THE GERMANS
More than 5,250,000 people have been contributed to our population
by Germany in the last ninety years. Deducting the Poles from
eastern Prussia, and counting Germans from Russia, Austria, Bohemia,
and eastern Switzerland, we have, no doubt, received more than
7,000,000 whose mother-tongue was the speech of Luther and Goethe.
It is probable that German blood has come to be at least a fourth
part of the current in the veins of the white people of this
country, so that this infusion alone equals the total volume of
Spanish and Portuguese blood in South America.
From its rise in the thirties until after our Civil War, the stream
of immigrants from Germany fluctuated with religious and political
conditions on the other side of the Atlantic rather than with
economic conditions on this side. Between 1839 and 1845 numerous
Old Lutherans, resenting the attempt of their king to unite the
Lutheran and the Reformed faiths, migrated hither from Pomerania and
Brandenburg. The political reaction in the German states after the
revolution of 1830, and again after the revolution of 1848, brought
tens of thousands of liberty-lovers. In 1851, in a book of advice
to intending immigrants, Pastor Bogen of Boston set forth as the
chief inducement to migrate the _freedom_ the Germans would enjoy
in America--freedom from oppression and despotism, from privileged
orders and monopolies, from intolerable imposts and taxes, from
constraint in matters of conscience, from restrictions on settling
anywhere in this country of "exhaustless resources."
The political exiles famous as the "Forty-eighters" included many
men of unusual attainments and character, who almost at once became
leaders of the German-Americans, exercising an influence quite
out of proportion to their numbers. These university professors,
physicians, journalists, and even aristocrats, aroused many of their
fellow-countrymen to feel a pride in German culture, and they left
a stamp of political idealism, social radicalism, and religious
skepticism which is slow to be effaced.
Thanks to the _Hausfrau_ ideal for women and to the militarist
demand for recruits, the German people has until recently
persevered in a truly medieval fecundity. Despite an outflow of
6,500,000 between 1820 and 1893, population has doubled in seventy
years and trebled in a hundred. Prince Bülow complains that "the
Poles of eastern Prussia multiply like rabbits, while we Germans
multiply like hares." The fact is, a generation ago the Germans,
too, were multiplying like rabbits. This is the reason why during
the seventies and eighties, although political conditions had
much improved, great numbers of farm-laborers, female servants,
handicraftsmen, small tradesmen, and other members of the humbler
classes, streamed out of crowded Germany in the hope of improving
their material condition. The peasant living on black bread and
potatoes heard of and longed for the white bread and fleshpots
of the American West. Although the overwhelming majority of the
1,500,000 Germans who immigrated during the eighties represented
the lower economic strata, they came in with fair schooling,
considerable industrial skill, and, on an average, three times as
much money as the Slav, Hebrew, or South European shows to-day at
Ellis Island.
The German influx dropped sharply as soon as the panic of 1893
broke out, and when, after four and a half years of economic
submergence, this country struggled to the surface, the tide of
Teutons was not ready to flow again. America's free land was gone,
and ruder peoples, with lower standards of living, were crowding
into her labor markets. In the meantime, Germany's extraordinary
rise as a manufacturing country, her successes in foreign trade,
and her wonderful system of protection and insurance for her labor
population, had made her sons and daughters loath to migrate
oversea. The immigration from Germany into the United States is
virtually a closed chapter, and has been so for twenty years. Such
Germans as now arrive hail chiefly from Austria and Russia.
DISTRIBUTION THROUGHOUT THE STATES
No other foreign element is so generally distributed over the United
States as the Germans. A third of them are between Boston and
Pittsburgh, fifty-five per cent. live between Pittsburgh and Denver,
seven per cent. are in the South, and five per cent. are in the far
West.
In the South they are more numerous than any other non-native
element. They predominate, except in New England, where the Irish
abound; in States along the northern border, into which filter
many Canadians; in the Dakotas, where the Scandinavians lead; in
the Mormon States, with their many converts from England; and in
Louisiana and Florida, with their Italians and Cubans. In Milwaukee
nearly half the people are of German parentage, in Cincinnati a
quarter, in St. Louis a fifth. A third of the Germans are in the
rural districts, whereas all but a sixth of the Irish are in cities.
Whether one considers their distribution among the States, their
partition between city and country, or their dispersion among the
callings, the Germans will be found to be the most pervasive element
so far added to our people.
