IMMIGRATION.
Because this is a land of liberty a great many foreigners imagine it a
land of license. To do them justice, they do not know any better. But we
do, and it is our duty to teach them the difference. If we don’t, we,
not they, will be the principal sufferers.
The subject of immigration has been largely discussed by the newspapers
of late, and a good deal of demagogy has been got off in Congress on the
same subject. But sensible people are pretty well agreed that it is time
to put some restriction upon the use of America as a common dumping
ground for the world’s offal and rubbish. This country is not an asylum
for criminals or paupers. That ought to go without saying and it should
not require any argument to prove, but it seems we have been very
careless in this direction. A short time ago the New York _Herald_ said:
“America is no longer to be considered the legitimate dumping ground for
the paupers, the idiots, the insane and the criminals of Europe,” and
Congressman Ford, chairman of the Immigration Committee and father of
the bill which was presented in January, made the statement that “if the
law could be strictly enforced I believe our immigration would be
decreased from these sources at least one hundred and fifty thousand per
annum.” This is an awful proportion of the aggregate of immigration, for
the entire figure exceeds half a million per year very little. Still Mr.
Ford may be supposed, from his position, to know what he is talking
about, for his committee has spent a great amount of time in examining a
great many witnesses who are supposed to understand the nature of the
immigration to this country of the peoples of the whole world. But
enough about paupers, idiots, insane and criminals; everybody is agreed
that we do not want them.
Are there any other classes whom we do not want? Yes; we cannot afford
to have the contract laborer. The native labor organizations have talked
a good deal of nonsense about the foreigner, but not on this one
subject. The importation on contract of men to do a certain amount of
work for a smaller sum than American citizens would accept, and to carry
back almost all their earnings to be spent in another country, is a very
successful way of making a nation poor. If we were to send all of our
money to Europe for the purchase of supplies and Europe were to buy
nothing of us in return, it would soon be
[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW LOOKING SOUTH, SHOWING END OF WORLD’S
COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.]
impossible to raise enough coin to buy a postage stamp. Yet contract
labor is a transaction of exactly the same nature, and it is increasing
at a rate that may be estimated from the known ability and willingness
of large employers to have work done as cheaply as possible, regardless
of the consequences to every one but themselves.
When, however, statesmen or politicians, or demagogues or well-meaning
labor agitators or leaders, insist that skilled labor should be kept out
of the country, it is to the interest of the community to firmly,
persistently and indignantly oppose any such proposition. Lack of
skilled labor is the curse of the country. Because a man is employed on
work which requires skill and experience is no sign that he is fully
competent to do it. The tramps who bind the farmer’s wheat, the
cast-aways and chance laborers who build some houses in the West, the
riff-raff who are gathered together occasionally to work a mine, or sail
a ship, or do the work of a plantation or a farm for a short season, are
the most costly labor that could be employed, and a great deal of work
supposed to be done by experts in the United States is almost as
expensive. So long as we don’t allow young men to learn trades--and that
seems to be the rule at present--we must have men who have learned
trades somewhere else. Plenty of Americans can be found in New York city
at half an hour’s notice who complain with real patriotic feeling that,
while they would like all their own employés to be Americans, they
cannot find a large number or even a respectable majority of natives who
are sufficiently skilled to do the work for which they are called upon.
The consumption of pianofortes, for instance, in the United States, is
twenty times as great, according to statistics of trade, as in any other
country of equal population in the world. But in going through a piano
factory one might very quickly imagine himself in a foreign country. It
is not that the manufacturers are all foreigners, for they are not, or
that they prefer foreign labor, or that foreign piano-makers work
cheaper than those of native birth, but simply because we have scarcely
any of native birth, although this variety of manufacturing industry has
been active in this country for nearly two generations.
In many other of the mechanical arts the same lack of native skilled
labor is manifested. The wall-paper printers, the engravers, the better
class of weavers, and several other mechanical arts, which require the
services of draughtsmen and colorists, are almost all obliged to depend
upon men of foreign birth for their work. It is pleasing to realize that
most of these foreign workmen are now naturalized American citizens and
probably quite as loyal to the Union and the Constitution as any of our
native-born operatives, but the probabilities are, that as they grow
old or disabled, and have to be replaced, the new men must come from the
same sources as the old. Between Americans not being allowed to learn
trades, and Americans not being willing to learn trades, we are pretty
badly off for mechanical labor unless we can depend upon foreign
countries.
