NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS
It is only since the year 1820 that the government of the United States
has kept a record of alien passengers arriving in this country. For
several years following 1820 the immigration was so slight as to be
almost negligible. It was not until 1820 that there were more than
20,000 arrivals. So accustomed have we become to large figures of
immigration that nothing less than 100,000 seems worth noting, and this
figure was not reached until 1842. Since then there have been only four
years of less than 100,000, and two of these were years of the Civil
War.
A striking fact which first attracts the attention of one who examines
the statistics since 1840 is the close sympathy between immigration and
the industrial prosperity and depression of this country. Indeed, so
close is the connection that many who comment on the matter have held
that immigration during the past century has been strictly an industrial
or economic phenomenon, depending on the opportunities in this country,
and that the religious and political causes which stimulated earlier
immigration no longer hold good.
A curved line on the accompanying chart has been drawn so as to show
the relative numbers of immigrants since 1800, and another line shows
the movement of imports of merchandise per capita of the population. The
latter, except for tariff changes, is a fair index of the cycles of
prosperity and depression. By following these two lines on the chart we
notice the coincidence is close, except for a few years prior to the
Civil War. Both movements reached high points in 1873, and fell to very
low points in 1879; then rose in 1882 and fell in 1885; then reached
another high point in 1892 and a low point in 1897; and finally, the
present period of prosperity and heavy imports brings the largest
immigration in the history of the country.
In following the history of immigration by races we shall see to what
extent the alleged coincidence between prosperity and immigration may be
counted as a social law. Probably in the middle of the century it was
not so much the opportunities for employment in this country as it was
conditions in Europe that drove people to our shores. When we come to
inquire as to the nationalities which constituted immigration at that
period, we shall find what these causes were. In 1846 occurred the
unparalleled potato rot in Ireland, when the year's crop of what had
become the sole food staple of the peasantry of that island was entirely
lost. The peasants had been reduced to subsistence on the cheapest of
all staples through the operations of a system of landlordism scarcely
ever paralleled on a large scale as a means of exploiting tenants.
It was found that land used for potatoes would support three times the
number of people as the same land sown to wheat, and the small tenants
or the cotter peasants paid the landlord a higher rent than could be
obtained from larger cultivators. Reduced to a diet of potatoes by an
economic system imposed by an alien race, the Irish people are one of
the many examples which we find throughout our studies of a subject
people driven to emigration by the economic injustices of a dominant
race. We shall find the same at a later time in Austria-Hungary, whence
the conquered Slav peoples are fleeing from the discrimination and
impositions of the ruling Magyar. We shall find it in Russia, whence the
Jew, the Finn, and the German are escaping from the oppression of the
Slav; and we shall find it in Turkey, whence the Armenian and the Syrian
flee from the exactions of the Turk. Just so was it in Ireland in the
latter half of the decade, 1840 to 1850, and the contention of the
apologist for England that the famine which drove the Irish across the
seas was an act of God, is but a weak effort to charge to a higher power
the sufferings of a heartless system devised to convert the utmost life
and energy of a subject race into gold for their exploiters. Much more
nearly true of the part played by the Divine hand in this catastrophe is
the report of the Society of Friends in Ireland, saying that the
mysterious dispensation with which their country had been visited was
"a means permitted by an All-wise Providence to exhibit more strikingly
the unsound state of its social condition."
[Illustration: MOVEMENT OF IMMIGRANTS, IMPORTS OF MERCHANDISE PER
CAPITA, AND IMMIGRANTS PER 10,000 POPULATION--1800 TO 1906.]
Thus we have an explanation of the incentives under which, even in a
period of industrial depression in this country, the unfortunate Irish
flocked hither. It is true that the population of Ireland had increased
during the century preceding the famine at a rate more rapid than that
of any other country of Europe. It was 3,000,000 in 1790, and over
8,000,000 in the year of the famine. At the present time it is only
5,000,000. The potato, above all other crops, enables the cultivator to
live from hand to mouth, and coupled with a landlord system which takes
away all above mere subsistence, this "de-moralizing esculent" aided the
apparent overpopulation. Certainly the dependence of an entire people on
a single crop was a most precarious condition.
During the five years, 1846 to 1850, more than a million and a quarter
of Irish emigrants left the ports of the United Kingdom, and during the
ten years, 1845 to 1855, more than a million and a quarter came to the
United States. So great a number could not have found means of
transportation had it not been for the enormous contributions of
government and private societies for assistance. Here began that
exportation of paupers on a large scale against which our country has
protested and finally legislated. Even this enormous migration was not
greatly in excess of the number that actually perished from starvation
or from the diseases incident thereto. The Irish migration since that
time has never reached so high a point, although it made a second great
advance in 1882, succeeding another famine, and it has now fallen far
below that of eastern races of Europe. Altogether the total Irish
immigration of over four million since 1821 places that race second of
the contributors to our foreign-born population, and, compared with its
own numbers, it leads the world, for in sixty years it has sent to us
half as many people as it contained at the time of its greatest
population. Scarcely another country has sent more than one-fifth.
Looking over a period of nearly three centuries, it is probably true
that the Germans have crossed the ocean in larger numbers than any other
race. We have already noted the large migration during the eighteenth
century, and the official records show that since 1820 there have
entered our ports more than 5,200,000 Germans, while Ireland was sending
4,000,000 and Great Britain 3,300,000.
The German migration of the nineteenth century was quite distinct in
character from that of the preceding century. The colonial migration was
largely induced on religious grounds, but that of the past century was
political and economic, with at first a notable prominence of
materialism respecting religion. From the time of the Napoleonic wars to
the revolution of 1848, the governments of Germany were despotic in
character, supporting an established church, while at the same time the
marvellous growth of the universities produced a class of educated
liberals. In the revolution of 1848 these took a leading part, and
although constitutional governments were then established, yet those who
had been prominent in the popular uprisings found their position
intolerable under the reactionary governments that followed. The
political exiles sought America, bringing their liberalism in politics
and religion, and forming with their descendants in American cities an
intellectual aristocracy. They sprang from the middle classes of
Germany, and latterly, when the wars with Austria and France had
provoked the spirit of militarism, thousands of peasants looked to
emigration for escape from military service. The severe industrial
depression of 1873-79 added a powerful contributing cause. Thus there
were two periods when German migration culminated; first in 1854, on
political grounds, second in 1882, on military and economic grounds.
