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

[Pg 3]

—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

ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pg 8]

[Pg 9]

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[Pg 10] 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[Pg 11] 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.[Pg 13][Pg 12]

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 dan[Pg 14]gerous 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.[Pg 15]

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.

[Pg 16]

I

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[Pg 17].

I. A Year's Immigration Analyzed

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:

"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.

"It is a vast procession of varied humanity. In tongue it is polyglot; in dress all climes from[Pg 18] 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]

The Inflowing Tide

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 con[Pg 19]ceivable 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.

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.

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[Pg 20] 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.

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.[Pg 21]

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.Queer Towns these would be 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[Pg 22] 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.

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;[Pg 23] 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.

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[Pg 24] 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.

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[Pg 25] 50,000 the population of Maine, that of Colorado by about 80,000, and twice that of the District of Columbia.

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

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[Pg 26] 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.

Taking the figures by decades, we have this enlightening table:

From this it appears that more aliens landed in the single decade from 1880 to 1890 than in[Pg 27] 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.

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.

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[Pg 28] (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.

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[Pg 29] 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

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[Pg 30] Expulsionreached 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.Attraction 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[Pg 31] 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.

Three ClassesThe three causes produce three classes of immigrants: 1. Natural; 2. Assisted; and 3. Solicited.

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[Pg 32] [Pg 33]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.

Immigration at the Port of New York for 1906

"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[Pg 34] 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 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

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.[Pg 35]

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.

Ellis Island Immigration Station

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"[Pg 36] has allured multitudes to leave the old home and land.

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.

An Italian bootblack who already owns several bootblacking establishments in this country, was[Pg 37] 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."

A Swedish farmer says: "A man who had been living in America once came to visit the[Pg 38] 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."

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,[Pg 39] 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.

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[Pg 40] 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.

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.

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,[Pg 41] 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.

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.

From these illustrations, it can readily be seen how widespread is the knowledge of America as[Pg 42] 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

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 steam[Pg 43]ship have been so reduced, it is the least thrifty and prosperous members of their communities that fall readiest prey to the emigration agent.

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.

Other and incidental causes there are, such as the influence of new machinery, opening the way for more unskilled labor, such as the ordi[Pg 44]nary 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.

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, per[Pg 45]haps, 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.Colonists
and
Immigrants Distinguished 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]

It ought clearly to be recognized that the colonists and their descendants have sacred rights, civil and religious, with which aliens should not be permitted to interfere; and that[Pg 46] 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.

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.

The facts already brought out are surely sufficient to arrest attention. Suppose this million-a-year rate should continue for a decade—and[Pg 47] 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?"[Pg 48]

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.

II. To Realise the Proportion of Our Population that has Immigrated since 1820.

III. Why do Aliens Come?

IV. What Should be our Attitude toward Aliens, and What is our Individual Responsibility for Them?

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.[Pg 50]

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.

[Pg 51]

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[Pg 52]

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[Pg 53].

I. Method of Admission

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:

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[Pg 54] 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]

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[Pg 55] 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.

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.

Before embarking you are made to answer a long list of questions, filling out your "manifest," or official record which the law requires[Pg 56] the vessel-masters to obtain, attest, and deliver to the government officers at the entrance port.[16]

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.

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.

Your first American experience befalls you when the steamship anchors at quarantine inside[Pg 57] 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.

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.

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[Pg 58] 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.

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[Pg 59] 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.

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.

Receiving Room at Ellis Island

(A) Entrance stairs; (B) Examination of health ticket; (C) Surgeon's examination; (D) Second surgeon's examination; (E) Group compartments; (F) Waiting for inspection; (G) Passage to the stairway; (H) Detention room; (I) The Inspectors' desks; (K) Outward passage to barge, ferry, or detention room.

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[Pg 60] 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.

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.

As you move along to the inclosed space of[Pg 61] 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.The Wicket Gate 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.

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.[Pg 62]

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.

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[Pg 63] Stairs of Separation," and there families are sometimes ruthlessly separated without warning, when bound for different destinations.

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[Pg 64] 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]

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

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[Pg 65] classes: 1. Protective, in favor of the immigrant; and 2. Restrictive, in favor of the country.

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]

"In a compartment from nine to ten feet high and having a space no larger than six ordinary rooms, were beds for 195 persons, and 214 women and children occupied them. The ventilation was merely what was to be had from the companionway that opened into the alleyway and not on the deck, the few ports in the ship's sides, and the scanty ventilating shafts. The beds were double-tiered affairs in blocks of from ten to twenty, constructed of iron framework, with iron slats in checker fashion to support the burlap-covered bag of straw, grass, or waste which served as a mattress. Pillows there were[Pg 66] none, only cork jacket life-preservers stuck under one end of the mattress to give the elevation of a pillow. One blanket served the purpose of all bedclothing; it was a mixture of wool, cotton, and jute, predominantly jute; the length of a man's body and a yard and a half wide. For such quarters and accommodations the emigrant pays half the sum that would buy a first-class passage. A comparison of the two classes shows where the steamship company makes the most money.

"Enrolled in the blanket each person found a fork, spoon, pint tin cup, and a flaring six-inch-wide, two-inch-deep pan out of which to eat. The passengers were instructed to form groups of six and choose a mess-manager, who was supposed to take the big pan and bucket, get the dinner and drinkables, and distribute the portions to his group. After the meal, some member was supposed to collect the tin utensils and wash them ready for next time. But the crowd in the wash-room was so great that about one third of the people chose to rinse off the things with a dash of drinking water, others never washed their cups and pans. Yet the emigrant pays half the first-cabin rate for fighting for his food, serving it himself, and washing his own dishes. The food was in its quality good, but the manner in which it was messed into one heap in the big pan was nothing short of nauseating. After the[Pg 67] first meal the emigrants began throwing the refuse on the deck instead of over the side or into the scuppers. The result can be imagined. It was an extremely hot night, and the air in the crowded compartment was so foul I could not sleep. The men and boys about me lay for the most part like logs, hats, coats, and shoes off, and no more, sleeping the sleep of the tired.

"My wife said the babies in her compartment were crying in relays of six, the women had scattered bits of macaroni, meat, and potatoes all over the beds and on the floor, and added dishwater as a final discomfort. Two thirds of the emigrants were as clean as circumstances would permit, but the other third kept all in a reign of uncleanliness. The worst could not be put into print. The remedy for the whole matter is to pack fewer people in the same ship's space, and a regular service at tables. The big emigrant-carriers should be forced to give up a part of their enormous profits in order that sanitary conditions at least may prevail."

This certainly is not an unreasonable demand, and proper laws with regard to the steerage rigidly enforced would tend to discourage immigration, instead of the reverse, since the rates would doubtless be raised as the numbers were lowered. Cruel treatment of the helpless aliens by the stewards and ship's officers should be stopped. Mr Brandenburg's description, which[Pg 68] by no means tells the whole story of steerage horrors, should serve to institute reform through the creation of a public sentiment that will demand it.Steerage Reforms Needed There is no other way to reach such conditions; and here is where the young people can exert their influence powerfully for good. Money greed should not be allowed to make the steerage a disgrace to Christian civilization and an offense to common decency. Of course it is difficult to detect what goes on in the hold of a great steamship, and when immigrants make complaint they frequently suffer for it. It is possible, however, to provide government inspectors, and inspectors who will inspect and remain proof against bribes. The one essential is a sufficiently strong and insistent public opinion.

III. Putting up the Bars

The need of some regulation and restriction of immigration was felt early in our national life. The fathers of the Republic did not agree about the matter, and in this their descendants have been like them. Washington questioned the advisability of letting any more immigrants come, except those belonging to certain skilled trades that were needed to develop the new country. Madison favored a policy of liberality and inducement, so that population might increase more rapidly. Jefferson, on the other hand, wished "there were an ocean of fire between this[Pg 69] country and Europe, so that it might be impossible for any more immigrants to come hither." We can only conjecture what his thoughts would be if he were to return and study present conditions. Franklin, certainly one of the wisest and most far-seeing of the earlier statesmen, feared that immigration would tend to destroy the homogeneity essential to a democracy with ideals. Equally great and good men in our history have taken one or the other side of this question, from the extreme of open gates to that of prohibition, while the people generally have gone on about their business with the comfortable feeling that matters come out pretty well if they are not too much interfered with.

While statesmen were theorizing and differing, conditions made the need of some actual regulations and restrictions felt as early as 1824, although the total immigration of that year was only 7,912, or less than that of a single day at present. The first law resulted from abuse of free admission. It was found that some foreign governments were shipping their paupers, diseased persons, and criminals to America as the easiest and most economical way to get rid of them. This it undoubtedly was for them; but the people of New York did not see where the ease and economy came in on their side of the ledger, and in self-defense, therefore, the state passed the first law, with intent to shut out unde[Pg 70]sirables.[21] This state legislation was the genesis of national enactment. The history of federal laws concerning aliens is covered compactly by Mr. Hall, and those interested in the details of this important phase of the subject are referred to his book.[22] A comprehensive table, by means of which all the significant legislation can be seen at a glance, will be found in Appendix B.

In 1882 there came a tremendous wave of immigration, with effects upon the labor market that largely induced the passage in that year of the first general immigration law. The Federal Government now assumed entire control of the ports of entry, as it was manifestly essential to have a national policy and supervision. Since 1862, when the Chinese coolies were excluded, under popular pressure, Congress has passed eight Acts of more or less importance, culminating in the Act of 1903,[23] which is said by Mr. Whelpley, who has collected all the immigration laws of all countries, and is therefore competent[Pg 71] to judge, to be "up to the present time the most far-reaching measure of its kind in force in any country; and the principles underlying it must serve as the foundation for all immigration restriction." Under this law we have practically unrestricted immigration, with the important exceptions that the Chinese laborers are not admitted, and that persons suffering from obvious contagious diseases, insane persons, known anarchists and criminals, and a certain small percentage likely to become public charges are debarred. The law does not fix a property, income, or educational qualification, does not insist upon a knowledge of a trade, nor impose a tax. In other words, we have at present a more or less effective police regulation of immigration, but we are not pursuing a policy of restriction or limitation.

As to the Chinese, we have made an exception, and one that fails to commend itself to many. Grant that there is much to be said in favor of the proper restriction of Chinese immigration, especially on the ground that the immigrants would come only to earn money and return home, not to become Americans; that there can be no race assimilation between Chinese and Americans; and that such bird-of-passage cheap male labor is a detriment to the best interests of the country. All the force in these arguments applies equally to a large proportion of[Pg 72] the immigration from southeastern Europe which is admitted. The laws should be uniform. The right to shut out the Chinese coolies is not questioned; but if these be debarred, why not debar the illiterate and unskilled laboring class that comes from Ireland, Italy, and Austria-Hungary? The Chinese certainly can fill a place in our industries which the other races do not fill equally well. Their presence in the kitchen would tend to alleviate domestic conditions that are responsible in large measure for the breaking up of American home life. It is a ludicrous error to suppose that all the Chinese who come to America are laundrymen at home. Let Mrs. S. L. Baldwin, a returned missionary who labored in China for eighteen years and knows the people she pleads for, bear her witness:

"The Chinese are exactly the same class as the immigrants from other lands. The needy poor, with few exceptions, must ever be the immigrant class. Those who come to us across the Pacific are largely from the respectable farming class, who fall into laundry work, shoemaking, etc., because these branches of industry are chiefly open to them. I have no fear of the Chinese immigrants suffering in comparison with those who come across the Atlantic. It is not the Chinaman who is too lazy to work, and goes to the almshouse or jail. It is not he who reels through our streets, defies our Sabbath laws,[Pg 73] deluges our country with beer, and opposes all work for temperance and the salvation of our sons from the liquor curse. It is not the man from across the Pacific who commits the fearful crimes, and who is longing to put his hand to our political wheel and rule the United States. There are no healthier immigrants coming to this country. It is with difficulty, and only under pressure of necessity they are induced to leave China, so that the bugbear of millions of coolies overrunning America is absurd."

Workers in the Chinese missions and Sunday-schools in this country will assent to Mrs. Baldwin's words. And Americans will appreciate her sense of the ludicrous when an Irish washerwoman in San Francisco, indignant that a Chinese servant had been brought to America by the missionary, said to her, "We have a right here and they haven't." As for the Chinese, the time will come when the injustice of discriminating against a single nation will be recognized and the wrong be righted. There are no more stable converts to Christianity, no more generous givers and zealous missionaries, than the Chinese converts. Let us have American fair play, about which President Roosevelt says so much, in our treatment of them. Recent developments prove that the United States is unwilling to imperil the relations of friendship which have existed with China.[Pg 74]

IV. Excluding the Unfit

At Ellis Island one may see what is aptly termed "the tragedy of the excluded."[24] The enforcement of the laws comes into operation at the ports of entry. Practically everything depends upon the intelligence and faithfulness of the inspectors, who are charged with grave responsibility. Immigrant and country are equally at their mercy. Necessarily a large margin must be left to their judgment when it comes to the question, Will the applicant now before me probably become a public charge—that is, fall into the pauper or criminal class—or is he of the right stuff to make a respectable and desirable American citizen? In cases of plain insanity or idiocy or disease the decision is easy; but when it comes to the moral and economic sphere an expert opinion is required.Trickeries Attempted Then, the inspectors have to be constantly on the lookout for deception and fraud. Immigrants who belong to the excluded classes have been carefully coached by agents interested in getting them through the examination. Diseased eyes have been doctored up for the occasion; lame persons have been trained to avoid the fatal limp during that walk between the two surgeons. Lies have been put into innocent mouths and the beginnings of falsehood into the heart. Mr. Adams gives this instance showing how the[Pg 75] mind of the inspector works. The line is passing steadily, ceaselessly. A flashily dressed French girl has plenty of money but unsatisfactory references and destination, and back she is turned.

Detained for Special Examination

"Next comes a bookkeeper, so he says. His father gave him money and he was coming here to make his fortune. The inspector is not satisfied and he is turned over to the 'S. I.' Board. But his papers, money, and statements are clear and he is admitted; they give him the benefit of the doubt as they always do. But next in line comes a well built stocky Pole, with nothing in the world but a carpet bag, a few bundles, and a small showing of money. Ambition is written all over his face and he is admitted. 'Now,' says the recorder, pausing for a moment, 'see the difference between these two gents. The first duffer will look around for a job, spend time and money to get something to suit him, and keep his job for a short time; then he will give it up, run through his money, borrow from his friends, and then give them all the cold hand. He won't wear well, and his dad knew it when he sent him over, but he was glad to get rid of him. So lots of them are.Picking the Winning Man Now look at the difference between him and that Pole. He knows nothing but work. Look at his eyes, mild but good. He has been brought up next to mother earth; turn him loose from the train when he reaches his destination[Pg 76] and he will dig. He won't hang around looking for a job, but he will till the soil and before you or I know it he will have crops and that is what he will live on. He comes from a hard country, is tough, and when you and I are going around shivering in an overcoat, he will be going around in his shirt sleeves. That is the stuff we want here, not the first kind, with flabby hands and sapped vitality.' Sure enough the bookkeeper did not wear well, and falling into the hands of the police, some months later, he was deported under the three-year limitation law, and the country was better for it."

The inspectors are wise in showing partiality to the men who have plenty of days' work in them, even if they have less money. It is not at all safe to judge the immigrants as desirable or otherwise according to the amount of money per capita they bring. It is the head and not the head-money that should be looked at. Think of the responsibility. More than 300,000 women passed through the "moral wicket" at Ellis Island last year. Of course many of bad quality, men and women both, get through, for inspectors on too meager salaries are not omniscient, but a good word should be said for these public servants, who in the main are conscientiously performing a delicate and difficult task.[25] Let us see some [Pg 77]of the results of their work. This will give an idea of the large numbers who ought never to have been allowed to leave home.

Record of the DebarredThe following table shows the principal classes of excluded for the past fourteen years, with the total debarred for each year, and the percentage:

THE DEBARRED FOR THE YEARS 1892-1905

The debarred have the right of appeal, from the Special Inquiry Board which excludes them, to the Commissioner of the Port, then to the Commissioner-General, and finally to the Secre[Pg 78]tary[26] of Commerce and Labor. The steamship lines that brought them have to pay costs of detention and deportation, which is one means of making these lines careful.

A second table, which shows the exclusion by races, will repay study. It is given in Appendix A. It not only shows where the bulk of the excluded belong, but reveals not a little concerning the character of those admitted who come from the same races. The intention of the present Commissioner-General is to enforce the laws strictly, yet in a humane spirit. Comparing the figures for the two years 1903-1904, he says:

"The most significant feature of this statement is the large increase in the number of idiots, insane persons, and paupers during 1905, which, coupled with an increase of twenty-five per cent. in the number of diseased aliens, justifies the Bureau in directing attention to the flagrant and wilful disregard by the ocean carriers of the laws for the regulation of their business of securing alien passengers destined for the United States."[27]

This brings up a point of vast importance in more ways than one. The official reports charge wholesale deception, evasion, and fraud upon the great transportation companies. The fact stands for itself that in 1904 they were fined more than[Pg 79] $31,000 under the section of the law imposing a $100 penalty for bringing a diseased alien whose disease might have been detected by a competent medical examination at the port of departure. For many years these companies have in doubtful cases demanded double passage money, so that they might make a profit both ways if the alien were rejected. The Italian government has passed an Act giving an alien right to recover the money illegally retained in this way, showing the practice, and the government opinion of it.

The truth is, the transportation agent has become a figure of international consequence and concern. The artificial cause behind the present unprecedented exodus from Europe, according to Whelpley, is the abnormal activity of the transportation companies in their effort to secure new and profitable cargo for their ships. In 1900 over $118,000,000 was invested in trans-atlantic steamship lines, which are largely owned by foreigners. New lines to the Mediterranean have been put on with distinct purpose to swell the Italian and Slav immigration. Rate cutting has at times made it possible for the steerage passenger to go from Liverpool to New York for as low as $8.75. The average rate is not high enough to deter anyone who really wants to come. An English line, in return for establishing a line direct from a Mediterranean port, has secured from the Hungarian government a guar[Pg 80]antee of 30,000 immigrants a year from its territory.

The law forbids transportation companies or the owners of vessels to "directly or through agents, either by written, printed, or oral solicitations, solicit, invite, or encourage the immigration of any aliens into the United States except by ordinary commercial letters, circulars, advertisements, or oral representations, stating the sailings of their vessels and terms and facilities of transportation therein." That this restrictive provision is persistently evaded is made plain by the reports of government inspectors sent abroad to investigate. The annual migration involves more than a hundred millions of dollars, and where money is to be made law is easily disobeyed.

One of the inspectors says the chief evil in this solicitation business is the so-called "runner." Here is his description of this mischievous genus homo. "It is he who goes around in eastern and southern Europe from city to city and village to village telling fairy tales about the prosperity of many immigrants in America and the opportunities offered by the United States for aliens. The runner does not know of anyone who is undesirable; he claims to be all-powerful, that he has representatives in every port who can 'open the door' of America to anyone. It is he who induces many a diseased person to attempt the journey,[Pg 81] and it is also he and his associates who do their best to have the undesirables admitted. The steamship companies, as a rule, do not deal with these runners directly and disclaim all responsibility for their nefarious practices. But the official agents of the steamship companies do pay their runners commissions for every immigrant referred to them. I have especially studied this problem along the borders of Germany, Russia, and Austrian Galicia. Here most of the emigrants are smuggled across the frontiers by these runners and robbed of the greater part of their cash possessions. When they arrive at the 'control station' it is remarkable that most emigrants have cards with the address of a certain steamship ticket agent, and the agent, on the other hand, has a list of all the individuals who were smuggled across the frontiers. When I asked one of these representatives how this was done, he told me that he paid 'good commissions' to the runner on the other side of the frontier for each case. When steamship companies and their agents stop paying commissions to runners for emigrants referred to them, individuals will only by their own initiative attempt to come to the United States, and most of those considered undesirable will remain at their native homes."[28]

Violations of law abound. Smuggling persons is regarded with much the same moral leniency[Pg 82] as smuggling goods. The law forbids importation of persons under contract to work. In April last two Italian steamships carried back to Europe more than 1,000 laborers, who had been brought over in violation of the contract-labor laws. Commissioner Watchorn had word from his special investigators abroad that the men had been collected in the Balkan States to work for padrones in this country. So back went the thousand Slavs; but it was a chance discovery. The men admitted that the padrones had paid their passage and agreed to furnish them work. They said the rosiest conditions had been painted before their eyes, and they believed "big money" was to be made here. The steamship companies had to bear the expense of taking them back, but the padrones have not suffered any penalty, and will go on with their unlawful work.

Mr. Brandenburg learned from an Italian woman that her husband had been commissioned by a contractor in Pittsburg to go into the Italian provinces of Austria and engage 200 good stonemasons, 200 good carpenters, and an indefinite number of unskilled laborers. These people were to be put in touch with sub-agents of lines sailing from Hamburg, Fiume, and Bremen, and these agents were to be accountable for these contract laborers being got safely into the United States. This woman said many of her neighbors in Pittsburg had come into the country as contract[Pg 83] laborers and held the law in great contempt, as it was merely a matter of being sufficiently instructed and prepared, and no official at Boston or Ellis Island could tell the difference.[29] Why should not the law be held in contempt, not only this one but all law, by the immigrant who is introduced to America through its violation, and trained to perjure himself at the outset of his new career? Does not the Commissioner-General sound a note of warning when he says:

"It is not reasonable to anticipate that if the great transportation lines do not respect the laws of this country their alien passengers will do so, nor can it be conceded that those aliens whose entrance to the United States is effected in spite of the law are desirable or even safe additions to our population."[30]

It is painful to think that such conditions can exist in connection with so vital a matter as immigration. But it is better to have the facts known, in order that a remedy may be found. Publicity is the safety of republics and communities. And the disclosures of the lengths to which men will go in order to make money should give new and mighty impulse to those who believe in righteousness and have not bowed to the god mammon. If the work of Christianizing the aliens is made harder by the experiences through which they[Pg 84] pass and the examples they have set before them by unscrupulous persons, it must be undertaken with so much the more zeal. Respect for law must be preserved, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to see to it that the laws are enforced and the violators of them punished, even though they represent giant corporations and vast capital.

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER II

Aim: To Realize the Necessity of Just and Adequate Laws for the Admission and Restriction of Immigrants

I. Method of Admission.

1. What proportion of the immigrants now coming land at New York?

2. What is Ellis Island like—materially—spiritually?

3. Suppose yourself an immigrant: what steps would you take to reach New York? What processes would you undergo on landing? How would you be directed?

II. Governmental Regulation.

4. What two kinds of government regulation are practicable? Are both in force?

5. Do the steamship companies obey the law? with regard to its letter? to its real intent?

III. Restriction.

6. * Do you think unrestricted immigration is best for our country?

7. Why is the present discrimination against the Chinese not just?[Pg 85]

8. When and to what extent was control over immigration assumed by the United States Government?

9. What measures were passed in 1903? Has there been any action since?

10. What classes of immigrants are excluded as unfit? Who decides in case of doubt?

11. Are many immigrants sent back? Why do the steamship companies bring the unfit?

IV. Violation.

12. How is immigration solicited? How is it coerced?

13. What is the purpose and what the actual working of the "Contract-Labor Law"?

V. What Can the Christian Public do to Improve Conditions?

14. * Can we expect immigrants to obey our laws, if they are started in such ways? Why not?

15. Has Christian public opinion any special duty in this matter? What is it?

References for Advanced Study.—Chapter II

I. Visit and inspect if possible, some receiving station for immigrants, and report; or else consult the statements and charts of Reports of the Commissioner of Immigration, for the year ending June 30, 1905.

II. Describe the Brandenburgs during life among Italians, and journey to this country as immigrants; their aims, and the results achieved. Brandenburg: Imported Americans, IV, XIII, XV, XXII.[Pg 86]

III. The present regulation of immigrants, with special reference to "The Excluded." Laws for 1903. Hall: Immigration, 216-231. Brandenburg: Imported Americans, 248-274.

IV. Is there need for further restriction? Hall: Immigration, XI, XII. Hunter: Poverty, VI. Charities and The Commons, issue for March 31, 1906.

[Pg 87]

The evils attendant upon unrestricted immigration are not theoretical but actual. Emigration from one place becomes immigration into another. It is an international affair of greatest importance, and should be speedily recognized as such.—J. D. Whelpley.

III

PROBLEMS OF LEGISLATION AND DISTRIBUTION

[Pg 88]

The immigration question in this country has never had the attention to which its importance entitles it. It has sometimes been the scapegoat of religious and racial prejudices, and always, in recent years, an annual sacrifice to the gods of transportation.—Prescott F. Hall.

It is exasperating to any patriotic American to have brought convincingly before him the proofs of a wholesale evasion of a very carefully planned code of laws which he fain would think is a sufficient protection of his country's best interests. It is more annoying to realize that the successful evaders are for the most part foreigners, and those, too, of commonly despised races. The conclusion is plain: Seek the grounds on which to deny passage to undesirable emigrants who wish to come to the United States, in the villages from which they emanate. In the communes of their nativity the truth is known and cannot be hidden.—Broughton Brandenburg.

The mesh of the law needs to be stiffened rather than relaxed. The benefit of the doubt belongs to the United States rather than to the alien who clamors for admittance.—Commissioner-General Sargent.

Distribution, rather than wholesale restriction, is being more and more recognized as the real way out of the difficulties presented by our immense unassimilated immigration.—Gino C. Speranza.

The need is to devise some system by which undesirable immigrants shall be kept out entirely, while desirable immigrants are properly distributed throughout the country.—President Roosevelt[Pg 89].

I. The Present Situation

There is a growing conviction that something ought to be done to check the present enormous inflow of immigrants. But when it comes to what that something is, difficulties at once arise. There are so many foreigners already in America, and so many children of foreign-born parents, that it is impossible to touch the stream at any point without protest from some source. As some one says, "You do not have to go very far back in the family line of any of us to find an immigrant. Scratch an American and you find a foreigner." And not a few of these foreigners sympathize with the Irishman who said to a lady against whom he had a grievance because she insisted on having a Chinese servant, "We have a right here that those who are here by the mere accident of birth have not." On the other hand, it was a foreigner of wide vision who said: "I do not believe there is any peculiar virtue in American birth, or that Americans are (per se) superior to all other nations; but I do believe that they are better fitted than all others to govern[Pg 90] their own country. They made the country what it is, and ought to have the first voice in determining what it is to be. In this alone consists their superiority."[31]

It is significant and hopeful that men are thinking upon the subject. What we want is full and fair discussion and thorough information. Nothing is so perilous in a democracy as ignorance and indifference. It is far better for men to disagree thoughtfully than to agree thoughtlessly. What all patriotic and Christian men seek is the best good of this country, which means so much to the whole world as the supreme experiment of self-government. That the people are awakening was shown by the Immigration Conference in New York in December of 1905, when five hundred men, most of them appointed by their state governors, gathered under the auspices of the National Civic Federation to discuss the whole question of immigration. The immigration experts of the country were present, and the company included United States Senators and Representatives, college presidents and professors, leading editors, lawyers and clergymen, and prominent labor leaders.

No such conference on this subject has before been held, and the results of the discussion, which was for the most part as temperate and sensible as it was straightforward, were such[Pg 91] as to bring about a better understanding between the men who are supposed to be theorists and the representatives of American labor. The resolutions unanimously adopted were conservative and practical. The most important recommendations call for admission tests in Europe rather than after the alien has reached America, for the spread of information leading to better distribution, and for the establishment of a commission to investigate the subject of immigration in all its relations, including the violations and evasions of the present law. Undoubtedly such a commission, appointed by the president and possessed of competent authority, could accomplish much good. For one thing, it could keep the matter before the people and wisely guide public sentiment.

However much men may differ in view as to specific legislation, one point ought to be regarded as settled. That is, the right of Congress to pass such laws as may be deemed essential to safeguard American institutions and liberties. A nation has the inalienable right to protect itself against foreign invasion; and it does not matter whether the invasion be armed or under the guise of immigration. No foreign nation has the right to send its peoples to America, or by persecution to drive them forth upon other nations, and no foreigner has any inherent right to claim admission to the United States.[Pg 92]

Right is determined, in migration as in civic relations, not by the will or whim of the individual, but by the welfare of the state. Further than this, the government has the right to deport at any time any aliens who may be regarded as unfit to remain. There ought to be no confusion as to rights in this matter.

The question recurs, however, is there need of doing anything? As to this President Roosevelt and the Commissioner-General of Immigration are agreed. In his last annual message the President recommended the prohibition of immigration through Canada and Mexico, the strengthening of our exclusion laws, heavier restraints upon the steamship companies, and severer penalties for enticing immigrants. It is a striking fact that nearly all of the proposed additions to our laws are intended to stop the evasion and violation of the laws we have, which are made ineffective by fraud and questionable practices of the most extensive kind. A recent writer[32] presents this matter in condensed form worthy of study, giving this "astonishing catalogue of abuses," brought to light by special inspectors in the employ of the Immigration Bureau:

As a result, Mr. Ogg says, of the widespread operations through these underground channels there is an abnormal immigration movement so vast as "to override and all but reduce to a mere joke our whole restrictive system. That an appalling number of aliens who are on the verge of dependency, defectiveness, and delinquency do somehow contrive to get into the country every year is a fact too well known to call for verification here. Nobody undertakes to deny it." There is plain necessity, therefore, that some means of redeeming the situation should be found.

II. Proposed Legislation

The Commissioner-General of Immigration, in his report for 1905, devotes much space to new or amendatory legislation, which he regards as[Pg 94] a necessity.[33] To bring the steamship companies to stricter regard for law, he would raise the penalty for carrying diseased persons from $100 to $500. He favors the debarring of illiterates, and as a special recommendation proposes an international conference of immigration experts, with a view to secure by treaty or convention the coöperation of foreign countries from which aliens migrate hither, both in reducing the number of immigrants and preventing the inadmissible and undesirable classes from leaving their own homes.

Such a conference would certainly be conducive to a good understanding between nations, would doubtless secure an effective restraint of the transportation agencies, and throw such light upon the attitude of foreign governments toward our present system of immigration restriction as would enable Congress to decide intelligently what additional measures are necessary to protect this country from the dangers of an increasing influx of aliens. This is an admirable recommendation. As Mr. Whelpley says, it is a question of emigration as well as immigration, and since two countries are interested in the migrants, the whole matter is properly one for international conference and action.

