A song was popular about forty years ago, in which was couched an
invitation to every nation to come along and make no delay, as “Uncle
Sam is rich enough to give you all a farm.” At Castle Garden, since that
invitation, respondent aliens to the number of over seven and a half
million have “come along,” and Uncle Sam has redeemed the promise to all
who applied. Yet, munificent as is this bounty, the State of New York
bestows a more liberal hospitality, and a more beneficent care on the
immigrant. During a discussion in a New York club lately of the question
“What does this country owe to other nations?” a gentleman vehemently
protested against the assumption couched in the question. “When a subject
of another nation lands on our shores,” he said, “we meet him with food
and raiment, find him occupation, and give him a farm. Talk about our
owing other people anything! The obligation is all on the other side.”
The speaker did not half recite the obligation that the Empire State
assumes on behalf of the stranger. It reaches out arms of protection
to him, like a mother yearning across seas, almost from the time he
sets sail. It meets the ship at the Lower Bay of New York, inspects its
sanitary condition and that of the passenger; hears his complaints, and
if he have any grievance, tries to remedy it. It receives him at Castle
Garden, helps him to secure and check his baggage and buy a passage
ticket to any point at lowest rates. It gives him his mail, if he have
any waiting; telegraphs or writes the news of his arrival to his friends,
if he have any in this country, and sends him and his baggage to them
if his destination be in or near the city. It gives him food if he be
hungry; medicine and nursing if he be ill; a Bible if he can read; sends
him to an asylum, if he be _non compos mentis_, or back to Europe if
he be a pauper. It changes his foreign coin into American on terms of
equal value, and gives him a piece of paper with the whole transaction
figured out so he can ponder over it and come back for explanations
or corrections, if need be. It finds him a hotel, if he want one, the
proprietor of which is under heavy bonds to kindly entreat the stranger
and not overcharge him; it stands guard with big clubs to keep off
biped wolves, and if, notwithstanding, in the exercise of his new-found
liberty, he walk into pitfalls, it sends a detective or a policeman to
secure him restitution. It finds him immediate occupation at prices
that sound fabulous by the side of his old-time pittance; it furnishes
interpreters, guides and guardians—in a word, exercises over him a wiser
and more helpful paternalism of government than he has ever known. And
all this paternal care it extends to him not only when he arrives;
it stands ready to renew the guardianship at any time within a year
thereafter if he return to Castle Garden and ask it. Most of this it does
without charge to the immigrant; all of it is free if he have no money
to pay withal. Not so much is done for any other visitor—not even for
the titled and wealthy stranger. Nay, the opera singer or the champion
pugilist receives less consideration. Really, the only “distinguished
arrivals” in this country are the steerage passengers.
The State of New York stands guardian to the whole United States in this
matter. Its little timely aid and provision of employment, its security
extended to those destined inland, as well as the care it takes to
prohibit entirely the landing of paupers and helpless ones, prevent many
from becoming a public expense in other states.
Perhaps you are ready to give it credit, in all this, for Christian
philanthropy. Not at all. It is enlightened self-interest on the part of
the State. She is simply guarding the chief city of the country, which
happens to be within her borders, from the peril and cost of unregulated
immigration. And she takes care to make some one else pay all the bills,
my friend. The expense of doing all this is chiefly met by a tax on
the steamship lines, called “head-money;” a tax of two dollars a head,
for all steerage passengers. And besides that she makes the steamship
company, at its own expense, carry back to the old country any emigrant
who has no money or friends in this. In collecting the head-money tax
and in enforcing the restrictions against pauper immigration the State
has indirectly the powerful aid of the United States government—a plain
recognition of the fact that the whole duty properly belongs to the
latter.
