immigration in terms of races and religions. And much of the
present-day hostility to immigration comes from the inexplicable
prejudice which has recently sprung up against persons of differing
races and religions. It is assumed that the new immigration is poor
and ignorant because it is ethnically unfitted for anything different
and that it prefers the tenement and the mining camp to American
standards of living and culture. But the newly arrived immigrant goes
to the mines and the crowded city not from choice but from necessity.
He lives in colonies with his fellows largely because the employing
class prefers that he be segregated and has no interest in his physical
comfort or welfare. The alien has been a commodity, not a human being;
he has been far cheaper than a machine because he provided his own
capital cost and makes provision for his own depreciation and decay. He
has been bought in the slums of Europe for his passage money and he can
be left to starve when bad times or industrial power throws him on his
own resources. The important difference between the “old immigration”
and the “new immigration” is not ethnic. It is not religious. It is
economic. The “old immigration” has become the owning and employing
class, while the “new immigration” is the servile and dependent
class. This is the real, the important difference between the “old
immigration” and the “new.” The former owns the resources of America.
The economic division coincides roughly with the race division.
When economic privilege becomes ascendant fear is born. It is born of
a subconscious realization on the part of the privileged classes that
their privileges rest on an unjust if not an unstable foundation. Fear
is the parent of hate, and back of other explanations of the present
demand for exclusion of the alien is fear. It is fear that gave birth
to the persecution and ruthless official and semi-official activity
first against all aliens under the White Slave Act and similar laws,
next against the Germans, and later against the “reds.” An economic
psychology born of injustice explains our present attitude toward the
alien just as a different economic psychology explained our attitude
during the first two and a half centuries of our life when it was the
consuming desire of statesmen, real-estate speculators, and exploiters
to people the continent and develop our industries and resources as
rapidly as possible.
The “immigration problem,” so called, has always been and always will
be an economic problem. There are many people who feel that there
is an inherent superiority in the Anglo-Saxon race; that it has a
better mind, greater virtue, and a better reason for existence and
expansion than any other race. They insist there are eugenic reasons
for excluding immigration from South and Central Europe; they would
preserve America for people of Anglo-Saxon stock. As an immigration
official I presided over Ellis Island for five years. During this
time probably a million immigrants arrived at the port of New York.
They were for the most part poor. They had that in common with the
early immigrant. They had other qualities in common. They were
ambitious and filled with hope. They were for the most part kindly
and moved by the same human and domestic virtues as other peoples.
And it is to me an open question whether the “new immigration,” if
given a virgin continent, and the hope and stimulus which springs
from such opportunity, would not develop the same qualities of mind
and of character that we assume to be the more or less exclusive
characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race. There is also reason for
believing that the warmer temperament, the emotional qualities, and the
love of the arts that characterize the South and Central European would
produce a race blend, under proper economic conditions, that would
result in a better race than one of pure Northern extraction. For it is
to be remembered that it was not political liberty, religious liberty,
or personal liberty that changed the early immigrant of Northern
Europe into the American of to-day. His qualities were born of economic
conditions, of a free continent, of land to be had for the asking, of
equal opportunity with his fellows to make his life what he would have
it to be. The old immigrant recognized no master but himself. He was
the equal of his neighbours in every respect. He knew no inferiority
complex born of a servile relationship. It was this rather than our
constitutions and laws that made the American of the first three
centuries what he was. It was this alchemy that changed the serf of
Northern Europe into the self-reliant freeman of America.
The immigration problem was born when this early economic opportunity
came to an end. When the free land was all gone, the immigrant had to
work for somebody else. He went to the mines and the city tenement
not from the choice but from necessity. He took the first job that
offered. When established he sent for his brother, his neighbour, or
his friend. He, too, went to the mining camp or the slum. Colonies
appeared. The alien became segregated. He lived by himself. And he
developed the qualities that would be developed by any race under
similar conditions. He, too, feared. He was known as a Dago, Wop,
Hunkie. To him government meant a policeman, a health officer, and an
immigration inspector--all agencies to be feared. He slowly learned to
unionize. He came to understand group action. He found in his craft
organization the only protection against the employers, and in the
political boss the only protection against agencies that interfered
with his personal and domestic life. The immigrant soon learned that
our immigration laws were shaped by economic motives. He learned that
he was in danger of being deported if he did not work. The menace which
hangs over the immigrant during his early years is the phrase “likely
to become a public charge.” And this alleged reason for deportation
covers a multitude of other excuses which can be used as it is used--as
a drag-net accusation. So the immigrant feels and justly feels that
what we want of him is to work, to work for some one else, and to
accept what is offered and be content. For within the last few years
the doctrine has become accepted by him and by the nation as well that
the alien must not complain, he must not be an agitator, he must not
protest against the established industrial order or the place which he
occupies within it. This has heightened his fear complex. It has tended
to establish his inferiority relationship.
