descendants have sacred rights, civil and religious, with which aliens
should not be permitted to interfere; and that these rights include all
proper and necessary legislation for the preservation of the liberties,
laws, institutions, and principles established by the founders of the
Republic and those rights of citizenship guaranteed under the
constitution. If restriction of immigration becomes necessary in order
to safeguard America, the American people have a clear right to pass
restrictive or even prohibitory laws. In other words, America does not
belong equally to everybody. The American has rights which the alien
must become American to acquire.
[Sidenote: Sympathetic and Open Mind]
At the same time, our attitude toward the alien should be sympathetic,
and our minds should be open and inquiring as we study the incoming
multitudes. We do not wish to raise the Russian cry, "Russia for the
Russians," or the Chinese shibboleth, "China for the Chinese." The
Christian spirit has been compressed into the epigram, "Not America for
Americans, but Americans for America." We must see to it that the
immigrants do not remain aliens, but are transformed into Christian
Americans. That is the true missionary end for which we are to work; and
it is in order that we may work intelligently and effectively that we
seek to familiarize ourselves with the facts.
[Sidenote: The Personal Responsibility]
The facts already brought out are surely sufficient to arrest attention.
Suppose this million-a-year rate should continue for a decade--and
there is every reason to believe it will, unless unusual and unlikely
restrictive measures are taken by our government. That would mean ten
millions more added, and probably seventy per cent. of them from
southeastern Europe. Add the natural increase, and estimate what the
result of these millions would be upon the national digestion.
Politically, the foreign element would naturally and inevitably assume
the place which a majority can claim in a democracy, and not only claim
but maintain, by the use of votes--a use which the immigrant learns full
soon from the manipulators of parties. Religiously, unless a great
change should come over the spirit of American Protestantism, and the
work of evangelization among foreigners be conducted along quite
different lines from the present, is it not plain that our country would
cease to be Christian America, as we understand the term? There is
enough in these questions to set and keep the patriotic American
thinking.
The personal inquiry for each one to make is, "As an American and a
Christian, have these facts and queries any special message for me, and
have I any direct responsibility in relation to them?"
SUGGESTIONS FOR USING THE QUESTIONS
These questions have been prepared to suggest to the leader and student
the most important points in the chapter, and to stimulate further
meditation and thought. Those marked * should encourage discussion. The
leader is not expected to use all of these questions, and should use his
judgment in eliminating or adding others that are in harmony with the
aim of the lesson. For helps for conducting each class session, the
leader should not fail to write to the Secretary of his Home Missionary
Board.
QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER I
AIM: TO REALIZE OUR RESPONSIBILITY IN RECEIVING ONE MILLION ALIENS A
YEAR
I. _To Learn by Comparison the Magnitude of a Million Aliens._
1. At what rate per annum is our population now being increased by
immigration?
2. What are the sources of this invasion? Its principal gateway?
3. What comparison helps you most to realize the number of
immigrants?
4. What are some of the largest groups in the mass, as classified
by nationality? By race? By knowledge or ignorance? By fitness for
labor?
5. What states may be compared with last year's arrivals?
II. _To Realise the Proportion of Our Population that has Immigrated
since 1820._
6. How does the total number of our immigrants compare with the
population of Germany? England? Canada?
7. Has the number of immigrants been increasing steadily? Will it
tend to increase?
8. Has the present rate been long continued? What proportion of the
population of the United States is derived from immigration
subsequent to the American Revolution?
9. * Do you think there is any serious menace in such large numbers
of immigrants? Why?
III. _Why do Aliens Come_?
10. Name the principal causes of immigration. The principal
classes.
11. What American ideals have the greatest attractive power? What
opportunities?
12. Give some typical instances of immigrants' stories. * Would you
have wished to come under the same circumstances?
13. What other forces stimulate immigration to the United States?
What agencies?
IV. _What Should be our Attitude toward Aliens, and What is our
Individual Responsibility for Them_?
14. * What is the Christian attitude toward these newcomers? How
can we remove prejudice?
