudulent naturalization--these work together
upon the immigrant, for his undoing and thus to the detriment of the
nation. When we permit such an environment to exist, and practically
force the immigrant into it because we do not want him for a next-door
neighbor, we can hardly condemn him for forming foreign colonies which
maintain foreign customs and are impervious to American influences. It
has too long been the common practice to lay everything to the
foreigner. Would it not be fairer and more Christian to distribute the
blame, and assume that part of it which belongs to us. In the study of
the facts contained in this chapter, put yourself persistently in the
place of the immigrant, suddenly introduced into the conditions here
pictured, and ask yourself what you would probably be and become in like
circumstances.
[Sidenote: A Call for Reform]
How the other half lives is not the only mystery. How little the
so-called upper-ten know how the lower-ninety live. And how little you
and I, who are fortunate to count ourselves in the next upper-twenty,
perhaps, know how the under-seventy exist and think and do. If only the
more fortunate thirty per cent. knew of the exact conditions under which
a large proportion of men, women, and children carry on the pitiful
struggle for mere existence, there would be an irresistible demand for
betterment. Every Christian ought to know the wrongs of our
civilization, in order that he may help to right them. This glimpse
beneath the surface of the city should stir us out of comfortable
complacency and give birth in us to the impulse that leads to settlement
and city mission work, and to civic reform movements. The young men and
women of America must create a public sentiment that will demolish the
slums, and erect in their places model tenements; that will tear down
the rookeries, root out the saloons and dens of vice, and provide the
children with playgrounds and breathing space. And this work will be
directly in the line of Americanizing and evangelizing the immigrants,
for they are chiefly the occupants and victims of the tenements and the
slums.
[Sidenote: Vanishing Americanism]
New York is a city in America but is hardly an American city.
Nor is any other of our great cities, except perhaps Philadelphia.
Boston is an Irish city, Chicago is a German-Scandinavian-Polish
city, Saint Louis is a German city, and New York is a
Hebrew-German-Irish-Italian-Bohemian-Hungarian city--a cosmopolitan race
conglomeration. Eighteen languages are spoken in a single block. In
Public School No. 29 no less than twenty-six nationalities are
represented. This indicates the complicated problem.
[Sidenote: A Jewish City]
New York is the chief Jewish capital. Of the 760,000 Jews on Manhattan,
about 450,000 are Russian, and they overcrowd the East Side ghetto. In
that quarter the signs are in Hebrew, the streets are markets, the shops
are European, the men, women, and children speak in Yiddish, and all
faces bear the foreign and Hebrew mark plainly upon them.
[Sidenote: An Italian City]
Go on a little further and you find that you are in Little Italy, quite
distinct from Jewry, but not less foreign. Here the names on the signs
are Italian, and the atmosphere is redolent with the fumes of Italy. The
hurdy-gurdy vies with the push-cart, the streets are full of children
and women, and you are as a stranger in a strange land. You would not be
in a more distinctively Italian section if you were by magic
transplanted to Naples or Genoa.
[Sidenote: A Foreign City]
[Sidenote: Other Foreign Cities]
Nor is it simply the East Side in lower New York that is so manifestly
foreign. Go where you will on Manhattan Island and you will see few
names on business signs that do not betray their foreign derivation. Two
out of every three persons you meet will be foreign. You will see the
Italian gangs cleaning the streets, the Irish will control the motor of
your trolley-car and collect your fares, the policeman will be Irish or
German, the waiters where you dine will be French or German, Italian or
English, the clerks in the vast majority of the shopping places will be
foreign, the people you meet will constantly remind you of the rarity of
the native American stock. You are ready to believe the statement that
there are in New York more persons of German descent than of native
descent, and more Germans than in any city of Germany except Berlin.
Here are nearly twice as many Irish as in Dublin, about as many Jews as
in Warsaw, and more Italians than in Naples or Venice. In government, in
sentiment, in practice, as in population (thirty-seven per cent.
foreign-born and eighty per cent. of foreign birth or parentage), the
metropolis is predominantly foreign, and in elections the foreign vote,
shrewdly manipulated for the most part, controls. Nor is this true of
New York alone. In thirty-three of our largest cities the foreign
population is larger than the native; in Milwaukee and Fall River the
foreign percentage rises as high as eighty-five per cent. In all these
cities the foreign colonies are as distinct and practically as isolated
socially as though they were in Russia or Poland, Italy or Hungary.
Foreign in language, customs, habits, and institutions, these colonies
are separated from each other, as well as from the American population,
by race, customs, and religion.
[Sidenote: Failure in City Government]
To believe that this makes no particular difference so far as the
development of our national life is concerned is to shut one's eyes to
obvious facts. As such an impartial and intelligent student of our
institutions as Mr. James Bryce has pointed out, the conspicuous failure
of democracy in America thus far is seen in the bad government of our
great cities. And it is in these centers that the mass of the immigrants
learn their first and often last lessons of American life.
[Sidenote: Where the Newcomers First Go]
The strong tendency of immigrants is to settle in or near the ports of
entry. Where in the great cities do these newcomers find a dwelling
place? What will their first lessons in American life be? If we deal
largely with New York, it is simply because here are the typical
conditions and here the larger proportion of arrivals. Once admitted at
Ellis Island, the alien is free to go where he will; or rather, where he
can, for his place of residence is restricted, after all. If he is an
Italian, he will naturally and almost of necessity go to one of the
Little Italies; if a Jew, to the ghetto of the East Side; if a Bohemian,
to Little Bohemia; and so on. In other words, he will go, naturally and
almost inevitably, to the colonies which tend to perpetuate race customs
and prejudices, and to prevent assimilation. Worse yet, these colonies
are in the tenement and slum districts, the last environment of all
conceivable in which this raw material of American citizenship should be
placed.
_II. Tenement-House Life_
[Sidenote: Vice-Breeding Conditions]
To those who have not made personal investigation, the present
conditions, in spite of laws and efforts to ameliorate the worst evils,
are well nigh unbelievable. The cellar population, the blind alley
population, the swarming masses in buildings that are little better than
rat-traps, the herding of whole families in single rooms, in which the
miserable beings sleep, eat, cook, and make clothing for contractors, or
cigars that would never go into men's mouths if the men saw where they
were made--these things seem almost impossible in a civilized and
Christian land. It is horrible to be obliged to think of the human
misery and hopelessness and grind to which hundreds of thousands are
subjected in the city of New York day in and out, without rest or
change. It is no wonder that criminals and degenerates come from these
districts; it is a marvel, rather, that so few result, and that so much
of human kindness and goodness exists in spite of crushing conditions.
There is a bright as well as dark side even to the most disgraceful
districts; but there is no denying that the dark vastly predominates,
and that the struggle for righteousness is too hard for the average
human being. Nearly everything is against the peasant immigrant thrust
into the throng which has no welcome for him, no decent room, and yet
from which he has little chance to get away. He is commonly cleaner
morally when he lands than after six months of the life here. Why should
he not be? What has American Christianity done to safeguard or help him?
[Sidenote: Immigrants Not Responsible]
The existence of the tenement-house evils, it must be borne in mind, is
chargeable primarily to the owner and landlord, not to the foreign
occupant. The landlords are especially to blame for the ill
consequences. The immigrant cannot dictate terms or conditions. He has
to go where he can. The prices charged for rent are exorbitant, and
should secure decency and healthful quarters. No property is so
remunerative. This rent money is literally blood money in thousands of
instances, and yet every effort to improve things is bitterly fought.
Why should not socialism and anarchism grow in such environment? Of
course many of the immigrants are familiar with poor surroundings and do
not apparently object to dirt and crowding. But that does not make these
conditions less perilous to American life. Self-respect has a hard
struggle for survival in these sections, and if the immigrant does not
possess or loses that, he is of the undesirable class. Mr. Robert Hunter
makes the statement that no other city in the world has so many dark and
windowless rooms, or so many persons crowded on the acre, or so many
families deprived of light and air as New York. He says there are
360,000 dark rooms in Greater New York. And these are almost entirely
occupied by the foreigners. But unsanitary conditions prevail also in
all the cities, large and small, and especially in the mine and mill and
factory towns, wherever large masses of the poorest workers live.
[Sidenote: Legal Remedies Possible]
Concerning possible legislation to correct these city evils of
environment, Mr. Sargent says: "So far as the overcrowding in city
tenements is concerned, municipal ordinances in our large cities
prescribing the amount of space which rapacious landlords should, under
penalties sufficiently heavy to enforce obedience, be required to give
each tenant, would go far toward attaining the object in view. Whether
such a plan could be brought into existence through the efforts of our
general government, or whether the Congress could itself legislate
directly, upon sanitary and moral grounds, against the notorious
practice of housing aliens with less regard for health and comfort than
is shown in placing brute animals in pens, the Bureau is unprepared to
say.
[Sidenote: Demands Immediate Remedy]
It is, however, convinced that no feature of the immigration question so
insistently demands public attention and effective action. The evil to
be removed is one that is steadily and rapidly on the increase, and its
removal will strike at the root of fraudulent elections, poverty,
disease, and crime in our large cities, and on the other hand largely
supply that increasing demand for labor to develop the natural resources
of our country."[71]
[Sidenote: Little Italy]
Not to draw the picture all in the darker shades, let us look at the
best type of Italian tenement life. We are not left to guesswork in the
matter. Settlement workers and students of social questions are actually
living in the tenement and slum sections, so as to know by experience
and not hearsay. One of these investigators, Mrs. Lillian W. Betts,
author of two enlightening books,[72] has lived for a year in one of the
most crowded tenements in one of the most densely populated sections of
the Italian quarter. We condense some of her statements, which reveal
the foreign life of to-day in New York's Little Italy, with its 400,000
souls.
[Sidenote: Immigrant Isolation]
"A year's residence in an Italian tenement taught me first of all the
isolation of a foreign quarter; how completely cut off one may be from
everything that makes New York New York. The necessities of life can be
bought without leaving the square that is your home. After a little it
occasioned no surprise to meet grandparents whose own children were born
in New York, who had never crossed to the east side of the Bowery, never
seen Broadway, nor ever been south of Houston Street. There was no
reason why they should go. Every interest in their life centered within
four blocks. I went with a neighbor to Saint Vincent's Hospital, where
her husband had been taken. I had to hold her hand in the cars, she was
so terrified. She had lived sixteen years in this ward and never been on
a street-car before. Of a family of five sons and two daughters, besides
the parents, in this country fifteen years, none spoke English but the
youngest, born here, and she indifferently. Little Italy was all of
America they knew, and of curiosity they had none.
[Sidenote: Children American in Spirit]
"The house in which we lived was built for twenty-eight families and
occupied by fifty-six. One man who had been in the country twenty-eight
years could not speak or understand a word of English. Nothing but
compulsion made his children use Italian, and the result was pathetic.
The eldest child was an enthusiastic American, and the two civilizations
were always at war. This boy knew more of American history, its heroes
and poetry, than anyone of his age I ever met. This boy had never been
five blocks from the house in which we lived. He removed his hat and
shoes when he went to bed in winter; in summer he took off his coat. A
brother and two sisters shared the folding bed with him. His father
hired the three rooms and sublet to a man with a wife and three
children. The women quarreled all the time, but worked in the same room,
finishing trousers and earning about forty-five cents a day each.
[Sidenote: Evils of Overcrowding]
"How do they live? One widow, with three in her own family, took nine
men boarders in her three rooms. A nephew and his wife also kept house
there, the rent being $18 a month. Another neighbor, whose family
consisted of four adults and two children, had seven lodgers or boarders
at one time. These men owned mattresses, rolled up by day, spread on the
floor at night. One of them had a bride coming from Italy. Two men with
their mattresses were ejected and space made for the ornate brass and
green bedstead. The wedding was the occasion of great rejoicing. Next
day the bride was put to work sewing 'pants.' At the end of a month I
found she had not left those rooms from the moment she entered them, and
that she worked, Sundays included, fourteen hours a day. She was a mere
child, at that. The Italian woman is not a good housekeeper, but she is
a homemaker; she does not fret; dirt, disorder, noise, company, never
disturb her. She must share everything with those about her. She cooks
one meal a day and that at night. Pot or pan may be placed in the
middle of the table and each may help himself from it, but the food is
what her husband wants.
[Sidenote: Family Coöperation]
"Together they will wash the dishes or he will take the baby out. The
mother, who has sewed all day, will wash till midnight, while the
husband sits dozing, smoking, talking. But he hangs out the clothes.
They work together, these Italian husbands and wives. Their wants are
the barren necessaries of life; shelter, food, clothing to cover
nakedness. The children's clothes are washed when they go to bed. Life
is reduced to its lowest terms. They can move as silently as do the
Arabs and do so in the night watches. But they are rarely penniless;
they have a little fund always in the bank. They put their young
children in institutions from weaning-time until they are old enough to
work, then bring them home to swell the family income. Recently a
father, whose children had thus been cared for by the state, bought a
three-story tenement. This is typical thrift. There was never a day when
all the children of school age were in school. School was a prison house
to most of them. There was not room for them, even if they wanted to go.
[Sidenote: City Neglect]
"The streets in which the Italians live are the most neglected. It is
claimed that cleanliness is impossible where the Italian lives. The
truth is that preparation for cleanliness in our foreign colonies is
wholly inadequate. The police despise the Italian except for his voting
power. He feels the contempt, but with the wisdom of his race he keeps
his crimes foreign, and defies this department more successfully than
the public generally knows. He is a peaceable citizen in spite of the
peculiar race crimes which startle the public. The criminals are as one
to a thousand of these people. On Sundays watch these colonies. The
streets are literally packed with crowds from house line to house line,
as far as the eye can see, but not a policeman in sight, nor occasion
for one. Laughter, song, discussion, exchange of epithet, but no
disturbance. They mind their own business as no other nation, and carry
it to the point of crime when they protect the criminal."[73]
[Sidenote: Possibilities of Uplifting]
This is testimony directly from life and has especial value. It reveals
the difficulties, and at the same time the possibilities, of reaching
and Americanizing these immigrants, who are better than their
surroundings, and promising if properly cared for.
[Sidenote: Sources of Degradation]
The impression that steadily deepens with observation and study is that
of the evil and degrading surroundings. Not only are there the evil
moral influences of overcrowding, but also the contact with elements of
population already deteriorated by a generation of tenement house life.
The fresh arrivals are thrown into contact with the corrupt remnants of
Irish immigration which now make up the beggars, drunkards, thugs, and
thieves of those quarters. The results can easily be predicted. The
Italian laboring population is temperate when it comes to this country;
but under the evil conditions and influences of the tenement district
disorderly resorts have been opened, and drinking and other vices are
spreading. The Hebrews show tendencies to vices from which formerly they
were free. The law does not protect these immigrants, and it is charged
that the city permits every kind of inducement for the extension of
immorality, drunkenness, and crime. Thus the immigrant is likely to
deteriorate and degenerate in the process of Americanization, instead of
becoming better in this new world. He has indeed little chance. If he
does not become a pauper or criminal or drunkard, it will be because he
is superior to his environment.
_III. The Sweat-shop Peril_
[Sidenote: An Awful Peril]
An immigrant peril is the sweat-shop labor which this class performs.
"Sweating" is the system of sub-contract wherein the work is let out to
contractors to be done in small shops or at home. According to the
Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, "in practice sweating consists of
the farming out by competing manufacturers to competing contractors of
the material for garments, which in turn is distributed among competing
men and women to be made up." This system is opposed to the factory
system, where the manufacturer employs his own workmen, sees the goods
made, and knows the conditions. The sweating system is one of the
iniquities of commercial greed, and the helpless foreigner of certain
classes is its victim. The contractor or sweater in our cities is an
organizer and employer of immigrants. His success depends upon getting
the cheapest help, and life is of no account to him, nor apparently to
the man above him. The clothing may be made in foul and damp and
consumption or fever-infested cellars and tenement-styes, by men, women
and children sick or uncleanly, but the only care of the sweater is that
it be made cheaply and thus his returns be secured. It is a standing
reproach to our Christian civilization that the sweating system and the
slums are still existing sores in American centers of population. So far
the law has been unable to control or check greed, and the plague spots
grow worse. Here is a typical case, taken from the report of the
Industrial Commission:
[Sidenote: A Striking Example]
"A Polish Jew in Chicago, at a time when very few of the Poles were
tailors, opened a shop in a Polish neighborhood. He lost money during
the time he was teaching the people the trade, but finally was a gainer.
Before he opened the shop he studied the neighborhood; he found the
very poorest quarters where most of the immigrant Poles lived. He took
no one to work except the newly arrived Polish women and girls. The more
helpless and dependent they were, the more sure of getting work from
him. In speaking about his plans he said: 'It will take these girls
years to learn English and to learn how to go about and find work. In
that way I will be able to get their labor very cheap.' His theory
turned out to be practical. He has since built several tenement-houses."
[Sidenote: A Foreign Importation]
The cheap tailor business is divided among the Italians, Russians,
Poles, and Swedes, Germans and Bohemians. The women and children are
made to work, and hours are not carefully counted. Long work, poor food,
poor light, foul air, bad sanitation--all make this kind of life far
worse than any life which the immigrants knew in Europe. Better physical
starvation there than the mental and spiritual blight of these modern
conditions here. That so much of hopeful humanity is found in these
unwholesome and congested wards proves the quality worth saving and
elevating.
[Sidenote: Story of a Sweat-shop Girl]
Here is an illustration of the resolute spirit which conditions cannot
crush. A young Polish girl was brought by her widowed mother to America,
in hope of bettering their condition. The mother died soon afterward,
leaving the orphan dependent. Then came the disappointments, one after
another, and finally, the almost inevitable result in such cases, the
fall into the slums and the sweat-shops. By hard work six days in the
week, fourteen or more hours a day, this girl of tender age could make
$4 a week! She had to get up at half past five every morning and make
herself a cup of coffee, which with a bit of bread and sometimes fruit
made her breakfast. Listen to her story:
[Sidenote: Her Own Story]
"The machines go like mad all day, because the faster you work the more
money you get. Sometimes in my haste the finger gets caught and the
needle goes right through it. We all have accidents like that. Sometimes
a finger has to come off.... For the last two winters I have been going
to night school. I have learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. I can
read quite well in English now, and I look at the newspapers every day.
I am going back to night school again this winter. Some of the women in
my class are more than forty years of age. Like me, they did not have a
chance to learn anything in the old country. It is good to have an
education; it makes you feel higher. Ignorant people are all low. People
say now that I am clever and fine in conversation. There is a little
expense for charity, too. If any worker is injured or sick we all give
money to help."[74]
[Sidenote: Possibilities]
Surely this is good material. A changed and Christian environment would
make shining lights out of these poor immigrants, who are kept in the
subways of American life, instead of being given a fair chance out in
the open air and sunlight of decently paid service.
[Sidenote: A Foreign System]
Practically all of the work in tenements is carried on by foreign-born
men and women, and more than that, by the latest arrivals and the lowest
conditioned of the foreign-born. Tenement-house legislation has been
practically forced upon New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, whose
ports of entry receive the first impact of immigration, by two of the
races that have been crowding into the cities--the Italian and Hebrew.
The Italian woman, working in her close tenement, has by her cheap labor
almost driven out all other nationalities from that class of work still
done in the home, the hand sewing on coats and trousers. Of the 20,000
licenses granted by the New York factory inspector for "home finishing"
in New York City, ninety-five per cent. are held by Italians. This work
has to be done because the husband is not making enough to support the
family. These men work mostly as street laborers, hucksters, and
peddlers. To make both ends meet not only the wife but children have to
work.
[Sidenote: A Typical Case]
Here is a typical case of this class of worker and the earnings, from an
inspector's note-book: "Antonia Scarafino, 235 Mulberry Street;
finisher; gets five cents per pair pants, bastes bottoms, puts linings
on; one hour to make; two years at this business; four in this country;
married, with baby; sister works with her; can both together make $4 per
week; husband peddles fish and makes only $1 to $2 a week; got married
here; two rooms, $8.50 rent; kitchen 10 x 12; bedroom 8 x 10; gets all
the work she wants. No sunlight falls into her squalid rooms, and there
is no stopping, from early morning till late at night."
_IV. Three Constant Perils_
[Sidenote: The Naturalization Evil]
Illegal and fraudulent naturalization is another evil to which the
foreigner in the city becomes a party, although the blame belongs
chiefly to the ward politicians who make him a _particeps criminis_. The
recognized managers of the foreign vote of various nationalities--almost
always saloonkeepers--hold citizenship cheap, perjury undiscovered as
good as truth, and every vote a clear gain for the party and themselves.
So the naturalization mills are kept running night and day preceding a
national or municipal election. Describing this process, ex-United
States Senator Chandler says that in New York during a single month just
before election about seven thousand naturalization papers were issued,
nearly all by one judge, who examined each applicant and witnesses to
his satisfaction, and signed his orders at the rate of two per minute,
and as many as 618 in one day. Many classes of frauds were committed.
Witnesses were professional perjurers, each swearing in hundreds of
cases, testifying to a five years' residence when they had first met the
applicants only a few hours before. During the past year some of these
professional perjurers and political manipulators were tried and sent to
the penitentiary; but the frauds will go on. Here is an illustration:
[Sidenote: Making Citizens]
"Patrick Hefferman, of a given street in New York, was twenty-one years
old September 2, 1891, and came to this country August 1, 1888. He was
naturalized October 20, 1891. On that day he was introduced by Thomas
Keeler to a stranger, who went with him to court and signed a paper;
they both went before the judge, who asked the stranger something.
Hefferman signed nothing, said nothing, but kissed a book and came out a
citizen, having taken no oath except that of renunciation and
allegiance."
[Sidenote: Fraud Abundant]
Thus are the sacred rights of citizenship obtained by thousands upon
thousands, not in New York alone, but in all our cities. More than that,
fraudulent use is freely made of naturalization papers. The Italian
immigrant, for example, finds his vote is wanted, and obtains a false
paper. He returns to Italy to spend his earnings, and there is offered a
sum of money for the use of his papers. These are given to an emigrant
who probably could not pass the examination at Ellis Island, but who as
a naturalized citizen, if he is not detected in the fraud, cannot be
shut out. Then he sends the papers back to Italy. It is admitted that
there is a regular traffic in naturalization papers. In every way the
alien is put on the wrong track, and his American experiences are such
as would naturally make him lawless and criminal rather than a good
citizen. He needs nothing more than protection against corrupting and
venal agencies, which find their origin in politics and the saloon.
