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RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA
[Illustration: ELLIS ISLAND, IMMIGRATION STATION]
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA
BY JOHN R. COMMONS
PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1907
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1907.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
REFERENCES vii
CHAPTER
I. RACE AND DEMOCRACY 1
II. COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 22
III. THE NEGRO 39
IV. NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 63
V. INDUSTRY 107
VI. LABOR 135
VII. CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 160
VIII. POLITICS 179
IX. AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 198
INDEX 239
ILLUSTRATIONS
ELLIS ISLAND, IMMIGRANT STATION _Frontispiece_
PAGE
"RETURN OF THE MAYFLOWER." Painting By Boughton, 1834 _opposite_ 24
ANGLO-SAXON MOUNTAINEERS, BEREA COLLEGE, KENTUCKY _opposite_ 36
COUNTIES HAVING A LARGER PROPORTION OF NEGROES IN 1900
THAN IN 1880 _opposite_ 50
MOVEMENT OF IMMIGRANTS, IMPORTS OF MERCHANDISE PER
CAPITA AND IMMIGRANTS PER 10,000 POPULATION _between_ 63-64
ALIENS AWAITING ADMISSION AT ELLIS ISLAND _opposite_ 78
NORWEGIAN, ITALIAN, AND ARABIC TYPES " 90
SLAV, JEWISH, POLACK, AND LITHUANIAN TYPES " 96
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS OF IMMIGRANTS--1906 _between_ 108-109
AMERICAN SCHOOL BOYS _opposite_ 122
FILIPINO GOVERNORS " 142
GOVERNOR JOHNSON OF MINNESOTA.--SWEDE " 154
DR. ORONHYATEKHA, MOHAWK INDIAN. LATE CHIEF OF
ORDER OF FORESTERS " 168
CHINESE STUDENTS, HONOLULU " 186
FACULTY OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE " 202
SLAVIC HOME MISSIONARIES " 216
ALIENS AWAITING ADMISSION AT ELLIS ISLAND " 230
REFERENCES CITED IN FOOTNOTES
"AMERICA'S RACE PROBLEMS." A series of discussions on indigenous race
elements and the negro. _American Academy of Political and Social
Science_, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (1901).
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS:--
No. 1. "Mortality among Negroes in Cities" (1896).
No. 2. "Social and Physical Condition of Negroes in Cities" (1897).
No. 3. "Some Efforts of Negroes for Social Betterment" (1898).
No. 6. "The Negro Common School" (1901).
No. 7. "The Negro Artisan" (1902).
No. 8. "The Negro Church" (1903).
No. 9. "Notes on Negro Crime" (1904).
No. 10. "A Select Bibliography of the Negro American" (1905).
BALCH, EMILY GREENE, "Slav Emigration at its Source," _Charities_, 1906.
"Introductory," Jan. 6; "Bohemians," Feb. 3; "Slovaks," March 3, April
7; "Galicia, Austrian Poles, Ruthenians," May 5.
BLUNTSCHLI, J. K., _The Theory of the State_. New York, 1885.
BRANDENBURG, BROUGHTON, _Imported Americans_ (1904). Description of trip
by author and wife through southern Italy and Sicily and return by
steerage with immigrants.
BRINTON, DANIEL G., _Religions of Primitive Peoples_. New York, 1897.
BUREAU OF LABOR, Seventh Special Report, _The Slums of Baltimore,
Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia_ (1894). Ninth Special Report, _The
Italians in Chicago_ (1897).
BURGESS, JOHN W., _Reconstruction and the Constitution_, 1866-1876. New
York, 1903.
BUSHEE, FREDERICK A., "Ethnic Factors in the Population of Boston,"
_American Economic Association_, 3d Series, Vol. IV, pp. 305-470 (1903).
CASSON, HERBERT N., _Munsey's Magazine_, "The Jews in America," 34:381;
"The Sons of Old Scotland in America," 34:599; "The Germans in America,"
34:694; "The Scandinavians in America," 35:613; "The Welsh in America,"
35:749; "The Italians in America," 35:122; "The Dutch in America,"
35:238; "The Spanish in America," 35:294.
COMAN, KATHERINE, "The History of Contract Labor in the Hawaiian
Islands," _American Economic Association_, 3d Series, Vol. IV, No. 3
(1903). "The Negro as Peasant Farmer," _American Statistical
Association_, June, 1904, pp. 39-54.
COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION, _Annual Reports_, Washington.
COMMISSIONER-GENERAL OF IMMIGRATION, _Annual Reports_, Washington.
COMMONS, J. R., _Proportional Representation_. New York, 1907.
CUTLER, JAMES E., _Lynch Law. An Investigation into the History of
Lynching in the United States_. New York, 1905.
DE FOREST AND VEILLIER, _The Tenement House Problem_, 2 vols. New York,
1903.
DU BOIS, W. E. B., _The Philadelphia Negro_. Philadelphia, 1899; _The
Soul of Black Folk._ New York, 1903; "Negroes," Twelfth Census,
_Supplementary Analysis_, pp. 185-275; "The Negro Farmer," pp. 511-579.
EATON, DORMAN B., _The Civil Service in Great Britain_. New York, 1880.
EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES, Special Consular Reports, Vol. XXX.
Department of Commerce and Labor, 1904.
_Facts about Immigration._ Reports of Conferences of the Immigration
Department of the National Civic Federation, Sept. 14 and Dec. 12, 1906.
New York, 1907.
_Federation._ Quarterly Journal of Federation of Churches and Christian
Organizations, New York. Especially June, July, December, 1902, March,
June, October, 1903. Also annual reports and sociological canvasses of
the Federation.
FISKE, JOHN, _Old Virginia and her Neighbors_, 2 vols. New York, 1897.
FLEMING, WALTER L., _Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama_. New York,
1897.
FRANKLIN, F. J., _The Legislative History of Naturalization in the
United States_. Chicago, 1906.
GROSE, HOWARD B., _Aliens or Americans?_ Forward Mission Study Courses.
New York, 1906.
HALL, PRESCOTT F., _Immigration and its Effect upon the United States_.
New York, 1906.
HAMPTON NEGRO CONFERENCE, Annual, 1897-1901.
HANNA, CHARLES A., _The Scotch-Irish_, 2 vols. New York, 1902.
HAWAII, REPORTS ON, United States Bureau of Labor, 1st Report, Sen. Doc.
169, 57th Congress, 1st Sess., 13:4231; 2d Report, _Bulletin_ No. 47
(1903); 3d Report, _Bulletin_ No. 66 (1906).
HOFFMAN, FREDERICK L., "Race Traits and Tendencies of the American
Negro," _Publications of the American Economic Association_, Vol. XI,
Nos. 1, 2, 3 (1896).
HUEBNER, GROVER G., "The Americanization of the Immigrant," _American
Academy of Political and Social Science_, May, 1906, p. 191.
_Hull House Maps and Papers, A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages
in a Congested District of Chicago_, by residents of Hull House. New
York, 1895.
HUNTER, ROBERT, _Poverty_. New York, 1904. Chapter VI, "The Immigrant."
_Immigration Laws and Regulations and Chinese Exclusion Laws_, Bureau of
Immigration and Naturalization, Washington.
IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION LEAGUE, Prescott F. Hall, Secretary, Boston,
Mass. Leaflets.
INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION, Vol. XV, _Immigration and Education_; Vol. XIX,
_Miscellaneous_ (1901).
JACKSON, HELEN HUNT, _A Century of Dishonor_. New York, 1881.
JAPANESE AND KOREAN EXCLUSION LEAGUE, San Francisco. Leaflets.
JENKS, J. W., _Certain Economic Questions in the English and Dutch
Colonies in the Orient_. War Department, Bureau of Insular Affairs,
1902, Doc. No. 168.
JEWISH AGRICULTURAL AND INDUSTRIAL AID SOCIETY, _Annual Reports_. New
York.
KELLOR, FRANCES A., _Out of Work_. New York, 1904.
KELSEY, CARL, _The Negro Farmer_. Chicago, 1903. Also _Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science_, January, 1903.
KING AND OKEY, _Italy To-day_. London, 1901.
KUCZYNSKI, R., "The Fecundity of the Native and Foreign Born Population
in Massachusetts," _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, November, 1901,
February, 1902. "Die Einwanderungspolitik und die Bevoelkerungsfrage der
Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika," _Volkswirthschaftliche Zeitfragen_.
Berlin, 1903.
LAZARE, BERNARD, _Antisemitism, Its History and Causes_. New York, 1903.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, _Select List of References on the Negro Question
(1903). List of Works relating to the Germans in the United States
(1904). Select List of References on Chinese Immigration (1904).
