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[Illustration: COMING AMERICANS]
FORWARD MISSION STUDY COURSES
EDITED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
ALIENS
OR
AMERICANS
?
HOWARD B. GROSE With Introduction BY JOSIAH STRONG
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY YOUNG PEOPLE'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT NEW
YORK
UNGUARDED GATES
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them presses a wild, motley throng--
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Celt, and Slav,
Flying the old world's poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In street and alley what strange tongues are these,
Accents of menace alien to our air,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
O Liberty, White Goddess! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate,
Lift the downtrodden, but with the hand of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn
And trampled in the dust. For so of old
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome.
And where the temples of the Cæsars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.
_--Thomas Bailey Aldrich._
* * * * *
TO ONE
WHO CHERISHES AMERICAN
IDEALS, WHO HAS INCULCATED LOVE OF
COUNTRY IN HER CHILDREN, AND
SOUGHT TO INSPIRE IT IN
ALL--MY WIFE
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface 9
Introduction, by Josiah Strong 13
I. The Alien Advance 15
II. Alien Admission and Restriction 51
III. Problems of Legislation and Distribution 87
IV. The New Immigration 121
V. The Eastern Invasion 157
VI. The Foreign Peril of the City 193
VII. Immigration and the National Character 231
VIII. The Home Mission Opportunity 267
APPENDIXES
A. Tables of Immigrants Admitted and Debarred 305
B. The Immigration Laws 309
C. Work of Leading Denominations for the Foreign Population 314
D. Bibliography 321
ILLUSTRATIONS
Coming Americans Frontispiece
The Inflowing Tide 18
Ellis Island Immigration Station 34
Receiving Room at Ellis Island 59
Detained for Special Examination 74
An Appeal from the Special Inquiry Board to Commissioner Watchorn 94
The Landing at the Battery in New York 102
A German Family 128
Italian and Swiss Girls 144
A Group of Twelve Different Nationalities 166
Three Types of Immigrants 180
A Group of Immigrants Just Arrived at Ellis Island 198
An Italian Family Crowded in a New York Tenement 210
Four Nationalities 236
Portuguese and Spanish Children 256
An Italian Sunday School in New England 283
_Sketch Maps and Charts_
Immigration at the Port of New York for 1906 32
Immigrant Distribution by States for 1905 106
Immigrant Distribution by Races:
Scandinavian 108
Canadian and British 109
Irish 114
Germanic 115
French and Iberic 146
Slavic 171
Changes in Sources of Immigration Causing Increase of Illiteracy 125
Countries from which the Slavs Come 161
Distribution of Slavs in the United States 163
Wave of Immigration for Eighty-seven Years 308
Colored Chart of Races of Immigrants for 1905 End
PREFACE
It is not a question as to whether the aliens will come. They have come,
millions of them; they are now coming, at the rate of a million a year.
They come from every clime, country, and condition; and they are of
every sort: good, bad, and indifferent, literate and illiterate,
virtuous and vicious, ambitious and aimless, strong and weak, skilled
and unskilled, married and single, old and young, Christian and infidel,
Jew and pagan. They form to-day the raw material of the American
citizenship of to-morrow. What they will be and do then depends largely
upon what our American Protestant Christianity does for them now.
Immigration--the foreign peoples in America, who and where they are,
whence they come, and what under our laws and liberties and influences
they are likely to become--this is the subject of our study. The subject
is as fascinating as it is vital. Its problems are by far the most
pressing, serious, and perplexing with which the American people have to
do. It is high time that our young people were familiarizing themselves
with the facts, for this is preëminently the question of to-day.
Patriotism and religion--love of country and love of Christ--unite to
urge thoughtful consideration of this great question: Aliens or
Americans? One aim of this book is to show our individual responsibility
for the answer, and how we can discharge it.
Immigration may be regarded as a peril or a providence, an ogre or an
obligation--according to the point of view. The Christian ought to see
in it the unmistakable hand of God opening wide the door of evangelistic
opportunity. Through foreign missions we are sending the gospel to the
ends of the earth. As a home mission God is sending the ends of the
earth to our shores and very doors. The author is a Christian optimist
who believes God has a unique mission for Christian America, and that it
will ultimately be fulfilled. While the facts are in many ways
appalling, the result of his study of the foreign peoples in our country
has made him hopeful concerning their Americanization and
evangelization, if only American Christians are awake and faithful to
their duty. The Christian young people, brought to realize that
immigration is another way of spelling obligation, must do their part to
remove that tremendous IF.
These newcomers are in reality a challenge to American Christianity. The
challenge is clear and imperative. Will we give the gospel to the
heathen in America? Will we extend the hand of Christian brotherhood and
helpfulness to the stranger within our gates? Will we Christianize,
which is the only real way to Americanize, the Aliens? May this book
help to inspire the truly Christian answer that shall mean much for the
future of our country, and hence of the world.
The author makes grateful acknowledgment to all who have assisted by
suggestion or otherwise. He has tried to give credit to the authors
whose works he has used. He is under special obligation for counsel and
many courtesies to Josiah Strong, one of the modern patriot-prophets who
has sought to awaken Americans to their Christian duty and privilege.