[Sidenote: The Saloon and the Immigrant]
The foreign element furnishes the saloons with victims. In his graphic
book describing tenement life in New York Mr. Riis shows the rapid
multiplication of the saloons in the slums where the foreigners are
crowded into tenements, nine per cent. more densely packed than the most
densely populated districts of London. In the chapter, "The Reign of
Rum,"[75] he says:
[Sidenote: Testimony of Riis]
"'Where God builds a church the devil builds next door a saloon' is an
old saying that has lost its point in New York. Either the devil was on
the ground first, or he has been doing a good deal more in the way of
building. I tried once to find out how the account stood, and counted to
111 Protestant churches, chapels, and places of worship of every kind
below Fourteenth Street, 4,065 saloons. The worst half of the tenement
population lives down there, and it has to this day the worst half of
the saloons. Up town the account stands a little better, but there are
easily ten saloons to every church to-day.
[Sidenote: Hunting for an American]
"As to the motley character of the tenement population, when I asked the
agent of a notorious Fourth Ward alley how many people might be living
in it, I was told: One hundred and forty families--one hundred Irish,
thirty-eight Italian, and two that spoke the German tongue. Barring the
agent herself, there was not a native-born individual in the court. The
answer was characteristic of the cosmopolitan character of lower New
York, very nearly so of the whole of it, wherever it runs to alleys and
courts. One may find for the asking an Italian, German, French, African,
Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish, and Chinese colony.
The one thing you shall ask for in vain in the chief city of America is
a distinctively American community."
[Sidenote: The Peril of Poverty]
The immigrant is nearly always poor, and is thrust into the poverty of
the city. We must distinguish between pauperism and poverty. As Mr.
Hunter points out, in his stirring chapter on this subject,[76]
"pauperism is dependence without shame, poverty is to live miserable we
know not why, to have the dread of hunger, to work sore and yet gain
nothing." Fear of pauperism, of the necessity of accepting charity,
drives the self-respecting poor insane and to suicide. It is to be said
that the majority of the immigrants are not paupers, but self-respecting
poor. Moreover, the new immigration is not nearly so ready to accept
pauperism as are the Irish, who make up the largest percentage of this
class, as already shown. But the poor immigrants are compelled, by
circumstances, to come in contact with, if not to dwell directly among
this pauper element, lost to sense of degradation. The paupers make up
the slums. And because the rents are cheaper in the miserable old
rookeries that still defy public decency, the Italians especially crowd
into these pestilential quarters, which are the hotbeds of disease,
physical and moral filth, drunkenness, and crime. Thus pauperism and
poverty dwell too closely together.
[Sidenote: Some Causes of Poverty]
Upon the unskilled masses the weight of want is constantly pressing.
Unemployment, sickness, the least stoppage of the scant income, means
distress. It is estimated that in our country not less than 4,000,000
persons are dependents or paupers, and not less than 10,000,000 are in
poverty. This means that they cannot earn enough regularly to maintain
the standard of life that means the highest efficiency, and that at some
time they are liable to need aid. Mr. Riis has shown that about one
third of the people of New York City were dependent upon charity at
some time during the eight years previous to 1890. The report of the
United Hebrew Charities for 1901 shows similar conditions existing among
the Jewish population of New York. Pauperism is a peril, and poverty is
a source of apathy and despair. The unskilled immigrant tends to
increase the poverty by creating a surplus of cheap labor, and also
falls under the blight of the evil he increases.
[Sidenote: Pauperism and Immigration]
Treating of this subject, the Charities Association of Boston reports
that it is hopeless to attempt to relieve pauperism so long as its ranks
are increased by the great hosts coming into the country, with only a
few dollars to depend upon, and no certain work. The statistics of the
public almshouses show that the proportion of foreign-born is greatly in
excess of the native-born. The pathetic feature of this condition is
that what is wanted is not charity but employment at living wages.
Greatly is it to the credit of the immigrants from southeastern Europe
that they are eager for work and reluctant to accept charity. The danger
is that, if allowed to come and then left without opportunity to work,
they will of necessity fall into the careless, shiftless, vicious class,
already so large and dangerous.
[Sidenote: Peril of the "Great White Plague"]
The immigrants in the city tenements are especially exposed to
consumption, that "Great White Plague" which yearly kills its tens of
thousands. In New York City alone ten thousand die annually of
tuberculosis; and this is the result largely of tenement conditions.
Statisticians estimate that the annual money loss in the United States
from tuberculosis, counting the cost of nursing, food, medicines, and
attendance, as well as the loss of productive labor, is $330,000,000.
Mr. Hunter instances a case where an entire family was wiped out by this
disease within two years and a half. In spite of his efforts to get the
father, who was the first one infected with the disease, to go to a
hospital, he refused, saying that as he had to die, he was going to die
with his family. The Health Board said it had no authority forcibly to
compel the man to go to a hospital; and the result was that the whole
family died with him. This plague "is the result of our weakness, our
ignorance, our selfishness, and our vices; there is no need of its
existence, and it is the duty of the state to stamp it out." That is Mr.
Hunter's conclusion, with which we heartily agree.
_V. The Cry of the Children_
[Sidenote: Peril of Child Neglect]
Another peril of the city, and of the entire country as well, that comes
through the foreigners is child neglect and labor; which means
illiteracy, stunted body and mind, and often wreckage of life. Every
foreign neighborhood is full of children, and sad enough is the average
child of poverty. What makes the tenement district of the great city so
terrible to you as you go into it is the sight of the throngs of
children, who know little of home as you know it, have irregular and
scanty meals, and surroundings of intemperance, dirt, foul atmosphere
and speech, disease and vice. No wonder the police in these districts
say that their worst trouble arises from the boys and the gangs of young
"toughs." There is every reason for this unwholesome product. Mr. Hunter
says there are not less than half a million children in Greater New York
whose only playground is the street. Result, the street gang; and this
gang is the really vital influence in the life of most boys in the large
cities. It is this life, which develops, as Mr. Riis says, "dislike of
regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, gambling
propensities, absence of energy, and carelessness of the happiness of
others." The great homeless, yardless tenement, where the children of
the immigrants are condemned to live, is the nursery of sickness and
crime. The child is left for good influence to the school, the
settlement, or the mission. For the enormous amount of juvenile crime in
the city, which it requires a special court to deal with, the conditions
are more responsible than the children, or even than the parents, who
are unable to maintain home life, and who, through the pinch of poverty
or the impulse of avarice, give over the education of the children to
school or street. Here is a picture of the life on its darker side:
[Sidenote: Street Life of Children]
"Crowded in the tenements where the bedrooms are small and often dark,
where the living room is also a kitchen, a laundry, and often a
garment-making shop, are the growing children whose bodies cry out for
exercise and play. They are often an irritant to the busy mother, and
likely as not the object of her carping and scolding. The teeming
tenements open their doors, and out into the dark passageways and
courts, through foul alleys and over broken sidewalks, flow ever renewed
streams of playing children. Under the feet of passing horses, under the
wheels of passing street-cars, jostled about by the pedestrian, driven
on by the policeman, they annoy everyone. They crowd about the music or
drunken brawls in the saloons, they play hide-and-seek about the garbage
boxes, they shoot 'craps' in the alleys, they seek always and everywhere
activity, movement, life."[77]
[Sidenote: Imprisoned Childhood]
But worse than this picture is that of childhood in the sweat-shop, the
factory, the mine, and other places of employment. Mr. Hunter has
written a chapter on "The Child"[78] that should be studied by every
lover of humanity. Its facts ring out a clarion call for reform. This
touches our subject most closely because, as he says, "These evils of
child life are doubly dangerous and serious because the mass of people
in poverty in our cities are immigrants. The children of immigrants are
a remarkable race of little ones."
[Sidenote: Happy Childhood]
Indeed they are, and they give you the bright side of the picture, in
spite of all the evil conditions in which they live. The present writer
stood recently opposite the entrance to a public school in the congested
East Side, where not one of all the thousand or more of scholars was of
native stock. As the crowds of little girls poured out at noontime their
faces made a fascinating study. The conspicuous thing about them was the
smile and fun and brightness. The dress was of every description, and
one of the merriest-faced of all had on one shoe and one rubber in place
of the second shoe; but from the faces you would never suspect into what
kind of places these children were about to go for all they know of
home. The hope lies in the children, and the schools are their great
blessing and outlet, even if as Mrs. Betts says, many of them of certain
classes do not think so. Mr. Hunter says:
[Sidenote: What Kind of Americans?]
"They are to become Americans, and through them, more than through any
other agency, their own parents are being led into a knowledge of
American ways and customs. All the statistics available prove that vice
and crime are far more common among the children of immigrants than
among the children of native parentage, and this is due no less to the
yardless tenement and street playground than to widespread poverty. In a
mass of cases the father and mother both work in that feverish, restless
way of the new arrival, ambitious to get ahead. To overcome poverty they
must neglect their children. Turned out of the small tenement into the
street, the child learns the street. Nothing escapes his sharp eyes, and
almost in the briefest conceivable time, he is an American ready to make
his way by every known means, good and bad. To the child everything
American is good and right. There comes a time when the parents cannot
guide him or instruct him; he knows more than they; he looks upon their
advice as of no value. If ever there was a self-made man, that man is
the son of the immigrant. But the street and the street gang have a
great responsibility; they are making the children of a hundred various
languages from every part of the world into American citizens."
[Sidenote: A Plain Duty]
How long will American Christianity allow this process of degeneracy to
go on, before realizing the peril of it, and providing the counteracting
agencies of good? That is the question the young people ought to
consider and help answer.
[Sidenote: Child Labor]
But far worse than all else, "the nation is engaged in a traffic for the
labor of children." In this country over 1,700,000 children under
fifteen are compelled to work in the factories, mines, workshops, and
fields. These figures may mean little, for as Margaret McMillan has
said, "You cannot put tired eyes, pallid cheeks, and languid little
limbs into statistics." But we believe that if our Christian people
could be brought for one moment to realize what the inhumanity of this
child labor is, there would be such an avalanche of public opinion as
would put a stop to it. This evil is a new one in America, begotten of
greed for money. This greed is shared jointly by the capitalist employer
and the parents, but the greater responsibility rests upon the former,
who creates the possibility and fosters the evil.
[Sidenote: Alien Victims]
The immigrants furnish the parents willing to sell their children into
child slavery in the factory, or the worse mill or mine--prisons all,
and for the innocent. Into these prisons gather "tens of thousands of
children, strong and happy, or weak, underfed, and miserable. Stop their
play once for all, and put them out to labor for so many cents a day or
night, and pace them with a tireless, lifeless piece of mechanism, for
ten or twelve hours at a stretch, and you will have a present-day
picture of child labor." But there is yet one thing which must be added
to the picture. Give the child-slave worker a tenement for a home in the
filthy streets of an ordinary factory city, with open spaces covered
with tin cans, bottles, old shoes, garbage, and other waste, the gutters
running sewers, and the air foul with odors and black with factory
smoke, and the picture is fairly complete. It is a dark picture, but
hardly so dark as the reality, and if one were to describe "back of the
yards" in Chicago, or certain mill towns or mining districts, the
picture would be even darker than the one given.
[Sidenote: The Shame of the Century]
Think of it, young people of Christian America! In the twentieth
century, in the country we like to think the most enlightened in the
world, after all our boasted advancements in civilization, child
slavery--more pitiful in some respects than African slavery ever
was--has its grip on the nation's childhood.
[Sidenote: An Appalling Record]
The record is amazing to one who has never thought about this subject.
Easily a hundred thousand children at work in New York, in all sorts of
employments unsuitable and injurious. Try to realize these totals, taken
from Mr. Hunter, of children under fifteen, compelled to work in
employments generally recognized as injurious: Over 7,000 in this
country in laundries; nearly 2,000 in bakeshops; 367 in saloons as
bartenders and other ways; over 138,000 at work as waiters and servants
in hotels and restaurants, with long hours and conditions morally bad;
42,000 employed as messengers, with work hours often unlimited and
temptations leading to immorality and vice; 20,000 in stores; 2,500 on
the railroads; over 24,000 in mines and quarries; over 5,000 in glass
factories; about 10,000 in sawmills and the wood-working industries;
over 7,500 in iron and steel mills; over 11,000 in cigar and tobacco
factories; and over 80,000 in the silk and cotton and other textile
mills.
[Sidenote: Soul Murder for Money]
Now, all of these industries are physically injurious to childhood. But
more than this, schooling has been made impossible, and immorality,
disease, and death reap a rich harvest from this seed-sowing. And why
are these helpless children thus engaged and enslaved, stunted,
crippled, and corrupted, deprived of education and a fair chance in
life? Simply because their labor is cheap. Mr. Hunter speaks none too
strongly when he calls this "murder, cannibalism, destruction of soul
and body." And it is the children of the immigrants who are thus
sacrificed to Mammon, the pitiless god of greed. Shall our Christian
young people have no voice in righting this wrong? Within a generation
they can put an end to it, if they will. Here is home missionary work at
hand, calling for highest endeavors.
QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER VI
AIM: TO SEE CLEARLY THE DANGERS ARISING FROM CONGESTION OF
FOREIGNERS IN OUR CITIES, AND THE BEST WAYS OF GUARDING AGAINST
THEM
I. _Foreigners in Cities._
1. What are the chief causes of the following: (1) the rapid growth
of great cities; (2) the existence of slums; (3) the settling of
immigrants in colonies?
2. Is your knowledge of the lives of the poor sufficient to move
you to work for their redemption? Are any of those persons, about
whom we have studied, your neighbors?
3. Is the prevailing tone of New York and other cities American or
Foreign? Give illustrations.
4. What is the prevailing tone in city government? Is there any
connection between the answers of these last two questions?
II. _Tenement-House Evils._
5. Where do most of the foreigners settle first in the United
States? Of what races is the mass chiefly composed?
6. Describe the conditions under which they live. Do they find them
so or make them so?
7. What remedies can be applied to tenement-house conditions? What
do the workers among them think of the needs and prospects?
8. What can be done toward improvement by the family? the school?
the city government?
III. _Prevalent Abuses._
9. Do the slum conditions tend to contaminate new arrivals? Do they
actually deteriorate?
10. What is the worst industrial feature of the tenement-house
districts? Describe its workings. Tell of some typical sweat-shop
workers.
11. What political evils flourish in the congested districts?
12. What moral and social evils flourish in the congested
districts?
IV. _Effects upon the Poor and the Children._
13. What relation does immigration hold to pauperism and poverty?
To conditions of health?
14. Name some of the principal authorities for the preceding
answers? How would you answer those who disputed their statements?
15. Can you give any facts as to child labor? What do you think of
the policy of employing children?
16. * Does this chapter convince you that Christians have a duty in
these matters, and if so, what is it?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER VI
I. _New York Slums and Foreign Quarters._
Study especially the Ghetto, Little Italy, Little Hungary, et al. and
find out whether similar conditions exist in cities of your section.
For New York, consult
University Settlement Studies, Vol. I, Nos. 3 and 4.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, X, XII.
For Chicago, consult
Hull House Papers.
For Boston, consult
Wood: Americans in Process, III, IV.
II. _Measures for Relief of Slum Population._
Riis: The Battle With the Slum, V-XV.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, VI, VII, XXIV.
III. _Connection between a Dense Foreign Population and Corruption in
Politics._
Wood: Americans in Process, VI.
IV. _Checks Put upon Industrial Oppression and Poverty._
Riis: The Peril and the Preservation of the Home.
V. _Problems of Poverty and Childhood as Affected by Immigration._
Hunter: Poverty, I, V, VI.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, XV, XVII, XXI.
_"To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely," said
Burke. If there is to be patriotism, it must be a matter of pride to
say, "Americanus sum"--I am an American._--Professor Mayo-Smith.
VII
IMMIGRATION AND THE NATIONAL CHARACTER
If that man who careth not for his own household is worse than an
infidel, the nation which permits its institutions to be endangered by
any cause that can fairly be removed, is guilty, not less in Christian
than in natural law. Charity begins at home; and while the people of the
United States have gladly offered an asylum to millions upon millions of
the distressed and unfortunate of other lands and climes, they have no
right to carry their hospitality one step beyond the line where American
institutions, the American rate of wages, the American standard of
living are brought into serious peril. _Our highest duty to charity and
to humanity is to make this great experiment here, of free laws and
educated labor, the most triumphant success that can possibly be
attained._ In this way we shall do far more for Europe than by allowing
its slums and its vast stagnant reservoirs of degraded peasantry to be
drained off upon our soil.--_General Francis A. Walker._
If the hope which this country holds out to the human race of permanent
and stable government is to be impaired by the enormous and unregulated
inroad of poverty and ignorance, which changed conditions of
transportation have brought upon us, then for the sake of Europe, as
well as for the sake of America, the coming of these people should be
checked and regulated until we can handle the problems that are already
facing us.--_Phillips Brooks._
There are certain fundamentals in every system, to destroy which
destroys the system itself. Our institutions have grown up with us and
are adapted to our national character and needs. To change them at the
demand of agitators knowing nothing of that character and those needs
would be absurd and destructive.--_Professor Mayo-Smith._
VII
IMMIGRATION AND THE NATIONAL CHARACTER
_I. Two Points of View_
[Sidenote: The Larger Race Problem]
Immigration is a radically different problem from that of slavery, but
not less vital to the Republic. It is a marvelous opportunity for a
Christian nation, awake; but an unarmed invasion signifying destruction
to the ideals and institutions of a free and nominally Christian nation,
asleep. "The wise man's eyes are in his head," says Solomon, "but the
fool walketh in darkness." In other words, the difference between the
wise and otherwise is one of sight. While Americans are walking in the
darkness of indifferentism and of an optimism born not of faith but
ignorance, immigration is steadily changing the character of our
civilization. We are face to face with the larger race problem--that of
assimilating sixty nationalities and races. The problem will never be
solved by minimizing or deriding or misunderstanding it.
[Sidenote: The Two Sides]
All through this study we have sought to remember that there are two
sides to every question, and two to every phase of this great
immigration question. Especially is this true when we come to estimating
effects upon character, for here we are in the domain of inference and
of reasoning from necessarily limited knowledge. Here, too, temperament
and bias play their part. One person learns that of every five persons
you meet in New York four are of foreign birth or parentage, notes the
change in personality, customs, and manners, and wonders how long our
free institutions can stand this test of unrestricted immigration.
Another answers that the foreigners are not so bad as they are often
painted, and that the immorality in the most foreign parts of New York
is less than in other parts.
[Sidenote: Different Opinions]
A third says it is not fair to count the children of foreign-born
parents as foreign; that they are in fact much stronger Americans in
general than the native children of native parentage; and instances the
flag-drills in the schools, in which the foreign children take the
keenest delight, as they do in the study of American history. But a
fourth says, with Professor Boyesen, that it takes generations of
intelligent, self-restrained, and self-respecting persons to make a man
fit to govern himself, and that if the ordinary tests of intelligence
and morality amount to anything, it certainly would take three or four
generations to educate these newcomers up to the level of American
citizenship.
[Sidenote: Conflicting Views]
One observer of present conditions says there is a lowered moral and
political tone by reason of immigration; and another agrees with a
leader in settlement work who recently said to the writer that he sees
no reason to restrict immigration, that wages will take care of
themselves and the foreigner steadily improve, and that there is in the
younger foreign element a needed dynamic, a consciousness of
Americanism, an interest in everything American in refreshing contrast
to the _laissez-faire_ type of native young person now so common. His
conclusion, from contact with both types, is that the intenseness and
enthusiasm of the foreign element will make the native element bestir
itself or go under.
[Sidenote: Mean between Extremes]
So opinions run, pro and con. There must be a mean between the two
extremes--the one, that God is in a peculiar sense responsible for the
future of the United States, and cannot afford to let our experiment of
self-government fail, however foolish and reckless the people may be;
and the other, that unless Congress speedily passes restrictive laws the
destiny of our country will be imperiled beyond remedy. We find such a
mean in that Americanization which includes evangelization as an
essential part of the assimilating process.
[Sidenote: Foreigners Everywhere]
As to the ubiquity of the foreigner all will agree. "Any foreigners in
your neighborhood?" asked the writer of a friend in a remote country
hamlet. "O, yes," was the reply, "we have a colony of Italians." Of all
such questions asked during months past not one has been answered in the
negative. Go where you will, from Atlantic to Pacific Coast, the
immigrant is there. In nineteen of the northern states of our Republic
the number of the foreign-born and their immediate descendants exceeds
the number of the native-born. In the largest cities the number is two
thirds, and even three quarters. There are more Cohens than Smiths in
the New York directory. Two thirds of the laborers in our factories are
foreign-born or of foreign parentage. New England is no longer Puritan
but foreign. So is it in the Middle and the Central West, and not only
in city and town but hamlet and valley. The farms sanctified by many a
Puritan prayer are occupied to-day by French-Canadian and Italian
aliens. Foreigners are running our factories, working our mines,
building our railways, boring our tunnels, doing the hard manual labor
in all the great constructive enterprises of the nation. They are also
entering all the avenues of trade, and few other than foreign names can
be seen on the business signs in our cities large or small.
[Sidenote: Foreignism Preserved]
Not only do you find the foreigner, of one race or another, everywhere,
but wherever you find him in any numbers you note that the most
distinctive feature is the foreignism. The immigrant readily catches
the spirit of independence and makes the most of liberty. He is
insistent upon his rights, but not always so careful about the rights of
others. He is imitative, and absorbs the spirit of selfishness as
quickly as do the native-born. He is often unkempt, uncultured, dirty,
and disagreeable. He is also impressionable and changeable, responsive
to kindness as he is resentful of contempt. He follows his own customs
both on Sundays and week days. He knows as little about American ideas
as Americans know about him. He is commonly apt to learn, and very much
depends upon the kind of teaching he falls under. Much of it,
unfortunately, has not been of the kind to make the American ideas and
ways seem preferable to his own. Made to feel like an alien, he is
likely to remain at heart an alien; whereas the very safety and welfare
and Christian civilization of our country depend in no small degree upon
transforming him into a true American. For upon this change hangs the
answer to the question, which influence is to be strongest--ours upon
the foreigner or the foreigner's upon us.
_II. American Ideals_
[Sidenote: A Question for Patriots]
Surely this is a question to engage the attention of Christian
patriots--the influence of this vast mass of undigested if not
indigestible immigration upon the national character and life. A most
scholarly and valuable treatment of this subject is found in the
discriminating work by Professor Mayo-Smith, one of the very best books
written on the subject. The figures are out of date, but the principles
so clearly enunciated are permanent, and the conclusions sane and sound.
This is the way he opens up the subject we are now considering:
[Sidenote: The Marks of a High Civilization]
"The whole life of a nation is not covered by its politics and its
economics. Civilization does not consist merely of free political
institutions and material prosperity. The morality of a community, its
observance of law and order, its freedom from vice, its intelligence,
its rate of mortality and morbidity, its thrift, cleanliness, and
freedom from a degrading pauperism, its observance of family ties and
obligations, its humanitarian disposition and charity, and finally its
social ideals and habits are just as much indices of its civilization as
the trial by jury or a high rate of wages. These things are, in fact,
the flower and fruit of civilization--in them consists the successful
'pursuit of happiness' which our ancestors coupled with life and liberty
as the inalienable rights of a man worthy of the name.
