Chapter 2

We have been considering thus far the immigration of a single year. To make the effect of this survey cumulative, let us include the totals of immigration from the first.[4] The official records begin with 1820. It is estimated that prior to that date the total number of alien arrivals was 250,000. In 1820 there were 8,385 newcomers, less than sometimes land at Ellis Island in a single day now, and they came chiefly from three nations--Great Britain, Germany, and Sweden. The stream gradually increased, but with many fluctuations, governed largely by the economic conditions. The highest immigration prior to the potato famine in Ireland in 1847 was in the year 1842, when the total for the first time passed the 100,000 mark, being 104,565. In 1849 the number leaped to 297,024, with a large proportion of the whole from Ireland; in 1850 it was 310,000; while 1854 was the high year of that period, with 427,833. Then came the panic and financial depression in America, and after that the civil war, which sent the immigration figures down. It was not until 1866, after the war was over, that the total again rose to 300,000. In 1872 it was 404,806; in 1873, 459,803; falling back then until 1880, when a high period set in. The totals of 1881 (669,431) and of 1882 (788,992) were not again equaled until 1903, when for the first time the 800,000 mark was passed.

[Sidenote: The Totals by Decades]

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

1821 to 1830 143,439 1831 to 1840 599,125 1841 to 1850 1,713,251 1851 to 1860 2,598,214 1861 to 1870 2,314,824 1871 to 1880 2,812,191 1881 to 1890 5,246,613 1891 to 1900 3,687,564 1901 to 1905 3,833,076 ---------- Total, 1821 to 1905 22,948,297

From this it appears that more aliens landed in the single decade from 1880 to 1890 than in the period of forty-five years from 1820 to 1865. Indeed, the immigration of the past six years more than outnumbers that of the forty years from 1820 to 1860.

[Sidenote: A Startling Total of 23,000,000]

Thus, from colonial days above twenty-three millions of aliens have been received upon these hospitable shores. And more than thirteen millions of them have come since 1880, or in the last quarter century. No wonder it is said that the invasion of Attila and his Huns was but a side incident compared to this modern migration of the millions.

[Sidenote: Impressive Comparisons]

Canada, our northern neighbor, is a prosperous colony of 5,371,315, according to her latest census. We could almost have peopled Canada entire with as large a population out of the immigration of the decade 1880-1890. More than that, the whole population of Scotland, or that of Ireland, above four and a quarter millions, could have moved over to America, and it would only have equaled the actual immigration since 1900. If the whole of Wales were to come over, the 1,700,000 odd of them would not have equaled by 100,000 the total immigration of the two years 1904-05. If all Sweden and Norway packed up and left the question of one or two kingdoms to settle itself, the 7,300,000 sturdy Scandinavians would fall short of the immigrant host that has come in from everywhither since 1891. More people than the entire population of Switzerland (3,315,000) have landed in America within four years. If only the majority of these aliens had possessed the love of liberty and the characteristic virtues of the Protestant Swiss, our problem would be very different. These comparisons strongly impress the responsibility and burden imposed upon America by practically free and wide-open gates.

[Sidenote: The Problem of Assimilation]

Here are the totals which we have now reached. Of the 23,000,000 aliens who have come into America since the Revolution, the last census (1900) gave the number then living at 10,256,664. A census taken to-day would doubtless show about 14,000,000. Add the children of foreign parentage and it would bring the total up to between 35,000,000 and 40,000,000. Mr. Sargent estimates this total at forty-six per cent. of our entire population. The immigration problem presents nothing less than the assimilation of this vast mass of humanity. No wonder thoughtful Americans stand aghast before it. At the same time, the only thing to fear is failure to understand the situation and meet it. As Professor Boyesen says: "The amazing thing in Americans is their utter indifference or supine optimism. 'Don't you worry, old fellow,' said a very intelligent professional man to me recently, when I told him of my observations during a visit to Castle Garden.[5] 'What does it matter whether a hundred thousand more or less arrive? Even if a million arrived annually, or two millions, I guess we could take care of them. Why, this country is capable of supporting a population of two hundred millions without being half so densely populated as Belgium. Only let them come--the more the merrier!' I believe this state of mind is fairly typical. It is the sublime but dangerous optimism of a race which has never been confronted with serious problems." But we believe it is the optimism of a race which, when fairly brought face to face with crises, will not fail to meet them in the same spirit that has won the victories of civil and religious liberty and established a free government of, by, and for the people in America.