Fourteenth Amendment_. List of Discussions of Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments with Special Reference to Negro Suffrage (1906). _List of
References on Naturalization (1907)._
LODGE, HENRY CABOT, _Historical and Political Essays_. Boston, 1892.
LORD, TRENOR, AND BARROWS, _The Italian in America_. New York, 1905.
Especially Italians in American agriculture.
MALLOCK, W. H., _Aristocracy and Evolution_. New York, 1898.
MARSHALL, ALFRED, _Principles of Economics_. New York, 1891.
MERRIAM, G. S., _The Negro and the Nation_. New York, 1906.
MUIRHEAD, JAMES F., _The Land of Contrasts_. London and New York, 1900.
MUeNSTERBERG, HUGO, _American Traits_. New York, 1902.
NATURALIZATION, REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE COMMISSION ON. Submitted
Nov. 8, 1905, 59th Cong., 1st Sess., H. R. Doc. 46.
NEGRO. Series of Articles on the Reconstruction Period, _Atlantic
Monthly_. "The Reconstruction of the Southern States," Woodrow Wilson,
87:1; "The Conditions of the Reconstruction Problem," Hilary A. Herbert,
87:145; "The Freedman's Bureau," W. E. B. Du Bois, 87:354;
"Reconstruction in South Carolina," Daniel H. Chamberlain, 87:473; "The
Ku-Klux Movement," William G. Brown, 87:634; "Washington during
Reconstruction," S. W. McCall, 87:817; "Reconstruction and
Disfranchisement," Editors, 88:31; "New Orleans and Reconstruction,"
Albert Phelps, 88:121; "The Southern People during Reconstruction,"
Thomas Nelson Page, 88:289; "The Undoing of Reconstruction," William A.
Dunning, 88:437.
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Black Belt"; No. 32, "The Negroes of Sandy Spring, Maryland"; No. 35,
"The Negro Landholder of Georgia"; No. 37, "The Negroes of Litwalton,
Virginia"; No. 38, "Negroes of Cinclare Central Factory and Calumet
Plantation, Louisiana"; No. 48, "The Negroes of Xenia, Ohio."
"NEGROES, SOCIAL INTERESTS OF, IN NORTHERN CITIES." _Charities_, special
number, Oct. 7, 1905.
RIPLEY, W. Z., _The Races of Europe_. New York, 1899.
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, _The Winning of the West_, 4 vols. New York,
1889-1894.
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"Labor Conditions in Hawaii," _American Federationist_, August, October,
December, 1905.
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American Academy of Political and Social Science_, July, 1901, pp.
67-89. The notable address in which the term "race suicide" was coined.
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Conditions_. New York, 1903. "The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky
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(1901).
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by representatives of the several Slav nationalities.
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Quarterly_, Vol. IX, pp. 426-444, 650-670 (1894).
STEWART, ETHELBERT, "Influence of Trade Unions on Immigrants," Bureau of
Labor, _Bulletin_ No. 56.
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Economic Association_, 3d Series, Vol. III, pp. 235-278 (1901). "The
Mulatto Factor in the Race Problem," _Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1903. "A
Plantation Experiment," _Quarterly Journal Economics_, 19:270 (1905).
"The Italian Cotton Grower: The Negro's Problem," _South Atlantic
Quarterly_, 4:45 (1905).
SUFFRAGE, SUPPRESSION OF THE. Report of the Committee on Political
Reform of the Union League Club. New York, 1903.
THOMAS, W. H., _The American Negro_, 1901.
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Economic Association_, 3d Series, Vol. III, No. 2 (1902).
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Contains introduction by President Roosevelt.
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1897.
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Reviews_, March, 1906.
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from Slavery_, 1901.
WATSON, ELKANAH, _Men and Times of the Revolution_. Edited by his son,
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laws of European countries and immigration laws of British Colonies and
the United States.
WOODS, R. A., _The City Wilderness_, 1898. _Americans in Process_, 1902.
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA
CHAPTER I
RACE AND DEMOCRACY
"All men are created equal." So wrote Thomas Jefferson, and so agreed
with him the delegates from the American colonies. But we must not press
them too closely nor insist on the literal interpretation of their
words. They were not publishing a scientific treatise on human nature
nor describing the physical, intellectual, and moral qualities of
different races and different individuals, but they were bent upon a
practical object in politics. They desired to sustain before the world
the cause of independence by such appeals as they thought would have
effect; and certainly the appeal to the sense of equal rights before God
and the law is the most powerful that can be addressed to the masses of
any people. This is the very essence of American democracy, that one man
should have just as large opportunity as any other to make the most of
himself, to come forward and achieve high standing in any calling to
which he is inclined. To do this the bars of privilege have one by one
been thrown down, the suffrage has been extended to every man, and
public office has been opened to any one who can persuade his
fellow-voters or their representatives to select him.