HOWARD B. GROSE.
_Briarcliff Manor, June, 1906._
INTRODUCTION
A million immigrants!
A million opportunities!
A million obligations!
This in brief is the message of _Aliens or Americans?_
A young man who came to this country young enough to get the benefit of
our public schools, and who then took a course in Columbia University,
writes: "Now, at twenty-one, I am a free American, with only one strong
desire; and that is to do something for my fellow-men, so that when my
time comes to leave the world, I may leave it a bit the better." These
are the words of a Russian Jew; and that Russian is a better American,
that Jew is a better Christian, than many a descendant of the Pilgrim
Fathers.
In this country every man is an American who has American ideals, the
American spirit, American conceptions of life, American habits. A man is
foreign not because he was born in a foreign land, but because he clings
to foreign customs and ideas.
I do not fear foreigners half so much as I fear Americans who impose on
them and brutally abuse them. Such Americans are the most dangerous
enemies to our institutions, utterly foreign to their true spirit. Such
Americans are the real foreigners.
Most of those who come to us are predisposed in favor of our
institutions. They are generally unacquainted with the true character of
those institutions, but they all know that America is the land of
freedom and of plenty, and they are favorably inclined toward the ideas
and the obligations which are bound up with these blessings. They are
open to American influence, and quickly respond to a new and a better
environment.
They naturally look up to us, and if with fair and friendly treatment we
win their confidence, they are easily transformed into enthusiastic
Americans. But if by terms of opprobrium, such as "sheeny" and "dago,"
we convince them that they are held in contempt, and if by oppression
and fraud we render them suspicious of us, we can easily compact them
into masses, hostile to us and dangerous to our institutions and
organized for the express purpose of resisting all Americanizing
influences.
Whether immigrants remain _Aliens_ or become _Americans_ depends less on
them than on ourselves.
JOSIAH STRONG.
_New York, June 26, 1906._
_We may well ask whether this insweeping immigration is to
foreignize us, or we are to Americanize it. Our safety demands the
assimilation of these strange populations, and the process of
assimilation becomes slower and more difficult as the proportion of
foreigners increases._
--Josiah Strong.
THE ALIEN ADVANCE
"And ELISHA prayed, and said, Jehovah, I pray thee, open his
eyes, that he may see. And Jehovah opened the eyes of the young man: and
he saw" (2 Kings vi. 17). Elisha's prayer is peculiarly fitting now. The
first need of American Protestantism is for clear vision, to discern the
supreme issues involved in immigration, recognize the spiritual
significance and divine providence in and behind this marvelous
migration of peoples, and so see Christian obligation as to rise to the
mission of evangelizing these representatives of all nations gathered on
American soil.--_The Author._
Out of the remote and little-known regions of northern, eastern, and
southern Europe forever marches a vast and endless army. Nondescript and
ever-changing in personnel, without leaders or organization, this great
force, moving at the rate of nearly 1,500,000 each year, is invading the
civilized world.--_J. D. Whelpley._
Political optimism is one of the vices of the American people. There is
a popular faith that "God takes care of children, fools, and the United
States." Until within a few years probably not one in a hundred of our
population has ever questioned the security of our future. Such optimism
is as senseless as pessimism is faithless. The one is as foolish as the
other is wicked.--_Josiah Strong._
I
THE ALIEN ADVANCE
_I. A Year's Immigration Analyzed_
[Sidenote: A Million a Year]
What does a million of immigrants a year mean? Possibly something of
more significance to us if we put it this way, that at present one in
every eighty persons in the entire United States has arrived from
foreign shores within twelve months. Of this inpouring human tide one of
the latest writers on immigration says, in a striking passage:
[Sidenote: The Peaceful Invasion]
"Like a mighty stream, it finds its source in a hundred rivulets. The
huts of the mountains and the hovels of the plains are the springs which
feed; the fecundity of the races of the old world the inexhaustible
source. It is a march the like of which the world has never seen, and
the moving columns are animated by but one idea--that of escaping from
evils which have made existence intolerable, and of reaching the free
air of countries where conditions are better shaped to the welfare of
the masses of the people.
[Sidenote: Variety of Peoples]
"It is a vast procession of varied humanity. In tongue it is polyglot;
in dress all climes from pole to equator are indicated, and all
religions and beliefs enlist their followers. There is no age limit, for
young and old travel side by side. There is no sex limitation, for the
women are as keen as, if not more so than, the men; and babes in arms
are here in no mean numbers. The army carries its equipment on its back,
but in no prescribed form. The allowance is meager, it is true, but the
household gods of a family sprung from the same soil as a hundred
previous generations may possibly be contained in shapeless bags or
bundles. Forever moving, always in the same direction, this marching
army comes out of the shadow, converges to natural points of
distribution, masses along the international highways, and its vanguard
disappears, absorbed where it finds a resting-place."[1]
[Sidenote: The Ellis Island Inflow]
See the living stream pour into America through the raceway of Ellis
Island.[2] There is no such sight to be seen elsewhere on the planet.