The interest taken by Congress in immigration is indicated by the introduction in the House[Pg 95] during the session of 1906 of nineteen bills to regulate or restrict immigration, while a number were introduced in the Senate also. The House Committee on Immigration, of which Mr. Gardner, of Massachusetts, is chairman, took all the bills into consideration and reported a comprehensive Bill to Regulate the Immigration of Aliens into the United States. This proposed law advances considerably beyond the Act of 1903, which it is designed to replace. It raises the head tax from $2 to $5, introduces the reading test,[34] and practically creates a money test also, by requiring every male immigrant to have $25 in hand at the time of examination.[35] The money from the head tax is to constitute a permanent immigration fund, to defray not only the cost of the Immigration Bureau, but also that of maintaining an information bureau, to save immigrants from being deceived and show them where they are most wanted and likely to succeed.[36]

An Appeal from the Special Enquiry Board
to Comissioner Watchorn

The section in this proposed legislation that[Pg 96] has caused most discussion and dissension is the illiteracy test. This measure has been pressed upon Congress by the Immigration Restrictive League ever since the organization of that Society in 1894. Senator Lodge fathered it and it was passed once and vetoed by President Cleveland. President Roosevelt recommended it in his message of December 3, 1901, and it has received the endorsement of many boards of charities and many leading men. The strongest argument in favor of it is contained in a resolution passed by the Associated Charities of Boston, although the same argument applies broadly to the question of restriction. The reading test was discussed by speakers at the National Immigration Conference, but that meeting did not include it in the resolutions adopted. The Jewish influence is thrown strongly against it, since the Russian Jews who are fleeing from oppression are among the most illiterate of the present immigration. This is due to lack of school facilities, however, for the Jews naturally take to education and the Jewish children in the public schools and high schools are carrying off the prizes. "Not long ago I saw a Jewish girl in a New England academy win the prize in constitutional history over the heads of the boys and girls from American families, though her father was an illiterate Russian Jew."[37][Pg 97]

That is not by any means an unusual testimony. Another fact worthy of note is that many of those who have worked most closely among the immigrants do not favor the reading test. Mr. Brandenburg, for example, suggests that the illiterates often prove less opinionated and more easily assimilable than others of the same race who can read and write, and says that so far as his experience goes the great proportion of the rascals and undesirables can read and write; that if he had his choice between admitting to this country a wealthy educated Roman nobleman or an illiterate Neapolitan or Sicilian laborer, he would take the laborer every time, for his brain and brawn and heart make the better foundation on which to build the institutions of our Republic. Miss Kate Claghorn and other experienced workers agree in this view, and think it would be a positive misfortune to make ability to read the deciding test. Nor would these experts favor the money test. They believe the inspectors should have more leeway, as judges of human nature, and would rather rely on their judgment as to the character of the applicant than upon any arbitrary tests. So this is an open question for discussion, with good arguments on both sides.

[Pg 98]

There are three propositions further. The first is a measure introduced into the House by the late Congressman Adams of Pennsylvania. This would restrict by law the total number of immigrants from any given country in any one year to 80,000. This would decrease the south of Europe quota, and might increase that from northern Europe. It would at any rate tend to stop the million a year rate.

The second measure is proposed by Mr. Brandenburg, who feels sure it would prove the desired remedy. His opinion carries a good deal of weight. His proposal is to "select emigrants before itinerant boards of two, three, or more native-born Americans who speak fluently and understand thoroughly the language and dialects of the people who come before them—these boards to be on a civil service basis," and to sit at stated times in the central cities of the countries whence aliens come.[38] This he believes to be "a correct solution of the gigantic problem." It would keep expense down, avoid opportunities for wholesale corruption of American officials by the transportation interests and the immigrants themselves, and enable the examiners to deny passage to persons desirous of going to districts already over-populated with aliens.

The third measure is in line with the second, but instead of establishing itinerant boards of examiners, it proposes to select fifteen or twenty ports abroad which shall be made exclusive points[Pg 99] for the embarkation of emigrants bound for the United States. Mr. Ogg states the plan as follows:

"Perhaps an adequate list would be Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin, Rotterdam, Antwerp, London, Southampton, Liverpool, Havre, St. Nazaire, Marseilles, Fiume, Trieste, Naples, Genoa, and Odessa. At each of these ports should be located an immigrant station, similar, in a general way, to the immigrant stations at our larger Atlantic ports to-day, and it should be made the duty of the resident commissioners, with their staffs of inspectors and medical attachés, to examine carefully and minutely every man, woman, and child of alien nationality who applies for passage to the United States. Successful applicants should be given a certificate which alone would enable them to land at the port of destination; those unsuccessful should be made to understand then and there that, in their present state at least, there is no chance for them to carry out their intention of migration, and that the best thing for them to do is to return to their homes."[39]

This radical plan proposes to transfer Ellis Island, in effect, to a score of points in Europe, and do the sifting before the starting. That would be sensible. Then only the desirable portion would get here. While the idea is radical, it is the outgrowth of years of experience and re[Pg 100]flection, and Mr. Ogg says, immigration officials are generally agreed upon its wisdom and practicability. This system, thoroughly carried out, would not only stop all immigration that is illegal, but as much as possible of that which, though not illegal, is questionable and undesirable. More tests applied at this end of the route will be only partially effective, since experience proves that the present tests are evaded. The means of reform, upon which all other immigration reforms must wait, lies in this shifting of the main work of supervision and inspection to Europe. The foreign governments would welcome the plan, or at least accept it if proposed by this country.

This system would serve to prevent the tragedies of the excluded; would go far toward stopping the pernicious activity of the steamship companies and their enticing emissaries; would facilitate the detection and punishment of those breakers and evaders of the law who are now immune; and it would make possible a quite different and more searching examination of intending immigrants than is possible when the mass of them is poured out at Ellis Island, as through the small end of a funnel. Back to the sources is humane and wise. The expense involved could easily be met by an increased head tax; and if not, this is a case where expense in money is not to be counted in comparison with the country's welfare.[Pg 101]

These are interesting propositions. Mr. Whelpley agrees with Mr. Brandenburg as to the necessity of dealing with the migrant before he reaches port, either of embarkation or disembarkation. He says our laws and restrictions are severe, and thoroughly and intelligently enforced, but fall short of their purpose for the simple reason that there is little or no control over the source of supply. "It is an effort to beat back the tide after it has rolled upon the shore, and in the vast multitude of arrivals many gain entrance legally whom the country would be better off without."[40] His plan is to have an international regulation of migration, so that each government will do its part to check the present conditions and regulate the matter at its starting point.

This subject of legislation is confessedly delicate and difficult. The diversity of opinion is confusing. Yet we cannot escape the conviction that the present immigration is altogether too vast for the good of the country. Suspension is not to be seriously considered, but surely it could do no harm to make the laws more stringent, to insist upon a higher physical standard, to debar degenerates, and to stop at any cost the solicitation and "assisted" immigration abuses which have caused so much suffering to the deceived and excluded victims of greed.[Pg 102]

III. The Problem of Distribution

No phase of the immigration question is receiving more attention at present than that of distribution. There is a common opinion that if the proper distribution could be made, the chief evils of the tremendous influx would disappear. We are told that it is the congestion of aliens in already crowded centers of population that creates the menace to civilization; that there is land enough to be cultivated; and that vast enterprises are under way calling for the unskilled labor that is coming in. But the puzzling problem is how to get the immigrants where they are wanted and needed, and can be of value. On this point, Mr. Max Mitchell, Superintendent of the Federation of Jewish Charities, says:

"The problem is that of overcrowding. We must not close our ports to the people of the Old World who seek a haven and a home in the land of liberty and plenty, but we must see to it that when they arrive here they are directed out of the city and into the country places where ordinary human industry is rewarded abundantly. The inclination of the immigrants themselves to stick so closely to the great centers of population must be overcome. If the great crowds of foreigners that inundate these shores every year could be distributed in a sensible and logical way over all the vast uncultivated territory in which this[Pg 103] nation is so rich, we should never hear any complaint of too much immigration. No better farmers can be found anywhere than among the foreign peoples who seek America."

Very likely, but the trouble is, they do not want to farm and they are free to prefer the squalor of the slums to the green of the fields. Nor is there much hope that this singular but strong inclination can be overcome save by government regulation, which shall settle the matter of location for those who have no specific destination or occupation. It is probable that on this point some reasonable legislation could be secured; especially if the various distribution societies and railroad companies should fail in their efforts to induce the aliens to go where they are needed. Commissioner-General Sargent has dealt plainly with this matter in his Reports for the last three years, and rightly estimates its importance. He says:[41]

"In my judgment the smallest part of the duty to be discharged in successfully handling aliens, with a view to the protection of the people and the institutions of this country, is that part now provided for by law. Its importance, though undeniable, is relatively of secondary moment. It cannot compare in practical value with, nor can it take the place of, measures to secure the distribution of the many thousands who come in[Pg 104] ignorance of the industrial needs and opportunities of this country, and colonize alien communities in our great cities."

The Landing at the Battery in New York

From copyright stereograph, 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, New York

Suitable legislation is strongly urged to establish agencies through which, either with or without the coöperation of the states, aliens shall be made acquainted with the resources of the country at large, and the industrial needs of the various sections, in both skilled and unskilled labor, the cost of living, the wages paid, the price and capabilities of the land, the character of the climates, the duration of the seasons—in short, all that information furnished by some of the great railway lines through whose efforts the territory tributary thereto has been transformed from a wilderness within a few years to the abiding place of a happy and prosperous population.

"Again the importance of undertaking to distribute aliens now congregating in our large cities to those parts of the United States where they can secure employment without displacing others by working for a less wage, and where the conditions of existence do not tend to the fostering of disease, depravity, and resistance to the social and political security of the country, is urged. The Bureau is convinced that no feature of the immigration question so insistently demands public attention and effective action. The evil to be removed is one that is steadily and[Pg 105] rapidly on the increase, and its removal will strike at the roots of fraudulent elections, poverty, disease, and crime in our large cities, and on the other hand largely supply that increasing demand for labor to develop the natural resources of our country. Too much encouragement cannot be given to the reported efforts of certain railway companies to divert a portion of the tide of immigration to the Southern states. It is impossible, in the opinion of the Bureau, to overestimate the importance of this subject as bearing upon the effect of immigration on the future welfare of this country."[42]

What are the facts concerning the present location and distribution of immigrants? The answer involves a most interesting study. Taking the immigration of 1905, the chart[43] on the next page illustrates the distribution by states.

Proportion of Immigration and number of Immigrants going to each state during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1905

BY PERMISSION OF THE BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION

The enormous proportion going to New York, Pennsylvania, and the North Atlantic section shows prominently. They got ninety per cent. of the whole, while the South received but four per cent. of the total, and only one per cent. of that went to the South Central States. The Great West had only four per cent. as against five the year preceding; showing conclusively how few of the million went where it would have been far better for the entire million to have gone. It is safe to say that there was little or no legiti[Pg 107][Pg 106]mate demand in New York, Pennsylvania, or New England for any of them. At the same time, there is some encouragement in the fact that the distribution of the past fourteen years shows that smaller proportions are now remaining in the states in which are located the principal ports of entry. For example, the percentage of New York State has steadily decreased from forty-two per cent. in 1892 to thirty per cent. in 1905. Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio have gained proportionately.

A series of diagrams which show the distribution of the foreign-born living in the United States in 1900, was prepared by Mr. F. W. Hewes, for the World's Work, and published in October, 1903. By the courtesy of Doubleday, Page and Company, publishers, they are reproduced. Each dot in them represents a thousand persons. They show at a glance where the immigrants were in 1900, and the totals by race or nationality. By adding to these totals the remarkable figures of the last five years, one can appreciate the great increase in the Italian and Slavic totals, and an idea of the present situation may be obtained, for as to locality the percentages have not materially changed.

Born in Sweden, Norway, Denmark—Resident in the United States 1900

Reproduced by special permission from "The World's Work" Copyright, 1903.

Born in Canada, England, Scotland, Wales—Resident in the United States 1900

Reproduced by special permission from "The World's Work" Copyright, 1903.

The further point to be considered as to distribution is the effort now being made to accomplish desired results. In lieu of legislation or government provision, these are (1) Societies[Pg 110][Pg 109][Pg 108] organized by individuals, and (2) Railway companies. The Bureau of Information[44] proposed by the bill now in Congress would, if established, closely coöperate with the state agencies and all other bodies promoting distribution.

One of the most active and efficient of these organizations, which will serve as an illustration, is the Society for Italian Immigrants, with headquarters in New York, near the Battery. The Society thus states its purpose and methods:

"About 200,000 Italian immigrants are now landing at this port during every twelve months. These immigrants are almost entirely poor peasants who cannot speak our language. In order that these people may get a fair start in this new and, to them, strange country, and that they may become familiar as soon as possible with our laws, habits, and customs, help and instruction of various kinds must be given them. To furnish these either freely or at the lowest possible cost, is the object of The Society for Italian Immigrants.

"Accordingly, in its work the Society employs agents to look after the needs of the immigrants at Ellis Island; it runs an escort service, by which competent persons are furnished, at[Pg 111] nominal cost, to take immigrants to their destination; it conducts an employment agency; it maintains an information bureau; it coöperates with the United States authorities to enforce the Immigration Laws; it manages labor camps for contractors; it wages war on all persons engaged in swindling immigrants; it is engaged in breaking up the padrone system in all its forms; and lastly and generally, it does all it can to help immigrants, so that as soon as possible they may become self-supporting and self-respecting citizens, a benefit and not a detriment to this country."

The Society is supported by voluntary contributions, and by grants to the amount of about $7,000 a year from the Italian government. The Society has met with the approval of the police department of the city, the United States authorities at Ellis Island, and the Italian Royal Department of Emigration, and of all individuals who have made themselves familiar with what it is doing. There is also a Boston Italian Society, organized in 1902, to protect newcomers from sharpers, thieves, and fraudulent persons; also from the frauds of bankers and padrones. The Italian government has given $1,000 a year to this Society.

A similar work is done by the United Hebrew Charities, and the Removal Bureau established by the Jews in New York in 1901. Through this[Pg 112] agency in the past three years over 10,000 of the Russian or Roumanian Jews have been kept from increasing the overcrowded population of the ghetto and swelling the sum of sweat-shop misery. While the number distributed is small compared with the steady inflow (5,525 sent out in 1903, while 43,000 settled in New York), the work bids fair to make itself felt, and shows an appreciation by the Jews already here of the situation and the necessity of changing it, for the sake both of the immigrants and the country. Industrial removal is now known wherever Jews are found, and all that is possible is being done to stimulate artificial distribution as the remedy for the worst evils of unassimilated and congested immigration.[45] There are also German, Scandinavian and other societies, benevolent and protective, which aid in distribution.

The principal difficulty with the distribution scheme, so far as most of the present-day immigrants are concerned, is that with the exception of the Italians they are not fitted for agriculture, while it is the farms that most need workers. Another difficulty[46] is that the authorities of the various states object to receiving shipments of immigrants from the city tenement districts, regarding them as decidedly undesirable additions to the population. The United States[Pg 113] Immigration Investigating Commission asked the governors of the different states what nationalities of immigrants they desired, and in only two cases was any desire expressed for Slavs, Latins, Jews, or Asiatics, and these two related to Italian farmers with money, intending to become permanent settlers. The officials protest against the shipment of southern and eastern Europeans from the city slums into the states. Care must be taken, too, that the immigrants do not settle in country colonies, which would render them almost as difficult of Americanization as though they were colonized in the city.

The New South is already giving object lessons to the country at large in the successful attraction and utilization of the alien influx. The Four States Immigration League, composed of representatives of business organizations in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, was organized in 1903 to secure desirable immigrants for those states. "It was keenly realized," observed the Chattanooga Times, "that of the enormous inflow from the old country, the number seeking homes in the South was ridiculously small and out of all proportion to the importance of the country and the inducements our productive fields hold out to home seekers." An Immigration Bureau has been established in Chattanooga, and South Carolina and other states have organized active departments of agriculture and immigration.[Pg 114]

Born in Ireland—Resident in the U.S. 1900

The small dots grouped about N.Y. City, include, also, the totals of Conn. and N.J.—Chart Boston: of Mass. and R.I.

Reproduced by special permission of "The World's Work." Copyright 1909.

Born in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg—Resident in the U.S. 1900

The small dots grouped about N.Y. City, include, also, the totals of Conn. and N.J.—Chart Boston: of Mass. and R.I.

Reproduced by special permission of "The World's Work." Copyright 1909.

[Pg 115]

[Pg 116]

The leading railway lines promise active coöperation, as their interests lie positively in this direction. Some, indeed, have actively engaged in the work of securing distribution.

The suggestion is a good one that we might study with profit, in this connection, the methods of New Zealand.[47] There the established Department of Labor has regarded as "its vital duty the practical task of finding where labor was wanted and depositing there the labor running elsewhere to waste." To this end a widely extended system of agencies is maintained for bringing workers and work together, the unemployed are scattered through the colony, and charity is refused. The experience there shows that city people and men of trades have been successful as farmers and farm workers. Mr. Lord says: "It may be a novel function of government to undertake the distributing of labor, but it is none the less more rational than an edict of exclusion would be, or the tolerance of congestion and slums now is."

One thing that government can do is to make sure that intending immigrants are fully informed, in their own countries, before they start, concerning the laws of the United States, the conditions of the various sections, the advantages and drawbacks, the demand for labor and of what kind. An official bureau of correspondence and information would help check undesirable[Pg 117] immigrants from coming, and distribute desirable ones when they do come.

While the question of distribution has only recently been taken up in earnest, its importance is now realized, and there is every reason to believe that it will receive henceforth large attention, and that wise measures will be vigorously pushed. Remedied congestion will mean increased assimilation and decreased danger. As we review the situation, while there is much in it that requires serious consideration and wise action, we agree heartily with these words of Dr. Charles L. Thompson:

"There is no need of becoming pessimistic. Above all we should not go back on the history of our Country. We have grown great by assimilation. Let us have a dignified confidence in the power of our institutions and of our Christianity to continue the process which has developed the strength of the Republic. If we are true to our principles we will be equal to any strain that may be put upon them. Only let us see to it that our principles—both civic and religious—are at work in full vigor on the questions which the floodtide of immigration raises. What we need is not more bars to keep foreigners out but more laborers to work with them and teach them how to gather the harvest of American and Christian liberty."[48][Pg 118]

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER III

Aim: To Study the Problems of Legislation and Distribution Regarding Aliens

I. The Opinions of Capable Observers Regarding Legislation.

1. Give the names and opinions of some who favor restriction of immigration. Of some who are opposed. With which do you agree?

2. The Immigration Conference of 1905: What was it? What did it recommend?

3. As to free admission: What are the rights of the government? Of the individual?

4. What does President Roosevelt recommend?

II. Proposed Legislation.

5. What abuses specially need to be corrected?

6. Name the chief provisions of the "Gardner Bill," before Congress in 1906.

7. * Give reasons for and against a reading test. Would you have voted for it or against?

8. Describe and give your opinion of other proposed methods of restricting immigration.

9. Would it be possible to sift immigrants before they leave Europe?

III. Distribution.

10. How much can be done toward a wider distribution of the stream of immigrants?

11. Where do the larger numbers now settle? In what cities? What states?

12. What Societies are helping them to find better locations?

13. What special efforts are being made by some Southern states?

14. How does New Zealand deal with this question? Can we copy that plan?[Pg 119]

15. * What spirit is needed in dealing with the whole problem?

16. Can you tell of any special endeavors to bring about better control or direction of immigration?

References for Advanced Study.—Chapter III

I. Further Study of Opinions of United States Immigration Officials.

See Commissioner-General's Annual Report, furnished free from Washington upon application to the "Commissioner of Immigration." Report of 1902, pp. 59, 60. Report of 1904, pp. 37-47, 123-136. Report of 1904, pp. 61-70. Report of 1905, pp. 58, 75-78.

II. Provisions and Fate of Legislation of 1906 Proposed in Congress.

Text of "Gardner Bill" and Journal of the House for June 25, 1906, can be secured by writing to Washington.

III. Evils of Undistributed Immigration.

Warne: The Slav Invasion, IV, V.
Hunter: Poverty, VI.
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, IV, X.

IV. Efforts to Secure Wider Distribution of Immigrants.

Hall: Immigration, XIII.
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, VII, IX.
[Pg 121][Pg 120]

To know anything about the actual character of recent and present immigration, we must distinguish the many and very diverse elements of which it is composed.—Samuel McLanahan.

IV

THE NEW IMMIGRATION

[Pg 122]

The world never before saw anything comparable to this tremendous movement of people in so short a space of time. The population Europe has lost in a hundred years is greater than the total number of inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland in 1860, and only a little less than that of the United States in the same year. It is equal to three fifths of the total population of Europe in the time of Augustus Cæsar. If the ships carried five hundred passengers on the average, about fifty thousand trips have been made in the transfer.

Emphatically too many people are now coming over here; too many of an undesirable sort. In 1902 over seven tenths were from races who do not rapidly assimilate with the customs and institutions of this country.—Prescott F. Hall.

There are two classes who would pass upon the immigration question. One says, "Close the doors and let in nobody;" and the other says, "Open wide the doors and let in everybody." I am in sympathy with neither of these classes. There is a happy middle path—a path of discernment and judgment.—Commissioner Robert Watchorn of New York.

Just as a body cannot with safety accept nourishment any faster than it is capable of assimilating it, so a state cannot accept an excessive influx of people without serious injury.—H. H. Boyesen.

It seems to me our only concern about immigration should be as to its character. We do not want Europe's criminals or paupers. The time to make selection is in Europe, prior to embarkation.—United States Senator Hansbrough[Pg 123].

I. New Peoples and New Problems

So great has been the change in the racial character of immigration within the last ten years that the term "new immigration" has been used to distinguish the present prevailing type from that of former years. By new immigration we mean broadly all the aliens from southeastern Europe—the Italians, Hungarians, Slavs, Hebrews, Greeks, and Syrians—as distinguished from the northwestern Europeans—the English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, French, Germans, and Scandinavians. The ethnic authorities at Washington make the following racial division, which is used in the official reports:

"Ninety-five per cent. of the immigration to this country comes from Europe. Most of these different races or peoples, or more properly subdivisions of race, coming from Europe have been grouped into four grand divisions, as follows:

This new immigration has been commonly regarded as either decidedly undesirable or at least distinctly less desirable than the Teutonic and Celtic, which for so many years practically had the field of America to itself. It has not been uncommon to group the Italians and Slavs, and denominate them as the "offscouring and refuse of Europe," now dumped into America, which is described as a sort of world "garbage bin." Extremists have drawn in gloomy colors the effects of this inrush of the worst and most illiterate and unassimilable elements of the Old World. A distinct prejudice has undoubtedly been created against these later comers.

Increase of Illiteracy

This chart shows what a mass of illiteracy is coming in from Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. Only those above the age of fourteen are counted as illiterates. The change in the source of immigration from northern and western Europe to southern and eastern Europe is responsible for this radical change in the number of those who cannot read or write. Of the southern Italians who came in 1905, 56 per cent. were illiterate; and of the Ruthenians, 63 per cent. Most of these illiterates will never learn to read, as they are beyond the school age.]

There is unquestionably some ground for the feeling that the new immigration is in many respects less desirable than the older type. These peoples come out of conditions of oppression and depression, illiteracy and poverty. Far more important than this, they have had no contact[Pg 126][Pg 125] with Anglo-Saxon ideas or government. They are consequently almost wholly ignorant of American ideals and standards. There is a vast difference between the common ideas of these immigrants and those from the more enlightened and progressive northern nations. So there is in the type of character and the customs and manners.

We are sufficiently familiar with the older type, and do not need here to dwell upon it. We know how large a part has been played in the development of our national material enterprises by the Germans, the English and Irish, the Scotch and Welsh, the Swedes and Norwegians. Millions of them are among the loyal Americans of to-day. The Irish originally came to perform the unskilled labor of America. Their women made the domestics, and many of them still rule the American kitchen. But the Irish men have moved up, into bosses and contractors, into the stores and trades and professions, and especially into politics, until they practically run the cities and have a lion's share of the governmental positions. The Germans have always been among the best of our immigrant population in intelligence, thrift, and other qualities that make the German nation strong and stable. They have Germanized us more than we have Americanized them. The Scandinavians have with excellent judgment distributed them[Pg 127]selves and gone largely into agriculture. All these north of Europe peoples belong to a common inheritance of principles and ideas, and all have found it natural to assimilate into American life. America owes a large debt to them, as they do to the land that has become their own by adoption.

But what can be said about this new immigration? First let us see how great the change in racial character has been, and then differentiate these new races. It will not do to brand any race as a whole. Discrimination is absolutely necessary if we are to deal with this subject practically and justly. There are Italians and Italians, Slavs and Slavs, just as there are all sorts of Irish, Germans, and Americans. No race has a monopoly of either virtue or vice. This table will help us to differentiate the millions of immigrants since 1820 as to race:

To appreciate the significance of these figures, it must be remembered that while the totals from the United Kingdom and Germany amount to nearly twelve and a half millions, or considerably more than one half of the entire immigration down to 1905, the proportions have been rapidly[Pg 128] changing. The immigration from the United Kingdom, for example, reached its highest point in 1851, when the total was 272,740, predominantly from Ireland. The German immigration reached high mark in 1887, the total being 250,630. On the other hand, the immigration from Italy did not reach 10,000 until 1880, and passed the 100,000 mark first in 1900. In the past five years nearly a million Italians—or one half of the entire Italian immigration—have entered the country, and the number in 1906 promises to exceed a quarter of a million more. The highest mark was 233,546 in 1903; but even this did not equal the birth-rate in Italy. In Hungary and Russia, also, the birth-rate is greater than the immense drain of immigration, so that this stream will continue to flow and increase, unless some check is put upon it, or some legislative dam built. The immigration from Russia, consisting chiefly of Jews, did not become appreciable until 1887, when it reached 30,766. It passed 100,000 in 1902; and from 1900 to 1905 the total arrivals were 748,522, or just about one half the entire number of Jews in the United States. The same is true of the Hungarian and Slav immigration. Its prominence has come since 1890.

The point of importance to be considered is that as the immigration from southeastern Europe has increased, that from northwestern Europe has decreased. In 1869 not one per[Pg 129] cent. of the total immigration came from Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Russia, while in 1902 the percentage was over seventy. In 1869 nearly three quarters of the total immigration came from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Scandinavia; in 1902 only one fifth was from those countries. The proportion has held nearly the same since.

The change is indicated most plainly in this table, which compares the total immigration of certain nationalities for the period 1821 to 1902 with that for the year 1903:

This table shows not only the nations which have added chiefly to our population in the past, and which are adding to-day, but how the percentage of each has varied in the period before 1903 compared with 1903. Mr. Hall says: "If the same proportions had obtained in the earlier period as during the later how different might our country and its institutions now be!"

A German Family

"Seven soldiers lost to the Kaiser." (German Consul's remark on seeing this picture)

This brings up the question of type, of character, and of homogeneity. The new immigration introduces new problems. The older immigration, before 1870, was chiefly composed of[Pg 130] races kindred in habits, institutions, and traditions to the original colonist.[49] To-day we face decidedly different conditions. At the same time study of these comparatively unknown races will bring us many surprises, and knowledge of the facts is the only remedy for prejudice and the only basis for constructive Christian work. We must know something, moreover, of the Old World environment before we can judge of the probable development of these peoples in America, or learn the way of readiest access to them. For they will not become Americanized unless they are in some way reached by Americans; and they will never be reached until they are understood.

II. The Italians

In our more detailed study of the new immigration we take first the Italians, who are seen wherever one turns in our cities, and are perhaps the most conspicuous of the immigrants. Here we come at once upon two extremes of opinion. One extreme finds little or nothing that is favorable to the Italians, who are classed all together and judged in the light of the Mafia, or "black hand," ready for all deeds of darkness. The other lauds these aliens so highly that an Italian[Pg 131] himself said to the writer, referring to a recent book about his people in America:[50] "I suppose I ought to be glad to have us all made out to be saints, but I am afraid there is another side to the story." We shall hope to find the truth between these extremes. This has to be admitted, on the start, that in most cases those who have most to do with the Italians, of whatever class, become warmly interested in them, and believe both in their ability and in their adaptability to American life.

When so keen a writer as Emil Reich, in discussing "The Future of the Latin Races," in the Contemporary Review, says, "there can be little doubt that the Italians are the most gifted nation in Europe," we see that it is a mistake to class all Italians as alike and put them under the ban of contempt as "dagoes." They differ from one another almost as much as men can differ who are still of the same color, says a recent writer.[51]

Most northern Italians are of the Alpine race and have short, broad skulls; southern Italians are of the Mediterranean race and have long, narrow skulls. Between the two lies a broad strip of country, peopled by those of mixed blood. In appearance the Italians may be anything from a tow-headed Teuton to a swarthy Arab. Varying with the district from which he comes, in[Pg 132] manner he may be rough and boisterous; suave, fluent, and gesticulative; or grave and silent. These differences extend to the very essentials of life. The provinces of Italy are radically unlike, not only in dress, cookery, and customs, but in character, thought, and speech. A distinct change of dialect is often found in a morning's walk. An ignorant Valtellinese from the mountains of the north, and an ignorant Neapolitan have as yet no means of understanding each other; and what is yet more remarkable, the speech of the unschooled peasant of Genoa is unintelligible to his fellow of Piedmont, who lives less than one hundred miles away.

The northern Italian is the result of a superior environment. His section is more prosperous, intelligent, orderly, and modern. The industrially progressive, democratic north presents a striking contrast to the industrially stagnant, feudal south. The northern division is full of the spirit of the new Italy, and its people are less prone to leave home. Central Italy, too, is making steady advances in agriculture and education, and the peasant farmer is a stay-at-home. In southern Italy agriculture is practically the sole reliance of the people, the lot of the day laborers is wretched, and the failure of a wheat crop is as disastrous as the potato famine in Ireland was to the Irish in 1847. United Italy is undoubtedly making progress in education and industry, the[Pg 133] standards of living are rising, and the money sent or carried back to Italy from America has helped to some degree in this advancement. Religiously, of course, the domination of the Roman Catholic Church continues over all Italy, and in illiteracy as in other respects Italy is an example of what this ecclesiastical rule means where it has power over the people sufficient to enable it to work its will.

In view of these facts regarding the home environment and difference in peoples, it will not do, evidently, to use sweeping generalizations, or to regard the organ-grinder and fruit-peddler as the representatives of Italy in America. We receive all grades, from cultured professionals to illiterate peasants, though mainly, of course, the peasant class. The one common feature of the Italian provinces is the poverty produced by the crushing taxes and agricultural depression. Absentee landlordism has blighted southern Italy as it has Ireland. Yet with great tracts of fertile soil thus held away from the people, and with no new territory to cultivate, the population of Italy has increased within twenty years from twenty-eight and a half to thirty-two and a half millions, an average density of 301 per square mile, and the excess of births over deaths amounts to nearly 350,000 a year. Hence the question with the people in overcrowded districts is simply emigration or starvation. The southern[Pg 134] Italian is driven from home by necessity to work, and work is to be found in America, so he comes. His labor is mostly unskilled, and this is in demand here. The result is that almost eighty per cent. of the Italian immigrants are males; over eighty per cent. are between fourteen and forty-five, the working age; over eighty per cent. are from the southern provinces, and nearly the same percentage are unskilled laborers, and a large majority of these are illiterates. The eighty per cent. of "human capital of fresh, strong young men" is Italy's contribution to America, and is a force winning its way to recognition.

Let us note the growth of Italian immigration, its sources, and its distribution. In the sixty years from 1820 to 1880 only 68,633 Italians made their way to America, while during this period the total foreign immigration was over ten millions. The census of 1890 gave the Italian population of the United States as only 182,580, and at that date not over a half million in all had come here. The rapid increase during recent years is shown in the following table:

IMMIGRATION FROM ITALY TO THE UNITED STATES

[Pg 135]

This shows how steady and remarkable the immigration has been since 1900. In five years 959,768 Italians have come to this country. Surely it is worth our while to know more particularly the character of this million and their promise as an element in our civilization. Thousands of them are "birds of passage"—that is, they come and go, earning money here and going back home to spend it and then returning to earn more; but tens of thousands come to stay, and will play their part in shaping our future.

The distribution of the Italians is shown partially in the accompanying diagram.[52] This, however, is based upon the Census of 1900, and does not account for the million arrivals since 1900. The destination clause in the immigrant's manifesto gives light upon the matter of distribution, although the incomer does not always get to the point named in his papers. From the official report for 1905 these results are drawn:

[Pg 136]

It is interesting to note that at least one Italian immigrant was destined to every state and territory. Of the total Italian population in this country in 1900, 62.4 per cent. was in the 160 principal cities, and nearly one half in New York alone. The percentage of Italians attracted to the cities is about the same as that of the Irish.