But there is another side to the successful operations of democracy. It
is not enough that equal opportunity to participate in making and
enforcing the laws should be vouchsafed to all--it is equally important
that all should be capable of such participation. The individuals, or
the classes, or the races, who through any mental or moral defect are
unable to assert themselves beside other individuals, classes, or races,
and to enforce their right to an equal voice in determining the laws and
conditions which govern all, are just as much deprived of the privilege
as though they were excluded by the constitution. In the case of
individuals, when they sink below the level of joint participation, we
recognize them as belonging to a defective or criminal or pauper class,
and we provide for them, not on the basis of their rights, but on the
basis of charity or punishment. Such classes are exceptions in point of
numbers, and we do not feel that their non-participation is a flaw in
the operations of democratic government. But when a social class or an
entire race is unable to command that share in conducting government to
which the laws entitle it, we recognize at once that democracy as a
practical institution has in so far broken down, and that, under the
forms of democracy, there has developed a class oligarchy or a race
oligarchy.
Two things, therefore, are necessary for a democratic government such as
that which the American people have set before themselves: equal
opportunities before the law, and equal ability of classes and races to
use those opportunities. If the first is lacking, we have legal
oligarchy; if the second is lacking, we have actual oligarchy disguised
as democracy.
Now it must be observed that, compared with the first two centuries of
our nation's history, the present generation is somewhat shifting its
ground regarding democracy. While it can never rightly be charged that
our fathers overlooked the inequalities of races and individuals, yet
more than the present generation did they regard with hopefulness the
educational value of democracy. "True enough," they said, "the black man
is not equal to the white man, but once free him from his legal bonds,
open up the schools, the professions, the businesses, and the offices to
those of his number who are most aspiring, and you will find that, as a
race, he will advance favorably in comparison with his white
fellow-citizens."
It is now nearly forty years since these opportunities and educational
advantages were given to the negro, not only on equal terms, but
actually on terms of preference over the whites, and the fearful
collapse of the experiment is recognized even by its partisans as
something that was inevitable in the nature of the race at that stage
of its development. We shall have reason in the following pages to enter
more fully into this discussion, because the race question in America
has found its most intense expression in the relations between the white
and the negro races, and has there shown itself to be the most
fundamental of all American social and political problems. For it was
this race question that precipitated the Civil War, with the ominous
problems that have followed upon that catastrophe; and it is this same
race problem that now diverts attention from the treatment of those
pressing economic problems of taxation, corporations, trusts, and labor
organizations which themselves originated in the Civil War. The race
problem in the South is only one extreme of the same problem in the
great cities of the North, where popular government, as our forefathers
conceived it, has been displaced by one-man power, and where a profound
distrust of democracy is taking hold upon the educated and
property-holding classes who fashion public opinion.
This changing attitude toward the educational value of self-government
has induced a more serious study of the nature of democratic
institutions and of the classes and races which are called upon to share
in them. As a people whose earlier hopes have been shocked by the hard
blows of experience, we are beginning to pause and take invoice of the
heterogeneous stocks of humanity that we have admitted to the management
of our great political enterprise. We are trying to look beneath the
surface and to inquire whether there are not factors of heredity and
race more fundamental than those of education and environment. We find
that our democratic theories and forms of government were fashioned by
but one of the many races and peoples which have come within their
practical operation, and that that race, the so-called Anglo-Saxon,
developed them out of its own insular experience unhampered by inroads
of alien stock. When once thus established in England and further
developed in America we find that other races and peoples, accustomed to
despotism and even savagery, and wholly unused to self-government, have
been thrust into the delicate fabric. Like a practical people as we
pride ourselves, we have begun actually to despotize our institutions in
order to control these dissident elements, though still optimistically
holding that we retain the original democracy. The earlier problem was
mainly a political one--how to unite into one self-governing nation a
scattered population with the wide diversity of natural resources,
climates, and interests that mark a country soon to stretch from ocean
to ocean and from the arctics to the subtropics. The problem now is a
social one,--how to unite into one people a congeries of races even more
diverse than the resources and climates from which they draw their
subsistence. That motto, "_E pluribus unum_," which in the past has
guided those who through constitutional debate and civil war worked out
our form of government, must now again be the motto of those who would
work out the more fundamental problem of divergent races. Here is
something deeper than the form of government--it is the essence of
government--for it is that union of the hearts and lives and abilities
of the people which makes government what it really is.