15. * What is our personal responsibility as Christians in
improving the condition of aliens?
REFERENCES FOR ADVANCED STUDY.--CHAPTER I
I. Compare modern immigration with the migration of peoples in
earlier times; for example, those of the Hebrews, Aryans, Goths,
Huns, Saracens, and other races.
Any good Encyclopedia or General History.
II. What resemblances and what differences between the Colonial
settlement of America, and the later immigration, say, during the
Nineteenth Century?
III. _The Causes of Immigration._
Hall: Immigration, II.
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, III, VIII.
Warne: The Slav Invasion, III, IV; 78, 83.
Holt: Undistinguished Americans, 35, 244-250.
IV. What agencies can you name and describe that are trying to
receive the immigrants in a humane and Christian spirit? For
example, the United States Government, American Tract Society, New
York Bible Society, Society for Italian Immigrants, and other
organizations and agencies. Study especially any that work in your
own neighborhood.
_As for immigrants, we cannot have too many of the right kind, and
we should have none of the wrong kind. I will go as far as any in
regard to restricting undesirable immigration. I do not think that
any immigrant who will lower the standard of life among our people
should be admitted._--President Roosevelt.
II
ALIEN ADMISSION AND RESTRICTION
Unrestricted immigration is doing much to cause deterioration in the
quality of American citizenship. Let us resolve that America shall be
neither a hermit nation nor a Botany Bay. Let us make our land a home
for the oppressed of all nations, but not a dumping-ground for the
criminals, the paupers, the cripples, and the illiterate of the world.
Let our Republic, in its crowded and hazardous future, adopt these
watchwords, to be made good all along our oceanic and continental
borders: "Welcome for the worthy, protection to the patriotic, but no
shelter in America for those who would destroy the American shelter
itself."--_Joseph Cook._
It is not the migration of a few thousand or even million human beings
from one part of the world to another nor their good or bad fortune that
is of interest to us. We are concerned with the effect of such a
movement on the community at large and its growth in civilization.
Immigration, for instance, means the constant infusion of new blood into
the American commonwealth, and the question is: What effect will this
new blood have upon the character of the community?--_Professor
Mayo-Smith._
It is advisable to study the influence of the newcomers on the ethical
consciousness of the community--whether there is a gain or a loss to us.
In short, we must set up our standard of what we desire this nation to
be, and then consider whether the policy we have hitherto pursued in
regard to immigration is calculated to maintain that standard or to
endanger it.--_Idem._
II
ALIEN ADMISSION AND RESTRICTION
_I. Method of Admission_
[Sidenote: Chief Ports of Entry]
How do immigrants obtain entrance into the United States? New York is
the chief port of entry, and if we learn the conditions and methods
there we shall know them in general. The great proportion coming through
New York is seen by comparison of the total admissions for 1904 and 1905
at the larger ports:
Port 1904 1905
New York 606,019 788,219
Boston 60,278 65,107
Baltimore 55,940 62,314
Philadelphia 19,467 23,824
Honolulu 9,054 11,997
San Francisco 9,036 6,377
Other Ports 22,702 24,447
Through Canada 30,374 44,214
[Sidenote: The Floating Gateway]
The proportion for New York is not far from eight tenths of the whole.
Hence it is true, that while the "dirty little ferryboat _John G.