Since the latter date a significant decline has ensued, and the present
migration of 32,000 from Germany is mainly the remnants of families
seeking here their relatives. A larger number of German immigrants,
55,000, comes from Austria-Hungary and Russia, those from the latter
country being driven from the Baltic provinces and the Volga settlements
by the "Russianizing" policy of the Slav.
=The Changing Character of European Immigration.=--Besides the Germans
and the Irish, the races which contributed the largest numbers of
immigrants during the middle years of the nineteenth century were the
English and Scandinavian. After the decline during the depression of
1879 there was an increase of all those races in 1882, a year when
nearly 800,000 immigrants arrived. At about that time began a remarkable
change in the character of immigration destined to produce profound
consequences.
This change was the rapid shifting of the sources of immigration from
Western to Eastern and Southern Europe. A line drawn across the
continent of Europe from northeast to southwest, separating the
Scandinavian Peninsula, the British Isles, Germany, and France from
Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Turkey, separates countries not only
of distinct races but also of distinct civilizations. It separates
Protestant Europe from Catholic Europe; it separates countries of
representative institutions and popular government from absolute
monarchies; it separates lands where education is universal from lands
where illiteracy predominates; it separates manufacturing countries,
progressive agriculture, and skilled labor from primitive hand
industries, backward agriculture, and unskilled labor; it separates an
educated, thrifty peasantry from a peasantry scarcely a single
generation removed from serfdom; it separates Teutonic races from Latin,
Slav, Semitic, and Mongolian races. When the sources of American
immigration are shifted from the Western countries so nearly allied to
our own, to Eastern countries so remote in the main attributes of
Western civilization, the change is one that should challenge the
attention of every citizen. Such a change has occurred, and it needs
only a comparison of the statistics of immigration for the year 1882
with those of 1902 and 1906 to see its extent. While the total number of
immigrants from Europe and Asiatic Turkey was approximately equal in
1882 and 1902, as shown in the accompanying table, yet in 1882 Western
Europe furnished 87 per cent of the immigrants and in 1902 only 22 per
cent, while the share of Southeastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey
increased from 13 per cent in 1882 to 78 per cent in 1902. During twenty
years the immigration of the Western races most nearly related to those
which have fashioned American institutions declined more than 75 per
cent, while the immigrants of Eastern and Southern races, untrained in
self-government, increased nearly sixfold. For the year 1906 the
proportions remain the same, although in the four years the total
immigration had increased two-thirds.
IMMIGRATION FROM EUROPE AND ASIATIC TURKEY BY COUNTRIES, 1882, 1902, 1906
1882 1902 1905
------------- ------------- -------------
NUMBER PER NUMBER PER NUMBER PER
CENT CENT CENT
Total Europe and
Asiatic Turkey 647,082 100 622,987 100 1,024,719 100
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Great Britain and
Ireland 179,423 27.7 46,036 7.4 102,241 10.0
Belgium 1,431 .2 2,577 .4 5,099 .5
Denmark 11,618 1.8 5,660 .9 7,741 .8
France 6,003 .9 5,117 .8 9,386 .9
Germany 250,630 38.7 26,304 4.2 37,564 3.7
Netherlands 9,517 1.1 2,284 .4 4,946 .5
Norway 29,101 4.5 17,404 2.8 21,730 2.1
Sweden 64,607 10.0 30,894 5.0 23,310 2.3
Switzerland 10,884 1.7 2,344 .4 3,846 .4
Total Western Europe 563,174 87.0 136,620 22.0 215,863 21.7
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Italy 32,159 5.0 178,375 28.6 273,120 26.7
Portugal 42 [41] 5,307 .9 8,517 .8
Spain 378 [41] 975 .1 1,921 .1
Austria-Hungary 29,150 4.5 171,989 27.6 265,138 25.9
Russia 21,590 3.3 107,347 17.2 215,665 21.0
Greece [40]73 [41] 8,104 1.3 19,489 1.9
Roumania [40]77 [41] 7,196 1.2 4,476 .5
Servia, Bulgaria,
and Montenegro [41] 851 [41] 4,666 .5
Turkey in Europe [40]86 [41] 187 [41] 9,510 .9
Turkey in Asia 82 [41] 6,223 1.0 6,354 .6
Total Southern and
Eastern Europe and
Asiatic Turkey 83,637 13.0 486,367 78.0 808,856 78.9
----------------------------------------------------------------------
=Italians.=--It was at this period that Italian immigration first became
noticeable. Prior to 1880 this stream had been but the merest trickle,
which now has become the greatest of all the foreign tributaries to our
population. In 1873 the Italians for the first time reached 8000 in
number, but they fell to 3000 in 1876 and so continued in moderate
proportions, but suddenly in 1880 jumped to 12,000, and in 1882 to
32,000. Falling off again with the industrial depression to 13,000 in
1885, they reached 76,000 in 1891, and then with another depression to
35,000 in 1895 they have now gone forward by leaps to the high mark of
287,000.[42] The Italians seem destined to rival the Germans and Irish
as the leading contributors to our social amalgam. Of course only a
small part are as yet women and children, but this is because the
immigration is in its early and pioneer stages. The women and children
follow rapidly when the men have saved enough money to send for them.
One-fourth of the emigration is on tickets and money furnished by
friends and relatives in the United States.[43]
The immigrants from Italy differ from those from Austria, Russia,
Hungary, and Ireland, in that they are not driven forth by the
oppressions of a dominant race, but as a result of the economic and
political conditions of a united people. This does not indeed exclude
oppression as a cause of expatriation, but it transfers the oppression
from that of one race to that of one class upon another. By far the
larger portion of Italian immigration comes from the southern provinces
and from Sicily, where the power of the landlords is greatest. In these
provinces of large estates held by the nobility, the rents have been
forced to the highest notch, an orange garden paying as high as $160 per
year per acre, and the leases are short, so that the tenant has little
to encourage improvement.[44] In many cases the land is rented by large
capitalist farmers, who raise therefrom cattle, wheat, and olives, and
are prosperous men. But their prosperity is extracted from the miserable
wages of their laborers. The agricultural laborer gets from 8 cents to
32 cents a day through the year and 10 cents to 38 cents through the
summer. Unskilled laborers get 25 cents to 50 cents a day, and such
skilled trades as masons and carpenters get only 27 cents to $1.40 a
day. This wide range of wages corresponds generally with the South and
North, the lowest rates being in the South and the highest toward the
North. In France and England wages are two and one-half times higher
than in Italy, while in Germany they are about 30 per cent to 50 per
cent higher.