An interesting parallel, indeed, may be drawn between these races. The Italians to-day occupy largely the place occupied by the Irish of yesterday. The Irish came in the earlier years by reason of distressing conditions at home, forcing them to seek a living elsewhere; this is now true of the Italians. The Irish were chiefly peasants, unskilled laborers and illiterate; so are the Italians. The Irish came mainly from agricultural sections and herded in the great cities; so do the Italians. The handy weapon of the Irish was the shillalah, that of the Italian is the stiletto. The Irish found ready employment by reason of the demand for cheap unskilled labor created by the vast material enterprises of a swiftly developing country, with cities and towns and railroads to build; this work is done by the Italians now, and they are commonly conceded to be in many respects better at the job. Here is a sample of the kind of testimony frequently given concerning them as workers:[53]

"I have learned to be cautious in comparing[Pg 137] races. I find good, bad, and indifferent people in all races. But I dissent from the current notion that the southern Italian is so much inferior to the northern. As a people there is more illiteracy among them; but when he goes to school the southern Italian holds his own with the northern. Another fact of promise is that Italians have not lost the spirit of service. They are good workmen. Not long since, asking a contractor who was building a sewer in the city why he had only Italians in his employ, he replied, 'Because they are the best workmen, and there are enough of them. If an Italian down in that ditch has a shovelful of earth half way up when the whistle blows for dinner, he will not drop it; he will throw it up; the Irishman and the French-Canadian will drop it. And when the lunch hour is over, when the clock strikes the Italian will be leaning on his shovel ready to go to work, but the Irishman will be out under that tree and he will be three minutes getting to his job, and three minutes each, for 150 men, is not a small item. The Italian does not regard his employer as his natural enemy. He has the spirit of kindly service."

The writer can confirm this from personal observation. The Italians are cheerful workers, and on hand ten to fifteen minutes before the hour to begin work. They relish a kind word, and can give lessons in politeness to many an[Pg 138] American-born. Ask anyone brought in contact with them and you will get the same testimony.

According to Adolfo Rossi, Supervisor of the Italian Immigration Department, who is deeply interested in the proper distribution and welfare of his countrymen in America, these immigrants are the flower of the laboring class of Italy. Economically they are doubtless of value at so many dollars per head. But of far more importance is the question, what are they in the social fabric? If, as some assert, the Italian race stock is inferior and degraded, if it will not assimilate naturally with the American, or will tend to lower our standards, then it is undesirable, even though the immigrant had a bank account in addition to his sturdy body. The further one investigates the subject, the less likely is he to conclude that the Italian is to be adjudged undesirable, as a race. He must be judged individually on his merits.

Mr. Carr draws a decidedly favorable picture of the Italians, whether from north or south. He says that immediate work and high wages, and not a love for the tenement, create our "Little Italies." The great enterprises in progress in and about the city, the subway, tunnels, water-works, railroad construction, as well as the ordinary building operations, call for a vast army of laborers. It is the educated Italian immigrant without a manual trade who fails in America. The illiterate laborer takes no chances. The[Pg 139] migratory laborer—for more than 98,000 Italians went back to Italy in 1903, and 134,000 in 1904—confers an industrial blessing by his very mobility. Then, in his opinion, there is something to be said for the illiterates who remain here. They are never anarchists; they are guiltless of the so-called "black hand" letters. The individual laborer is, in fact, rarely anything but a gentle and often a rather dull drudge. More than this, our school system deprives us of unskilled laborers. The gangs that dig sewers and subways and build railways are recruited from the illiterate or nearly so, and for our supply of the lower grades of labor we must depend upon countries with a poorer school system than ours.

Concerning the charge that the Italian is a degenerate, lazy and a pauper, half a criminal, a menace to our civilization, it is shown that in New York the Italians number about 450,000, the Irish over 300,000. In males the Italians outnumber the Irish two to one. Consider these facts: In 1904 one thousand five hundred and sixty-four Irish, and only sixteen Italians, were admitted to the almshouse on Blackwell's Island.[54] Mr. James Forbes, chief of the Mendicancy Department of the Charity Organization Society, says he has never seen or heard of an Italian tramp.Italians Not Beggars In reply to this, those who dislike the Italians say that their cheap labor has made[Pg 140] tramps of many who would otherwise be employed. As for begging, between July 1, 1904, and September 30, 1905, the Mendicancy Police in New York took into custody 519 Irish and only 92 Italians. This table will be found interesting:

NATIVITY OF PERSONS ADMITTED TO ALMSHOUSE (NEW YORK) IN 1900

This ought to correct some ideas as to where the pauperism comes from. Certainly the Italians are not to be charged with it. Conditions in Boston show equally well for the Italians. The proportions for the whole country also give them a remarkably low degree as compared with other races.

As to insanity, the figures tell their own story: In the charitable institutions of the country, there were of the insane: Irish, 5,943; Germans, 4,408; English, 1,822; Scandinavians, 1,985; and Italians, 718. As shown by the analysis of the Bureau of Immigration, the proportion of Irish in the charitable institutions is 30 per cent., of Germans 19, of English 8.5, while the Italians and Hebrews are each 8 per cent.[Pg 141]

The important point of crime remains to be considered. Here the Italian is commonly rated very high, by reason of the violent and conspicuous nature of most of his crimes, which are against the person. We hear of the brutal murders, the threats of the Mafia, the secret assassinations, and frequent sanguinary stiletto affrays, and are apt to regard the whole race as quarrelsome and murderous. The facts do not bear out this opinion. Here again they appear rather to the disadvantage of the older type of immigrant. The United States Industrial Commission on Immigration shows, by its statistical report,[55] that "taking the United States as a whole, the whites of foreign birth are a trifle less criminal than the total number of whites of native birth." This report further says: "Taking the inmates of all penal and charitable institutions, we find that the highest ratio is shown by the Irish, whose proportion is more than double the average for the foreign-born, amounting to no less than 16,624 to the million."

By far the greatest proportion of crime is caused by intemperance, and here the Italians are at a decided advantage, for they are among the least intemperate of the foreign peoples, and far less so than the average native-born. Arrests for drunkenness are exceedingly rare among them, and a drunken Italian woman is as[Pg 142] rare as one of immoral character. While in Massachusetts three in a hundred of the northern races, including the Scotch, Irish, English, and Germans, were arrested for intemperance in a given year, only three in a thousand of the Italians were arrested on this charge. In these respects the race is deserving of great commendation, especially in face of the tenement conditions into which most of the newcomers are thrust. If they become worse in America than they were when they came, we ought to take heed to the sins of greed, and not put all the blame on the aliens.

In crimes against the person the Italians are at their worst, but the affrays with knives and pistols are confined mostly to their own nationality, and grow out of jealousy or rivalry or resentment at fancied injuries. "There are, no doubt," says Dr. S. J. Barrows,[56] "murders of sheer brutality, or those committed in the course of robbery. There are known instances also of blackmail and dastardly assassination by individuals or bands of ruffians. But such outrages are utterly at variance with the known disposition of the great mass of the Italians in this country. There are vile men in every nationality, and it does not appear by any substantial evidence that the Italian is peculiarly burdened, though it has been unwarrantably reproached through ignor[Pg 143]ance or prejudice." This is the opinion of an expert in criminology, who has traveled extensively in Italy and knows the people on both sides of the sea.

It is a fact of importance that the great majority of the Italian immigrants, while classed as unskilled, have had some experience in farming or gardening or home industries of some kind. There is a larger percentage of skilled labor than is commonly supposed, and the list is interesting. The Annual Report on Immigration for 1905, for example, gives the distribution by occupation, from which we take some of the leading classes:

PROFESSIONS, TRADES AND INDUSTRIES OF THE ITALIANS ADMITTED IN 1905

It will be seen that not all the Italians who come are mere hewers of wood and drawers of water; while there is a distinct tendency on the part of those who begin at the bottom of drudgery, in the subways of American civilization, to[Pg 144] advance.Desire for Education The desire for education and betterment is as manifest as it is hopeful. No parents are more ambitious for their children, or more devotedly attached to them, than are the Italian immigrants who have brought over their families, and no children in our schools are brighter or more attentive. There is good blood in the Italian strain. They are an art and music-loving people, and in this respect the southern Italians take the lead. They come from a land of beauty and fame, song and sunshine, and bring a sunny temperament not easily soured by hardship or disappointment. Otherwise the tenement and labor-camp experiences in America would soon spoil them. With the exception of the money they earn, the change has been for the worse.

The thrift of the Italians is proverbial. To earn and save money they will live in conditions unsanitary, unhealthy, and degrading. It is not because they love dirt and degradation, but that they want money so much that they will put up with anything to get it. They can live and save a bit where an American family would starve. They have fairly monopolized for a time certain lines into which they entered—as the small fruit trade, the bootblacking business, and other pursuits. It is said that they have made the Americans a fruit-eating people. Supplanted in the street-vending of fruit by the Greek, the Italian has gone into business in earnest, and you find the[Pg 145] small fruit stands everywhere, with always a good stock, and by no means a low price. As barbers and tailors, too, the Italians are becoming known. They have a passion for land, and acquire property rapidly. Take the increase of their real estate holdings in New York as an example. Mr. G. Tuoti, a representative Italian operator in real estate, says that twenty years ago there was not a single Italian owner of real estate in the districts where such owners now predominate. He has a list of more than 800 landowners of Italian descent, whose aggregate holdings in New York are approximately $15,000,000.[57]

Italian and Swiss Girls

As to Italian savings and investments in the same city, Mr. Gino C. Speranza, vice-president of the Society for Italian Immigrants, finds on computation the Italian investments in the city savings-banks to total more than $15,000,000. He puts the real estate holdings at 4,000, of the clear value of $20,000,000. He estimates that 10,000 stores in the city are owned by Italians, and sets their value at $7,000,000, with a further investment of as much more in wholesale business. He makes the total material value of the property of the Italian colony in New York to be over $60,000,000, and says this value is relatively below that of the Italian possessions in Saint Louis, Boston, and Chicago. The Italian Cham[Pg 147][Pg 146]ber of Commerce has over two hundred members, and has done much to promote the interests of the immigrants. There is one distinctively Italian Savings Bank, with an aggregate of deposits approximating $1,100,000, and about 7,000 open accounts. Sixteen daily and weekly Italian newspapers in New York alone indicate that the people are reading, and that not all are illiterates by any means. The Italian Hospital, the Italian Benevolent Institute, and over 150 Italian societies for mutual aid and social improvement—all this in New York—indicate a degree of enterprise and progress. In the smaller cities the condition of the Italians is in many respects much better than in the great centers, since the tenement evils are escaped. The reports from such cities as Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Schenectady, New York, are most favorable as to the general character of the Italians as faithful workers and peaceful residents.

Born in Italy, France, Portugal, Greece—Resident in the U.S. 1900

Reproduced by special permission of "The World's Work." Copyright 1909.

In the cities and on the small farms of the South and West the prosperity of the Italians is marked. They take unproductive land and make it fertile soil for truck-gardening, and have increased the value of surrounding lands in Louisiana and other states by showing what can be done. If they can be distributed properly, and gotten out of the congested city wards, there is unquestionably a future of prosperity for them. A Texas colony described by Signor Rossi, who[Pg 148] recently investigated conditions with view to securing a better distribution by informing intending emigrants as to the openings for them in agricultural sections, illustrates the success of the Italians as gardeners and farmers.

In the neighborhood of San Francisco Italians have cultivated about 250 truck farms. They "obtain the manure from the city stables gratis, and transform into fertile farms the original sand dunes." Nearly all our cities where Italians have settled are receiving vegetables and fruit as the product of Italian labor, and the Italian is first in the market. They are found on Long Island and Staten Island, in New Jersey and Delaware, in Virginia, and in all the New England states. Near Memphis, Tennessee, there is a large and noted colony of truck farmers, and they have done much to remove the prejudice formerly existing against Italian labor in the South.[58] In this connection we give hearty second to the statesmanlike proposition made by a Christian worker who has been brought into close touch with the Italians and other foreign peoples in Brooklyn:[59]

"Pure philanthropy could not find a better field for the investment of a few hundred thousand dollars than in the organization of farm and[Pg 149] garden colonies a few miles out from our great city. On Long Island there are many thousands of acres of light, arable land perfectly adapted to the raising of small fruits and garden products. Irrigation plants could be provided at moderate cost, insuring generous crops. The Italian is prepared by nature, and by training in his own home land, for the cultivation of the soil. In a small way he has demonstrated his ability in the land of his adoption to do the very things here suggested. What he needs is a fair chance.

"What is needed is the guiding hand of 'philanthropy and five per cent.' to lead out of the congested and squalid tenement districts thousands of these poor yet industrious people who could make our deserts of Long Island sand and scrub oak blossom as the rose. Let the modern method find illustration here. Let our philanthropist choose for himself a board of trustees to whom should be delegated the management of a generous fund toward the end proposed. Keen-minded and great-hearted business men there are who would delight to give time and care to so worthy an object; and within five years a colony of 25,000 Italians could be transported and translated from the ghettos and filthy, crowded tenement districts of our great city into God's open country, there to be speedily transformed into industrious, self-supporting American citizens. Having studied this problem for[Pg 150] years, I believe it is entirely feasible. Brain and heart, time and talent, land and water, enlarging markets demanding produce, men, women, and children begging for an opportunity to earn a decent living—all these are ready and waiting for use and service.The Crucial Point All that is lacking is an adequate supply of good money to set the enterprise in motion. We have millions invested at Coney Island, at Gravesend racing track, and at the new Belmont Park, to beguile and hypnotize the masses. God must have in his keeping somewhere millions to uplift and redeem the masses. There is unspeakable need that they be ministered unto in the spirit of the Master."

These are weighty and practical words, and some day Christian men of wealth will see the wisdom of them. How could American prosperity better insure itself and all it represents for the future?

What, then, is the conclusion of our study? On the whole, decidedly favorable to the Italian, while recognizing the vicious and undesirable element that forms a comparatively small part of the whole. The Italian in general is approachable, receptive to American ideas, not criminal by nature more than other races, not difficult to adapt himself to new environment, and eager to earn and learn. He furnishes excellent raw material for American citizenship, if he does not come too rapidly to be Americanized. But what[Pg 151] he will mean to America, for good or ill, depends almost wholly upon what America does for and with and through him. Thus far, there has been too much of prejudice and neglect. Better acquaintance is the first step toward the transformation of the Italian alien into the Italian-American.

As for the religious side, here is testimony from a Roman Catholic source. Mrs. Betts says:[60]

"The relation between the Roman Catholic Church and the mass of the Italians in this country is a source of grief. Reluctantly the writer has to blame the ignorance and bigotry of the immigrant priests who set themselves against American influence; men who too often lend themselves to the purposes of the ward heeler, the district leader in controlling the people, who too often keep silence when the poor are the victims of the shrewd Italians who have grown rich on the ignorance of their countrymen. One man made $8,000 by supplying 1,000 laborers to a railroad. He collected $5 from each man as a railroad fare, though transportation was given by the road, and $3 from each man for the material to build a house. The men supposed it was to be a home for their families. They found as a home the wretched shelters provided by contractors, with which we are all familiar. This[Pg 152] transaction, when known, did not disturb the Church or social relations of the offender, but it increased his political power, for it showed what he could do. He is recognized to-day as the Mayor of—— street; his influence is met everywhere."

There is no doubt that the Italians are accessible to evangelical Christianity. Thousands of them appreciate the true character of the Church that tried to prevent Italian unity and liberty, and they are peculiarly open to the truths of democracy and the gospel. The home missionary finds among them a fruitful field. Dr. Lee expresses the conclusions of many observers, and indicates also a gate of personal opportunity to serve, when he says, as a result of personal observation and effort:

"Incident to the general recoil from the papal control, an enormous number of the Italians coming to this country are out of the old Church; they are without religion, yet are in a way groping after one. As a consequence the Italian is exceptionally open-minded. You can talk with him. He is not suspicious—not apprehensive lest you mislead him. He may have no respect for any kind of religion, but he is not afraid that you will lure him into forbidden paths. He is beginning to think—a privilege which he has been denied in the past. This open-mindedness is readiness to accept the spirit and theories of[Pg 153] American life; for open-mindedness is an American characteristic."

And open-mindedness toward the gospel is the vestibule to conversion.

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER IV

Aim: To Consider the Desirability of the Italians as Immigrants, and the Opportunity for Christian Work Among Them.

I. Contrast the Old and New Immigration.

1. What is the New Immigration?

2. What has become of the earlier immigrants? Was their coming a benefit to the United States?

3. Would your judgment concerning it have been the same when they were coming?

4. What races have gained and what have lost in their respective proportions?

II. The Italians.

5. What are the leading types at present? What are they likely to be in the future?

6. Mention opposing opinions as to the Italians? Which seem to you nearer the truth?

7. What differences are there between Italians from different parts of Italy?

8. From what class come most of the Italians now arriving? Of what sex? What age? What skill?

9. How has Italian immigration grown in numbers? How has it been distributed?

10. What proportion go West and South? Are efforts being made to attract them anywhere?[Pg 154]

III. Are the Italians a Desirable Class of Immigrants?

11. How do they compare with the early Irish immigrants? With other nationalities?

12. What is the record of Italians in this country; as to work, citizenship, self-support, crime, temperance, thrift, care for education, financial ability?

13. Have many Italians taken to farming? Do they succeed? What sort of farming?

14. What efforts are being made to direct and distribute the Italian immigrants?

IV. What is the Opportunity of the Christian Church Among Them?

15. Do you know of any specific effort to uplift them through Christian influences?

16. Does this chapter make you feel that the churches can do more for them? How?

References for Advanced Study.—Chapter IV

I. Further Study of Contrasts Between Different Types of Italians.

Lord et al: The Italian in America, I, III, V.
Brandenburg: Imported Americans, IV, VI, XII.
Holt: Undistinguished Americans, III.

II. Illiteracy Among the Northern and Southern Italians.

(1) Its bearing on their desirability as immigrants.
Brandenburg: Imported Americans, IV, XII, XX.
Hall: Immigration, 54-58, 80-83.
[Pg 155]

(2) Its relation to the probable effect of a reading test for admission.

Lord, et al: The Italian in America, VIII, XI.
Hall: Immigration, 262-280.

(3) Its bearing on their accessibility to the gospel.

McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, 69-74.
Wood: Americans in Process, IX.

III. Location of Italians After Their Arrival and Length of Their Stay.

Brandenburg: Imported Americans, II, XIX, XXII.
Lord, et al: The Italian in America, VI, VII, IX.

IV. The Italians in New York City and State.

Benefits and dangers arising from their presence,
and efforts made to help them.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, V, XXIV.
University Settlement Studies, Vol. I, Numbers
3 and 4, issue January, 1906.
Reports of the Society for Italian Immigrants, 17
Pearl Street, New York City.
[Pg 157][Pg 156]

Yesterday the Slav was a pauper immigrant; to-day he is what the English, Welsh, Irish, and German miner was a quarter of a century ago—on the way to becoming an American citizen. What sort of a citizen he will be will depend upon the influences brought to bear upon him.—F. J. Warne.

V

THE EASTERN INVASION

[Pg 158]

My people do not live in America. They live underneath America. America goes on over their heads.—Paul Tymkevich, a Ruthenian Priest.

"My people do not love America. Why should they, from what they see of it?" This is the profoundly suggestive question of a Ruthenian Greek-Catholic priest, of Yonkers, N. Y., who says his people do not come in contact with the better classes of Americans, but do come in contact with everyone who hopes to exploit them.

The subject of immigration is the most far-reaching in importance of all those with which this government has to deal. The history of the world offers no precedent for our guidance, since no such peaceful invasion of alien peoples has ever before occurred. It must have great and largely unforeseen effects upon our form of civilization, our social and political institutions, and, above all, upon the physical, mental, and moral characteristics of our people. Can such a subject be considered too seriously or too minutely? I cannot think it possible. The danger lies in the opposite direction.—F. P. Sargent.

It must not be forgotten that the Slav immigrants, and especially their descendants, are impressionable and adaptable; that forces are at work which have already done much for them, and will do more. The results of the public school are sure though slow. The full-grown individual must be brought under the influence of a yet more powerful agency, one which makes also for civilization and for Americanism in the best sense.—F. J. Warne[Pg 159].

THE EASTERN INVASION

Least known, least liked, and least assimilable of all the alien races migrating to America are the Slavs. That expresses the general opinion, based on ignorance and dislike. To the common view they seem to combine all the undesirable elements—low living, low intelligence, low morality, low capacity, low everything, including wages—this explaining in large measure their presence. The very name Slav excites prejudice. If an exclusion act of any kind were to be passed it would probably be easier to aim it at the Slavs than any other class of immigrants. We are now to submit this common opinion to the test of investigation, and see whether it is warranted in fact. Nowhere is discrimination based on knowledge more necessary than in dealing with this Slavic race division. First let us learn who the Slavs are. The following table shows this, and also how many of them entered our ports in 1905:

[Pg 160]

The Slavs proper number about 125,000,000, or more than one twelfth of the total population of the world. They have been concentrated, until the recent migration began, in the eastern and larger part of Europe. They make up the bulk of Russia, the great Slav power (numbering about 70,000,000), and of the Balkan States, and form nearly half of the population of Austria-Hungary. The various Slavic languages and dialects are closely related but differ as do German and Swedish, so that the different races cannot understand each other.[62]

The Slav immigration is of comparatively recent date. Before 1880 it was unnoticeable. A small number of Bohemians and Poles had come, settling in the larger cities. But suddenly the thousands began to pour in. Demand for cheap labor in the coal fields of Pennsylvania drew this class, and presently the American, Canadian, English, Welsh, Irish, Scotch, and German mine-workers found themselves being supplanted by the men from Austria-Hungary and Russia—men who were mostly single and alone, who[Pg 162][Pg 161] could live on little, eat any sort of food, wear any kind of clothes, and sleep in a hut or store-house, fourteen in a room. Of course the home of the English-speaking miner, with its carpet on the best room, its pictures and comforts, had to go, as did the miner and his wife and children, also the school and the church—for how could these stay when the Slav, homeless and familyless, could bunk in with a crowd anywhere, or build himself a hillside hut out of driftwood, and subsist on from four to ten dollars a month. The one conspicuous thing about the Slav was his ability to save money. Dr. Warne gives a graphic and pathetic picture of the struggle caused by the introduction of the Slavs into Pennsylvania, and his investigations may profitably be studied.[63]

Countries from which the Slavs come

The results in Pennsylvania thus far are the reverse of satisfactory. The cheap labor has become dear in more senses than one. Where in 1880 the English-speaking foreign-born composed nearly ninety-four per cent. of the mine workers, in 1900 they were less than fifty-two per cent., and to-day are much less still. The Slavs dominate in the mines. Strikes are not less frequent, but more difficult to control, and the necessity of frequent state control by militia, the riots and bloodshed, mark the failure to Americanize this growing class of aliens. A striking illustration of non-assimilation and the attendant[Pg 163] perils may be found in Pennsylvania. Fortunately all the Slavs do not go to the mines, and those who follow agriculture or trades afford a pleasanter study. The census of 1900 gave a million and a quarter of foreign-born Slavs and the number has been largely increased. In 1903 221,000 came, not counting the 67,000 Russian and Roumanian Jews. Since these peoples are all prolific, with an oversupply at home, there is every prospect that immigration will increase, unless some check is put upon it. The Slavs will have to be reckoned with, most assuredly, as an element in our civilization.

Slav Distribution in the United States

The maps here given, by the courtesy of Charities, show the sections from which the Slavs come and how they disperse in this country.[Pg 164]

An analysis of the official statistics shows that, with the exception of the Bohemians, these newest immigrants are mainly unskilled, illiterate peasants from country districts, and with little money in their pockets when they land. Of the Bohemians and Moravians forty-four per cent. are skilled laborers, and only 1.50 per cent. over fourteen are unable to read and write; but of the Poles eighty-five per cent. are unskilled, and thirty per cent. can neither read nor write; and this represents the average. We are getting in an illiterate mass, therefore, and the amount of money they bring per capita averages about $10. But on this point a writer says, speaking from a wide observation:[64]

"This does not necessarily mean that they are undesirable immigrants. The illiterate, unskilled immigrant may be, in fact, more desirable than the better educated skilled laborer, or the still better educated professional or business man. There may be a great demand here for unskilled labor. Again, the moral qualities of the untaught but industrious, simple-minded, unspoiled countryman may be far more wholesome for the communities to which he comes than those of the educated, town-bred, unsuccessful business or professional man, the misfit skilled laborer, or the actual loafer and sharper of the cities, who comes over here when home gets too hot for him. As to[Pg 165] illiteracy, moreover, the peasant is improving. The great mass of this unskilled labor pushes directly through the great gateway of New York, where unfortunately so many other races stop. They go to the eastern, middle, and northern states, mainly into our coal and iron mines, and our steel mills, but also to the farming regions, where they work patiently and thriftily, first as farm laborers, then as owners of abandoned farming lands or cut-over timber lands, reclaiming and making them fertile to the great advantage of the markets they supply."

Let us now look at this conglomerate immigration a little more in detail, and no longer class these peoples indiscriminately as "barbarian Huns."

I. The Bohemians

We may well begin with the Bohemians, who are among the most skilled, least illiterate, and, to Protestants, most interesting of the Slavs. In studying any group of "strangers within our gates," it is necessary to know its preëmigration history. These people, who call themselves Czechs, are a principal branch of the Slav family and one of the large constituents of the Austria-Hungarian empire, numbering 6,318,697 in 1901. At home they are chiefly agriculturists. In 1900 there were in this country 325,400 persons of Bohemian parentage, of whom 156,991 were born[Pg 166] in Bohemia. Since 1900 above 50,000 more have come. Three fourths of them all are in the north central states of the Mississippi Valley, with Chicago as their great center. Cleveland has about 15,000, New York about the same number; while in agriculture there are in round numbers 16,000 in Nebraska, 14,000 in Wisconsin, 11,000 in Iowa, and 9,000 in Texas.

A Group of Twelve Different Nationalities
Taken on the Roof Garden at Ellis Island

As to their history in the old world, the Bohemians have had such a stormy national struggle, and the bitterness of it has so entered into their lives, that it is impossible rightly to judge them apart from it. It has some instructive lessons for us. These are the conditions, as Mr. Nan Mashek, himself a Bohemian, states them:[65]

"For two hundred and fifty years they have been oppressed by a pitilessly despotic rule. In the day of their independence, before 1620, they were Protestants, and the most glorious and memorable events of their history are connected with their struggle for the faith. The history of their Church is the history of their nation, for on the one hand was Protestantism and independence, on the other, Catholicism and political subjection. For two centuries Bohemia was a bloody battleground of Protestant reform. Under the spiritual and military leadership of such men as Jerome of Prague, John Huss, and Ziska, the Bohemians fought their good fight and lost.[Pg 167] After the battle of White Mountains, in 1620, national independence was completely lost, and Catholicism was forcibly imposed upon the country. All Protestant Bibles, books, and songs were burned, thus depriving the nation of a large and rich literature. Those who still clung to their faith publicly were banished, their property becoming forfeited to the state. After 150 years, when Emperor Joseph II. of Austria gave back to the Protestants some measure of their former freedom, many of the churches were reëstablished; but Protestantism had lost much of its strength. The political revolution of 1848 led to new subjugation, and emigration was the result. Large numbers left the country in quest of freedom, and some of these found their way to America."

The first Bohemian settlers were of the most intelligent and more prosperous classes. They went West, chiefly to Wisconsin, where their farms are among the finest in the state. In Kewaunee County they constitute over one third of the population, or 6,000 out of 17,000. They have developed into an excellent type of American citizenship, have looked well after the education of their children, many of whom have gone to college, and are in every way progressive. Read thoughtfully what Mr. Mashek says:

"In the country the assimilation of Bohemians is not a problem which offers difficulties. The[Pg 168] public school is everywhere so potent an Americanizer that it alone is adequate. There is, however, one other influence which if brought to bear, especially in the large communities, would be helpful. I refer to the Protestant faith. For the most part Bohemians conversant with their history as a people are naturally hostile to the Catholic Church, and when the restraints which held them in their own country are removed by emigration, many of the more enlightened quietly drop their allegiance, and, through lack of desire or opportunity, fail to ally themselves with any other. So strong is this non-religious tendency among the Bohemians—especially in the cities—that it has resulted in active unbelief, and hostility to Church influence. This spiritual isolation, with its resultant social separation, is doing great harm in retarding assimilation. Aside from this matter of religion, the Bohemian falls into American customs with surprising readiness."

Thus a member of this race points out to Protestants their opportunity. Here is a people with inherited Protestant tendencies. They have been driven in Bohemia by an enforced Roman Catholicism into antagonism to the Church as they know it.

In Chicago, where over 100,000 of them make of that city the third largest Bohemian center in the world, they have a strongly organized Freethinkers' Society, with three hundred[Pg 169] branches, which issues an atheistic catechism, and has it taught in its numerous Sunday-schools, as they are called. But there are thousands who do not belong to this cult, and who are open to the gospel. The same is true of the Bohemians in New York, Cleveland, and elsewhere who have not advanced to the Chicago infidel standpoint. Their character has not been well understood. They possess excellent qualities for the making of good Americans. Christianity in pure and true form is all they need.

The Bohemians are a home people, social, and fond of organizations of every kind. Music is their passion, and their clubs, mutual benefit societies, and loan associations, successfully run, show large capacity for management. They have forty-two papers, seven of them religious, two Protestant. Their freethinking is not all of it by any means of the dogmatic sort which has its catechism of atheism. There is another class, represented by an old woman with a broad brow over which the silvery hair is smoothly parted, who says to the missionary, "I have my God in my heart, I shall deal with him. I do not want any priest to step between us." That is the class which the gospel can reach and ought to reach speedily.

About seventy-five per cent, of the Bohemians live in the northwest. In Cleveland they have entered into various industries. In New[Pg 170] York they are largely employed in cigar-making, at which the women and girls work under conditions not calculated to inspire them with regard for God or man. The home life cannot be what it should when the mothers are compelled to work in the factories, besides having all the home cares and work. The testimony of the tenement inspectors is that the Bohemians are perhaps the cleanest of the poor people in the city, and are struggling heroically against the pitiful conditions of the tenement-houses in which they are compelled to exist.

II. The Poles

The Poles form one of the oldest and largest elements of the Slav immigration. In 1900 the census gave 668,536 persons whose parents were born in Poland, and of these 383,510 were themselves born there. Nearly a quarter of a million of the latter came to this country between 1890 and 1900, and in the five years following, 1900-5, about 350,000 more arrived. A third of a million Poles now in America do not understand English. The Polish strength is indicated by the Polish National Alliance, with 50,000 members, and by a list of fifty newspapers published in the Polish tongue, four of them dailies, printed in Chicago, Buffalo, and Milwaukee, the largest centers.

Born in Russia, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary—Resident in the U.S. 1900

Reproduced by special permission of "The World's Work." Copyright 1909.