Our legislative attitude toward the alien has mirrored the economic
conditions of the country. Up to about the middle of the last century
we had no restrictive laws of any kind. America was free to all comers.
We wanted population. Western States pleaded for settlers. They drew
them from the East as they drew them from Europe. We were hospitable
to the oppressed. We opened our arms to revolutionary leaders. We had
no fears. Experience had shown that the poorest of Europe, even the
classified criminals of Europe, would quickly Americanize themselves
under the stimulus of new opportunity in a virgin land where all
men were potentially equal. For generations there was fear that the
American continent could never be fully peopled.
But the free lands were all gone about 1890. The Western drift of
peoples, which had been in movement since the earliest times, came
to an end. Population closed in on the Pacific. Cities grew with
unprecedented rapidity. Factories needed men. Employers looked to
Europe. They sent agents abroad who employed them in gangs. Often
they were used to displace American-born workers. They were used to
break up labour organizations. The aliens were mixed to prevent them
organizing. Wages were temporarily at least forced down. For some years
our immigration policy was shaped by the big industrials who combined
with the steamship companies to induce immigration.
Organized labour began to protest. It, too, was moved by economic
motives. It secured the passage of the contract labour law, which
prevents the landing of any worker for whom employment has been
provided in advance by an employer. Organized labour began to demand
restrictive legislation to protect its standard of living. But the
country was not ready for restrictive legislation. Congress instead
adopted a selective policy. We excluded paupers, the insane and
diseased, criminals, immoral persons, and those who were likely to
become a public charge. Later we extended the selective idea to
persons who did not believe in organized government, to anarchists,
and to persons of revolutionary beliefs. We now exclude and deport for
opinions as well as for physical and mental conditions. The percentage
of rejections under these selective laws was not great. Of the
1,200,000 aliens who came to the country in 1914 only one and one-third
per cent. were denied admission by the immigration authorities.
The war stimulated the anti-alien feeling. It provided an opportunity
for crusades. The press aided the hue and cry. In 1915 there was a
nation-wide round-up of immoral cases. Thousands of prostitutes, of
procurers, and of persons guilty of some personal irregularity were
arrested all over the country. Many of them were deported. The demand
for restrictive legislation was supported by many different groups. It
had the backing of organized labour, of the Southern States, of many
protestant organization and churches. It was strongly supported in the
West.
The “literacy test,” which went into effect in 1917, requiring of the
alien an ability to read some language selected by him, was the first
restrictive measure enacted. Its purpose was to check the South and
Central European inflow. For in these countries illiteracy is very
high. It rises as high as sixty and seventy per cent. in the Central
European states. With the test of literacy applied it was felt that
the old immigration from Northern Europe would reassert itself. Our
industrial needs would be supplied from Great Britain, from Germany and
from the Scandinavian countries. The same motive underlies the recently
enacted law which arbitrarily fixes the number who may come in any one
year from any one country to three per cent. of the aliens already here
from that country. This will still further shift the immigration to the
Northern countries, and if continued as the permanent policy of the
Government will insure a predominant Anglo-Saxon-Germanic-Scandinavian
stock as the racial stock of America.
Despite all of the Congressional concern over the alien and the recent
nation-wide movement for his Americanization, there has never been any
official concern for the alien, for his protection from exploitation
and abuse, or any attempt to work out a policy of real Americanization.
Not that the task is impossible. Not that it is even experimental.
Australia, Brazil, and Canada have more or less well-developed agencies
for aiding the alien on landing, for protecting him until he is able
to protect himself, and for adjusting him as speedily as possible
to new conditions of life. In all of these countries the aim of the
government is to give the immigrant a stake in the land, to bring about
his permanent residence in the country, and, if possible, to induce him
to become a farmer rather than an industrial worker. This has not been
done by agencies of distribution alone, but by conscious selection in
the country from which the immigrant comes, by grants of land to those
who are ready to take up land holdings, and by the extension of credit
from state agencies to enable the settlers to stock and equip their
farms. The policy of Brazil has been so successful that many colonies
of Northern Italians have been induced to settle there who have become
prosperous and contented farmers. In other words, these countries have
consciously aimed to work out a continuing policy similar to that which
prevailed in this country up to about 1890 when the immigrant drifted
naturally to the land as a means of securing the freedom from the
exploiting class that had driven him from Europe.