Nor must it be supposed that the cost of living is low to correspond
with the low wages. This is largely owing to the exaggerated system of
indirect taxes. Although wheat is a staple crop, yet the peasants eat
corn in preference, because, for a given expenditure, it gives a
stronger sense of repletion. Of wheat and corn meal together the Italian
peasant eats in a year only three-fourths as much as the inmate of an
English poorhouse. Of meat the peasant in Apulia gets no more than ten
pounds a year, while the English workhouse pauper gets fifty-seven
pounds. The local taxes on flour, bread, and macaroni are as high as 10
or 15 per cent of the value, and the state tax on imported wheat is
nearly 50 per cent of its value. The consumption of sugar has decreased
one-fourth since heavy duties were imposed to protect native beet sugar,
and it averages barely over five pounds per head. The consumption in the
United States is sixty-five pounds per head. The iniquitous salt tax
raises the price of salt from eleven pounds for two cents to one pound
for two cents, and the peasants sometimes cook their corn meal in sea
water, although this is smuggling. What the peasants lack in grain and
meat they strive to supply by vegetables, and the proportion of
vegetables, peas, and beans consumed is greater than that for any other
country of Europe. The peasants drink no beer, spirits, tea, nor coffee,
but the average annual consumption of wine is twenty gallons a head.
Food alone costs the peasants 85 per cent of their wages, whereas it
costs the German peasant 62 per cent and the American workman 41 per
cent. The poor and working classes pay over one-half the taxes,
amounting, even without wine, to 10 or 20 per cent of their wages. There
are in the south and Sardinia some 13,000 sales of land a year on
distress for non-payment of taxes, and the expropriated owners become
tenants. Several villages in Southern Italy have been almost wholly
abandoned and one village has recently announced its intention of
removing itself entire to one of the South American republics.[45] The
rich escape taxation, which is laid largely on consumption. Besides the
state tax on imports, each city and town has its _octroi_, or import
tax, on everything brought into the city. These "protective duties rob
the poor to fill the pockets of the rich landlord and manufacturer."
Since 1870 wealth has increased 17 per cent and taxes 30 per cent. Taxes
are nearly one-fifth of the nation's income, against one-twelfth in
Germany, one-sixteenth in England, and one-fifteenth in the United
States. Wages rose from 1860 to 1885, but since 1890 they have fallen.
The army and navy are the greatest drain on the resources of the people.
They cost one-fourth more of the national income than do the armies and
navies of France and Germany. Eighty million dollars a year for military
expenditures in Italy is over 5 per cent of the income of the people,
whereas $194,000,000 for the same purpose in the United States is less
than 2 per cent of our incomes. In the Triple Alliance of Germany,
Austria, and Italy, the latter country crushes its peasants in order to
make a showing by the side of its wealthier partners. The army takes
every able-bodied peasant from industry into barracks and drills for two
years of his best vigor. But the long line of exposed coast and the
general military situation in Europe make it unlikely that Italy for
many years can shake off this incubus.
In addition to all these economic and political causes of pressure,
there is another cause of a more profound nature, the rapid growth of
population. Strange as it may seem, the very poverty of Italy increases
the tendency to a high birth-rate, and the rate is highest in the very
districts where illiteracy and poverty are greatest. Only the great
number of deaths produced by poverty and lack of sanitation prevents the
increase of population from exceeding that of the more rapidly growing
countries of Germany, Great Britain, and Scandinavia. It is not among
those classes and nations, like the middle classes and the thrifty
people of France, that the largest number of children are born, but it
is among those ignorant and low-standard peoples to whom the future
offers no better prospect for their children than for themselves. Early
marriages and large families are both a result and a cause of poverty.
Parts of Lombardy and Venetia have a thicker population than any other
European country except Belgium, which is really not a country, but a
manufacturing centre of Europe. The density of population in Italy is in
excess of that of Germany, France, India, and even China. It is exceeded
only by the islands of Great Britain and Japan, and the states of Rhode
Island and Massachusetts.[46] Emigration is the only immediate relief
from this congestion. All other remedies which operate through raising
the intelligence and the standards of living require years for
appreciable results, but meanwhile the persistent birth-rate crowds new
competitors into the new openings and multiplies the need of economic
and political reforms before they can be put into effect. Emigration is
a relief ready at hand, but it is not a lessening of population. For
many years to come Italy will furnish a surplus population to overflow
to America.[47] Emigration is also a means of revenue for the mother
country. For it is estimated that the peasants in foreign countries send
back to their families and relatives $30,000,000 to $80,000,000 each
year, and many of them return with what to them is a fortune, and with
new ideas of industry and progress, to purchase and improve a farm and
cottage for their declining years. It is said that already there are
several small country towns in Southern Italy which have risen from
squalor to something of prosperity through the money and influence of
those who have come home. This temporary emigration is probably over
150,000 each year going abroad or to adjoining countries expecting to
return.
Besides this temporary emigration there is an equally large permanent
emigration. This is of two kinds, almost as entirely distinct from each
other as the emigration from two separate nations. The North Italian is
an educated, skilled artisan, coming from a manufacturing section and
largely from the cities. He is Teutonic in blood and appearance. The
South Italian is an illiterate peasant from the great landed estates,
with wages less than one-third his northern compatriot. He descends with
less mixture from the ancient inhabitants of Italy. Unhappily for us,
the North Italians do not come to the United States in considerable
numbers, but they betake themselves to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in
about the same numbers as the South Italians come to us. It is estimated
that in those three countries there are 3,000,000 Italians in a total
population of 23,000,000, and they are mainly derived from the north of
Italy. Surrounded by the unenterprising Spanish and Portuguese, they
have shown themselves to be the industrial leaders of the country. Some
of the chief buildings, banks, flour mills, textile mills, and a
majority of the wheat farms of Argentina belong to Italians. They are
one-third of the population of Buenos Ayres and own one-half of the
commercial capital of that city. They become lawyers, engineers, members
of parliament, and an Italian by descent has been president of the
Republic of Argentina, while other Italians have been ministers of war
and education.[48] While these North Italians, with their enterprise,
intelligence, and varied capacities, go to South America, we receive
the South Italians, who are nearly the most illiterate of all immigrants
at the present time, the most subservient to superiors, the lowest in
their standards of living, and at the same time the most industrious and
thrifty of all common laborers.
[Illustration: ALIENS AWAITING ADMISSION AT ELLIS ISLAND]
=Austria-Hungary.=--Next to that from Italy the immigration from the
Austro-Hungarian Empire in recent decades has reached the largest
dimensions. While Italy sent 273,000 people in 1906, Austria-Hungary
sent 265,000 in that year and 276,000 the year before. Like the
immigration from Italy, this increase has occurred since 1880. Prior to
that date the largest number reported from Austria-Hungary was 9000 in
1874.