The regulation of immigration by states is one of the anomalies of our
government. It is a relic of the early conflicts between the powers
of state and nation. After the infant Yankee nation had outgrown its
first constitution—that absurd, distrustful experiment of setting up a
nation and denying it all governmental powers—the matter of imposing and
collecting duties on imports of merchandise, etc., which had formed one
of the chief bones of contention between states, was taken from state
authority entirely, and given in charge of the general government. But at
the same time the regulation of the more important _human_ importations
was left with the states, and to this day the general government assumes
no control in the matter of what is strictly an international interest,
and concerns the welfare of all the states. Thus it came about that the
states in which are immigration ports acquired a large control over the
character of the population, and hence over the prosperity of other
states. That a business so much international and interstate in character
should have been left to local governments is a curious illustration of
the lack of foresight on the part of the founders of the constitution, as
well as one of the many evidences that they were not at heart democratic
enough to thoroughly believe in and understand the common people. Had
they anticipated that the time would ever come when human cargoes should
disbark upon our shores to the number of half a million in a year, of
people unused to our institutions and uneducated in self-government,
they doubtless would have devised a protective tariff which would have
prevented an invasion so threatening, as they might think, to our peace
and stability. It is often well that statesmen are not more prescient.
Legislating for the future in the light of the present, they would
most certainly go wrong, especially in legislating for a country of
such rapidly changing conditions as have followed each other here.
Those adopted citizens who raise the cry against the Chinese and demand
protection against imported labor, may thank their stars that the same
spirit did not seize the prophetic minds of the earlier law-makers of the
country.
Castle Garden, on the Battery, gives on the loveliest and healthiest park
of New York and the noblest harbor in the world. The main structure is
old Castle Clinton, a large circular fort built early in the century for
the protection of the city. Now it is converted to the uses of peace,
to welcome invaders instead of repelling them, but still to protect the
city, and the state and the nation. The open central space has been
roofed over and converted into a great rotunda; while the embrasures and
casemates designed for great cannon and magazines are used for baggage
rooms and various apartments. This is better than hammering swords into
plow-shares, this using forts to welcome ploughmen to our broad acres.
Wooden excrescences around the wall provide offices, hospitals, insane
asylums, labor bureaus, and various other departments. The rotunda and
fort walls can accommodate 3,000 immigrants and their baggage—and do you
know all that the words, immigrant’s baggage, implies?
On this little amphitheater of war is daily held a Congress of All
Nations. If you want to see Europe, come to Castle Garden, not go abroad.
There is nothing left over there but the houses and the superfluous
nobility and wealthy. Men are Europe, and the manhood of Europe is being
skimmed off for America’s use. A gentleman told me that when he traveled
in Circassia he looked in vain through the mass of awe-inspiring female
ugliness for the famous types of Circassian beauty. “Where are the
beautiful women?” he asked. “In Constantinople, all,” was the answer. So,
he said, it is with the manliness of Europe—it goes to America. Not the
most cultured, intelligent and favored. It would be small merit in them
to break away and come to America; that they do not proves that they are
too contented, fat and selfish for our use. But a man who, being born and
trained to a life of subjection and dependence; rooted to the spot on
which generations of his fathers have lived and died; who hardly knows
whether his native hills or city streets bound the world or not—when
one of these tears up his roots and sets out three thousand miles in
search of a chance to breathe and grow, be sure, be very sure there is
a spark in him of something that is wanted in this country. There is
the germ of an American citizen; the growth of it will appear in a few
generations. It is this surviving, vital spark of character that enables
this nation to assimilate so much crude human material and convert the
so-called “offscourings of Europe” into elements of national prosperity
and strength. What could we have done in forty years with seven and a
half million foreign aristocrats and capitalists? What would have become
of us if they had come to us! A few of them have come lately, and they
are already trying to build here a landed aristocracy, and on stolen land
at that. Men should be estimated by the abuses and disadvantages they
have survived, as well as by what they are. The courage, independence and
aspiration that outlive centuries of subjection in sufficient force to
carry a man half around the world into _terra incognita_ are the elements
of empire.