"The higher classes of Poland were touched by the pre-Reformation movement of Huss at Prague,[Pg 172][Pg 171] where they were generally educated. Reformation ideas did not gain as great currency as in Bohemia, but both Calvin and Luther were interested in their progress in Poland. A Jesuit authority complained that two thousand Romanist churches had become Protestant. A Union Synod was formed and consensus of doctrine adopted. Poland is described as the most tolerant country of Europe in the sixteenth century. It became an asylum for the persecuted Protestants of other lands, notably the Bohemian brethren. Later on, under the influence of Protestantism, literature and education were stimulated. But under succeeding Swedish and Saxon dynasties, and through Jesuit instrumentality, religious liberty and national independence were lost, and Poland disappeared from the map of Europe. As a race the Poles boast such names as Copernicus the astronomer, Kosciusko the patriot warrior, and Chopin the composer."[66]

The distribution in America in 1904 was as follows: Illinois, 123,887, of whom 107,669 were in the vicinity of the Chicago stockyards; Pennsylvania, 118,203, mainly in the anthracite coal regions and about Pittsburg, with 11,000 in Philadelphia; New York, 115,046, 50,000 of them in New York City and 35,000 in Buffalo; Wisconsin, 70,000, 36,000 in Milwaukee; Michigan, 59,075, 26,869 in Detroit; Ohio, 31,136, 15,000 in Cleve[Pg 173]land and 9,000 in Toledo; in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Jersey, between 20,000 and 30,000 each; in Connecticut and Indiana, over 10,000 each; and in smaller numbers widely distributed. Their preference for the larger cities is shown by these figures. Recent immigrants are going more into the New England States. Already there is a second generation of them in the cities and the farming country of the Middle West, and they have their own teachers and doctors. In New England they are spreading in the factory towns, and Chicopee, Massachusetts, has six thousand of them; while in the tobacco belt of Connecticut they furnish a majority of the farm hands. Ten years ago Hartford had only three or four hundred Polish families; to-day there is a parish of a thousand people, and they have built a Catholic church and given $20,000 toward a school.

Like most of the Slavs, the Poles who come here are commonly poor, and of the peasant class; about one third of them are illiterate. They are clannish, and clash with the Lithuanians and other races. Lovers of liberty, they clash also with the Catholic authorities, going so far even as organized rebellion to obtain control of their church properties and freedom in the choice of priests. They have a superstitious dread of Protestantism, which has been misrepresented to them as extremely difficult. "Polish priests about[Pg 174] Pittsburg are said to boast of the number of Bibles, distributed by Protestants, which they gather from the people and burn." If once Protestantism gets a grip upon them, rapid defection from ecclesiastical tyranny will follow. Dr. H. K. Carroll figures that the Polish Catholics as distinct from Roman Catholics, have forty-three churches and 42,859 communicants, with thirty-three priests—this representing the extent of revolt against the Romish Church. It must be granted that comparatively little has been done to reach this people, and it is not strange that as yet the number of Protestant Poles is small. It takes a larger and more imposing movement to make a definite impression upon those accustomed to the size and strength of the Catholic organizations.

III. The Slovaks

The Slovaks of northern Hungary number about two millions, and are closely akin to the Bohemians and Moravians. According to Mr. Rovinanek, editor of the Pittsburg Slovak Daily, they constitute the trunk of the great Slavonic national tree, from which have branched so many of the Slav people, at the head of whom now stands the powerful Russian empire. From prehistoric time they were celebrated as a peaceful, industrious people, fond of agricultural and pastoral life. The immigration has been from the[Pg 175] agricultural class, and at first settlement was made in the mining regions of Pennsylvania. Farming had its inherited attractions, however, and there are hundreds of Slovak farmers in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Ohio; while in Minnesota, Arkansas, Virginia, and Wisconsin there are colonies of them, where for many miles on every side the land is entirely in their possession. Kossuth was a Slovak, to their lasting pride. Over 100,000 of them have come to America since 1900, one fourth of them illiterates. They had little opportunity to be otherwise at home, but since coming here their advancement educationally has been marked.

"This is due," says Mr. Rovinanek, "largely to the intensely religious spirit which prevails among the Slavic peoples, and to the fact that here they have been able to combine schools with their churches." The total number now in the country is estimated at 250,000, of whom 150,000 are in Pennsylvania. Two thirds of the immigrants are men.

They live usually in very poor and crowded quarters, one family having sometimes from fifteen to twenty boarders, and under conditions far from cleanly or sanitary. There are nearly as many newspapers in the United States in the Slovak language as in Hungary, with a much larger total circulation. This press has stimulated industrial and business enterprises in the[Pg 176] Slovak communities. There are numerous small mercantile establishments. In Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago, wire and tinware factories established with Slovak capital and conducted with Slovak labor are securing the cream of this trade in the country. For centuries the tinware of Europe was made largely by the Slovaks. They have a high position also for electrical designs and other skilled work.

They are a great people for organization. The National Slavonic Society was organized in Pittsburg in 1890, with 250 members; it now has 20,000 active members and 512 lodges. It is primarily a beneficial organization, but has done a valuable work in educating its members and inducing them to become American citizens. The society requires its members, after a reasonable time, to obtain naturalization papers and thus promotes Americanization. It has paid out nearly a million dollars in death benefits, and much more in sick benefits; has aided students in this country and Hungary, and national literary and patriotic workers as well, besides coming to the rescue of Slavs in Hungary persecuted by the government. Many other societies have sprung from this parent organization, including a Presbyterian Slavistic Union, and hundreds of literary, benevolent, and political clubs, so that there are between 100,000 and 125,000 organized Slovaks in the United States.[Pg 177]

IV. The Magyars or Hungarians

The Magyars belong properly in a division by themselves. These people, who are Hungarians proper, do not class strictly with the Germans and Slavs of Hungary. They drove out their Slavic predecessors or subjugated them in the ninth century, and became masters of the Danubian plains. Roman Catholicism became the state religion about the year 1000, but during the Reformation period the Lutheran and Reformed types of Protestantism gained a large following and were granted liberty. This was afterward denied them, and bloody struggles followed, as in Bohemia. Protestants were again placed on equal footing with Roman Catholics in 1791. The Magyars number over eight millions and comprise a little more than one half the population of Hungary.

There are at present between 250,000 and 300,000 Hungarians in America. They have a fair degree of education, are generally reputed to be honest, and as compared with the Slavs (with whom they are commonly confused) are more intelligent and less industrious, "more agile in limb and temper." Many are addicted to drink and quarreling. It is noticeable that the Protestants are morally and intellectually superior to the Catholics. The bulk of the Magyars (eighty-six per cent.) are in the Pennsyl[Pg 178]vania mining regions, in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. At home chiefly agriculturists, here they work mostly in mines, mills, and factories. The Roman Catholic Hungarians are said to lapse easily from the Church, going into indifferentism and nothingism. This gives opening for Protestant mission work.

A writer who has made special investigations, in the line of social settlement studies,[67] says that eighty per cent. of the Magyars arriving in New York go at once to the farms and mines. The New York colony numbers 50,000 to 60,000, including the Hungarian Jews, who are scarcely distinguishable from the Gentiles. The life of their quarter is one continuous whirl of excitement. Pleasure seems the chief end. The café is their club room. Intensely social, fond of conviviality and gaiety, bright, polished, graceful, the Magyar soon learns English, and adapts himself to his new surroundings. The newspaper, literary society, and charitable organization are the only institutions he cares to support. Pride, independence, fertility of resource, lack of perseverance, love of ease rather than of a strenuous life—these are his qualities. Tailoring is the chief occupation in New York, though Hungarians are also furriers, workers in hotels and restaurants and various kinds of light factories, and some are shopkeepers and merchants. Those[Pg 179] who speak from close knowledge call them excellent "citizen-material." In one of these typical East Side Hungarian cafés, as a guest of the Hungarian Republican Club, President Roosevelt spent the evening and made a noteworthy address on February 14, 1905. Among other things, he told them that "Americanism is not a matter of birthplace or race, but of the spirit that is in the man."

V. The Lithuanians and Letts

The Lithuanians in Russia number about two millions. They began to come in 1868, driven out by famine at home, and the first comers went to the northern Pennsylvania mines. At present there are about 200,000 in America; 50,000 of them in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania, 25,000 in the soft coal mines of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia; 10,000 in Philadelphia and Baltimore; 15,000 in New York; 25,000 in New England; mainly in Boston, Worcester, Brockton, Hartford, and Bridgeport; 10,000 in Ohio and Michigan; 50,000 in Illinois and Wisconsin; while several thousand are scattered over the western states. Though nearly all raised on farms, they do not take to farming here, nor do they like open air work, preferring the mines, factories, foundries, and closed shops. In the cities many of them are tailors, and many are found in packing-houses, steel plants, hat and[Pg 180] shoe factories, and mills. Their chief curse is intemperance, and they are not of strong character, having little of the quality of leadership. Generally they are devout Roman Catholics; when not they are apt to become freethinkers, and a freethinkers' alliance has been formed among them. They are described as commonly peaceable, well dressed, and good-natured. Their children are mostly in public schools. Little Protestant work has been done among them.

Three Types of Immigrants

The Lettish people, like the Lithuanians, their neighbors and kinsmen, are among the oldest races of Europe. They are clearly distinguished from the southern Slavs, being tall and fair, like the Swede, in complexion. The Letts at home number about a million and a half. Since 1900 nearly 35,000 of them have come to America, settling mostly in the anthracite coal regions. They are also found in New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, and New Jersey. About one half are illiterate, and in the coal fields both Lithuanians and Letts have a poor reputation. In Boston, however, there is an encouraging mission work among the Lettish people.

VI. The Ruthenians

The Ruthenians, or Ukrainians, called also the Little Russians, at home occupy the southern part of Russia, eastern and southwestern Galicia, and part of Bukovina in Austria-Hungary.[Pg 181] Their number in Europe is computed at over 30,000,000. They are darker and smaller than the typical Slav. Roman Catholic in religion, they are generally poor, illiterate, backward in civilization, and oppressed. Immigration began perhaps thirty years ago, but not in appreciable numbers until recent years. In the four years ending in June, 1903, there were 26,496 arrivals, two thirds men, nearly all unskilled laborers, and one half unable to read or write. The number in 1905 was 14,473. Pennsylvania is their common destination. Estimates as to their present numbers in the country vary from 160,000 to 350,000, the latter figures given by Ivan Ardan, editor of their paper, Svoboda, at Scranton. He says there are 60,000 more in Canada, and as many in Brazil and other South American republics, or about half a million altogether in the new world. Probably there are 90,000 of them in Pennsylvania. They are said to be accessible to missionary influences, but their ignorance and crowded conditions of living make work difficult.

About eight tenths of the Ruthenians here are laborers, chiefly in the mines; and about one tenth are farmers. The young women work in shops and factories, but prefer domestic service, and are efficient. The people are very saving, and scarcely one but has from $50 to $200 at least saved and put away in some hidden corner or in a bank. They buy lots and build houses, or[Pg 182] take up farming. They have beneficial societies for sickness, injury, and death, including wife and mother as well as husband and father. Mr. Ardan says Ruthenian men and women drink, "farmers and Protestants being exceptions." What a notable exception and testimony that is.

Superstitious, devout, attached to their churches, the majority are Greek Catholics, with a few Protestants from Russian Ukraine, where Protestants are bitterly persecuted. There are 108 Ruthenian churches, composed of eighty Greek Catholic, twenty-six Greek Orthodox (Russian State Church), and two Protestant, besides several Protestant missions.

The people are as a rule very eager to learn both their native and the English language. They have their adult schools for this purpose. Their children go to the public schools. There are four Ruthenian weeklies and one monthly published in this country, and some books. Education is prompted by reading circles, lectures, and societies for self-improvement. The race has a fine physique, with great physical endurance. Individuality is more marked in it than in many Slavonic races, and assimilation is comparatively rapid. In this country they rapidly wake up to a new life and promise to make a worthy addition to citizenship. Such missionary opportunities should move our Christian churches to active efforts.[Pg 183]

VII. Other Nationalities

We can only mention the remaining nationalities of the Slavic group. The Croatians and Dalmatians, unable to make a living at home, are fleeing from starvation and mismanagement, and seeking work in America. Croatia is a kingdom of Austria-Hungary. Dalmatia is the seacoast province of Austria.

The Slovenians come from the provinces northwest of Croatia. The three nationalities have probably sent between 200,000 and 300,000 persons to America. Dalmatians are oyster fishermen at New Orleans, make staves in Mississippi, are wine dealers in San Francisco, and vine growers and miners in other parts of California. The Slovenians are chiefly found in the Pennsylvania mines and other mining regions. The Croatians are mostly in the same regions and work, although in New York there are about 15,000 of them engaged as longshoremen and mechanics, and a small number are farmers out West. They are Roman Catholic, largely illiterate and unskilled. The Catholics do little for them, and the Protestant denominations have undertaken no specific work in their behalf.

The Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Montenegrins are just beginning to come in appreciable numbers. They represent much the same home conditions as the nationali[Pg 184]ties mentioned more in detail. Catholicism, Greek or Roman, has cast them pretty much in the same mold. Ignorant, semi-civilized many of them, they have everything to get and learn in their new home, and afford still larger opportunity for Protestant Christianity in its mighty work of making and keeping America the land of righteousness and progress.

An interesting series of articles appeared in 1906 in a magazine devoted to social betterment,[68] the writer having spent a year in studying conditions in the Slav districts of Austria-Hungary. Living among the people, she has become profoundly interested in them, and takes a most hopeful view of their possibilities in America. She says the life from which the peasants mostly come to us is the old peasant life, but a little way removed from feudalism and serfdom. Each little village is a tiny world in itself, with its own traditions and ways, its own dress, perhaps even its own dialect. The amazing gift of the Slav for color and music permeates the whole home life with poetry. The Slav immigrants have the virtues and faults of their primitive world. They come to America to make money. The majority come with intent to earn money to take back home, rather than with expectation to settle here permanently. Unenterprising, unlettered, they are at the same time hardy, thrifty[Pg 185] and shrewd, honest and pious. They are undoubtedly highly endowed with gifts of imagination and artistic expression for which in their American conditions they find little or no outlet.

And here again is the point we are constantly having impressed upon us. What the immigrant shall become, for good or ill, depends chiefly upon what conditions are made for him, and whether he is given a chance to express his best self in this country. Grinding monopoly, harsh treatment, prejudice that drives into clannishness and race hatred—these will make of the Slavs a peril. A genuinely Christian environment and treatment will find them receptive and ready for Americanization through evangelization.

VIII. The Russian Jews

In some respects the most interesting immigrants from the Slav countries are the Jews from Russia and Roumania. The German Jew and the Russian Jew must not be confounded; they are as distinct as any two races in the entire immigrant group. The German Jew came to America to make more money, and is making it. The Russian Jew, who comes from persecution, is rigidly orthodox, and regards the commercial German class as apostate. He forms a picturesque, vigorous, sui generis member of the alien procession.[Pg 186]

Since the year 1881 not less than 750,000 Jewish immigrants have arrived at the port of New York alone. On Manhattan Island more than every fourth person you meet is a Jew. The Jews admitted at Ellis Island during the past five years outnumbered all the communicants in the Protestant churches in Greater New York.

Of the 106,000 Jews admitted in 1904, a large proportion of whom settled in New York, 77,000 came from the Russian Empire, 20,000 from Austria-Hungary, and 6,000 from Roumania. Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe are all one people.

They show a larger proportion with skilled, professional and commercial training and experience than do any of the other newer immigrants except the Finns. Nearly twenty per cent. of the Hebrew immigrants are tailors, nearly five per cent. mechanics, merchants, or clerks, and almost one per cent. follow the professions. Of the remainder a very considerable proportion, though not a majority, are skilled workers such as bakers, tobacco workers, carpenters, painters, and butchers. The garment trades, to which they find themselves adapted, and for which New York is the world center, engages perhaps 100,000 of them, men, women, and children, many of them in the sweat-shops, which they created. For the first time in their history, the Jews have built up a great industrial class, this being[Pg 187] an American development. According to a Jewish authority,[69] the "unspeakable evils of the tenements and sweat-shops" of the ghetto are undermining their physical and moral health.

The newly arrived Russian Jew is kept in the ghetto of the larger cities—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston—not only by his poverty and ignorance but by his orthodoxy. In this district the rules of his religion can more certainly be followed. Here can be found the lawful food, here the orthodox places of worship, here neighbors and friends can be visited within "a sabbath day's journey." The young people, however, rapidly shake off such trammels, and in the endeavor to be like Americans urge their parents to move away from this "foreign" district. When they succeed, the Americanizing process may be considered well under way. Concerning the religious change that comes over the young Jew after he reaches this country, a writer says:[70]

"Many a young man, who was firm in his religious convictions in his native village, having heard of the religious laxity prevalent in America, had fully made up his mind not to be misled by the temptation and allurements of the free country, but he succumbed in his struggle and renounced his Judaism when first submitting his chin to the barber's razor, at the entreaties and[Pg 188] persuasions of his Americanized friends and relatives. Religion then appeared to him not only distinct from life, but antagonistic to it, and since it was life, a free, full, undisturbed life he sought in coming here, he felt compelled to divorce himself from all the religious ties that had hitherto encompassed him. Thus it is that the immigrant Jewish youth, even those faithful and loyal to the institutions of old and who desired to conduct their lives in accordance with the precepts of their religion, became estranged from Judaism and suffered themselves to be swept along by the tide. Thus the immigrant Jew in America has frequently become callous and indifferent, and sometimes cynical and antagonistic to everything pertaining to Judaism." While they are thus lost to Judaism they are not won to Christianity, but they ought to be. The older people become reconciled with difficulty to this irreligious attitude and "the old Jewess still curses Columbus for his great transgression in discovering America, where her children have lost their religion."

The Russian Jews usually come in great poverty, but do not stay poor very long. In New York's East Side many tenements in Jewish quarters are owned by persons who formerly lived in crowded corners of others like them; and from this population comes many a Broadway merchant, and professional men in plenty. It is cer[Pg 189]tain that the adult Hebrew immigrant has definite aspirations toward social, economic, and educational advancement. The poorest among them will make all possible sacrifices to keep his children in school; and one of the most striking social phenomena in New York City is the way in which the Jews have taken possession of the public schools, in the highest as well as lowest grades. The city college is practically filled with Jewish pupils. In the lower schools Jewish children are the delight of their teachers for cleverness at their books, obedience, and general good conduct; and the vacation schools, night schools, social settlements, libraries, bathing places, parks, and playgrounds of the East Side are fairly besieged with Jewish children. Jewish boys are especially ambitious to enter professions or go into business. For example, the head of one of the largest institutions of the East Side tells a story of a long interview with a class of boys in which all spoke of the work they intended to do. Law, medicine, journalism, and teaching came first. There were even some who intended to become engineers. A smaller number were going into business, and not one intended to learn any manual trade. Some were going in for music, and occasionally one is found who intends to make his living by art. But above all, the young Jew is ambitious and intends to rise. This is true in all cities.[Pg 190]

The strong good qualities of the Jews are absence of the drink evil, love of home, desire to preserve the purity of the family, and remarkable eagerness for self-improvement. They easily adapt themselves to the new environment and assimilate the customs and language of the new country. This leads to the danger of readily falling in with the vices found in the tenement districts—the children showing this in the large numbers of them that appear in the Juvenile Court. The remedy is removal, and this the Jewish parents seek as soon as they are able.

With decent environment and a fair chance, the Russian Jew promises to become a good citizen, intellectually keen, commercially shrewd, professionally bound to shine. But that he will ever, except in rare instances, imbibe the real American spirit or understand the American ideals is a question. At the same time, the Jews are believers in the principle of democracy, and in case of an issue arising on the separation of Church and State, would be found standing with American Protestantism for the religious liberties of the American people.[Pg 191]

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER V

Aim: To Consider the Desirability of the Slavs as Immigrants.

I. The Slavic People as a Whole.

1. What nationalities are generally included under the term Slavs? Are they numerous in population? Are they strictly of one race?

2. What grounds are there to justify popular prejudice against them? Or to show it to be ill founded?

3. When did they begin to come in large numbers?

4. Where have they largely settled, and with what results?

II. Racial Divisions of the Slavic Immigrants.

5. What can you tell about the Bohemians, as to their religious history, political sufferings, and coming to America? What are their conditions here? Their accessibility? Their location?

6. Tell about the Poles in the same way.

7. Tell about the Slovaks in the same way.

8. Tell about the Magyars in the same way.

9. Who and what are the Lithuanians?

10. Who and what are the Ruthenians?

III. Slavic Elements of Strength and American Outlook.

11. Mention some encouraging features with reference to the above-named and other Slavs.

12. * If you had been born a Slav in Europe, would you be likely to prefer America to Europe? Protestantism to Roman Catholicism? The country or the city?[Pg 192]

IV. Social, Moral, and Religious Aspects of the Jewish and Slavic Population.

13. How many Jews are there in New York City?

14. What keeps the new arrivals in the larger cities?

15. Are they religious, quick to learn, temperate?

16. Mention some form of Christian work for Slavs or Jews about which you know.

References for Advanced Study.—Chapter V

I. Further Study as to Race Origin and Inter-relationship of the Slavs.

Warne: The Slav Invasion, III.
McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, IV.

II. National Conditions in Europe which the Slavs Seek to Escape.

Hall: Immigration, 60-65.

III. Social and Moral Effects Produced by the Slav Invasion of the Anthracite Regions.

Warne: The Slav Invasion, IV, VII.

IV. Factors in Slavic History and Conditions Favoring and Hindering the Access of the Gospel.

McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, 34-58.
Charities and Commons, issues 1905-06.

V. Conditions Among Russian Jews.

Statements of Jewish authors as to conditions
among Russian Jews in their native lands and in
America.

Bernheimer: The Russian Jew in the United
States, I (B), IV (A), VI (A).
[Pg 193]

The city is the nerve center of our civilization. It is also the storm center. The city has a peculiar attraction for the immigrant. Here is heaped the social dynamite; here the dangerous elements are multiplied and concentered.—Josiah Strong.

VI

THE FOREIGN PERIL OF THE CITY

[Pg 194]

The city is the most difficult and perplexing problem of modern times.—Francis Lieber.

We must save the city if we would save the nation. Municipal government and city evangelization together constitute the distinctive problem of the city, for this generation at least.—Josiah Strong.

Talk of Dante's Hell, and all the horrors and cruelties of the torture chamber of the lost! The man who walks with open eyes and bleeding heart through the shambles of our civilization needs no such fantastic images of the poet to teach him horror.—General Booth.

With the influx of a large foreign population into the great cities, there have come also foreign customs and institutions, laxity and license—those phases of evil which are the most insidious foes of the purity and strength of a people. The slums of our large cities are but the stagnant pools of illiteracy, vice, pauperism, and crime, annually fed by this floodtide of immigration.—R. M. Atchison.

You can kill a man with a tenement as easily as with an ax.—Jacob Riis.

Our foreign colonies are to a large extent in the cities of our own country. To live in one of these foreign communities is actually to live on foreign soil. The thoughts, feelings, and traditions which belong to the mental life of the colony are often entirely alien to an American.—Robert Hunter.

The vastness of the problem of the city slum, and the impossibility, even with unlimited resources of men and money, of permanently raising the standards of living of many of our immigrants as long as they are crowded together, and as long as the stream of newer immigrants pours into these same slums, has naturally forced itself upon the minds of thinking persons.—Robert D. Ward[Pg 195].

I. The Evils of Environment

As is the city, so will the nation be. The tendencies all seem to be toward steady concentration in great centers. The evils of congestion do not deter the thronging multitudes. The attractions of the city are irresistible, even to those who exist in the most wretched conditions. The tenement districts baffle description, yet nothing is more difficult than to get their miserable occupants to leave their fetid and squalid surroundings for the country. To the immigrants the city is a magnet. Here they find colonies of their own people, and prize companionship more than comfort. "Folks is more company than stumps," said an old woman in the slums to Dr. Schauffler. In the great cities the immigrants are massed, and this constitutes a most perplexing problem. If tens of thousands of foreigners could somehow be gotten out of New York, Boston, Chicago, and other cities, and be distributed where they are needed and could find work and homes, immigration would cause far less anxiety. But when the immigrant[Pg 196] prefers New York or Chicago, what authority shall remove him to Louisiana or Oklahoma?

The foreigner is in the city; he will chiefly stay there; and the question is what can be done to improve his city environment; for the perils to which we refer are primarily due not to the foreigner himself but to the evil and vice-breeding conditions in which he has to exist. These imperil him and make him a peril in turn. The overcrowded tenements and slums, the infection of long-entrenched corruption, the absence of light, fresh air, and playgrounds for the children, the unsanitary conditions and exorbitant rents, the political heelers teaching civic corruption, the saloons with their attendant temptations to vice and crime, the fraudulent naturalization—these work together upon the immigrant, for his undoing and thus to the detriment of the nation. When we permit such an environment to exist, and practically force the immigrant into it because we do not want him for a next-door neighbor, we can hardly condemn him for forming foreign colonies which maintain foreign customs and are impervious to American influences. It has too long been the common practice to lay everything to the foreigner. Would it not be fairer and more Christian to distribute the blame, and assume that part of it which belongs to us. In the study of the facts contained in this chapter, put yourself persistently in the place of the immi[Pg 197]grant, suddenly introduced into the conditions here pictured, and ask yourself what you would probably be and become in like circumstances.

How the other half lives is not the only mystery. How little the so-called upper-ten know how the lower-ninety live. And how little you and I, who are fortunate to count ourselves in the next upper-twenty, perhaps, know how the under-seventy exist and think and do. If only the more fortunate thirty per cent. knew of the exact conditions under which a large proportion of men, women, and children carry on the pitiful struggle for mere existence, there would be an irresistible demand for betterment. Every Christian ought to know the wrongs of our civilization, in order that he may help to right them. This glimpse beneath the surface of the city should stir us out of comfortable complacency and give birth in us to the impulse that leads to settlement and city mission work, and to civic reform movements. The young men and women of America must create a public sentiment that will demolish the slums, and erect in their places model tenements; that will tear down the rookeries, root out the saloons and dens of vice, and provide the children with playgrounds and breathing space. And this work will be directly in the line of Americanizing and evangelizing the immigrants, for they are chiefly the occupants and victims of the tenements and the slums.[Pg 198]

New York is a city in America but is hardly an American city. Nor is any other of our great cities, except perhaps Philadelphia. Boston is an Irish city, Chicago is a German-Scandinavian-Polish city, Saint Louis is a German city, and New York is a Hebrew-German-Irish-Italian-Bohemian-Hungarian city—a cosmopolitan race conglomeration. Eighteen languages are spoken in a single block. In Public School No. 29 no less than twenty-six nationalities are represented. This indicates the complicated problem.

New York is the chief Jewish capital. Of the 760,000 Jews on Manhattan, about 450,000 are Russian, and they overcrowd the East Side ghetto. In that quarter the signs are in Hebrew, the streets are markets, the shops are European, the men, women, and children speak in Yiddish, and all faces bear the foreign and Hebrew mark plainly upon them.

Go on a little further and you find that you are in Little Italy, quite distinct from Jewry, but not less foreign. Here the names on the signs are Italian, and the atmosphere is redolent with the fumes of Italy. The hurdy-gurdy vies with the push-cart, the streets are full of children and women, and you are as a stranger in a strange land. You would not be in a more distinctively Italian section if you were by magic transplanted to Naples or Genoa.

A Group of Immigrants Just Arrived at Ellis Island

Nor is it simply the East Side in lower[Pg 199] New York that is so manifestly foreign. Go where you will on Manhattan Island and you will see few names on business signs that do not betray their foreign derivation. Two out of every three persons you meet will be foreign. You will see the Italian gangs cleaning the streets, the Irish will control the motor of your trolley-car and collect your fares, the policeman will be Irish or German, the waiters where you dine will be French or German, Italian or English, the clerks in the vast majority of the shopping places will be foreign, the people you meet will constantly remind you of the rarity of the native American stock. You are ready to believe the statement that there are in New York more persons of German descent than of native descent, and more Germans than in any city of Germany except Berlin. Here are nearly twice as many Irish as in Dublin, about as many Jews as in Warsaw, and more Italians than in Naples or Venice. In government, in sentiment, in practice, as in population (thirty-seven per cent. foreign-born and eighty per cent. of foreign birth or parentage), the metropolis is predominantly foreign, and in elections the foreign vote, shrewdly manipulated for the most part, controls.Other Foreign Cities Nor is this true of New York alone. In thirty-three of our largest cities the foreign population is larger than the native; in Milwaukee and Fall River the foreign percentage rises as high as eighty-five[Pg 200] per cent. In all these cities the foreign colonies are as distinct and practically as isolated socially as though they were in Russia or Poland, Italy or Hungary. Foreign in language, customs, habits, and institutions, these colonies are separated from each other, as well as from the American population, by race, customs, and religion.

To believe that this makes no particular difference so far as the development of our national life is concerned is to shut one's eyes to obvious facts. As such an impartial and intelligent student of our institutions as Mr. James Bryce has pointed out, the conspicuous failure of democracy in America thus far is seen in the bad government of our great cities. And it is in these centers that the mass of the immigrants learn their first and often last lessons of American life.

The strong tendency of immigrants is to settle in or near the ports of entry. Where in the great cities do these newcomers find a dwelling place? What will their first lessons in American life be? If we deal largely with New York, it is simply because here are the typical conditions and here the larger proportion of arrivals. Once admitted at Ellis Island, the alien is free to go where he will; or rather, where he can, for his place of residence is restricted, after all. If he is an Italian, he will naturally and almost of necessity go to one of the Little Italies; if a Jew, to the ghetto of the East Side; if a Bohemian, to Little[Pg 201] Bohemia; and so on. In other words, he will go, naturally and almost inevitably, to the colonies which tend to perpetuate race customs and prejudices, and to prevent assimilation. Worse yet, these colonies are in the tenement and slum districts, the last environment of all conceivable in which this raw material of American citizenship should be placed.

II. Tenement-House Life

To those who have not made personal investigation, the present conditions, in spite of laws and efforts to ameliorate the worst evils, are well nigh unbelievable. The cellar population, the blind alley population, the swarming masses in buildings that are little better than rat-traps, the herding of whole families in single rooms, in which the miserable beings sleep, eat, cook, and make clothing for contractors, or cigars that would never go into men's mouths if the men saw where they were made—these things seem almost impossible in a civilized and Christian land. It is horrible to be obliged to think of the human misery and hopelessness and grind to which hundreds of thousands are subjected in the city of New York day in and out, without rest or change. It is no wonder that criminals and degenerates come from these districts; it is a marvel, rather, that so few result, and that so much of human kindness and goodness exists in[Pg 202] spite of crushing conditions. There is a bright as well as dark side even to the most disgraceful districts; but there is no denying that the dark vastly predominates, and that the struggle for righteousness is too hard for the average human being. Nearly everything is against the peasant immigrant thrust into the throng which has no welcome for him, no decent room, and yet from which he has little chance to get away. He is commonly cleaner morally when he lands than after six months of the life here. Why should he not be? What has American Christianity done to safeguard or help him?

The existence of the tenement-house evils, it must be borne in mind, is chargeable primarily to the owner and landlord, not to the foreign occupant. The landlords are especially to blame for the ill consequences. The immigrant cannot dictate terms or conditions. He has to go where he can. The prices charged for rent are exorbitant, and should secure decency and healthful quarters. No property is so remunerative. This rent money is literally blood money in thousands of instances, and yet every effort to improve things is bitterly fought. Why should not socialism and anarchism grow in such environment? Of course many of the immigrants are familiar with poor surroundings and do not apparently object to dirt and crowding. But that does not make these conditions less perilous to American[Pg 203] life. Self-respect has a hard struggle for survival in these sections, and if the immigrant does not possess or loses that, he is of the undesirable class. Mr. Robert Hunter makes the statement that no other city in the world has so many dark and windowless rooms, or so many persons crowded on the acre, or so many families deprived of light and air as New York. He says there are 360,000 dark rooms in Greater New York. And these are almost entirely occupied by the foreigners. But unsanitary conditions prevail also in all the cities, large and small, and especially in the mine and mill and factory towns, wherever large masses of the poorest workers live.

Concerning possible legislation to correct these city evils of environment, Mr. Sargent says: "So far as the overcrowding in city tenements is concerned, municipal ordinances in our large cities prescribing the amount of space which rapacious landlords should, under penalties sufficiently heavy to enforce obedience, be required to give each tenant, would go far toward attaining the object in view. Whether such a plan could be brought into existence through the efforts of our general government, or whether the Congress could itself legislate directly, upon sanitary and moral grounds, against the notorious practice of housing aliens with less regard for health and comfort than is shown in placing brute animals in pens, the Bureau is unprepared to say.[Pg 204]

It is, however, convinced that no feature of the immigration question so insistently demands public attention and effective action. The evil to be removed is one that is steadily and rapidly on the increase, and its removal will strike at the root of fraudulent elections, poverty, disease, and crime in our large cities, and on the other hand largely supply that increasing demand for labor to develop the natural resources of our country."[71]

Not to draw the picture all in the darker shades, let us look at the best type of Italian tenement life. We are not left to guesswork in the matter. Settlement workers and students of social questions are actually living in the tenement and slum sections, so as to know by experience and not hearsay. One of these investigators, Mrs. Lillian W. Betts, author of two enlightening books,[72] has lived for a year in one of the most crowded tenements in one of the most densely populated sections of the Italian quarter. We condense some of her statements, which reveal the foreign life of to-day in New York's Little Italy, with its 400,000 souls.

"A year's residence in an Italian tenement taught me first of all the isolation of a foreign quarter; how completely cut off one may be from everything that makes New York New York. The necessities of life can be bought without leaving the square that is your home. After a[Pg 205] little it occasioned no surprise to meet grandparents whose own children were born in New York, who had never crossed to the east side of the Bowery, never seen Broadway, nor ever been south of Houston Street. There was no reason why they should go. Every interest in their life centered within four blocks. I went with a neighbor to Saint Vincent's Hospital, where her husband had been taken. I had to hold her hand in the cars, she was so terrified. She had lived sixteen years in this ward and never been on a street-car before. Of a family of five sons and two daughters, besides the parents, in this country fifteen years, none spoke English but the youngest, born here, and she indifferently. Little Italy was all of America they knew, and of curiosity they had none.

"The house in which we lived was built for twenty-eight families and occupied by fifty-six. One man who had been in the country twenty-eight years could not speak or understand a word of English. Nothing but compulsion made his children use Italian, and the result was pathetic. The eldest child was an enthusiastic American, and the two civilizations were always at war. This boy knew more of American history, its heroes and poetry, than anyone of his age I ever met. This boy had never been five blocks from the house in which we lived. He removed his hat and shoes when he went to bed in winter; in[Pg 206] summer he took off his coat. A brother and two sisters shared the folding bed with him. His father hired the three rooms and sublet to a man with a wife and three children. The women quarreled all the time, but worked in the same room, finishing trousers and earning about forty-five cents a day each.

"How do they live? One widow, with three in her own family, took nine men boarders in her three rooms. A nephew and his wife also kept house there, the rent being $18 a month. Another neighbor, whose family consisted of four adults and two children, had seven lodgers or boarders at one time. These men owned mattresses, rolled up by day, spread on the floor at night. One of them had a bride coming from Italy. Two men with their mattresses were ejected and space made for the ornate brass and green bedstead. The wedding was the occasion of great rejoicing. Next day the bride was put to work sewing 'pants.' At the end of a month I found she had not left those rooms from the moment she entered them, and that she worked, Sundays included, fourteen hours a day. She was a mere child, at that. The Italian woman is not a good housekeeper, but she is a homemaker; she does not fret; dirt, disorder, noise, company, never disturb her. She must share everything with those about her. She cooks one meal a day and that at night. Pot or pan may be placed[Pg 207] in the middle of the table and each may help himself from it, but the food is what her husband wants.

"Together they will wash the dishes or he will take the baby out. The mother, who has sewed all day, will wash till midnight, while the husband sits dozing, smoking, talking. But he hangs out the clothes. They work together, these Italian husbands and wives. Their wants are the barren necessaries of life; shelter, food, clothing to cover nakedness. The children's clothes are washed when they go to bed. Life is reduced to its lowest terms. They can move as silently as do the Arabs and do so in the night watches. But they are rarely penniless; they have a little fund always in the bank. They put their young children in institutions from weaning-time until they are old enough to work, then bring them home to swell the family income. Recently a father, whose children had thus been cared for by the state, bought a three-story tenement. This is typical thrift. There was never a day when all the children of school age were in school. School was a prison house to most of them. There was not room for them, even if they wanted to go.

"The streets in which the Italians live are the most neglected. It is claimed that cleanliness is impossible where the Italian lives. The truth is that preparation for cleanliness in our foreign[Pg 208] colonies is wholly inadequate. The police despise the Italian except for his voting power. He feels the contempt, but with the wisdom of his race he keeps his crimes foreign, and defies this department more successfully than the public generally knows. He is a peaceable citizen in spite of the peculiar race crimes which startle the public. The criminals are as one to a thousand of these people. On Sundays watch these colonies. The streets are literally packed with crowds from house line to house line, as far as the eye can see, but not a policeman in sight, nor occasion for one. Laughter, song, discussion, exchange of epithet, but no disturbance. They mind their own business as no other nation, and carry it to the point of crime when they protect the criminal."[73]

This is testimony directly from life and has especial value. It reveals the difficulties, and at the same time the possibilities, of reaching and Americanizing these immigrants, who are better than their surroundings, and promising if properly cared for.

The impression that steadily deepens with observation and study is that of the evil and degrading surroundings. Not only are there the evil moral influences of overcrowding, but also the contact with elements of population already deteriorated by a generation of tenement house[Pg 209] life. The fresh arrivals are thrown into contact with the corrupt remnants of Irish immigration which now make up the beggars, drunkards, thugs, and thieves of those quarters. The results can easily be predicted. The Italian laboring population is temperate when it comes to this country; but under the evil conditions and influences of the tenement district disorderly resorts have been opened, and drinking and other vices are spreading. The Hebrews show tendencies to vices from which formerly they were free. The law does not protect these immigrants, and it is charged that the city permits every kind of inducement for the extension of immorality, drunkenness, and crime. Thus the immigrant is likely to deteriorate and degenerate in the process of Americanization, instead of becoming better in this new world. He has indeed little chance. If he does not become a pauper or criminal or drunkard, it will be because he is superior to his environment.

III. The Sweat-shop Peril

An immigrant peril is the sweat-shop labor which this class performs. "Sweating" is the system of sub-contract wherein the work is let out to contractors to be done in small shops or at home. According to the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, "in practice sweating consists of the farming out by competing manufacturers to[Pg 210] competing contractors of the material for garments, which in turn is distributed among competing men and women to be made up." This system is opposed to the factory system, where the manufacturer employs his own workmen, sees the goods made, and knows the conditions. The sweating system is one of the iniquities of commercial greed, and the helpless foreigner of certain classes is its victim. The contractor or sweater in our cities is an organizer and employer of immigrants. His success depends upon getting the cheapest help, and life is of no account to him, nor apparently to the man above him. The clothing may be made in foul and damp and consumption or fever-infested cellars and tenement-styes, by men, women and children sick or uncleanly, but the only care of the sweater is that it be made cheaply and thus his returns be secured. It is a standing reproach to our Christian civilization that the sweating system and the slums are still existing sores in American centers of population. So far the law has been unable to control or check greed, and the plague spots grow worse. Here is a typical case, taken from the report of the Industrial Commission:

An Italian Family Crowded in a
New York Tenement

"A Polish Jew in Chicago, at a time when very few of the Poles were tailors, opened a shop in a Polish neighborhood. He lost money during the time he was teaching the people the trade, but finally was a gainer. Before he opened the shop[Pg 211] he studied the neighborhood; he found the very poorest quarters where most of the immigrant Poles lived. He took no one to work except the newly arrived Polish women and girls. The more helpless and dependent they were, the more sure of getting work from him. In speaking about his plans he said: 'It will take these girls years to learn English and to learn how to go about and find work. In that way I will be able to get their labor very cheap.' His theory turned out to be practical. He has since built several tenement-houses."

The cheap tailor business is divided among the Italians, Russians, Poles, and Swedes, Germans and Bohemians. The women and children are made to work, and hours are not carefully counted. Long work, poor food, poor light, foul air, bad sanitation—all make this kind of life far worse than any life which the immigrants knew in Europe. Better physical starvation there than the mental and spiritual blight of these modern conditions here. That so much of hopeful humanity is found in these unwholesome and congested wards proves the quality worth saving and elevating.

Here is an illustration of the resolute spirit which conditions cannot crush. A young Polish girl was brought by her widowed mother to America, in hope of bettering their condition. The mother died soon afterward, leaving the[Pg 212] orphan dependent. Then came the disappointments, one after another, and finally, the almost inevitable result in such cases, the fall into the slums and the sweat-shops. By hard work six days in the week, fourteen or more hours a day, this girl of tender age could make $4 a week! She had to get up at half past five every morning and make herself a cup of coffee, which with a bit of bread and sometimes fruit made her breakfast. Listen to her story:

"The machines go like mad all day, because the faster you work the more money you get. Sometimes in my haste the finger gets caught and the needle goes right through it. We all have accidents like that. Sometimes a finger has to come off.... For the last two winters I have been going to night school. I have learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. I can read quite well in English now, and I look at the newspapers every day. I am going back to night school again this winter. Some of the women in my class are more than forty years of age. Like me, they did not have a chance to learn anything in the old country. It is good to have an education; it makes you feel higher. Ignorant people are all low. People say now that I am clever and fine in conversation. There is a little expense for charity, too. If any worker is injured or sick we all give money to help."[74][Pg 213]

Surely this is good material. A changed and Christian environment would make shining lights out of these poor immigrants, who are kept in the subways of American life, instead of being given a fair chance out in the open air and sunlight of decently paid service.

Practically all of the work in tenements is carried on by foreign-born men and women, and more than that, by the latest arrivals and the lowest conditioned of the foreign-born. Tenement-house legislation has been practically forced upon New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, whose ports of entry receive the first impact of immigration, by two of the races that have been crowding into the cities—the Italian and Hebrew. The Italian woman, working in her close tenement, has by her cheap labor almost driven out all other nationalities from that class of work still done in the home, the hand sewing on coats and trousers. Of the 20,000 licenses granted by the New York factory inspector for "home finishing" in New York City, ninety-five per cent. are held by Italians. This work has to be done because the husband is not making enough to support the family. These men work mostly as street laborers, hucksters, and peddlers. To make both ends meet not only the wife but children have to work.

Here is a typical case of this class of worker and the earnings, from an inspector's note-book:[Pg 214] "Antonia Scarafino, 235 Mulberry Street; finisher; gets five cents per pair pants, bastes bottoms, puts linings on; one hour to make; two years at this business; four in this country; married, with baby; sister works with her; can both together make $4 per week; husband peddles fish and makes only $1 to $2 a week; got married here; two rooms, $8.50 rent; kitchen 10 x 12; bedroom 8 x 10; gets all the work she wants. No sunlight falls into her squalid rooms, and there is no stopping, from early morning till late at night."

IV. Three Constant Perils

Illegal and fraudulent naturalization is another evil to which the foreigner in the city becomes a party, although the blame belongs chiefly to the ward politicians who make him a particeps criminis. The recognized managers of the foreign vote of various nationalities—almost always saloonkeepers—hold citizenship cheap, perjury undiscovered as good as truth, and every vote a clear gain for the party and themselves. So the naturalization mills are kept running night and day preceding a national or municipal election. Describing this process, ex-United States Senator Chandler says that in New York during a single month just before election about seven thousand naturalization papers were issued, nearly all by one judge, who examined each applicant and[Pg 215] witnesses to his satisfaction, and signed his orders at the rate of two per minute, and as many as 618 in one day. Many classes of frauds were committed. Witnesses were professional perjurers, each swearing in hundreds of cases, testifying to a five years' residence when they had first met the applicants only a few hours before. During the past year some of these professional perjurers and political manipulators were tried and sent to the penitentiary; but the frauds will go on. Here is an illustration:

"Patrick Hefferman, of a given street in New York, was twenty-one years old September 2, 1891, and came to this country August 1, 1888. He was naturalized October 20, 1891. On that day he was introduced by Thomas Keeler to a stranger, who went with him to court and signed a paper; they both went before the judge, who asked the stranger something. Hefferman signed nothing, said nothing, but kissed a book and came out a citizen, having taken no oath except that of renunciation and allegiance."

Thus are the sacred rights of citizenship obtained by thousands upon thousands, not in New York alone, but in all our cities. More than that, fraudulent use is freely made of naturalization papers. The Italian immigrant, for example, finds his vote is wanted, and obtains a false paper. He returns to Italy to spend his earnings, and there is offered a sum of money for the use[Pg 216] of his papers. These are given to an emigrant who probably could not pass the examination at Ellis Island, but who as a naturalized citizen, if he is not detected in the fraud, cannot be shut out. Then he sends the papers back to Italy. It is admitted that there is a regular traffic in naturalization papers. In every way the alien is put on the wrong track, and his American experiences are such as would naturally make him lawless and criminal rather than a good citizen. He needs nothing more than protection against corrupting and venal agencies, which find their origin in politics and the saloon.

The foreign element furnishes the saloons with victims. In his graphic book describing tenement life in New York Mr. Riis shows the rapid multiplication of the saloons in the slums where the foreigners are crowded into tenements, nine per cent. more densely packed than the most densely populated districts of London. In the chapter, "The Reign of Rum,"[75] he says:

"'Where God builds a church the devil builds next door a saloon' is an old saying that has lost its point in New York. Either the devil was on the ground first, or he has been doing a good deal more in the way of building. I tried once to find out how the account stood, and counted to 111 Protestant churches, chapels, and places of worship of every kind below Fourteenth Street,[Pg 217] 4,065 saloons. The worst half of the tenement population lives down there, and it has to this day the worst half of the saloons. Up town the account stands a little better, but there are easily ten saloons to every church to-day.

"As to the motley character of the tenement population, when I asked the agent of a notorious Fourth Ward alley how many people might be living in it, I was told: One hundred and forty families—one hundred Irish, thirty-eight Italian, and two that spoke the German tongue. Barring the agent herself, there was not a native-born individual in the court. The answer was characteristic of the cosmopolitan character of lower New York, very nearly so of the whole of it, wherever it runs to alleys and courts. One may find for the asking an Italian, German, French, African, Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish, and Chinese colony. The one thing you shall ask for in vain in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community."

The immigrant is nearly always poor, and is thrust into the poverty of the city. We must distinguish between pauperism and poverty. As Mr. Hunter points out, in his stirring chapter on this subject,[76] "pauperism is dependence without shame, poverty is to live miserable we know not why, to have the dread of hunger, to work[Pg 218] sore and yet gain nothing." Fear of pauperism, of the necessity of accepting charity, drives the self-respecting poor insane and to suicide. It is to be said that the majority of the immigrants are not paupers, but self-respecting poor. Moreover, the new immigration is not nearly so ready to accept pauperism as are the Irish, who make up the largest percentage of this class, as already shown. But the poor immigrants are compelled, by circumstances, to come in contact with, if not to dwell directly among this pauper element, lost to sense of degradation. The paupers make up the slums. And because the rents are cheaper in the miserable old rookeries that still defy public decency, the Italians especially crowd into these pestilential quarters, which are the hotbeds of disease, physical and moral filth, drunkenness, and crime. Thus pauperism and poverty dwell too closely together.

Upon the unskilled masses the weight of want is constantly pressing. Unemployment, sickness, the least stoppage of the scant income, means distress. It is estimated that in our country not less than 4,000,000 persons are dependents or paupers, and not less than 10,000,000 are in poverty. This means that they cannot earn enough regularly to maintain the standard of life that means the highest efficiency, and that at some time they are liable to need aid. Mr. Riis has shown that about one third of the people[Pg 219] of New York City were dependent upon charity at some time during the eight years previous to 1890. The report of the United Hebrew Charities for 1901 shows similar conditions existing among the Jewish population of New York. Pauperism is a peril, and poverty is a source of apathy and despair. The unskilled immigrant tends to increase the poverty by creating a surplus of cheap labor, and also falls under the blight of the evil he increases.

Treating of this subject, the Charities Association of Boston reports that it is hopeless to attempt to relieve pauperism so long as its ranks are increased by the great hosts coming into the country, with only a few dollars to depend upon, and no certain work. The statistics of the public almshouses show that the proportion of foreign-born is greatly in excess of the native-born. The pathetic feature of this condition is that what is wanted is not charity but employment at living wages. Greatly is it to the credit of the immigrants from southeastern Europe that they are eager for work and reluctant to accept charity. The danger is that, if allowed to come and then left without opportunity to work, they will of necessity fall into the careless, shiftless, vicious class, already so large and dangerous.

The immigrants in the city tenements are especially exposed to consumption, that "Great White[Pg 220] Plague" which yearly kills its tens of thousands. In New York City alone ten thousand die annually of tuberculosis; and this is the result largely of tenement conditions. Statisticians estimate that the annual money loss in the United States from tuberculosis, counting the cost of nursing, food, medicines, and attendance, as well as the loss of productive labor, is $330,000,000. Mr. Hunter instances a case where an entire family was wiped out by this disease within two years and a half. In spite of his efforts to get the father, who was the first one infected with the disease, to go to a hospital, he refused, saying that as he had to die, he was going to die with his family. The Health Board said it had no authority forcibly to compel the man to go to a hospital; and the result was that the whole family died with him. This plague "is the result of our weakness, our ignorance, our selfishness, and our vices; there is no need of its existence, and it is the duty of the state to stamp it out." That is Mr. Hunter's conclusion, with which we heartily agree.

V. The Cry of the Children

Another peril of the city, and of the entire country as well, that comes through the foreigners is child neglect and labor; which means illiteracy, stunted body and mind, and often wreckage of life. Every foreign neighborhood is full[Pg 221] of children, and sad enough is the average child of poverty. What makes the tenement district of the great city so terrible to you as you go into it is the sight of the throngs of children, who know little of home as you know it, have irregular and scanty meals, and surroundings of intemperance, dirt, foul atmosphere and speech, disease and vice. No wonder the police in these districts say that their worst trouble arises from the boys and the gangs of young "toughs." There is every reason for this unwholesome product. Mr. Hunter says there are not less than half a million children in Greater New York whose only playground is the street. Result, the street gang; and this gang is the really vital influence in the life of most boys in the large cities. It is this life, which develops, as Mr. Riis says, "dislike of regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, gambling propensities, absence of energy, and carelessness of the happiness of others." The great homeless, yardless tenement, where the children of the immigrants are condemned to live, is the nursery of sickness and crime. The child is left for good influence to the school, the settlement, or the mission. For the enormous amount of juvenile crime in the city, which it requires a special court to deal with, the conditions are more responsible than the children, or even than the parents, who are unable to maintain home life, and who, through[Pg 222] the pinch of poverty or the impulse of avarice, give over the education of the children to school or street. Here is a picture of the life on its darker side:

"Crowded in the tenements where the bedrooms are small and often dark, where the living room is also a kitchen, a laundry, and often a garment-making shop, are the growing children whose bodies cry out for exercise and play. They are often an irritant to the busy mother, and likely as not the object of her carping and scolding. The teeming tenements open their doors, and out into the dark passageways and courts, through foul alleys and over broken sidewalks, flow ever renewed streams of playing children. Under the feet of passing horses, under the wheels of passing street-cars, jostled about by the pedestrian, driven on by the policeman, they annoy everyone. They crowd about the music or drunken brawls in the saloons, they play hide-and-seek about the garbage boxes, they shoot 'craps' in the alleys, they seek always and everywhere activity, movement, life."[77]

But worse than this picture is that of childhood in the sweat-shop, the factory, the mine, and other places of employment. Mr. Hunter has written a chapter on "The Child"[78] that should be studied by every lover of humanity. Its facts ring out a clarion call for reform. This touches[Pg 223] our subject most closely because, as he says, "These evils of child life are doubly dangerous and serious because the mass of people in poverty in our cities are immigrants. The children of immigrants are a remarkable race of little ones."

Indeed they are, and they give you the bright side of the picture, in spite of all the evil conditions in which they live. The present writer stood recently opposite the entrance to a public school in the congested East Side, where not one of all the thousand or more of scholars was of native stock. As the crowds of little girls poured out at noontime their faces made a fascinating study. The conspicuous thing about them was the smile and fun and brightness. The dress was of every description, and one of the merriest-faced of all had on one shoe and one rubber in place of the second shoe; but from the faces you would never suspect into what kind of places these children were about to go for all they know of home. The hope lies in the children, and the schools are their great blessing and outlet, even if as Mrs. Betts says, many of them of certain classes do not think so. Mr. Hunter says:

"They are to become Americans, and through them, more than through any other agency, their own parents are being led into a knowledge of American ways and customs. All the statistics available prove that vice and crime are far more common among the children of immigrants than[Pg 224] among the children of native parentage, and this is due no less to the yardless tenement and street playground than to widespread poverty. In a mass of cases the father and mother both work in that feverish, restless way of the new arrival, ambitious to get ahead. To overcome poverty they must neglect their children. Turned out of the small tenement into the street, the child learns the street. Nothing escapes his sharp eyes, and almost in the briefest conceivable time, he is an American ready to make his way by every known means, good and bad. To the child everything American is good and right. There comes a time when the parents cannot guide him or instruct him; he knows more than they; he looks upon their advice as of no value. If ever there was a self-made man, that man is the son of the immigrant. But the street and the street gang have a great responsibility; they are making the children of a hundred various languages from every part of the world into American citizens."

How long will American Christianity allow this process of degeneracy to go on, before realizing the peril of it, and providing the counteracting agencies of good? That is the question the young people ought to consider and help answer.

But far worse than all else, "the nation is engaged in a traffic for the labor of children." In this country over 1,700,000 children under fifteen are compelled to work in the factories,[Pg 225] mines, workshops, and fields. These figures may mean little, for as Margaret McMillan has said, "You cannot put tired eyes, pallid cheeks, and languid little limbs into statistics." But we believe that if our Christian people could be brought for one moment to realize what the inhumanity of this child labor is, there would be such an avalanche of public opinion as would put a stop to it. This evil is a new one in America, begotten of greed for money. This greed is shared jointly by the capitalist employer and the parents, but the greater responsibility rests upon the former, who creates the possibility and fosters the evil.

The immigrants furnish the parents willing to sell their children into child slavery in the factory, or the worse mill or mine—prisons all, and for the innocent. Into these prisons gather "tens of thousands of children, strong and happy, or weak, underfed, and miserable. Stop their play once for all, and put them out to labor for so many cents a day or night, and pace them with a tireless, lifeless piece of mechanism, for ten or twelve hours at a stretch, and you will have a present-day picture of child labor." But there is yet one thing which must be added to the picture. Give the child-slave worker a tenement for a home in the filthy streets of an ordinary factory city, with open spaces covered with tin cans, bottles, old shoes, garbage, and other waste, the gutters running sewers, and the air foul with[Pg 226] odors and black with factory smoke, and the picture is fairly complete. It is a dark picture, but hardly so dark as the reality, and if one were to describe "back of the yards" in Chicago, or certain mill towns or mining districts, the picture would be even darker than the one given.

Think of it, young people of Christian America! In the twentieth century, in the country we like to think the most enlightened in the world, after all our boasted advancements in civilization, child slavery—more pitiful in some respects than African slavery ever was—has its grip on the nation's childhood.

The record is amazing to one who has never thought about this subject. Easily a hundred thousand children at work in New York, in all sorts of employments unsuitable and injurious. Try to realize these totals, taken from Mr. Hunter, of children under fifteen, compelled to work in employments generally recognized as injurious: Over 7,000 in this country in laundries; nearly 2,000 in bakeshops; 367 in saloons as bartenders and other ways; over 138,000 at work as waiters and servants in hotels and restaurants, with long hours and conditions morally bad; 42,000 employed as messengers, with work hours often unlimited and temptations leading to immorality and vice; 20,000 in stores; 2,500 on the railroads; over 24,000 in mines and quarries; over 5,000 in glass factories; about 10,000 in[Pg 227] sawmills and the wood-working industries; over 7,500 in iron and steel mills; over 11,000 in cigar and tobacco factories; and over 80,000 in the silk and cotton and other textile mills.

Now, all of these industries are physically injurious to childhood. But more than this, schooling has been made impossible, and immorality, disease, and death reap a rich harvest from this seed-sowing. And why are these helpless children thus engaged and enslaved, stunted, crippled, and corrupted, deprived of education and a fair chance in life? Simply because their labor is cheap. Mr. Hunter speaks none too strongly when he calls this "murder, cannibalism, destruction of soul and body." And it is the children of the immigrants who are thus sacrificed to Mammon, the pitiless god of greed. Shall our Christian young people have no voice in righting this wrong? Within a generation they can put an end to it, if they will. Here is home missionary work at hand, calling for highest endeavors.[Pg 228]

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER VI

Aim: To See Clearly the Dangers Arising from Congestion of Foreigners in our Cities, and the Best Ways of Guarding against Them

I. Foreigners in Cities.

1. What are the chief causes of the following: (1) the rapid growth of great cities; (2) the existence of slums; (3) the settling of immigrants in colonies?

2. Is your knowledge of the lives of the poor sufficient to move you to work for their redemption? Are any of those persons, about whom we have studied, your neighbors?

3. Is the prevailing tone of New York and other cities American or Foreign? Give illustrations.

4. What is the prevailing tone in city government? Is there any connection between the answers of these last two questions?

II. Tenement-House Evils.

5. Where do most of the foreigners settle first in the United States? Of what races is the mass chiefly composed?

6. Describe the conditions under which they live. Do they find them so or make them so?

7. What remedies can be applied to tenement-house conditions? What do the workers among them think of the needs and prospects?

8. What can be done toward improvement by the family? the school? the city government?

III. Prevalent Abuses.

9. Do the slum conditions tend to contaminate new arrivals? Do they actually deteriorate?[Pg 229]

10. What is the worst industrial feature of the tenement-house districts? Describe its workings. Tell of some typical sweat-shop workers.

11. What political evils flourish in the congested districts?

12. What moral and social evils flourish in the congested districts?

IV. Effects upon the Poor and the Children.

13. What relation does immigration hold to pauperism and poverty? To conditions of health?

14. Name some of the principal authorities for the preceding answers? How would you answer those who disputed their statements?

15. Can you give any facts as to child labor? What do you think of the policy of employing children?

16. * Does this chapter convince you that Christians have a duty in these matters, and if so, what is it?

References for Advanced Study.—Chapter VI

I. New York Slums and Foreign Quarters.

Study especially the Ghetto, Little Italy, Little Hungary, et al. and find out whether similar conditions exist in cities of your section.

For New York, consult
University Settlement Studies, Vol. I, Nos. 3 and 4.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, X, XII.

For Chicago, consult
Hull House Papers.

For Boston, consult
Wood: Americans in Process, III, IV.
[Pg 230]

II. Measures for Relief of Slum Population.

Riis: The Battle With the Slum, V-XV.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, VI, VII, XXIV.

III. Connection between a Dense Foreign Population and Corruption in Politics.

Wood: Americans in Process, VI.

IV. Checks Put upon Industrial Oppression and Poverty.

Riis: The Peril and the Preservation of the Home.

V. Problems of Poverty and Childhood as Affected by Immigration.

Hunter: Poverty, I, V, VI.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, XV, XVII, XXI.
[Pg 231]

"To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely," said Burke. If there is to be patriotism, it must be a matter of pride to say, "Americanus sum"—I am an American.—Professor Mayo-Smith.

[Pg 232]

VII

IMMIGRATION AND THE NATIONAL CHARACTER

If that man who careth not for his own household is worse than an infidel, the nation which permits its institutions to be endangered by any cause that can fairly be removed, is guilty, not less in Christian than in natural law. Charity begins at home; and while the people of the United States have gladly offered an asylum to millions upon millions of the distressed and unfortunate of other lands and climes, they have no right to carry their hospitality one step beyond the line where American institutions, the American rate of wages, the American standard of living are brought into serious peril. Our highest duty to charity and to humanity is to make this great experiment here, of free laws and educated labor, the most triumphant success that can possibly be attained. In this way we shall do far more for Europe than by allowing its slums and its vast stagnant reservoirs of degraded peasantry to be drained off upon our soil.—General Francis A. Walker.

If the hope which this country holds out to the human race of permanent and stable government is to be impaired by the enormous and unregulated inroad of poverty and ignorance, which changed conditions of transportation have brought upon us, then for the sake of Europe, as well as for the sake of America, the coming of these people should be checked and regulated until we can handle the problems that are already facing us.—Phillips Brooks.

There are certain fundamentals in every system, to destroy which destroys the system itself. Our institutions have grown up with us and are adapted to our national character and needs. To change them at the demand of agitators knowing nothing of that character and those needs would be absurd and destructive.—Professor Mayo-Smith[Pg 233].

I. Two Points of View

Immigration is a radically different problem from that of slavery, but not less vital to the Republic. It is a marvelous opportunity for a Christian nation, awake; but an unarmed invasion signifying destruction to the ideals and institutions of a free and nominally Christian nation, asleep. "The wise man's eyes are in his head," says Solomon, "but the fool walketh in darkness." In other words, the difference between the wise and otherwise is one of sight. While Americans are walking in the darkness of indifferentism and of an optimism born not of faith but ignorance, immigration is steadily changing the character of our civilization. We are face to face with the larger race problem—that of assimilating sixty nationalities and races. The problem will never be solved by minimizing or deriding or misunderstanding it.

All through this study we have sought to remember that there are two sides to every ques[Pg 234]tion, and two to every phase of this great immigration question. Especially is this true when we come to estimating effects upon character, for here we are in the domain of inference and of reasoning from necessarily limited knowledge. Here, too, temperament and bias play their part. One person learns that of every five persons you meet in New York four are of foreign birth or parentage, notes the change in personality, customs, and manners, and wonders how long our free institutions can stand this test of unrestricted immigration. Another answers that the foreigners are not so bad as they are often painted, and that the immorality in the most foreign parts of New York is less than in other parts.

A third says it is not fair to count the children of foreign-born parents as foreign; that they are in fact much stronger Americans in general than the native children of native parentage; and instances the flag-drills in the schools, in which the foreign children take the keenest delight, as they do in the study of American history. But a fourth says, with Professor Boyesen, that it takes generations of intelligent, self-restrained, and self-respecting persons to make a man fit to govern himself, and that if the ordinary tests of intelligence and morality amount to anything, it certainly would take three or four generations to educate these newcomers up to the level of American citizenship.[Pg 235]

One observer of present conditions says there is a lowered moral and political tone by reason of immigration; and another agrees with a leader in settlement work who recently said to the writer that he sees no reason to restrict immigration, that wages will take care of themselves and the foreigner steadily improve, and that there is in the younger foreign element a needed dynamic, a consciousness of Americanism, an interest in everything American in refreshing contrast to the laissez-faire type of native young person now so common. His conclusion, from contact with both types, is that the intenseness and enthusiasm of the foreign element will make the native element bestir itself or go under.

So opinions run, pro and con. There must be a mean between the two extremes—the one, that God is in a peculiar sense responsible for the future of the United States, and cannot afford to let our experiment of self-government fail, however foolish and reckless the people may be; and the other, that unless Congress speedily passes restrictive laws the destiny of our country will be imperiled beyond remedy. We find such a mean in that Americanization which includes evangelization as an essential part of the assimilating process.