While these figures compare with those of the Italians, yet, unlike the
Italians, they refer to a congeries of races and languages distinct one
from another. The significance of Austro-Hungarian immigration is
revealed only when we analyze it by races. The race map of this empire
shows at once the most complicated social mosaic of all modern nations.
Here we see, not that mixture of races and assimilation of language
which in our own country has evolved a vigorous, united people, but a
juxtaposition of hostile races and a fixity of language held together
only by the outside pressure of Russia, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. This
conflict of races has made the politics of the empire nearly
incomprehensible to foreigners, and has aggravated the economic
inequalities which drive the unprivileged masses to emigrate.
Not only are there in Austria-Hungary five grand divisions of the human
family,--the German, the Slav, the Magyar, the Latin, and the Jew,--but
these are again subdivided. In the northern mountainous and hilly
sections are 13,000,000 Slavic peoples, the Czechs, or Bohemians, with
their closely related Moravians, and the Slavic Slovaks, Poles, and
Ruthenians (known also as Russniaks); while in the southern hills and
along the Adriatic are another 4,000,000 Slavs, the Croatians, Servians,
Dalmatians, and Slovenians. Between these divisions on the fertile
plains 8,000,000 Magyars and 10,000,000 Germans have thrust themselves
as the dominant races. To the southwest are nearly a million Italians,
and in the east 2,500,000 Latinized Slavs, the Roumanians. The Slavs are
in general the conquered peoples, with a German and Magyar nobility
owning their land, making their laws, and managing their administration.
The northern Slavs are subject to Austria and Hungary, and the
Ruthenians suffer a double subjection, for they were the serfs of their
fellow-Slavs, the Poles, whom they continue to hate, and in whose
longings for a reunited Poland they do not participate. The southern
Slavs and Roumanians are subject to Hungary. The Roumanians are a
widespread and disrupted nationality of Slavs, conquered by the Romans,
from whom they imperfectly took their language, but now distributed
partly in independent kingdoms and partly under the dominion of the
Magyars. The Croatians from the southwest mountains are among the finest
specimens of physical manhood coming to our shores. They are a vigorous
people, hating Hungary which owns them and calling themselves
"Austrians" to ward off the name "Hun," by which Americans mistakenly
designate them. The Magyars are the Asiactic conquerors who overran
Europe ten centuries ago, and being repulsed by the Teutons to the west
established themselves on the Slavs in the valley and plains of the
Danube. Boasting a republican constitution a thousand years old they
have not until the past year been compelled to share it with the people
whom they subdued. Astute politicians and dashing military leaders, they
are as careless in business as the Slavs, and the supremacy which they
maintained in politics has slipped into the hands of the Jews in
economics. In no other modern country has the Jew been so liberally
treated, and in no other country have public and private finance come
more completely under his control. Profiting by the Magyars' suppression
of the Slavs, the Jew has monopolized the business opportunities denied
to the Slovak and the Croatian, and with this leverage has quietly
elbowed out the Magyar himself. No longer is the Magyar the dominant
race, and in the past year he has contributed to America more immigrants
than any branch of his conquered Slavs. In the Austrian dominions of
former Poland the Jew likewise has become the financier, and both the
Ruthenian and the Pole, unable to rise under their burden of debt,
contribute their more enterprising peasants to America.
By a perverse system of representative government, based on
representation of classes both in Austria and in Hungary, the great
landowners and wealthy merchants have heretofore elected three-fourths
of the parliaments, but recently in both countries the emperor has
granted universal manhood suffrage. The peasant Slavs will henceforth be
on equal footing with the German, the Magyar, and the Jew, and whether
out of the belated equality of races there will come equality of
economic opportunity remains to be seen. For the past few years the
emigration from the unfortunate dual empire has amazingly increased.
With all of this confusing medley of races, with this diversity of Greek
and Roman Catholicism and Judaism, with this history of race oppression
and hatred, it is not surprising that the immigrants should break out
into factions and feuds wherever thrown together among us. It is the
task of America to lift them to a patriotism which hitherto in their
native land they could not know.
The earliest migration from Austria-Hungary was that of the Bohemians,
the most highly educated and ardently patriotic of the Slavic people.
After the revolution of 1848, when the Germans suppressed their
patriotic uprising, students, professional men, and well-to-do peasants
came to America and settled in New York, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Chicago,
and in the rural districts of Texas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and
California. Again, after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, skilled
laborers were added to the stream, and they captured a large part of the
cigar-making industry of New York and the clothing trade of Chicago.
Latterly recruits from the peasants and unskilled laborers sought the
sections where the pioneers had located, learned the same trades, or
joined the armies of common labor. In Chicago the Bohemian section is
almost a self-governing city, with its own language, industries,
schools, churches, and newspapers. After a slight decline there is again
an increasing flow of immigrants, the number in 1906 being 13,000. Those
who come bring their families, and few return. In these earlier days the
Polish and Hungarian Jews also began their migration, following the
steps of their German precursors.
In the decade of the eighties the increase of immigration from
Austria-Hungary was first that of the Poles, now numbering 44,000, then
the Magyars, now 43,000, then the Slovaks, now 37,000. In the latter
part of the nineties the Southern Slavs--Croatians and Slovenians--suddenly
took up their burden, and 43,000 of them came in 1906. Following them
came the Ruthenians from the North, numbering 16,000 in 1906. Last of
all, the Latinized Slavs, the Roumanians, began their flight from the
Magyar, to the number of less than 400 in the year 1900, but swelling
to 11,000 in 1906. Only 300 additional came from their own proper
kingdom--Roumania. During all this period there has been also a
considerable migration of Germans, reaching 35,000 in 1906.
In the face of this swollen migration the Hungarian government has at
last taken alarm. They see even their own people, the Magyars, escaping.
Recently the government has attempted to restrict the unrest by
prohibiting advertisements or public speeches advocating emigration, by
prohibiting the sale of tickets or solicitation by any one not holding a
government license for the purpose, by contracting with a steamship line
from their own Adriatic part of Fiume in order to reduce migration
across the German and Italian frontiers. This may account for the
decline of ten thousand immigrants from Austria-Hungary in 1906.