A ship load of six or ten hundred does not make a very big caucus in this
rotunda of the world’s congress, but it makes the scene picturesque,
as to costumes, more so as to goods and chattels—the latter seeming
to include women and children. All the family heir-looms, such as
pots, pans, feather-beds and nondescript furniture came along. I can
believe in all the dozen ship loads of “traps” that “came over in the
‘Mayflower,’” since seeing one load of later immigrants debouch. And
they come, like a lot of wealthy bankrupts, with all their property on
their wives’ backs. The loads on these biped beasts of burden make one
think of the loads of hay on small donkeys in Spain, or those mountains
packed on camels in the East. At the head of the family caravan marches
the _pater familias_ loaded down with a shot-gun, half a dozen canes, a
long-tailed pipe or some queer fiddle-looking instrument. Well, he has
never been able to stand upright and hold up his head in the presence
of anybody _but_ his wife. A man must rise superior to something. One
of these years, mayhap, the order of superiority will be reversed, and
some of the daughters of this flock be advocating, or at least thinking,
women’s rights at Chautauqua. Housewives can tell you how soon some
of the daughters of these subjugated women learn a goodly degree of
independence. I anticipate this result more for the girls than the boys,
because when the caravan files before the clerk’s desk for registration
these “beasts of burden” are often the only ones self-possessed enough
to give the names, ages and intentions of the family. Often the lord
and master has forgotten the names, generally the ages of his children,
and not infrequently he has to refer to his chattel for his own name
and age. There is a scared look in all eyes. I don’t wonder, after such
an uprooting and hegira, that they look dazed, and that some go clean
daft—as they do.
One naturally looks here for the queer in dress, action or design, and
there is plenty to gratify the curiosity. Far across are two men who
look like Digger Indians in queer costumes—dirty red, long sacks and
short laced leggings. They are squatty, swarthy, sluggish, and outwardly
uncanny-looking. We go across the wide rotunda and find that each of
these unpromising delegates has a Bible, and that one of them is writing
the fly-leaf over with much small, neat chirography—a language which no
one here can interpret. They are Russian Finns. Despise nothing you see
here, my friend. You would look a trifle out of condition, and mayhap
your “plug hat” would excite a smile after a steerage journey to Finland.
I doubt if, arrived there, you would settle to as intelligent and
philosophical an occupation as writing a commentary on the Bible.
Then come a more canny couple—two manny-clad, bright-faced boys, Scotch
bairns, as their pretty dialect reveals. One is ten and the other eleven
years old; and these bit laddies are making the journey all the way alone
from Loch Lomond to Loch Michigan; billed and ticketed to their widower
father in Chicago. It is a picnic to them, you can see, yet in their
childish faces there is a sedate gravity, such as belongs to the earnest
race of the Covenanters. Nearly six hundred children last year came thus
alone “over the back of the round sea” to seek parents or friends. There
are in the United States Senate, in gubernatorial chairs, at the head of
great industries, in leading positions of all kinds, other boys who in
other years came thus alone to the land of promise. So we despise not the
day of small things at Castle Garden, says our attentive _chaperon_.
The most out-of-place delegate that I saw here was a Bedouin Arab. “What
sought he thus afar!” Very tall and slender and sinewy; swarthy skin,
black, close-cropped hair, intensely black stubbed beard, behind and
amidst which his white teeth, constantly exposed like a bull-dog’s, shine
like a battery behind a bristling _chevaux de frise_. His head is raised,
his nostrils dilated, his black, piercing eyes look far away over the
unseen crowds; he moves restlessly with a swift, cat-like tread and an
undulatory motion of his long, lithe body, like that of a tiger. He seems
a veritable wild beast at bay, and I watch from a respectful distance to
see him pounce down on some unsuspecting emigrant. Yet might not this
animal some day turn up an alderman in a “growing city,” having first
studied law? ’Twere not to consider too curiously to consider so; no,
faith, not a jot. I admit it were some time a paradox, but now our time
gives it proof.