ASSIMILATION WITH NEW NEIGHBORS
Unlike the Irish immigrants, the Germans brought a language,
literature, and social customs of their own; so that, although when
scattered they Americanized with great rapidity, wherever they were
strong enough to maintain churches and schools in their own tongue
they were slow to take the American stamp. For the sake of their
beloved _Deutschtum_, about the middle of the last century the
promoters of this migration dreamed of creating in the West a German
state where Germans should hold sway and hand down their culture
in all its purity. Missouri, Illinois, Texas, and later Wisconsin,
seemed to hold out such a hope. But the immigrants would not remain
massed, the Yankees pushed in, and "Little Germany" never found a
place on the map.
After 1870 the Teutonic overflow was prompted by economic motives,
and such a migration shows little persistence in flying the flag
of its national culture. Numbers came, little instructed, or else
bringing a knowledge of Old Testament worthies rather than of German
poets, musicians, and artists. In the words of a German-American,
Knortz: "Nine-tenths of all German immigrants come from humble
circumstances and have had only an indifferent schooling. Whoever,
therefore, expects pride in their German descent from these people,
who owe everything to their new country and nothing to their
fatherland, simply expects too much."
The "Forty-eighters" had given a great stimulus to all German forms
of life,--schools, press, stage, festivals, choral societies, and
gymnastic societies,--but since the passing of these leaders and the
subsidence of the Teutonic freshet, _Deutschtum_ has been on the
wane. German newspapers are disappearing, German-American books
and journals become fewer, German book stores are failing, German
theaters are closing, and the surviving German private schools may
be counted on the fingers. Probably not more than ten per cent. of
the children of German parentage hear anything but English spoken
at home. Champions of _Deutschtum_ admit sadly that nothing but a
strong current of immigration can preserve it here. The spreading
German-American National Alliance is bringing about a marked
revival, but hardly will it succeed in persuading the majority of
its people to lay upon their children the burden of a bi-lingual
education. It is the apparent destiny of the descendants of the
myriads of Germans who have settled here to lose themselves in the
American people, and to take the stamp of a culture which is, in
origin at least, eighty per cent. British.
It is no small tribute to the solvent power of American civilization
that the stable and conservative Germans, who, as settlers in
Transylvania, in Chili, or in Palestine, among the Russians on the
lower Volga, or among the Portuguese in southern Brazil, are careful
to keep themselves unspotted from the people about them, have
proved, on the whole, easy to Americanize. Years ago, Prof. James
Bryce, just back from Ararat, after noting the purity of the German
culture preserved by the Swabian colony in Tiflis, added:
It was very curious to contrast this complete persistence of
Teutonism here with the extremely rapid absorption of the
Germans among other citizens which one sees going on in those
towns of the Western States of America, where--as in Milwaukee,
for instance--the inhabitants are mostly Germans, and still
speak English with a markedly foreign accent.... Here they are
exiles from a higher civilization planted in the midst of a
lower one; there they lose themselves among a kindred people,
with whose ideas and political institutions they quickly come to
sympathize.
INFLUENCE OF THE GERMANS IN AMERICA
The leanness of his home acres taught the German to make the most
of his farm in the New World. The immigrant looked for good land
rather than for land easy to subdue. Knowing that a heavy forest
growth proclaims rich soil, he shunned the open areas, and chopped
his homestead out of the densest woods. While the American farmer,
in his haste to live well, mined the fertility out of the soil,
the German conserved it by rotating crops and feeding live stock.
In caring for his domestic animals, he set an example. Just as
the county agricultural fair, and the state fair as well, is the
development of the Pennsylvania-German _Jahrmarkt_, and the "prairie
schooner" is the lineal descendant of the "Conestoga wagon," so the
capacious red barns of the Middle West trace their ancestry back to
the big barn which the Pennsylvania "Dutchman" provided at a time
when most farmers let their stock run unsheltered.
Thanks partly to good farming and frugal living, and partly to the
un-American practice of working their women in the fields, the
German farmers made money, bought choice acres from under their
neighbors' feet, and so kept other nationalities on the move. This
is the reason why a German settlement spreads on fat soil and why
in time the best land in the region is likely to come into German
hands. Unlike the restless American, with his ears ever pricked to
the hail of distant opportunity, the phlegmatic German identifies
himself with his farm, and feels a pride in keeping it in the family
generation after generation. Taking fewer chances in the lottery
of life than his enterprising Scotch-Irish or limber-minded Yankee
neighbor, he has drawn from it fewer big prizes, but also fewer
blanks.