It is not to be inferred that our policy of hands off the alien
after his landing has worked only evil. Viewed in the perspective
of two centuries, it has worked amazingly well. The rapidity with
which practically all immigrants rise in the world in spite of the
obstacles of poverty, illiteracy, and unfamiliarity with our language
is little short of a miracle. This is true of the older generation as
it is of the younger. It is most true in the cities, least true in
the mining camps and smaller industrial centres about the steel mills
and slaughter houses where the tyranny of the employing class is most
pronounced. For the newcomer speedily acquires the wants of those with
whom he associates. He becomes dissatisfied with his shack. He demands
more and better food and clothes. He almost always wants his children
to have a schooling and to rise in the scale, which to him means
getting out of the hod-carrying, day-labour, or even artisan class.
And the next generation does rise. It rises only less rapidly than did
the early immigrant. It increases its wants and demands. It finds the
trades union a weapon with which it can combat the employer who seeks
to bring about a confusion of tongues, a confusion of religion, and
a confusion of races as a means of maintaining the open shop. As an
evidence of this, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America is almost
exclusively Jewish, Italian, and Latin in its membership. It is the
most intelligent, the most social-minded, and the most highly developed
labour organization in the country. The coal miners are largely men of
foreign birth. They, too, have adopted an advanced social programme.
The alien has found the trades union the most efficient if not the only
agency through which he can Americanize himself. And in Americanizing
himself he is merely doing what the aliens of earlier centuries who
preceded him have done--he is seeking for economic freedom from a
master class.
America is a marvellous demonstration of the economic foundations of
all life. It is a demonstration of what happens to men when economic
opportunities call forth their resourcefulness and latent ability on
one hand and when the State, on the other, keeps its hands off them in
their personal relationships. For the alien quickly adopts a higher
standard of culture as he rises in the industrial scale, while his
morals, whatever they may have been, quickly take on the colour of
his new environment, whatever that may be. And if all of the elements
which should enter into a consideration of the subject were included,
I am of the opinion it would be found that the morals, the prevalence
of vice and crime among the alien population is substantially that of
the economic class in which he is found rather than the race from which
he springs. In other words, the alleged prevalence of crime among the
alien population is traceable to poverty and bad conditions of living
rather than to ethnic causes, and in so far as it exists it tends
disappear as the conditions which breed it pass away.
Despite the fact that our hands-off policy of the past has worked
amazingly well, the time has come when it must be changed. Not because
of any change in the character of the alien, but because of the change
which has taken place in our own internal life. Economic conditions
make it impossible for the alien, as it does for the native born, to
become a farmer. Exploiting agencies are making it difficult and
often impossible for the farmer to make a living. Land speculation has
shot up the price of farm land to prohibitive figures. The railroads
and middle men and banking agencies are putting the American farmer
into a semi-servile status. He is unable to market his crop after it
is produced or he markets it at a figure that ultimately reduces him
to bankruptcy. The immigration problem remains an economic problem.
It has become an American problem. The policy we should adopt for
Americanizing the alien is a policy we should adopt for our own people
as well, for when economic opportunity came to an end for our own
people, it created not only an immigration problem, but a domestic
problem. The solution of one is the solution of the other.
The alien will Americanize himself if he is given the opportunity to
do so. The bird of passage will cease to migrate when he possesses a
stake in the land of his adoption. The best cure for Bolshevism is
not deportation but a home, a farm, a governmental policy of land
settlement. A constructive immigration policy and Americanization
policy is one that will:
1. Direct the alien as well as the native born to opportunities of
employment and especially to agencies that will enable them to become
home owners and farm owners;
2. Provide government grants, as is done in Australia, Denmark, and
some of the South American countries, to which the would-be farmer or
home owner can go for financial assistance. In Denmark and Australia
any man who shows aptitude and desire for farming and who is able to
satisfy a local commission of his abilities, can secure a small farm
in a farm colony, fully equipped for planting. The grant includes a
house and barn, some cattle and machinery, and sufficient capital to
carry the settler over the first season. The applicant must provide a
certain portion of the initial outlay himself. He is aided by experts
from the colony, he is advised as to what to plant and how to care
for his cattle. His produce is marketed co-operatively, while much
of the machinery is owned either by the community or by co-operative
agencies identified with the community. The land is purchased in large
tracts by the State in advance of settlement to prevent speculation,
while settlers are required to develop their holdings. They may not
purchase for speculative purposes. The State of Denmark has planted
thousands of home-owning farmers in this way and has all but ended farm
tenancy in a generation’s time. The farm tenant and farm labourer have
become owners. A similar policy has been developed in Australia, where
millions of dollars have been advanced by the State to settlers. In
both of these countries the land settlement colonies have been a great
success. There have been few failures and no losses to the State.
3. The savings of the alien should be used for the benefit of the
alien. Hundreds of millions of dollars leave this country annually in
the form of remittances. Much of it goes abroad because of fear of
American banks. Many millions more are in hiding for the same reason.
