CHAPTER IX_Races and Immigrants in America

AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION

A German statistician,[122] after studying population statistics of the

United States and observing the "race suicide" of the native American

stock, concludes: "The question of restriction on immigration is not a

matter of higher or lower wages, nor a matter of more or less criminals

and idiots, but the exclusion of a large part of the immigrants might

cost the United States their place among the world powers."

Exactly the opposite opinion was expressed in 1891 by Francis A.

Walker,[123] the leading American statistician of his time, and

superintendent of the censuses of 1870 and 1880. He said: "Foreign

immigration into this country has, from the time it first assumed large

proportions, amounted not to a reinforcement of our population, but a

replacement of native by foreign stock.... The American shrank from the

industrial competition thus thrust upon him. He was unwilling himself to

engage in the lowest kind of day labor with these new elements of

population; he was even more unwilling to bring sons and daughters into

the world to enter into that competition.... The more rapidly

foreigners came into the United States, the smaller was the rate of

increase, not merely among the native population separately, but

throughout the population of the country as a whole," including the

descendants of the earlier foreign immigrants.

Walker's statements of fact, whatever we may say of his explanations,

are easily substantiated. From earliest colonial times until the census

of 1840 the people of the United States multiplied more rapidly than the

people of any other modern nation, not excepting the prolific French

Canadians. The first six censuses, beginning in 1790, show that, without

appreciable immigration, the population doubled every twenty years, and

had this rate of increase continued until the present time, the

descendants of the colonial white and negro stock in the year 1900 would

have numbered 100,000,000 instead of the combined colonial, immigrant,

and negro total of 76,000,000. Indeed, if we take the total immigration

from 1820 to 1900, exceeding 19,000,000 people, and apply a slightly

higher than the average rate of increase from births, we shall find that

in the year 1900 one-half of the white population is derived from

immigrant stock, leaving the other half, or but 33,000,000 whites,

derived from the colonial stock.[124] This is scarcely more than

one-third of the number that should have been expected had the colonial

element continued to multiply from 1840 to 1900 as it had multiplied

from 1790 to 1840.

An interesting corroboration of these speculations is the prediction

made in the year 1815, thirty years before the great migration of the

nineteenth century, by the mathematician and publicist, Elkanah

Watson.[125] On the basis of the increase shown in the first three

censuses he made computations of the probable population for each census

year to 1900, and I have drawn up the following table, showing the

actual population compared with his estimates. Superintendent Walker, in

the essay above quoted, uses Watson's figures, and points out the

remarkable fact that those predictions were within less than one per

cent of the actual population until the year 1860, although, meanwhile,

there had come nearly 5,000,000 immigrants whom Watson could not have

foreseen. Thus the population of 1860, notwithstanding access of the

millions of immigrants, was only 310,000, or one per cent less than

Watson had predicted. And the falling off since 1860 has been even

greater, for, notwithstanding the immigration of 20,000,000 persons

since 1820, the population in 1900 was 75,000,000, or 25 per cent less

than Watson's computations.

POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION

------+------------+---------------+-------------+-----------

| POPULATION | WATSON'S | WATSON'S | FOREIGN

| (CENSUS) | ESTIMATE | ERROR |IMMIGRATION

| | | |FOR DECADE

------+------------+---------------+-------------+-----------

1790 | 3,929,214 | | |

1800 | 5,308,483 | | | 50,000

1810 | 7,239,881 | | | 70,000

1820 | 9,633,822 | 9,625,734 | -8,088 | 114,000

1830 | 12,866,020 | 12,833,645 | -32,375 | 143,439

1840 | 17,069,453 | 17,116,526 | +47,073 | 599,125

1850 | 23,191,876 | 23,185,368 | -6,508 | 1,713,251

1860 | 31,443,321 | 31,753,825 | +310,503 | 2,598,214

1870 | 38,558,371 | 42,328,432 | +3,770,061 | 2,314,824

1880 | 50,155,783 | 56,450,241 | +6,294,458 | 2,812,191

1890 | 62,622,250 | 77,266,989 | +14,644,739 | 5,246,613

1900 | 75,559,258 | 100,235,985 | +24,676,727 | 3,687,564

------+------------+---------------+-------------+-----------

Total immigration 1820-1900 19,229,224

-------------------------------------------------------------

This question of the "race suicide" of the American or colonial stock

should be regarded as the most fundamental of our social problems, or

rather as the most fundamental consequence of our social and industrial

institutions. It may be met by exhortation, as when President Roosevelt

says, "If the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many

different ways, with all their might and strength, and ready and able to

fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of families, and if the women

do not recognize that the greatest thing for any woman is to be a good

wife and mother, why that nation has cause to be alarmed about its

future."[126]

The anxiety of President Roosevelt is well grounded; but if race suicide

is not in itself an original cause, but is the result of other causes,

then exhortation will accomplish but little, while the removal or

amelioration of the other causes will of itself correct the resulting

evil. Where, then, shall we look for the causes of race suicide, or,

more accurately speaking, for the reduced proportion of children brought

into the world? The immediate circumstances consist in postponing the

age of marriage, in limiting the number of births after marriage, and in

an increase in the proportion of unmarried people. The reasons are

almost solely moral and not physical. Those who are ambitious and

studious, who strive to reach a better position in the world for

themselves and their children, and who have not inherited wealth, will

generally postpone marriage until they have educated themselves, or

accumulated property, or secured a permanent position. They will then

not bring into the world a larger number of children than they can

provide for on the basis of the standing which they themselves have

attained; for observation shows that those who marry early have large

families, and are generally kept on a lower station in life. The real

problem, therefore, with this class of people, is the opportunities for

earning a living. In the earlier days, when the young couple could take

up vacant land, and farming was the goal of all, a large family and the

cooperation of wife and children were a help rather than a hindrance.

To-day the couple, unless the husband has a superior position, must go

together to the factory or mill, and the children are a burden until

they reach the wage-earning age. Furthermore, wage-earning is uncertain,

factories shut down, and the man with a large family is thrown upon his

friends or charity. To admonish people living under these conditions

to go forth and multiply is to advise the cure of race suicide by race

deterioration.

[Illustration: FACULTY OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE (From _World's Work_)]

Curiously enough, these observations apply with even greater force to

the second generation of immigrants than to the native stock, for among

the daughters of the foreign-born only 19 per cent of those aged 15 to

24 years are married, while among daughters of native parents 30 per

cent are married; and for the men of 20 to 29 only 26.8 per cent of the

native sons of foreigners are married and 38.5 per cent of the sons of

natives.[127] These figures sustain what can be observed in many large

cities, that the races of immigrants who came to this country

twenty-five or more years ago are shrinking from competition with the

new races from Southern Europe.

Boston, for example, with its large Irish immigration beginning two

generations ago, shows a similar disproportion. Of the American

daughters of foreign parents 15 to 24 years of age, only 12 per cent are

married, but of the daughters of native parents 17 per cent are married;

of the sons of foreign parents 20 to 29 years of age, only 20 per cent

are married, but of the sons of native parents 26 per cent are married.

The contrast with the immigrants themselves is striking. In Boston, 24

per cent of the foreign-born women aged 15 to 24 are married, and 35 per

cent of the foreign-born men aged 20 to 29.[128] In other words, the

early marriages of immigrant men and women are nearly twice as many as

those of the American-born sons and daughters of immigrants, and only

one-third more than those of the sons and daughters of native stock.

With such a showing as this it would seem that our "place among the

world powers" depends indeed on immigration, for the immigrants'

children are more constrained to race suicide than the older American

stock.[129]

The competition is not so severe in country districts where the native

stock prevails; but in the cities and industrial centres the skilled and

ambitious workman and workwoman discover that in order to keep

themselves above the low standards of the immigrants they must postpone

marriage. The effect is noticeable and disastrous in the case of the

Irish-Americans. Displaced by Italians and Slavs, many of the young men

have fallen into the hoodlum and criminal element. Here moral causes

produce physical causes of race destruction, for the vicious elements of

the population disappear through the diseases bequeathed to their

progeny, and are recruited only from the classes forced down from above.

On the other hand, many more Irish have risen to positions of

foremanship, or have lived on their wits in politics, or have entered

the priesthood. The Irish-American girls, showing independence and

ambition, have refused to marry until they could be assured of a husband

of steady habits, and they have entered clerical positions, factories,

and mills. Thus this versatile race, with distinct native ability, is

meeting in our cities the same displacement and is resorting to the same

race suicide which itself inflicted a generation or two earlier on the

native colonial stock. But the effect is more severe, for the native

stock was able to leave the scenes of competition, to go West and take

up farms or build cities, but the Irish-American has less opportunity to

make such an escape.