In quest of vinous exhilaration, our grandfathers stood at a bar
pouring down ardent spirits. It is owing to our German element that
the mild _lager_ beer has largely displaced whisky as the popular
beverage, while sedentary drinking steadily gains on perpendicular
drinking. Because the toping of beer has from time immemorial been
interwoven with their social enjoyments, and because beer, unlike
whisky, makes wassailers fraternal rather than wild and quarrelsome,
the Germans, supported by the Bohemians, have offered, in the name
of "personal liberty," the most determined opposition to liquor
legislation. They may renounce the bowl, but taken away it shall
not be! In their loyalty to beer, these Teutons out-German their
cousins in the Fatherland, who are of late turning from the national
beverage at an astonishing rate. At the World's Fair in St. Louis
a number of American scholars who had studied of yore in German
universities gave a luncheon to the visiting German economists.
Out of respect for their guests, the hosts all filled the mugs of
their student days; but, to their astonishment, the Germans called
unanimously for iced tea!
The influence of the Germans in spreading among us the love of good
music and good drama is acknowledged by all. But there is a more
subtle transformation that they have wrought on American taste.
The social diversions of the Teutons, and their affirmance of the
"joy of living," have helped to clear from our eyes the Puritan
jaundice that made all physical and social enjoyment look sinful. If
"innocent recreation" and "harmless amusement" are now phrases to
conjure with, it is largely owing to the Germans and Bohemians, with
their love of song and mirth and "having a good time." Few of the
present generation realize that fifty years ago the principal place
of amusement in the American town, although as innocent of opera as
a Kaffir _kraal_, called itself the "opera-house," in order to avoid
the damning stigma the reigning Puritanism had attached to the word
"theater."
As voters, the Germans have shown little clannishness. Their
partizanship has not been bigoted, and by their insistence
on independent voting they have perplexed and disgusted the
politicians. Before 1850, they saw in the Democratic party the
champion of the liberties for the sake of which they had
expatriated themselves. But when the slavery issue came to be
overshadowing, the "Forty-eighters" were able to swing them to the
newly formed Republican party, to which, on the whole, they have
remained faithful, although in some States their loyalty has been
much shaken by prohibition. On money questions the Germans have been
conservative. Bringing with them the notion of an efficient civil
service, they have despised office-mongering and have befriended the
merit system. No immigrants have been more apt to look at public
questions from a common-welfare point of view and to vote for their
principles rather than for their friends. If by "political aptitude"
is meant the skill to use politics for private advantage, then in
this capacity the German must be ranked low among our foreign-born.
[Illustration: Distribution of Germans and natives of German
Parentage--1910]
In the way of civil and political liberty, the Germans added nothing
to the old-English heritage they found here; but in freedom of
thought their contribution has been invaluable. Where there is no
church, state, or upper class to hold it in check, the community is
likely to show itself imperious toward the nonconformist. The New
England Puritan, who was oak to any civil authority that he had not
helped to constitute, was a reed before the pressure of community
opinion. The sturdy Germans flouted this tyranny _sans_ tyrant. At
a time when the would-be-respectable American stifled under a pall
of conventionality in regard to religion and manners, they asserted
the right to think and speak for themselves without incurring loss
or ostracism. Then, too, the scholarly German immigrant imparted to
us his sense of the dignity of science and its right to be free,
although, to be sure, this spirit has been fostered among us chiefly
by Americans who have studied in German universities. On the whole,
in the way of intellectual liberty, the university-bred Liberals of
1848 had as much to offer as they gained in the way of political
liberty.
THE GERMANS IN THE CIVIL WAR
At the outbreak of the Civil War the Germans, with their deep
detestation of slavery, played no small rôle. In the South, those
of later immigration opposed the Confederacy; in the North their
leaders lined them up solidly in support of the Union. About 200,000
Germans enlisted in the Union army, more than there were of Irish
volunteers, although the Irish were more numerous in the population
of the loyal States. The militia companies formed among the Germans
in Missouri, especially in St. Louis, were pivotal in saving that
State for the Union. The military knowledge of Prussians who had
seen service in the old country was valued, sometimes over-valued,
in the earlier stage of the conflict. The all-German divisions
of Steinwehr and Schurz, after being roundly, perhaps unjustly,
abused for not holding Jackson at Chancellorsville, fought well at
Gettysburg and distinguished themselves in the "battle among the
clouds."
THE GERMANS IN THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
Probably no compliment has ever been bestowed on the Germans in
America that did not contain the words "industrious and thrifty."
Nor is it surprising that the members of a race so forelooking
and reflective rarely sink into the mire of poverty. In 1900, the
Germans were 25.8 per cent. of our foreign-born, and three years
later it was found that only 23.3 per cent. of the foreign-born in
our almshouses were Germans. For the country at large, we have no
means of comparing the German with the American in his ability to
take care of himself; but studies made in Boston showed that the
proportion of Boston Germans in the city almshouse was half that of
the English in that city, one-sixth of that of the Scotch, and only
one-tenth of that of the Irish. In the state charitable institutions
of Massachusetts, Germans make a better showing than Celts, but not
so good a showing as Scandinavians and Americans.