The conditions necessary for democratic government are not merely the
constitutions and laws which guarantee equality, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, for these after all are but paper documents. They
are not merely freedom from foreign power, for the Australian colonies
enjoy the most democratic of all governments, largely because they are
owned by another country which has protected them from foreign and civil
wars. Neither are wealth and prosperity necessary for democracy, for
these may tend to luxury, inequality, and envy. World power, however
glorious and enticing, is not helpful to democracy, for it inclines to
militarism and centralization, as did Rome in the hands of an emperor,
or Venice in the hands of an oligarchy. The true foundations of
democracy are in the character of the people themselves, that is, of the
individuals who constitute the democracy. These are: first,
intelligence--the power to weigh evidence and draw sound conclusions,
based on adequate information; second, manliness, that which the Romans
called virility, and which at bottom is dignified self-respect,
self-control, and that self-assertion and jealousy of encroachment
which marks those who, knowing their rights, dare maintain them; third,
and equally important, the capacity for cooperation, that willingness
and ability to organize, to trust their leaders, to work together for a
common interest and toward a common destiny, a capacity which we
variously designate as patriotism, public spirit, or self-government.
These are the basic qualities which underlie democracy,--intelligence,
manliness, cooperation. If they are lacking, democracy is futile. Here
is the problem of races, the fundamental division of mankind. Race
differences are established in the very blood and physical constitution.
They are most difficult to eradicate, and they yield only to the slow
processes of the centuries. Races may change their religions, their
forms of government, their modes of industry, and their languages, but
underneath all these changes they may continue the physical, mental, and
moral capacities and incapacities which determine the real character of
their religion, government, industry, and literature. Race and heredity
furnish the raw material, education and environment furnish the tools,
with which and by which social institutions are fashioned; and in a
democracy race and heredity are the more decisive, because the very
education and environment which fashion the oncoming generations are
themselves controlled through universal suffrage by the races whom it is
hoped to educate and elevate.
=Social Classes.=--Closely connected with race division in its effect upon
democracy are the divisions between social classes. In America we are
wont to congratulate ourselves on the absence of classes with their
accompanying hatred and envy. Whether we shall continue thus to commend
ourselves depends partly on what we mean by social classes. If we
compare our situation with an extreme case, that of India,[1] where
social classes have been hardened into rigid castes, we can see the
connection between races and classes. For it is generally held that the
castes of India originated in the conquests by an Aryan race of an
indigenous dark or colored race. And while the clear-cut race
distinctions have been blended through many centuries of amalgamation,
yet it is most apparent that a gradation in the color of the skin
follows the gradation in social position, from the light-colored,
high-caste Brahman to the dark-colored, low-caste Sudra, or outcast
pariah. Race divisions have been forgotten, but in their place religion
has sanctified a division even more rigid than that of race, for it is
sacrilege and defiance of the gods when a man of low caste ventures into
the occupation and calling of the high caste. India's condition now is
what might be conceived for our Southern states a thousand years from
now, when the black man who had not advanced to the lighter shades of
mulatto should be excluded from all professions and skilled trades and
from all public offices, and should be restricted to the coarsest kind
of service as a day laborer or as a field hand on the agricultural
plantations. Confined to this limited occupation, with no incentive to
economize because of no prospect to rise above his station, and with his
numbers increasing, competition would reduce his wages to the lowest
limit consistent with the continuance of his kind. Such a development is
plainly going on at the present day, and we may feel reasonably certain
that we can see in our own South the very historical steps by which in
the forgotten centuries India proceeded to her rigid system of castes.