Great numbers of Irishmen, together with others of English, Scotch,

German, and American descent, remaining in these industrial centres,

have sought to protect themselves and maintain high standards through

labor-unions and the so-called "closed shop," by limiting the number of

apprentices, excluding immigrants, and giving their sons a preference of

admission. But even with the unions they find it necessary also to limit

the size of their families, and I am convinced from personal

observation, that, were the statistics on this point compiled from the

unions of skilled workmen, there would be found even stronger evidences

of race suicide than among other classes in the nation.

To the well-to-do classes freedom from the care of children is not a

necessity, but an opportunity for luxury and indulgence. These include

the very wealthy, whose round of social functions would be interrupted

by home obligations. To them, of course, immigration brings no need of

prudence--it rather helps to bring the enormous fortunes which distract

their attention from the home. But their numbers are insignificant

compared with the millions who determine the fate of the nation. More

significant are the well-to-do farmers and their wives who have

inherited the soil redeemed by their fathers, and whose desire to be

free for enjoying the fruits of civilization lead them to the position

so strongly condemned by President Roosevelt. This class of farmers, as

shown in the census map of the size of private families,[130] may be

traced across the Eastern and Northern states, running through New

England, rural New York, Northern Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan,

parts of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. In the rich counties of

southern Michigan, settled and occupied mainly by native stock from New

York, the average size of families is less than four persons, as it is

in a large area of Central New York, whereas for the country at large it

is 4.7, and for counties in the mining sections of Michigan occupied by

immigrants it rises as high as 5.8 persons.

The census figures showing the size of families do not, however, reveal

the number of children born to a family, since they show only those

living together and not those who have moved away or died. This

especially affects the large-sized families, and does not reveal, for

example, a fact shown by Kuczynski from the state census of

Massachusetts that the average number of children of the foreign-born

women in that state is 4.5, while for native women it is only 2.7.[131]

This also affects the showing for a state like West Virginia, composed

almost entirely of native Americans of colonial stock, with only 2 per

cent foreign-born and 5 per cent colored, where the average size of

families is 5.1 persons, the highest in the United States, but where in

the Blue Ridge Mountains I have come upon two couples of native white

Americans who claimed respectively eighteen and twenty-two children.

Throughout the South the reduction in size of families and the

postponement of marriage have not occurred to any great extent either

among the white or colored races, and these are states to which

immigration has contributed less than 3 per cent of their population.

Yet, if Superintendent Walker's view is sound in all respects, the

Southern whites should shrink from competition with the negro in the

same way that the Northern white shrinks from competition with the

immigrant. He does not do so, and the reasons are probably found in the

fact that the South has been remote from the struggle of modern

competition, and that ignorance and proud contentment fail to spur the

masses to that ambitious striving which rises by means of what Malthus

called the prudential restraints on population. It is quite probable

that in the South, with the spread of the factory system and universal

education, the growth in numbers through excess of births over deaths

will be retarded.

On the whole it seems that immigration and the competition of inferior

races tends to dry up the older and superior races wherever the latter

have learned to aspire to an improved standard of living, and that among

well-to-do classes not competing with immigrants, but made wealthier by

their low wages, a similar effect is caused by the desire for luxury and

easy living.[132]

=Americanization.=--A line on the chart opposite page 63 shows the

proportions between the number of immigrants and the existing

population. From this it appears that the enormous immigration of 1906

is relatively not as large as the smaller immigration of the years 1849

to 1854, or the year 1882. Three hundred thousand immigrants in 1850 was

as large an addition to a population of 23,000,000 as 1,000,000 in 1906

to a population of 85,000,000. Judged by mere numbers, the present

immigration is not greater than that witnessed by two former periods.

Judged by saturation it may be greater, for the former immigrants were

absorbed by colonial Americans, but the present immigrants enter a

solution half colonial and half immigrant. The problem of

Americanization increases more than the number to be Americanized. What

is the nature of this problem, and what are the forces available for its

solution?

The term amalgamation may be used for that mixture of blood which unites

races in a common stock, while assimilation is that union of their minds

and wills which enables them to think and act together. Amalgamation is

a process of centuries, but assimilation is a process of individual

training. Amalgamation is a blending of races, assimilation a blending

of civilizations. Amalgamation is beyond the organized efforts of

government, but assimilation can be promoted by social institutions and

laws. Amalgamation therefore cannot attract our practical interest,

except as its presence or absence sets limits to our efforts toward

assimilation.

Our principal interest in amalgamation is its effect on the negro race.

The census statisticians discontinued after 1890 the inquiry into the

number of mulattoes, but the census of 1890 showed that mulattoes were

15 per cent of the total negro population. This was a slightly larger

proportion than that of preceding years. The mulatto element of the

negro race is almost a race of itself. Its members on the average differ

but little if at all from those of the white race in their capacity for

advancement, and it is the tragedy of race antagonism that they with

their longings should suffer the fate of the more contented and

thoughtless blacks.[133] In their veins runs the blood of white

aristocracy, and it is a curious psychology of the Anglo-Saxon that

assigns to the inferior race those equally entitled to a place among the

superior. But sociology offers compensation for the injustice to

physiology. The mulatto is the natural leader, instructor, and spokesman

of the black. Prevented from withdrawing himself above the fortunes of

his fellows, he devotes himself to their elevation. This fact becomes

clear in proportion as the need of practical education becomes clear.

The effective work of the whites through missionary schools and colleges

has not been the elevation of the black, but the elevation of mulattoes

to teach the blacks. A new era for the blacks is beginning when the

mulatto sees his own future in theirs.

Apart from the negro we have very little knowledge of the amalgamation

of races in America. We only know that for the most part they have

blended into a united people with harmonious ideals, and the English,

the German, the Scotch-Irish, the Dutch, and the Huguenot have become

the American.

We speak of superior and inferior races, and this is well enough, but

care should be taken to distinguish between inferiority and

backwardness--between that superiority which is the original endowment

of race and that which results from the education and training which we

call civilization. While there are superior and inferior races, there

are primitive, mediaeval, and modern civilizations, and there are certain

mental qualities required for and produced by these different grades of

civilization. A superior race may have a primitive or mediaeval

civilization, and therefore its individuals may never have exhibited the

superior mental qualities with which they are actually endowed, and

which a modern civilization would have called into action. The adults

coming from such a civilization seem to be inferior in their mental

qualities, but their children, placed in the new environments of the

advanced civilization, exhibit at once the qualities of the latter. The

Chinaman comes from a mediaeval civilization--he shows little of those

qualities which are the product of Western civilization, and with his

imitativeness, routine, and traditions, he has earned the reputation of

being entirely non-assimilable. But the children of Chinamen, born and

reared in this country, entirely disprove this charge, for they are as

apt in absorbing the spirit and method of American institutions as any

Caucasian.[134] The race is superior but backward.

The Teutonic races until five hundred years after Christ were primitive

in their civilization, yet they had the mental capacities which made

them, like Arminius, able to comprehend and absorb the highest Roman

civilization. They passed through the mediaeval period and then came out

into the modern period of advanced civilization, yet during these two

thousand years their mental capacities, the original endowment of race,

have scarcely improved. It is civilization, not race evolution, that

has transformed the primitive warrior into the philosopher, scientist,

artisan, and business man. Could their babies have been taken from the

woods two thousand years ago and transported to the homes and schools of

modern America, they could have covered in one generation the progress

of twenty centuries. Other races, like the Scotch and the Irish, made

the transition from primitive institutions to modern industrial habits

within a single century, and Professor Brinton, our most profound

student of the American Indian, has said,[135] "I have been in close

relations to several full-blood American Indians who had been removed

from an aboriginal environment and instructed in this manner [in

American schools and communities], and I could not perceive that they

were either in intellect or sympathies inferior to the usual type of the

American gentleman. One of them notably had a refined sense of humor as

well as uncommon acuteness of observation."

The line between superior and inferior, as distinguished from advanced

and backward, races appears to be the line between the temperate and

tropical zones. The two belts of earth between the tropics of Capricorn

and Cancer and the arctic and antarctic circles have been the areas

where man in his struggle for existence developed the qualities of mind

and will--the ingenuity, self-reliance, self-control, strenuous

exertion, and will power--which befit the modern industrial

civilization. But in the tropics these qualities are less essential, for

where nature lavishes food, and winks at the neglect of clothing and

shelter, there ignorance, superstition, physical prowess, and sexual

passion have an equal chance with intelligence, foresight, thrift, and

self-control. The children of all the races of the temperate zones are

eligible to the highest American civilization, and it only needs that

they be "caught" young enough. There is perhaps no class of people more

backward than the 3,000,000 poor whites of the Appalachian Mountains,

but there is no class whose children are better equipped by heredity to

attain distinction in any field of American endeavor. This much cannot

be said for the children of the tropical zones. Amalgamation is their

door to assimilation.