We need not blame foreigners for this; we have only our own selves to
blame and our own people. The reason for the general dependence upon
foreign labor, beside the inability of young men who wish to learn a
trade to be allowed to follow their inclinations, is that the most of
our own people are rapidly getting above anything and everything that
does not afford an opportunity for speculation. Beside, it is one of the
inevitable results of the theory of social equality, a theory which must
do a great deal more harm than it yet has done before we abandon it,
that, as the wealth and prosperity of the country increases, and new
opportunities of making money multiply, the sons of farmers and
mechanics will be reluctant to follow the occupations of their fathers.
We have heard a great deal about the unwillingness of the Hebrews to
indulge in any mechanical or routine labor, and their avidity to enter
all branches of trade where barter and sale are the principal
occupations, but the modern American can double discount the Hebrew in
this particular and then get ahead of him about as often as not.
There is no sign that the native-born American youth will revert to the
good old custom of his fathers, and endeavor to learn a trade, even if
he were able to do it. It is unfashionable to work with one’s hands in a
country where most of the money is made by working with one’s wits. The
mechanic’s son, and the farmer’s son, and the day laborer’s son gets as
good a common-school education as the children of the richest men in the
town, and has equal opportunities for going into mercantile business, or
for entering the offices of business houses and corporations, and his
own father will tell him that he is a fool unless he embraces these
opportunities. No man gets rich by farming alone, or by laboring at
day’s wages at any mechanical occupation, whereas some men in trade and
speculation amass great fortunes. That forty-nine out of every fifty
finally fail and never get upon their feet again does not occur either
to the youth or to his parents. Let us hope that some day it will, and
that our young men will not be ashamed to earn their bread literally by
the sweat of their brow. But the prospect at present for any such change
seems exceedingly remote. Indeed, until the change occurs we will need
all the skilled labor we can get from abroad. Unless the supply
increases we will either have to give up some of our country’s business
schemes and prospects, or we will be obliged to offer a bounty or a
premium to foreign laborers to come over here.
We especially need foreign farmers and workmen for the instruction of
our own farmers, and a large immigration of foreign agriculturists, if
they could be sprinkled among our agricultural communities in the
various States, would do more than any proposed legislation to improve
the condition of the American farmer. In his efforts to get beyond his
strength and resources, efforts which are natural in all new countries,
our farmer wastes enough to support another farmer. The Englishman, or
Frenchman, or German, or Swede, can teach him how not to do this. There
are a great many unprofitable farms near the city of New York, but when
you see a small piece of ground tilled to the full extent of its
capacity, and sending in large loads of fat vegetables to the city every
day, you may safely bet that the proprietor is a foreigner. In one
neighborhood very near New York city, a lot of discontented farmers are
envious of the prosperity of one fellow who is tilling only thirteen
acres, yet who has saved enough money to buy three houses in the city of
New York, each of which yields him a handsome income. And who is this
lucky fellow? A highly educated German, or a scientific English farmer?
No; he is a wretched Laplander, a man who is obliged to be ashamed of
the province which gave him birth, and who poses among acquaintances as
a Swede. He was a common farm laborer in his own country, and came here
with very little more money than would pay his board at a den near the
Battery for two or three days until some one should employ him. But he
had learned how to turn every scrap of soil to the best advantage, how
to make the most of all fertilizers, and how to get the largest number
of crops out of a given amount of soil in a given time. During the
agricultural depression of Great Britain a few years ago, which followed
several successive wet years, a number of English farmers sold out at a
sacrifice, came over here and located wherever best they could, and it
is astonishing to see how fast some of these men have got along, and how
well fixed they now are, as the saying is. They didn’t seem to be very
smart fellows. In a horse-trade, or a shooting-match, or a political
squabble, the best of them cannot hold his own for five minutes with an
ordinary American. But when it comes to farming so as to make every
resource of the estate count for all that it is worth, they leave the
American farmer far behind.