Carlisle_ is not an imposing object to the material eye, to the eye of
the imagination she is a spectacle to inspire awe, for she is the
floating gateway of the Republic. Over her dingy decks march in endless
succession the eager battalions of Europe's peaceful invaders of the
West. That single craft, in her hourly trips from Ellis Island to the
Battery,[13] carries more immigrants in a year than came over in all the
fleets of the nations in the two centuries after John Smith landed at
Jamestown."[14]
[Sidenote: Human Storage Reservoirs]
Reading about the arrivals at Ellis Island, no matter how realistic the
description, will not give a vivid idea of what immigration means nor of
what sort the immigrants are. For that, you must obtain a permit from
the authorities and actually see for yourself the human stream that
pours from the steerage of the mighty steamships into the huge human
storage reservoirs of Ellis Island.[15] We know that however perfect the
system, human nature has to be taken into account, both in officials and
immigrants, and human nature is imperfect; much of it at Ellis Island
is exceedingly difficult to deal patiently with. Hence, from the very
nature of things and men, the situation is one to develop pathos, humor,
comedy, and tragedy, as the great "human sifting machine" works away at
separating the wheat from the chaff. The tragedy comes in the case of
the excluded, since the blow falls sometimes between parents and
children, husband and wife, lover and sweetheart, and the decree of
exclusion is as bitter as death.
[Sidenote: Make Yourself an Imaginary Immigrant]
To make the manner and method of getting into America by the steerage
process as real as possible, try to put yourself in an alien's place,
and see what you would have to go through. Do not take immigration at
its worst, but rather at its best, or at least above the average
conditions. Assume that you belong to the more intelligent and desirable
class, finding a legitimate reason for leaving your home in Europe,
because of hard conditions and poor outlook there and bright visions of
fortune in the land of liberty, whither relatives have preceded you.
Your steamship ticket is bought in your native town, and you have no
care concerning fare or baggage. A number of people of your race and
neighborhood are on the way, so that you are not alone.
[Sidenote: The Ship's Manifest]
Before embarking you are made to answer a long list of questions,
filling out your "manifest," or official record which the law requires
the vessel-masters to obtain, attest, and deliver to the government
officers at the entrance port.[16]
[Sidenote: Numbered and Lettered]
Your answers proving satisfactory to the transportation agents, a card
is furnished you, containing your name, the letter of the group of
thirty to which you are assigned, and your group number. Thus you
become, for the time being, No. 27 of group E. You are cautioned to keep
this card in sight, as a ready means of identification.
[Sidenote: The Voyage]
Partings over, you enter upon the strange and unforgetable experiences
of ten days or more in the necessarily cramped quarters of the
steerage--experiences of a kind that do not invite repetition.
Homesickness and seasickness form a trying combination, to say nothing
of the discomforts of a mixed company and enforced companionship.
[Sidenote: First Experiences in the New World]
Your first American experience befalls you when the steamship anchors at
quarantine inside Sandy Hook, and the United States inspection officers
come on board to hunt for infectious or contagious diseases--cholera,
smallpox, typhus fever, yellow fever, or plague. No outbreak of any of
these has marked the voyage, fortunately for you, and there is no long
delay. Slowly the great vessel pushes its way up the harbor and the
North River, passing the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, that
beacon which all incomers are enjoined to see as the symbol of the new
liberty they hope to enjoy.
[Sidenote: Ship Landing]
At last the voyage is done, your steamship lies at her pier, and you are
thrust into the midst of distractions. Families are trying to keep
together; the din is indescribable; crying babies add to the general
confusion of tongues; all sorts of people with all sorts of baggage are
making ready for the landing, which seems a long time off as you wait
for the customs officers to get through with the first-class passengers.
At last word is given to go ashore, and the procession or pushing
movement rather begins. You are hurried along, up a companionway,
lugging your hand baggage; then down the long gangway on to the pier and
the soil of America.
[Sidenote: Unnecessary Cruelty]
It is not a pleasant landing in the land of light and liberty. You have
been sworn at, pushed, punched with a stick for not moving faster when
you could not, and have seen others treated much more roughly. Just in
front of you a poor woman is trying to get up the companionway with a
child in one arm, a deck chair on the other, and a large bundle besides.
She blocks the passage for an instant. A great burly steward reaches up,
drags her down, tears the chair off her arm, splitting her sleeve and
scraping the skin off her wrist as he does so, and then in his rage
breaks the chair to pieces, while the woman passes on sobbing, not
daring to remonstrate.[17] This is not the first treatment of this sort
you have seen, and you feel powerless to help, though your blood boils
at the outrage.