Before we can intelligently inquire into the agencies of Americanization

we must first agree on what we mean by the term. I can think of no

comprehensive and concise description equal to that of Abraham Lincoln:

"Government of the people, by the people, for the people." This

description should be applied not only to the state but to other

institutions. In the home it means equality of husband and wife; in the

church it means the voice of the laity; in industry the participation of

the workmen.

Unhappily it cannot be said that Lincoln's description has ever been

attained. It is the goal which he and others whom we recognize as true

Americans have pointed out. Greater than any other obstacle in the road

toward that goal have been our race divisions. Government for the people

depends on government by the people, and this is difficult where the

people cannot think and act together. Such is the problem of

Americanization.

In the earlier days the most powerful agency of assimilation was

frontier life. The pioneers "were left almost entirely to their own

resources in this great struggle. They developed a spirit of

self-reliance, a capacity for self-government, which are the most

prominent characteristics of the American people."[136] Frontier life

includes pioneer mining camps as well as pioneer farming.

Next to the frontier the farms of America are the richest field of

assimilation. Here the process is sometimes thought to be slower than it

is in the cities, but any one who has seen it under both conditions

cannot doubt that if it is slower it is more real. In the cities the

children are more regularly brought under the influence of the public

schools, but more profound and lasting than the education of the schools

is the education of the street and the community. The work of the

schools in a great city like New York cannot be too highly praised, and

without such work the future of the immigrant's child would be dark. In

fact the children of the immigrant are better provided with school

facilities than the children of the Americans. Less than 1 per cent of

their children 10 to 14 years of age are illiterate, but the proportion

of illiterates among children of native parents is over 4 per cent. This

is not because the foreigner is more eager to educate his child than is

the native, but because nearly three-fourths of the foreigners' children

and only one-sixth of the natives' children live in the larger cities,

where schools and compulsory attendance prevail. Were it not for

compulsory education, the child of the peasant immigrant would be, like

the child of the Slav in the anthracite coal fields, "the helpless

victim of the ignorance, frugality, and industrial instincts of his

parents."[137] As it is, they drop out of the schools at the earliest

age allowed by law, and the hostility of foreigners to factory

legislation and its corollary compulsory school legislation is more

difficult to overcome than the hostility of American employers, both of

whom might profit by the work of their children. The thoroughness with

which the great cities of the North enforce the requirements of primary

education leaves but little distinction between the children of natives

and the children of foreigners, but what difference remains is to the

advantage of the natives. In Boston in 1900 only 5 children of native

parents were illiterate, and 22 native children of foreign parents, a

ratio of one-twentieth of 1 per cent for the natives and one-tenth of 1

per cent for the foreigners. In New York 68 of the 83,000 children of

native parents were illiterate, and 311 of the 166,000 native children

of foreign parents, a ratio insignificant in both cases, but more than

twice as great for the foreigners as for the natives.[138] Taking all of

the cities of at least 50,000 population, more than one-fourth of the

foreign-born children 10 to 15 years of age are bread-winners, and only

one-tenth of the children of native parents. The influence of residence

in America is shown by the fact that of the children of foreigners born

in this country the proportion of bread-winners is reduced to

one-seventh.[139]

But it is the community more than the school that gives the child his

actual working ideals and his habits and methods of life. And in a great

city, with its separation of classes, this community is the slums, with

its mingling of all races and the worst of the Americans. He sees and

knows surprisingly little of the America that his school-books describe.

The American churches, his American employers, are in other parts of the

city, and his Americanization is left to the school-teacher, the

policeman, and the politician, who generally are but one generation

before him from Europe. But on the farm he sees and knows all classes,

the best and the worst, and even where his parents strive to isolate

their community and to preserve the language and the methods of the old

country, only a generation or two are required for the surrounding

Americanism to permeate. Meanwhile healthful work, steady, industrious,

and thrifty habits, have made him capable of rising to the best that

his surroundings exemplify.

[Illustration: SLAVIC HOME MISSIONARIES (From _The Home Missionary_)]

Since the year 1900 the Immigration Bureau has not inquired as to the

religious faith of the immigrants. In that year, when the number

admitted was 361,000, one-fifth were Protestants, mainly from Great

Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and Finland. One-tenth

were Jews, 4 per cent were Greek Catholics, and 52 per cent were Roman

Catholics. With the shifting of the sources toward the east and south of

Europe the proportion of Catholic and Jewish faith has increased. During

this transition the Protestant churches of America have begun to awaken

to a serious problem confronting them. The three New England states

which have given their religion and political character to Northern and

Western states are themselves now predominantly Catholic. In all of the

Northern manufacturing and industrial states and in their great cities

the marvellous organization and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church

has carefully provided every precinct, ward, or district with chapels,

cathedrals, and priests even in advance of the inflow of population,

while the scattered forces of Protestantism overlap in some places and

overlook other places. Two consequences have followed. The Protestant

churches in much the larger part of their activities have drawn

themselves apart in an intellectual and social round of polite

entertainment for the families of the mercantile, clerical,

professional, and employing classes, while the Catholic churches

minister to the laboring and wage-earning classes. In a minor and

relatively insignificant part of their activities the Protestant

churches have supported missionaries, colporters, and chapels among the

immigrants, the wage-earners, and their children. Their home missionary

societies, which in the earlier days followed up their own believers on

the frontier and enabled them to establish churches in their new homes,

have in the past decade or two become foreign missionary societies

working at home. Nothing is more significant or important in the history

of American Protestantism than the zeal and patriotism with which a few

missionaries in this unaccustomed field have begun to lead the way. By

means of addresses, periodicals, books, study classes, they are

gradually awakening the churches to the needs of the foreigner at

home.[140] Among certain nationalities, especially the Italians and

Slavs, they find an open field, for thousands of those nationalities,

though nominally Catholic, are indifferent to the church that they

associate with oppression at home. Among these nationalities already

several converts have become missionaries in turn to their own people,

and with the barrier of language and suspicion thus bridged over, the

influence of the Protestant religion is increasing. Perhaps more than

anything else is needed a federation of the Protestant denominations

similar to that recently arranged in Porto Rico. That island has been

laid out in districts through mutual agreement of the home missionary

societies, and each district is assigned exclusively to a single

denomination.

While the Protestant churches have been withdrawing from the districts

invaded by the foreigners, the field has been entered by the "social

settlement." This remarkable movement, eliminating religious propaganda,

is essentially religious in its zeal for social betterment. Its

principal service has been to raise up Americans who know and understand

the life and needs of the immigrants and can interpret them to others.

In the "institutional church" is also to be found a similar adaptation

of the more strictly religious organization to the social and

educational needs of the immigrants and their children.

More than any other class in the community, it is the employers who

determine the progress of the foreigner and his children towards

Americanization. They control his waking hours, his conditions of

living, and his chances of advancement. In recent years a few employers

have begun to realize their responsibilities, and a great corporation

like the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company establishes its "sociological"

department with its schools, kindergartens, hospitals, recreation

centres, and model housing, on an equal footing with its engineering and

sales departments. Other employers are interesting themselves in various

degrees and ways in "welfare work," or "industrial betterment," and

those who profit most by this awakening interest are the foreign-born

and their families. This interest has not yet shown itself in a

willingness to shorten the hours of labor, and this phase of welfare

work must probably be brought about by other agencies.

The influence of schools, churches, settlements, and farming communities

applies more to the children of immigrants than their parents. The

immigrants themselves are too old for Americanization, especially when

they speak a non-English language. To them the labor-union is at present

the strongest Americanizing force. The effort of organized labor to

organize the unskilled and the immigrant is the largest and most

significant fact of the labor movement. Apart from the labor question

itself, it means the enlistment of a powerful self-interest in the

Americanization of the foreign-born. For it is not too much to say that

the only effective Americanizing force for the Southeastern European is

the labor-union. The church to which he gives allegiance is the Roman

Catholic, and, however much the Catholic Church may do for the ignorant

peasant in his European home, such instruction as the priest gives is

likely to tend toward an acceptance of their subservient position on the

part of the workingmen. It is a frequently observed fact that when

immigrants join a labor-union they almost insolently warn the priest to

keep his advice to himself.

Universal suffrage admits the immigrant to American politics within one

to five years after landing. But the suffrage is not looked upon to-day

as the sufficient Americanizing force that a preceding generation

imagined. The suffrage appeals very differently to the immigrant voter

and to the voter who has come up through the American schools and

American life. The American has learned not only that this is a free

government, but that its freedom is based on constitutional principles

of an abstract nature. Freedom of the press, trial by jury, separation

of powers, independence of the judiciary, equality of opportunity, and

several other governmental and legal principles have percolated through

his subconscious self, and when he contemplates public questions these

abstract principles have more or less influence as a guide to his

ballot. But the immigrant has none of these. He comes here solely to

earn a better living. The suffrage is nothing to him but a means of

livelihood. Not that he readily sells his vote for money--rather does he

simply "vote for his job." He votes as instructed by his employer or his

political "boss," because it will help his employer's business or

because his boss will get him a job, or will, in some way, favor him and

others of his nationality. There is a noticeable difference between the

immigrant and the children of the immigrant in this regard. The young

men, when they begin to vote, can be appealed to on the ground of public

spirit; their fathers can be reached only on the ground of private

interest.