Nevertheless, we need to restrict and regulate more systematically, and
with more rigor than we ever did it before. Of course we have the right
to refuse absolutely undesirable immigrants. No one can deny this with
any show of reason, and if we would fight to maintain this principle no
nation could blame us. But we also have the right to deny citizenship to
workmen coming from any portion of the world, until we are satisfied
that they intend to become citizens, and that they will be desirable
acquisitions. We are quite competent to keep up our own supply of
idiots, and paupers and criminals. No nation has a monopoly of that sort
of thing, and we do quite as well in that way as could be expected of
us, and far better than suits our tax-payers. For the freedom of mind
and body, and the prospects of founding homes for all of his posterity,
an honest man should be willing to remain in this country a long time
before claiming full rights of citizenship. There never were any
complaints under the old rule, which required a very long term of
probation, and there would be none under the new. Property rights of
aliens are respected quite as much as those of natives, and there is no
other right in which our laws distinguish between the native and the
foreigner. A chance tourist arriving here and getting into legal
difficulty of any kind has quite as good a chance of obtaining justice
as the richest man in the nation. This is not an American idea, for
foreigners themselves have said the same. Intelligent foreigners, makers
of opinion on the other side of the water, have marvelled again and
again in speech and in print at the carelessness with which America
admitted all classes of foreign-born persons to the rights of
citizenship, and have declared that were citizenship rights to be
delayed until the second generation came of adult age, there would be
nothing in the law or customs of the country which would give a
foreign-born resident any reason for complaint.
Unless we restrict immigration there is nothing to prevent any foreign
nation, desiring to pick a quarrel with us so as to steal some of our
property, or have some of her own troublesome inhabitants disposed of by
bullet wounds, or “to weld the people together” when they are pulling
every which way, from sending a few carefully selected men here for the
express purpose of fitting out a pretended dynamite expedition or
something of the kind, for which the United States would be called to
account. But that is only part of what they can do. At the present day
every German and Frenchman under middle age has received a military
training. There is nothing to prevent a few thousand picked soldiers,
with their officers, being sent here in small parties in the guise of
ordinary immigrants, to rally and rise at a given signal, seize some of
our cities, forts and navy-yards, overcome our make-believe army and
establish a reign of terror, from which we could not release ourselves
speedily without ransom. They could find arms and munitions of war
without the slightest trouble, for such things are on sale to every
purchaser in every village in the land, and when desired in large
quantities they can be purchased from any of our large manufacturers
without the purchaser first undergoing the formality of answering
unpleasant questions. As for commissariat, they could live on the land.
There is no portion of it from which a body of armed men could not
obtain all they need in the way of food and clothing. There would be no
difference between such a movement and the insurrections by which almost
all of the older nations have suffered from time to time--insurrections
some of which have been dignified by success to the rank of revolutions.
The mobs which started the French revolution had a large army to oppose
them, and they had little opportunity for arming and organizing
themselves, nevertheless they succeeded in overturning one of the oldest
monarchies in the world, and apparently one of the strongest.
Among the classes whom we must most resolutely exclude from this country
are those which, in good earnest and with justifiable sense of wrong,
but nevertheless with utter disregard of the land of their adoption,
organize disturbances to be carried on in the lands from which they
come. Russian nihilists, disaffected Canadians, Irish dynamiters, French
socialists and anarchists, and all the other broods of disturbers of
the peace of foreign lands are out of place in the United States. Many
of them have abundant cause for the hatred which they manifest toward
the governments from which they have escaped. Most of them have the
sympathy of the people of the United States, to the extent of wishing
that desirable reforms might be accomplished in lands where any classes
are wrongly treated or find themselves at disadvantage in comparison
with other classes more favored. But this country cannot afford to be a
hot-bed of discontent from which the germs may be sent abroad. When the
time for accounting comes, the bill will not be sent to the disturbers,
but to the nation which harbored them. We have been dangerously near war
with Great Britain two or three times on account of the operations of
the large class generally known as Irish sympathizers. There is probably
no class of foreign-born residents of the United States who have more
reason in law and morals for the feeling which they manifest than these
same Irish sympathizers. But when they come here as citizens the safety
of this country, which we have the right to regard as an interest
paramount to that of any other which may exist in the hearts of our
people, must rank first. If this class or any other class of disturbers
of the peace of foreign countries persist in their agitation on this
side of the water, it is the duty of the nation to expel them. Where
they may go is an important question to them, but it is not one with
which we can afford to concern ourselves. Perhaps there may be
individuals among us who would take personal friends into their families
with the understanding that they came there for the sole purpose of
making trouble with their families; but nations have none of that sort
of disinterested philanthropy. The few that have tried it cannot be
found to-day on the maps of any well-edited atlas.