Suppose for the moment that all the immigrants of 1905 came in by that
wide open way, as eight tenths of them actually did. If your station had
been by that gateway, where you could watch the human tide flowing
through, and if the stream had been steady, on every day of the 365 you
would have seen more than 2,800 living beings--men, women, and children,
of almost every conceivable condition except that of wealth or
eminence--pass from the examination "pens" into the liberty of American
opportunity. Since the stream was spasmodic, its numbers did reach as
high in a single day as 11,343.
[Sidenote: A Motley Procession]
Imagine an army of nearly 20,000 a week marching in upon an unprotected
country. At the head come the motley and strange-looking
migrants--largely refugee Jews--from the far Russian Empire and the
regions of Hungary and Roumania. At the daily rate of 2,800 it would
take this indescribable assortment more than 166 days to pass in single
file. Then the Italians would consume about eighty days more. For over
eight months you would have watched so large a proportion of illiteracy,
incompetency, and insensibility to American ideals, that you would be
tempted to despair of the Republic. Nor would you lose the sense of
nightmare when the English and Irish were consuming forty-two days in
passing, for the "green" of the Emerald Isle is vivid at Ellis Island,
and the best class of the English stay at home. The flaxen-haired and
open-faced Scandinavians would lighten the picture, but with the equally
sturdy Germans they would get by in only a month and four days.
[Sidenote: A Process of Enlightenment]
This much is certain, whatever may be thought of the fanciful
procession. No American who spends a single day at Ellis Island, when
the loaded steamships have come in, will afterward require awakening on
the subject of immigration and the necessity of doing something
effective in the way of Americanization. A good view of the steerage is
the best possible enlightener.
[Sidenote: A Graphic Grouping]
A million a year and more is the rate at which immigrants are now coming
into the United States.[3] It is not easy to grasp the significance of
such numbers: yet we must try to do so if we are to realize the problem
to be solved. To get this mass of varied humanity within the mind's eye,
let us divide and group it. First, recall some small city or town with
which you are familiar, of about 10,000 inhabitants; say Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, where the treaty of peace between Japan and Russia was agreed
upon; or Saratoga Springs, New York; or Vincennes, Indiana; or Ottawa,
Illinois; or Sioux Falls, South Dakota; or Lawrence, Kansas. Settle one
hundred towns of this size with immigrants, mostly of the peasant class,
with their un-American languages, customs, religion, dress, and ideas,
and you would locate merely those who came from Europe and Asia in the
year ending June 30, 1905. Those who came from other parts of the world
would make two and a half towns more, or a city the size of Poughkeepsie
in New York, seat of Vassar College, or Burlington in Iowa, of about
25,000 each.
[Sidenote: Grouped by Nationality]
[Sidenote: Queer Towns these would be]
Gather these immigrants by nationality, and you would have in round
numbers twenty-two Italian cities of 10,000 people, or massed together,
a purely Italian city as large as Minneapolis with its 220,000. The
various peoples of Austria-Hungary--Bohemians, Magyars, Jews, and
Slavs--would fill twenty-seven and one half towns; or a single city
nearly as large as Detroit. The Jews, Poles, and other races fleeing
from persecution in Russia, would people eighteen and one half towns, or
a city the size of Providence. For the remainder we should have four
German cities of 10,000 people, six of Scandinavians, one of French, one
of Greeks, one of Japanese, six and a half of English, five of Irish,
and nearly two of Scotch and Welsh. Then we should have six towns of
between 4,000 and 5,000 each, peopled respectively by Belgians, Dutch,
Portuguese, Roumanians, Swiss, and European Turks; while Asian Turks
would fill another town of 6,000. We should have a Servian, Bulgarian,
and Montenegrin village of 2,000; a Spanish village of 2,600; a Chinese
village of 2,100; and the other Asiatics would fill up a town of 5,000
with as motley an assortment as could be found under the sky. Nor are we
done with the settling as yet, for the West Indian immigrants would make
a city of 16,600, the South Americans and Mexicans a place of 5,000, the
Canadians a 2,000 village, and the Australians another; leaving a
colony of stragglers and strays, the ends of creation, to the number of
2,000 more. Place yourself in any one of these hundred odd cities or
villages thus peopled, without a single American inhabitant, with
everything foreign, including religion; then realize that just such a
foreign population as is represented by all these places has actually
been put somewhere in this country within a twelvemonth, and the
immigration problem may assume a new aspect and take on a new concern.