Now it cannot be expected that the labor-union or any other influence

will greatly change the immigrant in this respect. But the union does

this much: it requires every member to be a citizen, or to have declared

his intention of taking out naturalization papers. The reasons for doing

this are not political; they are sentimental and patriotic. The union

usually takes pride in showing that its members are Americans, and have

foregone allegiance to other countries. In a union like the musicians'

the reasons for requiring citizenship are also protective, since they

serve to exclude transient musical immigrants from American audiences.

Again, the union frees its members from the dictation of employers,

bosses, and priests. Politicians, of course, strive to control the vote

of organized labor, but so disappointing has been the experience of the

unions that they have quite generally come to distrust the leader who

combines labor and politics. The immigrant who votes as a unionist has

taken the first step, in casting his ballot, towards considering the

interests of others, and this is also the first step towards giving

public spirit and abstract principles a place alongside private interest

and his own job.

But there is another way, even more impressive, in which the union

asserts the preeminence of principles over immediate self-interest. When

the foreigner from Southern Europe is inducted into the union, then for

the first time does he get the idea that his job belongs to him by

virtue of a right to work, and not as the personal favor or whim of a

boss. These people are utterly obsequious before their foremen or

bosses, and it is notorious that nearly always they pay for the

privilege of getting and keeping a job. This bribery of bosses, as well

as the padrone system, proceed from the deep-seated conviction that

despotism is the natural social relation, and that therefore they must

make terms with the influential superior who is so fortunate as to have

favor with the powers that be.

The anthracite coal operators represented such men, prior to joining the

union, as disciplined and docile workmen, but in doing so they

disregarded the fact that outside the field where they were obsequious

they were most violent, treacherous, and factional. Before the

organization of the union in the coal fields these foreigners were given

over to the most bitter and often murderous feuds among the ten or

fifteen nationalities and the two or three factions within each

nationality. The Polish worshippers of a given saint would organize a

night attack on the Polish worshippers of another saint; the Italians

from one province would have a knife for the Italians of another

province, and so on. When the union was organized the antagonisms of

race, religion, and faction were eliminated. The immigrants came down to

an economic basis and turned their forces against their bosses. "We

fellows killed this country," said a Polish striker to Father Curran,

"and now we are going to make it." The sense of a common cause, and,

more than all else, the sense of individual rights as men, have come to

these people through the organization of their labor unions, and it

could come in no other way, for the union appeals to their necessities,

while other forces appeal to their prejudices. They are even yet far

from ideal Americans, but those who have hitherto imported them and

profited by their immigration should be the last to cry out against the

chief influence that has started them on the way to true

Americanism.[141]

=Agricultural Distribution of Immigrants.=--The congestion and colonizing

of immigrants in the cities and their consequent poverty and the

deterioration of the second generation have brought forth various

proposals for inducing them to settle upon the farms. The commissioners

of immigration[142] at various times have advocated an industrial museum

at Ellis Island, wherein the resources and opportunities of the several

states could be displayed before the eyes of the incoming thousands.

They and others have gone further and advocated the creation of a bureau

of immigrant distribution to help the immigrants out of the crowded

cities into the country districts. Still others have urged the

establishment of steamship lines to Southern ports and the Gulf of

Mexico, so that immigrants may be carried directly to the regions that

"need them." Very little can be expected from projects of this

kind,[143] for the present contingent of immigrants from Southeastern

Europe is too poor in worldly goods and too ignorant of American

business to warrant an experiment in the isolation and self-dependence

of farming. The farmers of the South and West welcome the settler who

has means of purchase, but they distrust the newly arrived immigrant.

Scandinavians and Germans in large numbers find their way to their

countrymen on the farms, but the newer nationalities would require the

fostering care of government or of wealthy private societies. The Jews

have, indeed, taken up the matter, and the Jewish Agricultural and

Industrial Aid Society of New York, by means of subventions from the

Baron de Hirsch fund, has distributed many families throughout the

country, partly in agriculture, but more generally in trade. The Society

for the Protection of Italian Immigrants is doing similar work. Great

railway systems and land companies in the South and West have their

agricultural and industrial agents on the lookout for eligible settlers.

All of the Southern states have established bureaus of immigration, and

they are advertising the North and Europe for desirable immigrants. But

these agencies seek mainly those immigrants who have resided in the

country for a time, and have learned the language and American

practices, and, in the case of the railroad and land companies, those

who have accumulated some property.

The immigration bureaus of the Southern states and railways, the most

urgent applicants at the present time for immigrants, are strongly

opposed to the plan of federal distribution. They want farmers who will

do their own work. From the standpoint of the immigrant himself this

position is correct. To find a place as an agriculturist he must find a

place as a farmer and not a harvest hand.[144] Speaking for the Southern

bureaus, Professor Fleming says,[145] "The South decidedly objects to

being made the government dumping-ground for undesirable immigrants. It

does not want the lower class foreigners who have swarmed into the

Northern cities. It wants the same sort of people who settled so much of

the West." The state board of South Carolina officially invites

immigration of "white citizens of the United States, citizens of

Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, and France, and all other foreigners of

Saxon origin."

As for those without money who must depend on their daily labor for

wages, they must go where employment is most regular and the best wages

are paid. This is not on the farms, with a few months' work in summer

and no homes in winter. It is unmistakably in the great cities and

industrial centres. The commissioner of immigration at Ellis Island,

speaking of the cordon established by his bureau along the Canadian

frontier from Halifax to Winnipeg in order to catch those who tried to

escape inspection at New York, said, "All those immigrants who had New

York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, or Cincinnati in mind as a

destination when they left Europe and came to Quebec, went all the way

around that wall to its western end at Winnipeg, and then took trains

and came back to the very places they had in mind when they left Europe;

and if you were to land all the ships that now come to New York at

Galveston, New Orleans, or Charleston, every one of the immigrants would

come to the place he had in mind when he decided to emigrate."[146]

Professor Wilcox contends that the immigrants already distribute

themselves according to their economic advantage as completely as do the

natives. They seem to congest in the cities because the cities are

necessarily their places of first arrival. "Our foreign-born arrive, in

at least nine-tenths of the cases, at some city. Our native citizens

arrive by birth, in at least three-fourths of the cases, in the country.

The foreign-born arrive mainly at seaport cities, and disperse gradually

from those cities to and through other interior cities, ultimately

reaching in many cases the small towns or open country. It is in no

sense surprising, or an evidence of imperfect distribution, that the

foreign-born should be massed in the cities when nine-tenths of them

arrive there, and the native population massed in the country districts

when three-fourths of them arrive there."[147] Artificial distribution

would not relieve the pressure as long as the character and amount of

immigration continue--it can only be relieved by creating greater

economic inducements in the country. Natives and foreigners both crowd

to the cities because wages and profits are higher than they are in the

country.

Even supposing the congestion in the cities could be relieved by making

the inducements in the country greater, the relief could not continue,

for it would only invite more immigration. Emigration has not relieved

the pressure of population in Europe. In no period of their history,

with the exception of Ireland, have the populations of Europe increased

at a greater rate than during the last half century of migration to

America. It is not emigration but improved standards of living that

lessens the pressure of numbers, and France with the widest diffusion of

property has little emigration and no increase in population. With the

redundant millions of Europe, increasing thousands would migrate if they

got word from their friends that the American government is finding jobs

for them. Just as we have already seen that the tide of immigration

rises with a period of prosperity in America, so would it rise with

agricultural distribution of immigrants. Both are simply more openings

for employment, and the knowledge of such opportunities is promptly

carried to the waiting multitudes abroad.

Consider also the political jeopardy of an administration at Washington

conducting a bureau for the distribution of immigrants. If it refused

to direct immigrants to one section of the country because it found that

the wages were low, it would arouse the hostility of employers. If it

directed them to another section, where the wages offered were high

because the employers were preparing for a lockout, or the unions were

on strike, it would lose the votes of workingmen. The administration

would soon learn that safely to conduct such a bureau it must not

conduct it at all.

Far better is it that the federal government should leave the

distribution of immigrants to private employment agencies. It might then

license all such agencies that conduct an interstate business. With the

power to take away the license on proof of fraud and misrepresentation,

and with the prosecution of agencies and employers that deceive and

enslave the immigrant, the government would accomplish all that it could

directly do for better distribution. Unquestionably the employment

agencies, with their _padroni_, their bankers, and their false promises,

are the source of miserable abuse to thousands of immigrants.[148] They

require interstate as well as state regulation. By weeding out the

dishonest agencies the field would be occupied by the honest ones, and

the immigrant could trust himself to their assistance. But such

regulation would not be merely for the sake of the immigrant. It would,

as it should, aid the American as well.

