Aliens or Americans? Part 10

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 Was.h.i.+ngton.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 Caesar.

If the s.h.i.+ps carried five hundred pa.s.sengers 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 a.s.similate with the customs and inst.i.tutions of this country.--_Prescott F. Hall._

There are two cla.s.ses who would pa.s.s upon the immigration question. One says, "Close the doors and let in n.o.body;" and the other says, "Open wide the doors and let in everybody." I am in sympathy with neither of these cla.s.ses. 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 a.s.similating 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 Was.h.i.+ngton make the following racial division, which is used in the official reports:

[Sidenote: Race Cla.s.sification]

"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, j.a.panese, 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 una.s.similable elements of the Old World. A distinct prejudice has undoubtedly been created against these later comers.

[Sidenote: Reasons for Adverse Opinion]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHANGES IN SOURCES OF IMMIGRATION WHICH HAVE CAUSED HEAVY INCREASE OF ILLITERACY

This chart shows what a ma.s.s 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 a.s.similate 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: