relatively but absolutely, and at the same time the native American,
whose ancestry was pre-dominantly Nordic, began to be crowded to the
wall. In certain sections of New England that progressive change soon
became all too evident and has made them no longer American but foreign
communities. The French Canadians, Irish, and Poles took over whole
districts and occupied the abandoned farms. The Polish Jews, settling
almost entirely in the larger cities, built up a Ghetto population
similar in most respects to the congested urbanism of their homeland.
Americans were so obsessed with the idea of a "Refuge for the
Oppressed" that they even welcomed the draining into our country of
that morass of human misery found in the Polish Ghettos. When the
objection arose that there were already 1,000,000 Jews in New York
City, an effort was made to divert this migration into Texas, where the
wide-open spaces were supposed to provide room for the 7,000,000 Polish
Jews.
The German Jews, who also came into this country in smaller numbers
at the end of the last century, were of the Alpine type, closely
resembling those from Poland, Galicia, and Russia. All of these Jews
are in sharp contrast to the Sephardim Jews, a superior group, largely
Mediterranean in race, a very few of whom came from Holland to America
in Colonial times. These latter had reached Spain by way of North
Africa and later fled to Holland to escape the Inquisition.
The immigration from Scandinavia was entirely Nordic. Sweden is purely
Nordic, and Norway and Denmark are overwhelmingly so. Lithuania and
North Poland are also Nordic lands, as are the German provinces along
the Baltic; but South Poland and Galicia are Alpine, as are the
majority of the immigrants who come from South Germany. Those from the
provinces of the former Austrian Empire are mostly Alpine, although a
few Nordics came from the Tyrol.
The Balkans, Greece, Asia Minor, and Armenia sent over practically
only Alpine immigrants. French-speaking Switzerland was originally
Burgundian territory and contributed some very valuable Nordic racial
elements to America. Those from German-speaking Switzerland were
largely Alpine.
The period of the great European migration to the United States covered
just a century. Prior to that time, since the founding of the Union,
most of the immigration had been English and Scotch. Up to 1860, as
will be recalled, this British character of the immigration continued,
except for the beginning of the great stream of Germans who have been,
next to the English, the largest single element in our population.
The early Germans in the United States were, as previously described,
mostly Alpines from the upper Rhine--the Palatinate and Swabia. In the
'40's the area of the German emigration spread. At first to the western
states and provinces, which were much more Nordic in character (Hesse,
the Rhineland, Westphalia, Thuringia). All this region had an easy
outlet by the Rhine to the seaports; moreover emigration was stimulated
by the result of revolutionary activities, which forced many to leave.
After transportation began to be improved by railways, the main
currents of emigration began to flow from central and eastern Germany.
Emigration reached its first crest in the southwest and west of Germany
in the middle of the '50's, its second in Central Germany toward the
end of that decade, its third in the eastern part of the empire in the
'70's and '80's. This later emigration was, on the whole, more Nordic
than the earlier stream.
After the World War, when business conditions in Germany brought about
some years of active emigration with the United States as its main
objective, the current of emigration shifted again to the northwestern
and southwestern districts (the former Nordic, the latter mainly so)
and away from the northeast, which was even more Nordic.
The Scandinavian immigration, another main source of the Nordic
population of the United States, dates almost entirely from the period
since the Civil War. The largest volume was between 1877 and 1898, when
more than 1,000,000 arrived. One-fifth of the entire population of
Norway and Sweden moved to the New World, nearly all of them seeking
farms in the States of the upper Mississippi Valley. There has been
also an active immigration from Scandinavia since the end of the World
War. In general, the United States was the only destination which a
Scandinavian emigrant considered. Of those who left the homeland, not
one Swede in fifty directed his course elsewhere than to America. No
other emigrant population has shown such a single-minded interest in
the United States, though the Norwegians have not been far behind, with
96 per cent of their departures destined to the United States; and the
Danes, with 88 per cent.
Arriving at New York or sometimes Quebec, the immigrants made their way
to Chicago or Detroit, and thence were distributed to the States west
of the Great Lakes. The Norwegian movement was the earlier, beginning
with the southern and central counties of that kingdom and gradually
working its way north until arrivals were giving as their birthplaces
little towns far north of the Arctic Circle.
In a few decades Norwegians owned six times as much farming land in
the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and the
Dakotas (four-fifths of the immigration being found in the States
named) as did all the farmers in the "Old Country." No nationality has
sent such a small percentage of its people into the cities--one in
five of the whole, as compared with a half of the Germans, and a still
higher percentage of the Irish and Italians, who seek an urban life.
This tendency to agricultural life and to prompt and whole-hearted
Americanism has made the great body of Scandinavian immigrants one of
the most valuable that America has received.
Meanwhile there continued a steady immigration of English and Irish.
The latter envenomed our political life up to the last few years, by
introducing into the United States their old political and religious
feuds with Great Britain, and endeavoring to involve this country in
their plans for Irish freedom. As a consequence, the friendly relations
which should exist between the two great Anglo-Saxon nations have been
kept disturbed, and a systematic policy of twisting the lion's tail
was pursued, not merely by the Fenian agitators, but by American
demagogues anxious to cultivate the "Irish vote."
Prior to 1880 only 5 per cent of the immigration was from southern and
eastern Europe. Between 1860 and 1880 less than 250,000 immigrants from
eastern and southern Europe came over. Then came the rush, and between
1890 and 1910 more than 8,000,000 immigrants reached our shores from
southern and eastern Europe.
A group not homogeneous with the old native American population is
the Italian. It began arriving after 1870, but did not reach large
proportions until after 1890. Then it soon became a flood. From 1900
until the World War cut down immigration, the Italians far outnumbered
all other peoples arriving on our shores.
Northern Italy has furnished us some fine types of immigrants. They
are mostly Alpine with a Nordic admixture. Southern Italy, that is,
Naples and Sicily, sent us almost exclusively a Mediterranean stock,
which formed the great mass of Italian immigration and was of extremely
inferior type. They are derived to some extent from the slaves whom
the Romans gathered along the coasts of the Mediterranean from Syria
to Morocco and employed on their large estates or latifundia. Among
them, however, are to be found remnants of the pre-Nordic Mediterranean
population of Italy.
In earlier decades the emigration from Italy was mostly of North
Italians, commonly spoken of as "Genoese," but mainly from the crowded
Italian Riviera west of Genoa. These went to neighboring countries,
particularly France, and to South America, few of them reaching the
United States. When Italian mass emigration to this country began,
it was from central and southern Italy and Sicily, who are of quite
different racial stock from those of the more northerly districts.
The northern Italians are well thought of in the countries to which
they have gone. The southern Italians seem to be far inferior in
quality. While the country of their origin, Magna Græcia, two thousand
five hundred years ago was the source of a large part of the world's
progress in civilization, it is doubtful whether the reader can name a
single man produced in that region during the last two thousand years,
whose ability or eminence was such as to give him a worthy place in the
world's history.
Add to this that the United States did not receive even the best of the
southern Italian population, but in some instances rather the part that
the local authorities were most happy to get rid of, and it is easy to
understand how the Italian children in the American schools have shown
themselves in almost every test to be a group apart, widely separated
from every other white racial group and close to the Negro-Mulatto
children in their ability.
Of the non-English-speaking peoples who have arrived in the United
States during the last century, the 4,500,000 of Italians are
outnumbered by only one group, namely, the nearly 6,000,000 Germans.
The Italians have been more inclined to return home than some others.
In all the immigration, it has been observed that a considerable
proportion of the immigrants stayed only temporarily, sometimes
for a season of work, sometimes for a generation or until they had
accumulated enough money to return to the "Old Country" and live on
their investments. It is usually figured that the arrivals should be
diminished by about one-third to give the net of permanent immigration.
There are of course exceptions--thus it is relatively rare for a Jew
who came to the United States to move out of the country later.
During the sixteen years, 1908-23, the total alien emigration from the
United States was 35 per cent of the total alien immigration, and the
differences between the racial groups in respect to this tendency were
immense.[10]
This ebb and flow of migration is often overlooked. It is impossible to
understand the population figures without bearing it in mind.
While the departure of so many unassimilable aliens is highly
favorable, the fact that migratory cheap labor thus floats into and
out of the country to compete with the native white, may of course
have most serious effects socially and economically on the older stock.
Fortunately, this has now been stopped by suitable restrictions.
Taking a long view over the whole history of immigration into the
United States in the century and a half before 1930 one sees that
approximately half of the total was from the countries of northern
and western Europe, which are largely and some distinctly Nordic in
population, and which sent us people who, in most cases, were easily
assimilated by the Native Americans. Most of these came in during the
first century of the Republic's life, as pointed out above.
After 1890 the tide turned strongly to southern and eastern Europe, the
countries of which in 1913 (the last year of unrestricted immigration)
sent 85 per cent of the total as against 15 per cent from northern
and western Europe. The main contributors to this later stream, often
called the "new immigration" as distinct from the "old immigration"
were, in order of importance, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian
Empire.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: The Chinese stood at the head of the list, emigrants from
here exceeding immigrants by 30 per cent--that is, none were coming in
as permanent residents, because of legislative restrictions; and some
of the earlier arrivals were going home to stay. In a number of groups
the outflow was more than half of the inflow--Bulgarians, Serbians,
Montenegrins, 89 per cent; Turkish, 86 per cent; Koreans, 73 per cent;
Rumanians, 66 per cent; Magyars, 66 per cent; Italians (South), 60 per
cent; Cubans, 58 per cent; Slovaks, 57 per cent; Russians, 52 per cent.