"In order that we may take a pride in our nationality and be willing to
make sacrifices for our country, it is necessary that it should satisfy
in some measure our ideal of what a nation ought to be. What now are the
characteristics of American state and social life which we desire to
see preserved? Among the most obvious are the following:
[Sidenote: American Ideals]
"(1) The free political constitution and the ability to govern
ourselves in the ordinary affairs of life, which we have inherited
from England and so surprisingly developed in our own history;
"(2) The social morality of the Puritan settlers of New England,
which the spirit of equality and the absence of privileged classes
have enabled us to maintain;
"(3) The economic well-being of the mass of the community, which
affords our working classes a degree of comfort distinguishing them
sharply from the artisans and peasants of Europe;
"(4) Certain social habits which are distinctively American or are,
at least, present in greater degree among our people than elsewhere
in the world. Such are love of law and order, ready acquiescence in
the will of the majority, a generally humane spirit, displaying
itself in respect for women and care for children and helpless
persons, a willingness to help others, a sense of humor, a good
nature and a kindly manner, a national patriotism, and confidence
in the future of the country.
"All these are desirable traits; and as we look forward to the future of
our commonwealth we should wish to see them preserved, and should
deprecate influences tending to destroy the conditions under which they
exist. Any such phenomenon as immigration, exerting wide and lasting
influence, should be examined with great care to see what its effect on
these things will be."[79]
[Sidenote: Protestant Religion Vital]
We should add to this thoughtful statement a clause concerning religion.
A vital thing to be maintained and extended is the Protestant faith
which formed the basis of our colonial and national life. No part of the
subject should receive more careful scrutiny than the effect of
immigration upon Protestant America. Whatever would make this country
less distinctively Protestant in religion tends to destroy all the other
social and civil characteristics which, it is well said, we wish to
preserve.
[Sidenote: American Life Changing]
When immigration began in the early years of the nineteenth century, the
American people possessed a distinctive life and character of their own,
differing in many respects from that of any other people. The easy
amalgamation of the races that formed the colonial stock--English,
Huguenot, Scotch, Dutch--had produced an American stock distinct from
any in the Old World. The nation was practically homogeneous, and its
social, religious, and political ideals and aims were distinct. That
great changes have taken place in the past century no one will deny. The
material expansion and development have not been more marked than the
changes social and religious.
[Sidenote: Influence of Immigration]
Just what part immigration has played in producing these changes it is
of course difficult to say with exactness, but unquestionably the part
has been very great. The twenty-three millions of aliens admitted into
the United States since 1820 brought their habits and customs and
standards of living with them; brought also their religion or want of
it; and it would be absurd to imagine that all of these millions had
been Americanized, or, in other words, had given up their old ways for
our ways of thinking and living. On the contrary, they have transported
all sorts of political notions from monarchial countries to our soil.
"The continental ideas of the Sabbath, the nihilist's ideas of
government, the communist's ideas of property, the pagan's ideas of
religion--all these mingle in our air with the ideas that shaped the men
at Plymouth Rock and Valley Forge," that adorned hill, dale and prairie
with Christian church and Christian school, and made possible the
building of free America.
[Sidenote: The Grade of the Aliens]
As we have seen, the immigrants have mostly represented the peasant or
lower classes of the countries whence they came. This is noted, not in
the way of prejudice, but because it is always true that mortality is
greater, and crime, illiteracy, and pauperism are more prevalent among
the lower classes. Of course it is also true that if the higher classes
had come from foreign lands they would have made an addition to the
social life quite different from that which did come. The average
character of the immigration, however favorable, required raising in
order to meet the American level. In the new environment it was to be
expected that large numbers of individuals among the immigrants would
rise to prominence and influence, and this has been the case. The
country owes large debt to the immigrants of earlier days. Their
children and descendants are loyal Americans. It is true, on the other
hand, that many have come from unfortunate conditions in the Old World
only to fall into quite as unfortunate ones in the New; and they and
their descendants have swollen the pauper and criminal class. The
statistics prove that a large proportion of our criminals and convicts
are of foreign birth. It is still more significant to note that, in the
opinion of expert observers, the first generation of foreign-born
parentage, in the cities at least, make a worse record than the
migrating parents.
[Sidenote: Bad Effects of New Environments]
If this be so, the new environment is producing deterioration and
degeneracy instead of improvement. An Italian of education, working
among his people, told the writer that the Italian boys and girls born
here, or coming at a very early age, were much more lawless and
disorderly and difficult to deal with than their fathers and mothers.
They had imbibed all the worst features of our life, its independence,
its defiance of parental authority, its selfishness, rudeness, and
vices, while they lacked the reverence, courtesy, and spirit of
obedience native to the Italian-born. This is substantiated by many
witnesses who have labored among the foreign element. The
Americanization these children are getting is largely of the worst
type--the type that we should like to see emigrate to European
countries. And it is confined to no one race, but common to all.
Professor Boyesen, for instance, a Norwegian-American, who blamed the
ideas gained in the public schools for some of the results seen in the
young hoodlums and roughs of foreign parentage, said that worthy German
and Scandinavian fathers complained bitterly that they could not govern
their children in this country. Their sons took to the streets, and if
disciplined left home entirely; and they attributed this to the spirit
of irresponsible independence in the air. This is perhaps one of the
inevitable penalties of individual liberty.
_III. Various Effects of Immigration_
[Sidenote: Making Life too Cheap]
The introduction through immigration of a lower standard of living has
been shown in preceding chapters. The point to be appreciated is that in
this matter we are not dealing with the immigration of individual
paupers and cheap workingmen, but with the influx of whole classes that
threaten to degrade our material civilization. There are in America
entire communities which live on a different plane, and form colonies
as foreign to American ideas and life as anything in Europe can show.
They have organized their own social life and fixed their own standards,
instead of rising to ours. The results are plain all over the country.
Immigration has cheapened more than wages in certain lines, it has
cheapened life, until the coal barons could say, "It is cheaper to store
men than coal." But men may be too cheap.
[Sidenote: Good Qualities Bad if Abused]
Some of the best qualities in the immigrants are liable to abuse.
Thrift, for instance, is commendable, but not when it is exercised at
the expense of decent living. Economy is an admirable trait, but not
when practiced at the expense of manhood and decent conditions. A
distinct deterioration of the masses displaced by the cheaper labor has
marked the advent of the new immigration. While some of the workingmen
thrown out of employment by immigration rise with the increase in the
number of superior positions, the great mass are obliged to accept the
lower standard or are forced out of the industry into misery, pauperism,
and crime. The greater tendency of immigrants, by reason of their
poverty, to permit or encourage the employment of their wives or
children, still further increases the intensity of the competition for
employment. In view of all the facts, a recent writer argues that the
limitation or restriction which would reduce the volume and improve the
economic quality of immigration would greatly improve labor conditions
in this country.
[Sidenote: Deterioration a Result of too Large Immigration]
Under the present free inflow, says this writer, "the condition of the
great mass of the working classes of this country is being permanently
depressed, and the difference between the industrial condition of the
unskilled workers in our country and of other countries is being
steadily lessened to our permanent and great detriment."[80]
[Sidenote: False Reasoning]
As to the economic effects of unrestricted immigration, the stock
argument that it costs a foreign country a thousand dollars to raise a
man, and that, therefore, every immigrant is that much clear money gain
to this country, simply begs the question of the usefulness of the
immigrant and the country's need of him. Many immigrants are not worth
what it cost to raise them, to their native land or any other; and at
any rate, a man is only of value where he can fit into the community
life and do something it needs to have done. Another naïve claim is that
every mouth that comes into the country brings with it two hands, the
assumption being that there is necessarily work for the two hands. If
not, then there is an extra mouth to be fed at somebody else's expense.
The real question is one of demand and quality.
[Sidenote: Effects upon Education]
What effect has immigration had, and what is it likely to have, upon our
national educational policy? The parochial school is opposed to the
public school; the parochial school is Roman, the public school
American. The parochial schools could not secure scholars but for
immigration. The Roman Catholic Church is persistently trying to get
appropriations of public money for parochial schools, although well
aware that this is directly contrary to the fundamental American
principle of absolute separation of Church and State; and is relying
upon the foreign vote to accomplish this un-American purpose. Here is an
illustration of the conditions made possible through unchecked
immigration and the wielding of this immigration by priestly influence:
[Sidenote: Baneful Results in Illinois]
In Illinois the foreign element outnumbers the native in voting power.
In consequence compulsory education in the public schools of that state
was voted down by a legislature pledged to obey the dictum of the
foreign element. Where the priests wield the foreign element in favor of
the parochial schools, it is not possible to pass a bill for compulsory
education in the English language.
[Sidenote: Parochial Schools in Pennsylvania]
The striking fact is given by Dr. Warne[81] that in parochial schools
for the Slav children in Pennsylvania, English is not taught, and the
children are growing up as thoroughly foreign and under priestly
control as though they were in Bohemia or Galicia.
[Sidenote: A Real Menace to the Republic]
A student of this subject[82] says that all the facts indicate that the
time will come when, if compulsory education in English is not
maintained by the states, this important matter will have to be made one
of national legislation. "The supine bowing of the native element in our
political parties to this foreign, domineering, un-American and
denationalizing opposition to the state control of the education of the
child for citizenship is in itself a menace. When we hear of public
schools in America taught in German and Polish, instead of the language
of Emerson and Longfellow, Lincoln and Grant, one feels like taking, not
Diogenes' lantern, but an Edison searchlight, and going about our
streets to see if there be in all our cities a patriot." More evil in
results than this, and most insidious of all the attempts of the Roman
Catholic hierarchy to undermine American principles, is the system of
so-called compromise by which some of the public schools are taught by
nuns, sisters, and priests, who wear their Church garb, and use the
school buildings during certain hours for sectarian instruction. The
mere statement of the facts ought to be sufficient to bring about
drastic remedies, but the easy-going Protestants apparently do not
realize what is being done.
[Sidenote: Schools the Sure Way to Americanism]
American patriotism must steadily and resolutely resist every Roman
Catholic attack, open or covert, upon our public schools, every attempt
to divert public moneys to sectarian purposes. This is vital to the
preservation of our civil and religious liberty. For the immigrant
children the public schools are the sluiceways into Americanism. When
the stream of alien childhood flows through them, it will issue into the
reservoirs of national life with the Old World taints filtered out, and
the qualities retained that make for loyalty and good citizenship. We
shall have to look to our school boards, elevate them above party
politics and the reach of graft, and elect upon them men and women
instinct with the spirit of true Americanism, or see this mightiest
agency of modern civilization diverted from its high mission to produce
for the Republic an enlightened and noble manhood and womanhood.
[Sidenote: Effects upon Political Conditions]
What is the effect of the addition of so many thousands of men of voting
age upon our political conditions? Undoubtedly demoralizing and
dangerous. Professor Mayo-Smith says: "We are thus conferring the
privilege of citizenship, including the right to vote, without any test
of the man's fitness for it. The German vote in many localities controls
the action of political leaders on the liquor question, oftentimes in
opposition to the sentiment of the native community. The bad influence
of a purely ignorant vote is seen in the degradation of our municipal
administrations in America."[83] The foreign-born congregate in the
large cities, especially the mass of unskilled laborers. There they
easily come under control of leaders of their own race, who use them to
further selfish ends. Fraudulent naturalization is another evil result.
There is no more dangerous element in the Republic than a foreign vote,
wielded by unscrupulous partisans and grafters. The immigrant is not so
much to blame as are those who corrupt him, but if he were not here they
would have no opportunity. In order to wield a bludgeon a bully must
have the bludgeon.
[Sidenote: A Voter Should be Able to Read his Ballot]
There is an unquestioned and increasing evil and peril in a German vote,
an Irish vote, a Scandinavian vote, an Italian vote, and a Hebrew vote.
Out in South Dakota a Russian vote also has to be reckoned with, and in
New England a French-Canadian vote. All this is undemocratic and
unwholesome in the highest degree. Our government is based upon the
intelligent and responsible use of the ballot. How can such use be
possible in the case of the naturalized alien who cannot read or write
our language or any other? No one can declare it unreasonable that a
reading test as a qualification for voting should be required of all. On
the brighter side of the political phase, it is asserted that it was the
foreign element of the East Side in New York that made possible the
election of a reform candidate in a recent election, and that this
element can be relied upon for reform and independent voting quite as
much as the American society element, which is frequently too
indifferent to vote at all. There is too much truth in this. At the same
time, one who is familiar with the discussions at the People's Forum in
Cooper Institute, New York, or similar meeting places of the foreign
element in other large cities, knows how essentially un-American are the
point of view and the theories most advocated.
_IV. The Religious Problem_
[Sidenote: Effects upon Religious Conditions]
What is the effect of immigration upon the religious life of the
country? This is an exceedingly difficult matter upon which to
generalize. There is no doubt that great changes have taken place in the
religious views and practices of the people, but how far these can be
attributed to foreign influence is something upon which agreement will
be rare and judgment difficult. It will be instructive, first of all, to
study this table, which gives the results of questions asked the
immigrants in 1900 concerning their religious connections. This was the
last inquiry of the kind officially made, and will indicate what
religious elements in immigration must be taken into consideration:
RELIGIOUS STATISTICS OF THE IMMIGRATION FOR 1900
-------------------------------------------------------
|Total
| | Protestants
Countries | | | Roman Catholics
| | | |Greek Catholics
-------------------------------------------------------
Austria-Hungary|64,835 | 5,009 | 39,694| 7,699
Belgium | 1,728 | 94 | 967| 2
Denmark | 3,253 | 2,629 | 44| --
France | 4,902 | 165 | 1,736| 3
German Empire |25,904 |10,258 | 6,758| 18
Greece | 2,450 | 14 | 14| 2,350
Italy |79,664 | 50 | 78,306| 26
Netherlands | 1,994 | 839 | 190| --
Norway | 7,113 | 6,674 | 2| --
Portugal | 2,269 | 2 | 2,056| --
Roumania | 1,655 | 160 | 60| 31
Russian Empire | | | |
and Finland |62,537 |13,295 | 22,462| 1,470
Servia, | | | |
Bulgaria | 59 | -- | 4| 47
Spain | 1,428 | 15 | 704| --
Sweden |13,541 |12,708 | 9| --
Switzerland | 2,294 | 710 | 608| 7
Turkey in | | | |
Europe | 137 | 5 | 5| 33
United Kingdom |65,390 | 12,611| 31,216| 4
Not specified | 8 | --| -- | 5
Total Europe |341,161| 65,238|184,835|11,695
Total Asia | 9,726| 452| 1,390| 2,833
Africa | 109| 13| 9| --
All other | | | |
countries | 10,440| 1,274| 2,178| 11
---------------------------------
Grand Total[84] |361,436| 66,977|188,412|14,539
---------------------------------
Percentage in | | | |
each religion| 100| 18.54| 52.14| 4.03
-------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
|Israelites
| | Brahmans
Countries | | | Mohammedans
| | | |Miscellaneous
--------------------------------------------------------
Austria-Hungary |11,082 | -- | -- | 1,351
Belgium | 4 | -- | -- | 661
Denmark | 2 | -- | -- | 578
France | 12 | -- | 2 | 2,984
German Empire | 401 | -- | -- | 8,469
Greece | -- | -- | -- | 72
Italy | 1 | -- | -- | 1,281
Netherlands | 8 | -- | -- | 957
Norway | -- | -- | -- | 437
Portugal | -- | -- | -- | 211
Roumania | 1,350 | -- | -- | 54
Russian Empire | | | |
and Finland |24,351 | -- | 1 | 958
Servia, | | | |
Bulgaria | 1 | -- | -- | 7
Spain | -- | -- | -- | 709
Sweden | -- | -- | -- | 824
Switzerland | 6 | -- | -- | 963
Turkey in | | | |
Europe | 27 | -- | 13 | 54
United Kingdom | 197 | -- | 1 | 21,361
Not specified | -- | -- | -- | 3
Total Europe | 37,442| -- | 17 | 41,934
Total Asia | 48| 3,373| 77 | 1,553
Africa | 5| -- | 16 | 66
All other | | | |
countries | 28| 228| -- | 6,721
---------------------------------
Grand Total[84] | 37,523| 3,601| 110| 50,274
---------------------------------
Percentage in | | | |
each religion | 10.39| .99| -- | 13.91
-------------------------------------------------------
[Sidenote: Eighty Per Cent. Non-Protestant]
In analyzing these figures, it will be noted that the Roman Catholics
had fifty-two per cent. in a year when the total immigration of 361,436
(not much over one third that of the present time) was about the same in
the proportion of aliens from southeastern Europe as now. The Jews would
make a larger showing at present, as the immigrants from Russia are
almost wholly Jews. The Protestant strength certainly would not be any
greater proportionately. The large number put down as miscellaneous is
significant. What a task is laid upon American Protestantism--nothing
less than the evangelization of nearly eighty-two per cent. of the vast
immigration. It is easy to say that the fifty-two per cent. is nominally
Christian, but in fact that nominal Christianity is in many respects as
much out of sympathy with American religious ideals, with democracy and
the pure gospel, as is heathenism; and it is in many cases as difficult
to reach, and as great an obstacle to the assimilation of the aliens.
[Sidenote: Sunday Observance]
Looking at various results of this incoming host, in regard to reverence
for Sunday and observance of it, it is fair to assume that the millions
of Germans, with their continental Sunday, were leaders in breaking in
upon our Sunday customs. While they have as a people observed the
laws--although seeking to have the laws changed so as to permit here the
home customs of open concert halls and beer gardens on Sunday afternoon
and evening--their influence has been strongly felt in favor of loose
Sunday observance, and this has been sufficient to stimulate the natural
tendency of the American element to make the day one of amusement and
recreation, regardless of laws. The result is that now we have a lawless
American Sunday quite different from and more objectionable than the
continental Sunday.
[Sidenote: Disregard of Law]
In the larger cities throughout the country the encroachments of the
money-makers have been steady. Performances of all kinds are permitted,
theaters run either openly or with thinly veiled programs, saloons are
open to those who know where the proper entrances are, and many forms of
business and labor are carried on seven days in the week. The Jews
claimed that it was a hardship to have to close on Sunday, when their
religious observances came on Saturday, with result that a good many
manage to keep shops and factories open all the year around. Pleas of
necessity have been put forward where contractors desired to push jobs
and profits. Sunday excursions are universal, and in order to gain their
Sunday pleasure-outings several millions of people of all races keep
several other millions hard at work on the day of rest. All places are
crowded on Sunday except the churches. Go among the foreign elements in
the city and you would never know it was Sunday. Holiday has supplanted
holy-day. Observe the trolley-cars or subway or elevated trains on
Sunday and you will see nine foreigners out of every ten persons. Go
into the suburbs and you will find springing up in out-of-the-way
places, where land can be secured cheap, little recreation parks, with
games and dancing platforms; and here there will be throngs of Italians
and other foreigners all day.
[Sidenote: Loss of the American Sunday]
Let us be just in this matter. The loss of the American Sunday is
undoubtedly due in great measure to immigration; due in part to the
weakness and dereliction of American professing Christians who have
surrendered to the foreign elements and fallen in with their ideas
instead of maintaining public worship and insisting upon respect for law
at least. Let the blame fall where it belongs, and let the Church
members recreant to duty take their share. When the sea threatened
Holland her resolute people built the dykes and maintained them;
American Christians have failed to stop the leaks in the church dykes,
and we have had a Sunday submergence in consequence. The effect of it
upon our national development is already evident and is most disastrous
to our highest interests. Sabbath-breaking and progress-making never go
together. Sunday work and pleasure combined form the peril alike of the
American workingman and of Christian civilization.
[Sidenote: General Deterioration]
Along with this inflow of alien ideas in religion goes a lowered
morality and a lower tone generally. Not that the sins of those in high
places are to be charged upon the poor immigrant, for he rarely if ever
belongs to that class. The statement may be true that the great rascals
are of native stock. But that only increases the peril. The masses that
come to us from southern Europe certainly will not raise the moral or
commercial, any more than they will the political or intellectual,
level. If we do not raise them they will tend to lower us; and much of
what they see and hear can have nothing less than a demoralizing effect.
[Sidenote: The Only Safeguard of Liberty]
Where shall we find the zealous and consistent Christians who by
sympathetic contact will represent the true spirit of Christianity, and
make the elevation of the aliens possible? The supreme truth to be
realized is that nothing but Christianity, as incarnated in American
Protestantism, can preserve America's free institutions.
[Sidenote: Spread of Socialism]
Ex-President Seelye, of Amherst, said that socialism is the question of
the time, and this is more apparent with every passing year. Socialism
has its source in the foreign element. It is not native to America. Its
swelling hosts are composed almost entirely of immigrants of recent
coming. It is found not only in the great cities but is spreading
through the farming sections. Now, there is a truth in socialism that
must be intelligently dealt with; and there is a Christian socialism
that should become dominant. And this is the only force that can check
and counteract the foreign socialism that would sweep away foundations
instead of ameliorating conditions and remedying evils.
[Sidenote: Migration a Severe Test]
In the same way, Protestant Christianity is the only agency that can
save us from the moral degeneracy involved in migration, even if the
immigrants were of our moral grade before coming. As Dr. Strong says,
the very act of migration is demoralizing. All the strength that comes
from associations, surroundings, relations, the emigrant leaves behind
him, and becomes isolated in a strange land. Is it strange, then, that
those who come from other lands, whose old associations are all broken
and whose reputations are left behind, should sink to a lower moral
level? Across the sea they suffered restraints which are here removed.
Better wages afford larger means of self-indulgence; often the back is
not strong enough to bear prosperity, and liberty too often lapses into
license.[85]
[Sidenote: Why Foreign Colonies are Perpetuated]
This result of migration is at once an evil and an opportunity. Breaking
away from the old associations leaves room and necessity for new ones.
Upon the character of these the future of the immigrant will largely
depend. Here is the Christian opportunity. See to it that the new
associations make for righteousness and patriotism. If the immigrant is
evangelized, assimilation is easy and sure. It is recognition of this
fact that leads the Roman Catholic Church to keep foreign colonies in
America as isolated and permanent as possible. The ecclesiastics realize
that children must be held in the parochial schools, so as to avoid the
Americanization that comes through the public schools, with the
probable loss of loyalty to the Church. The parents equally must be
kept away from the influences that would broaden and enlighten them. Dr.
Strong tells of large colonies in the West, settled by foreigners of one
nationality and religion; "thus building up states within a state,
having different languages, different antecedents, different religions,
different ideas and habits, preparing mutual jealousies, and
perpetuating race antipathies. In New England conventions are held to
which only French-Canadian Roman Catholics are admitted. At such a
convention in Nashua, New Hampshire, attended by eighty priests, the
following mottoes were displayed: 'Our tongue, our nationality, our
religion,' 'Before everything else, let us remain French!'" And it is
well said: "If our noble domain were tenfold larger than it is, it would
still be too small to embrace with safety to our national future, little
Germanies here, little Scandinavias there, and little Irelands yonder."