To the various relief agencies in Boston, Germans apply less often
than any other of the English-speaking immigrants. The analyst of
Boston's foreign-born is struck by the small number of Germans and
Scandinavians who seek aid, and says:
Occasionally, it is true, idle and shiftless families are found
among both these peoples; but on the whole they are industrious
and thrifty, and less hopeless poverty is found among them
than among almost any of the other foreign immigrants.... The
Germans are without doubt the best type of immigrants which has
settled in Boston.
In our cities, no other element has so large a proportion of
home-owners, and in the care of the home they surpass all other
nationalities save the Swedes.
ALCOHOLISM AMONG THE GERMANS
The saturation of the social life of our Germans with the amber
beverage, as well as their hostility to prohibition, prepares us to
find alcoholism very common among the disciples of St. Gambrinus.
The fact is, however, that in point of sobriety hardly any North
European makes so good a record as the German. A few years ago an
analysis of 2075 charity cases showed that drink as the cause of
poverty occurred only one-half as often among the German cases as
among the Irish, and two-thirds as often as among native American
cases. In the charity hospitals of New York, the proportion of
German patients treated for alcoholism is only half as large as that
of the English and the native Americans, and only a third as great
as that of the Irish. The charity workers in our cities report that
"intemperance of the bread-winner" is less often found to be the
cause of destitution among the German applicants than among those of
any other North-European nationality. Among alien prisoners only one
German of twenty-two was committed for intoxication as against one
out of three Irish, one out of four French Canadians, one out of
five Scotch, and one out of eight Scandinavians. On the other hand,
the victims of drink are far more numerous among them than among the
Italians, Magyars, Jews, and Syrians. These peoples, vine-growers
and wine-bibbers from time immemorial, have had the chance to get
drunk many thousand years longer than the Celts and Teutons; hence
they have been more completely purged of their alcoholics. While a
light beverage like beer produces fewer sots and wrecks than the
"water of life" so grateful to the Northern palate, it produces
a vast unreported stupefying and deterioration; so there is good
reason why the German drinking customs are being sloughed off in
the Fatherland at the very moment they are being warmly defended in
America.
AMOUNT OF CRIME NORMAL AMONG GERMANS
The striking thing about the abnormality of the Germans is its
normality in amount. Among the foreign-born, the Germans have just
about their due share of insanity, neither less nor more. Likewise,
the marked feature of German crime in this country is simply its
featurelessness. Among the twelve thousand-odd aliens in our
prisons, the German prisoners run a little above the average in
their bent for gainful offenses and a little below the average in
their crimes of violence. In their leaning to other offenses they
come close to the mean. Among the twenty nationalities that figure
in the police arrests of Chicago, the German stands, with respect
to almost every form of misconduct, near the middle of the list.
The French and the Hebrews stand out in bad eminence as offenders
against chastity, the Italians lead in murder and blackmail, the
Americans in burglary, the Greeks in kidnapping, the Lithuanians
in assault, the Irish in disorderly conduct. But the German lacks
distinction in evil, never coming near either the top or the bottom
of the scale in predilection for any form of crime. On the whole,
his criminal bent is very close to that of the native American.
WIDE VARIETY OF OCCUPATION
The Germans brought us much more in the way of industrial skill and
professional training than the Irish; besides, they were much more
successful in planting themselves upon the soil. They tended far
more to farming and manufacturing, far less to domestic and personal
service and transportation. The second generation shows no marked
drift away from the farm. In 1900, three-fifths of all brewers in
the country were Germans, a third of the bakers and cabinet-makers,
a fifth of the saloon-keepers and butchers, a sixth of the hatters,
tailors, and coopers, and a seventh of the musicians and teachers of
music. Yet only one male bread-winner out of nineteen was a German.
The sons of Germans are a sixteenth of our male labor force; but
they furnish a quarter of the trunk-and-satchel makers, a fifth
of the bottlers, stovemakers, and engravers, and a sixth of the
upholsterers, bookbinders, paper-box makers, butchers, brewers, and
brass-workers. In our cities the German baker, tailor, butcher,
cabinet-maker, or engraver is quite as characteristic and familiar
a figure as the Irish drayman, fireman, brakeman, section boss,
street-car conductor, plumber, or policeman.
The immigrant German women begin rather higher in the scale of
occupation than the Irish, but their daughters do not rise in
life with such amazing buoyancy as do the daughters of the Irish.