[Sidenote: Unpleasant Beginnings]
As you pass down the gangway your number is taken by an officer with a
mechanical checker, and then you become part of the curious crowd
gathered in the great somber building, filled with freight, much of it
human. Here there is confusion worse confounded, as separated groups try
to get together and dock watchmen try to keep them in place. Many
believe their baggage has been stolen, and mothers are sure their
children have been kidnaped or lost. The dockmen are violent, not
hesitating to use their sticks, and you find yourself more than once in
danger, although you strive to obey orders you do not understand very
well, since they are shouted out in savage manner. The inspector reaches
you finally, and you are hustled along in a throng to the barge that is
waiting. You are tired and hungry, having had no food since early
breakfast. Your dreams of America seem far from reality just now. You
are almost too weary to care what next.
[Sidenote: America's Gateway]
The next is Ellis Island, whose great building looks inviting. Out of
the barge you are swept with the crowd, baggage in hand or on head or
shoulder, and on to the grand entrance. As you ascend the broad stairs,
an officer familiar with many languages is shouting out, first in one
tongue and then another, "Get your health tickets ready." You notice
that the only available place many have in which to carry these tickets
is in their mouths, since their hands are full of children or baggage.
[Sidenote: Medical Inspection]
At the head of the long pair of stairs you meet a uniformed officer (a
doctor in the Marine Hospital Service), who takes your ticket, glances
at it, and stamps it with the Ellis Island stamp. Counting the
quarantine officer as number one, you have now passed officer number
two. At the head of the stairs you find yourself in a great hall,
divided into two equal parts, each part filled with curious railed-off
compartments. Directed by an officer, you are turned into a narrow
alleyway, and here you meet officer number three, in uniform like the
second. The keen eyes of this doctor sweep you at a glance, from feet to
head. You do not know it, but this is the first medical inspection by a
surgeon of the Marine Hospital Service, and it causes a halt, although
only for a moment. When the person immediately in front of you reaches
this doctor, you see that he pushes back the shawl worn over her head,
gives a nod, and puts a chalk mark upon her. He is on the keen lookout
for favus (contagious skin disease), and for signs of disease or
deformity. The old man who limps along a little way behind you has a
chalk mark put on his coat lapel, and you wonder why they do not chalk
you.
[Sidenote: Examination of Eyes]
You are now about ten or fifteen feet behind your front neighbor, and as
you are motioned to follow, about thirty feet further on you confront
another uniformed surgeon (officer number four), who has a towel hanging
beside him, a small instrument in his hand, and a basin of disinfectants
behind him. You have little time for wonder or dread. With a deft motion
he applies the instrument to your eye and turns up the lid, quickly
shutting it down again, then repeats the operation upon the other eye.
He is looking for the dreaded contagious trachoma or for purulent
ophthalmia; also for disease of any kind, or any defect that would make
it lawful and wise to send you back whence you came. You have now been
twice examined, and passed as to soundness of body, freedom from
lameness or defect, general healthfulness, and absence of eye disease or
pulmonary weakness.
[Sidenote: Detention Room]
[Sidenote: The Wicket Gate]
As you move along to the inclosed space of your group E, you note that
the lame man and the woman who were chalk-marked are sent into another
railed-off space, known as the "detention pen," where they must await a
more rigid medical examination. One other inspector you have faced--a
woman, whose sharp eyes seem to read the characters of the women as they
come up to her "wicket gate;" for it is her duty to stop the suspicious
and immoral characters and send them to the detention rooms or special
inquiry boards. Thus you have passed five government officers since
landing on the Island. They have been courteous and kindly, but impress
you as knowing their business so well that they can readily see through
fraud and deception.
[Sidenote: Entrance Examination]
The entrance ordeal is not quite over, but for a little while you rest
on the wooden bench in your E compartment, waiting until the group is
assembled, all save those sent away for detention. Suddenly you are told
to come on, and in single file E group marches along the narrow railed
alley that leads to officer number six, or the inspector who holds E
sheet in his hand. When it comes your turn, your manifest is produced
and you are asked a lot of questions. A combined interpreter and
registry clerk is at hand to assist. The interpreter pleases you greatly
by speaking in your own language, which he rightly guesses, and notes
whether your answers agree with those on the manifest.