To-day there are also little Italies and little Hungaries, and a long
list of other races.
_V. The Hopeful Side_
[Sidenote: A Brighter Picture]
Turning to the pleasanter and brighter side of this great question, we
give the encouraging view of one who has spent years among the immigrant
population, studying their environment, conditions, and character, with
view to improving their chances. She says:
"The writer will risk just one generalization which, it is hoped, the
ultimate facts will bear out, that in the case of the new immigration we
shall see a repetition of the story of the old immigrant we are so
familiar with. First comes the ignorant and poor but industrious
peasant, the young man, alone, without wife or family. For a few years
he works and saves, living according to a 'standard of life' which
shocks his older established neighbors, and we may guess would often
shock his people at home. At first he makes plans for going back, sends
his savings home, and perhaps goes back himself. But he usually returns
to this country, with a wife. America has now become his home, savings
are invested here, land is bought, and a little house built. The growing
children are educated in American schools, learn American ways, and
forcibly elevate the 'standard of life' of the family. The second
generation, in the fervor of its enthusiasm for change and progress
becomes turbulent, unruly, and is despaired of.
[Sidenote: The Open Door]
"But out of the chaos emerges a third generation, of creditable
character, from whom much may be expected. Our Austrian, Hungarian, and
Russian newcomers are still in the first and second stages, and there
seems no good reason why they should not pull through successfully to
the third. But in that endeavor we can either help or materially hinder
them, according to our treatment of them, as employees, as producers,
as fellow citizens. America, for her own sake, owes to the immigrant not
only the opportunities for 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'
that she promises to every man, but a sympathetic appreciation of his
humanity, and an intelligent assistance in developing it."[86]
[Sidenote: How the Children Lead]
This is a picture of progress in assimilation to be remembered, and the
conclusion is admirably expressed. Assimilation is made easy when the
wheels of contact are oiled by kindness and sympathy. The children lead
the way to Americanization. Mr. Brandenburg gives this report of a
conversation overheard in an Italian tenement in New York, the parties
being a mother, father, and the oldest of three daughters: "Said the
mother in very forcible Tuscan: 'You shall speak Italian and nothing
else, if I must kill you; for what will your grandmother say when you go
back to the old country, if you talk this pig's English?' 'Aw, g'wan!
Youse tink I'm goin' to talk dago 'n' be called a guinea! Not on your
life. I'm 'n American, I am, 'n you go 'way back an' sit down,' The
mother evidently understood the reply well enough, for she poured forth
a torrent of Italian, and then the father ended matters by saying in
mixed Italian and English: 'Shut up, both of you. I wish I spoke English
like the children do,' Many parents have learned good English in order
to escape being laughed at or despised by their children."[87]
[Sidenote: The Young American]
The language is not classic, but it is that of real life such as these
children have to endure. The rapidity with which foreigners become
Americanized is illustrated, said Dr. Charles B. Spahr, by the
experience of a gentleman in Boston. In his philanthropic work he had
gotten quite a hold on the Italian population. A small boy once asked
him: "Are you a Protestant?" He said "Yes," and the boy seemed
disappointed. But presently he brightened up and said, "You are an
American, aren't you?" "Yes." "So am I!" with satisfaction. Children
become American to the extent that they do not like to have it known
that they have foreign parents. One little girl of German parentage said
of her teacher: "She's a lady--she can't speak German at all." Where
assimilation is slow, it is quite as likely to be the fault of the
natives as of the immigrants, much more likely, indeed. How can he learn
American ways who is carefully and rudely excluded from them? We build a
Chinese wall of exclusiveness around ourselves, our churches, and
communities, and then blame the foreigner for not forcing his way
within.
In a thoughtful treatment of this whole subject, Mr. Sidney Sampson
says:[88]
[Sidenote: The Real Question]
"It has become a pressing and anxious question whether American
institutions, with all their flexibility and their facility of
application to new social conditions, will continue to endure the strain
put upon them by the rapid and ceaseless introduction of foreign
elements, unused, and wholly unused in great measure, to a system of
government radically differing from that under which they have been
educated. Can these diverse elements be brought to work in harmony with
the American Idea? The centuries of subjection to absolutism, or even
despotism, to which the ancestors of many of the immigrant classes have
been accustomed, has formed a type of political character which cannot,
except after long training, be brought into an understanding of, and
sympathy with, republican principles. This is by far the most important
aspect of the question, much more so than questions of industrial
competition."
If the republic will not ultimately endure harm, he believes industrial
questions will slowly but surely right themselves; if otherwise, none
even of the wisest can foresee the result. We give his conclusion:
[Sidenote: Optimism the True View]
"What is to be the outcome of this movement of the nations upon American
political and industrial life is a question which confronts us with a
problem never before presented in the world's history. Upon a review of
the entire situation I think we may be optimists. Notwithstanding all
unfavorable features, there are antagonizing elements constantly at
work, not the less potent because they work silently. We may attach
undue importance to statistics merely.
[Sidenote: Assimilating Agencies]
"Students of the immigration problem do not sufficiently observe the
influences--in fact, the immigrant may not himself be conscious of
them--which year after year tend to adjust his habits of thought and his
political views and actions to his new environment. Freedom of suffrage,
educational advantages, improved industrial conditions, the dignity of
citizenship, equal laws, protection of property--all these nourish in
him an increasing respect for the American system; and we have reason to
believe that, under proper legislation, the combined influence of all
these will in the long run fully neutralize the distinctly unfavorable
results of future immigration."
[Sidenote: Solution by Combined Forces]
With this we are in accord, provided the Christian people of America can
be brought to see and do their whole duty by the aliens. The solution of
the problem demands the combined forces of our educational, social,
political, and evangelical life. In that solution is involved the
destiny of ultimate America.
QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER VII
AIM: TO REALIZE THE EFFECT OF IMMIGRATION UPON THE NATIONAL
CHARACTER AND OUR INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR IMPROVING
CONDITIONS
I. _Reasons for Concern._
I. * Do you think that immigration makes a very serious problem for
the United States? Why? Mention others who think differently. Why
do you not agree with them?
2. * Are there any foreigners in your neighborhood? What are they
and what can you do for them?
3. Do these immigrants long retain their foreign aspect and ways?
In what respects do they change most quickly?
4. What does Professor Mayo-Smith say about keeping American ideals
intact? Must Protestant Christianity be guarded?
II. _Threatening Changes._
5. In what respects has immigration since 1820 introduced
un-American standards?
6. * Have the average character and the plane of living of the
immigrants been raised or lowered by their coming here? Same as to
wages? As to intelligence?
7. * How are our public schools affected? Is there any menace to
our school system? Can we provide compulsory education for all the
children?
III. _Other Effects._
8. Do these new Americans learn to use the ballot rightly? Can they
learn?
9. Does their coming make genuine Christianity more or less
prominent in the national life? What effect does it have on Sunday
observance? Does it lessen or increase lawbreaking?
IV. _National Bulwarks._
10. What are the safeguards pointed out by Professor Boyesen? By
ex-President Seelye?
11. How can Socialism be met?
12. * Will anything but Christianity effectively guard our
institutions?
13. How far will material improvements help to uplift and
assimilate the newcomers?
14. Do the children learn patriotism from their new country? Do
they keep it when grown up?
15. * Is there good reason for being optimistic? Upon what
condition may we be hopeful?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER VII
I. Study further some of the specific effects of the immigrants'
presence.
Warne: The Slav Invasion, V, VI.
Wood: Americans in Process, VII, VIII.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, XVIII, XXI.
II. What can you learn about the present status of the parochial school
movement, especially in your own vicinity?
Refer to local periodicals and daily papers.
III. Is assimilation of foreigners taking place everywhere, or only in
certain places?
McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, I.
Hall: Immigration, 172, 182.
Wood: Americans in Process, XII.
Strong: The Twentieth Century City, IV.
IV. Are our school facilities, actual or prospective, likely to prove
sufficient for the demands made upon them?
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, XV, XVI.
Wood: Americans in Process, X.
Hunter: Poverty, V.
_The Christian Churches in America stand face to face with a
tremendous task. It is a challenge to their faith, their devotion,
their zeal. The accomplishment of it will mean not only the
ascendancy of Christianity in the homeland, but also the gaining of
a position of vantage for world-wide evangelization._--E. E.
Chivers, D.D.
VIII
THE HOME MISSION OPPORTUNITY
The question of supreme interest to us is the religious question. What
share shall the Church have in making Christian Americans of these
immigrants? How may Church and State work together for the solution of
the problem, on the solution of which very largely the future prosperity
of the State and the Church depends.--_Charles L. Thompson, D.D._
The future success of missions will be largely affected by the success
of the Church in dealing with problems that lie at her very door. The
connection between home and foreign missionary work is living. The
conversion of the world is bound up with the national character of
professedly Christian lands. --_Rev. Herbert Anderson, English
Missionary in India._
"The blood of the people! changeless tide through century, creed, and
race, Still one, as the sweet salt sea is one, though tempered by sun
and place, The same in ocean currents and the same in sheltered seas:
Forever the fountain of common hopes and kindly sympathies.
Indian and Negro, Saxon and Celt, Teuton and Latin and Gaul,
Mere surface shadow and sunshine, while the sounding unifies all!
One love, one hope, one duty theirs! no matter the time or kin,
There never was a separate heart-beat in all the races of men."
VIII
THE HOME MISSION OPPORTUNITY
_I. Alien Accessibility_
[Sidenote: A Unique Mission Field]
"Save America and you save the world." Through immigration the United
States is in a unique sense the most foreign country and the greatest
mission field on the globe. "All peoples that on earth do dwell" have
here their representatives, gathered by a divine ordering within easy
reach of the gospel. Through them the world may be reached in turn.
Every foreigner converted in America becomes directly or indirectly a
missionary agent abroad, spreading knowledge of the truth among his
kindred and tribe.[89] The greatness of the opportunity is the measure
of obligation. God's message to this nation has been thus interpreted:
"Here are all these people; I have taken them from the overcrowded
countries where they were living and sent them to you, that you may mass
your forces and lend a hand to save them." No such opportunity ever came
to a nation before. The Christian church must seize it or sink into
deserved decadence and decay. Only a missionary church can save the
world or justify its own existence. The manner in which American
Christianity deals with the religious problems of immigration will
decide what part America is to play in the evangelization of the nations
abroad.
[Sidenote: The Gospel the Chief Factor]
We have now reached the vital part of our subject. We have learned to
discriminate between peoples and find the good in all of them. We have
seen that assimilation is essential to national soundness and strength.
But we have yet to realize that the most potential factor in
assimilation is not legislation or education but evangelization. There
is no power like the gospel to destroy race antipathies, break down the
bars of prejudice, and draw all peoples into unity, brotherhood, and
liberty--that spiritual freedom wherewith Christ makes free. When
American Protestantism sees in immigration a divine mission none will
discover in it thenceforth a human menace.
[Sidenote: Shall America be kept Christian]
Marvelous mission, involving the destiny of free America. A writer asks,
"Will New England be kept Christian?" and answers, "That depends.
Population is greatly changing. Immigrants from all parts of the world
are here. They will continue to come. Unless they are molded according
to the principles of our religion, they will greatly increase the
irreligious elements of New England, already too large. There is a
religious basis in those who come, but it will require an application of
religious agencies to make them truly Christian citizens."[90] Put
America in place of New England, and the question and answer will be as
pertinent. Shall America be kept Christian? That depends. It depends
upon what American Christians do.
[Sidenote: Immigrants not Evangelical]
Few of the immigrants are evangelical in religion. They know nothing of
our gospel, and little or nothing of the Bible. The religious principles
they have been taught are totally opposed to the spirit of our free
institutions of religion. They know priestly sovereignty but not soul
liberty. They are the creatures of a system, and the system is
thoroughly un-American and inimical to freedom of conscience and
worship. But thousands and tens of thousands of them are out of sorts
with the system and are ready for something better.[91] They have lost
faith in their Church and will lose it in religion unless we teach them
the gospel. To accomplish this result two persons must be changed--the
immigrant and the American. Alien assimilation depends largely upon
American attitude.
[Sidenote: Two Timely Questions]
Two questions confront us squarely as we approach this subject. First,
the common one, What do we think of the immigrant? And second, the less
common but not less important one, What does the immigrant think of us?
It will do us good, as Americans and as Christians, to consider both of
these frankly. Honestly, what is your attitude toward the ordinary
immigrant? Do you want him and his family, if he has one, in your
church? Do you not prefer to have him in a mission by himself? Would you
not rather work for him by proxy than with him in person? Do you not
pull away from him as far as possible if he takes a seat next to you in
the car? Actual contact is apt to mean contamination, germs, physical
ills. He is ignorant and uncultured. You desire his conversion--in the
mission. You wish him well--at a convenient distance. You would much
more quickly help send a missionary to the Chinese in China than be a
missionary to a Chinaman in America, would you not? Think it over,
Christian, and determine your personal relation to the immigrant. Is he
a brother man, or a necessary evil? Will you establish a friendly
relation with him, or hold aloof from him? Does your attitude need to be
changed?
[Sidenote: The Alien Point of View]
What, now, do you suppose this "undesirable" immigrant thinks of America
and Protestant Christianity? What has he reason to think, in the light
of his previous dreams and present realizations? What does Protestant
Christianity do for him from the time he reaches America? What will he
learn of our free institutions--in the tenement slums or labor camps or
from the "bosses" who treat him as cattle--that will teach him to prize
American citizenship, desire religious liberty, or lead a sober,
respectable life? If we are in earnest about the evangelization of the
immigrant we must put ourselves in his place occasionally and get his
point of view. When we think fairly and rightly of the immigrant, and
treat him in real Christian wise, he will soon come to think of us that
our religion is real, and this will be a long step toward the change we
desire him to undergo. We shall never accomplish anything until we
realize that the coming of these alien millions is not accidental but
providential.
_II. Missionary Beginnings_
[Sidenote: Alien Accessibility is Home Mission Possibility]
The first human touch put upon the immigrant in the new environment is
vastly important in its effects. He is easily approachable, if rightly
approached. Alien accessibility makes home mission possibility. The
approach may not at first be on the distinctively religious side, but
there is a way of access on some side. A living gospel incarnated in a
living, loving man or woman is the "open sesame" to confidence first and
conversion afterward. Make the foreigner feel that you are interested
in him as a man, and the door is open beyond the power of priestcraft to
shut it. The priest may for a time keep the Catholic immigrant away from
the Protestant church but not from the Protestant cordiality and
sympathy; and if these be shown it will not be long before the
immigrant, learning rapidly to think for himself, will settle the
church-going according to his own notion. A kind word has more
attractive power than a cathedral. You will never win an Italian as long
as you call him or think of him as "dago," nor a Jew while you nickname
him "sheeny." The immigrant wants neither charity nor contempt, but a
man's recognition and rights, and when American Christians give him
these he will believe in their Christianity and be apt to accept it for
himself.
[Sidenote: The First Touch]
Home mission work of a distinctive character should and does begin at
the point of landing in the New World. At Ellis Island, for example,
there are now some thirty missionaries, representing the leading
Christian denominations. This gives proof of the partial awakening of
the Churches to the importance of this work. It is only of late years
that any special attention has been paid to the welfare of the incomers,
either by State or Church. Now both are seeking to throw safeguards
around the immigrants and secure them a fair start. A large room is set
apart for the missionaries in the receiving building at Ellis Island,
and they perform a service of great good both to the aliens and the
country. First impressions count tremendously, and happy is it for the
immigrant who gets this initial impression from contact with a Christian
missionary instead of a street sharper. Once put the touch of human
kindness upon the immigrant and he is not likely to forget it. The hour
of homesickness, of strangeness in a strange land, of perplexity and
trouble, is the hour of hours when sympathy and help come most
gratefully. The missionaries are on hand at this critical juncture.
Thousands of immigrants are saved from falling into bad hands and evil
associations through their zealous efforts. Thousands are supplied with
copies of the Testament, the sick and sorrowful are comforted, the
rejected are tenderly ministered to in their distress, and the gospel is
preached in the practical way that makes it a living remembrance. This
is one way in which a true and enduring assimilation is begun.
[Sidenote: The Fruit of Kindness]
Here is a single illustration of the unexpected results of this first
Christian touch in the new world. One of the women missionaries was very
kind to a Bohemian family, helping the father find his destination and
get settled. At parting, the missionary gave him a Testament and asked
him to read it when in trouble. He thanked her for all her kindness to
him and his family, and said he would keep the book for her sake. He
put it away and forgot all about it. One day his little girl got the
book and tore a leaf out. When he learned what she had done he was very
angry, and punished her for tearing the book, saying that the kind lady
at Ellis Island had given it to him, and he had promised to keep it. He
threatened the child with severe punishment if she touched it again.
"What is the book, papa?" she asked. He said he did not know what it
was, but the lady gave it to him, and that was enough.
[Sidenote: The Gospel's Power]
The little girl kept asking about it until at length his curiosity was
aroused, and he took the Testament to find out for himself. As he began
to read the story of Jesus he became interested, and presently had his
wife reading it also. Such wonderful things he had never heard of
before, and he thought he would tell the priest about it, for if the
priest knew about it he would surely tell the people. The priest forbade
him to look into the book again, saying that it was a bad book and would
cost him his soul if he read it. This only ended the influence of the
priest, for the immigrant said such a good person as Jesus could not do
anybody any harm, he was sure of that. He decided to go back to Ellis
Island and ask the kind lady about it. The light came, and he and his
family are earnest members of a Christian church, showing their
gratitude by trying with true missionary spirit to bring others of
their race to the Master.[92]
[Sidenote: Immigrant Headquarters]
This missionary work, coming at the critical time, needs to be extended
and dignified. It should be so enlarged that it would be possible to
reach in some way the great mass of the newcomers, where now it touches
comparatively few. There should be a great interdenominational
headquarters building, thoroughly equipped for every kind of helpful
service. A large force of trained workers of different nationalities
should be employed, so that all kinds of needs might be met. It is
entirely possible to establish a center that would powerfully impress
the immigrants with the worth and importance of the Christian religion.
But no small affair will do. Our great denominations have the money in
plenty, and certainly have the talent to organize such a work as the
world has never yet seen. And what a chance for personal service such an
institution would afford. This would be a living object lesson of
Christianity helping the world, that might fitly stand beside the statue
of "Liberty enlightening the world."
_III. Protestantism and the Alien_
[Sidenote: Present Work for the Foreigners]
How are the evangelical denominations meeting their imperative
obligation to evangelize the multitudes brought to their very doors?
When the immigrant has passed through the gates, what attention is paid
to him? Take it in the centers of population, where the mass of the
immigrants go, and the showing is not very imposing as yet.
[Sidenote: Abandoned Fields]
The truth is that as the foreigners have moved into down-town New York
the old-time Protestant churches have moved out, in great measure
abandoning the field, on the assumption that there was no constituency
to maintain an American church. It did not seem to dawn upon the rich
churches which moved up town that the new population needed
evangelization and could be evangelized. The result is that the
immigrant accustomed to imposing churches and splendid architecture and
impressive ritual, sees little to impress him with the existence of
Protestant Christianity. Go through that teeming East Side in New York,
and here and there you will find a mission supported in desultory
fashion by some church or city mission society or mission board, and in
quarters conducive to anything but worship or respect. There is nothing
to make the new arrival feel the presence and power of the religious
faith that created this free Republic and still predominates in its best
life. So it is wherever you go. The home mission work is in its
beginnings, and these are manifestly feeble and inadequate.
[Sidenote: An Example]
The Roman Catholics teach us some practical lessons. They build large
and impressive churches for the immigrants. They abandon no fields, and
immediately occupy those left by Protestants. They expend money where it
will go furthest. The Protestants of New York should have been
far-sighted enough to plant strong evangelistic and philanthropic
institutions in the fields from which they withdrew their churches.
Valuable ground has been lost for want of this missionary insight and
impulse.
[Sidenote: Need of an Awakening]
The conditions in New York are symptomatic of those obtaining generally,
in country as well as city. The Protestant churches, not recognizing the
supreme home mission opportunity to Christianize the immigrants, have in
many cases become weak where a zealous evangelism would have kept them
strong. Too many of the American Churches have been satisfied with their
own prosperity and unmindful of the growing need of the gospel all
around them. As a missionary worker says:[93] "There are plenty of
Christians who believe that the gospel is the power of God unto
salvation in a vague and general way; but there are not enough people
who clearly believe that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation
to the Italian working on the railroad, or the Hungarian in the shops,
or the German on the farm. Too many of us have no faith at all in
foreign missions at home."
[Sidenote: Reasons for Present Conditions]
It is impossible to enter into details of what has been undertaken by
the different evangelical denominations. Reference to the tables
furnished by various Home Mission Boards[94] will indicate, as far as
bald figures can do so, the extent of the work among the various
peoples. The statistics show that in the country, especially in the
West, missions among the earlier type of immigrants--the German and
Scandinavian--have long been maintained with success. There are hundreds
of strong and prosperous churches among these peoples. For the later
immigrants less has been done, although the need is far greater. Some of
the reasons for the small proportions of this work are manifest. In
order to reach the Slavs and Italians there must be native missionaries,
and these cannot be found offhand. After converts are made, those who
are fitted to preach and teach must be trained, and schools must be
provided for the training.[95] The difficulties of language must first
be overcome. The process requires time and patience and large resources.
Missions cannot be imposed upon these foreign peoples from without.
Force cannot be used. Access must be found, and the gospel seed be sown
as opportunity occurs. There must be a natural development in a work
like this, which deals with individuals, and that by persuasion. The
present work must not be judged too harshly, therefore, as reflecting
upon the churches. Only of late has the need been recognized by the
leaders in Christian effort. Dr. Thompson puts the situation in true
light, when he says:
[Sidenote: The Point for a New Departure]
"It goes without saying that the church has not so far taken its full
share of the responsibility. She has not realized the gravity of the
situation. Indeed, only in late years has it emerged in its full
significance. Consequently the work of the various Christian bodies has
been sporadic, rather than systematic and persistent. There has been no
serious endeavor to deal with it as a problem and to try to compass it.
All the Churches have worked among the foreigners, but it has been
determined by local conditions and needs which have appealed to
Christian people here and there; that, however, is very different from
an intelligent view of the whole situation and a campaign intended and
adapted to solve the whole problem. We have reached a point in the
immigration problem where it must be solved broadly, philosophically,
and by the combination of all forces--civic, social, moral, and
religious--to bring about the healthy assimilation of all foreign
elements into the life of the body politic."[96]
[Sidenote: Success of Earnest Effort]
We have said the foreigner is accessible. How true this is, when earnest
and genuine effort is made, is shown by the tent work in many cities.