Practically the entire migration of the Slavic elements at the present
time is that of peasants. In Croatia the forests have been depleted, and
thousands of immigrant wood-choppers have sought the forests of our
South and the railway construction of the West. The natural resources of
Croatia are by no means inadequate, but the discriminating taxes and
railway freight rates imposed by Hungary have prevented the development
of these resources. The needed railways are not obtainable for the
development of the mines and minerals of Croatia, and the peasants,
unable to find employment at home, are allured by the advertisements of
American steamships and the agents of American contractors.
So it is with the Slovak peasants and mine workers of the northern
mountains and foothills. With agricultural wages only eighteen cents a
day, they find employment in the American mines, rolling-mills,
stock-yards, and railroad construction at $1.50 a day.
In addition to race discrimination, the blight of Austria-Hungary is
landlordism. Considerable reforms, indeed, have been made in certain
sections. The free alienation of landed property was adopted in the
Austrian dominions in 1869, and in the following twelve years 42,000 new
holdings were carved out of the existing peasant proprietorships in
Bohemia. Similar transfers have occurred elsewhere, but even where this
peasant ownership has gained, the enormous prices are an obstacle to
economic independence. They compel the land-owning peasant to content
himself with five to twelve acres, the size of four-fifths of the farms
in Galicia. His eagerness to own land is his dread of the mere
wage-earner's lot, which he no longer dreads when he lands in America.
"The fear of falling from the social position of a peasant to that,
immeasurably inferior, of a day laborer, is the great spur which drives
over the seas alike the Slovak, the Pole, and the Ruthenian."[49] These
high rentals and fabulous values can exist only where wages and
standards of living are at the bare subsistence level, leaving a heavy
surplus for capitalization. They also exist as a result of most
economical and minute cultivation, so that, with this training, the
Bohemian or Polish farmer who takes up land in America soon becomes a
well-to-do citizen.
Taxation, too, is unequal. For many years the government suffered
deficits, the military expenses increased, and worst of all, the
nobility were exempt from taxation. The latter injustice, however, was
remedied by the revolution of 1848, and yet at the present time the
great landowners pay much less than their proportionate share of the
land-tax, to say nothing of the heavy taxes on consumption and industry.
As in other countries of low standards, the number of births is large in
proportion to the inhabitants. For every one thousand persons in
Hungary, there are forty-three births each year,[50] a number exceeded
by but one great country of Europe, Russia. Yet, with this large number
of births, because the economic conditions are so onerous and the
consequent deaths so frequent, the net increase is less than that of any
other country except France. In Austria the births and deaths are less
and the net increase greater, and they run close to those of prolific
Italy.
In each of these countries the figures for births and deaths stand near
those of the negroes in America, and like the negroes, two-fifths of the
mortality is that of children under five years of age, whereas with
other more favored countries and races this proportion is only one-fifth
or one-fourth. It is not so much the overpopulation of Austria-Hungary
that incites emigration as it is the poverty, ignorance, inequality, and
helplessness that produce a seeming overpopulation. While these
conditions continue, emigration will continue to increase, and the
efforts of the Hungarian government to reduce it will not succeed.
=Russia.=--The Russian Empire is at the present time the third in the rank
of contributors to American immigration. Russian immigration, like that
of Italy and Austria-Hungary, is practically limited to the past two
decades. In 1881 it first reached 10,000. In 1893 it was 42,000, and in
1906, 216,000.
The significant fact of this immigration is that it is only 2 per cent
Russian and 98 per cent non-Russian. The Russian peasant is probably the
most oppressed of the peasants of Europe, and though his recent uprising
has aroused his intellect and disabused the former opinion of his
stupidity, yet he has been so tied to the soil by his system of
communism, his burden of taxes and debt and his subjection to landlords,
that he is as yet immune to the fever of migration. In so far as he has
moved from his native soil he has done so through the efforts of a
despotic government to Russianize Siberia and the newly conquered
regions of his own vast domain. On the other hand, the races which have
abandoned the Russian Empire have been driven forth because they refused
to submit to the policy which would by force assimilate them to the
language or religion of the dominant race. Even the promises of the
aristocracy under the fright of recent revolution have not mitigated the
persecutions, and the number taking refuge in flight has doubled in four
years. Foremost are the Jews, 125,000 in 1906, an increase from 37,000
four years ago; next the Poles, 46,000 in 1906; next 14,000 Lithuanians,
13,000 Finns, and 10,000 Germans. The Poles and Lithuanians are Slavic
peoples long since conquered and annexed by the Russians. The Finns are
a Teutonic people with a Mongol language; the Germans are an isolated
branch of that race settled far to the east on the Volga River by
invitation of the Czar more than one hundred years ago, or on the Baltic
provinces adjoining Germany; while the Jews are the unhappy descendants
of a race whom the Russians found in territory conquered during the past
two centuries.
=The Jews.=--Russia, at present, sends us five-sixths of the Jewish
immigration, but the other one-sixth comes from adjoining territory in
Austria-Hungary and Roumania. About six thousand temporarily sojourn in
England, and the Whitechapel district of East London is a reduced
picture of the East Side, New York. During American history Jews have
come hither from all countries of Europe. The first recorded immigration
was that of Dutch Jews, driven from Brazil by the Portuguese and
received by the Dutch government of New Amsterdam. The descendants of
these earliest immigrants continue at the present time in their own
peculiar congregation in lower New York City. Quite a large number of
Portuguese and Spanish Jews, expelled from those countries in the time
of Columbus, have contributed their descendants to America by way of
Holland. The German Jews began their migration in small numbers during
colonial times, but their greatest influx followed the Napoleonic wars
and reached its height at the middle of the century. Prior to the last
two decades so predominant were the German Jews that, to the ordinary
American, all Jews were Germans. Strangely enough, the so-called Russian
Jew is also a German, and in Russia among the masses of people the words
"German" and "Jew" also mean the same thing. Hereby hangs a tale of
interest in the history of this persecuted race. Jews are known to have
settled at the site of the present city of Frankfort in Southern Germany
as early as the third century, when that town was a trading post on the
Roman frontier. At the present time the region about Frankfort,
extending south through Alsace, contains the major part of the German
and French Jews. To this centre they flocked during the Middle Ages, and
their toleration in this region throws an interesting light on the
reasons for their persecution in other countries.
Under the Catholic polity following the crusades the Jew had no rights,
and he could therefore gain protection only through the personal favor
of emperor, king, or feudal lord. This protection was arbitrary and
capricious, but it was always based on a pecuniary consideration.