This suggests to us the true nature of the problem of city congestion

and the nature of its solution. It is not to be found in special efforts

on behalf of the immigrant, but in efforts to better the condition of

both Americans and immigrants. The congestion of cities is owing to

discriminations in favor of cities. If the government gives aid to

agriculture as it does to manufactures, if it provides better

communication, equalizes taxes, reduces freight rates to the level

enjoyed by cities, then agriculture and the small towns will be more

attractive. Americans will not crowd to the cities, and the more

provident of the immigrants will find their way to the country. The

proposition of federal distribution of immigrants is merely a clever

illusion kept up to lead Congress astray from the restriction of

immigration.

=Higher Standards of Immigration.=--As for the inferior, defective, and

undesirable classes of immigrants, there is no protection except

stringent selection. The Commissioner of Immigration at New York

estimates that 200,000 of the million immigrants in 1903 were an injury

instead of a benefit to the industries of the country,[149] and he

advocates a physical examination and the exclusion of those who fall

below a certain physical standard. During the past ten years the

educational, or rather, illiteracy test, has come to the front, and the

advantages of this test are its simplicity and its specific application

to those races whose standards are lowest.

[Illustration: ALIENS AWAITING ADMISSION AT ELLIS ISLAND]

Much discussion has been carried on respecting this test, and there has

been considerable misunderstanding and misrepresentation as to its

probable effects. The principal mistake has been the assumption that it

is designed to take the place of other tests of admission, and that

therefore it would permit, for example, the most dangerous

criminals--those who are intelligent--to enter this country. If we

examine existing laws, and seek to understand the real nature of

immigration restriction, we can see the character of this mistake. All

of our legislation governing immigration should be described as

_improvement_ of immigration rather than _restriction_ of immigration.

The object has always been to raise the average character of those

admitted by excluding those who fall below certain standards. And higher

standards have been added from time to time as rapidly as the lawmakers

perceived the need of bettering the quality of our future citizenship.

Although in 1862 Congress had enacted a law prohibiting the shipment of

Chinese coolies in American vessels,[150] it was not until 1875 that the

lawmakers first awoke to the evil of unrestricted immigration. In that

year a law was enacted to exclude convicts and prostitutes. This law

made an exception in favor of those who had been convicted of political

offences. Next, in 1882, Congress added lunatics, idiots, paupers, and

Chinese. In 1885 laborers under contract were for the first time to be

excluded, but an exception was made in order to admit actors, artists,

lecturers, singers, domestics, and skilled workmen for new industries.

In 1891 the list of ineligibles was again extended so as to shut out not

only convicts but persons convicted of crime, also "assisted"

immigrants, polygamists, and persons with loathsome or dangerous

contagious diseases. In 1903 the law added epileptics, persons who have

had two or more attacks of insanity, professional beggars, and

anarchists. Notwithstanding these successive additions of excluded

classes, the number of immigrants has continually increased until it is

greater to-day than in any preceding period, and while the standards

have been raised in one direction, the average quality has been lowered

in other directions. The educational and physical tests, while not

needed for the races from Northwestern Europe, are now advocated as

additions to the existing tests on account of the flood of races from

Southeastern Europe.

The question of "poor physique" has come seriously to the front in

recent reports of immigration officials. The decline in the average of

physical make-up to which they call attention accompanies the increase

in numbers of Southern and Eastern Europeans. While the commissioner at

Ellis Island estimates that 200,000 immigrants are below the physical

standards that should be required to entitle them to admission, the

number certified by the surgeons is much less than this. Yet nine-tenths

of even that smaller number are admitted, since the law excludes them

only if other grounds of exclusion appear. That the physical test is

practicable is shown by the following description of the qualities taken

into account by the medical examiners at the immigrant stations;

qualities which would be made even more definite if they were authorized

to be acted upon:[151]--

"A certificate of this nature implies that the alien concerned is

afflicted with a body not only but illy adapted to the work necessary to

earn his bread, but also but poorly able to withstand the onslaught of

disease. It means that he is undersized, poorly developed, with feeble

heart action, arteries below the standard size; that he is physically

degenerate, and as such not only unlikely to become a desirable citizen,

but also very likely to transmit his undesirable qualities to his

offspring should he, unfortunately for the country in which he is

domiciled, have any.

"Of all causes for rejection, outside of those for dangerous,

contagious, or loathsome diseases, or for mental disease, that of 'poor

physique' should receive the most weight, for in admitting such aliens

not only do we increase the number of public charges by their inability

to gain their bread through their physical inaptitude and their low

resistance to disease, but we admit likewise progenitors to this country

whose offspring will reproduce, often in an exaggerated degree, the

physical degeneracy of their parents."

The history of the illiteracy test in Congress is a curious comment on

lobbying. First introduced in 1895, it passed the House by a vote of 195

to 26, and the Senate in another form by a vote of 52 to 10. Referred to

a conference committee, an identical bill again passed both Houses by

reduced majorities. But irrelevant amendments had been tacked on and the

President vetoed it. The House passed it over his veto by 193 to 37, but

it was too late in the session to reach a vote in the Senate. Introduced

again in 1898, it passed the Senate by 45 to 28, but pressure of the

Spanish War prevented a vote in the House. The bill came up in

subsequent Congresses but did not reach a vote.[152] The lobby is

directed by the steamship companies, supported by railway companies, the

Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, and other great employers of

labor. By misrepresentation, these interested agencies have been able at

times to arouse the fears of the older races of immigrants not affected

by the measure. Their fears were groundless, for the illiteracy test is

not a test of the English language, but a test of any language, and it

applies only to those who are 15 years of age and over, but does not

apply to wife, children, parents, or grandparents of those who are

admitted. With these reasonable limitations it would exclude only 1 in

200 of the Scandinavians, 1 in 100 of the English, Scotch, and Finns, 2

or 3 in 100 of the Germans, Irish, Welsh, and French; but it would

exclude one-half of the South Italians, one-seventh of the North

Italians, one-third to two-fifths of the several Slav races, one-seventh

of the Russian Jews, altogether one-fifth or one-fourth of the total

immigration.[153] But these proportions would not long continue.

Elementary education is making progress in Eastern and Southern Europe,

and a test of this kind would stimulate it still more among the

peasants. Restrictive at first, it is only selective; it would not

permanently reduce the number of immigrants, but would raise their level

of intelligence and their ability to take care of themselves.

The foregoing principles do not apply to Chinese immigration. There the

law is strictly one of exclusion and not selection. This distinction is

often overlooked in the discussion of the subject. Respecting European,

Japanese, and Korean immigration, the law _admits_ all except certain

classes definitely described, such as paupers, criminals, and so on.

Respecting Chinese immigration the law _excludes_ all except certain

classes described, such as teachers, merchants, travellers, and

students. In the case of European immigration the burden of proof is

upon the immigration authorities to show that the immigrant should be

excluded. In the case of the Chinese, the burden of proof is on the

immigrant to show that he should be admitted. In the administration of

the law the difference is fundamental. If the Chinese law is liberalized

so as to admit doctors, lawyers, and other professional classes,

against whom there is no objection, it can be done in one of two ways.

It can name and specify the additional classes to be admitted. To this

there is little objection, for it retains the existing spirit of the

law. Or it can be reversed, and can admit all classes of Chinese except

coolies, laborers, and the classes now excluded by other laws. If this

were done, the enforcement of the law would break down, for the burden

of proof would be lifted from the immigrant and placed on the examining

board. The law is with great difficulty enforced as it is, but the

evasions bear no comparison in number with those practised under the

other law. European immigration is encouraged, provided it passes a

minimum standard. Chinese immigration is prohibited unless it exceeds a

maximum standard. One is selection, the other is exclusion. One should

be amended by describing new classes _not_ to be admitted, the other by

describing classes which _may_ be admitted.

This difference between the two laws may be seen in the effects of the

restrictions which have from time to time been added to the immigration

laws. Each additional ground of restriction or selection has not

decreased the total amount of immigration, nor has it increased the

proportion of those debarred from admission. In 1898, 3200 aliens were

sent back, and this was 1.4 per cent of those who arrived. In 1901, 3900

were sent back, but this was only three-fourths of 1 per cent of those

arriving. In 1906, 13,000 sent back were 1.2 per cent of the arrivals.