Take it among the Italians in New York, for example. A tent worker tells
the results:[97]
"New York City within a year will hold a half million Italians. What is
the Church of America to do with them? Will they listen to the gospel?
Who has tried to reach them?
[Sidenote: Tent Work Results in a Church]
"During the past summer a company of earnest workers for God and man
tested the problem of saving men to save New York. They started an
open-air and tent campaign. They proceeded on the simple hypothesis that
'Nothing will elevate the man, no matter how good he is morally, except
the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it alone is the power of God to change
the whole man and save him eternally.' They drove their tent-stakes into
the ground in an Italian quarter and began to preach and to sing the
gospel of grace triumphant into the ears and hearts of Roman Catholic
Italians. Except when the weather was exceptionally bad, from five to
six hundred persons were there nightly. They were met just as the
foreign missionary would meet them. Not one among them, perhaps,
Christian from a purely evangelistic standpoint, and yet, what was the
result? In less than one year they expect to have a permanent church
building to cost $60,000; something like two hundred are ready to enter
and form a Protestant church."
[Sidenote: An Ingenious Italian Expedient]
Is this a hopeful work, this effort to evangelize the foreigners? Let
the following unique instance give its answer, and illustrate also the
intertwinings of the home and foreign work. In a quarry at Monson,
Massachusetts, where over three hundred Italians are employed, there was
among the number a man who had been converted in Italy, through the
faithful efforts of an American missionary. When this convert reached
the Massachusetts quarry, his heart burned within him as he realized the
spiritual condition of his countrymen, who were living without any
religious services. He labored so effectively for their salvation that
in a few months seventeen of the workmen were converted, and they held
regular meetings for prayer and study of the Bible. At length they sent
a message, signed by every convert, to a state missionary society: "In
God's name, send us a missionary." A missionary was sent to organize
them into a church. They had no meeting-place, and in this emergency
one of the converts proposed that a room be built on the roof of his
cottage. This was done by the little band, and there they worshiped
until the place was too small. Then the first story was extended in the
rear, giving space for a comfortable chapel, and the family occupied the
second story or roof-room. This indicates the ingenuity as well as the
generous and self-sacrificing spirit of these Italian Christians, who
maintain a regular pastor and full services. How many of our American
churches, with much larger resources, could show a better record? What
American Christian would have thought of building a meeting-house on his
home roof, or would have been willing to do it if he had thought of it?
In devotion and liberality the converted aliens often set noble examples
for American Christians.[98]
_IV. The Call to Great Things_
[Sidenote: How to Save Our American Churches]
[Sidenote: Missionary Effort the Solution]
Missionaries have been surprised at the eagerness with which they were
received by the Italians, Bohemians, Poles, Slovaks, and Lithuanians,
and others commonly regarded as most hopeless. The Bohemians have a
large number of freethinkers--over 300 societies of them--who have
sought to draw their people away from Christianity or any form of
religion; but they also have a large number of earnest and devoted
Christian converts, who know the power of the gospel to save, and are
preaching and teaching it. In Pennsylvania, among the Slav peoples,
simple-hearted native workers who have found the way of life are making
that way known to others, and local churches in many places are becoming
revived through their active work for these foreigners. Many churches
now extinct would be alive if they had seen their opportunity. If those
churches that have lost most of their old-time membership could be
filled with missionary zeal, and be sustained as evangelistic centers,
the church life of the mining regions would become a different thing
once more. The only way to save these American churches is for them to
save the immigrants. The same thing is true in all country sections
where the foreigners have become numerous. The need everywhere is for
money to plant and equip thoroughly, and maintain efficiently, these
evangelizing churches in every community. These institutions must be
more than meeting-houses, open a few times a week.
[Sidenote: A Great Mission Enterprise]
The institutional church always open, with something to meet every
legitimate need of old and young, so that the evangelical center shall
be the center of community life, can alone meet the requirement. A great
force of workers must be raised up, and this means training schools. No
more important educational work can be done in our country in the
present emergency. These schools might be interdenominational, with
special classes where required for the specific denominational training,
and thus a united Protestantism could be rallied to their support, and
make them of size sufficient to impress all with the real consequence of
the work.
[Sidenote: Church Federation for Service]
In this work the interdenominational comity and coöperation represented
in the federation of evangelical churches would secure the best covering
of the whole field, in the true fraternal and Christian spirit. What all
desire supremely is the salvation of the immigrants. And only a united
Protestantism can present such a massive front as to impress the world.
This work must be large enough to be self-respecting. At present it is
extremely doubtful if there is enough of it to make individual members
of the churches feel its worth and importance. There should be a mighty
advance movement, calling for millions of money and thousands of
missionaries, and reaching into a multitude of places now destitute of
gospel influences. Then the alien in America would realize the American
spirit and purpose and interest in him, and the birth of a new
citizenship would begin.
[Sidenote: Planning Large Things]
This is the day of large enterprises. The home mission movement for the
evangelization of the foreign peoples in America ought to be in the
forefront of the great enterprises. The real hope of America lies in the
success of this work. The best brain of the Christian laity should be
engaged in this business.
[Sidenote: A Million a Year in New York]
In New York City alone the Christian denominations ought to raise and
expend at least a million dollars a year for the next ten years for city
foreign evangelization, and this would be only a start in a work bound
to extend indefinitely. The demand is imperative. The fields are ripe
for harvest. We have seen that the old religious ties are not only
weakened by the Atlantic voyage, but often broken altogether. In some
nationalities this tie is strong, in most of them not very binding. The
great bulk of the new immigration is Roman or Greek Catholic. Thousands
of these nominal church members drift into open infidelity or schools of
atheism, or else into nothingism. Their former Church does not keep
them, and Protestantism does not get them. It is a question whether
their new condition is better or worse, religiously, than it was in the
old country. We should remove that question by surrounding them with
such Christian influences and institutions as will make it impossible
for them to escape the Americanizing and evangelizing environment. Why
should not Christian philanthropy, for instance, build a block of model
tenement-houses in the Italian district, and give the income from
rentals as a permanent endowment for Italian mission work? This would be
a double blessing.
[Sidenote: How to Use Wealth for Country]
There is a magnificent opportunity, an opportunity to fire the heart of
the men who have means to carry out whatever they devise. The
evangelical denominations should establish in the heart of the East
Side, where are gathered a dozen little nationalities, not simply one
great establishment of distinctively religious and educational
character, but a number of such institutional churches, costing anywhere
from a million to a million and a half each, and sustained in a
thoroughly business-like way. Christianity should permeate the entire
work. We ought to be working for to-day and for the future. The Home
Mission Boards in coöperation should be asked to lead forward in this,
the greatest task of the twentieth century. There is nothing sentimental
or impracticable about these suggestions.
[Sidenote: A Work for United Protestantism]
Here is a work that demands the moral strength of Protestant union. Let
us seek to make the foreigners Christian, give them the Bible, and set
them an example of the brotherhood of believers. Then the immigrants
will become believers and join the brotherhood.
[Sidenote: What the Local Church Can Do]
In addition to this organized work done through the missionary bodies,
there is a large work for local churches to do. In some denominations,
which report little organized effort, there is much mission work done by
local parishes. And in all denominations there are many churches that
study their community and apply themselves to its needs. The Chinese
Sunday-school work has been chiefly done by the local churches, and
therefore it is not easy to learn the extent of the work, since reports
are not made to central boards. This form of service is especially
desirable when it draws the members of the churches to any extent into
personal contact with the foreign element, and it should be fostered.
_V. The Individual Duty_
[Sidenote: What You Can Do]
This brings us to the heart of the whole matter--the personal equation.
The trouble is that the alien and the American do not know each other.
Aversion on the one side is met by suspicion on the other. Shut away
from intercourse, the alien becomes more alienated, and the American
more opinionated, with results that may easily breed trouble. The
antidote for prejudice is knowledge. Immigration has made it
possible--and in this case possibility is duty--for the consecrated
Christian, in this day and land of marvelous opportunity, to be a
missionary--not by proxy but in person.
[Sidenote: Be a Home Missionary]
Here is the foreigner in every community. You meet him in a hundred
places where the personal contact is possible. Did it ever occur to you
that you could do something directly for the evangelization of the Greek
or Italian fruit vender or bootblack or laborer? Have you ever felt any
responsibility for the salvation of these commonly despised foreigners?
Have you laughed at them, or shown your contempt and dislike for them as
they have crowded the public places? The evangelization of the
foreigners in America must be effected by the direct missionary effort
of the masses of American Christians. That is the foundation truth. The
work cannot be delegated to Home Mission Boards or any other agencies,
no matter how good and strong in their place.
[Sidenote: A Personal Service]
Hence, let all emphasis be put here upon personal responsibility and
opportunity. Be a missionary yourself. Reach and teach some one of these
newcomers, and you will do your part. Do not begin with talking about
religion. Make the chance to get acquainted; then after you have shown
genuine human interest, and won confidence, the way will be open for the
gospel that has already been felt in human helpfulness. As a result of
this study, which has taught you to discriminate and to be charitable to
all peoples, the new attitude and sympathy will enable you to approach
those who have been brought within your sphere of influence. There is a
field of magnificent breadth open to our young people. Once engaged in
this personal service, and aware of its blessed effects, there will be
no lack of a missionary zeal that will embrace the world-wide kingdom.
[Sidenote: A Shining Example of Personal Effort]
At a conference in New York, in the Home Mission study class a young
colored man from the West Indies gave a practical illustration of
individual missionary effort of the kind that would evangelize the
foreigners, if it were generally practiced. He said that every Thursday,
when the steamer from the West Indies arrives, he arranges his work so
as to be at the wharf, ready to welcome immigrants, especially young
people, and to advise them, if they are strangers without settled
destination. He was led to do this by his own experience. For three
years after he came to New York, he went from church to church without
ever receiving a word of welcome or invitation to come again. Finally he
found a church home; but the homesickness and loneliness of those years
made him feel that so far as he could help it, no one else from the West
Indies should have a similar experience. So he made himself free to
speak to the young men, and always invited them to church. He had been
the means of aiding many to establish themselves, and had saved many
immigrants from being lured away into evil. He said the place to get the
heart of the foreigner was when he first landed. It was a simple story,
told without any false modesty. Plainly his heart was in the work. He
was a home missionary, doing a definite service of importance, and
setting an example that inspired that company. They could not help the
round of applause that followed his statement. It was spontaneous. This
is the personal touch that must be put in some way upon the stranger
that is within our gates. If the alien can be brought under this
gracious Christian influence, the chances are many that he will soon
cease to be alien and become Christian. Blessed is he who makes any soul
welcome to country and church.
[Sidenote: A Call for Sacrifice]
A call to home mission service is thus presented by Dr. Goodchild, who
would carry religion more fully into the settlement idea: "We need for
the solution of this problem that young men and women who go to the
great cities from the strong churches of the smaller towns and villages
should identify themselves with mission churches rather than to seek
ease and honor in wealthy churches where unused talent is already
congested.
[Sidenote: The Living Example]
"We need young men and young women to go down among these people and
live Christian lives in the midst of them. I do not believe that any
one should take his children there to rear them. But young men in
groups, or young women in groups, or young couples without children, who
are able to earn their own living could contribute greatly to the
solution of these problems if they would live among these foreigners and
help in the process of digestion and assimilation. And there is nothing
that can do that work so quickly and effectually as for Christian men
and women to dwell among these people, as Christ once left his home on
high to dwell among the sinful ones of earth. And if there are young men
and young women who are willing to give themselves wholly to work for
these people, and will live among them, and seek by the power of divine
grace to lift them up, it surely is very little for you and me to
sustain them while they toil."
[Sidenote: How the Work Grows]
Wherever earnest effort has been put forth, the progress of the work has
been most encouraging. As an illustration of this, when Dr. H. A.
Schauffler some twenty years ago began his pioneer missionary work among
the 25,000 Bohemians of Cleveland, he could not learn of any
fellow-laborers in the Slavic field except a Bohemian theological
student in New York, a Bohemian Reformed Church pastor in Iowa,
and another in Texas. But in 1905 there met in Chicago an
Interdenominational Conference of Slavic missionaries and pastors, and
that gathering comprised no less than 103 Slavic workers, of whom
sixty-four were pastors and preachers, fourteen women missionaries, and
twenty-five missionary students; while the conference represented
forty-nine churches in thirteen states, and five evangelical
denominations. Mr. Ives says truly: "It has been forever established
that foreigners are as convertible as our own people, that in many
instances their faith is more pure and evangelical than the American
type, that their lives are transformed by its power to an extent that
sometimes puts the American Christian to shame, that their children are
easily gathered into Sunday-schools, their young people into Endeavor
Societies, and their men and women into prayer-meetings, where in many
different tongues they yet speak and pray in the language of Canaan. The
immigration problem is not the same menace that it was. A mighty solvent
has been found."
[Sidenote: Inspiring Difficulties]
There is no escaping the fact that a prodigious amount of difficult
lifting must be done in order to elevate the aliens to the American
social and religious level. But the very vastness of the home mission
task is inspiring rather than discouraging to heroic souls. As someone
says, "The American loves a tough job." Difficulties will not hinder him
a moment when once he is moved with the divine impulse, sees the thing
to be done, and sets himself with God's help to do it. Present
conditions call to mind that passage in "Alice in Wonderland," where by
the seashore
The walrus and the carpenter were walking hand in hand,
And wept like anything to see such quantities of sand.
"If seven maids with seven mops, swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the walrus said, "that they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.
[Sidenote: A Hopeful, not Hopeless Task]
It must be confessed that what has been done, in comparison with what
has to be done, would not be unfairly represented by the seven maids,
and that some people think the conversion of the foreigner as hopeless
as the carpenter did the sand-sweeping job. But seven mops are better
than none, and the pessimists are few. Souls are different material to
work upon from sand. By and by the Christian denominations will stop
sweeping around the edges of this great missionary enterprise, and take
hold of it with full force. This will come to pass when the real
conditions and needs and perils are widely known; and in making them
known the young people have their opportunity to render signal service
to foreigner, country, Church, and Christ.
_VI. Basal Grounds for Optimism_
[Sidenote: The Outlook]
Now that we have completed our study of immigration, necessarily limited
by time and space, we are in position to draw some conclusions with
regard to the outlook. Our study shows that there is plenty in the
character and extent of present day immigration to make the Christian
and patriot thoughtful, prayerful, and purposeful. On the surface there
is enough that is appalling and threatening to excuse if not justify the
use of the word "peril." The writer confesses that when he lived, years
ago, in western Pennsylvania, and came close to the inferior grades of
immigrants, and witnessed the changes wrought by the displacement of the
earlier day mining class, he bordered for a time on the pessimistic
plane. Nor was his condition much improved during residence in New
England, where the changing of the old order and the passing of the
Puritan are of vast significance to our country. But closer study of the
broad subject has led to a positively optimistic view concerning
immigration, and some of the grounds of this optimism may properly close
this chapter and volume.
[Sidenote: Two Great Factors--Democracy and Religion]
The basal ground is the universal tendency toward democracy and the
universal necessity for religion. These are sufficiently axiomatic. The
appeal to the history of the nineteenth century is sufficient to
establish the first, and the appeal to the heart of humanity will
establish the second. Democracy is the dominant spirit in the world's
life to-day. It is the vital air of America. Whatever is in its nature
inimical to democracy cannot permanently endure on this continent, and
certainly cannot control, whether it be in the sphere of ecclesiasticism
or commercialism. This, then, is the sure ground for optimism. Religion
is a necessity in a nation. What shall the type of religion be in
America? The answer is clear, for Protestantism is democratic, while
Romanism is autocratic.
[Sidenote: Influence of the New Environment]
The hope of America's evangelization is increased by the fact that the
pure religion of Jesus Christ is so essentially democratic in its
fundamental teachings of the brotherhood of man, of spiritual liberty
and unity. The immigrant comes into a new environment, created alike by
civil and religious liberty, and cannot escape its influence. Political
liberty teaches the meaning of soul liberty, and leads the way slowly
but surely to it. A man cannot come into rights of one kind without
awakening to rights of every kind; and once awakened, soon he insists
upon having them all for himself. Freedom is infectious and contagious,
and the disease is speedily caught by the old-world arrival, who
breathes in its germs almost before the ship-motion wears off. The peril
of this is that to him the main idea of liberty is license. The true
meaning of the word he must be taught by the Christian missionary, for
certainly he will not learn it from the Church to which he commonly
belongs. Here, then, is the opportunity for the pure gospel and for the
Christian missionary.
[Sidenote: The Testing "If"]
Adding the natural appeal of the gospel in its simplicity to this
favoring democratic environment, there is every reason for optimism
concerning immigration, if only American Protestantism prove true to its
opportunity and duty. "Ah, but that is a tremendous IF," said a widely
known Christian worker to whom this statement was made. "I agree with
you as to the favoring conditions, and my only doubt is whether our
Christian Churches can be brought to see their duty and do it. So far
there are only signs of promise. Our home mission societies are
doubtless doing all they can with the slender means furnished by the
contributing churches, but they are only playing at the evangelization
of these inpouring millions." What could be said in reply? One could not
deny present apathy on the part of Protestants at large, whether the
cause be ignorance or indifference or want of missionary spirit. One
could but declare faith in the prevailing power of Protestantism when
the crisis comes. We believe the day is not distant when American
Protestantism will present a united front and press forward
irresistibly. For the hastening of this day let us pray and work.
[Sidenote: The Task of the Ages]
Thus the problem always resolves itself to this at last: God has set for
American Protestant Christianity the gigantic task of the ages--the
home-foreign-mission task--nothing less than the assimilation of all
these foreign peoples who find a home on this continent into a common
Americanism so that they shall form a composite American
nation--Christian, united, free, and great. What could be more glorious
than to have part in the solution of this problem? To this supreme
service, young men and women of America, you are called of God. What say
you: shall it be Alien or American?
QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER VIII
AIM: TO MAKE HOPEFUL BEGINNINGS A STRONG INCENTIVE TO GREAT
EXPANSION OF CHRISTIAN WORK FOR FOREIGNERS
I. _Faults on Both Sides._
1. What issues hang upon our work for the incoming foreigners?
2. * What barriers must be broken down in order to approach them
successfully?
3. What do these immigrants (speaking of them in general terms)
possess, and what do they lack, spiritually?
4. Is there a lack in our own personal attitude and feelings toward
them? What is it?
5. * If you had come as an average immigrant, what would you be
likely to think of "America" and the "Americans"?
II. _Missionary Beginnings._
6. When and where is it most easy to approach the foreigner? What
will a "lurking prejudice" do?
7. What Christian workers are there at the ports of entry? Give
instances of the results of their labors.
8. Can we possibly rest content with what is now being done on
these lines? Why not?
9. * Should all denominations unite in an effort to meet the
situation? Will you strive for it?
10. What has been the history of evangelical churches down town in
New York City? What centers of Christian work may be found there?
What form would a more adequate provision be likely to take?
11. Among what classes of immigrants has the most successful
Christian work been done?
12. Among what classes has it been thus far sporadic and
experimental? Give instances of successful work for Italians.
III. _Expansion Needed and Possible._
13. * Are those who are ordinarily neglected responsive to the
right sort of effort? How may there be sent forth "more laborers
into the harvest"?
14. When and how may the scattered forces be joined for more
effective work?
15. * Shall we "dare to brave the perils of an unprecedented
advance"?[99] Have we such faith that God will move his people to
furnish the funds?
IV. _Local and Individual Efforts._
16. Are there many Sunday-schools for Chinese in local churches?
Why not as many for other needy races?
17. * How can every Christian be a Home Missionary? Describe some
example. Compare our Lord's parable of the leaven.
18. Will the "day of small things" lead to greater? On what
conditions? Give instances.
19. * Is the task great enough to challenge our Christian faith,
courage, and perseverance?
V. _A Hopeful Outlook for the Christian._
20. Is there any reason for inactivity and despair? Why not?
21. Will Christian democracy help to solve the problem?
22. Where lies the element of uncertainty and how can it be
removed?
23. * Will you deliberately give yourself to be used of God in
helping to remove it?
"Immigration Means Obligation."
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER VIII
I. Study the various forms of work undertaken for foreigners by
denominational Home Mission Boards.
Tables and statements in the appendixes of this book.
Missionary periodicals.
Reports and papers of different Societies.
II. Investigate and report upon efforts made in your own locality.
III. Frame an argument, or plea, for the great enlargement of all
Christian activities on behalf of foreigners.
McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, X, XI.
APPENDIXES
APPENDIX A
TABLE I
NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS ARRIVED IN THE UNITED STATES EACH YEAR FROM
1820 TO 1905, BOTH INCLUSIVE[100]
-----------------------------------------
Period |Number |
------------------------------|---------|
Year ending September 30-- | |
1820 | 8,385|
1821 | 9,127|
1822 | 6,911|
1823 | 6,354|
1824 | 7,912|
1825 | 10,199|
1826 | 10,837|
1827 | 18,875|
1828 | 27,382|
1829 | 22,520|
1830 | 23,322|
1831 | 22,633|
Oct. 1, 1831, to Dec. 31, 1832| 60,482|
Year ending December 31-- | |
1833 | 58,640|
1834 | 65,365|
1835 | 45,374|
1836 | 76,242|
1837 | 79,340|
1838 | 38,914|
1839 | 68,069|
1840 | 84,066|
1841 | 80,289|
1842 | 104,565|
Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, 1843 | 52,496|
Year ending September 30-- | |
1844 | 78,615|
1845 | 114,371|
1846 | 154,416|
1847 | 234,968|
1848 | 226,527|
1849 | 297,024|
1850 | 310,004|
Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 1850 | 59,976|
Year ending December 31-- | |
1851 | 379,466|
1852 | 371,603|
1853 | 368,645|
1854 | 427,833|
1855 | 200,877|
1856 | 195,857|
Jan. 1 to June 30, 1857 | 112,123|
Year ending June 30-- | |
1858 | 191,942|
1859 | 129,571|
1860 | 133,143|
Year ending June 30-- | |
1861 | 142,877|
1862 | 72,183|
1863 | 132,925|
1864 | 191,114|
1865 | 180,339|
1866 | 332,577|
1867 | 303,104|
1868 | 282,189|
1869 | 352,768|
1870 | 387,203|
1871 | 321,350|
1872 | 404,806|
1873 | 459,803|
1874 | 313,339|
1875 | 227,498|
1876 | 169,986|
1877 | 141,857|
1878 | 138,469|
1879 | 177,826|
1880 | 457,257|
1881 | 669,431|
1882 | 788,992|
1883 | 603,322|
1884 | 518,592|
1885 | 395,346|
1886 | 334,203|
1887 | 490,109|
1888 | 546,889|
1889 | 444,427|
1890 | 455,302|
1891 | 560,319|
1892 | 579,663|
1893 | 439,730|
1894 | 285,631|
1895 | 258,536|
1896 | 343,267|
1897 | 230,832|
1898 | 229,299|
1899 | 311,715|
1900 | 448,572|
1901 | 487,918|
1902 | 648,743|
1903 | 857,046|
1904 | 812,870|
1905 |1,026,499|
1906[101] |1,100,735|
-----------------------------------------
TABLE II RACE, SEX, AND AGE OF IMMIGRANTS ADMITTED IN 1905
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | Under | 14 to |45 yrs.