Unwittingly the Catholic Church, by its prohibition of usury to all
believers, had thrown the business of money lending into the hands of
the Jews, and since the Jew was neither inclined toward agriculture nor
permitted to follow that vocation, his only sources of livelihood were
trade and usury. The sovereigns of Europe who protected the Jews did so
in view of the large sums which they could exact from their profits as
usurers and traders. They utilized the Jews like sponges to draw from
their subjects illicit taxes. When, therefore, the people gained power
over their sovereigns, and the spirit of nationality arose, the Jew,
without his former protector, was the object of persecution. England was
the first country where this spirit of nationality emerged and the first
to expel the Jews (1290); France followed a century later (1395); and
Spain and Portugal two centuries later (1492 and 1495). But in Germany
and other parts of the Holy Roman Empire political confusion and anarchy
prevailed, and the emperor and petty sovereigns were able to continue
their protection of the Jews.
[Illustration: NORWEGIAN ITALIAN ARABIC (From _The Home Missionary_)]
The Russian people, at that time, were confined to the interior
surrounding Moscow, but even before the crusades they had expelled the
Jews. As rapidly as they conquered territory to the south from Turkey,
or to the west from Poland, they carried forward the same hostility.
There was only one country, Poland, in the centre of Europe, where the
kings, desiring to build up their cities, invited the Jews, and hither
the persecuted race fled from the East before the Russians, and latterly
from the West, driven out by the Germans. When finally, a hundred years
ago, the remnant of the Polish Empire was divided between Russia,
Prussia, and Austria, the Jewish population in this favored area had
become the largest aggregation of that people since the destruction of
Jerusalem. To-day in certain of these provinces belonging to Russia the
Jews number as high as one-sixth of the entire population, and more than
half of that of several cities. Fifteen provinces taken from Poland and
Turkey, extending 1500 miles along the border of Germany and
Austria-Hungary and 240 miles in width, constitute to-day the "Pale of
Settlement," the region where Jews are permitted to live. Here are found
one-third of the world's 11,000,000 Jews.[51] Here they formerly engaged
in all lines of industry, including agriculture.
Now we come to the last great national uprising, like that which began
in England six hundred years ago. The Russian serfs had been freed in
1861. But they were left without land or capital and were burdened by
high rents and enormous taxes. The Jews became their merchants,
middlemen, and usurers. Suddenly, in 1881, the peasants, oppressed and
neglected by landlord and government, turned in their helplessness upon
the intermediate cause of their misery, the Jew. The anti-Semitic riots
of that year have perhaps never been exceeded in ferocity and
indiscriminate destruction. Then began the migration to America. The
next year the Russian government took up the persecution, and the
notorious "May Orders" of 1882 were promulgated. These, at the
instigation of the Greek Church, have been followed by orders more
stringent, so that to-day, unless relieved by the terrorized promises of
the Czar, the Jew is not permitted to foreclose a mortgage or to lease
or purchase land; he cannot do business on Sundays or Christian
holidays; he cannot hold office; he cannot worship or assemble without
police permit; he must serve in the army, but cannot become an officer;
he is excluded from schools and universities; he is fined for conducting
manufactures and commerce; he is almost prohibited from the learned
professions. While all other social questions are excluded from
discussion, the anti-Semitic press is given free play, and the popular
hatred of the Jew is stirred to frenzy by "yellow" journals. Only when
this hatred breaks out in widespread riots does the news reach America,
but the persecution is constant and relentless. The government and the
army join with the peasants, for, true to the character of this
versatile race, the Jews are leaders of the revolutionary and
socialistic patriots who seek to overthrow the government and restore
the land to the people.
Nor is this uprising confined to Russia. Galician Jews in the Austrian
possessions of former Poland, where the Slavs bitterly complain of them
as saloon-keepers and money-lenders,[52] have suffered the persecutions
of their race, and in the last ten years Roumania, a country of peasants
adjoining Hungary and Russia, has adopted laws and regulations even more
oppressive than those of her neighbor.
Thus it is that this marvellous and paradoxical race, the parent of
philosophers, artists, reformers, martyrs, and also of the shrewdest
exploiters of the poor and ignorant, has, in two decades, come to
America in far greater numbers than in the two centuries preceding.
It should not be inferred that the Jews are a race of pure descent.
Coming as they do from all sections and nations of Europe, they are
truly cosmopolitan, and have taken on the language, customs, and modes
of thought of the people among whom they live. More than this, in the
course of centuries, their physical characteristics have departed from
those of their Semitic cousins in the East, and they have become
assimilated in blood with their European neighbors. In Russia,
especially in the early centuries, native tribes were converted to
Judaism and mingled with their proselyters. That which makes the Jew a
peculiar people is not altogether the purity of his blood, but
persecution, devotion to his religion, and careful training of his
children. Among the Jews from Eastern Europe there are marked
intellectual and moral differences. The Hungarian Jew, who emigrated
earliest, is adventurous and speculative: the Southern Russian keeps few
of the religious observances, is the most intellectual and socialistic,
and most inclined to the life of a wage-earner; the Western Russian is
orthodox and emotional, saves money, becomes a contractor and retail
merchant; the Galician Jew is the poorest, whose conditions at home were
the harshest, and he begins American life as a pedler. That which unites
them all as a single people is their religious training and common
language.
The Hebrew language is read and written by all the men and half of the
women, but is not spoken except by a few especially orthodox Jews on
Saturday. Hebrew is the language of business and correspondence, Yiddish
the language of conversation, just as Latin in the Middle Ages was the
official and international language, while the various peoples spoke
each its own vernacular. The Yiddish spoken by the Russian Jews in
America is scarcely a language--it is a jargon without syntax,
conjugation, or declension. Its basis is sixty per cent German of the
sixteenth century, showing the main origin of the people, and forty per
cent the language of the countries whence they come.
That which most of all has made the Jew a cause of alarm to the peasants
of Eastern Europe is the highest mark of his virtue, namely, his rapid
increase in numbers. A high birth-rate, a low death-rate, a long life,
place the Jew as far above the average as the negro is below the
average. These two races are the two extremes of American race vitality.
Says Ripley:[53]--
"Suppose two groups of one hundred infants each, one Jewish, one of
average American parentage (Massachusetts), to be born on the same day.
In spite of the disparity of social conditions in favor of the latter,
the chances, determined by statistical means, are that one-half of the
Americans will die within forty-seven years; while the first half of the
Jews will not succumb to disease or accident before the expiration of
seventy-one years. The death-rate is really but little over half that of
the average American population."