[Sidenote: Grouped by Illiteracy]
But let us carry our imagination a little further. Suppose we bring
together into one place the illiterates of 1905--the immigrants of all
nationalities, over fourteen years of age, who could neither read nor
write. They would make a city as large as Jersey City or Kansas City,
and 15,000 larger than Indianapolis. Think of a population of 230,000
with no use for book, paper, ink, pen, or printing press. This mass of
dense ignorance was distributed some way within a year, and more
illiterates are coming in by every steamer. Divide this city of
ignorance by nationalities into wards, and there would be an Italian
ward of 100,000, far outnumbering all others; in other words, the
Italian illiterates landed in America in a year equal the population of
Albany, capital of the Empire State. The other leading wards would be:
Polish, 33,000; Hebrew, 22,000, indicating the low conditions whence
they came; Slav, 36,000; Magyar and Lithuanian, 12,000; Syrian and
Turkish, 3,000. These regiments of non-readers and writers come almost
exclusively from the south and east of Europe. Of the large total of
illiterates, 230,882 to be exact--it is noteworthy that only
seventy-five were Scotch; and only 157 were Scandinavian, out of the
more than 60,000 from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. That almost one
quarter of a total million of newcomers should be unable to read or
write is certainly a fact to be taken into account, and one that throws
a calcium light on the general quality of present-day immigration and
the educational status of the countries from which they come. Illiteracy
is a worse reflection upon the foreign government than upon the foreign
immigrant.
[Sidenote: The Army of the Unskilled]
To complete this grouping, we should go one step further, and make up a
number of divisions according to occupation and no-occupation, skilled
and unskilled labor. To begin with, the unskilled laborers would fill a
city of 430,000, or about the size of Cincinnati. Those classified as
servants, with a fair question mark as to the amount of skill possessed,
numbered 125,000 more, equal to the population of New Haven. Those
classified as without occupation, including the children under fourteen,
numbered 232,000, equal to the population of Louisville. Gathering into
one great body, then, what may fairly be called unskilled labor, the
total is not far from 780,000 out of the 1,026,499 who came. This mass
would fill a city the size of Boston, Cambridge, and Lynn combined, or
of Cleveland and Washington. Imagine, if you can, what kind of a city it
would be, and contrast that with these centers of civilization as they
now are.
[Sidenote: Whole States Equaled in Numbers]
To put all the emphasis possible upon these facts, consider that the
immigration of a single year exceeded by 26,000 the population of
Connecticut, which has been settled and growing ever since early
colonial days. It exceeded by 37,000 the combined population of Alaska,
Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. These immigrants would have
repopulated whole commonwealths, but they would hardly be called
commonwealths in that case. If such immigrant distribution could be
made, how quickly would the imperative necessity of Americanization be
realized. The Italians who came during the year would exceed the
combined population of Alaska and Wyoming. The Hungarians and Slavs
would replace the present population of New Hampshire, or of North
Dakota, and equal that of Vermont and Wyoming together. The Russian Jews
and Finlanders would replace the people of Arizona. The army of
illiterates would repeople Delaware and Nevada. And the much larger army
of the unskilled would exceed by 50,000 the population of Maine, that
of Colorado by about 80,000, and twice that of the District of Columbia.
[Sidenote: The Race Proportions]
The diagram at the end of the book, taken from the Report of the
Commissioner-General of Immigration for 1905, will help us to fix in
mind the race proportions of the present immigration. The increase of
1905 over 1904 was 213,629. Almost one half of this was from
Austria-Hungary, and all of it was from four countries, the other three
being Russia, Italy, and the United Kingdom. There was a decrease from
Germany, Sweden, and Norway.
_II. The Inflow Since 1820_
[Sidenote: Immigration Totals since 1820]
We have been considering thus far the immigration of a single year. To
make the effect of this survey cumulative, let us include the totals of
immigration from the first.[4] The official records begin with 1820. It
is estimated that prior to that date the total number of alien arrivals
was 250,000. In 1820 there were 8,385 newcomers, less than sometimes
land at Ellis Island in a single day now, and they came chiefly from
three nations--Great Britain, Germany, and Sweden. The stream gradually
increased, but with many fluctuations, governed largely by the economic
conditions. The highest immigration prior to the potato famine in
Ireland in 1847 was in the year 1842, when the total for the first time
passed the 100,000 mark, being 104,565. In 1849 the number leaped to
297,024, with a large proportion of the whole from Ireland; in 1850 it
was 310,000; while 1854 was the high year of that period, with 427,833.
Then came the panic and financial depression in America, and after that
the civil war, which sent the immigration figures down. It was not until
1866, after the war was over, that the total again rose to 300,000. In
1872 it was 404,806; in 1873, 459,803; falling back then until 1880,
when a high period set in. The totals of 1881 (669,431) and of 1882
(788,992) were not again equaled until 1903, when for the first time the
800,000 mark was passed.
[Sidenote: The Totals by Decades]
Taking the figures by decades, we have this enlightening table:
1821 to 1830 143,439
1831 to 1840 599,125
1841 to 1850 1,713,251
1851 to 1860 2,598,214
1861 to 1870 2,314,824
1871 to 1880 2,812,191
1881 to 1890 5,246,613
1891 to 1900 3,687,564
1901 to 1905 3,833,076
----------
Total, 1821 to 1905 22,948,297
From this it appears that more aliens landed in the single decade from
1880 to 1890 than in the period of forty-five years from 1820 to 1865.
Indeed, the immigration of the past six years more than outnumbers that
of the forty years from 1820 to 1860.