Race or people | Male | Female| Total | 14 | 44 | and
| | | | years | years | over
--------------------|-------|-------|---------|-------|-------|-------
African (black) | 2,325| 1,273| 3,598| 433| 2,974| 191
Armenian | 1,339| 539| 1,878| 246| 1,529| 103
Bohemian and | | | | | |
Moravian | 6,662| 5,095| 11,757| 2,620| 8,442| 695
Bulgarian, Servian, | | | | | |
and Montenegrin | 5,562| 261| 5,823| 97| 5,529| 197
Chinese | 1,883| 88| 1,971| 28| 1,666| 277
Croatian and | | | | | |
Slovenian | 30,253| 4,851| 35,104| 1,383| 32,470| 1,251
Cuban | 4,925| 2,334| 7,259| 1,346| 5,225| 688
Dalmatian, Bosnian, | | | | | |
and Herzegovinian | 2,489| 150| 2,639| 62| 2,450| 127
Dutch and Flemish | 5,693| 2,805| 8,498| 1,699| 6,085| 714
East Indian | 137| 8| 145| 3| 122| 20
English | 31,965| 18,900| 50,865| 6,956| 36,726| 7,183
Filipino | 4| 1| 5| | 4| 1
Finnish | 11,907| 5,105| 17,012| 1,483| 15,047| 482
French | 6,705| 4,642| 11,347| 1,121| 8,825| 1,401
German | 49,647| 32,713| 82,360| 11,469| 64,441| 6,450
Greek | 11,586| 558| 12,144| 446| 11,523| 175
Hebrew | 82,076| 47,834| 129,910| 28,553| 95,964| 5,393
Irish | 24,640| 29,626| 54,266| 2,580| 48,562| 3,124
Italian (north) | 31,695| 8,235| 39,930| 3,569| 34,561| 1,800
Italian (south) |155,007| 31,383| 186,390| 16,915|159,024| 10,451
Japanese | 9,810| 1,211| 11,021| 124| 10,588| 309
Korean | 4,506| 423| 4,929| 325| 4,557| 47
Lithuanian | 13,842| 4,762| 18,604| 1,474| 16,875| 255
Magyar | 34,242| 11,788| 46,030| 3,864| 39,926| 2,240
Mexican | 152| 75| 227| 29| 169| 29
Pacific Islander | 13| 4| 17| 1| 15| 1
Polish | 72,452| 29,985| 102,437| 9,867| 89,914| 2,656
Portuguese | 2,992| 1,863| 4,855| 1,035| 3,381| 439
Roumanian | 7,244| 574| 7,818| 153| 7,293| 372
Russian | 2,700| 1,046| 3,746| 591| 2,988| 167
Ruthenian (Russniak)| 10,820| 3,653| 14,473| 661| 13,321| 491
Scandinavian | | | | | |
(Norwegians, | | | | | |
Danes, and Swedes)| 37,202| 25,082| 62,284| 6,597| 52,226| 3,461
Scotch | 10,472| 5,672| 16,144| 2,270| 12,109| 1,765
Slovak | 38,038| 14,330| 52,368| 4,582| 45,882| 1,904
Spanish | 4,724| 866| 5,590| 403| 4,612| 575
Spanish-American | 1,146| 512| 1,658| 223| 1,232| 203
Syrian | 3,248| 1,574| 4,822| 742| 3,843| 237
Turkish | 2,082| 63| 2,145| 45| 2,073| 27
Welsh | 1,549| 982| 2,531| 464| 1,726| 341
West Indian (except | | | | | |
Cuban) | 892| 656| 1,548| 187| 1,209| 152
All other peoples | 288| 63| 351| 22| 311| 18
| | | | | |
Total |724,914|301,585|1,026,499|114,668|855,419| 56,412
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here we have forty-four races or nationalities differentiated. Surely
this is a medley of peoples to be harmonized. Note the vast proportion
of working age.
TABLE III
DEBARRED IN 1905, FOR REASONS GIVEN
---------------------+------+------+----------+----------+--------+--------+
Race or People |Idiots|Insane|Paupers or|Loathsome |Contract|Relieved|
| | |likely to |or |laborers|in |
| | |be public |contagious| |hospital|
| | |charges |diseases | | |
---------------------+------+------+----------+----------+--------+--------+
African (black) | .. | .. | 107 | .. | 13 | 3 |
Armenian | .. | .. | 25 | 50 | 5 | 78 |
Bohemian and | | | | | | |
Moravian | .. | 1 | 38 | 8 | 5 | 104 |
Bulgarian, Servian, | | | | | | |
and Montenegrin | .. | .. | 314 | 19 | 62 | 37 |
Chinese | .. | 1 | 9 | 74 | 3 | 2 |
Croatian and | | | | | | |
Slovenian | .. | .. | 263 | 88 | 32 | 128 |
Cuban | .. | 1 | 22 | 4 | 11 | .. |
Dalmatian, Bosnian, | | | | | | |
and Herzegovinian | .. | .. | 41 | 3 | 13 | 18 |
Dutch and Flemish | 2 | 1 | 51 | 7 | 5 | 41 |
East Indian | .. | .. | 12 | .. | 1 | 3 |
English | 4 | 9 | 328 | 28 | 58 | 144 |
Finnish | 2 | 1 | 33 | 46 | 4 | 89 |
French | .. | 2 | 94 | 9 | 23 | 48 |
German | 5 | 8 | 420 | 100 | 60 | 747 |
Greek | .. | .. | 193 | 22 | 60 | 70 |
Hebrew | 10 | 10 | 1,208 | 353 | 33 | 1,534 |
Irish | 4 | 13 | 175 | 28 | 15 | 243 |
Italian (north) | .. | 2 | 169 | 41 | 42 | 158 |
Italian (south) | 6 | 19 | 1,578 | 247 | 205 | 1,290 |
Japanese | .. | 1 | 238 | 285 | 13 | 2 |
Korean | .. | .. | 4 | 18 | .. | 1 |
Lithuanian | 2 | 1 | 48 | 92 | 8 | 269 |
Magyar | .. | .. | 427 | 103 | 18 | 363 |
Mexican | .. | .. | 7 | 8 | .. | 2 |
Polish | .. | 4 | 444 | 204 | 125 | 991 |
Portuguese | .. | .. | 50 | 7 | 1 | 26 |
Roumanian | .. | .. | 388 | 14 | 111 | 47 |
Russian | .. | 3 | 66 | 27 | 1 | 59 |
Ruthenian (Russniak) | 1 | 1 | 186 | 14 | 13 | 115 |
Scandinavian | | | | | | |
(Norwegians, Danes,| | | | | | |
and Swedes) | 2 | 9 | 152 | 43 | 14 | 253 |
Scotch | .. | 2 | 77 | 10 | 21 | 75 |
Slovak | .. | .. | 275 | 66 | 47 | 491 |
Spanish | .. | 1 | 66 | 6 | 63 | 23 |
Spanish American | .. | .. | 13 | 4 | 1 | 6 |
Syrian | .. | .. | 124 | 155 | 59 | 200 |
Turkish | .. | .. | 46 | 9 | 5 | 17 |
Welsh | .. | 1 | 12 | 1 | 13 | 8 |
West Indian | | | | | | |
(except Cuban) | .. | 1 | 20 | .. | .. | 17 |
All other peoples | .. | .. | 195 | 5 | .. | 74 |
---------------------+------+------+----------+----------+--------+--------+
Grand total | 38 | 92 | 7,898 | 2,198 | 1,164 | 7,776 |
---------------------+------+------+----------+----------+--------+--------+
[Illustration: WAVE OF IMMIGRATION into the United States FROM ALL
COUNTRIES during 87 Years.
ESTIMATED ARRIVALS 1776 TO 1820 250,000 ARRIVALS 1820 TO 1906
24,032,718]
APPENDIX B
TABLE OF ACTS OF CONGRESS CONCERNING IMMIGRATION
1862. Act of February 19, prohibiting building, equipping, loading, or
preparing any vessel licensed, enrolled or registered in the United
States for procuring coolies from any Oriental country to be held for
service or labor.
1875. Act of March 3, providing that any person contracting or
attempting to contract to supply coolie labor to another be guilty of
felony. Excluding convicts, and women imported for immoral purposes,
making this traffic felony.
1882. General Immigration Act of August 3; enlarging excluded list and
establishing head tax.
1885. Contract Labor Act of February 26, to prevent importation of labor
under the padrone or other similar system.
1891. Act of March 3, which codified and strengthened the previous
statutes. Excluded classes increased; encouraging of contract labor to
emigrate by advertisements forbidden; scope of Immigration Bureau
enlarged by establishing office of Superintendent of Immigration (now
Commissioner-General), providing for return of debarred aliens, and
making decision of immigration officers as to landing or debarment
final.
1893. Act of March 3; requiring manifests and their verification;
providing boards of special inquiry; and compelling steamship companies
to post in the offices of their agents copies of the United States
immigration laws, and to call the attention of purchasers of tickets to
them.
1894. Act of August 18; making the decision of the appropriate
immigration officials final as to admission of aliens, unless reversed
by the Secretary of the Treasury on appeal.
1903. Immigration Restriction Act of March 3. (For its main provisions
see p. 70 of this book, footnote 23.)
THE PRINCIPAL EXCLUDED CLASSES
(1) Idiots; (2) insane persons; (3) epileptics; (4) prostitutes; (5)
paupers; (6) persons likely to become public charge; (7) professional
beggars; (8) persons afflicted with a loathsome or contagious disease;
(9) persons who have been convicted of a felony or other crime or
misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, not including those convicted of
purely political offences; (10) polygamists; (11) anarchists (or persons
who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the
government of the United States or of all government or forms of laws,
or the assassination of public officials); (12) those deported within a
year from date of application for admission as being under offers,
solicitation, promises or agreements to perform labor or service of some
kind therein; (13) any person whose ticket or passage is paid for with
the money of another, or who is assisted by others to come, unless it is
shown that such person does not belong to one of the excluded classes;
but any person in the United States may send for a relative or friend
without thereby putting the burden of this proof upon the immigrant.
CRIMES UNDER THE ACT OF 1903
In order to enforce these provisions twelve violations were made crimes,
with penalties of both fine and imprisonment: (1) Importing any person
for immoral purposes; (2) prepaying the transportation or encouraging
the migration of aliens under any offer, solicitation, promise or
agreement, parol or special, expressed or implied, made previous to the
importation of aliens, to perform labor in the United States; (3)
encouraging the migration of aliens by promise of employment through
advertisements in foreign countries; (4) encouraging immigration on the
part of owners of vessels and transportation companies by any means
other than communications giving the sailing of vessels and terms of
transportation; (5) bringing in or attempting to bring in any alien not
duly admitted by an immigrant inspector or not lawfully entitled to
enter the United States; (6) bringing in by any person other than
railway lines of any person afflicted with a loathsome or dangerous
contagious disease; (7) allowing an alien to land from a vessel at any
other time and place than that designated by the immigration officer;
(8) refusing or neglecting to return rejected aliens to the port from
which they came or to pay their maintenance while on land; (9) refusing
or neglecting to return aliens arrested within three years after entry
as being unlawfully in the United States; (10) knowingly or willfully
giving false testimony or swearing to any false statement affecting the
right of an alien to land is made perjury; (11) assisting any anarchist
to enter the United States, or conspiring to allow, procure or permit
any such person to enter; (12) failing to deliver manifests.
LAWS TO PROTECT THE IMMIGRANT
Act of 1819, providing that a vessel should not carry more than two
passengers for every five tons, and that a specified quantity of certain
provisions should be carried for every passenger; requiring the master
to deliver sworn manifests showing age, sex, occupation, nativity, and
destination of passengers.
Act of 1855, limited number to one for every two tons, and provided
that each passenger on main and poop decks should have sixteen feet of
floor space, and on lower decks eighteen feet.
Act of 1882, providing that in a steamship the unobstructed spaces shall
be sufficient to allow one hundred cubic feet per passenger on main and
next deck, and 120 on second deck below main deck, and forbidding
carrying of passengers on any other decks, or in any space having
vertical height less than six feet; other provisions regulate the
occupancy of berths, light and air, ventilation, toilet rooms, food, and
hospital facilities. Explosives and other dangerous articles are not to
be carried, nor animals with or below passengers. Lists of passengers
are to be delivered to the boarding officer of customs.
Act of 1884, provision that no keeper of a sailors' boarding house or
hotel, and no runner or person interested in one, could board an
incoming vessel until after it reached its dock. This to protect aliens
from imposition and knavery.
LEGISLATION RECOMMENDED IN 1905 BY THE COMMISSIONER-GENERAL OF
IMMIGRATION
1. In regard to diseased aliens: that competent medical officers be
located at the principal ports of embarkation; that all aliens seeking
passage secure as a prerequisite from such officer a certificate of good
health, mental and physical; and that the bringing of any alien
unprovided with such certificate shall subject the vessel by which he is
brought to summary fine. 2. That the penalty of $100 now prescribed for
carrying diseased persons be increased to $500, as a means of making the
transportation lines more careful. 3. Such further legislation as will
enable the government to punish those who induce aliens to come to this
country under promise or assurance of employment. Less exacting rules
of evidence and a summary mode of trial are needed to make the law
effective. 4. That Congress provide means for distributing arriving
aliens who now congregate in the large cities. 5. That as a means of
those incapable of self-support through age or feebleness; those who
have not brought sufficient money to maintain them for a reasonable time
in event of sickness or lack of employment. 6. That adequate means be
adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies
to observe in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or
solicit immigration. If other means fail, a limitation apportioning the
number of passengers in direct ratio to tonnage is suggested. 7. That
masters of vessels be required to furnish manifests of outgoing aliens,
similar to those of arriving aliens, so that the net annual increase of
alien population may be ascertained.
In addition two special recommendations are made, with view to control
immigration and lessen the hardships of the debarred: (1) To enlighten
aliens as to the provisions of our laws, so that they may not in
ignorance sever their home ties and sacrifice their small possessions in
an ineffectual attempt to enter the United States. To this end the laws
and regulations should be translated into the various tongues and
distributed widely. This might not prevail as against the influence and
promises of transportation agents, but it would relieve this country of
responsibility for needless distress and suffering. (2) An international
conference of immigration experts.
APPENDIX C
WORK OF LEADING DENOMINATIONS FOR THE FOREIGN POPULATION
The following facts and figures, received from the leading Home Mission
Boards, give some idea of the work which is now being done for the
evangelization of the foreign peoples in the United States. We should be
glad if the reports were more complete. They do not represent all of the
work that is being done, because a considerable part of this work is
carried on by the local churches in all of the denominations, and this
work is seldom reported and does not enter into the statistics of the
Home Mission Boards.
It is hoped that each Board will provide a supplementary chapter,
setting forth in detail its work among the foreign population--a work
abounding in incident and hopefulness. There is no more encouraging home
mission work, and wherever earnest effort has been made, the response
has been most gratifying. Write to your Home Mission Board for full
information. Where a special chapter is not furnished for a supplemental
study, the Boards will send the information and literature that will
enable the leader of the study class to show what is being done, with a
detail impossible in the general treatment of the subject.
It is significant, in this connection, that all the Boards are calling
especial attention to the needs of this work among the foreign peoples
and urging large advance in plans for evangelization.
MISSION WORK OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN 1906 AMONG THE FOREIGN
POPULATION
----------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------
| No. of charges | Members and probationers
| receiving | in charge receiving
Nationality | missionary aid | missionary aid
----------------------+-----------------------+--------------------------
Welsh 4 185
Swedish 135 12,076
Norwegian and Danish 85 4,236
German 265 19,184
French 8 350
Chinese 11 298
Japanese 30 1,666
Bohemian and Hungarian 11 1,666
Italian 18 1,014
Portuguese 3 86
Finnish 9 93
Foreign Populations 3 ....
--- ------
582 39,557
Including the charges not now receiving missionary aid, the total number
of missions, or charges, among the foreign peoples was 971, not
including Spanish work, and the total membership, including
probationers, was 92,082 in 1906. The work is extended all over the
country.
The Woman's Home Missionary Society supports Immigrant Homes in New York
City, and in Boston, Mass., in which immigrants may find protection and
counsel as well as a safe lodging. In Philadelphia, Pa., work is also
done for incoming strangers, and lodgings provided in case of need.
Missionaries are stationed at each of these points. Much work is done
for foreigners by this Society through its three large city missions,
and its numerous Deaconess Homes.
MISSION WORK OF THE PRESBYTERIAN HOME MISSION BOARD IN 1906 AMONG THE
FOREIGN POPULATION
Nationality No. of Churches and Stations Membership
Armenian 3 183
Bohemian 30 1,529
Chinese 10 438
Danes and Norwegians 1 101
Dutch 12 1,365
French 9 508
German 156 13,446
Hungarian (Magyar) 15 1,035
--- ------
Total 236 18,605
Italian 32 955
Japanese 3 50
Korean 1 40
Russian 1 ....
Slavic 8 337
Syrian 2 15
Welsh 7 414
--- ------
Total 290 20,415
The Annual Report for 1906 says: In addition to the above it is
doubtless true that there are many churches, and even individuals,
carrying on religious work among foreigners which has not been reported
to the Board. Two facts warrant special attention. One is that the
proper carrying on of the work of giving the gospel to these
foreign-speaking peoples necessarily includes and is closely allied with
other needs--such as schools; literature in their own tongue, including
tracts, papers, and the Bible; colporteur visitation; Bible reading, and
so forth. It is not sufficient simply to open a church or hall where a
meeting can be held and expect the people to come. A great deal of
preparatory work must be done.
MISSION WORK OF THE AMERICAN BAPTIST HOME MISSION SOCIETY IN 1906, AMONG
THE FOREIGN POPULATION
Nationality No. of Field Members of Mission Fields
Bohemians 6 196
Chinese 12 209
Danes 20 484
Finns 13 175
French Canadian 29 650
Germans 148 5,196
Hungarians 3 42
Italians 25 391
Japanese 2 68
Jews 2 ....
--- ------
260 7,411
Lettish 2 31
Mexicans in U. S 18 113
Norwegians 50 1,095
Poles 6 82
Portuguese 2 42
Russians 2 71
Slavs 5 77
Swedes 205 7,623
Syrians 1 ....
--- ------
551 16,545
FOREIGN PEOPLES IN BAPTIST CHURCHES, THE RESULTS OF HOME MISSION WORK
Churches Memb'ship
Germans, 1906 266 26,274
Dane-Norwegian, 1903 90 5,530
Swedes, 1903 331 22,625
The number of missionaries among the foreign populations was 312. The
Women's Societies maintained a number of workers, including the
efficient missionaries at Ellis Island. The Home Mission Society is
supporting Italian missionaries in twenty cities. Aside from organized
effort, Chinese Sunday-schools are conducted by many local churches,
which do not report to any central organization. There is a considerable
work done also by the city mission societies, which work independently
in part. In some places, local churches also maintain missions among the
Italians, Hungarians, and Slavs.
MISSION WORK OF THE CONGREGATIONAL HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY IN 1906
Total number of Missionaries 215
German Missions 73
Scandinavian Missions 89
Bohemian " 20
Polish " 5
French " 7
Spanish Missions 10
Finnish " 6
Danish " 2
Armenian " 6
Greek " 1
Chinese and Japanese 22
STATEMENTS SHOWING NUMBER OF CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES FOR FOREIGN
SPEAKING PEOPLES, WITH THEIR TOTAL MEMBERSHIP
Churches Members Average to a Church
Germans 170 8,000 47
Scandinavians 95 7,495 79
Slavs 12 636 58
All other Nationalities,
(including Italians, French,
Greek, Armenian, Chinese,
Welsh, etc) 102 8,222 78
--- ------ ---
379 24,353 262
WORK OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH AMONG THE FOREIGN
POPULATION
The Domestic Section of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of
the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States carries on work to
a limited extent among the Swedes. There is a general missionary in the
East, who has charge of this work in the three dioceses of Rhode Island,
New York, and Massachusetts, and one in the northwest. In the eastern
dioceses named there were in 1906 fifteen Swedish missions and parishes,
with 1,897 communicants, ministered to by five clergymen. The western
general missionary visited Sweden during the past year for the purpose
of finding suitable university students for the ministry in this
country. There are missions in Duluth and at other points. The Annual
Report says: "Of all the work under the care of the general missionary,
none is more important than the mission to Scandinavian immigrants
arriving at Ellis Island, New York, for it acts as a special feeder to
the church. The Scandinavian immigrants outnumber those from any other
Protestant country."
What further work is done for the foreign peoples is carried on by the
local parishes, such as Grace Church, Trinity, Saint George's, and Saint
Bartholomew's in New York, which work among the Italians and other
nationalities, and equip their missions in a manner worthy of imitation.
LUTHERAN WORK IN THE UNITED STATES
Large numbers of the immigrants are Lutherans. The resources of the
Lutheran church in America to care for her people are thus stated by the
Rev. J. N. Lenker, D.D., in the _Lutheran World_, the church organ:
For the Germans, 5,000 pastors, 8,000 churches, and 1,200,000
communicant members.
For the Scandinavians, 1,800 pastors, 14,300 churches, and 500,000
communicant members.
For the Finns, three synods, 58 pastors, 187 churches, and 22,149
communicant members.
For the Slovaks, about 200 organizations with a growing number of
pastors and a very loyal constituency.
For the Letts and Esthonians, 21 organized congregations and preaching
stations, divided into the eastern and western districts.
For the Icelanders, one synod, 10 pastors, 37 organized congregations,
3,785 communicant members.
For the Poles, Bohemians, and Magyars, work is done by the various
German synods, the late statistics of which are not at hand. Besides
congregations in these languages, many understand German and are served
by German pastors.
The whole Lutheran Church of America, including the Swedish Mission
Friends with 33,000 members and the German Evangelical Synod with
222,000 members, the constituents of which are nearly all Lutherans,
making in all 8,956 pastors, 15,135 churches, and 2,123,639 communicant
members are the results of immigrant mission work or mission work in
foreign languages or languages other than English.
ANALYSIS OF THE IMMIGRATION FOR 1905, WITH REGARD TO RELIGIOUS
AFFILIATIONS AND EASE OF ASSIMILATION[102]
First class and the easiest to assimilate are
English 50,865 Reformed
Scotch 16,144 Reformed
Germans 82,360 Luth. and Cath.
Scandinavians 62,284 Lutheran
Irish 54,266 Catholic.