Intending immigrants as well as steamship companies learn the standards

of exclusion and the methods of evasion, so that the proportion who take

their chances and fail in the attempt is very small. Nevertheless, this

deportation of immigrants, though averaging less than 1 per cent, is a

hardship that should be avoided. It has often been proposed that this

should be done through examination abroad by American consuls or by

agents of the Immigration Bureau. Attractive and humane as this proposal

appears, the foreign examination could not be made final. It would

remove the examiners from effective control, and would require a large

additional force as well as the existing establishment to deport those

who might evade the foreign inspection. It does not strike at the root

of the evil, which is the business energy of the steamship companies in

soliciting immigration, and their business caution in requiring doubtful

immigrants to give bonds in advance to cover the cost of carrying them

back.[154] It is not the exclusion law that causes hardship, but the

steamship companies that connive at evasions of the law. The law of 1903

for the first time adopted the correct principle to meet this evasion,

but with a limited application. Since 1898, the Bureau had debarred

increasing numbers on account of loathsome and contagious diseases. But

these had already done the injury which their deportation was designed

to prevent. In the crowded steerage the entire shipload was exposed to

this contagion. Congress then enacted the law of 1903, not only

requiring the steamship companies to carry them back, as before, but

requiring the companies to pay a fine of $100 for every alien debarred

on that account. In 1906, the companies paid fines of $24,300 on 243

such deportations. The principle should be extended to all classes

excluded by law, and the fine should be raised to $500. Then every agent

of the steamship companies in the remotest hamlets of Europe would be an

immigration inspector. Their surgeons and officials already know the law

and its standards of administration as thoroughly as the immigration

officials. It only needs an adequate motive to make them cooperators

with the Bureau instead of evaders of the law. Already the law of 1903

has partly had that effect. One steamship company has arranged with the

Bureau to locate medical officers at its foreign ports of embarkation.

However, the penalty is not yet heavy enough, and the Commissioner-General

recommends its increase to $500. By extending the law to all grounds of

deportation in addition to contagious diseases, the true source of

hardship to debarred aliens will be dried up.[155]

INDEX

Advertising, 26, 29, 84, 85, 104, 108, 109.

Age Composition of Immigrants, 119.

Agriculture, 130, 131, 132, 133.

Alien Contract Labor Law, 118.

American Federation of Labor, 144.

Americanization, 208.

Armenians, 65, 99.

Asiatic Immigration, 101-104.

Assimilation, 17-21, 113, 198.

Atlanta University, 58, 59, 61.

Australia, 6, 19.

Austria-Hungary, 18, 65, 79-87.

Births, 57, 86, 94.

Bohemians, 80, 82, 132.

Boston, 203, 215.

Brinton, Daniel G., 212.

Burlingame Treaty, 111.

Butcher Workmen, 150.

California, 101, 103, 117.

Canada, 104. (See "French Canadians.")

Carib, 106.

Castes, 8.

Charity, 108.

Charity Organization Society of New York, 100.

Chicago, 47, 110, 165, 178.

Child Labor, 152.

Chinese, 101, 109, 111, 114, 117, 130, 131, 132, 143, 144, 146, 156,

231. (See "Coolies.")

Chinese Exclusion, 117, 152, 235.

Cities, 54, 55, 164, 165, 166, 215.

Civil War, 3, 63, 64, 98, 111, 129, 175.

Classes in America, 8, 12.

Closed Shop, 205.

Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 150, 219.

Colored Farmers' Alliance, 50.

Competition, Race, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 148, 149, 151, 204, 208.

Contract Labor, 99, 102, 104, 108, 109, 110, 118, 135, 138, 141, 142,

143, 231. (See "Coolies," "Peonage.")

Coolies, 109, 152. (See "Chinese," "Japanese.")

Cooperation, 49, 50.

Cost of Living, 73. (See also "Standard of Living.")

Crime, 26, 168-175.

Croatians, 80, 81, 83, 84, 109, 122, 123.

Curran, Father, 223.

Death-rate, 58, 60, 61, 86, 95. (See "Infant Mortality.")

Distribution of Immigrants, 130, 224-230.

Drunkenness, 172.

Dutch, 24, 88, 89, 123.

Dutch East India Company, 108.

Education, 45, 46, 52, 146, 214. (See "Illiteracy.")

Educational Tests, 44, 45, 52, 194, 231, 232, 234. (See "Negro.")

Eminence of Races in America, 23-27, 31, 32.

Employment Agencies, 229.

English Race, 17, 23, 25, 128.

Erie Canal, 130.

Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 42, 44, 188.

Filipinos, 140, 142, 143, 144.

Finns, 95-97.

Fleming, Professor W. L., 226.

Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 42, 44, 45.

French, 25, 128.

French Canadians, 25, 97, 151, 199.

Galicia, 93. (See also "Austria-Hungary.")

Germans, 24, 30, 65, 67-68, 84, 122, 132, 152.

Greeks, 47, 122.

Hampton Institute, 49.

Hawaii, 99, 101, 102, 103, 105, 131, 132, 142, 196.

Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, 234.

Heredity, 5.

Hoffman, Fred L., 55, 57.

Huguenots, 24-25.

Illiteracy, 76, 79, 194.

Immigration, 22-38, 63-106.

Immigration Bureaus, 225, 237.

Incentives to Immigration, 27-31, 63-68, 72, 76, 77, 80, 84-87, 88, 95,

96, 99, 100, 101, 107, 108.

India, 9, 10, 103, 141, 142.

Indigenous Races, 104.

Industrial Capacity of Races, 127-134.

Industrial Education, 46, 47, 48. (See "Negro.")

Industrial Prosperity and Depression, 63, 68, 72, 157.

Infant Mortality, 60, 62, 87. (See "Death-rate.")

Initiative and Referendum, 185-187.

Irish, 24, 34, 65, 66, 67, 122, 151, 153, 204, 205.

Italians, 70-79, 109, 122, 123, 127, 130, 132, 140, 141, 147, 151, 153.

Japanese, 101, 102, 109, 114, 130, 131, 132.

Jefferson, Thomas, 1.

Jenks, J. W., 142.

Jews, 65, 81, 83, 87-95, 115, 122, 123, 127, 132, 133, 152, 153, 164.

Kelsey, Carl, 54, 55.

Knights of Labor, 118.

Knownothings, 117, 173.

Koreans, 103.

Kuczynski, R. R., 198, 207.

Labor, 124, 125, 126, 131, 134-159. (See "Wage Earners," "Trade Unions.")

Labor, Department of, 177, 178.

Landlordism, 64, 66, 72, 85, 87, 180.

Languages, 20, 94, 97.

Law, John, 108.

Leadership, 52.

Legislation, 111, 117, 118, 136, 231, 234, 236.

Lincoln, Abraham, 43, 213.

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 22-25.

Longshoremen, 150.

Machinery, 125, 156.

Magyars, 81, 82, 83, 84, 123.

Malay Races, 140, 142.

Mallock, W. H., 179.

Marriage, 203.

Mexicans, 132.

Military Duties, 75.

Miners, 129, 130, 150, 154.

Mob Violence, 173, 174, 175.

Molly Maguires, 129.

Morality, 61, 62, 204. (See "Prostitution.")

Muensterberg, Hugo, 179.

Naturalization, 111, 188, 189, 190, 194.

Negro, 3, 12, 16, 39-62, 106, 108, 112, 113, 114, 136, 137, 139, 140,

147, 172, 209.

New York, 164, 214, 215.

Norwegians, 164. (See "Scandinavians.")

Padroni, 102, 103, 109, 118, 229.

"Pale of Settlement," 91.

Penn, William, 29, 108.

Pennsylvania, 29, 30, 31.

Peonage, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141.

Philippine Commission, 144.

Philippine Islands, 106, 141, 179, 180.

Poles, 83, 123, 152.

Political Boss, The, 182.

Political Exiles, 68.

Population, 53-58, 76, 157, 160. (See "Births" and "Death-rates.")

Porto Rico, 106, 218.

Portuguese, 98, 152.

Poverty and Pauperism, 26, 66, 76, 167, 175-178.

Primaries, Direct, 185.

Profits, 108, 155.

Prohibition, 173.

Proportional Representation, 184.

Prostitution, 57.

Protective Tariff, 158.

Quakers, 28, 29.

Race Problem, 4, 8, 40, 42, 43, 44, 113. (See "Negro.")

Races, 3, 5, 7, 8, 12-17, 87, 88, 104-106, 108, 211. (See individual

name of race.)

Race Suicide, 198, 200.

Railroads, 130, 156, 225.

Reconstruction, 43, 50.

Religion, 28, 186, 217-219. (See "Incentives to Immigration.")

Restriction of Immigration, 116 n., 117, 118, 175, 230, 231.

Ripley, W. Z., 95.

Roosevelt, Theodore, 201, 206.

Rosenberg, Edward, 144.

Roumanians, 83, 84, 123.

Russia, 87, 92, 93, 132.