[Sidenote: A Startling Total of 23,000,000]
Thus, from colonial days above twenty-three millions of aliens have been
received upon these hospitable shores. And more than thirteen millions
of them have come since 1880, or in the last quarter century. No wonder
it is said that the invasion of Attila and his Huns was but a side
incident compared to this modern migration of the millions.
[Sidenote: Impressive Comparisons]
Canada, our northern neighbor, is a prosperous colony of 5,371,315,
according to her latest census. We could almost have peopled Canada
entire with as large a population out of the immigration of the decade
1880-1890. More than that, the whole population of Scotland, or that of
Ireland, above four and a quarter millions, could have moved over to
America, and it would only have equaled the actual immigration since
1900. If the whole of Wales were to come over, the 1,700,000 odd of them
would not have equaled by 100,000 the total immigration of the two years
1904-05. If all Sweden and Norway packed up and left the question of one
or two kingdoms to settle itself, the 7,300,000 sturdy Scandinavians
would fall short of the immigrant host that has come in from
everywhither since 1891. More people than the entire population of
Switzerland (3,315,000) have landed in America within four years. If
only the majority of these aliens had possessed the love of liberty and
the characteristic virtues of the Protestant Swiss, our problem would be
very different. These comparisons strongly impress the responsibility
and burden imposed upon America by practically free and wide-open gates.
[Sidenote: The Problem of Assimilation]
Here are the totals which we have now reached. Of the 23,000,000 aliens
who have come into America since the Revolution, the last census (1900)
gave the number then living at 10,256,664. A census taken to-day would
doubtless show about 14,000,000. Add the children of foreign parentage
and it would bring the total up to between 35,000,000 and 40,000,000.
Mr. Sargent estimates this total at forty-six per cent. of our entire
population. The immigration problem presents nothing less than the
assimilation of this vast mass of humanity. No wonder thoughtful
Americans stand aghast before it. At the same time, the only thing to
fear is failure to understand the situation and meet it. As Professor
Boyesen says: "The amazing thing in Americans is their utter
indifference or supine optimism. 'Don't you worry, old fellow,' said a
very intelligent professional man to me recently, when I told him of my
observations during a visit to Castle Garden.[5] 'What does it matter
whether a hundred thousand more or less arrive? Even if a million
arrived annually, or two millions, I guess we could take care of them.
Why, this country is capable of supporting a population of two hundred
millions without being half so densely populated as Belgium. Only let
them come--the more the merrier!' I believe this state of mind is fairly
typical. It is the sublime but dangerous optimism of a race which has
never been confronted with serious problems." But we believe it is the
optimism of a race which, when fairly brought face to face with crises,
will not fail to meet them in the same spirit that has won the victories
of civil and religious liberty and established a free government of, by,
and for the people in America.
_III. Why They Come_
[Sidenote: The Causes of Immigration]
[Sidenote: Expulsion]
[Sidenote: Attraction]
The causes of immigration are variously stated, but compressed into
three words they are: Attraction, Expulsion, Solicitation. The
attraction comes from the United States, the expulsion from the Old
World, and the solicitation from the great transportation lines and
their emissaries. Sometimes one cause is more potent, sometimes another.
Of late, racial and religious persecution has been active in Europe, and
America gets the results. "In Russia there is an outbreak, hideous and
savage, against the Jew, and an impulse is started whose end is not
reached until you strike Rivington Street in the ghetto of New York. The
work begun in Russia ends in the seventeenth ward of New York." Cause
and effect are manifest. Military service is enforced in Italy; taxes
rise, overpopulation crowds, poverty pinches. As a result, the stream
flows toward America, where there is no military service and no tax, and
where steady work and high wages seem assured. The mighty magnet is the
attractiveness of America, real or pictured. America is the magic word
throughout all Europe. No hamlet so remote that the name has not
penetrated its peasant obscurity. America means two things--money and
liberty--the two things which the European peasant (and often prince as
well) lacks and wants. Necessity at home pushes; opportunity in America
pulls. Commissioner Robert Watchorn, of the port of New York, packs the
explanation into an epigram: "American wages are the honey-pot that
brings the alien flies." He says further: "If a steel mill were to start
in a Mississippi swamp paying wages of $2 a day, the news would hum
through foreign lands in a month, and that swamp would become a beehive
of humanity and industry in an incredibly short space of time." Dr. A.
F. Schauffler says, with equal pith, that "the great cause of
immigration is, after all, that the immigrants propose to better
themselves in this country. They come here not because they love us, or
because we love them. They come here because they can do themselves
good, not because they can do us good."[6] That is natural and true; and
it furnishes excellent reason why we must do them good in order that
they may not do us evil. To make their good ours and our good theirs is
both Christian and safe.
[Sidenote: Three Classes]
The three causes produce three classes of immigrants: 1. Natural; 2.
Assisted; and 3. Solicited.
[ILLUSTRATION: IMMIGRATION AT THE PORT OF NEW YORK FOR 1906.]