Finns 17,012 Lutheran
Letts, et al. 18,604 Lutheran
Slovaks 52,368 Lutheran
-------
Total 353,903
Second class and the second easiest to assimilate:
Magyars 46,030 Ref. and Cath.
Bohemians, etc 11,757 Ref. and Cath.
French 11,021 Ref. and Cath.
Ruthenians 14,473 Catholic
------
Total 83,281
Third class and the most difficult to evangelize and Americanize and the
class that makes the new problem difficult:
Poles 102,137 Catholic
Italians 226,320 Catholic
Hebrews 129,910 Israelites
-------
Total 458,367
APPENDIX D
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bernheimer, Charles S., Editor. The Russian Jew in the United States. B.
F. Buck & Co., New York $1.50. Written mostly by Jews; replete with
facts gathered in the various centers--New York, Philadelphia, Chicago,
Boston. Should be read by those who would understand this remarkable
people.
Brandenburg, Broughton. Imported Americans. F. A. Stokes, New York.
$1.60. Description of experiences while making personal investigations
in New York, Italy, and the steerage, of immigration problems.
Crowell, Katherine R. Coming Americans. Willett Press, New York. Paper,
25 cents; Cloth, 35 cents. A book for Juniors, putting in attractive
form for children and teachers of children the leading features of
immigration.
Gordon, W. Evans. The Alien Immigrant. Charles Scribner's Sons, New
York. $1.50. Describes the Hebrews in European countries, with chapter
on situation in the United States.
Hall, Prescott F. Immigration. Henry Holt & Co., New York. $1.50. The
latest volume of comprehensive character, taking the restrictive
position. The author is secretary of the Immigration Restriction League.
Holt, Hamilton. Undistinguished Americans. James Pott & Co., New York.
$1.50. Biographical and readable.
Lord, Eliot, et al. The Italian in America. B. F. Buck & Co., New York.
$1.50. Makes an exceedingly favorable showing for the Italians; somewhat
one-sided but valuable.
Mayo-Smith, Richmond. Emigration and Immigration. Charles Scribner's
Sons, New York. $1.50. An exceedingly valuable and scholarly work.
McLanahan, Samuel. Our People of Foreign Speech. Fleming H. Revell
Company, New York. 50 cents, net. A handbook containing many valuable
facts in compact form.
Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives. Charles Scribner's Sons, New
York. $1.25, net. Descriptive of the conditions in which the foreign
population struggles for existence.
Roberts, Peter. Anthracite Coal Communities. The Macmillan Company, New
York. $3.50. A study of the anthracite regions and the Slavs, similar in
character to Dr. Warne's book.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. $1.50. A
work based on personal investigation and living among the Slavs who
labor in the stockyards in Chicago; vivid narrative. This book discloses
the treatment of the alien that makes him a menace to America.
Strong, Josiah. Our Country. Baker & Taylor Company, New York. 60 cents.
The points made in the chapter on Immigration are as pertinent now as
when the book was issued in 1881.
Strong, Josiah. The Twentieth Century City. Baker & Taylor Company, New
York. Paper, 25 cents; Cloth, 50 cents. Has the breadth of view and
effectiveness which belong to the author.
Warne, F. Julian. The Slav Invasion. J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia,
Pa. $1.00, net. Study at first hand of conditions in Pennsylvania mining
regions and the Slav population.
Whelpley, J. D. The Problem of the Immigrant. Charles Scribner's Sons,
New York. $4.20. Dealing with the emigration and immigration laws of all
nations.
Wood, Robert A. Americans in Process. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
$1.50. A series of papers by Robert A. Wood, and other workers in the
South End House in Boston, Mass.
INDEX
Abuses, of immigration privileges and laws, 42, 43, 63-69, 78-84, 92, 93
Adams, Representative, of Pennsylvania, 74, 97
Admission, see _Immigrants_
Africans, 124
Alabama, 113
Albany, New York, 22
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 3
Alien, admission, 53-64;
advance in numbers and distribution, 15-50, 102-117;
characterized, 236, 237, 258;
ideas imported, 241;
loss of religious faith, 271;
opinion of America, 272;
protection, 65-68;
restriction, 68-84
Aliens, classes excluded, 77, 78;
total since American Revolution, 28
America, duty to guard its own genius, 232;
mission, 10, 269;
must be kept Christian, 271;
unique mission field, 269
American, Christians, duty of, 10, 11, 44-47;
fair play, 73;
ideals to be preserved, 11, 46, 47, 91, 238, 239, 262;
institutions, 232, 261;
liberty, 117;
Protestantism, 16, 47, 254, 255, 288;
teacher in Syria, 39;
Tract Society, 50;
type of nationality, 11, 45, 46, 92, 238, 240
Americanization of immigrants, 10, 14, 46, 113, 126, 176, 242;
children promoting, 205, 223, 259, 260
Anderson, Herbert, 268
Antwerp, 99
Appeal, right of, by excluded, 77, 78
Ardan, Ivan, 181, 182
Armenians, 124
Asia, immigrants from, 20, 21, 113
Assimilation of foreign peoples, 270, 271;
aid to, 293
Assisted immigration, 43, 77, 93, 101
Associated Charities of Boston, 96
Atchison, Rena M., 194, 247
Attila, 27
Australians, as immigrants, 22
Austria, 81, 82
Austria-Hungary, 92, 165;
immigrants from, 21, 25, 72
Baldwin, Mrs. S. L., 72, 73
Baltimore, 53
Barrows, Dr. S. J., 142
Battery, the, 54, 62, 108
Belgians, as immigrants, 21
Belgium, 29
Berlin, 199
Betts, Mrs. Lillian W., 151, 152, 204
Bible, 34, 167, 174, 283, 288
"Birds of passage," 71, 135
Blackwell's Island, 139
Board of Special Inquiry, 62
Bohemians, as immigrants, 21, 165-170;
city centers, 166;
freethinking tendencies, 168, 169;
Protestant in spirit, 165-168;
religious work among, 285
Booth, General William, 194
Bosnians, 183
Boston, 24, 53, 83, 198;
Italian Society, 111
Boyesen, Professor, 28, 89, 90, 234
Brandenburg, Broughton, 41, 65-68, 82, 97, 98, 101
Bremen, 82, 99
Brooklyn, 148
Brooks, Phillips, 232
Bryce, James, 200
Buffalo, 172
Bulgarians, as immigrants, 21, 183
Bureau of Information, 110
Burlington, Iowa, 20
Calvin, 172
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 24
Canada, 27;
ingress from, 53, 77, 92
Canadians, as immigrants, 21
Carr, Mr. 138
Carroll, Dr. H. K., 174
Castle Garden, 28
Celtic peoples, 123
Chandler, ex-Senator, 214
Chattanooga, Immigration Bureau in, 113
Chicago, 36, 166-172, 176, 187, 198
Childhood, the blighting of, 225, 226
Children, condition of, in great cities, 221, 222;
number of, at work, 224, 226
Chinese, as immigrants, 21, 40, 72, 73;
converts, 73, 89, 269;
exclusion act, 70, 73;
Sunday-schools for, 289
Chivers, Dr. E. E., 267
Chopin, 172
Christ, 44, 277
Christian attitude toward immigrants, 44-47, 270;
coöperation and federation, 286;
optimism, 8, 117, 262
Christianity, converts to, 73;
its first impression for newcomers, 277, 278
Churches, duty and opportunity of, 270, 282, 286;
abandoning lower New York, 278;
must be missionary, 270;
saving themselves through saving immigrants, 285;
work for foreigners, 289
Cincinnati, 23
Citizenship, how degraded, 214
City, the, bad government of, 200;
conditions of tenement-house life in, 201, 210;
demoralizing influences, 209, 214;
environment offered immigrants, 196, 201-206;
foreignization of, 198, 199, 217;
isolation of foreigners in, 205;
nerve and storm center, 193;
overcrowding, 203, 206;
political evils, 214
City College, many Jewish pupils in, 189
Civil War, effect on immigration, 26, 31
Claghorn, Kate H., 97, 259
Cleveland, Ohio, 24, 166, 169, 172
Cleveland, President, 96
Colonies, foreign, in America, 196, 198, 200, 217
Colonists distinguished from immigrants, 45, 46
Columbia University, 13
Columbus, Christopher, 188
Commissioner-General of Immigration, 25, 76-78, 83, 92, 93;
of the Port, 77
Coney Island, 150
Congestion of foreign elements in cities, 195
Congress, acts of, 70
Connecticut, 173, 174, 180
Consumption, statistics of, 220;
foreign element largely its victims, 220
Contract labor exclusion, 77, 82, 92;
violation, 82, 83
Convicts, excluded, 77
Cook, Joseph, 52
Coolies, Chinese, excluded, 70
Coöperation, interdenominational, 286;
of Home Mission Boards, 288
Copernicus, 172
Crime, conditions favorable to increase of, 209, 224;
foreigners led into by environment and example, 209
Croatians, 124, 183
Czechs, see _Bohemians_
Dalmatians, as immigrants, 183
Danes, as immigrants, 21
Debarred, see _Excluded_
Democracy, influence of upon aliens, 296, 298
Denmark, immigrants from, 23
Detroit, 21, 172
Discrimination needed as to immigrants, 127
Diseases guarded against, 57, 59, 60, 74, 77, 78, 93
Distribution of immigrants, 102-117;
New York state, 105, 107;
New Zealand methods, 116;
North Atlantic section, 105;
Ohio, 107;
Pennsylvania, 105, 107;
railroads assisting, 116;
societies aiding, 107-113;
South Central states, 105;
West Virginia, 107;
Western section, 105
Dublin, 199
Dutch, as immigrants, 21
Eastern invasion, the, 157-192
Edison, Thomas A., 247
Educational policy affected by immigration, 246
Ellis Island, 18, 19, 35, 37, 54, 55, 59-62, 74, 83, 99, 100, 108;
missionary workers at, 274;
results of personal efforts at, 275
Emerson, Ralph W., 247
English, as immigrants, 19, 21, 126;
language, influence of, 259, 260
Environment, evil effects of upon children, 243
Europe, American ideas working in, 33, 34;
immigrants from, 20, 23, 98, 123-192
Evangelization of immigrants, 10, 16, 46, 47;
accessibility, 294;
illustration of, 283;
most potent factor in Americanizing, 270;
need for extension of, 277;
personal responsibility for, 290;
sporadic, not systematic, 281
Evasion of immigration laws, 78-83
Excluded classes, 74-78, 100, 101
Federation of Jewish Charities, 102
Financial panics, effect on immigration, 26, 31
Finns, as immigrants, 21
Fiume, 82, 99
Forbes, James, 139
Foreign-born, distribution of, 107
Four State Immigration League, 113
France, 34
Franklin, Benjamin, 69
Freethinkers, their societies among immigrants, 168, 169, 180, 285
French-American College, the, 280
French, as immigrants, 21
French-Canadians, Roman Catholic convention of, 257
Fung Yuet Mow, 269
Gardner, Representative, of Massachusetts, 95
Genoa, 99, 132
Germans, as immigrants, 19, 21, 35, 126
Germany, immigrants from, 25, 33, 81
Goodchild, Rev. F. M., 33, 292
Grant, Ulysses S., 247
Great Britain, immigrants from, 25, 43, 128
Greece, 92
Greek Catholic Church, 182, 184;
Orthodox or Russian State Church, 182
Greeks, as immigrants, 21, 37, 41
Hall, Prescott F., 45, 70, 129
Hamburg, 82, 99
Havre, 99
Hebrew, see _Jewish_, _Jews_
Herzegovinians, as immigrants, 183
Hewes, F. W., 107
Home Missions, at Ellis Island, 274;
demand for extension of in New York, 287;
opportunities of, for local churches, 279;
personal work, 274, 290, 291;
results of abroad, 269;
settlement influences by residence, 292, 293
Honolulu, 53
Huguenot colonial stock, 240
Hungarians, as immigrants, 33, 128, 177-179;
cafés, as social centers, 178, 179;
fair degree of education, 177;
open to mission work, 178
Hungary, 19, 128
Huns, 27, 165
Hunter, Robert, 194, 200
Huss, John, 166, 170
Iberic peoples, 123
Idiots, excluded, 77, 78
Illiteracy, amount of among immigrants, 22, 24, 125;
test proposed, 95, 96
Immigrants, admission, 53-64;
"assisted," 43, 93;
approachable, 273, 282;
attracted to the city, 195;
debarred, 70, 71, 77, 78;
diseased, 57, 60, 74, 77, 78, 93, 94;
illiteracy among, 22, 23, see also _Illiteracy_;
"manifest," 55, 56, 61;
nationality, 21, 22;
"natural," 31-42;
ports and routes of entry, 53, 77;
"solicited," 42, 43, 80-82, 93;
smuggling of, 81, 92;
religious census and conditions, 251, 271;
value of first impression upon, 273;
views of America, 272;
women among, 18, 61, 76
Immigration, annual volume, 17-22;
Bureau of, 76, 77, 92, 104;
causes of, 29-31;
Christian view of, 8;
classes, 31-43;
Conference of 1905, 90, 91;
divine mission in, 270;
economic fallacies of, 245;
effect upon educational policy, 246;
inspectors and officers, 59-61, 76, 77;
laws, see _Laws, immigration_;
new development of, 121-155;
numbers since 1820, 25-27;
process by the steerage and Ellis Island described, 55-62;
Restrictive League, 96;
"runner," 80-82;
steamship and railroad arrangements, 55, 57, 62
Indianapolis, 22
Indians, North American, 45
Industrial Commission, 31
Insane, excluded, 77, 78
Insanity, low proportion among Italians and Jews, 140
Institutional church, need of, 286, 288
Ireland, 27, 43,
immigrants from, 25, 31, 72, 128;
potato famine, 25
Irish, as immigrants, 19, 21, 38, 39, 89, 126;
compared with the Italians, 136, 137
Italian, Benevolent Institute, 147;
Chamber of Commerce, 145;
Hospital, 147;
Immigration Department, 138;
Savings Bank, 147
Italians, as immigrants, 19, 34, 36, 37, 110, 130;
distribution, 135, 136;
family coöperation, 207;
generally peaceable character, 141, 142, 208;
illiteracy, 22, 134;
in New York, 139, 145, 206;
number entering, 19, 134, 135;
parallel drawn with Irish, 136, 137;
societies for mutual aid, 50, 110, 145, 147;
spirit of converts, 284;
thrift, 139-147, 207;
women homemakers, 206;
Italy, 92, 131-133;
government action and aid, 79, 111;
immigrants from, 25, 31, 72, 79, 107;
Royal Department of Emigration, 111;
sections compared, 131-134
Ives, Mr., 294
Japanese, as immigrants, 40;
Robinson Crusoe, 40
Jefferson, President, 68
Jerome of Prague, 166
Jersey City, 22
Jewish children as pupils, 189
Jews, as immigrants, 21, 95, 96, 113, 128, 185-190;
Austria-Hungarian, 21, 186;
German, 185;
good qualities, 190;
number of in New York, 186, 198;
Roumanian, 186;
Russian, 11, 12, 21, 185-190
_John G. Carlisle_, ferryboat, 53
Joseph II, Emperor, of Austria, 167
Juvenile Court, Jewish children in, 190
Kansas City, 22
Kosciusko, 172
Kossuth, a Slovak, 175
Labor, immigration of skilled and unskilled, 23, 24
Latin races, as immigrants, 113, 131
Lawrence, Kansas, 20
Laws, immigration, 58, 64;
Bill of 1906, 95;
problems, 87-119;
protective, 65-68;
restrictive, 68-84;
summaries and recommendations, 309-313
Lee, Dr. S. H., 136, 152
Legislation, see _Laws, immigration_
Letts, the, as immigrants, 179, 180
Liberty, American, as a working leaven, 33, 34;
statue of, 57, 278
Lieber, Francis, 194
Lincoln, Abraham, 247
Lithuanians, as immigrants, 23, 36, 179, 180;
illiteracy, 23
Liverpool, 99
Lodge, Senator, 96
London, 99
Long Island, as a field for Italians, 149
Longfellow, 247
Louisiana, 113
Louisville, 23
Luther, 172
Lynn, Massachusetts, 24
Machinery, effect on immigration, 43
Madison, President, 68
Mafia, the, 130, 141
Magna Charta, 34
Magyars, as immigrants, 21, 177-179;
illiteracy, 23;
see also _Hungarians_
"Manifest" for immigrant, 55, 56, 61
Marine Hospital Service, 59
Marseilles, 99
Mashek, Nan, 166
Massachusetts, 142, 173
Mayo-Smith, Richmond, 52, 231, 238, 248
McLanahan, Samuel, 121
McMillan, Margaret, 225
Mexicans, as immigrants, 21
Mexico, ingress through, 92, 93
Michigan, 172
Milwaukee, 170, 172
Minneapolis, 21
Mission workers for immigrants, 274
Mississippi, 113, 183
Mitchell, Max, 102
Mongolic peoples, 124
Montenegrins, as immigrants, 21, 183
Moravians, as immigrants, 164
Music, love of by Bohemians, 169;
by Italians, 144
Naples, 99, 199
National Civic Federation, 90;
Slavonic Society, 176
Naturalization, illegal methods, 93, 196, 214-215;
reading test desirable, 249
New Amsterdam, 45
New England, 45, 148, 173, 179;
how it can remain Christian, 270, 271
New Haven, 23
New Jersey, 148, 173, 178
New Orleans, 183
New York, Bible Society, 50;
State, 69, 70, 105, 107, 178, 213
New York City, 30-39, 53, 54, 62, 63, 110, 112, 139, 145, 165,
166, 169, 172, 176-189, 198, 200, 220;
chief port of entry for immigrants, 53;
child life and labor in, 220, 221;
consumption in, 220;
cosmopolitan character, 198, 199;
foreign peoples in, 139, 145, 150, 166, 172, 178, 179, 186-189, 195-226
Norway, 27;
immigrants from, 23, 25, 126
Occupations, of various races, 23, 24
Odessa, 99
Ogg, Frederick A., 92, 93, 99, 100
Ohio, 172
Optimism, 8, 29, 262
Ottawa, Illinois, 20
Padrones, 82, 92, 111
Parochial schools among aliens, 246, 256
Pauperism in the United States, 218;
contrasted with poverty, 217;
foreign percentage of, 219;
increased by immigration, 219
Pennsylvania, 160-163, 172, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 213
People's Forum in Cooper Institute, 250
Persecution, affecting immigration, 29, 30, 91
Philadelphia, 38, 53, 172, 176, 179, 187
Pittsburg, 82, 172, 174, 176
Poles, as immigrants, 22, 35, 75, 76, 170-174;
clannish, 173;
illiteracy, 22, 173;
independence, 173
Polish, Catholics, 174;
girl, story of, 212;
Jew, "sweater," 210;
National Alliance, 170
Ports, for examination abroad, 98, 99;
of entry, 53
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 20
Poughkeepsie, New York, 20
Poverty in the United States, 218;
defined, 217
Presbyterian Slavistic Union, 176
Protestantism, as related to immigrants, 9, 39, 47, 202, 166-174,
177-188, 216, 224, 251;
could change conditions as to child labor, 225, 226;
ought to save immigrants from moral degeneracy, 255;
vast opportunity to evangelize and Americanize, 267-299
Providence, Rhode Island, 21
Public Schools, attacks upon to be resisted, 248;
duty to elevate, 248;
foreign children in, 198, 223, 248;
power to Americanize, 234, 248, 256
Publicity, value of, 83, 90
Quarantine, 56, 62
Railroads and immigrants, 62, 63
Reich, Emil, 131
Religious census of immigrants in 1900, 251
Removal Bureau, for directing Jewish emigrants, 111
Reports, Commissioner-General, 25, 143
Riis, Jacob, 194, 216
Roman Catholic Church, as related to immigrants, 133, 151, 152, 167,
168, 172-174, 177-184, 247, 248, 251, 256, 257, 271, 297;
efforts to get public money for parochial schools, 246;
some lessons to be learned from, 279
Roosevelt, President, 51, 73, 88, 92, 96, 179
Rossi, Adolpho, 138, 147
Rotterdam, 99
Roumanians, as immigrants, 19, 21;
see also _Jews_
Rovinanek, Mr., 174, 175
Russia, 34, 128;
immigrants from, 25, 81, 217
Russian empire, 19;
Jews, 11, 19, 112;
persecution, 29, 30
Saint Louis, 145, 198
Saint Nazaire, 99
Saloon, evil effects of, 216, 217
Sampson, Sidney, 260
San Francisco, 41, 53, 73, 148
Saratoga Springs, New York, 20
Sargent, Commissioner-General, 28, 103, 158, 203
Scandinavians, 27;
agricultural tendency, 127;
useful immigrants, 19, 21, 126, 217;
small illiteracy, 23
Schauffler, Dr. A. F, 30, 195
Schauffler, Dr. H. A., 293
Scotch, as immigrants, 21, 126;
small illiteracy, 23
Scotland, 27
Secretary of Commerce and Labor, 77, 78
Seelye, ex-President of Amherst, 255
Servian immigrants, 21
Settlement service by religion and residence, 292, 293
Sioux Falls, Iowa, 20
Slavic home missionaries, 293, 294;
peoples, 124
Slavs, as immigrants, 21, 79, 107, 113, 127, 128, 157-192;
defined, 159, 160;
displacing other peoples, 160, 162;
illiteracy, 23, 164;
largely unskilled, 164;
migration of recent date, 160;
mostly mine and factory workers, 164;
native workers among, 285
Slovaks, as immigrants, 174-176;
from agricultural class, 175;
organizations among, 176;
tinware workers, 176
Slovenians, as immigrants, 183
Slums, peril of the children in, 220-224;
poverty and pauperism of, 217-219
Socialism, bred in the slums, 202
Societies in aid of immigrants by races, 110-112
Society for Italian immigrants, 50, 110, 111
Solicitation, as affecting immigration, 42, 43, 80-82, 93
South American immigrants, 21
South Carolina, 113
South, the New, as a field for immigrants, 113
Southampton, 99
Spahr, Dr. Charles B., 260
Spanish immigrants, 21, 217
Special Inquiry Board, 77
Speranza, Gino C., 88, 145
"Stairs of Separation," 62, 63
Standards of living, lowered through immigration, 244
States and countries as a scale of immigration, 24, 25, 27, 28
Statistics of immigration, aliens since Revolution, 28;
arrivals by years from 1820 to 1905, 305;
child labor in New York City, and in United States, 226, 227;
countries by totals, 127-129;
debarred during fourteen years, and by race or people, 77, 303;
distribution by states, 105-107;
entries at ports and through Canada, 53;
estimated immigration for 1905-6, 20;
illiteracy, 21-23, 134, 164;
increase of immigrants for 1905, 25;
inflow since 1820, 25-27;
insanity, 140;
Italians, by years, locality, and occupation, 134, 135, 143;
Jews, chiefly Russian, 185, 186, 198;
labor skilled and unskilled, 23, 24, 134, 164;
mendicancy, 140;
money sent from United States to aid immigrants, 31;
present annual race totals illustrated, 20-23;
race, sex, and age of immigrants for 1905, 306;
religious divisions for 1900, 251;
savings and investments of Italians, 145, 146;
Slavs for 1905, 159,
see also, for distribution and occupation, 165-183;
tendency among Italians to forsake Roman Catholic Church, 271
Steamships for immigrants, 55, 57;
overcrowding, 65;
rate cutting, 79;
steerage abuses and reforms, 65-68;
unkind treatment, 57, 58, 67;
unsanitary arrangements, 65-67;
violation of laws, 78-84
Stettin, 99
Strong, Dr. Josiah, 9-16, 193, 194, 256, 257
Sunday laws and observance, as affected by immigration, 72, 237,
241, 252-254;
Sunday-schools, among immigrants, 284, 294
Sweat-shop, description of system, 209, 210;
reproach to Christian civilization, 210;
victims of, 210-213
Sweden, 27;
immigrants from, 23, 25, 33, 37, 38, 126
Swiss, as immigrants, 21, 28
Switzerland, 27, 43
Syrian immigrants, 23, 39
Tariff, effect on immigration, 44
Temperance, large measure of, among Chinese, Italians, and Jews, 73,
141, 190
Tenement-houses, description of life in, 204-208;
evils of, 201;
exorbitant rents, 202;
model block of suggested, 288;
responsibility of landlords, 202;
unsanitary conditions of, 211
Tent campaign, winning Italians, 282
Teutonic peoples, 123
Texas, 113
Thompson, Dr. Charles L., 117, 268
Training schools, needed in work among aliens, 286
Trieste, 99
Tuoti, Mr. G., 145
Turks, as immigrants, 21;
illiteracy, 23
Tymkevich, Paul, 158
United Hebrew Charities, 111, 219, 277
United Kingdom, see _Great Britain_
United States, agencies of helpful to immigrants, 50, 54, 57-63,
111, 274;
"assisted" immigration to, 43, 93;
attraction of, 29-42;
Immigration Investigating Commission, 112, 113;
Industrial Commission on Immigration, 141;
legislation as to immigrants, see _Laws, immigration_;
money from relatives in, to aid immigrants, 31;
national songs, 34;
Post-office, an immigration agency, 33;
see also _Commissioner-General of Immigration, Ports of entry_
Venice, 199
Vincennes, Indiana, 20
Virginia, 45, 175
Vote, foreign, peril of, 249
Walker, General Francis A., 232
Ward, Robert D., 194
Warne, F. J., 157, 158, 162, 246
Warsaw, 199
Washington, city of, 24;
President, 68
Watchorn, Commissioner Robert, 30, 82
Welsh, as immigrants, 21, 126
Whelpley, J. D., 16, 70, 79, 94, 101
Wisconsin, 167
Women immigrants, 18, 35, 38, 39, 57, 61, 67, 75, 76, 304;
special inspection for, 61, 76
Work of leading denominations for foreign population, 314-320
Yiddish language, 198
Young people, as creators of public sentiment, 197;
opportunity of for Christian service, 10
Ziska, General, 166
* * * * *
~The Forward Mission Study Courses~
* * * * *
"Anywhere, _provided it be_ FORWARD."--_David Livingstone_
* * * * *
_Prepared under the auspices of the
YOUNG PEOPLE'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT_
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:--Harry Wade Hicks, S. Earl Taylor, John W.