[Sidenote: The Ticket System]
As you have the good fortune to be honest, and have sufficient money to
escape being halted as likely to become a public charge, you are
ticketed "O. K." with an "R" which means that you are bound for a
railroad station. You see a ticket "S. I." on the lame man, which means
that he is to go to a Board of Special Inquiry, with the chances of
being debarred, or sent back home. On another, as you pass, you notice a
ticket "L. P. C.," which signifies the dreaded decision, "liable to
become public charge"--a decision that means deportation.
[Sidenote: The Three Stairs of Separation]
All this time you have been guided. Now you are directed to a desk where
your railroad ticket-order is stamped; next to a banker's desk, where
your money is exchanged for American money; and finally you are motioned
to the right stairway of three, this leading to the railroad barge room.
Here your baggage is checked and your ticket provided, a bag of food is
offered you, and then you are taken on board a barge which will convey
you to the railroad station. You have left your fellow-voyagers
abruptly, all save the railroad-ticketed like yourself. Had you been
destined for New York, you would have gone down the left stairway and
been free to take the ferryboat for the Battery. If you had expected
friends to meet you, the central stairway would have led you to the
waiting room for that purpose. Those three stairways are called "The
Stairs of Separation," and there families are sometimes ruthlessly
separated without warning, when bound for different destinations.
[Sidenote: Careful Supervision]
The officers, who have treated you courteously, in strong contrast to
the steamship and dock employees, keep track of you until you are safely
on board an immigrant car, bound for the place where your relatives are.
Your ideas of great New York are limited, but you have been saved by
this official supervision from being swindled by sharpers or enticed
into evil. You are practically in charge of the railway company, as you
have been of the steamship company, until you are deposited at the
station where you expect to make your home. You are ready to believe, by
this time, that America is at least a spacious country, with room enough
in it for all who want to come. At the same time you will admit, as you
recall some of your fellow-passengers in the steerage, that there should
not be room in the country for those who ought not to come--not only the
diseased and insane, crippled and consumptive, who are shut out by the
law, but also the delinquent and depraved, whose presence means added
ignorance and crime. You only wish the inspectors could have seen some
of those shameless men on shipboard, so that in spite of their smooth
answers they might have been sent back whence they came, to prey upon
the innocent there instead of here. Now that it is all over, you
shudder for a long time at night as memory recalls the steerage scenes,
through which your faith in God and your constant prayers preserved
you.[18]
[Sidenote: The Alien's Chance]
In such manner the alien gains his chance to become an American. What he
will make of that chance is a matter of grave importance to the land
that has opened to him the doors of opportunity and liberty. Having seen
how the immigrants get into the United States, let us now see how they
are kept out. When we know what the restrictive laws are, and how they
are enforced or evaded, we shall be in a position to judge as to their
sufficiency, and the need of further legislation.
_II. Governmental Regulation_
[Sidenote: Evasion and Violation]
The United States has some excellent immigration laws, the best and most
extensive of any nation, as one would expect, since this is the nation
to which nearly all immigrants come. The trouble is that every attempt
is made to evade these laws, and where they cannot be evaded they are
violated. The laws are of two classes: 1. Protective, in favor of the
immigrant; and 2. Restrictive, in favor of the country.
[Sidenote: Protection for the Immigrant]
There is a law against overcrowding on shipboard, going back as far as
1819, but overcrowding has gone on ever since.[19] There seems to be no
doubt that even on the best steamships of the best lines there is ready
disregard of the law when it interferes with the profits to be made out
of the steerage. Strong evidence to this effect is given by Mr.
Brandenburg. Here is a condensed leaf from his own experience which
shows how much regard is paid to the comfort and health of the steerage
passengers:[20]
[Sidenote: Steerage Horrors]