Four Nationalities

Jewish Girl, Polack Girl
Italian Boy, Spanish Boy

As to the ubiquity of the foreigner all will agree. "Any foreigners in your neighborhood?" asked the writer of a friend in a remote country[Pg 236] hamlet. "O, yes," was the reply, "we have a colony of Italians." Of all such questions asked during months past not one has been answered in the negative. Go where you will, from Atlantic to Pacific Coast, the immigrant is there. In nineteen of the northern states of our Republic the number of the foreign-born and their immediate descendants exceeds the number of the native-born. In the largest cities the number is two thirds, and even three quarters. There are more Cohens than Smiths in the New York directory. Two thirds of the laborers in our factories are foreign-born or of foreign parentage. New England is no longer Puritan but foreign. So is it in the Middle and the Central West, and not only in city and town but hamlet and valley. The farms sanctified by many a Puritan prayer are occupied to-day by French-Canadian and Italian aliens. Foreigners are running our factories, working our mines, building our railways, boring our tunnels, doing the hard manual labor in all the great constructive enterprises of the nation. They are also entering all the avenues of trade, and few other than foreign names can be seen on the business signs in our cities large or small.

Not only do you find the foreigner, of one race or another, everywhere, but wherever you find him in any numbers you note that the most distinctive feature is the foreignism. The immi[Pg 237]grant readily catches the spirit of independence and makes the most of liberty. He is insistent upon his rights, but not always so careful about the rights of others. He is imitative, and absorbs the spirit of selfishness as quickly as do the native-born. He is often unkempt, uncultured, dirty, and disagreeable. He is also impressionable and changeable, responsive to kindness as he is resentful of contempt. He follows his own customs both on Sundays and week days. He knows as little about American ideas as Americans know about him. He is commonly apt to learn, and very much depends upon the kind of teaching he falls under. Much of it, unfortunately, has not been of the kind to make the American ideas and ways seem preferable to his own. Made to feel like an alien, he is likely to remain at heart an alien; whereas the very safety and welfare and Christian civilization of our country depend in no small degree upon transforming him into a true American. For upon this change hangs the answer to the question, which influence is to be strongest—ours upon the foreigner or the foreigner's upon us.

II. American Ideals

Surely this is a question to engage the attention of Christian patriots—the influence of this vast mass of undigested if not indigestible immigration upon the national character and life. A[Pg 238] most scholarly and valuable treatment of this subject is found in the discriminating work by Professor Mayo-Smith, one of the very best books written on the subject. The figures are out of date, but the principles so clearly enunciated are permanent, and the conclusions sane and sound. This is the way he opens up the subject we are now considering:

"The whole life of a nation is not covered by its politics and its economics. Civilization does not consist merely of free political institutions and material prosperity. The morality of a community, its observance of law and order, its freedom from vice, its intelligence, its rate of mortality and morbidity, its thrift, cleanliness, and freedom from a degrading pauperism, its observance of family ties and obligations, its humanitarian disposition and charity, and finally its social ideals and habits are just as much indices of its civilization as the trial by jury or a high rate of wages. These things are, in fact, the flower and fruit of civilization—in them consists the successful 'pursuit of happiness' which our ancestors coupled with life and liberty as the inalienable rights of a man worthy of the name.

"In order that we may take a pride in our nationality and be willing to make sacrifices for our country, it is necessary that it should satisfy in some measure our ideal of what a nation ought to be. What now are the characteristics of[Pg 239] American state and social life which we desire to see preserved? Among the most obvious are the following:

"All these are desirable traits; and as we look forward to the future of our commonwealth we should wish to see them preserved, and should deprecate influences tending to destroy the conditions under which they exist. Any such phenomenon as immigration, exerting wide and lasting influence, should be examined with great[Pg 240] care to see what its effect on these things will be."[79]

We should add to this thoughtful statement a clause concerning religion. A vital thing to be maintained and extended is the Protestant faith which formed the basis of our colonial and national life. No part of the subject should receive more careful scrutiny than the effect of immigration upon Protestant America. Whatever would make this country less distinctively Protestant in religion tends to destroy all the other social and civil characteristics which, it is well said, we wish to preserve.

When immigration began in the early years of the nineteenth century, the American people possessed a distinctive life and character of their own, differing in many respects from that of any other people. The easy amalgamation of the races that formed the colonial stock—English, Huguenot, Scotch, Dutch—had produced an American stock distinct from any in the Old World. The nation was practically homogeneous, and its social, religious, and political ideals and aims were distinct. That great changes have taken place in the past century no one will deny. The material expansion and development have not been more marked than the changes social and religious.

Just what part immigration has played in[Pg 241] producing these changes it is of course difficult to say with exactness, but unquestionably the part has been very great. The twenty-three millions of aliens admitted into the United States since 1820 brought their habits and customs and standards of living with them; brought also their religion or want of it; and it would be absurd to imagine that all of these millions had been Americanized, or, in other words, had given up their old ways for our ways of thinking and living. On the contrary, they have transported all sorts of political notions from monarchial countries to our soil. "The continental ideas of the Sabbath, the nihilist's ideas of government, the communist's ideas of property, the pagan's ideas of religion—all these mingle in our air with the ideas that shaped the men at Plymouth Rock and Valley Forge," that adorned hill, dale and prairie with Christian church and Christian school, and made possible the building of free America.

As we have seen, the immigrants have mostly represented the peasant or lower classes of the countries whence they came. This is noted, not in the way of prejudice, but because it is always true that mortality is greater, and crime, illiteracy, and pauperism are more prevalent among the lower classes. Of course it is also true that if the higher classes had come from foreign lands they would have made an addition to the social life quite different from that which did come.[Pg 242] The average character of the immigration, however favorable, required raising in order to meet the American level. In the new environment it was to be expected that large numbers of individuals among the immigrants would rise to prominence and influence, and this has been the case. The country owes large debt to the immigrants of earlier days. Their children and descendants are loyal Americans. It is true, on the other hand, that many have come from unfortunate conditions in the Old World only to fall into quite as unfortunate ones in the New; and they and their descendants have swollen the pauper and criminal class. The statistics prove that a large proportion of our criminals and convicts are of foreign birth. It is still more significant to note that, in the opinion of expert observers, the first generation of foreign-born parentage, in the cities at least, make a worse record than the migrating parents.

If this be so, the new environment is producing deterioration and degeneracy instead of improvement. An Italian of education, working among his people, told the writer that the Italian boys and girls born here, or coming at a very early age, were much more lawless and disorderly and difficult to deal with than their fathers and mothers. They had imbibed all the worst features of our life, its independence, its defiance of parental authority, its selfishness, rudeness,[Pg 243] and vices, while they lacked the reverence, courtesy, and spirit of obedience native to the Italian-born. This is substantiated by many witnesses who have labored among the foreign element. The Americanization these children are getting is largely of the worst type—the type that we should like to see emigrate to European countries. And it is confined to no one race, but common to all. Professor Boyesen, for instance, a Norwegian-American, who blamed the ideas gained in the public schools for some of the results seen in the young hoodlums and roughs of foreign parentage, said that worthy German and Scandinavian fathers complained bitterly that they could not govern their children in this country. Their sons took to the streets, and if disciplined left home entirely; and they attributed this to the spirit of irresponsible independence in the air. This is perhaps one of the inevitable penalties of individual liberty.

III. Various Effects of Immigration

The introduction through immigration of a lower standard of living has been shown in preceding chapters. The point to be appreciated is that in this matter we are not dealing with the immigration of individual paupers and cheap workingmen, but with the influx of whole classes that threaten to degrade our material civilization. There are in America entire communities which[Pg 244] live on a different plane, and form colonies as foreign to American ideas and life as anything in Europe can show. They have organized their own social life and fixed their own standards, instead of rising to ours. The results are plain all over the country. Immigration has cheapened more than wages in certain lines, it has cheapened life, until the coal barons could say, "It is cheaper to store men than coal." But men may be too cheap.

Some of the best qualities in the immigrants are liable to abuse. Thrift, for instance, is commendable, but not when it is exercised at the expense of decent living. Economy is an admirable trait, but not when practiced at the expense of manhood and decent conditions. A distinct deterioration of the masses displaced by the cheaper labor has marked the advent of the new immigration. While some of the workingmen thrown out of employment by immigration rise with the increase in the number of superior positions, the great mass are obliged to accept the lower standard or are forced out of the industry into misery, pauperism, and crime. The greater tendency of immigrants, by reason of their poverty, to permit or encourage the employment of their wives or children, still further increases the intensity of the competition for employment. In view of all the facts, a recent writer argues that the limitation or restriction which would reduce[Pg 245] the volume and improve the economic quality of immigration would greatly improve labor conditions in this country.

Under the present free inflow, says this writer, "the condition of the great mass of the working classes of this country is being permanently depressed, and the difference between the industrial condition of the unskilled workers in our country and of other countries is being steadily lessened to our permanent and great detriment."[80]

As to the economic effects of unrestricted immigration, the stock argument that it costs a foreign country a thousand dollars to raise a man, and that, therefore, every immigrant is that much clear money gain to this country, simply begs the question of the usefulness of the immigrant and the country's need of him. Many immigrants are not worth what it cost to raise them, to their native land or any other; and at any rate, a man is only of value where he can fit into the community life and do something it needs to have done. Another naïve claim is that every mouth that comes into the country brings with it two hands, the assumption being that there is necessarily work for the two hands. If not, then there is an extra mouth to be fed at somebody else's expense. The real question is one of demand and quality.[Pg 246]

What effect has immigration had, and what is it likely to have, upon our national educational policy? The parochial school is opposed to the public school; the parochial school is Roman, the public school American. The parochial schools could not secure scholars but for immigration. The Roman Catholic Church is persistently trying to get appropriations of public money for parochial schools, although well aware that this is directly contrary to the fundamental American principle of absolute separation of Church and State; and is relying upon the foreign vote to accomplish this un-American purpose. Here is an illustration of the conditions made possible through unchecked immigration and the wielding of this immigration by priestly influence:

In Illinois the foreign element outnumbers the native in voting power. In consequence compulsory education in the public schools of that state was voted down by a legislature pledged to obey the dictum of the foreign element. Where the priests wield the foreign element in favor of the parochial schools, it is not possible to pass a bill for compulsory education in the English language.

The striking fact is given by Dr. Warne[81] that in parochial schools for the Slav children in Pennsylvania, English is not taught, and the children are growing up as thoroughly foreign and under[Pg 247] priestly control as though they were in Bohemia or Galicia.

A student of this subject[82] says that all the facts indicate that the time will come when, if compulsory education in English is not maintained by the states, this important matter will have to be made one of national legislation. "The supine bowing of the native element in our political parties to this foreign, domineering, un-American and denationalizing opposition to the state control of the education of the child for citizenship is in itself a menace. When we hear of public schools in America taught in German and Polish, instead of the language of Emerson and Longfellow, Lincoln and Grant, one feels like taking, not Diogenes' lantern, but an Edison searchlight, and going about our streets to see if there be in all our cities a patriot." More evil in results than this, and most insidious of all the attempts of the Roman Catholic hierarchy to undermine American principles, is the system of so-called compromise by which some of the public schools are taught by nuns, sisters, and priests, who wear their Church garb, and use the school buildings during certain hours for sectarian instruction. The mere statement of the facts ought to be sufficient to bring about drastic remedies, but the easy-going Protestants apparently do not realize what is being done.[Pg 248]

American patriotism must steadily and resolutely resist every Roman Catholic attack, open or covert, upon our public schools, every attempt to divert public moneys to sectarian purposes. This is vital to the preservation of our civil and religious liberty. For the immigrant children the public schools are the sluiceways into Americanism. When the stream of alien childhood flows through them, it will issue into the reservoirs of national life with the Old World taints filtered out, and the qualities retained that make for loyalty and good citizenship. We shall have to look to our school boards, elevate them above party politics and the reach of graft, and elect upon them men and women instinct with the spirit of true Americanism, or see this mightiest agency of modern civilization diverted from its high mission to produce for the Republic an enlightened and noble manhood and womanhood.

What is the effect of the addition of so many thousands of men of voting age upon our political conditions? Undoubtedly demoralizing and dangerous. Professor Mayo-Smith says: "We are thus conferring the privilege of citizenship, including the right to vote, without any test of the man's fitness for it. The German vote in many localities controls the action of political leaders on the liquor question, oftentimes in opposition to the sentiment of the native community. The bad influence of a purely ignorant[Pg 249] vote is seen in the degradation of our municipal administrations in America."[83] The foreign-born congregate in the large cities, especially the mass of unskilled laborers. There they easily come under control of leaders of their own race, who use them to further selfish ends. Fraudulent naturalization is another evil result. There is no more dangerous element in the Republic than a foreign vote, wielded by unscrupulous partisans and grafters. The immigrant is not so much to blame as are those who corrupt him, but if he were not here they would have no opportunity. In order to wield a bludgeon a bully must have the bludgeon.

There is an unquestioned and increasing evil and peril in a German vote, an Irish vote, a Scandinavian vote, an Italian vote, and a Hebrew vote. Out in South Dakota a Russian vote also has to be reckoned with, and in New England a French-Canadian vote. All this is undemocratic and unwholesome in the highest degree. Our government is based upon the intelligent and responsible use of the ballot. How can such use be possible in the case of the naturalized alien who cannot read or write our language or any other? No one can declare it unreasonable that a reading test as a qualification for voting should be required of all. On the brighter side of the political phase, it is asserted that it was the for[Pg 250]eign element of the East Side in New York that made possible the election of a reform candidate in a recent election, and that this element can be relied upon for reform and independent voting quite as much as the American society element, which is frequently too indifferent to vote at all. There is too much truth in this. At the same time, one who is familiar with the discussions at the People's Forum in Cooper Institute, New York, or similar meeting places of the foreign element in other large cities, knows how essentially un-American are the point of view and the theories most advocated.

IV. The Religious Problem

What is the effect of immigration upon the religious life of the country? This is an exceedingly difficult matter upon which to generalize. There is no doubt that great changes have taken place in the religious views and practices of the people, but how far these can be attributed to foreign influence is something upon which agreement will be rare and judgment difficult. It will be instructive, first of all, to study this table, which gives the results of questions asked the immigrants in 1900 concerning their religious connections. This was the last inquiry of the kind officially made, and will indicate what religious elements in immigration must be taken into consideration:

[Pg 251]

RELIGIOUS STATISTICS OF THE IMMIGRATION FOR 1900

In analyzing these figures, it will be noted that the Roman Catholics had fifty-two per cent. in a year when the total immigration of 361,436 (not much over one third that of the present time) was about the same in the proportion of aliens from southeastern Europe as now. The Jews would make a larger showing at present, as the immigrants from Russia are almost wholly Jews. The Protestant strength certainly would not be any greater proportionately. The large[Pg 252] number put down as miscellaneous is significant. What a task is laid upon American Protestantism—nothing less than the evangelization of nearly eighty-two per cent. of the vast immigration. It is easy to say that the fifty-two per cent. is nominally Christian, but in fact that nominal Christianity is in many respects as much out of sympathy with American religious ideals, with democracy and the pure gospel, as is heathenism; and it is in many cases as difficult to reach, and as great an obstacle to the assimilation of the aliens.

Looking at various results of this incoming host, in regard to reverence for Sunday and observance of it, it is fair to assume that the millions of Germans, with their continental Sunday, were leaders in breaking in upon our Sunday customs. While they have as a people observed the laws—although seeking to have the laws changed so as to permit here the home customs of open concert halls and beer gardens on Sunday afternoon and evening—their influence has been strongly felt in favor of loose Sunday observance, and this has been sufficient to stimulate the natural tendency of the American element to make the day one of amusement and recreation, regardless of laws. The result is that now we have a lawless American Sunday quite different from and more objectionable than the continental Sunday.[Pg 253]

In the larger cities throughout the country the encroachments of the money-makers have been steady. Performances of all kinds are permitted, theaters run either openly or with thinly veiled programs, saloons are open to those who know where the proper entrances are, and many forms of business and labor are carried on seven days in the week. The Jews claimed that it was a hardship to have to close on Sunday, when their religious observances came on Saturday, with result that a good many manage to keep shops and factories open all the year around. Pleas of necessity have been put forward where contractors desired to push jobs and profits. Sunday excursions are universal, and in order to gain their Sunday pleasure-outings several millions of people of all races keep several other millions hard at work on the day of rest. All places are crowded on Sunday except the churches. Go among the foreign elements in the city and you would never know it was Sunday. Holiday has supplanted holy-day. Observe the trolley-cars or subway or elevated trains on Sunday and you will see nine foreigners out of every ten persons. Go into the suburbs and you will find springing up in out-of-the-way places, where land can be secured cheap, little recreation parks, with games and dancing platforms; and here there will be throngs of Italians and other foreigners all day.[Pg 254]

Let us be just in this matter. The loss of the American Sunday is undoubtedly due in great measure to immigration; due in part to the weakness and dereliction of American professing Christians who have surrendered to the foreign elements and fallen in with their ideas instead of maintaining public worship and insisting upon respect for law at least. Let the blame fall where it belongs, and let the Church members recreant to duty take their share. When the sea threatened Holland her resolute people built the dykes and maintained them; American Christians have failed to stop the leaks in the church dykes, and we have had a Sunday submergence in consequence. The effect of it upon our national development is already evident and is most disastrous to our highest interests. Sabbath-breaking and progress-making never go together. Sunday work and pleasure combined form the peril alike of the American workingman and of Christian civilization.

Along with this inflow of alien ideas in religion goes a lowered morality and a lower tone generally. Not that the sins of those in high places are to be charged upon the poor immigrant, for he rarely if ever belongs to that class. The statement may be true that the great rascals are of native stock. But that only increases the peril. The masses that come to us from southern Europe certainly will not raise the moral or com[Pg 255]mercial, any more than they will the political or intellectual, level. If we do not raise them they will tend to lower us; and much of what they see and hear can have nothing less than a demoralizing effect.

Where shall we find the zealous and consistent Christians who by sympathetic contact will represent the true spirit of Christianity, and make the elevation of the aliens possible? The supreme truth to be realized is that nothing but Christianity, as incarnated in American Protestantism, can preserve America's free institutions.

Ex-President Seelye, of Amherst, said that socialism is the question of the time, and this is more apparent with every passing year. Socialism has its source in the foreign element. It is not native to America. Its swelling hosts are composed almost entirely of immigrants of recent coming. It is found not only in the great cities but is spreading through the farming sections. Now, there is a truth in socialism that must be intelligently dealt with; and there is a Christian socialism that should become dominant. And this is the only force that can check and counteract the foreign socialism that would sweep away foundations instead of ameliorating conditions and remedying evils.

In the same way, Protestant Christianity is the only agency that can save us from the moral degeneracy involved in migration, even if the[Pg 256] immigrants were of our moral grade before coming. As Dr. Strong says, the very act of migration is demoralizing. All the strength that comes from associations, surroundings, relations, the emigrant leaves behind him, and becomes isolated in a strange land. Is it strange, then, that those who come from other lands, whose old associations are all broken and whose reputations are left behind, should sink to a lower moral level? Across the sea they suffered restraints which are here removed. Better wages afford larger means of self-indulgence; often the back is not strong enough to bear prosperity, and liberty too often lapses into license.[85]

This result of migration is at once an evil and an opportunity. Breaking away from the old associations leaves room and necessity for new ones. Upon the character of these the future of the immigrant will largely depend. Here is the Christian opportunity. See to it that the new associations make for righteousness and patriotism. If the immigrant is evangelized, assimilation is easy and sure. It is recognition of this fact that leads the Roman Catholic Church to keep foreign colonies in America as isolated and permanent as possible. The ecclesiastics realize that children must be held in the parochial schools, so as to avoid the Americanization that comes through the public schools, with the probable[Pg 257] loss of loyalty to the Church. The parents equally must be kept away from the influences that would broaden and enlighten them. Dr. Strong tells of large colonies in the West, settled by foreigners of one nationality and religion; "thus building up states within a state, having different languages, different antecedents, different religions, different ideas and habits, preparing mutual jealousies, and perpetuating race antipathies. In New England conventions are held to which only French-Canadian Roman Catholics are admitted. At such a convention in Nashua, New Hampshire, attended by eighty priests, the following mottoes were displayed: 'Our tongue, our nationality, our religion,' 'Before everything else, let us remain French!'" And it is well said: "If our noble domain were tenfold larger than it is, it would still be too small to embrace with safety to our national future, little Germanies here, little Scandinavias there, and little Irelands yonder." To-day there are also little Italies and little Hungaries, and a long list of other races.

V. The Hopeful Side

Turning to the pleasanter and brighter side of this great question, we give the encouraging view of one who has spent years among the immigrant population, studying their environment, conditions, and character, with view to improving their chances. She says:[Pg 258]

"The writer will risk just one generalization which, it is hoped, the ultimate facts will bear out, that in the case of the new immigration we shall see a repetition of the story of the old immigrant we are so familiar with. First comes the ignorant and poor but industrious peasant, the young man, alone, without wife or family. For a few years he works and saves, living according to a 'standard of life' which shocks his older established neighbors, and we may guess would often shock his people at home. At first he makes plans for going back, sends his savings home, and perhaps goes back himself. But he usually returns to this country, with a wife. America has now become his home, savings are invested here, land is bought, and a little house built. The growing children are educated in American schools, learn American ways, and forcibly elevate the 'standard of life' of the family. The second generation, in the fervor of its enthusiasm for change and progress becomes turbulent, unruly, and is despaired of.

Portugese and Spanish Children

Portuguese Boy and Girl
Spanish Boys

"But out of the chaos emerges a third generation, of creditable character, from whom much may be expected. Our Austrian, Hungarian, and Russian newcomers are still in the first and second stages, and there seems no good reason why they should not pull through successfully to the third. But in that endeavor we can either help or materially hinder them, according to our[Pg 259] treatment of them, as employees, as producers, as fellow citizens. America, for her own sake, owes to the immigrant not only the opportunities for 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' that she promises to every man, but a sympathetic appreciation of his humanity, and an intelligent assistance in developing it."[86]

This is a picture of progress in assimilation to be remembered, and the conclusion is admirably expressed. Assimilation is made easy when the wheels of contact are oiled by kindness and sympathy. The children lead the way to Americanization. Mr. Brandenburg gives this report of a conversation overheard in an Italian tenement in New York, the parties being a mother, father, and the oldest of three daughters: "Said the mother in very forcible Tuscan: 'You shall speak Italian and nothing else, if I must kill you; for what will your grandmother say when you go back to the old country, if you talk this pig's English?' 'Aw, g'wan! Youse tink I'm goin' to talk dago 'n' be called a guinea! Not on your life. I'm 'n American, I am, 'n you go 'way back an' sit down,' The mother evidently understood the reply well enough, for she poured forth a torrent of Italian, and then the father ended matters by saying in mixed Italian and English: 'Shut up, both of you. I wish I spoke English like the children do,' Many parents have learned[Pg 260] good English in order to escape being laughed at or despised by their children."[87]

The language is not classic, but it is that of real life such as these children have to endure. The rapidity with which foreigners become Americanized is illustrated, said Dr. Charles B. Spahr, by the experience of a gentleman in Boston. In his philanthropic work he had gotten quite a hold on the Italian population. A small boy once asked him: "Are you a Protestant?" He said "Yes," and the boy seemed disappointed. But presently he brightened up and said, "You are an American, aren't you?" "Yes." "So am I!" with satisfaction. Children become American to the extent that they do not like to have it known that they have foreign parents. One little girl of German parentage said of her teacher: "She's a lady—she can't speak German at all." Where assimilation is slow, it is quite as likely to be the fault of the natives as of the immigrants, much more likely, indeed. How can he learn American ways who is carefully and rudely excluded from them? We build a Chinese wall of exclusiveness around ourselves, our churches, and communities, and then blame the foreigner for not forcing his way within.

In a thoughtful treatment of this whole subject, Mr. Sidney Sampson says:[88][Pg 261]

"It has become a pressing and anxious question whether American institutions, with all their flexibility and their facility of application to new social conditions, will continue to endure the strain put upon them by the rapid and ceaseless introduction of foreign elements, unused, and wholly unused in great measure, to a system of government radically differing from that under which they have been educated. Can these diverse elements be brought to work in harmony with the American Idea? The centuries of subjection to absolutism, or even despotism, to which the ancestors of many of the immigrant classes have been accustomed, has formed a type of political character which cannot, except after long training, be brought into an understanding of, and sympathy with, republican principles. This is by far the most important aspect of the question, much more so than questions of industrial competition."

If the republic will not ultimately endure harm, he believes industrial questions will slowly but surely right themselves; if otherwise, none even of the wisest can foresee the result. We give his conclusion:

"What is to be the outcome of this movement of the nations upon American political and industrial life is a question which confronts us with a problem never before presented in the world's history. Upon a review of the entire situation I[Pg 262] think we may be optimists. Notwithstanding all unfavorable features, there are antagonizing elements constantly at work, not the less potent because they work silently. We may attach undue importance to statistics merely.

"Students of the immigration problem do not sufficiently observe the influences—in fact, the immigrant may not himself be conscious of them—which year after year tend to adjust his habits of thought and his political views and actions to his new environment. Freedom of suffrage, educational advantages, improved industrial conditions, the dignity of citizenship, equal laws, protection of property—all these nourish in him an increasing respect for the American system; and we have reason to believe that, under proper legislation, the combined influence of all these will in the long run fully neutralize the distinctly unfavorable results of future immigration."

With this we are in accord, provided the Christian people of America can be brought to see and do their whole duty by the aliens. The solution of the problem demands the combined forces of our educational, social, political, and evangelical life. In that solution is involved the destiny of ultimate America.[Pg 263]

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER VII

Aim: To Realize the Effect of Immigration Upon the National Character and Our Individual Responsibility for Improving Conditions

I. Reasons for Concern.

I. * Do you think that immigration makes a very serious problem for the United States? Why? Mention others who think differently. Why do you not agree with them?

2. * Are there any foreigners in your neighborhood? What are they and what can you do for them?

3. Do these immigrants long retain their foreign aspect and ways? In what respects do they change most quickly?

4. What does Professor Mayo-Smith say about keeping American ideals intact? Must Protestant Christianity be guarded?

II. Threatening Changes.

5. In what respects has immigration since 1820 introduced un-American standards?

6. * Have the average character and the plane of living of the immigrants been raised or lowered by their coming here? Same as to wages? As to intelligence?

7. * How are our public schools affected? Is there any menace to our school system? Can we provide compulsory education for all the children?

III. Other Effects.

8. Do these new Americans learn to use the ballot rightly? Can they learn?[Pg 264]

9. Does their coming make genuine Christianity more or less prominent in the national life? What effect does it have on Sunday observance? Does it lessen or increase lawbreaking?

IV. National Bulwarks.

10. What are the safeguards pointed out by Professor Boyesen? By ex-President Seelye?

11. How can Socialism be met?

12. * Will anything but Christianity effectively guard our institutions?

13. How far will material improvements help to uplift and assimilate the newcomers?

14. Do the children learn patriotism from their new country? Do they keep it when grown up?

15. * Is there good reason for being optimistic? Upon what condition may we be hopeful?

References for Advanced Study.—Chapter VII

I. Study further some of the specific effects of the immigrants' presence.

Warne: The Slav Invasion, V, VI.
Wood: Americans in Process, VII, VIII.
Riis: How the Other Half Lives, XVIII, XXI.

II. What can you learn about the present status of the parochial school movement, especially in your own vicinity?

Refer to local periodicals and daily papers.

III. Is assimilation of foreigners taking place everywhere, or only in certain places?

McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, I.
Hall: Immigration, 172, 182.
Wood: Americans in Process, XII.
Strong: The Twentieth Century City, IV.
[Pg 265]

IV. Are our school facilities, actual or prospective, likely to prove sufficient for the demands made upon them?

Riis: How the Other Half Lives, XV, XVI.
Wood: Americans in Process, X.
Hunter: Poverty, V.
[Pg 267][Pg 266]

The Christian Churches in America stand face to face with a tremendous task. It is a challenge to their faith, their devotion, their zeal. The accomplishment of it will mean not only the ascendancy of Christianity in the homeland, but also the gaining of a position of vantage for world-wide evangelization.—E. E. Chivers, D.D.

VIII

THE HOME MISSION OPPORTUNITY

[Pg 268]

The question of supreme interest to us is the religious question. What share shall the Church have in making Christian Americans of these immigrants? How may Church and State work together for the solution of the problem, on the solution of which very largely the future prosperity of the State and the Church depends.—Charles L. Thompson, D.D.

The future success of missions will be largely affected by the success of the Church in dealing with problems that lie at her very door. The connection between home and foreign missionary work is living. The conversion of the world is bound up with the national character of professedly Christian lands. —Rev. Herbert Anderson, English Missionary in India.

"The blood of the people! changeless tide through century, creed, and race,
Still one, as the sweet salt sea is one, though tempered by sun and place,
The same in ocean currents and the same in sheltered seas:
Forever the fountain of common hopes and kindly sympathies.
Indian and Negro, Saxon and Celt, Teuton and Latin and Gaul,
Mere surface shadow and sunshine, while the sounding unifies all!
One love, one hope, one duty theirs! no matter the time or kin,
There never was a separate heart-beat in all the races of men."
[Pg 269]

I. Alien Accessibility

"Save America and you save the world." Through immigration the United States is in a unique sense the most foreign country and the greatest mission field on the globe. "All peoples that on earth do dwell" have here their representatives, gathered by a divine ordering within easy reach of the gospel. Through them the world may be reached in turn. Every foreigner converted in America becomes directly or indirectly a missionary agent abroad, spreading knowledge of the truth among his kindred and tribe.[89] The greatness of the opportunity is the measure of obligation. God's message to this nation has been thus interpreted: "Here are all these people; I have taken them from the overcrowded countries where they were living and sent them to you, that you may mass your forces and lend a hand to save them." No such opportunity ever came to a nation before. The Chris[Pg 270]tian church must seize it or sink into deserved decadence and decay. Only a missionary church can save the world or justify its own existence. The manner in which American Christianity deals with the religious problems of immigration will decide what part America is to play in the evangelization of the nations abroad.

We have now reached the vital part of our subject. We have learned to discriminate between peoples and find the good in all of them. We have seen that assimilation is essential to national soundness and strength. But we have yet to realize that the most potential factor in assimilation is not legislation or education but evangelization. There is no power like the gospel to destroy race antipathies, break down the bars of prejudice, and draw all peoples into unity, brotherhood, and liberty—that spiritual freedom wherewith Christ makes free. When American Protestantism sees in immigration a divine mission none will discover in it thenceforth a human menace.

Marvelous mission, involving the destiny of free America. A writer asks, "Will New England be kept Christian?" and answers, "That depends. Population is greatly changing. Immigrants from all parts of the world are here. They will continue to come. Unless they are molded according to the principles of our religion, they will greatly increase the irreligious[Pg 271] elements of New England, already too large. There is a religious basis in those who come, but it will require an application of religious agencies to make them truly Christian citizens."[90] Put America in place of New England, and the question and answer will be as pertinent. Shall America be kept Christian? That depends. It depends upon what American Christians do.