The lowest rate of re-migration was that of the Jews, 5 per cent. The
Irish showed 11 per cent; Scotch and Welsh, 13 per cent; Armenians, 15
per cent; Dutch and Flemish, 18 per cent; Mexican, 19 per cent; English
and French, 21 per cent; Scandinavian, 22 per cent; Syrian, 24 per
cent; Lithuanian, 25 per cent; and Finnish, 29 per cent.]
XIII
THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA
Under the impact of the "new immigration," most of it dating from the
beginning of the present century, the complexion of the States which,
as repeatedly shown, was almost wholly Nordic and Protestant, began to
change rapidly. As concerned their native-born population, most of the
States followed the rule, often mentioned in these pages, that a State
is populated, in the first instance by its own increase, and secondly
by movements from the States directly adjacent to it.
Maine, according to the 1930 census, with about one-tenth of the
population of New England, is only five-eighths native stock, _i.e._,
native white of native parents. These were mostly people born in Maine,
with a few from surrounding States. Of its foreign stock, three-fourths
were French Canadians.
New Hampshire presents a similar picture, with a slightly higher
percentage of native Americans from nearby States.
Vermont's native population, aside from that portion born in the State
itself, came from New Hampshire or Massachusetts and even more from New
York. As in the two States previously mentioned, most of the foreign
stock is from French Canada, and that which was not from Quebec is
mostly Irish.
The Slavs and Italians have made little inroad in these three States.
Massachusetts in 1930 was more cosmopolitan, with 300,000 residents
from other New England States and nearly 100,000 from New York. The
old white stock, however, now makes up but one-third of the population
of the Bay State. French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Poles, Russians,
and Scandinavians, in the order named, have completely overwhelmed the
native stock--even such a small country as Lithuania is represented in
Massachusetts by more than 50,000 people.
Rhode Island's population, similarly, is now only one-third from the
old stock. Its complexion is similar to that of Massachusetts. French
Canadian Catholics control the government in many communities.
Connecticut, like Rhode Island, has about one-third old American stock.
Here the Italians are the dominant element in number, with Irish,
Slavs, and French Canadians almost equally numerous.
Thus New England, with its more than 8,000,000 population, has been
virtually lost to the native Americans. Their birthrate in that area
has long been far below the level necessary to prevent its dying out,
and migration to the west is not now caused by the region's increase,
as in Colonial times, but by an actual uprooting of families whose
place is taken by others who in race, language, religion, culture, and
institutions are quite out of harmony with American traditions.
A similar picture is observed when one turns to the 26,000,000
inhabitants of the Middle Atlantic States--the most populous, the
wealthiest, and in many ways the most powerful section of the country.
The old stock makes up but one-third of New York's population. For
its composition every State in the Union has been drawn on, with
Pennsylvania and New Jersey furnishing the largest contingents. The
State has well on to half a million Negroes--mostly in Manhattan,
though the ratio of increase of Negroes in some of the other cities of
the State vastly outstripped the ratio of increase of Whites between
1920 and 1930. Thus while the Whites of Buffalo increased 11 per cent
in the decade, the Negroes increased 200 per cent; in Syracuse they
increased twice, in Utica four times, in Rochester seven times, in
Albany eight times, as fast as the whites--due, of course, to the
migration of great numbers of mulattoes from the Southern States
northward.
With its two million Jews, its million and a half Italians, its million
Germans, and its three-quarters of a million each of Poles and Irish,
together with substantial contingents from almost every other country
on the map, the Empire State is scarcely able to meet the requirements
of the Founders of the Republic, who, like Thomas Jefferson, feared
above everything else the formation of an alien, urban proletariat as
creating a condition under which a democratic form of government could
not function successfully.
Three-eighths of New Jersey's population were still of the old native
stock in 1930, though half of these were born in other States,
particularly New York and Pennsylvania. The rest of the population was
a heterogeneous mixture of half a million British (largely Irish), half
a million southern Italians, a quarter of a million Poles, a somewhat
larger number of Germans, and so on down the list.
Pennsylvania makes a somewhat better showing, with more than half of
its population still old native Americans. Of the later arrivals the
largest number, well on to a million, was of British (including Irish)
extraction. Italy and Poland each sent more than half a million,
Germany not much less, Russia and Czechoslovakia each more than 200,000.
In both these divisions, then, the New England and the Middle Atlantic
States, containing as they do more than a third of the entire
population of the United States, the old American stock is now reduced
to a minority. Fortunately, this cannot be said of any of the other
major divisions of the country, though it is true of a few other
individual States--Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota--where the
foreign-born or their offspring are in a slight majority, but of good
Nordic stock. On the whole, it is the northern and central parts of
the Atlantic Coast that have become the worst un-American parts of
the Union. The South Atlantic States play a much less important part
nowadays than they did a century ago, in furnishing population to the
rest of the country; but they are still American. In the following
discussion their Negro population is ignored, and consideration is
limited to the Whites, unless otherwise stated.