Plenty of romances and not a few tragedies are enacted or consummated
here. If the re-unions that take place in this old fort consecrate it
to humanity, and make it a temple of affection, its disappointments
make it a theater for melodramas and tragedies in reality. Last year
one hundred and fifty-three emigrants were sent to the insane asylum on
Ward’s Island, East River, a large proportion of whom were young people,
and a majority women. They come over to find their mates, and either
do not meet them, or worse, find they have lost them indeed. Thence
they become aliens to the whole universe and find their only home in
the Fantastic Realm. Melancholia is the prevalent form of aberration.
The shock of transplanting and the excitement of new scenes upon simple
and undeveloped natures are also a pregnant cause of mental overthrow.
A little negro boot black, contemplating the insane asylum, said to me
reflectively, “I think anybody is foolish to go crazy.” As three-fourths
of the crazy ones here are unmarried, it might seem foolish to expose
themselves when so simple a remedy is so available as marriage is here.
For Castle Garden is a famous place for weddings. Romances begun in the
old country or on shipboard, and eke runaway matches to this distant
Gretna Green find fusion here. Plenty of girls also come to America to
unanticipated homes. A curious feature of the supply agency of the bureau
is its match-making offices. The commissioners are applied to by men in
this country for wives—perhaps on the principle that if a man marries he
will be compelled to support a German or Irish girl anyway, so he might
as well marry one and have done with trouble on that score. Sometimes,
also, a man sends by mail his request, as who should say, “Please forward
to my address in good order, upon approval, one (1) wife, per express.”
The original of the following letter was shown me at the superintendent’s
office:
“FORT CŒUR D’ALENE, IDAHO TERRITORY.
“DEAR SIR:—Having noticed in the columns of some New York papers
that some young men have procured good wives at the Castle
Garden, and as I presume that the demand is not equal to the
supply, I am desirous of having a good, honest woman for a wife
and would make an offer of a comfortable home to a deserving
woman. Of course the lady must be consulted about taking her
chances in coming out this far, but I am making this offer in
good faith and would like an answer as soon as your convenience
will permit. My reasons for sending so far are—I am keeping a
hotel, stables and ranch on one of the few routes to the newly
discovered Cœur d’Alene gold fields, am doing a fair business, am
a young bachelor not yet thirty-two, and can’t find a girl of any
use to me inside of three hundred miles. So I thought I, being a
New Yorker myself, would send and have you try and procure me a
life-partner. Hoping this may meet with kind favor I am, yours,
etc.,
“M. E. L.”
There is never any difficulty in making up these improvised matches, but
the wooers, like young Lochinvar, have to come out from the West and make
their own selections. So far as reported, these matches result happily,
which goes to show that connubial felicity does not always follow the law
of natural selection. Perhaps the matches that are made in Castle Garden
are different from those reputed to have been made in heaven.
Somewhat too much of incident.
Is there in all history a human migratory movement like this? Men have
always been, like poor Joe, moving on, but generally for conquest or
subjugation of other races. No such fusion of bloods has ever before
taken place—the nearest approach to it being the amalgamation of races
through which the modern Englishman came. But that commingling was
always the result of conquest and subjugation, and the antagonistic
nature of the union delayed the peaceful fusion and left its impress of
belligerency on the resultant race characteristic. In this last Anabasis
of Liberty, however, everybody is welcome, all elements are assimilated,
everything converted to the uses of empire and the work of peopling a
continent with an entirely new race of men—new in blood, thought and aim.
Whether as a result of the varied forces of heredity or the unprecedented
influences of environment, it is evident that here a new people is being
created for a new purpose. The future Greene who shall essay the writing
of “The Making of America,” will find in the mutual reaction of race
characteristics on each other, in the influence of material surroundings
and in the stimulus of free institutions, the profound study of the
origin and evolution of the American citizen.