Few of the immigrants are evangelical in religion. They know nothing of our gospel, and little or nothing of the Bible. The religious principles they have been taught are totally opposed to the spirit of our free institutions of religion. They know priestly sovereignty but not soul liberty. They are the creatures of a system, and the system is thoroughly un-American and inimical to freedom of conscience and worship. But thousands and tens of thousands of them are out of sorts with the system and are ready for something better.[91] They have lost faith in their Church and will lose it in religion unless we teach them the gospel. To accomplish this result two persons must be changed—the immigrant and the American. Alien assimilation depends largely upon American attitude.[Pg 272]

Two questions confront us squarely as we approach this subject. First, the common one, What do we think of the immigrant? And second, the less common but not less important one, What does the immigrant think of us? It will do us good, as Americans and as Christians, to consider both of these frankly. Honestly, what is your attitude toward the ordinary immigrant? Do you want him and his family, if he has one, in your church? Do you not prefer to have him in a mission by himself? Would you not rather work for him by proxy than with him in person? Do you not pull away from him as far as possible if he takes a seat next to you in the car? Actual contact is apt to mean contamination, germs, physical ills. He is ignorant and uncultured. You desire his conversion—in the mission. You wish him well—at a convenient distance. You would much more quickly help send a missionary to the Chinese in China than be a missionary to a Chinaman in America, would you not? Think it over, Christian, and determine your personal relation to the immigrant. Is he a brother man, or a necessary evil? Will you establish a friendly relation with him, or hold aloof from him? Does your attitude need to be changed?

What, now, do you suppose this "undesirable" immigrant thinks of America and Protestant Christianity? What has he reason to think, in the light of his previous dreams and present[Pg 273] realizations? What does Protestant Christianity do for him from the time he reaches America? What will he learn of our free institutions—in the tenement slums or labor camps or from the "bosses" who treat him as cattle—that will teach him to prize American citizenship, desire religious liberty, or lead a sober, respectable life? If we are in earnest about the evangelization of the immigrant we must put ourselves in his place occasionally and get his point of view. When we think fairly and rightly of the immigrant, and treat him in real Christian wise, he will soon come to think of us that our religion is real, and this will be a long step toward the change we desire him to undergo. We shall never accomplish anything until we realize that the coming of these alien millions is not accidental but providential.

II. Missionary Beginnings

The first human touch put upon the immigrant in the new environment is vastly important in its effects. He is easily approachable, if rightly approached. Alien accessibility makes home mission possibility. The approach may not at first be on the distinctively religious side, but there is a way of access on some side. A living gospel incarnated in a living, loving man or woman is the "open sesame" to confidence first and conversion afterward. Make the foreigner[Pg 274] feel that you are interested in him as a man, and the door is open beyond the power of priestcraft to shut it. The priest may for a time keep the Catholic immigrant away from the Protestant church but not from the Protestant cordiality and sympathy; and if these be shown it will not be long before the immigrant, learning rapidly to think for himself, will settle the church-going according to his own notion. A kind word has more attractive power than a cathedral. You will never win an Italian as long as you call him or think of him as "dago," nor a Jew while you nickname him "sheeny." The immigrant wants neither charity nor contempt, but a man's recognition and rights, and when American Christians give him these he will believe in their Christianity and be apt to accept it for himself.

Home mission work of a distinctive character should and does begin at the point of landing in the New World. At Ellis Island, for example, there are now some thirty missionaries, representing the leading Christian denominations. This gives proof of the partial awakening of the Churches to the importance of this work. It is only of late years that any special attention has been paid to the welfare of the incomers, either by State or Church. Now both are seeking to throw safeguards around the immigrants and secure them a fair start. A large room is set apart for the missionaries in the receiving build[Pg 275]ing at Ellis Island, and they perform a service of great good both to the aliens and the country. First impressions count tremendously, and happy is it for the immigrant who gets this initial impression from contact with a Christian missionary instead of a street sharper. Once put the touch of human kindness upon the immigrant and he is not likely to forget it. The hour of homesickness, of strangeness in a strange land, of perplexity and trouble, is the hour of hours when sympathy and help come most gratefully. The missionaries are on hand at this critical juncture. Thousands of immigrants are saved from falling into bad hands and evil associations through their zealous efforts. Thousands are supplied with copies of the Testament, the sick and sorrowful are comforted, the rejected are tenderly ministered to in their distress, and the gospel is preached in the practical way that makes it a living remembrance. This is one way in which a true and enduring assimilation is begun.

Here is a single illustration of the unexpected results of this first Christian touch in the new world. One of the women missionaries was very kind to a Bohemian family, helping the father find his destination and get settled. At parting, the missionary gave him a Testament and asked him to read it when in trouble. He thanked her for all her kindness to him and his family, and[Pg 276] said he would keep the book for her sake. He put it away and forgot all about it. One day his little girl got the book and tore a leaf out. When he learned what she had done he was very angry, and punished her for tearing the book, saying that the kind lady at Ellis Island had given it to him, and he had promised to keep it. He threatened the child with severe punishment if she touched it again. "What is the book, papa?" she asked. He said he did not know what it was, but the lady gave it to him, and that was enough.

The little girl kept asking about it until at length his curiosity was aroused, and he took the Testament to find out for himself. As he began to read the story of Jesus he became interested, and presently had his wife reading it also. Such wonderful things he had never heard of before, and he thought he would tell the priest about it, for if the priest knew about it he would surely tell the people. The priest forbade him to look into the book again, saying that it was a bad book and would cost him his soul if he read it. This only ended the influence of the priest, for the immigrant said such a good person as Jesus could not do anybody any harm, he was sure of that. He decided to go back to Ellis Island and ask the kind lady about it. The light came, and he and his family are earnest members of a Christian church, showing their gratitude by trying with[Pg 277] true missionary spirit to bring others of their race to the Master.[92]

This missionary work, coming at the critical time, needs to be extended and dignified. It should be so enlarged that it would be possible to reach in some way the great mass of the newcomers, where now it touches comparatively few. There should be a great interdenominational headquarters building, thoroughly equipped for every kind of helpful service. A large force of trained workers of different nationalities should be employed, so that all kinds of needs might be met. It is entirely possible to establish a center that would powerfully impress the immigrants with the worth and importance of the Christian religion. But no small affair will do. Our great denominations have the money in plenty, and certainly have the talent to organize such a work as the world has never yet seen. And what a chance for personal service such an institution would afford. This would be a living object[Pg 278] lesson of Christianity helping the world, that might fitly stand beside the statue of "Liberty enlightening the world."

III. Protestantism and the Alien

How are the evangelical denominations meeting their imperative obligation to evangelize the multitudes brought to their very doors? When the immigrant has passed through the gates, what attention is paid to him? Take it in the centers of population, where the mass of the immigrants go, and the showing is not very imposing as yet.

The truth is that as the foreigners have moved into down-town New York the old-time Protestant churches have moved out, in great measure abandoning the field, on the assumption that there was no constituency to maintain an American church. It did not seem to dawn upon the rich churches which moved up town that the new population needed evangelization and could be evangelized. The result is that the immigrant accustomed to imposing churches and splendid architecture and impressive ritual, sees little to impress him with the existence of Protestant Christianity. Go through that teeming East Side in New York, and here and there you will find a mission supported in desultory fashion by some church or city mission society or mission board, and in quarters conducive to anything but worship or respect. There is nothing to make[Pg 279] the new arrival feel the presence and power of the religious faith that created this free Republic and still predominates in its best life. So it is wherever you go. The home mission work is in its beginnings, and these are manifestly feeble and inadequate.

The Roman Catholics teach us some practical lessons. They build large and impressive churches for the immigrants. They abandon no fields, and immediately occupy those left by Protestants. They expend money where it will go furthest. The Protestants of New York should have been far-sighted enough to plant strong evangelistic and philanthropic institutions in the fields from which they withdrew their churches. Valuable ground has been lost for want of this missionary insight and impulse.

The conditions in New York are symptomatic of those obtaining generally, in country as well as city. The Protestant churches, not recognizing the supreme home mission opportunity to Christianize the immigrants, have in many cases become weak where a zealous evangelism would have kept them strong. Too many of the American Churches have been satisfied with their own prosperity and unmindful of the growing need of the gospel all around them. As a missionary worker says:[93] "There are plenty of Christians who believe that the gospel is the power of God[Pg 280] unto salvation in a vague and general way; but there are not enough people who clearly believe that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to the Italian working on the railroad, or the Hungarian in the shops, or the German on the farm. Too many of us have no faith at all in foreign missions at home."

It is impossible to enter into details of what has been undertaken by the different evangelical denominations. Reference to the tables furnished by various Home Mission Boards[94] will indicate, as far as bald figures can do so, the extent of the work among the various peoples. The statistics show that in the country, especially in the West, missions among the earlier type of immigrants—the German and Scandinavian—have long been maintained with success. There are hundreds of strong and prosperous churches among these peoples. For the later immigrants less has been done, although the need is far greater. Some of the reasons for the small proportions of this work are manifest. In order to reach the Slavs and Italians there must be native missionaries, and these cannot be found offhand. After converts are made, those who are fitted to preach and teach must be trained, and schools must be provided for the training.[95] The difficul[Pg 281]ties of language must first be overcome. The process requires time and patience and large resources. Missions cannot be imposed upon these foreign peoples from without. Force cannot be used. Access must be found, and the gospel seed be sown as opportunity occurs. There must be a natural development in a work like this, which deals with individuals, and that by persuasion. The present work must not be judged too harshly, therefore, as reflecting upon the churches. Only of late has the need been recognized by the leaders in Christian effort. Dr. Thompson puts the situation in true light, when he says:

"It goes without saying that the church has not so far taken its full share of the responsibility. She has not realized the gravity of the situation. Indeed, only in late years has it emerged in its full significance. Consequently the work of the various Christian bodies has been sporadic, rather than systematic and persistent. There has been no serious endeavor to deal with it as a problem and to try to compass it. All the Churches have worked among the foreigners, but it has been determined by local conditions and needs which have appealed to Christian people here and there; that, however, is very different from an intelligent view of the whole situation and a campaign intended and adapted to solve the whole problem. We have reached a point in the immigra[Pg 282]tion problem where it must be solved broadly, philosophically, and by the combination of all forces—civic, social, moral, and religious—to bring about the healthy assimilation of all foreign elements into the life of the body politic."[96]

We have said the foreigner is accessible. How true this is, when earnest and genuine effort is made, is shown by the tent work in many cities. Take it among the Italians in New York, for example. A tent worker tells the results:[97]

"New York City within a year will hold a half million Italians. What is the Church of America to do with them? Will they listen to the gospel? Who has tried to reach them?

An Italian Sunday School in New England

"During the past summer a company of earnest workers for God and man tested the problem of saving men to save New York. They started an open-air and tent campaign. They proceeded on the simple hypothesis that 'Nothing will elevate the man, no matter how good he is morally, except the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it alone is the power of God to change the whole man and save him eternally.' They drove their tent-stakes into the ground in an Italian quarter and began to preach and to sing the gospel of grace triumphant into the ears and hearts of Roman Catholic Italians. Except when the weather was exceptionally bad, from[Pg 283] five to six hundred persons were there nightly. They were met just as the foreign missionary would meet them. Not one among them, perhaps, Christian from a purely evangelistic standpoint, and yet, what was the result? In less than one year they expect to have a permanent church building to cost $60,000; something like two hundred are ready to enter and form a Protestant church."

Is this a hopeful work, this effort to evangelize the foreigners? Let the following unique instance give its answer, and illustrate also the intertwinings of the home and foreign work. In a quarry at Monson, Massachusetts, where over three hundred Italians are employed, there was among the number a man who had been converted in Italy, through the faithful efforts of an American missionary. When this convert reached the Massachusetts quarry, his heart burned within him as he realized the spiritual condition of his countrymen, who were living without any religious services. He labored so effectively for their salvation that in a few months seventeen of the workmen were converted, and they held regular meetings for prayer and study of the Bible. At length they sent a message, signed by every convert, to a state missionary society: "In God's name, send us a missionary." A missionary was sent to organize them into a church. They had no meeting-place,[Pg 284] and in this emergency one of the converts proposed that a room be built on the roof of his cottage. This was done by the little band, and there they worshiped until the place was too small. Then the first story was extended in the rear, giving space for a comfortable chapel, and the family occupied the second story or roof-room. This indicates the ingenuity as well as the generous and self-sacrificing spirit of these Italian Christians, who maintain a regular pastor and full services. How many of our American churches, with much larger resources, could show a better record? What American Christian would have thought of building a meeting-house on his home roof, or would have been willing to do it if he had thought of it? In devotion and liberality the converted aliens often set noble examples for American Christians.[98]

IV. The Call to Great Things

Missionaries have been surprised at the eagerness with which they were received by the[Pg 285] Italians, Bohemians, Poles, Slovaks, and Lithuanians, and others commonly regarded as most hopeless. The Bohemians have a large number of freethinkers—over 300 societies of them—who have sought to draw their people away from Christianity or any form of religion; but they also have a large number of earnest and devoted Christian converts, who know the power of the gospel to save, and are preaching and teaching it.Missionary Effort the Solution In Pennsylvania, among the Slav peoples, simple-hearted native workers who have found the way of life are making that way known to others, and local churches in many places are becoming revived through their active work for these foreigners. Many churches now extinct would be alive if they had seen their opportunity. If those churches that have lost most of their old-time membership could be filled with missionary zeal, and be sustained as evangelistic centers, the church life of the mining regions would become a different thing once more. The only way to save these American churches is for them to save the immigrants. The same thing is true in all country sections where the foreigners have become numerous. The need everywhere is for money to plant and equip thoroughly, and maintain efficiently, these evangelizing churches in every community. These institutions must be more than meeting-houses, open a few times a week.[Pg 286]

The institutional church always open, with something to meet every legitimate need of old and young, so that the evangelical center shall be the center of community life, can alone meet the requirement. A great force of workers must be raised up, and this means training schools. No more important educational work can be done in our country in the present emergency. These schools might be interdenominational, with special classes where required for the specific denominational training, and thus a united Protestantism could be rallied to their support, and make them of size sufficient to impress all with the real consequence of the work.

In this work the interdenominational comity and coöperation represented in the federation of evangelical churches would secure the best covering of the whole field, in the true fraternal and Christian spirit. What all desire supremely is the salvation of the immigrants. And only a united Protestantism can present such a massive front as to impress the world. This work must be large enough to be self-respecting. At present it is extremely doubtful if there is enough of it to make individual members of the churches feel its worth and importance. There should be a mighty advance movement, calling for millions of money and thousands of missionaries, and reaching into a multitude of places now destitute of gospel influences. Then the alien in America[Pg 287] would realize the American spirit and purpose and interest in him, and the birth of a new citizenship would begin.

This is the day of large enterprises. The home mission movement for the evangelization of the foreign peoples in America ought to be in the forefront of the great enterprises. The real hope of America lies in the success of this work. The best brain of the Christian laity should be engaged in this business.

In New York City alone the Christian denominations ought to raise and expend at least a million dollars a year for the next ten years for city foreign evangelization, and this would be only a start in a work bound to extend indefinitely. The demand is imperative. The fields are ripe for harvest. We have seen that the old religious ties are not only weakened by the Atlantic voyage, but often broken altogether. In some nationalities this tie is strong, in most of them not very binding. The great bulk of the new immigration is Roman or Greek Catholic. Thousands of these nominal church members drift into open infidelity or schools of atheism, or else into nothingism. Their former Church does not keep them, and Protestantism does not get them. It is a question whether their new condition is better or worse, religiously, than it was in the old country. We should remove that question by surrounding them with such[Pg 288] Christian influences and institutions as will make it impossible for them to escape the Americanizing and evangelizing environment. Why should not Christian philanthropy, for instance, build a block of model tenement-houses in the Italian district, and give the income from rentals as a permanent endowment for Italian mission work? This would be a double blessing.

There is a magnificent opportunity, an opportunity to fire the heart of the men who have means to carry out whatever they devise. The evangelical denominations should establish in the heart of the East Side, where are gathered a dozen little nationalities, not simply one great establishment of distinctively religious and educational character, but a number of such institutional churches, costing anywhere from a million to a million and a half each, and sustained in a thoroughly business-like way. Christianity should permeate the entire work. We ought to be working for to-day and for the future. The Home Mission Boards in coöperation should be asked to lead forward in this, the greatest task of the twentieth century. There is nothing sentimental or impracticable about these suggestions.

Here is a work that demands the moral strength of Protestant union. Let us seek to make the foreigners Christian, give them the Bible, and set them an example of the brotherhood of believers. Then the immigrants[Pg 289] will become believers and join the brotherhood.

In addition to this organized work done through the missionary bodies, there is a large work for local churches to do. In some denominations, which report little organized effort, there is much mission work done by local parishes. And in all denominations there are many churches that study their community and apply themselves to its needs. The Chinese Sunday-school work has been chiefly done by the local churches, and therefore it is not easy to learn the extent of the work, since reports are not made to central boards. This form of service is especially desirable when it draws the members of the churches to any extent into personal contact with the foreign element, and it should be fostered.

V. The Individual Duty

This brings us to the heart of the whole matter—the personal equation. The trouble is that the alien and the American do not know each other. Aversion on the one side is met by suspicion on the other. Shut away from intercourse, the alien becomes more alienated, and the American more opinionated, with results that may easily breed trouble. The antidote for prejudice is knowledge. Immigration has made it possible—and in this case possibility is duty—for the consecrated[Pg 290] Christian, in this day and land of marvelous opportunity, to be a missionary—not by proxy but in person.

Here is the foreigner in every community. You meet him in a hundred places where the personal contact is possible. Did it ever occur to you that you could do something directly for the evangelization of the Greek or Italian fruit vender or bootblack or laborer? Have you ever felt any responsibility for the salvation of these commonly despised foreigners? Have you laughed at them, or shown your contempt and dislike for them as they have crowded the public places? The evangelization of the foreigners in America must be effected by the direct missionary effort of the masses of American Christians. That is the foundation truth. The work cannot be delegated to Home Mission Boards or any other agencies, no matter how good and strong in their place.

Hence, let all emphasis be put here upon personal responsibility and opportunity. Be a missionary yourself. Reach and teach some one of these newcomers, and you will do your part. Do not begin with talking about religion. Make the chance to get acquainted; then after you have shown genuine human interest, and won confidence, the way will be open for the gospel that has already been felt in human[Pg 291] helpfulness. As a result of this study, which has taught you to discriminate and to be charitable to all peoples, the new attitude and sympathy will enable you to approach those who have been brought within your sphere of influence. There is a field of magnificent breadth open to our young people. Once engaged in this personal service, and aware of its blessed effects, there will be no lack of a missionary zeal that will embrace the world-wide kingdom.

At a conference in New York, in the Home Mission study class a young colored man from the West Indies gave a practical illustration of individual missionary effort of the kind that would evangelize the foreigners, if it were generally practiced. He said that every Thursday, when the steamer from the West Indies arrives, he arranges his work so as to be at the wharf, ready to welcome immigrants, especially young people, and to advise them, if they are strangers without settled destination. He was led to do this by his own experience. For three years after he came to New York, he went from church to church without ever receiving a word of welcome or invitation to come again. Finally he found a church home; but the homesickness and loneliness of those years made him feel that so far as he could help it, no one else from the West Indies should have a similar experience. So he made himself free to speak to the young men, and[Pg 292] always invited them to church. He had been the means of aiding many to establish themselves, and had saved many immigrants from being lured away into evil. He said the place to get the heart of the foreigner was when he first landed. It was a simple story, told without any false modesty. Plainly his heart was in the work. He was a home missionary, doing a definite service of importance, and setting an example that inspired that company. They could not help the round of applause that followed his statement. It was spontaneous. This is the personal touch that must be put in some way upon the stranger that is within our gates. If the alien can be brought under this gracious Christian influence, the chances are many that he will soon cease to be alien and become Christian. Blessed is he who makes any soul welcome to country and church.

A call to home mission service is thus presented by Dr. Goodchild, who would carry religion more fully into the settlement idea: "We need for the solution of this problem that young men and women who go to the great cities from the strong churches of the smaller towns and villages should identify themselves with mission churches rather than to seek ease and honor in wealthy churches where unused talent is already congested.

"We need young men and young women to go down among these people and live[Pg 293] Christian lives in the midst of them. I do not believe that any one should take his children there to rear them. But young men in groups, or young women in groups, or young couples without children, who are able to earn their own living could contribute greatly to the solution of these problems if they would live among these foreigners and help in the process of digestion and assimilation. And there is nothing that can do that work so quickly and effectually as for Christian men and women to dwell among these people, as Christ once left his home on high to dwell among the sinful ones of earth. And if there are young men and young women who are willing to give themselves wholly to work for these people, and will live among them, and seek by the power of divine grace to lift them up, it surely is very little for you and me to sustain them while they toil."

Wherever earnest effort has been put forth, the progress of the work has been most encouraging. As an illustration of this, when Dr. H. A. Schauffler some twenty years ago began his pioneer missionary work among the 25,000 Bohemians of Cleveland, he could not learn of any fellow-laborers in the Slavic field except a Bohemian theological student in New York, a Bohemian Reformed Church pastor in Iowa, and another in Texas. But in 1905 there met in Chicago an Interdenominational Conference of[Pg 294] Slavic missionaries and pastors, and that gathering comprised no less than 103 Slavic workers, of whom sixty-four were pastors and preachers, fourteen women missionaries, and twenty-five missionary students; while the conference represented forty-nine churches in thirteen states, and five evangelical denominations. Mr. Ives says truly: "It has been forever established that foreigners are as convertible as our own people, that in many instances their faith is more pure and evangelical than the American type, that their lives are transformed by its power to an extent that sometimes puts the American Christian to shame, that their children are easily gathered into Sunday-schools, their young people into Endeavor Societies, and their men and women into prayer-meetings, where in many different tongues they yet speak and pray in the language of Canaan. The immigration problem is not the same menace that it was. A mighty solvent has been found."

There is no escaping the fact that a prodigious amount of difficult lifting must be done in order to elevate the aliens to the American social and religious level. But the very vastness of the home mission task is inspiring rather than discouraging to heroic souls. As someone says, "The American loves a tough job." Difficulties will not hinder him a moment when once he is moved with the divine impulse, sees the thing[Pg 295] to be done, and sets himself with God's help to do it. Present conditions call to mind that passage in "Alice in Wonderland," where by the seashore

The walrus and the carpenter were walking hand in hand,
And wept like anything to see such quantities of sand.
"If seven maids with seven mops, swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the walrus said, "that they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the carpenter, and shed a bitter tear.

It must be confessed that what has been done, in comparison with what has to be done, would not be unfairly represented by the seven maids, and that some people think the conversion of the foreigner as hopeless as the carpenter did the sand-sweeping job. But seven mops are better than none, and the pessimists are few. Souls are different material to work upon from sand. By and by the Christian denominations will stop sweeping around the edges of this great missionary enterprise, and take hold of it with full force. This will come to pass when the real conditions and needs and perils are widely known; and in making them known the young people have their opportunity to render signal service to foreigner, country, Church, and Christ.

VI. Basal Grounds for Optimism

Now that we have completed our study of immigration, necessarily limited by time and[Pg 296] space, we are in position to draw some conclusions with regard to the outlook. Our study shows that there is plenty in the character and extent of present day immigration to make the Christian and patriot thoughtful, prayerful, and purposeful. On the surface there is enough that is appalling and threatening to excuse if not justify the use of the word "peril." The writer confesses that when he lived, years ago, in western Pennsylvania, and came close to the inferior grades of immigrants, and witnessed the changes wrought by the displacement of the earlier day mining class, he bordered for a time on the pessimistic plane. Nor was his condition much improved during residence in New England, where the changing of the old order and the passing of the Puritan are of vast significance to our country. But closer study of the broad subject has led to a positively optimistic view concerning immigration, and some of the grounds of this optimism may properly close this chapter and volume.

The basal ground is the universal tendency toward democracy and the universal necessity for religion. These are sufficiently axiomatic. The appeal to the history of the nineteenth century is sufficient to establish the first, and the appeal to the heart of humanity will establish the second. Democracy is the dominant spirit in the world's life to-day. It is the vital air of America.[Pg 297] Whatever is in its nature inimical to democracy cannot permanently endure on this continent, and certainly cannot control, whether it be in the sphere of ecclesiasticism or commercialism. This, then, is the sure ground for optimism. Religion is a necessity in a nation. What shall the type of religion be in America? The answer is clear, for Protestantism is democratic, while Romanism is autocratic.

The hope of America's evangelization is increased by the fact that the pure religion of Jesus Christ is so essentially democratic in its fundamental teachings of the brotherhood of man, of spiritual liberty and unity. The immigrant comes into a new environment, created alike by civil and religious liberty, and cannot escape its influence. Political liberty teaches the meaning of soul liberty, and leads the way slowly but surely to it. A man cannot come into rights of one kind without awakening to rights of every kind; and once awakened, soon he insists upon having them all for himself. Freedom is infectious and contagious, and the disease is speedily caught by the old-world arrival, who breathes in its germs almost before the ship-motion wears off. The peril of this is that to him the main idea of liberty is license. The true meaning of the word he must be taught by the Christian missionary, for certainly he will not learn it from the Church to which he commonly belongs. Here,[Pg 298] then, is the opportunity for the pure gospel and for the Christian missionary.

Adding the natural appeal of the gospel in its simplicity to this favoring democratic environment, there is every reason for optimism concerning immigration, if only American Protestantism prove true to its opportunity and duty. "Ah, but that is a tremendous IF," said a widely known Christian worker to whom this statement was made. "I agree with you as to the favoring conditions, and my only doubt is whether our Christian Churches can be brought to see their duty and do it. So far there are only signs of promise. Our home mission societies are doubtless doing all they can with the slender means furnished by the contributing churches, but they are only playing at the evangelization of these inpouring millions." What could be said in reply? One could not deny present apathy on the part of Protestants at large, whether the cause be ignorance or indifference or want of missionary spirit. One could but declare faith in the prevailing power of Protestantism when the crisis comes. We believe the day is not distant when American Protestantism will present a united front and press forward irresistibly. For the hastening of this day let us pray and work.

Thus the problem always resolves itself to this at last: God has set for American Protestant Christianity the gigantic task of the ages—the[Pg 299] home-foreign-mission task—nothing less than the assimilation of all these foreign peoples who find a home on this continent into a common Americanism so that they shall form a composite American nation—Christian, united, free, and great. What could be more glorious than to have part in the solution of this problem? To this supreme service, young men and women of America, you are called of God. What say you: shall it be Alien or American?

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER VIII

Aim: To Make Hopeful Beginnings a Strong Incentive to Great Expansion of Christian Work for Foreigners

I. Faults on Both Sides.

1. What issues hang upon our work for the incoming foreigners?

2. * What barriers must be broken down in order to approach them successfully?

3. What do these immigrants (speaking of them in general terms) possess, and what do they lack, spiritually?

4. Is there a lack in our own personal attitude and feelings toward them? What is it?

5. * If you had come as an average immigrant, what would you be likely to think of "America" and the "Americans"?

II. Missionary Beginnings.

6. When and where is it most easy to approach the foreigner? What will a "lurking prejudice" do?[Pg 300]

7. What Christian workers are there at the ports of entry? Give instances of the results of their labors.

8. Can we possibly rest content with what is now being done on these lines? Why not?

9. * Should all denominations unite in an effort to meet the situation? Will you strive for it?

10. What has been the history of evangelical churches down town in New York City? What centers of Christian work may be found there? What form would a more adequate provision be likely to take?

11. Among what classes of immigrants has the most successful Christian work been done?

12. Among what classes has it been thus far sporadic and experimental? Give instances of successful work for Italians.

III. Expansion Needed and Possible.

13. * Are those who are ordinarily neglected responsive to the right sort of effort? How may there be sent forth "more laborers into the harvest"?

14. When and how may the scattered forces be joined for more effective work?

15. * Shall we "dare to brave the perils of an unprecedented advance"?[99] Have we such faith that God will move his people to furnish the funds?

IV. Local and Individual Efforts.

16. Are there many Sunday-schools for Chinese in local churches? Why not as many for other needy races?[Pg 301]

17. * How can every Christian be a Home Missionary? Describe some example. Compare our Lord's parable of the leaven.

18. Will the "day of small things" lead to greater? On what conditions? Give instances.

19. * Is the task great enough to challenge our Christian faith, courage, and perseverance?

V. A Hopeful Outlook for the Christian.

20. Is there any reason for inactivity and despair? Why not?

21. Will Christian democracy help to solve the problem?

22. Where lies the element of uncertainty and how can it be removed?

23. * Will you deliberately give yourself to be used of God in helping to remove it?

"Immigration Means Obligation."

References for Advanced Study.—Chapter VIII

I. Study the various forms of work undertaken for foreigners by denominational Home Mission Boards.

Tables and statements in the appendixes of this book.

Missionary periodicals.

Reports and papers of different Societies.

II. Investigate and report upon efforts made in your own locality.

III. Frame an argument, or plea, for the great enlargement of all Christian activities on behalf of foreigners.

McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, X, XI.[Pg 303][Pg 302]

[Pg 304]

[Pg 305]

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX A

TABLE I

Number of Immigrants Arrived in the United States each Year from 1820 to 1905, both inclusive[100]

[Pg 306]

TABLE II

RACE, SEX, AND AGE OF IMMIGRANTS ADMITTED IN 1905

Here we have forty-four races or nationalities differentiated. Surely this is a medley of peoples to be harmonized. Note the vast proportion of working age.[Pg 307]

TABLE III

DEBARRED IN 1905, FOR REASONS GIVEN

[Pg 308]

Wave of Immigration into the United States from all Countries during 87 Years

ESTIMATED ARRIVALS 1776 TO 1820 250,000 ARRIVALS 1820 TO 1906 24,032,718

[Pg 309]

APPENDIX B

Table of Acts of Congress Concerning Immigration

The Principal Excluded Classes

(1) Idiots; (2) insane persons; (3) epileptics; (4) prostitutes; (5) paupers; (6) persons likely to become public charge; (7) professional beggars; (8) persons afflicted with a loathsome or contagious disease; (9) persons who have been convicted of a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, not including those convicted of purely political offences; (10) polygamists; (11) anarchists (or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all government or forms of laws, or the assassination of public officials); (12) those deported within a year from date of application for admission as being under offers, solicitation, promises or agreements to perform labor or service of some kind therein; (13) any person whose ticket or passage is paid for with the money of another, or who is assisted by others to come, unless it is shown that such person does not belong to one of the excluded classes; but any person in the United States may send for a relative or friend without thereby putting the burden of this proof upon the immigrant.

Crimes Under the Act of 1903

In order to enforce these provisions twelve violations were made crimes, with penalties of both fine and imprisonment: (1) Importing any person for immoral purposes; (2) prepaying the transportation or encoura[Pg 311]ging the migration of aliens under any offer, solicitation, promise or agreement, parol or special, expressed or implied, made previous to the importation of aliens, to perform labor in the United States; (3) encouraging the migration of aliens by promise of employment through advertisements in foreign countries; (4) encouraging immigration on the part of owners of vessels and transportation companies by any means other than communications giving the sailing of vessels and terms of transportation; (5) bringing in or attempting to bring in any alien not duly admitted by an immigrant inspector or not lawfully entitled to enter the United States; (6) bringing in by any person other than railway lines of any person afflicted with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; (7) allowing an alien to land from a vessel at any other time and place than that designated by the immigration officer; (8) refusing or neglecting to return rejected aliens to the port from which they came or to pay their maintenance while on land; (9) refusing or neglecting to return aliens arrested within three years after entry as being unlawfully in the United States; (10) knowingly or willfully giving false testimony or swearing to any false statement affecting the right of an alien to land is made perjury; (11) assisting any anarchist to enter the United States, or conspiring to allow, procure or permit any such person to enter; (12) failing to deliver manifests.

Laws to Protect the Immigrant

Act of 1819, providing that a vessel should not carry more than two passengers for every five tons, and that a specified quantity of certain provisions should be carried for every passenger; requiring the master to deliver sworn manifests showing age, sex, occupation, nativity, and destination of passengers.