There is lacking but one essential to the Indian system; namely, a
religion which ascribes to God himself the inequalities contrived by
man. For the Indian derives the sacred Brahman from the mouth of God, to
be His spokesman on earth, while the poor Sudra comes from the feet of
God, to be forever the servant of all the castes above him. But the
Christian religion has set forth a different theory, which ascribes to
God entire impartiality toward races and individuals. He has "made of
one blood all nations." It is out of this doctrine that the so-called
"self-evident" assertion in the Declaration of Independence originated,
and it is this doctrine which throughout the history of European
civilization has contributed to smoothen out the harsh lines of caste
into the less definite lines of social classes. For it must be
remembered that Europe, like India, is built upon conquest, and the
earlier populations were reduced to the condition of slaves and serfs to
the conquering races. True, there was not the extreme opposition of
white and colored races which distinguished the conquests of India, and
this is also one of the reasons why slavery and serfdom gradually gave
way and races coalesced. Nevertheless, the peasantry of Europe to-day is
in large part the product of serfdom and of that race-subjection which
produced serfdom. Herein we may find the source of that arrogance on the
one hand and subserviency on the other, which so closely relate class
divisions to race divisions. The European peasant, says Professor
Shaler,[2] "knows himself to be by birthright a member of an inferior
class, from which there is practically no chance of escaping.... It is
characteristic of peasants that they have accepted this inferior lot.
For generations they have regarded themselves as separated from their
fellow-citizens of higher estate. They have no large sense of citizenly
motives; they feel no sense of responsibility for any part of the public
life save that which lies within their own narrow round of action."
How different from the qualities of the typical American citizen whose
forefathers have erected our edifice of representative democracy! It was
not the peasant class of Europe that sought these shores in order to
found a free government. It was the middle class, the merchants and
yeomen, those who in religion and politics were literally "protestants,"
and who possessed the intelligence, manliness, and public spirit which
urged them to assert for themselves those inalienable rights which the
church or the state of their time had arrogated to itself. With such a
social class democracy is the only acceptable form of government. They
demand and secure equal opportunities because they are able to rise to
those opportunities. By their own inherent nature they look forward to
and aspire to the highest positions.
But the peasants of Europe, especially of Southern and Eastern Europe,
have been reduced to the qualities similar to those of an inferior race
that favor despotism and oligarchy rather than democracy. Their only
avenues of escape from their subordinate positions have been through the
army and the church, and these two institutions have drawn from the
peasants their ablest and brightest intellects into a life which
deprived them of offspring. "Among the prosperous folk there have been
ever many classes of occupations tempting the abler youths, while among
the laborers the church has afforded the easiest way to rise, and that
which is most tempting to the intelligent. The result has been, that
while the priesthood and monastic orders have systematically debilitated
all the populations of Catholic Europe, their influence has been most
efficient in destroying talent in the peasant class."[3]
Thus it is that the peasants of Catholic Europe, who constitute the bulk
of our immigration of the past thirty years, have become almost a
distinct race, drained of those superior qualities which are the
foundation of democratic institutions. If in America our boasted freedom
from the evils of social classes fails to be vindicated in the future,
the reasons will be found in the immigration of races and classes
incompetent to share in our democratic opportunities. Already in the
case of the negro this division has hardened and seems destined to
become more rigid. Therein we must admit at least one exception to our
claim of immunity from social classes. Whether with our public schools,
our stirring politics, our ubiquitous newspapers, our common language,
and our network of transportation, the children of the European
immigrant shall be able to rise to the opportunities unreached by his
parents is the largest and deepest problem now pressing upon us. It
behooves us as a people to enter into the practical study of this
problem, for upon its outcome depends the fate of government of the
people, for the people, and by the people.
=Races in the United States.=--We use the term "race" in a rather loose
and elastic sense; and indeed we are not culpable in so doing, for the
ethnographers are not agreed upon it. Races have been classified on the
basis of color, on the basis of language, on the basis of supposed
origin, and in these latter days on the basis of the shape of the skull.
For our purpose we need consider only those large and apparent divisions
which have a direct bearing on the problem of assimilation, referring
those who seek the more subtle problems to other books.[4]
Mankind in general has been divided into three and again into five great
racial stocks, and one of these stocks, the Aryan or Indo-Germanic, is
represented among us by ten or more subdivisions which we also term
races. It need not cause confusion if we use the term "race" not only to
designate these grand divisions which are so far removed by nature one
from another as to render successful amalgamation an open question, but
also to designate those peoples or nationalities which we recognize as
distinct yet related within one of the large divisions. Within the area
controlled by the United States are now to be found representatives of
each of the grand divisions, or primary racial groups, and it would be a
fascinating study to turn from the more practical topics before us and
follow the races of man in their dispersion over the globe and their
final gathering together again under the republic of America. First is
the Aryan, or Indo-Germanic race, which, wherever it originated, sent
its Sanskrit conquerors to the South to plant themselves upon a black
race related to the Africans and the Australians. Its Western branch,
many thousand miles away, made the conquest and settlement of Europe.