[Sidenote: Normal Motives and Conditions]
The prosperity of this country has undoubtedly chiefly influenced
immigration in the past. This is shown by the marked relationship
between industrial and commercial activity in the United States and the
volume of immigration.[7] Our prosperity not only induces desire to come
but makes coming possible. The testimony before the Industrial
Commission showed that from forty to forty-five per cent. of the
immigrants have their passage prepaid by friends or relatives in this
country, and from ten to twenty-five per cent. more buy their tickets
abroad with money sent from the United States. In 1902 between
$65,000,000 and $70,000,000 was sent home to Italy alone from the United
States, and the stream of earnings flowing out to Ireland and Germany
and Sweden and Hungary has been not less steady. American prosperity has
been feeding and paying taxes for millions of people who owe far more to
our government than to their own, and foreign governments have been
reaping the benefit. The United States has a small standing army of its
own, but through the gold sent abroad by the alien wage earners here we
have been helping maintain the vast armaments of Europe. The letters and
the money sent by immigrants to the home folks awaken the desires and
dreams that mean more immigrants. The United States Post-office is a
marvelous immigration agent in Europe. Immigrants are not the only
persons induced to migrate through the feeling that where one is not
will prove a much better place than where one is. That seems to inhere
in human nature.
[Sidenote: American Leaven]
[Sidenote: The American Idea]
"Not only the American money and letters, but the American ideas are at
work abroad," says the Rev. F. M. Goodchild, D.D.,[8] in a recent
address: "The praises of America are told abroad by every person who
comes here and gets along. Some things to be sure, these people
miss--the blue skies of Italy and the vineyards on the hillside. But
they have for them the compensation of such a liberty as they never knew
before. The real reason why all southern Europe is in a turmoil to-day,
is that American ideas of liberty are working there like leaven. We get
our notions of liberty from the Bible and from the men who forced the
Magna Charta from King John at Runnymede, but all other peoples in the
world seem to be getting their ideas of liberty from us. That is what is
the matter with the Old World to-day. The American idea is working like
leaven. That is the force at work in France, where absolute divorce has
just been proclaimed between Church and State. That is at the bottom of
the movements in Russia, where the Stundists have just won religious
liberty, and where, let us hope, all classes of people ere long will
have won complete civil liberty. These people have felt the uplift of
our American free institutions and they want them for themselves. They
have heard 'Yankee Doodle,' and the 'Star Spangled Banner,' and 'My
Country, 'tis of Thee,' and they cannot get the music of liberty out of
their ears and their hearts. Broughton Brandenburg tells us that he
heard some Italians who had been in America singing our classic song
'Mr. Dooley' in the vineyards near Naples."
_IV. What the Immigrants Say_
[Sidenote: Personal Testimony]
Let the immigrants themselves tell why they come. These testimonies are
typical, condensed from a most interesting volume of immigrant
autobiography,[9] fresh and illuminating.
[Sidenote: A German]
A German nurse girl says: "I heard about how easy it was to make money
in America and became very anxious to go there. I was restless in my
home; mother seemed so stern and could not understand that I wanted
amusement. I sailed from Antwerp, the fare costing $35. My second eldest
sister met me with her husband at Ellis Island and they were glad to see
me and I went to live with them in their flat in West Thirty-fourth
Street, New York. A week later I was an apprentice in a Sixth Avenue
millinery store earning four dollars a week. I only paid three for
board, and was soon earning extra money by making dresses and hats at
home." Friends in Germany would be sure to hear of this new condition.
[Sidenote: A Pole]
Why do the Poles come? A Polish sweat-shop girl, telling her life story,
answers. The father died, then troubles began in the home in Poland.
Little was needed by the widow and her child, but even soup, black
bread, and onions they could not always get. At thirteen the girl was
handy at housekeeping, but the rent fell behind, and the mother decided
to leave Poland for America, where, "we heard, it was much easier to
make money. Mother wrote to Aunt Fanny, who lived in New York, and told
her how hard it was to live in Poland, and Aunt Fanny advised her to
come and bring me." Thousands could tell a similar story to that.
"Easier to make money" has allured multitudes to leave the old home and
land.
[Sidenote: A Russian]
A Lithuanian (Russian) tells how it was the traveling shoemaker that
made him want to come to America. This shoemaker learned all the news,
and smuggled newspapers across the German line, and he told the boy's
parents how wrong it was to shut him out of education and liberty by
keeping him at home. "That boy must go to America," he said one night.
"My son is in the stockyards in Chicago." These were some of his reasons
for going: "You can read free papers and prayer books; you can have free
meetings, and talk out what you think." And more precious far, you can
have "life, liberty, and the getting of happiness." When time for
military service drew near, these arguments for America prevailed and
the boy was smuggled out of his native land. "It is against the law to
sell tickets to America, but my father saw the secret agent in the
village and he got a ticket from Germany and found us a guide. I had
bread and cheese and vodka (liquor) and clothes in my bag. My father
gave me $50 besides my ticket." Bribery did the rest, and thus this
immigrant obtained his liberty and chance in America. The American idea
is leavening Russia surely enough.