The United States has nothing to fear from honest, well-meaning
immigrants, no matter how stupid they are. Transplanting does wonders
for wild-wood trees and shrubs that amount to nothing in their native
wastes, and the improvement which some unpromising foreign stock has
often made in this country recalls the traditional remark of the Bad
Habit to the Small Boy: “Look at me now and the day you got me.” Some of
the most exquisite gentlemen and able men of our land descended from
clodhoppers of no one nationality, who came to this country only a
generation or two ago. Some of the wisest and grandest spirits of our
revolutionary periods were descendants of articled servants who came
away not many years before. But, pshaw! Which of us who has not pure
Indian blood in his veins did not descend from immigrants who a little
while ago were so badly off in the old country that they had to move to
get enough to eat and wear? Some self-appointed aristocrats may except
to this general classification, but either they lie or they don’t know
why their ancestors came here. No foreigner who is living comfortably at
home, and who has nothing to be ashamed of, is going to a new country
unless he has some unrest in him which will make him a nuisance if he
remains at home. Of course political annoyances have been influential in
sending us many immigrants, but very few from the classes who have any
possible excuse for thinking themselves better than other men. The
development of fine natures from very rude stock in the United States
has been so marvellous in some of its instances as to deserve a large
book specially devoted to the subject. A little while ago it was
discovered that a famous judge, whose opinions and rulings are held in
respect in courts of every State of this Union, was the son of a pauper
immigrant. A gentleman who was very favorably mentioned a few years ago
as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States said himself that
his father, who was an immigrant, was so poor that the son went to
school without breakfast for five successive years, and acquaintances of
this estimable and highly cultivated gentleman, who stood at the very
head of one of the most learned professions, said that the father was
unable to read or write at the time of his death. The population of the
State of California started with men of all classes from all parts of
the world. Probably more adventurers and worthless men took part in the
rush for gold than can be found in all the state-prisons of the United
States at the present day. Yet the descendants of some of these very
objectionable characters are to-day men of prominence and character. The
natives of that State attributed this wonderful change to the “glorious
climate of California.” But it is not necessary to make any such
explanation. Cases of the same kind, though not perhaps in so large
proportion, can be found in all the States of the Union. It is
impossible that it should be otherwise. Whatever may happen to the
original immigrant, his posterity has as fair a chance as that of any
native. His children go to the same schools, the same churches, they
mingle freely with all persons of their own age, have the same
interests, same impulses, aspirations, and opportunities.
There is another great promise to this country also through its
immigrant population, which may not be announced as a fact, but which
certainly has a great deal of probability in it. Mr. Darwin, who in
tracing the descent of species seemed to interest himself in the descent
of everything else, explained once the method by which forests suddenly
appear upon some tracts of land which apparently had been long
destitute of any of the larger varieties of vegetation. He found upon
examination of one such tract that while the arboreal shoots which had
first come into view that year were small, they nevertheless had
enormous roots. Ploughing and cultivation had kept the soil above these
roots broken for a great many years, or cattle in grazing over the
ground had kept everything nipped short. Nevertheless the roots or germs
were there, and through the very process of repression seemed to
accumulate a strength which they put forth, when they were allowed to do
so, as if they were making up for lost time, which was exactly the
deduction which Mr. Darwin made in longer and more scholarly form. It is
known to breeders that the strain of families of various species is
frequently improved by infusion of the blood of an animal of the sort
commonly known as a “runt;” that is, one which has been stunted in its
growth. The average immigrant is a man who has been repressed for
generations and perhaps for centuries. When his opportunity for
development comes he really seems to have the capacity to make up for
lost time. There is no other way of explaining the wonderful improvement
in many thousands of American families of foreign extraction. There have
been some amusing results of efforts of men, suddenly become prominent
and deservedly so, in tracing their ancestry. They learned what Burns
once expressed about himself after he had made similar investigations:
“Through scoundrels’ blood
My race has crept, e’er since the flood.”
The wonderful virility and prosperity of the Hebrew in this country, as
well as in those European countries where he has been allowed a chance
beside his fellow-men, cannot be explained except upon this theory of
accumulated strength during long periods of repression.
Americans can stand all this sort of thing that Europe can bless us
with. According to statisticians it costs two or three thousand dollars
to bring a child from the cradle up to adult age and working power.
Consequently every able-bodied foreigner we get who is willing to work
is worth two or three thousand dollars to our nation and is so much
capital in our pockets. Let us have all we can of them. The men who
complain of them are those who are not capable of taking care of
themselves.