Here it sent out many smaller branches, among them the Greeks and
Latins, whose situation on the Mediterranean helped in great measure to
develop brilliant and conquering civilizations, and who, after twenty
centuries of decay and subjection, have within the past twenty years
begun again their westward movement, this time to North and South
America. North of Greece the Aryans became the manifold Slavs, that most
prolific of races. One branch of the Slavs has spread the power of
Russia east and west, and is now crushing the alien Hebrew, Finn,
Lithuanian, and German, and even its fellow-Slav, the Pole, who, to
escape their oppressors, are moving to America. The Russian himself,
with his vast expanse of fertile prairie and steppe, does not migrate
across the water, but drives away those whom he can not or will not
assimilate. From Austria-Hungary, with its medley of races, come other
branches of the Slavs, the Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, Slovenians,
Croatians, Roumanians, Poles, and Ruthenians, some of them mistakenly
called Huns, but really oppressed by the true Hun, the Magyar, and by
the German. To the west of the Slavs we find the Teutonic branches of
the Aryans, the Germans, the Scandinavians, and, above all, the English
and Scotch-Irish with their descent from the Angles, Saxons, and Franks,
who have given to America our largest accessions in numbers, besides our
language, our institutions, and forms of government. Then other branches
of the Aryans known as Celtic, including the Irish, Scotch, and Welsh,
formerly driven into the hills and islands by the Teutons, have in these
latter days vied with the English and Germans in adding to our
population. The French, a mixture of Teuton and Celt, a nationality
noted above all others for its stationary population and dislike of
migration, are nevertheless contributing to our numbers by the
circuitous route of Canada, and are sending to us a class of people more
different from the present-day Frenchman in his native home than the
Italian or Portuguese is different from the Frenchman.
In the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia and the Tigris the Semitic race
had separated from its cousins, the Aryans, and one remarkable branch of
this race, the Hebrews, settling on a diminutive tract of land on the
eastern shore of the Mediterranean and finally driven forth as wanderers
to live upon their wits, exploited by and exploiting in turn every race
of Europe, have ultimately been driven forth to America by the thousands
from Russia and Austria where nearly one-half of their present number is
found.
Another race, the Mongolian, multiplying on the plains of Asia, sent a
conquering branch to the west, scattering the Slavs and Teutons and
making for itself a permanent wedge in the middle of Europe, whence,
under the name of Magyar, the true Hungarian, the Mongolians come to
America. Going in another direction from this Asiatic home the Mongolian
race has made the circuit of the globe, and the Chinese, Japanese, and
Koreans meet in America their unrecognized cousins of many thousand
years ago.
Last of the immigrants to be mentioned, but among the earliest in point
of time, is the black race from the slave coast of Africa. This was not
a free and voluntary migration of a people seeking new fields to escape
oppression, but a forced migration designed to relieve the white race of
toil. All of the other races mentioned, the Aryan, the Semitic, the
Mongolian, had in early times met one another and even perhaps had
sprung from the same stock, so that when in America they come together
there is presumably a renewal of former ties. But as far back as we can
trace the history of races in the records of archaeology or philology, we
find no traces of affiliation with the black race. The separation by
continents, by climate, by color, and by institutions is the most
diametrical that mankind exhibits anywhere. It is even greater than that
between the Aryan and the native American, improperly called the Indian,
whose presence on the soil which we have seized from him has furnished
us with a peculiar variation in our multiform race problem. For the
Indian tribes, although within our acquired territory, have been treated
as foreign nations, and their reservations have been saved to them under
the forms of treaties. Only recently has there sprung up a policy of
admitting them to citizenship, and therefore the Indian, superior in
some respects to the negro, has not interfered with our experiment in
democracy.
Last in point of time we have taken into our fold the Malay race, with
some seven million representatives in the Hawaiian and Philippine
Islands. Like the Indian and the negro, this race never in historic
times prior to the discovery of the new world came into close contact
with the white races. With its addition we have completed the round of
all the grand divisions of the human family, and have brought together
for a common experiment in self-government the white, yellow, black,
red, and brown races of the earth.
=Amalgamation and Assimilation.=--Scarcely another nation in ancient or
modern history can show within compact borders so varied an aggregation.