While the negro exceeds all races in the constitutional diseases of
consumption and pneumonia, the Jew excels all in immunity from these
diseases. His vitality is ascribed to his sanitary meat inspection, his
sobriety, temperance, and self-control. Of the Jew it might be said more
truly than of any other European people that the growth of population
has led to overcrowding and has induced emigration. Yet of no people is
this less true, for, were it not for the discrimination and persecution
directed against them, the Jews would be the most prosperous and least
overcrowded of the races of Europe.
=The Finns.=--Until the year 1901 Finland was the freest and best governed
part of the Russian Empire. Wrested from Sweden in 1809, it became a
grand duchy of the Czar, guaranteed self-government, and confirmed by
coronation oath of each successor. It was the only section of the
Russian Empire with a constitutional government in which the laws,
taxes, and army were controlled by a legislature representing the
people. Here alone in all his empire was the Czar compelled to ask the
consent of parliament in order to enact laws. But these free
institutions within the past seven years were by his decree abrogated.
The Czar claimed the right to put into force such laws as he chose
without discussion or acceptance by the Finnish diet. The Russian
language took the place of Swedish and Finnish as the official medium, a
severe censorship of the press was introduced, the Lutheran religion,
devoutly adhered to, was subordinated to the "orthodox," the independent
Finnish army was abolished and Finns were distributed throughout the
armies of the empire, and a Russian governor with absolute powers was
placed over all. Thus have 2,000,000 of the sturdiest specimens of
humanity been suddenly reduced to the level of Asiatic despotism. They
had managed by industry and thrift to extort a livelihood from a sterile
soil, and had developed a school system with universal education,
culminating in one of the noblest universities of Europe. Their peasants
are healthy, intelligent, honest, and sober. In one year, 1900, their
emigration increased from 6000 to 12,000, and it continues at 14,000,
notwithstanding the repentance of the Czar and his restoration of
their stolen rights. Compared with the population of the country, the
present immigration from Finland is proportionately greater than that of
any race except the Jews; and famine, adding its horrors to the loss of
their liberties, has served to augment the army of exiles.
[Illustration: SLAV JEWISH POLACK LITHUANIAN (From _The Home Missionary_)]
Much dispute has arisen respecting the racial relations of the Finns.
Their language is like that of the Magyars, an agglutinative tongue with
tendencies towards inflections, but their physical structure allies them
more nearly to the Teutons. Their Lutheran religion also separates them
from other peoples of the Russian Empire. Their sober industriousness
and high intelligence give them a place above that of their intolerant
conquerors; and the futile attempts of the Slav to "Russify" them drove
to America many of our most desirable immigrants.
=The French Canadians.=--When Canada was conquered by England in 1759, it
contained a French population of 65,000. Without further immigration the
number had increased in 1901 to 2,400,000, including 1,600,000 in Canada
and 800,000 emigrants and their children in the United States. Scarcely
another race has multiplied as rapidly, doubling every twenty-five
years. The contrast with the same race in France, where population is
actually declining, is most suggestive. French Canada is, as it were, a
bit of mediaeval France, picked out and preserved for the curious student
of social evolution. No French revolution broke down its old
institutions, and the English conquest changed little else than the
oath of allegiance. Language, customs, laws, and property rights
remained intact. The only state church in North America is the Roman
Catholic Church of Quebec, with its great wealth, its control of
education, and its right to levy tithes and other church dues. With a
standard of living lower than that of the Irish or Italians, and a
population increasing even more rapidly, the French from Canada for a
time seemed destined to displace other races in the textile mills of New
England. Yet they came only as sojourners, intending by the work of
every member of the family to save enough money to return to Canada,
purchase a farm, and live in relative affluence. Their migration began
at the close of the Civil War, and during periods of prosperity they
swarmed to the mill towns, while in periods of depression they returned
to their Northern homes. Gradually an increasing proportion remained in
"the States," and the number in 1900 was 395,000 born in Canada, and
436,000 children born on this side of the line.
=The Portuguese.=--A diminutive but interesting migration of recent years
is that of the Portuguese, who come, not from Portugal, but from the
Cape Verde and Azores Islands, near equatorial Africa. These islands are
remarkably overpopulated, and the emigration, nearly 9000 souls in 1906,
is a very large proportion of the total number of inhabitants. By two
methods did they find their way to America. One was almost accidental,
for it was the wreck of a Portuguese vessel on the New England coast
that first directed their attention to that section. They have settled
mainly at New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they follow the fisheries in
the summer and enter the mills in the winter. The other method was
solicitation, which took several thousand of them to Hawaii as contract
laborers on the sugar plantations. Unlike the Oriental importations to
these islands the Portuguese insisted that their families be imported,
and then as soon as their contracts expired they left the planters to
become small farmers, and are now the backbone of the coffee industry.
They and their children are nearly half of the "Caucasian" element of
30,000. In Massachusetts they are of two distinct types, the whites from
the Azores and the blacks from the Cape Verde Islands, the latter
plainly a blend of Portuguese and Africans. Their standards of living
are similar to those of the Italians, though they are distinguished by
their cleanliness and the neatness of their homes.
=Syrians and Armenians.=--That the recruiting area of American immigration
is extending eastward is no more clearly evident than in the recent
migration of Syrians and Armenians. These peoples belong to the
Christian races of Asiatic Turkey, whence they are escaping the
oppressions of a government which deserves the name of organized robbery
rather than government. Within the past thirty years many thousand
Syrians of Mount Lebanon have emigrated to Egypt and other
Mediterranean countries, to the dependencies of Great Britain and South
America. Six thousand of them came to the United States in 1906. They
belong mainly to the Greek Church or the Maronite branch of the Roman
Catholic Church, and it is mainly American missionary effort that has
diverted them to the United States. Unlike other immigrants, they come
principally from the towns, and are traders and pedlers. Broadly
speaking, says an agent of the Charity Organization Society of New York,
"the well-intentioned efforts of the missionaries have been abused by
their proteges.... It is these alleged proselytes who have contributed
largely to bring into relief the intrinsically servile character of the
Syrian, his ingratitude and mendacity, his prostitution of all ideals to
the huckster level.... As a rule they affiliate themselves with some
Protestant church or mission, abandoning such connections when no longer
deemed necessary or profitable."[54]
The Armenian migration began with the monstrous Kurdish atrocities of
recent years, instigated and supported by the Turkish government.
Armenians are a primitive branch of the Christian religion, and at an
early date became separated from both the Greek and Roman churches. They
are among the shrewdest of merchants, traders, and money-lenders of the
Orient, and, like the Jews, are hated by the peasantry and persecuted by
the government. Like the Jews also, religious persecution has united
them to the number of five million in a racial type of remarkable purity
and distinctness from the surrounding races.