Act of 1855, limited number to one for every two tons,[Pg 312] and provided that each passenger on main and poop decks should have sixteen feet of floor space, and on lower decks eighteen feet.

Act of 1882, providing that in a steamship the unobstructed spaces shall be sufficient to allow one hundred cubic feet per passenger on main and next deck, and 120 on second deck below main deck, and forbidding carrying of passengers on any other decks, or in any space having vertical height less than six feet; other provisions regulate the occupancy of berths, light and air, ventilation, toilet rooms, food, and hospital facilities. Explosives and other dangerous articles are not to be carried, nor animals with or below passengers. Lists of passengers are to be delivered to the boarding officer of customs.

Act of 1884, provision that no keeper of a sailors' boarding house or hotel, and no runner or person interested in one, could board an incoming vessel until after it reached its dock. This to protect aliens from imposition and knavery.

Legislation Recommended in 1905 by the Commissioner-General of Immigration

1. In regard to diseased aliens: that competent medical officers be located at the principal ports of embarkation; that all aliens seeking passage secure as a prerequisite from such officer a certificate of good health, mental and physical; and that the bringing of any alien unprovided with such certificate shall subject the vessel by which he is brought to summary fine. 2. That the penalty of $100 now prescribed for carrying diseased persons be increased to $500, as a means of making the transportation lines more careful. 3. Such further legislation as will enable the government to punish those who induce aliens to come to this country under promise or assurance of employment. Less exact[Pg 313]ing rules of evidence and a summary mode of trial are needed to make the law effective. 4. That Congress provide means for distributing arriving aliens who now congregate in the large cities. 5. That as a means of those incapable of self-support through age or feebleness; those who have not brought sufficient money to maintain them for a reasonable time in event of sickness or lack of employment. 6. That adequate means be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies to observe in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or solicit immigration. If other means fail, a limitation apportioning the number of passengers in direct ratio to tonnage is suggested. 7. That masters of vessels be required to furnish manifests of outgoing aliens, similar to those of arriving aliens, so that the net annual increase of alien population may be ascertained.

In addition two special recommendations are made, with view to control immigration and lessen the hardships of the debarred: (1) To enlighten aliens as to the provisions of our laws, so that they may not in ignorance sever their home ties and sacrifice their small possessions in an ineffectual attempt to enter the United States. To this end the laws and regulations should be translated into the various tongues and distributed widely. This might not prevail as against the influence and promises of transportation agents, but it would relieve this country of responsibility for needless distress and suffering. (2) An international conference of immigration experts.[Pg 314]

APPENDIX C

Work of Leading Denominations for the Foreign Population

The following facts and figures, received from the leading Home Mission Boards, give some idea of the work which is now being done for the evangelization of the foreign peoples in the United States. We should be glad if the reports were more complete. They do not represent all of the work that is being done, because a considerable part of this work is carried on by the local churches in all of the denominations, and this work is seldom reported and does not enter into the statistics of the Home Mission Boards.

It is hoped that each Board will provide a supplementary chapter, setting forth in detail its work among the foreign population—a work abounding in incident and hopefulness. There is no more encouraging home mission work, and wherever earnest effort has been made, the response has been most gratifying. Write to your Home Mission Board for full information. Where a special chapter is not furnished for a supplemental study, the Boards will send the information and literature that will enable the leader of the study class to show what is being done, with a detail impossible in the general treatment of the subject.

It is significant, in this connection, that all the Boards are calling especial attention to the needs of this work among the foreign peoples and urging large advance in plans for evangelization.[Pg 315]

MISSION WORK OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN 1906 AMONG THE FOREIGN POPULATION

Including the charges not now receiving missionary aid, the total number of missions, or charges, among the foreign peoples was 971, not including Spanish work, and the total membership, including probationers, was 92,082 in 1906. The work is extended all over the country.

The Woman's Home Missionary Society supports Immigrant Homes in New York City, and in Boston, Mass., in which immigrants may find protection and counsel as well as a safe lodging. In Philadelphia, Pa., work is also done for incoming strangers, and lodgings provided in case of need. Missionaries are stationed at each of these points. Much work is done for foreigners by this Society through its three large city missions, and its numerous Deaconess Homes.[Pg 316]

MISSION WORK OF THE PRESBYTERIAN HOME MISSION BOARD IN 1906 AMONG THE FOREIGN POPULATION

The Annual Report for 1906 says: In addition to the above it is doubtless true that there are many churches, and even individuals, carrying on religious work among foreigners which has not been reported to the Board. Two facts warrant special attention. One is that the proper carrying on of the work of giving the gospel to these foreign-speaking peoples necessarily includes and is closely allied with other needs—such as schools; literature in their own tongue, including tracts, papers, and the Bible; colporteur visitation; Bible reading, and so forth. It is not sufficient simply to open a church or hall where a meeting can be held and expect the people to come. A great deal of preparatory work must be done.

MISSION WORK OF THE AMERICAN BAPTIST HOME MISSION SOCIETY IN 1906, AMONG THE FOREIGN POPULATION

[Pg 317]

FOREIGN PEOPLES IN BAPTIST CHURCHES, THE RESULTS OF HOME MISSION WORK

The number of missionaries among the foreign populations was 312. The Women's Societies maintained a number of workers, including the efficient missionaries at Ellis Island. The Home Mission Society is supporting Italian missionaries in twenty cities. Aside from organized effort, Chinese Sunday-schools are conducted by many local churches, which do not report to any central organization. There is a considerable work done also by the city mission societies, which work independently in part. In some places, local churches also maintain missions among the Italians, Hungarians, and Slavs.

MISSION WORK OF THE CONGREGATIONAL HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY IN 1906

STATEMENTS SHOWING NUMBER OF CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES FOR FOREIGN SPEAKING PEOPLES, WITH THEIR TOTAL MEMBERSHIP

[Pg 318]

Work of the Protestant Episcopal Church Among the Foreign Population

The Domestic Section of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States carries on work to a limited extent among the Swedes. There is a general missionary in the East, who has charge of this work in the three dioceses of Rhode Island, New York, and Massachusetts, and one in the northwest. In the eastern dioceses named there were in 1906 fifteen Swedish missions and parishes, with 1,897 communicants, ministered to by five clergymen. The western general missionary visited Sweden during the past year for the purpose of finding suitable university students for the ministry in this country. There are missions in Duluth and at other points. The Annual Report says: "Of all the work under the care of the general missionary, none is more important than the mission to Scandinavian immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, New York, for it acts as a special feeder to the church. The Scandinavian immigrants outnumber those from any other Protestant country."

What further work is done for the foreign peoples is carried on by the local parishes, such as Grace Church, Trinity, Saint George's, and Saint Bartholomew's in New York, which work among the Italians and other nationalities, and equip their missions in a manner worthy of imitation.

Lutheran Work in the United States

Large numbers of the immigrants are Lutherans. The resources of the Lutheran church in America to care for her people are thus stated by the Rev. J. N. Lenker, D.D., in the Lutheran World, the church organ:[Pg 319]

For the Germans, 5,000 pastors, 8,000 churches, and 1,200,000 communicant members.

For the Scandinavians, 1,800 pastors, 14,300 churches, and 500,000 communicant members.

For the Finns, three synods, 58 pastors, 187 churches, and 22,149 communicant members.

For the Slovaks, about 200 organizations with a growing number of pastors and a very loyal constituency.

For the Letts and Esthonians, 21 organized congregations and preaching stations, divided into the eastern and western districts.

For the Icelanders, one synod, 10 pastors, 37 organized congregations, 3,785 communicant members.

For the Poles, Bohemians, and Magyars, work is done by the various German synods, the late statistics of which are not at hand. Besides congregations in these languages, many understand German and are served by German pastors.

The whole Lutheran Church of America, including the Swedish Mission Friends with 33,000 members and the German Evangelical Synod with 222,000 members, the constituents of which are nearly all Lutherans, making in all 8,956 pastors, 15,135 churches, and 2,123,639 communicant members are the results of immigrant mission work or mission work in foreign languages or languages other than English.

ANALYSIS OF THE IMMIGRATION FOR 1905, WITH REGARD TO RELIGIOUS AFFILIATIONS AND EASE OF ASSIMILATION[102]

[Pg 320]

Third class and the most difficult to evangelize and Americanize and the class that makes the new problem difficult:

[Pg 321]

APPENDIX D

Bibliography

RACES OF IMMIGRANTS FISCAL YEAR 1905

FIGURES ON THE MAP REPRESENT THE NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS OF THE RACES NAMED COMING FROM EACH COUNTRY INDICATED, WHILE THE FIGURES ON THE BARS REPRESENT THE TOTAL NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS OF THE RACES NAMED COMING FROM ALL COUNTRIES.

THE COLOR ON MAP INDICATES APPROXIMATELY REGIONS OF THE RACIAL GRAND DIVISIONS

WHERE THE TERMS "BOHEMIAN," "BULGARIAN," "CROATIAN," AND "DALMATIAN" ARE USED, THEY REFER TO "BOHEMIAN AND MORAVIAN," "BULGARIAN, SERVIAN, AND MONTENEGRIN," "CROATIAN AND SLOVENIAN," AND "DALMATIAN, BOSNIAN, AND HERZEGOVINIAN."

[Pg 326]

[Pg 327]

INDEX

Abuses, of immigration privileges and laws, 42, 43, 63-69, 78-84, 92, 93

Adams, Representative, of  Pennsylvania, 74, 97

Admission, see Immigrants

Africans, 124

Alabama, 113

Albany, New York, 22

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 3

Alien, admission, 53-64;
advance in numbers and distribution, 15-50, 102-117;
characterized, 236, 237, 258;
ideas imported, 241;
loss of religious faith, 271;
opinion of America, 272;
protection, 65-68;
restriction, 68-84

Aliens, classes excluded, 77, 78;
total since American Revolution, 28

America, duty to guard its own genius, 232;
mission, 10, 269;
must be kept Christian, 271;
unique mission field, 269

American, Christians, duty of, 10, 11, 44-47;
fair play, 73;
ideals to be preserved, 11, 46, 47, 91, 238, 239, 262;
institutions, 232, 261;
liberty, 117;
Protestantism, 16, 47, 254, 255, 288;
teacher in Syria, 39;
Tract Society, 50;
type of nationality, 11, 45, 46, 92, 238, 240

Americanization of immigrants, 10, 14, 46, 113, 126, 176, 242;
children promoting, 205, 223, 259, 260

Anderson, Herbert, 268

Antwerp, 99

Appeal, right of, by excluded, 77, 78

Ardan, Ivan, 181, 182

Armenians, 124

Asia, immigrants from, 20, 21, 113

Assimilation of foreign peoples, 270, 271;
aid to, 293

Assisted immigration, 43, 77, 93, 101

Associated Charities of Boston, 96

Atchison, Rena M., 194, 247

Attila, 27

Australians, as immigrants, 22

Austria, 81, 82

Austria-Hungary, 92, 165;
immigrants from, 21, 25, 72


Baldwin, Mrs. S. L., 72, 73

Baltimore, 53

Barrows, Dr. S. J., 142

[Pg 328]Battery, the, 54, 62, 108

Belgians, as immigrants, 21

Belgium, 29

Berlin, 199

Betts, Mrs. Lillian W., 151, 152, 204

Bible, 34, 167, 174, 283, 288

"Birds of passage," 71, 135

Blackwell's Island, 139

Board of Special Inquiry, 62

Bohemians, as immigrants, 21, 165-170;
city centers, 166;
freethinking tendencies, 168, 169;
Protestant in spirit, 165-168;
religious work among, 285

Booth, General William, 194

Bosnians, 183

Boston, 24, 53, 83, 198;
Italian Society, 111

Boyesen, Professor, 28, 89, 90, 234

Brandenburg, Broughton, 41, 65-68, 82, 97, 98, 101

Bremen, 82, 99

Brooklyn, 148

Brooks, Phillips, 232

Bryce, James, 200

Buffalo, 172

Bulgarians, as immigrants, 21, 183

Bureau of Information, 110

Burlington, Iowa, 20


Calvin, 172

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 24

Canada, 27;
ingress from, 53, 77, 92

Canadians, as immigrants, 21

Carr, Mr. 138

Carroll, Dr. H. K., 174

Castle Garden, 28

Celtic peoples, 123

Chandler, ex-Senator, 214

Chattanooga, Immigration Bureau in, 113

Chicago, 36, 166-172, 176, 187, 198

Childhood, the blighting of, 225, 226

Children, condition of, in great cities, 221, 222;
number of, at work, 224, 226

Chinese, as immigrants, 21, 40, 72, 73;
converts, 73, 89, 269;
exclusion act, 70, 73;
Sunday-schools for, 289

Chivers, Dr. E. E., 267

Chopin, 172

Christ, 44, 277

Christian attitude toward immigrants, 44-47, 270;
coöperation and federation, 286;
optimism, 8, 117, 262

Christianity, converts to, 73;
its first impression for newcomers, 277, 278

Churches, duty and opportunity of, 270, 282, 286;
abandoning lower New York, 278;
must be missionary, 270;
saving themselves through saving immigrants, 285;
work for foreigners, 289

Cincinnati, 23

Citizenship, how degraded, 214

City, the, bad government of, 200;
conditions of tenement-house life in, 201, 210;
demoralizing influences, 209, 214;
environment offered immigrants, 196, 201-206;
foreignization of, 198, 199, 217;
[Pg 329]isolation of foreigners in, 205;
nerve and storm center, 193;
overcrowding, 203, 206;
political evils, 214

City College, many Jewish pupils in, 189

Civil War, effect on immigration, 26, 31

Claghorn, Kate H., 97, 259

Cleveland, Ohio, 24, 166, 169, 172

Cleveland, President, 96

Colonies, foreign, in America, 196, 198, 200, 217

Colonists distinguished from immigrants, 45, 46

Columbia University, 13

Columbus, Christopher, 188

Commissioner-General of Immigration, 25, 76-78, 83, 92, 93;
of the Port, 77

Coney Island, 150

Congestion of foreign elements in cities, 195

Congress, acts of, 70

Connecticut, 173, 174, 180

Consumption, statistics of, 220;
foreign element largely its victims, 220

Contract labor exclusion, 77, 82, 92;
violation, 82, 83

Convicts, excluded, 77

Cook, Joseph, 52

Coolies, Chinese, excluded, 70

Coöperation, interdenominational, 286;
of Home Mission Boards, 288

Copernicus, 172

Crime, conditions favorable to increase of, 209, 224;
foreigners led into by environment and example, 209

Croatians, 124, 183

Czechs, see Bohemians


Dalmatians, as immigrants, 183

Danes, as immigrants, 21

Debarred, see Excluded

Democracy, influence of upon aliens, 296, 298

Denmark, immigrants from, 23

Detroit, 21, 172

Discrimination needed as to immigrants, 127

Diseases guarded against, 57, 59, 60, 74, 77, 78, 93

Distribution of immigrants, 102-117;
New York state, 105, 107;
New Zealand methods, 116;
North Atlantic section, 105;
Ohio, 107;
Pennsylvania, 105, 107;
railroads assisting, 116;
societies aiding, 107-113;
South Central states, 105;
West Virginia, 107;
Western section, 105

Dublin, 199

Dutch, as immigrants, 21


Eastern invasion, the, 157-192

Edison, Thomas A., 247

Educational policy affected by immigration, 246

Ellis Island, 18, 19, 35, 37, 54, 55, 59-62, 74, 83, 99, 100, 108;
missionary  workers at, 274;
results of personal efforts at, 275

Emerson, Ralph W., 247

English, as immigrants, 19, 21, 126;
[Pg 330]language, influence of, 259, 260

Environment, evil effects of upon children, 243

Europe, American ideas working in, 33, 34;
immigrants from, 20, 23, 98, 123-192

Evangelization of immigrants, 10, 16, 46, 47;
accessibility, 294;
illustration of, 283;
most potent factor in Americanizing, 270;
need for extension of, 277;
personal responsibility for, 290;
sporadic, not systematic, 281

Evasion of immigration laws, 78-83

Excluded classes, 74-78, 100, 101


Federation of Jewish Charities, 102

Financial panics, effect on immigration, 26, 31

Finns, as immigrants, 21

Fiume, 82, 99

Forbes, James, 139

Foreign-born, distribution of, 107

Four State Immigration League, 113

France, 34

Franklin, Benjamin, 69

Freethinkers, their societies among immigrants, 168, 169, 180, 285

French-American College, the, 280

French, as immigrants, 21

French-Canadians, Roman Catholic convention of, 257

Fung Yuet Mow, 269


Gardner, Representative, of Massachusetts, 95

Genoa, 99, 132

Germans, as immigrants, 19, 21, 35, 126

Germany, immigrants from, 25, 33, 81

Goodchild, Rev. F. M., 33, 292

Grant, Ulysses S., 247

Great Britain, immigrants from, 25, 43, 128

Greece, 92

Greek Catholic Church, 182, 184;
Orthodox or Russian State Church, 182

Greeks, as immigrants, 21, 37, 41


Hall, Prescott F., 45, 70, 129

Hamburg, 82, 99

Havre, 99

Hebrew, see Jewish, Jews

Herzegovinians, as immigrants, 183

Hewes, F. W., 107

Home Missions, at Ellis Island, 274;
demand for extension of in New York, 287;
opportunities of, for local churches, 279;
personal work, 274, 290, 291;
results of abroad, 269;
settlement influences by residence, 292, 293

Honolulu, 53

Huguenot colonial stock, 240

Hungarians, as immigrants, 33, 128, 177-179;
cafés, as social centers, 178, 179;
[Pg 331]fair degree of education, 177;
open to mission work, 178

Hungary, 19, 128

Huns, 27, 165

Hunter, Robert, 194, 200

Huss, John, 166, 170


Iberic peoples, 123

Idiots, excluded, 77, 78

Illiteracy, amount of among immigrants, 22, 24, 125;
test proposed, 95, 96

Immigrants, admission, 53-64;
"assisted," 43, 93;
approachable, 273, 282;
attracted to the city, 195;
debarred, 70, 71, 77, 78;
diseased, 57, 60, 74, 77, 78, 93, 94;
illiteracy among, 22, 23, see also Illiteracy;
"manifest," 55, 56, 61;
nationality, 21, 22;
"natural," 31-42;
ports and routes of entry, 53, 77;
"solicited," 42, 43, 80-82, 93;
smuggling of, 81, 92;
religious census and conditions, 251, 271;
value of first impression upon, 273;
views of America, 272;
women among, 18, 61, 76

Immigration, annual volume, 17-22;
Bureau of, 76, 77, 92, 104;
causes of, 29-31;
Christian view of, 8;
classes, 31-43;
Conference of 1905, 90, 91;
divine mission in, 270;
economic fallacies of, 245;
effect upon educational policy, 246;
inspectors and officers, 59-61, 76, 77;
laws, see Laws, immigration;
new development of, 121-155;
numbers since 1820, 25-27;
process by the steerage and Ellis Island described, 55-62;
Restrictive League, 96;
"runner," 80-82;
steamship and railroad arrangements, 55, 57, 62

Indianapolis, 22

Indians, North American, 45

Industrial Commission, 31

Insane, excluded, 77, 78

Insanity, low proportion among Italians and Jews, 140

Institutional church, need of, 286, 288

Ireland, 27, 43,
immigrants from, 25, 31, 72, 128;
potato famine, 25

Irish, as immigrants, 19, 21, 38, 39, 89, 126;
compared with the Italians, 136, 137

Italian, Benevolent Institute, 147;
Chamber of Commerce, 145;
Hospital, 147;
Immigration Department, 138;
Savings Bank, 147

Italians, as immigrants, 19, 34, 36, 37, 110, 130;
distribution, 135, 136;
family coöperation, 207;
generally peaceable character, 141, 142, 208;
illiteracy, 22, 134;
in New York, 139, 145, 206;
number entering, 19, 134, 135;
parallel drawn with Irish, 136, 137;
societies for mutual aid, 50, 110, 145, 147;
spirit of converts, 284;
thrift, 139-147, 207;
[Pg 332]women homemakers, 206;

Italy, 92, 131-133;
government action and aid, 79, 111;
immigrants from, 25, 31, 72, 79, 107;
Royal Department of Emigration, 111;
sections compared, 131-134

Ives, Mr., 294


Japanese, as immigrants, 40;
Robinson Crusoe, 40

Jefferson, President, 68

Jerome of Prague, 166

Jersey City, 22

Jewish children as pupils, 189

Jews, as immigrants, 21, 95, 96, 113, 128, 185-190;
Austria-Hungarian, 21, 186;
German, 185;
good qualities, 190;
number of in New York, 186, 198;
Roumanian, 186;
Russian, 11, 12, 21, 185-180

John G. Carlisle, ferryboat,  53

Joseph II, Emperor, of Austria, 167

Juvenile Court, Jewish children in, 190


Kansas City, 22

Kosciusko, 172

Kossuth, a Slovak, 175


Labor, immigration of skilled and unskilled, 23, 24

Latin races, as immigrants, 113, 131

Lawrence, Kansas, 20

Laws, immigration, 58, 64;
Bill of 1906, 95;
problems,  87-119;
protective, 65-68;
restrictive, 68-84;
summaries and recommendations, 309-313

Lee, Dr. S. H., 136, 152

Legislation, see Laws, immigration

Letts, the, as immigrants, 179, 180

Liberty, American, as a working leaven, 33, 34;
statue of, 57, 278

Lieber, Francis, 194

Lincoln, Abraham, 247

Lithuanians, as immigrants, 23, 36, 179, 180;
illiteracy, 23

Liverpool, 99

Lodge, Senator, 96

London, 99

Long Island, as a field for Italians, 149

Longfellow, 247

Louisiana, 113

Louisville, 23

Luther, 172

Lynn, Massachusetts, 24


Machinery, effect on immigration, 43

Madison, President, 68

Mafia, the, 130, 141

Magna Charta, 34

Magyars, as immigrants, 21, 177-179;
illiteracy, 23;
see also Hungarians

"Manifest" for immigrant, 55, 56, 61

Marine Hospital Service, 59

Marseilles, 99

Mashek, Nan, 166

Massachusetts, 142, 173

Mayo-Smith, Richmond, 52, 231, 238, 248

McLanahan, Samuel, 121

[Pg 333]McMillan, Margaret, 225

Mexicans, as immigrants, 21

Mexico, ingress through, 92, 93

Michigan, 172

Milwaukee, 170, 172

Minneapolis, 21

Mission workers for immigrants, 274

Mississippi, 113, 183

Mitchell, Max, 102

Mongolic peoples, 124

Montenegrins, as immigrants, 21, 183

Moravians, as immigrants, 164

Music, love of by Bohemians, 169;
by Italians, 144


Naples, 99, 199

National Civic Federation, 90;
Slavonic Society, 176

Naturalization, illegal methods, 93, 196, 214-215;
reading test desirable, 249

New Amsterdam, 45

New England, 45, 148, 173, 179;
how it can remain Christian, 270, 271

New Haven, 23

New Jersey, 148, 173, 178

New Orleans, 183

New York, Bible Society, 50;
State, 69, 70, 105, 107, 178, 213

New York City, 30-39, 53, 54, 62, 63, 110, 112, 139, 145, 165, 166, 169, 172, 176-189, 198, 200, 220;
chief port of entry for immigrants, 53;
child life and labor in, 220, 221;
consumption in, 220;
cosmopolitan character, 198, 199;
foreign peoples in, 139, 145, 150, 166, 172, 178, 179, 186-189, 195-226

Norway, 27;
immigrants from, 23, 25, 126


Occupations,  of various races, 23, 24

Odessa, 99

Ogg, Frederick A., 92, 93, 99, 100

Ohio, 172

Optimism, 8, 29, 262

Ottawa, Illinois, 20


Padrones, 82, 92, 111

Parochial schools among aliens, 246, 256

Pauperism in the United States, 218;
contrasted with poverty, 217;
foreign percentage of, 219;
increased by immigration, 219

Pennsylvania, 160-163, 172, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 213

People's Forum in Cooper Institute, 250

Persecution, affecting immigration, 29, 30, 91

Philadelphia, 38, 53, 172, 176, 179, 187

Pittsburg, 82, 172, 174, 176

Poles, as immigrants, 22, 35, 75, 76, 170-174;
clannish, 173;
illiteracy, 22, 173;
independence, 173

Polish, Catholics, 174;
girl, story of, 212;
Jew, "sweater," 210;
National Alliance, 170

Ports, for examination abroad, 98, 99;
[Pg 334]of entry, 53

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 20

Poughkeepsie, New York, 20

Poverty in the United States, 218;
defined, 217

Presbyterian Slavistic Union, 176

Protestantism, as related to immigrants, 9, 39, 47, 202, 166-174, 177-188, 216, 224, 251;
could change conditions as to child labor, 225, 226;
ought to save immigrants from moral degeneracy, 255;
vast opportunity to evangelize and Americanize,  267-299

Providence, Rhode Island, 21

Public Schools, attacks upon to be resisted, 248;
duty to elevate, 248;
foreign children in, 198, 223, 248;
power to Americanize, 234, 248, 256

Publicity, value of, 83, 90


Quarantine, 56, 62


Railroads and immigrants, 62, 63

Reich, Emil, 131

Religious census of immigrants in 1900, 251

Removal Bureau, for directing Jewish emigrants, 111

Reports, Commissioner-General, 25, 143

Riis, Jacob, 194, 216

Roman Catholic Church, as related to immigrants, 133, 151, 152, 167, 168, 172-174,
177-184, 247, 248, 251, 256, 257, 271, 297;
efforts to get public money for parochial schools, 246;
some lessons to be learned from, 279

Roosevelt, President, 51, 73, 88, 92, 96, 179

Rossi, Adolpho, 138, 147

Rotterdam, 99

Roumanians, as immigrants, 19, 21;
see also Jews

Rovinanek, Mr., 174, 175

Russia, 34, 128;
immigrants from, 25, 81, 217

Russian empire, 19;
Jews, 11, 19, 112;
persecution, 29, 30


Saint Louis, 145, 198

Saint Nazaire, 99

Saloon, evil effects of, 216, 217

Sampson, Sidney, 260

San Francisco, 41, 53, 73, 148

Saratoga Springs, New York, 20

Sargent, Commissioner-General, 28, 103, 158, 203

Scandinavians, 27;
agricultural tendency, 127;
useful immigrants, 19, 21, 126, 217;
small illiteracy, 23

Schauffler, Dr. A. F, 30, 195

Schauffler, Dr. H. A., 293

Scotch, as immigrants, 21, 126;
small illiteracy, 23

Scotland, 27

[Pg 335]Secretary of Commerce and Labor, 77, 78

Seelye,  ex-President of Amherst, 255

Servian immigrants, 21

Settlement service by religion and residence, 292, 293

Sioux Falls, Iowa, 20

Slavic home missionaries, 293, 294;
peoples, 124

Slavs, as immigrants, 21, 79, 107, 113, 127, 128, 157-192;
defined, 159, 160;
displacing other peoples, 160, 162;
illiteracy, 23, 164;
largely unskilled, 164;
migration of recent date, 160;
mostly mine and factory workers, 164;
native workers among, 285

Slovaks, as immigrants, 174-176;
from agricultural class, 175;
organizations among, 176;
tinware workers, 176

Slovenians, as immigrants, 183

Slums, peril of the children in, 220-224;
poverty and pauperism of, 217-219

Socialism, bred in the slums, 202

Societies in aid of immigrants by races, 110-112

Society for Italian immigrants, 50, 110, 111

Solicitation, as affecting immigration, 42, 43, 80-82, 93

South American immigrants, 21

South Carolina, 113

South, the New, as a field for immigrants, 113

Southampton, 99

Spahr, Dr. Charles B., 260

Spanish immigrants, 21, 217

Special Inquiry Board, 77

Speranza, Gino C., 88, 145

"Stairs of Separation," 62, 63

Standards of living, lowered through immigration, 244

States and countries as a scale of immigration, 24, 25, 27, 28

Statistics of immigration, aliens since Revolution, 28;
arrivals by years from 1820 to 1905, 305;
child labor in New York City, and in United States, 226, 227;
countries by totals, 127-129;
debarred during fourteen years, and by race or people, 77, 303;
distribution by states, 105-107;
entries at ports and through Canada, 53;
estimated immigration for 1905-6, 20;
illiteracy, 21-23, 134, 164;
increase of immigrants for 1905, 25;
inflow since 1820, 25-27;
insanity, 140;
Italians, by years, locality, and occupation, 134, 135, 143;
Jews, chiefly Russian, 185, 186, 198;
labor skilled and unskilled, 23, 24, 134, 164;
mendicancy, 140;
money sent from United States to aid immigrants, 31;
present annual race totals illustrated, 20-23;
race, sex, and age of immigrants for 1905, 306;
[Pg 336]religious divisions for 1900, 251;
savings and investments of Italians, 145, 146;
Slavs for 1905, 159,
see also, for distribution and occupation, 165-183;
tendency among Italians to forsake Roman Catholic Church, 271

Steamships for immigrants, 55, 57;
overcrowding, 65;
rate cutting, 79;
steerage abuses and reforms, 65-68;
unkind treatment, 57, 58, 67;
unsanitary arrangements, 65-67;
violation of laws, 78-84

Stettin, 99

Strong, Dr. Josiah, 9-16, 193, 194, 256, 257

Sunday laws and observance, as affected by immigration, 72, 237, 241, 252-254;
Sunday-schools, among immigrants, 284, 294

Sweat-shop, description of system, 209, 210;
reproach to Christian civilization, 210;
victims of, 210-213

Sweden, 27;
immigrants from, 23, 25, 33, 37, 38, 126

Swiss, as immigrants, 21, 28

Switzerland, 27, 43

Syrian immigrants, 23, 39


Tariff, effect on immigration, 44

Temperance, large measure of, among Chinese, Italians, and Jews, 73, 141, 190

Tenement-houses, description of life in, 204-208;
evils of, 201;
exorbitant rents, 202;
model block of suggested, 288;
responsibility of landlords, 202;
unsanitary conditions of, 211

Tent campaign, winning Italians, 282

Teutonic peoples, 123

Texas, 113

Thompson, Dr. Charles L., 117, 268

Training schools, needed in work among aliens, 286

Trieste, 99

Tuoti, Mr. G., 145

Turks, as immigrants, 21;
illiteracy, 23

Tymkevich, Paul, 158


United Hebrew Charities, 111, 219, 277

United Kingdom, see Great Britain

United States, agencies of helpful to immigrants, 50, 54, 57-63, 111, 274;
"assisted" immigration to, 43, 93;
attraction of, 29-42;
Immigration Investigating Commission, 112, 113;
Industrial Commission on Immigration, 141;
legislation as to immigrants, see Laws, immigration;
money from relatives in, to aid immigrants, 31;
national songs, 34;
Post-office, an immigration agency, 33;
see also Commissioner-General of Immigration, Ports of entry


[Pg 337]Venice, 199

Vincennes, Indiana, 20

Virginia, 45, 175

Vote, foreign, peril of, 249


Walker, General Francis A., 232

Ward, Robert D., 194

Warne, F. J., 157, 158, 162, 246

Warsaw, 199

Washington, city of, 24;
President, 68

Watchorn, Commissioner Robert, 30, 82

Welsh, as immigrants, 21, 126

Whelpley, J. D., 16, 70, 79, 94, 101

Wisconsin, 167

Women immigrants, 18, 35, 38, 39, 57, 61, 67, 75, 76, 304;
special inspection for, 61, 76

Work of leading denominations for foreign population, 314-320


Yiddish language, 198

Young people, as creators of public sentiment, 197;
opportunity of for Christian service, 10

Ziska, General, 166
[Pg 338]