Delaware, with more than three-fifths of its people belonging to the
old stock, has drawn no great additions in late years except from its
neighbors on the west and south, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Its alien
element is a cosmopolitan one in which no single group particularly
preponderates.
Maryland is three-fourths native. Its industrial and commercial life,
centered in Baltimore, has drawn a population from an unusually wide
area, and this tendency has been greatly accentuated because many
of the cosmopolitan group in Washington, D.C., actually reside in
Maryland. Thus in addition to the heavy contingents from Pennsylvania
and Virginia, it has groups of a thousand or more each from half the
States in the Union. The bulk of its foreign population is made up of
Germans, Poles, Russians (including Jews), and Italians, in addition to
the British.
The District of Columbia, as the seat of the Federal Government,
naturally draws its residents from every part of the United States,
the largest element of what may be called its permanent population
being from Virginia and Maryland. There is no large foreign element,
but the Negroes, more than one-fourth of the whole, are nowhere more
aggressive. It is generally understood that the reason Congress has
never been willing to grant the residents of the district the right
to vote, even in local affairs, is that it would be likely to put
the political control in the hands of this Negro block, which would
always find unscrupulous white politicians ready to forget their own
birthright and truckle to it.
Virginia is almost purely of old native stock, Virginian born. Its
seaports and its proximity to the District of Columbia account for some
residents from other States. After dealing in quarter millions and half
millions to describe the foreign-born of the North Atlantic States,
it is with something like incredulity that one notes only 23,000
foreign-born Whites of all sorts in the Old Dominion. The number who
are native-born of foreign or mixed parentage, and therefore classified
as "foreign stock," is twice as large; but many thereof are British.
With Virginia, one reaches the region where the old native American
holds his ground.
North Carolina makes a still more striking picture. In its population
of more than three million, the 1930 census enumerators found scarcely
25,000 foreign-born or of foreign parentage. North Carolina is an
active industrial State, yet it has been able to attain to its modern
development from its own resources. Its neighbors on the North and
South, together, have supplied a hundred thousand citizens; other
regions have contributed a few; but the old white American stock
in this State, as in many others of the South, has been largely
self-sufficing.
South Carolina is not only of the American stock, but has had few
outsiders, even from adjacent States. In addition to natives, a
very few British and Germans, a very few Northerners, and moderate
contingents from the nearby States make up its white population, which
is still but slightly larger than the Negro element in the State.
Georgia fits into the same pattern, though it has attracted a few more
of the "new immigration"--Slavs and Italians; and a few more Yankees,
so that its population, on the whole, is somewhat more cosmopolitan.
Florida, on the other hand, has had an influx both of Northerners,
who have almost changed the political complexion of the State; and of
the foreign stock, largely Nordic, it is true, but with a West Indian
element that is less assimilable. Of its million Whites, a sixth are of
foreign stock, including almost every one of the nationalities found
anywhere in the United States. But despite this somewhat cosmopolitan
nature of its population, the State is overwhelmingly Nordic, like the
other Southern commonwealths.
West Virginia, cut off from the Old Dominion by a technically
questionable move at the beginning of the Civil War, showed by this
very "secession" of its own that its population differed widely from
that of the Tidewater. As pointed out earlier, the latter region was
English and the mountains were Ulster Scotch, with a widely different
outlook on life. The western part of the State had never been a great
slave-holding region, partly because of the sentiment of the people,
partly because there was little for a slave to do there that a free
white could not do much better. To this day only one in sixteen of
the population of West Virginia is colored, and it is still largely
native white, despite the coal mines, which in other regions have come
to depend largely on the labor of Slavs. In the 10 per cent of its
foreign-stock population West Virginia has a scattering of Slavs, as
also of almost every other people, but the largest element is British,
the next German.
Kentucky offers no exception to the rule that the Southern States are
still almost wholly native white. The only important foreign element
is a small German one. It still retains a little of the tendency which
made it, a century or more ago, one of the chief colonizing States, for
it has more of its native sons scattered throughout the Union, than has
almost any other Southern State.
Virginia still sends out a surplus population, and Georgia notably has
done so, though mainly to the States nearest at hand. Kentucky and
Tennessee have sent out pioneers to more distant regions. At present,
for instance, they have as many representatives on the Pacific Coast as
have all the South Atlantic States together.
Tennessee's racial make-up is very similar to that of Kentucky,
although there is still the marked contrast in the "atmosphere" of the
two States, which has existed from the beginning.
Alabama's composition is not very dissimilar to the two just mentioned,
save that the Italian element is a little larger. Its main foreign
stocks, however, are British and German.