Ruthenians, 80, 83, 123.

Scandinavians, 24, 132, 152. (See "Norwegians.")

Scotch Irish, 23-24, 31-38, 128, 151. (See "Irish.")

Self-government, 2-4, 42, 43, 49, 53.

Seymour, Governor Horatio, 29.

Shaler, Professor N. S., 10.

Slavs, 14, 65, 80, 82, 83, 152.

Slovaks, 81, 83, 151.

Social Settlements, 219.

Socialism, 181.

Spaniards, 128.

Standard of Living, 112, 115, 151, 153, 208.

Statistics, 119, 130, 158, 160-178, 198. (See "Population," "Births,"

"Death-rate.")

Steamship Lines, 84, 85, 107, 110, 237, 238.

Stone, A. H., 147.

Strikes, 102, 149.

Suffrage, 2, 42, 43, 44, 51, 52, 117, 182, 183, 188, 220. (See also

"Educational Tests.")

Sweatshops, 115, 133, 148.

Swedes, 47.

Syrians, 99, 151.

Taft, Governor, 143.

Taxation, 74, 75, 84, 86.

Temporary Immigration, 77, 98, 101.

Test Act, 35.

Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 42.

Trade Unions, 50, 51, 115, 129, 149, 150, 152, 154, 205, 220, 221, 222,

223, 224. (See "Labor" and "Wage Earners.")

Triple Alliance, 75.

Tuskegee Institute, 49.

United Garment Workers of America, 115 n., 150.

United Hebrew Charities of New York, 167.

United Mine Workers of America, 150.

Wage Earners, 111-118, 157.(See "Labor.")

Wages, 112, 113, 129, 140, 148, 152, 153, 155, 157, 159. (See "Labor.")

Wage System, The, 147.

Walker, Francis A., 198, 200, 207.

Watson, Elkanah, 200.

Wealth Production and Immigration, 119, 159.

Welfare Work, 219.

Wilcox, Professor, 227.

Footnotes:

[1] Bluntschli, "Theory of the State," pp. 108-181.

[2] _Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1903, p. 649.

[3] Shaler, p. 651.

[4] Ripley, "The Races of Europe."

[5] Ripley, Chs. XVII and XVIII.

[6] See the interesting series of articles by H. N. Casson, _Munsey's_,

1906.

[7] Lodge, p. 138.

[8] "History and Topography of New York," Address at Cornell University,

June 30, 1870.

[9] These figures are probably exaggerated, but authorities agree upon

the magnitude of the migration. Fiske, "Old Virginia," Vol. II, p. 594.

[10] Hanna, "The Scotch-Irish," Vol. II, p. 2.

[11] Tillinghast, "The Negro in Africa and America."

[12] Burgess, pp. 45, 225; Fleming, pp. 380, 433.

[13] Burgess, p. 207.

[14] See Ch. VIII, "Politics."

[15] Commission of Education _Report_, 1900-1901, Vol. I, p. ci.

[16] Hugh M. Browne, A.M.E., _Zion Church Quarterly_, April, 1894,

quoted by Tillinghast, p. 186.

[17] Fannie B. Williams, _Charities_, October 7, 1905, p. 43.

[18] _Atlanta University Publications_, No. 7, p. 188.

[19] Bureau of Labor, _Bulletin_, No. 35.

[20] _Atlanta University Publications_, Nos. 3 and 8.

[21] _Atlanta University Publications_, No. 3, pp. 153-178.

[22] Twelfth Census, _Supplementary Analysis_, p. 203.

[23] Willcox, "Census Statistics of the Negro," _Yale Review_, 13:279

(1904).

[24] "The Negro Farmer," p. 90.

[25] Pp. 9, 10.

[26] Dabney, Commissioner of Education, _Report_, 1902, Vol. I, p. 797.

[27] Twelfth Census, _Supplementary Analysis_, pp. 305, 307.

[28] _Supplementary Analysis_, p. 204.

[29] Pp. 16, 17; Wood, "American in Process," p. 218.

[30] Twelfth Census, Vol. III, p. lxix.

[31] _Atlanta University Publications_, No. 1, p. 24.

[32] _Atlanta University Publications_, No. 2, p. 9.

[33] Twelfth Census, Vol. III, p. lxxxii.

[34] P. clxxvi.

[35] P. ccxviii.

[36] Pp. cxix, cxxiii, cxxvii.

[37] Hoffman, p. 70.

[38] Twelfth Census, _Supplementary Analysis_, pp. 496, 497.

[39] _Atlanta University Publications_, No. 1, p. 26.

[40] Figures for 1883.

[41] Less than one-tenth of one per cent.

[42] This is the number according to race; the table gives the number

according to last place of residence.

[43] _Review of Reviews_, 33:491 (1906).

[44] Statistics mainly from King and Okey, "Italy To-day."

[45] _Review of Reviews_, 33:491 (1906).

[46] Twelfth Census, _Supplementary Analysis_, p. 27.

[47] _Review of Reviews_, 33:491 (1906).

[48] King and Okey, pp. 316-318.

[49] Balch, _Charities_, May, 1906, p. 179.

[50] Marshall, "Principles of Economics," p. 248.

[51] "Jewish Encyclopedia," 2:532.

[52] Balch, _Charities_, May, 1906, p. 180.

[53] P. 380.

[54] "Industrial Commission," 15:442.

[55] Commissioner-General, 1906, p. 85.

[56] Coman, "History of Contract Labor," etc., p. 47.

[57] Reports on Hawaii; Commissioner-General of Immigration. See Index.

[58] Report of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, 1903. Cd.

1741.

[59] Semple, "American History," etc., p. 332.

[60] Rowe, Chapter V.

[61] Census of the Philippine Islands.

[62] Lalor's "Cyclopedia of Political Economy, Political Science, and

United States History," article on "Chinese Immigration."

[63] Industrial Commission, 19:679.

[64] Computed from Table VIII, p. 28 _et seq._, Report of

Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1906. "Commercial" includes agents,

bankers, hotel-keepers, manufacturers, merchants, and dealers, and other

miscellaneous. "Unskilled" includes draymen, hackmen, and teamsters,

farm laborers, farmers, fishermen, laborers, and servants.

[65] Two hundred and eighty-five thousand four hundred and sixty

immigrants set down as "no occupation," including mainly women and

children, are omitted from this computation.

[66] Less than one-tenth of one per cent.

[67] Industrial Commission, Vol. XV, see index, "Prepaid Tickets," p.

818.

[68] United States Revised Statutes, 1901, Section 1999, Act of July 28,

1868.

[69] Fleming, pp. 692, 693.

[70] "If I were asked what one factor makes most for the amicable

relations between the races in the Delta, I should say, without

hesitation, the absence of a white laboring class, particularly of field

laborers."--Stone, "The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta," p. 241.

"There is comparatively little crime in the Black Belt and in the White

Belt. It is in the counties where the races meet on something like

numerical equality and in economic competition that the maximum of crime

is charged against negroes."--_Atlanta University Publications_, No. 9,

p. 48.

[71] In 1905, after losing a strike in New York, the General Executive

Board of the United Garment Workers of America, consisting with one

exception of Russian Jews, adopted the following resolutions:--

Resolved, That the unprecedented movement of the very poor in America

from Europe in the last three years has resulted in wholly changing the

previous social, political, and economic aspects of the immigration

question. The enormous accessions to the ranks of our competing

wage-workers, being to a great extent unemployed, or only partly

employed at uncertain wages, are lowering the standard of living among

the masses of the working people of this country, without giving promise

to uplift the great body of immigrants themselves. The overstocking of

the labor market has become a menace to many trade-unions, especially

those of the lesser skilled workers. Little or no benefit can possibly

accrue to an increasing proportion of the great numbers yet coming; they

are unfitted to battle intelligently for their rights in this republic,

to whose present burdens they but add others still greater. The fate of

the majority of the foreign wage-workers now here has served to

demonstrate on the largest possible scale that immigration is no

solution of the world-wide problem of poverty.

Resolved, That we call on American trade unionists to oppose

emphatically the proposed scheme of government distribution of

immigrants, since it would be an obvious means of directly and cheaply

furnishing strike breakers to the combined capitalists now seeking

destruction of the trade-unions.

Resolved, That we condemn all forms of assisted immigration, through

charitable agencies or otherwise.

Resolved, That we warn the poor of the earth against coming to America

with false hopes; it is our duty to inform them that the economic

situation in this country is changing with the same rapidity as the

methods of industry and commerce.

Resolved, That with respect to immigration we call on the government of

the United States for a righteous relief of the wage-workers now in

America. We desire that Congress should either (1) suspend immigration

totally for a term of years; or (2) put into force such an illiteracy

test as will exclude the ignorant, and also impose such a head tax as

will compel immigrants to pay their full footing here and be sufficient

to send back all those who within a stated period should become public

dependants.