It is frequently maintained that a nation composed of a mixed stock is
superior in mind and body to one of single and homogeneous stock. But it
must be remembered that amalgamation requires centuries. The English
race is probably as good an example of a mixed race as can be found in
modern history, yet this race, though a mixture of the closely related
primitive Celt, the conquering Teuton, and the Latinized Scandinavian,
did not reach a common language and homogeneity until three hundred
years after the last admixture. We know from modern researches that all
of the races of Europe are mixed in their origin, but we also know that
so much of that mixture as resulted in amalgamation occurred at a time
so remote that it has been ascribed to the Stone Age.[5] The later
inroads have either been but temporary and have left but slight
impression, or they have resulted in a division of territory. Thus the
conquest of Britain by the Teutons and the Normans has not produced
amalgamation so much as it has caused a segregation of the Celts in
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and of the Teutons, with their later but
slight infusion of Normans, in England. On the continent of Europe this
segregation has been even more strongly marked. The present
stratification of races and nationalities has followed the upheavals and
inroads of a thousand years introduced by the decline and fall of the
Roman Empire. Two developments have taken place. A conquering race has
reduced a native population in part to subjection and has imposed upon
the natives its laws, customs, and language. In course of time the
subject race becomes a lower social class and slowly assimilates with
the upper classes, producing a homogeneous nationality with a new
evolution of laws, customs, and language. This is the history of four
great nations of Europe,--the French, the German, the English, the
Italian. The other development has been the segregation of a portion of
the conquered race, who having fled their conquerors avoid actual
subjection by escaping to the mountains and islands. Here they preserve
their original purity of stock and language. This is the history of
Austria-Hungary, whose earlier population of Slavs has been scattered
right and left by German and Hun and who now constitute separate
branches and dialects of the unassimilated races. That Austria-Hungary
with its dozen languages should be able to hold together as a "dual
empire" for many years is one of the marvels of history, and is
frequently ascribed to that which is the essence of autocracy, the
personal hold of the emperor.
The little bundle of republics known as Switzerland is a federation of
French, Germans, and Italians, who retain their languages and have
developed what out of such a conflict of races has elsewhere never been
developed, a high grade of democratic government. Here in historic times
there has been no amalgamation of races or assimilation of languages,
but there has been the distinct advantage of a secluded freedom from
surrounding feudal lords, which naturally led to a loose federation of
independent cantons. It is Switzerland's mountains and not her mixed
races that have promoted her democracy. At the other end of the world
the highest development of democracy is in the colonies of Australasia,
where a homogeneous race, protected from foreign foes, and prohibiting
the immigration of alien races and inferior classes, has worked out
self-government in politics and industry. In the Roman Empire we see the
opposite extreme. At first a limited republic, the extension of
conquests, and the incorporation of alien races led to that
centralization of power in the hands of one man which transformed the
republic into the empire. The British Empire, which to-day covers all
races of the earth, is growingly democratic as regards Englishmen, but
despotic as regards subject races. Taking the empire as a whole, neither
amalgamation nor self-government is within the possibilities of its
constitutional growth.
In America, on the other hand, we have attempted to unite all races in
one commonwealth and one elective government. We have, indeed, a most
notable advantage compared with other countries where race divisions
have undermined democracy. A single language became dominant from the
time of the earliest permanent settlement, and all subsequent races and
languages must adopt the established medium. This is essential, for it
is not physical amalgamation that unites mankind; it is mental
community. To be great a nation need not be of one blood, it must be of
one mind. Racial inequality and inferiority are fundamental only to the
extent that they prevent mental and moral assimilation. If we think
together, we can act together, and the organ of common thought and
action is common language. Through the prism of this noble instrument of
the human mind all other instruments focus their powers of assimilation
upon the new generations as they come forth from the disunited
immigrants. The public schools, the newspapers, the books, the political
parties, the trade unions, the religious propagandists with their
manifold agencies of universal education, the railroads with their
inducements to our unparalleled mobility of population, are all
dependent upon our common language for their high efficiency. Herein are
we fortunate in our plans for the Americanization of all races within
our borders. We are not content to let the fate of our institutions wait
upon the slow and doubtful processes of blood amalgamation, but are
eager to direct our energies toward the more rapid movements of mental
assimilation. Race and heredity may be beyond our organized control; but
the instrument of a common language is at hand for conscious improvement
through education and social environment.