Wood, F. P. Haggard, T. H. P. Sailer.
* * * * *
The Forward Mission Study Courses are an outgrowth of a conference of
leaders in Young People's Mission Work, held in New York City, December,
1901. To meet the need that was manifested at that conference for
Mission Study Text-books suitable for young people, two of the
delegates, Professor Amos R. Wells, of the United Society of Christian
Endeavor, and Mr. S. Earl Taylor, Chairman of the General Missionary
Committee of the Epworth League, projected the Forward Mission Study
Courses. These courses have been officially adopted by the Young
People's Missionary Movement, and are now under the immediate direction
of the Executive Committee of the Movement, which consists of the young
people's secretaries, or other official representatives of twelve of the
leading missionary boards of the United States and Canada.
The aim is to publish a series of text-books covering the various home
and foreign mission fields, and written by leading authorities with
special reference to the needs of young people. The entire series when
completed will comprise perhaps as many as twenty text-books. A general
account will be given of some of the smaller countries, such as Japan,
Korea, and Turkey; but, for the larger fields, as China, Africa, and
India, the general account will be supplemented by a series of
biographies of the principal missionaries connected with the country.
The various home mission fields will also be treated both biographically
and historically.
The following text-books have been published:--
~1. The Price of Africa.~ (Biographical.) By S. Earl Taylor.
~2. Into All the World.~ A General Survey of Missions. By Amos R.
Wells.
~3. Princely Men in the Heavenly Kingdom.~ (Biographical.) By
Harlan P. Beach, M.A., F.R.G.S.
~4. Child Life in Mission Lands.~ A Course of Study for Junior
Societies. By Ralph E. Diffendorfer.
~5. Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdom.~ A Study of Japan. By the Rev.
John H. De Forest, D.D.
~6. Heroes of the Cross in America.~ Home Missions. (Biographical.)
By Don O. Shelton.
~7. Daybreak in the Dark Continent.~ A Study of Africa. By Wilson
S. Naylor.
~8. The Christian Conquest of India.~ A Study of India. By Bishop
James M. Thoburn.
~9. Aliens or Americans?~ A Study of Immigration. By Rev. Howard B.
Grose, Ph.D.
These books are published by mutual arrangement among the denominational
publishing houses, to whom all orders should be addressed. They are
bound uniformly, and are sold for 50 cents, in cloth, and 35 cents, in
paper, postage extra.
* * * * *
Study classes desiring more advanced text-books are referred to the
admirable series published by the Interdenominational Committee of the
Woman's Boards. The volumes already published are:--
~Via Christi.~ A Study of Missions before Carey. By Louise Manning
Hodgkins.
~Lux Christi.~ A Study of Missions in India. By Caroline Atwater
Mason.
~Rex Christus.~ A Study of Missions in China. By Rev. Arthur H.
Smith, D.D.
~Dux Christus.~ A Study of Missions in Japan. By Rev. W. E.
Griffis, D.D.
~Christus Liberator.~ A Study of Missions in Africa. By Ellen C.
Parsons.
~Christus Redemptor.~ A Study of the Island World. By Helen Barrett
Montgomery.
* * * * *
[Illustration: AN ITALIAN SUNDAY SCHOOL IN NEW ENGLAND]
[Illustration: PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH CHILDREN
Portuguese Boy and Girl
Spanish Boys]
[Illustration: FOUR NATIONALITIES
Jewish Girl Polack Girl
Italian Boy Spanish Boy
]
[Illustration: AN ITALIAN FAMILY CROWDED IN A NEW YORK
TENEMENT]
[Illustration: A GROUP OF IMMIGRANTS JUST ARRIVED AT ELLIS
ISLAND]
[Illustration: THREE TYPES OF IMMIGRANTS
Alsace-Lorraine Girl Ruthenian Woman Holland Dame
]
[Illustration: A GROUP OF TWELVE DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES
Taken on the Roof Garden at Ellis Island]
[Illustration: AN APPEAL FROM THE SPECIAL INQUIRY BOARD TO
COMMISSIONER WATCHORN]
[Illustration: ITALIAN AND SWISS GIRLS
Italian Girl Swiss Girl
]
[Illustration: ELLIS ISLAND IMMIGRANT STATION
The Chief Port of Entry in New York Harbor]
[Illustration: DETAINED FOR SPECIAL EXAMINATION]
[Illustration: A GERMAN FAMILY
"Seven soldiers lost to the Kaiser." (German Consul's remark on seeing
this picture)]
[Illustration: RECEIVING ROOM AT ELLIS ISLAND
(A) Entrance stairs; (B) Examination of health ticket; (C) Surgeon's
examination; (D) Second surgeon's examination; (E) Group compartments;
(F) Waiting for inspection; (G) Passage to the stairway; (H) Detention
room; (I) The Inspectors' desks; (K) Outward passage to barge, ferry, or
detention room.]
[Illustration: THE LANDING AT THE BATTERY IN NEW YORK]
[Illustration: _From copyright stereograph, 1907, by Underwood &
Underwood, New York_
THE INFLOWING TIDE]
[Illustration: RACES OF IMMIGRANTS FISCAL YEAR 1905
FIGURES ON THE MAP REPRESENT THE NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS OF THE RACES NAMED
COMING FROM EACH COUNTRY INDICATED, WHILE THE FIGURES ON THE BARS
REPRESENT THE TOTAL NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS OF THE RACES NAMED COMING FROM
ALL COUNTRIES.
THE COLOR ON MAP INDICATES APPROXIMATELY REGIONS OF THE RACIAL GRAND
DIVISIONS
WHERE THE TERMS "BOHEMIAN," "BULGARIAN," "CROATIAN," AND "DALMATIAN" ARE
USED, THEY REFER TO "BOHEMIAN AND MORAVIAN," "BULGARIAN, SERVIAN, AND
MONTENEGRIN," "CROATIAN AND SLOVENIAN," AND "DALMATIAN, BOSNIAN, AND
HERZEGOVINIAN."]
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] J. D. Whelpley, _The Problem of the Immigrant_, 2.
[2] Entrance Port for Immigrants at New York.
[3] The total immigration into the United States for the fiscal year
ending June 30, 1906, was 1,100,735.
[4] For table showing immigration for each year from 1820 to 1905, see
Appendix A.
[5] Now known as the Battery. See footnote 1, p. 54.
[6] _City Mission Monthly_, April, 1902.
[7] Those who are interested in this feature can trace--by examining the
table in the Appendix which gives the immigration by years since
1820--the relation between prosperity and immigration. The effect of the
panics of 1837, 1843, 1873, 1893, and the depression caused by the Civil
War, will be seen clearly in the immigration totals. This subject is
treated in _Immigration_, 17 ff.
[8] Published in _Baptist Home Mission Monthly_ for July, 1906.
[9] Hamilton Holt, _Undistinguished Americans._
[10] The Swedish _krone_ (kro-ne) has a value of about 27 cents.
[11] Broughton Brandenburg, _Imported Americans_, 37.
[12] Prescott F. Hall, _Immigration_, 3, 4.
[13] The park and piers at the southern end of New York City, formerly
known as Castle Garden.
[14] Samuel E. Moffett, _Review of Reviews_, July, 1903.
[15] It is good to know that the reception conditions, so far as the
Government is concerned, have been made as favorable as present
accommodations will allow, and enlargement is already projected. Since
the Federal Government finally took charge of immigration in 1882, great
improvement has been made in method and administration. The inspection
is humane, prompt, and on the whole kindly, although entrance
examinations are as much dreaded by the average immigrant as by the
average student. Commissioner Watchorn, an admirable man for his place,
insists upon kindness, and want of it in an employee is cause for
dismissal. Ellis Island affords an excellent example of carefully
adjusted details and thorough system, whereby with least possible
friction thousands of aliens are examined in a day, and pronounced fit
or unfit to enter the country. The process is too rapid, however, to
give each case the attention which the best interests of the country
demand.
[16] Under the Act of 1903, this manifest has to state: The full name,
age and sex; whether married or single; the calling or occupation;
whether able to read or write; the nationality; the race; the last
residence; the seaport landing in the United States; the final
destination, if any, beyond the port of landing; whether having a ticket
through to such final destination; whether the alien has paid his own
passage or whether it has been paid by any other person or by any
corporation, society, municipality, or government, and if so, by whom;
whether in possession of thirty dollars, and if less, how much; whether
going to join a relative or friend and if so, what relative or friend,
and his name and complete address; whether ever before in the United
States, and if so, when and where; whether ever in prison or almshouse
or an institution or hospital for the care and treatment of the insane
or supported by charity; whether a polygamist; whether an anarchist;
whether coming by reason of any offer, solicitation, promise, or
agreement, expressed or implied, to perform labor in the United States,
and what is the alien's condition of health, mental and physical, and
whether deformed or crippled, and if so, for how long and from what
cause.
[17] Broughton Brandenburg, _Imported Americans_, 208.
[18] This imaginary sketch adheres in every detail to the facts. The
medical examiners and inspectors become exceedingly expert in detecting
disease, disability, or deception. If an overcoat is carried over the
shoulder, they look for a false or stiff arm. The gait and general
appearance indicate health or want of it to them, and all who do not
appear normal are turned aside for further examination, which is
thorough. The women have a special inspection by the matrons, who have
to be both expert and alert to detect and reject the unworthy. The chief
difficulty lies in too small a force to handle such large numbers, which
have reached as high as 45,000 in five days.
[19] The present regulations were passed in 1882, and if lived up to, as
by trustworthy testimony they are not, would prevent serious
overcrowding, although the conditions as to air, sanitation, and morals
would still be most unsatisfactory. For protective laws, see Appendix B.
[20] Broughton Brandenburg, _Imported Americans_, chap. XIV.
[21] This Act of 1824 required of vessel-masters a report giving name,
birthplace, age, and occupation of each immigrant, and a bond to secure
the city against public charges.
[22] _Immigration_, chap. X.
[23] The main provisions are: 1. Head tax of $2. 2. Excluded classes
numbering 17. 3. Criminal offenses against the Immigration Acts,
enumerating 12 crimes. 4. Rejection of the diseased aliens. 5. Manifest,
required of vessel-masters, with answers to 19 questions. 6. Examination
of immigrants. 7. Detention and return of aliens. 8. Bonds and
guaranties. The law may be found in full in the Appendix to
_Immigration_, and in _The Problem of the Immigrant_, chap. VI., where
the rules and regulations for its enforcement are also given. A list of
the excluded classes and criminal offenses will be found in Appendix B
of this volume.
[24] Joseph H. Adams, in _Home Missionary_, for April, 1905.
[25] The Immigration Bureau has 1,214 inspectors and special agents. The
Commissioner-General says of them: They are spread throughout the
country from Maine to southern California. They are
[26] thoroughly organized under competent chiefs, many of them working
regardless of hours, whether breaking the seals of freight cars on the
southern border to prevent the smuggling of Chinese, or watching the
countless routes of ingress from Canada, ever alert and willing, equally
efficient in detecting the inadmissible alien and the pretended citizen.
The Bureau asserts with confidence that, excepting a very few, the
government of this country has no more able and faithful servants in its
employ, either civil or military, than the immigration officers.
[27] Commissioner-General's Report for 1905, p. 41.
[28] _Immigration Report_ for 1905, p.56.
[29] Broughton Brandenburg, _Imported Americans_, 33.
[30] _Immigration Report_ for 1905, p. 48.
[31] Prof. H. H. Boyesen.
[32] Frederick Austin Ogg, in _Outlook_ for May 5, 1906.
[33] A synopsis of these recommendations will be found in Appendix B.
[34] Sec. 38. That no alien immigrant over sixteen years of age
physically capable of reading shall be admitted to the United States
until he has proved to the satisfaction of the proper inspection
officers that he can read English or some other tongue ... provided that
an admissible alien over sixteen, or a person now or hereafter in the
United States of like age, may bring in or send for his wife, mother,
affianced wife, or father over fifty-five, if they are otherwise
admissible, whether able to read or write or not.
[35] Sec. 39. That every male alien immigrant over sixteen shall be
deemed likely to become a public charge unless he shows to the proper
immigration officials that he has in his possession at the time of
inspection money to the equivalent of $25, or that the head of his
family entering with him so holds that amount to his account. Every
female alien must have $15.
[36] The Bill, as amended, left the head tax at $2, and the reading test
was omitted. Great opposition to the Bill came from the foreign element,
especially the Jews.
[37] Dr. Goodchild.
[38] Broughton Brandenburg, _Imported Americans_, 302.
[39] _Outlook_ for May 5, 1906.
[40] J. D. Whelpley, _The Problem of the Immigrant_, 13.
[41] _Annual Report for_ 1903, p. 60.
[42] _Annual Report for_ 1905, p. 58.
[43] Idem, opposite p. 34.
[44] This bureau shall collect and furnish to all incoming aliens, data
as to the resources, products, and manufactures of each state, territory
and district of the United States; the prices of land and character of
soils; routes of travel and fares; opportunities of employment in the
skilled and unskilled occupations, rates of wages, cost of living, and
all other information that in the judgment of the Commissioner-General
might tend to enlighten the aliens as to the inducements to settlement
in the various sections.
[45] Bernheimer, _The Russian Jew in the United States_, 370.
[46] Prescott F. Hall, _Immigration_, 303.
[47] Eliot Lord, in _The Italian in America_, 177 ff.
[48] "The Problem of Immigration," Presbyterian Board of Publication.
[49] For a condensed characterization of the north of Europe immigrants
read the chapter on Racial Conditions in _Immigration_ (chap. III.) The
leading traits of the various immigrant peoples are set forth with
fairness and discrimination, although probably none of those described
would see themselves exactly as Mr. Hall sees them.
[50] _The Italian in America._
[51] John Foster Carr in _Outlook_.
[52] See page 146.
[53] Dr. S. H. Lee in _Baptist Home Mission Monthly_, for May, 1905.
[54] Location of various public institutions of New York City.
[55] Industrial Commission Report to Congress, Dec. 5, 1901.
[56] _The Italian in America_, 215, 216.
[57] G. Tuoti, in _The Italian in America_, 78.
[58] A remarkable showing of what the Italians have accomplished through
these farming colonies in various parts of the country is given in the
chapter "On Farm and Plantation", in _The Italian in America_.
[59] Rev. E. P. Farnham, D.D., in New York _Examiner_, June 22, 1906.
[60] _University Settlement Studies_, December, 1905.
[61] While the Magyars (or Hungarians) are not Slavs, they have lived in
close contact with them, and for convenience may be classed in the
Slavic division; and the same thing is true of the Roumanian and Russian
Jews. All these peoples come from Russia, Austria-Hungary, or the Balkan
States, and represent similar customs and ideas, although they differ
materially in character, as we shall see.
[62] Samuel McLanahan, _Our People of Foreign Speech_, 34 ff.
[63] F. J. Warne, _The Slav Invasion_, chap. VI.
[64] Miss Kate H. Claghorn, in _Charities_, for December, 1904.
[65] _Charities_, for December, 1904.
[66] Samuel McLanahan, _Our People of Foreign Speech_, 45.
[67] Louis H. Pick, in _Charities_, for December, 1904.
[68] Miss Emily Balch, "The Slavs at Home," in _Charities and Commons_.
[69] Lee Frankel, in _The Russian Jew in the United States_, 63.
[70] Julius H. Greenstone, in _The Russian Jew in the United States_,
158.
[71] Commissioner-General's Report for 1905, p. 58.
[72] _The Leaven of a Great City_, and _The Story of an East Side
Family_.
[73] _University Settlement Studies_, January, 1906.
[74] Hamilton Holt, _Undistinguished Americans_, 43 ff.
[75] Jacob Riis, _How the Other Half Lives_, chap. XVIII.
[76] Robert Hunter, _Poverty_, chap. I. This is a book that every
American should read. The author is indebted to it for much of the
material in this chapter.
[77] Robert Hunter, _Poverty_, 196.
[78] Idem, chap. V.
[79] Richmond Mayo-Smith, _Emigration and Immigration_, 5 ff.
[80] Walter E. Heyl, in _University Settlement Studies_.
[81] F. J. Warne, _The Slav Invasion_, 103.
[82] Rena M. Atchison, _Un-American Immigration_, 82.
[83] Richmond Mayo-Smith, _Emigration and Immigration_, 84 ff.
[84] Represents the recapitulation of totals of Europe, Asia, Africa and
all other countries.
[85] Josiah Strong, _Our Country_, 56.
[86] Kate H. Claghorn, in _Charities_ for December, 1904.
[87] Broughton Brandenburg, _Imported Americans_, 19.
[88] Sidney Sampson, pamphlet, "The Immigration Problem."
[89] Fung Yuet Mow, Chinese missionary in New York, says that at a
missionary Conference which he attended in Canton there were fifty
missionaries present, native Chinese, and half of them were converted in
our missions in America, and returned home to seek the conversion of
their people. Everywhere he met the influence of Chinese who found
Christ in this country.
[90] Henry H. Hamilton in the _Home Missionary_.
[91] In one city in Massachusetts, where there are 1,700 Italians only
fifty or sixty attend the Roman Catholic Church; and in another, of
6,000 Italians, only about 300 go to that church. They declare that they
are tired of the Romish Church and have lost faith in its priests.
Similar reports come from all parts of the country.
[92] There are numerous instances equally remarkable. Many young people
express their desire to lead true lives and the missionaries often learn
how well the resolutions made at Ellis Island have been kept. One
missionary says: "I meet one here and another there, who tell me that I
met them first three or four years ago, when they first reached this
country, strangers to Christ as well as to me; but now they say, 'We
love to tell the story of Jesus and his love.' Some of the denominations
have houses fitted up for the temporary entertainment of immigrants who
need a safe place while waiting to hear from friends or secure
employment. This missionary work admirably supplements the excellent
service rendered by the protective organizations, of which the United
Hebrews Charities is perhaps the most influential, dispensing funds
amounting to $270,000 a year, including the Baron Hirsch fund. There is
also an Immigrant Girls' Home which saves many from temptation while
they are seeking employment, and helps them secure places in Christian
families."
[93] Rev. Joel S. Ives, pamphlet, "The Foreigner in New England."
[94] Appendix C.
[95] Some denominations already have theological training departments
for foreign people. The French-American College at Springfield,
Massachusetts, is the first distinctive training school for foreigners.
[96] "The Foreign Problem." Published by the Presbyterian Board of Home
Missions.
[97] Rev. F. H. Allen, in _Home Missionary_ for January, 1906.
[98] Rev. C. W. Shelton reports typical cases, that could be duplicated
by every secretary of a Home Missionary Society and every missionary. In
one mission church a young Swede girl gave $25 a month, out of her
earnings as cook, toward the pastor's support. In a Finnish church,
another young woman pledged $30 a month out a salary of $50. A Chinese
mission in California supports three native workers in China. A Slav
Mission Sunday-school in Braddock, Pennsylvania, with thirty members,
gave out of its poverty, as one year's record, $6 for home missions,
$1.25 for windows in a new Bohemian church, $1 for missionary schools,
$6.35 for maps, and $6 for a foreign missionary ship. Nearly fifty cents
a member these Slavs gave; and that amount per member from all Christian
Churches and Sunday-schools would make the missionary treasuries much
fuller than at present.
[99] Words used by Dr. A. L. Phillips, of Richmond, Va., at the
Asheville Conference, July, 1906.
[100] From Annual Report of Commissioner-General of Immigration for
1905.
[101] Statement from Commissioner-General F. P. Sargent.
[102] From the Lutheran World.
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