=Asiatic Immigration.=--Utterly distinct from all other immigrants in the
nineteenth century are the Chinese. Coming from a civilization already
ancient when Europe was barbarian, the Chinaman complacently refuses to
assimilate with Americans, and the latter reciprocate by denying him the
right of citizenship. His residence is temporary, he comes without his
family, and he accumulates what to him is a fortune for his declining
years in China. The gold discoveries of California first attracted him,
and the largest migration was 40,000 in 1882, the year when Congress
prohibited further incoming. In 1906, 3015 Chinamen tried to get in, and
2732 were admitted, mainly as United States citizens, returning
merchants and returning laborers. One-half of the 1448 admitted as
"exempt" were believed by the immigration officials to have been coolies
in disguise.[55] Within the past ten years the Japanese have taken his
place, and 14,000 of his Mongolian cousins arrived in 1906.
The immigration of the Japanese has taken a peculiar turn owing to the
annexation of Hawaii. While these islands were yet a kingdom in 1868
this immigration began, and in 1886 a treaty was concluded with Japan
for the immigration of Japanese contract laborers for the benefit of
the sugar planters. Many thousand were imported under this arrangement,
and "the fear that the islands would be annexed to Japan was one of the
prime factors in the demand for annexation to the United States."[56]
With annexation in 1900 contract labor was abolished, and the Japanese,
freed from servitude, indulged in "an epidemic of strikes." The Japanese
government retained paternal oversight of its laborers migrating to
foreign lands, which is done through some thirty-four emigrant companies
chartered by the government. Since opening up Korea for settlement Japan
has granted but a limited number of passports to its citizens destined
for the mainland of America, so that almost the entire immigration comes
first to Honolulu through arrangements made between the emigrant
companies and the planters. But the planters are not able to keep them
on the island on account of the higher wages on the Pacific coast. Since
the alien contract-labor law does not apply to immigrants from Hawaii, a
_padroni_ system has sprung up for importing Japanese from that island.
As a result, the arrivals at Honolulu are equalled by the departures to
the mainland, and Hawaii becomes the American side entrance for the
Japanese.[57] This evasion has been stopped by the law of February 20,
1906.
Hawaii also is showing another Asiatic race the opening to America. The
growing independence of the Japanese led the planters to seek Koreans,
since the Chinese exclusion law came into force with annexation. In this
effort to break down Japanese solidarity some eight thousand Koreans
have been mixed with them during the past five years, and these also
have begun the transit to California.
Although the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans are the familiar examples
often cited of low standards of living, yet their wages in their native
countries are higher than those of the South Italians and equal to those
of the Slavs. They earn $4 or $5 a month and spend $2 or $3 for living.
In Hawaii they get $18 to $20 a month, and on the Pacific coast $35 to
$50.
In the past two or three years a tiny dripping of immigration has found
its way from another vast empire of Asiatic population--India. Some two
hundred are admitted each year. The populations of that land are growing
discontented as they see Indians returned from Natal, where they earned
$20 to $35 a month, while at home they get only $3 to $7 under a penal
contract system. The American consul at Calcutta reports ten sturdy
Punjab Mohammedans inquiring the way to America and telling of their
friends at work on American dairy farms. In his judgment they are
stronger and more intelligent than the Chinese coolies and are
preferable for work on the Panama Canal. The self-governing British
colonies have educational restrictions designed to prevent Asiatic
immigration, whether of British subjects or aliens;[58] other colonies
have contract labor. The unrest of India therefore turns the native eyes
towards America.
While America has been welcoming the eastward and backward races she has
begun to lose her colonial stock and her Americanized Teutonic stock.
These pioneer elements have kept in front of the westward movement, and
now that the American frontier is gone they seek a new frontier in
Canada. The Canadian government for several years has sought to fill its
vast Western plains with Teutonic races and to discourage others. It has
expended many thousand dollars for advertising and soliciting in the
British Isles, and has maintained twenty to thirty immigration agents in
our Western states. The opportunities of British Columbia are now well
known, and the American farmers, with agricultural land rising
enormously in value, sell out to the newcomer or the acclimated
immigrant and betake themselves to double or treble the area for
cultivation under the flag of England. They push onward by rail and by
wagon, and the ingress of millions of immigrants is reflected in the
egress of thousands of Americans.[59]
=Indigenous Races.=--It is not enough that we have opened our gates to the
millions of divergent races in Europe, Asia, and Africa; we have in
these latter days admitted to our fold new types by another
process--annexation.
The Hawaiians are the latest of these oversea races to be brought under
our flag, although in the course of eighty years they have been brought
under our people. Nowhere else in the world has been seen such finished
effect on an aboriginal race of the paradoxes of Western
civilization--Christianity, private property, and sexual disease. With a
population of some 300,000 at the time of discovery they had dwindled by
domestic wars and imported disease to 140,000 when the missionaries came
in 1820, then to 70,000 in 1850 when private property began its hunt for
cheap labor, and now they number but 30,000. A disease eliminating the
unfit of a race protected by monogamy decimates this primitive people on
a lower stage of morals. Missionaries from the most intellectual type of
American Protestantism converted the diminishing nation to Christianity
in fifty years. A soil and climate the most favorable in the world for
sugar-cane inspired American planters and sons of missionaries to
displace the unsteady Hawaiians with industrious coolies, and finally to
overthrow the government they had undermined and then annex it to
America. Although acquiring American citizenship and sharing equally the
suffrage with Caucasians, the decreasing influence of the Hawaiians is
further diminished by the territorial form of government.
The Spanish War added islands on opposite sides of the globe, with
races resulting from diametrically opposite effects of three centuries
of Spanish rule. From Porto Rico the aboriginal Carib had long
disappeared under the slavery of his conquerors, and his place had been
filled by the negro slave in sugar cultivation and by the Spaniard and
other Europeans in coffee cultivation. To-day the negro and mulatto are
two-fifths of the million population and the whites three-fifths.[60] In
the Philippine Islands the native races have survived under a theocratic
protectorate and even their tribal and racial subdivisions have been
preserved. Two-fifths of their population of 7,600,000 belong to the
leading tribe, the Visayans, and one-fifth to another, the Tagalogs. Six
other tribes complete the list of "civilized" or Christianized peoples,
while 10 per cent remain pagan in the mountains and forests. Four-fifths
of the population are illiterate, a proportion the same as in Porto
Rico, compared with less than half of the negroes and only one-sixteenth
of the whites in the United States.[61]