[Sidenote: An Italian]
An Italian bootblack who already owns several bootblacking
establishments in this country, was trained to a beggar's life in
Italy, and ran away. "Now and then I had heard things about
America--that it was a far-off country where everybody was rich and that
Italians went there and made plenty of money, so that they could return
to Italy and live in pleasure ever after." He worked his passage as a
coaler, and was passed at Ellis Island through the perjury of one of the
bosses who wring money out of the immigrants in the way of commissions,
getting control of them by the criminal act at the very entrance into
American life.
A Greek peddler, a graduate of the high school at Sparta--think of a
modern high school in ancient Sparta!--after two years in the army, was
ready for life. "All these later years I had been hearing from America.
An elder brother was there who had found it a fine country and was
urging me to join him. Fortunes could easily be made, he said. I got a
great desire to see it, and in one way and another I raised the money
for fare--250 francs--($50) and set sail from the old port of Athens. I
got ashore without any trouble in New York, and got work immediately as
a push-cart man. Six of us lived together in two rooms down on
Washington Street. At the end of our day's work we all divided up our
money even; we were all free."
[Sidenote: A Swede]
A Swedish farmer says: "A man who had been living in America once came
to visit the little village near our cottage. He wore gold rings set
with jewels and had a fine watch. He said that food was cheap in America
and that a man could earn nearly ten times as much there as in Sweden.
There seemed to be no end to his money." Sickness came, with only black
bread and a sort of potato soup or gruel for food, and at last it was
decided that the older brother was to go to America. The first letter
from him contained this: "I have work with a farmer who pays me
sixty-four kroner[10] a month and my board. I send you twenty kroner,
and will try to send that every month. This is a good country. All about
me are Swedes, who have taken farms and are getting rich. They eat white
bread and plenty of meat. One farmer, a Swede, made more than 25,000
kroner on his crop last year. The people here do not work such long
hours as in Sweden, but they work much harder, and they have a great
deal of machinery, so that the crop one farmer gathers will fill two big
barns."
[Sidenote: An Irish Woman]
An Irish cook, one of "sivin childher," had a sister Tilly, who
emigrated to Philadelphia, started as a greenhorn at $2 a week, learned
to cook and bake and wash, all American fashion, and before a year was
gone had money enough laid up to send for the teller of the story. The
two gradually brought over the whole family, and Joseph owns a big
flour store and Phil is a broker, while his son is in politics and the
city council, and his daughter Ann (she calls herself Antoinette now) is
engaged to a lawyer in New York. That is America's attractiveness and
opportunity and transformation in a nutshell.
[Sidenote: Foreign Mission School, Cause of Immigration]
A Syrian, born on the Lebanon range, went to an American mission school
at fifteen, learned much that his former teacher the friar had warned
him against, had his horizon broadened, gave up his idea of becoming a
Maronite monk when he learned that there were other great countries
beside Syria, and had all his old ideas overthrown by an encyclopedia
which said the United States was a larger and richer country than Syria
or even Turkey. The friar was angry and said the book told lies, and so
did the patriarch, who was scandalized to think such a book should come
to Mount Lebanon; but the American teacher said the encyclopedia was
written by men who knew, and the Syrian boy finally decided to go to the
United States, where "we had heard that poor people were not oppressed."
His mother and uncle came, too, and as the boy was a good penman he
secured work without difficulty in an Oriental goods store. As for his
former religious teaching he says: "The American teacher never talked to
me about religion; but I can see that those monks and priests are the
curse of our country, keeping the people in ignorance and grinding the
faces of the poor, while pretending to be their friends." In his case it
was the foreign mission school that was the magnet to America.
[Sidenote: A Japanese]
A Japanese says: "The desire to see America was burning in my boyish
heart. The land of freedom and civilization of which I had heard so much
from missionaries and the wonderful story of America I had heard from
those of my race who returned from there made my longing ungovernable."
A popular novel among Japanese boys, "The Adventurous Life of Tsurukichi
Tanaka, Japanese Robinson Crusoe," made a strong impression upon him,
and finally he decided to come to this country to receive an American
education.
[Sidenote: A Chinese]
A representative Chinese business man of New York was taught in
childhood that the English and Americans were foreign devils, the latter
false, because having made a treaty by which they could freely come to
China and Chinese as freely go to America, they had broken the treaty
and shut the Chinese out. When he was sixteen, working on a farm, a man
of his tribe came back from America "and took ground as large as four
city blocks and made a paradise of it." He had gone away a poor boy, now
he returned with unlimited wealth, "which he had obtained in the country
of the American wizards. He had become a merchant in a city called Mott
Street, so it was said. The wealth of this man filled my mind with the
idea that I, too, would go to the country of the wizards and gain some
of their wealth." Landing in San Francisco, before the exclusion act, he
started in American life as a house servant, but finally became a Mott
Street merchant, as he had intended from the first.