Between the first-generation and the second-generation Germans the
proportion of servants and waitresses falls from a third of all
female bread-winners to a quarter. For the Irish the drop is from
fifty-four per cent. to sixteen per cent. The second-generation
Germans do not show such an advance on their parents as do the
second-generation Irish, who bob up like corks released at the
bottom of a stream.
TEUTONIC TRAITS
Physically the German is strong, but often too stocky for grace.
A blend with the taller and thinner American is likely to give
good results in figure. Being slow in response, he makes a poor
showing in competitive sports. His forte is gymnastics rather
than athletics, and he is to be found in the indoor, sedentary
trades rather than in the active, outdoor callings. Not often
will you come upon him riveting trusses far up on the skyscraper
or the railway bridge. His pleasures he takes sitting rather than
moving, so that he haunts summer-garden and picnic-ground rather
than base-ball diamond and bowling-alley. For all his traditional
domesticity, he is a sociable soul, and will lug off his entire
family to a public resort, when an American would prefer a pipe by
the fireside. He is fond of the table, and loves to enjoy talk,
music, or drama while eating and drinking. In comparison with the
native Americans, or the Celts from the British Isles, the Germans
in America have the name of being materialistic. If this be true,
it is doubtless due to the small representation among them of that
noble leavening type that has made the spiritual greatness of
Germany. Any one who has lived in the old country knows that there
is a kind of German that one rarely sees among our fellow-citizens.
Of such were the "Forty-eighters"; but as their influence fades, the
idealism they fanned dies down, and visitors from the Fatherland
complain that America has stamped its dollar-mark all over the souls
of their kinsmen here. Professor Hugo Münsterberg, an impartial
observer, judges that "the average German-American stands below the
level of the average German at home."
But if he chases the dollar, let us grant that he does it in his
own way. Honest and stable, he puts little faith in short-cuts to
riches, such as "scream" advertising, commercial humbug, "faked"
news, thimblerig finance, or political graft. He does not count
on skipping many rungs in the ladder of success. German business
enterprises grow slowly, but if you probe them, you find a solid
texture. The German is hard-headed, and is not easily borne off
his feet by the contagion of example. To speculative fever and to
made panic he is rather immune. Because he is less mobile than the
American and does not shift from one thing to another, he is more
apt to gain skill and turn out good work. Then, too, he is not so
keen to get on that he does not find the artist's enjoyment and
pride in the practice of his craft. In a word, the Germans act in
American society as a neutral substance moderating the action of
an overlively ferment. For the universal eagerness to be "wide
awake" and "up to date" has deposed habit, tradition, and external
authority as lords of life among us.
The German is lasting in his sympathies and his antipathies and
leisurely in his mental processes. It takes him long to make up his
mind and longer to get an idea out of his head. In his thinking
he tries to grasp more things at a time than does the Celt. Not
for him the simple logic that proceeds from one or two outstanding
factors in a situation and ignores all the rest. He wants to be
comprehensive and final where the Latin aims to be merely clear
and precise. It is this very complexity of thought that makes
the German often silent, his speech heavy or confused. But just
this relish for details and this passion for thoroughness make
him a born investigator. This is why, on the practical side, the
German-American has most distinguished himself in work that calls
for long and close observation, such as gardening, viticulture,
breeding, forestry, brewing, and the chemical industries.
Thirty years ago there was an outcry that the Germans were
introducing into this country the virus of anarchism and socialism.
It is now clear that German socialism, instead of being a shattering
type of thought, is in fact highly constructive. However bold
and iconoclastic he may be in his thinking, the German, with his
respect for authority, his slow reaction to wrong, and his love
of order and system, is a conservative by nature. The children of
revolutionary immigrants are milder than their fathers were; and the
German-Americans are now very far from leading the van of radicalism.
[Illustration:
1826-30 8000
1831-35 49000
1836-40 109300
1841-45 110000
1846-50 337800
1851-55 672400 POLITICAL REACTION IN GERMANY
1856-60 316100 HARD TIMES IN UNITED STATES
1861-65 242500 CIVIL WAR IN UNITED STATES
1866-70 577600
1871-75 532700
1876-80 220200 HARD TIMES IN UNITED STATES
1881-85 1031500 { MILITARISM AND OVERPOPULATION
{
1886-90 548200 { IN
{
1891-95 432600 { GERMANY
1896-1900 120100 HARD TIMES IN UNITED STATES
1901-05 214300
1906-10 211400
Immigration from Germany, Netherlands, and Switzerland, 1826-1910]