[72] Smith, "Emigration and Immigration," pp. 238-263.

[73] Act of March 3, 1903, Sec. 2.

[74] New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1898, p. 1155.

[75] Twelfth Census, "Occupations," p. clxxxvii.

[76] Report on Hawaii, _Bulletin_ No. 47, pp. 780-783.

[77] Report on Hawaii, _Bulletin_ No. 66, pp. 441-447.

[78] Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, _Annual Reports_.

[79] Clyatt _v._ U.S., 97 U.S., 207 (1903); Peonage Cases, 123 Fed. 671.

[80] New York _Herald_, June 24, 1903.

[81] _The Nation_, 83:379 (1906); Durand, Herbert, "Peonage in America,"

_Cosmopolitan_, 39:423 (1905).

[82] Rosenberg, _American Federationist_, October, 1903, p. 1026.

[83] Jenks, "Certain Economic Questions," etc., p. 157.

[84] Coman, and "Reports on Hawaii."

[85] Jenks, pp. 47, 54, 55, 158.

[86] United States Philippine Commission, 1902, Part I, p. 22.

[87] Rosenberg, p. 1021.

[88] Philippine Commission, 1902, index, "The Labor Situation."

[89] "The Italian Cotton Grower," p. 45.

[90] Where two years are given, the first is for Immigration and the

second for Imports.

[91] Twelfth Census, Vol. I, p. clxxvi.

[92] See _Federation_, June 1902, p. 40.

[93] Twelfth Census, Vol. I, pp. 878-881.

[94] New York _Sun_, Nov. 29, 1903.

[95] Semple, 312.

[96] Prisoners having one parent foreign are apportioned in the ratio of

native and foreign parentage.

[97] Includes native-born, parentage unknown.

[98] Offenders having one parent foreign are apportioned in the ratio of

native and foreign parentage.

[99] Kate Holladay Claghorn, "The Tenement House Problem," Vol. II, p.

79.

[100] John B. McMaster, "The Riotous Career of the Knownothings,"

_Forum_, July, 1894, p. 524.

[101] Cutler, "Lynch Law"; Bishop, "Lynching," _International

Quarterly_, September, 1903.

[102] Bureau of the Census, Special Reports, "Paupers in Almshouses,

1904," "Benevolent Institutions, 1904," "Insane and Feeble-minded in

Hospitals and Institutions, 1904."

[103] Muensterberg, "American Traits," p. 225 ff.

[104] Eaton, "The Civil Service in Great Britain," p. 160 ff.

[105] Muirhead, "The Land of Contrasts," p. 274.

[106] See description of the Belgium system by the author, _Review of

Reviews_, May, 1900; also, "Representation of Interests," _Independent_,

June, 1900; "Proportional Representation."

[107] Commons, "Proportional Representation," Appendix. Publications of

the Federation for Majority Rule, Washington, D.C.

[108] Hunt, Gaillard, "Federal Control of Naturalization," _World's

Work_, 11:7095 (1906).

[109] "Report to the President on Naturalization."

[110] "Naturalization Laws and Regulations of October, 1906," published

by the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization.

[111] Twelfth Census, Vol. I, p. 929.

[112] Twelfth Census, "Abstract," p. 18.

[113] Twelfth Census, "Abstract," p. 19.

[114] Twelfth Census, Vol. I, p. ccxvii.

[115] Phillips, J. B., "Educational Qualifications of Voters,"

_University of Colorado Studies_, Vol. III, No. 2 (1906).

[116] Caffey, Francis G., "Suffrage Limitations at the South,"

_Political Science Quarterly_, 20:53 (1905). Report on Political Reform,

Union League Club, New York, 1903.

[117] Williams _v._ Mississippi, 170 U.S., 213; Giles _v._ Harris, 189

U.S., 475; Giles _v._ Teasley, 193 U.S., 146.

[118] This does not apply to the "understanding" clause in Mississippi,

which is permanent.

[119] Twelfth Census, Vol. I, pp. ccxiii, ccxv.

[120] Twelfth Census, Vol. I, pp. cciv, ccv.

[121] See "Reports on Hawaii."

[122] Kuczynski, "Einwanderungspolitik," p. 35.

[123] _Forum_, 11:634-743 (1891). Reprinted in "Discussions," etc., pp.

417-426.

[124] Professor Smith, for the year 1888, estimated the colonial element

at 29,000,000 and the immigrant element at 26,000,000, applying to the

immigrants the average rate of increase from births. "Emigration and

Immigration," pp. 60-61.

[125] Watson, p. 522.

[126] Van Vorst, "The Woman Who Toils," p. viii.

[127] Computed from the Twelfth Census, Vol. II, p. lxxxvii, ff.

[128] Computed from the Twelfth Census, Vol. II, p. 312.

[129] Kuczynski concludes from his study of Massachusetts statistics

that "the native population cannot hold its own. It seems to be dying

out." Could he have separated the two elements of the native population,

he would have found that the immigrant element is dying out faster than

the older native element. "The Fecundity of the Native and Foreign Born

Population in Massachusetts," p. 186.

[130] Twelfth Census, "Statistical Atlas," plate 98.

[131] "Fecundity," etc., p. 157.

[132] Ross, "Causes of Race Superiority."

[133] See Du Bois, "The Souls of Black Folk."

[134] Report on Hawaii, _Bulletin_ No. 47, p. 715.

[135] "Religions of Primitive People," p. 15.

[136] Smith, "Assimilation of Nationalities," p. 440.

[137] Lovejoy, "The Slav Child," _Charities_, July, 1905, p. 884.

[138] Twelfth Census, _Supplementary Analysis_, p. 374.

[139] "Child Labor in the United States," p. 15, Bureau of the Census.

[140] Grose, "Aliens or Americans?"

[141] See also Stewart and Huebner.

[142] Report, 1903, p. 60; 1904, p. 44; 1905, p. 58; 1906, p. 64.

[143] Industrial Commission, 15:492-646; 19:971-977.

[144] Tosti, Gustavo, "The Agricultural Possibilities of Italian

Immigration," _Charities_, May 5, 1904, p. 472.

[145] "Immigration to the Southern States," _Political Science

Quarterly_, 20:276 (1905).

[146] "Facts about Immigration," p. 11.

[147] _Ibid._, p. 119.

[148] Kellor, "Out of Work," pp. 17, 50-53, 70; _Charities_, Feb. 6,

1904, p. 151.

[149] Commissioner-General, 1903, p. 70.

[150] Chapter 27, Laws of 1862.

[151] Commissioner-General, 1906, p. 62.

[152] For details of the several measures, see Hall, "Immigration."

[153] "Industrial Commission," 19:1001-1003. Hall, "Immigration."

[154] Commissioner-General, 1904, p. 41.

[155] The National Immigration Conference, December 8, 1905, adopted the

following resolution: "That the penalty of $100, now imposed on the

steamship companies for bringing diseased persons to the United States,

be also imposed for bringing in any person excluded by law." _National

Civic Federation Review_, January, 1906, p. 19.

POVERTY

By ROBERT HUNTER

Paper 12mo 25 cents net

Cloth 12mo $1.50 net

"A book that should be read by every one who has the promotion of social

betterment at heart."--_Milwaukee Sentinel._

"A most interesting, a most startling, and a most instructive book."--_Los

Angeles Times._

"His book is largely a result of personal experience, and the aid of

such works as his observation has led him to believe are approximately

accurate and worthy of credence. 'Poverty' seeks to define its subject

estimate its extent, describe some of its effects, and point out the

necessary remedial action, as seen by a settlement worker. The result is

a collection of data of considerable value."--_New York Daily People._

"This is in many ways a noteworthy book. The author has long lived face

to face with the almost incredible conditions which he here portrays. He

has extended his work and observations from the crowded tenement

districts of the great cities to the smaller industrial towns, and what

he finds reveals conditions in this country--even in times of industrial

prosperity--very similar to those found in England by Booth and other

investigators; namely, that a percentage of poverty exists in the

smaller industrial centres not far below that of the great industrial

places, and that this percentage is extraordinarily high."--_Springfield

Republican._

"The book is written with earnestness, but without exaggeration. Every

one familiar with the facts knows that conditions are even more cruel

and brutal than as here described. And yet, no one of the great

industrial nations is so backward as our own in devising and employing

the legislative and other necessary remedies. Mr. Hunter's presentation

of the situation is of the greatest value, and deserves the widest

consideration."--_The Congregationalist._

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.

The following misprints have been corrected:

"conquerers" corrected to "conquerors" (page 97)

"Amercianized" corrected to "Americanized" (page 104)

"anequal" corrected to "an equal" (page 121)

"780 783" corrected to "780-783" (footnote 76)

"Soul" corrected to "Souls" (footnote 133)