The deposits in the Postal Savings banks are largely the deposits of
the immigrant. They are turned over to the National banks and find
their way into commercial activities. If these funds were mobilized in
co-operative banks, as is done all over Europe, or if the Government
would dedicate them to a revolving fund for aiding persons to build
homes, to buy farms, and to aid the alien with credit, which he now has
no means of securing; he would be lured from the city to the land, he
would become a home and farm owner rather than an industrial worker,
and would rapidly develop those qualities of mind and character that
are associated in our minds with the early Anglo-Saxon settler but
which are rather the qualities which spring up of themselves when the
economic conditions encourage them.
4. Our deportation laws are a disgrace to any country. They are an
adaptation of the fugitive slave laws. The offending alien is subject
to lynch law sanctioned by the State. He is arrested on complaint by an
inspector. He is then tried by the man who arrests him. His friends and
relatives are excluded from the trial. The judge who made the arrest
is often the interpreter and the clerk who transcribes the testimony.
He also is his jailer. He can and does hold the alien incommunicado.
Often the alien scarcely knows why he has been arrested. Often he does
not understand the testimony. The local findings have to be approved
at Washington by the Department of Labour. But the approval is by a
clerk who, like the inspector, often wants to make a record. The
opportunity for collusion with police, with crusaders, with employers,
with Chambers of Commerce, and with organization bent on “ridding the
country of disturbers” is manifest. Often men are arrested, tried,
convicted, and possibly placed on ships for their home countries before
their families are aware of what has happened to them.
The alien is denied every protection of our constitution. The Bill of
Rights does not apply to him. He has no presentment before a Grand
Jury, there is no jury trial, he rarely has counsel, and he is often
held incommunicado by the official who has taken him into custody and
who wants to justify his arrest. The only recourse the alien has is
the writ of habeas corpus. But this is of practically no avail. For
the courts have held that if there is a scintilla of evidence on which
the inspector could act the court will not review the finding. And
a scintilla is any evidence at all. When to this is added the fact
that the charge “likely to become a public charge” has come to cover
almost any condition that might arise, and as this charge is usually
added to the others as a recourse on which the inspector may fall
back, the chance of relief in the court is practically nil. Under the
laws as they now exist the alien is a man without a country. He has no
protection from the constitution and little protection under the laws.
The alien knows this. He feels that he is defenceless. American liberty
to him means the liberty of a policeman, a health or school official,
an immigration inspector, and agents of the department of justice to
invade his home, to seize his papers, to arrest without warrant, to
hold incommunicado, and to deport on a charge that is often as foreign
to the facts as anything could be.
It is this more than anything else that has embittered the alien
towards America during the last few years. It is this that makes him
feel that he is not wanted here. It is this that is sending hundreds of
thousands back to Europe, many of them among the best of the aliens and
many of them worthy in every way of our confidence and welcome.
A proper immigration policy should be a national policy. Not something
for the alien alone but for our own people. For the immigration problem
is merely another form of the domestic problem. When we are ready to
settle the one we will settle the other. A cross section of one branch
of our political State is a cross section of another. The alien of
to-day is not very different from the alien of yesterday. He has the
same instincts and desires as did those who came in the _Mayflower_.
Only those who came in the _Mayflower_ made their own laws and their
own fortunes. Those who come to-day have their laws made for them by
the class that employs them and they make their own fortunes only as
those aliens who came first permit them to do so.
FREDERIC C. HOWE
RACIAL MINORITIES
“... not to laugh at the actions of men, nor yet to deplore or
detest them, but simply to understand them.”--_Spinoza._
In America, the race-problem is not only without answer; thus far it is
even without formulation. In the face of ordinary economic, political,
and religious difficulties, people habitually formulate creeds
which give a kind of rhyme and reason to their actions; but where
inter-racial relations are concerned, the leaders go pussy-footing
all around the fundamental question, while the emotions of the masses
translate themselves into action, and action back again into emotion,
with less consideration of means and ends than one expects of the
maddest bomb-thrower. Everybody has some notion of the millennial aims
of the Communist Party, the National Association of Manufacturers, the
W.C.T.U., the Holy Rollers; but what are the Southerners getting at,
when they educate the Negro, and refuse him the ballot; what ultimate
result does the North expect from the granting of the franchise and
the denial of social equality? Do both the North and the South hope
to maintain a permanent racial division of the country’s population?
If so, are the Indians, the Jews and the Asiatics to be classed
with the Negroes, as unassimilable minorities? How is the conduct
of the American majority suited to this aim, if it is an aim? How
can permanent division be maintained, except by permanent prejudice?
What do the racial liberators, ameliorators, uplifters, and general
optimists think about it; or do they think about it at all?