[Sidenote: Fortune and Freedom]
Thus we have gone the rounds of immigrants of various races. The two
ideas--fortune and freedom--lie at the basis of immigration, although
the money comes first in nearly all cases. These testimonies could be
multiplied indefinitely. Ask the first immigrant you can talk with what
brought him, and find out for yourself. Mr. Brandenburg says a Greek who
was being deported told him that all Greece was stirred up over the
matter of emigration, and that in five years the number of Greeks coming
to the United States would have increased a thousand per cent.[11] The
reasons are the too onerous military duties in Greece and prosperity of
Greeks in America. The remittances fired the zeal of the home people to
follow, and the candymakers' shops were full of apprentices, because the
idea had gone abroad that candymakers could easily gain a fortune in
America.
[Sidenote: Showing only the Bright Side]
From these illustrations, it can readily be seen how widespread is the
knowledge of America as a desirable place. The other side is rarely
told and that is the pitiful side of it. The stories that go back are
always of the fortunes, not of the misfortunes, of the money and not of
the misery.
_V. Solicitation an Evil_
[Sidenote: Evils of Solicitation]
If immigration were left to the natural causes, there would be little
reason for apprehension. It is in the solicited and assisted immigration
that the worst element is found. Commercial greed lies at the root of
this, as of most of the evils which afflict us as a nation. The great
steamship lines have made it cheaper to emigrate than to stay at home,
in many cases; and every kind of illegal inducement and deceit and
allurement has been employed to secure a full steerage. The
ramifications of this transportation system are wonderful. It has a
direct bearing, too, upon the character of the immigrants. Easy and
cheap transportation involves deterioration in quality. In the days when
a journey across the Atlantic was a matter of weeks or months and of
considerable outlay, only the most enterprising, thrifty, and
venturesome were ready to try an uncertain future in an unknown land.
The immigrant of those days was likely, therefore, to be of the
sturdiest and best type, and his coming increased the general prosperity
without lowering the moral tone. Now that the ocean has become little
more than a ferry, and the rates of railway and steamship have been so
reduced, it is the least thrifty and prosperous members of their
communities that fall readiest prey to the emigration agent.
[Sidenote: Assisted Immigration]
Assisted immigration is the term used to cover cases where a foreign
government has eased itself of part of the burden of its paupers,
insane, dependents, and delinquents by shipping them to the United
States. This was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, especially in
the case of local and municipal governments. Our laws were lax, and for
a time nearly everybody, sane or insane, sound or diseased, was passed.
The financial gain to the exporting government can be seen in the fact
that it costs about $150 per head a year to support dependents and
delinquents in this country, while it would not cost the foreign
authorities more than $50 to transport them hither. This policy seems
scarcely credible, but Switzerland, Great Britain, and Ireland followed
it thriftily until our laws put a stop to it, in large part, by
returning these undesirable persons whence they came, at the expense of
the steamship companies bringing them. It was not until 1882, however,
that our government passed laws for self-protection, and in 1891 another
law made "assisted" immigrants a special class not to be admitted.
[Sidenote: Other Causes]
Other and incidental causes there are, such as the influence of new
machinery, opening the way for more unskilled labor, such as the
ordinary immigrant has to sell; the protective tariff, which shuts out
foreign goods and brings in the foreign producers of the excluded goods;
the thorough advertising abroad of American advantages by boards of
agriculture and railway companies interested in building up communities;
and a fear of restrictive legislation. But undoubtedly, ever back of all
other reasons is the conviction that America is the land of plenty and
of liberty--a word which each interprets according to his light or his
liking.
[Sidenote: The Christian Attitude]
[Sidenote: Colonists and Immigrants Distinguished]
Having thus considered the remarkable proportions of immigration, and
the causes of it, it will be well at this point to say a cautionary word
as to the attitude of mind and heart in which this subject should be
approached. Impartiality is necessary but difficult. There is a natural
prejudice against the immigrant. A Christian woman, of ordinarily gentle
and sweet temper, was heard to say recently, while this very subject of
Christian duty to the immigrant was under discussion at a missionary
conference: "I hate these disgusting foreigners; they are spoiling our
country." Doubtless many would sympathize with her. This is not uncommon
prejudice or feeling, and argument against it is of little avail.
Nevertheless, as Christians we must endeavor to divest ourselves of it.
We must recognize the brotherhood of man and the value of the individual
soul as taught by Jesus. It may aid us, perhaps, if we remember that we
are all--with the exception of the Indians, who may lay claim to
aboriginal heritage--in a sense descendants of immigrants. At the same
time, it is essential to draw a clear distinction between colonists and
immigrants. Colonization, with its attendant hardships and heroisms,
steadily advanced from its beginnings in New England, New Amsterdam, and
Virginia, until there resulted the founding of a free and independent
nation, with popular government and fixed religious principles,
including the vital ones of religious liberty and the right of the
individual conscience. In other words, colonization created a nation;
and there had to be a nation before there could be immigration to it.
"In discussing the immigration question," says Mr. Hall, "this
distinction is important," for it does not follow that, because, as
against the native Indians, all comers might be considered as intruders
and equally without claim of right, those who have built up a
complicated framework of nationality have no rights as against others
who seek to enjoy the benefits of national life without having
contributed to its creation."[12]
[Sidenote: Colonist and National Rights]