_III. Why They Come_

[Sidenote: The Causes of Immigration]

[Sidenote: Expulsion]

[Sidenote: Attraction]

The causes of immigration are variously stated, but compressed into three words they are: Attraction, Expulsion, Solicitation. The attraction comes from the United States, the expulsion from the Old World, and the solicitation from the great transportation lines and their emissaries. Sometimes one cause is more potent, sometimes another. Of late, racial and religious persecution has been active in Europe, and America gets the results. "In Russia there is an outbreak, hideous and savage, against the Jew, and an impulse is started whose end is not reached until you strike Rivington Street in the ghetto of New York. The work begun in Russia ends in the seventeenth ward of New York." Cause and effect are manifest. Military service is enforced in Italy; taxes rise, overpopulation crowds, poverty pinches. As a result, the stream flows toward America, where there is no military service and no tax, and where steady work and high wages seem assured. The mighty magnet is the attractiveness of America, real or pictured. America is the magic word throughout all Europe. No hamlet so remote that the name has not penetrated its peasant obscurity. America means two things--money and liberty--the two things which the European peasant (and often prince as well) lacks and wants. Necessity at home pushes; opportunity in America pulls. Commissioner Robert Watchorn, of the port of New York, packs the explanation into an epigram: "American wages are the honey-pot that brings the alien flies." He says further: "If a steel mill were to start in a Mississippi swamp paying wages of $2 a day, the news would hum through foreign lands in a month, and that swamp would become a beehive of humanity and industry in an incredibly short space of time." Dr. A. F. Schauffler says, with equal pith, that "the great cause of immigration is, after all, that the immigrants propose to better themselves in this country. They come here not because they love us, or because we love them. They come here because they can do themselves good, not because they can do us good."[6] That is natural and true; and it furnishes excellent reason why we must do them good in order that they may not do us evil. To make their good ours and our good theirs is both Christian and safe.

[Sidenote: Three Classes]

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

[Sidenote: Normal Motives and Conditions]

The prosperity of this country has undoubtedly chiefly influenced immigration in the past. This is shown by the marked relationship between industrial and commercial activity in the United States and the volume of immigration.[7] Our prosperity not only induces desire to come but makes coming possible. The testimony before the Industrial Commission showed that from forty to forty-five per cent. of the immigrants have their passage prepaid by friends or relatives in this country, and from ten to twenty-five per cent. more buy their tickets abroad with money sent from the United States. In 1902 between $65,000,000 and $70,000,000 was sent home to Italy alone from the United States, and the stream of earnings flowing out to Ireland and Germany and Sweden and Hungary has been not less steady. American prosperity has been feeding and paying taxes for millions of people who owe far more to our government than to their own, and foreign governments have been reaping the benefit. The United States has a small standing army of its own, but through the gold sent abroad by the alien wage earners here we have been helping maintain the vast armaments of Europe. The letters and the money sent by immigrants to the home folks awaken the desires and dreams that mean more immigrants. The United States Post-office is a marvelous immigration agent in Europe. Immigrants are not the only persons induced to migrate through the feeling that where one is not will prove a much better place than where one is. That seems to inhere in human nature.

[Sidenote: American Leaven]

[Sidenote: The American Idea]

"Not only the American money and letters, but the American ideas are at work abroad," says the Rev. F. M. Goodchild, D.D.,[8] in a recent address: "The praises of America are told abroad by every person who comes here and gets along. Some things to be sure, these people miss--the blue skies of Italy and the vineyards on the hillside. But they have for them the compensation of such a liberty as they never knew before. The real reason why all southern Europe is in a turmoil to-day, is that American ideas of liberty are working there like leaven. We get our notions of liberty from the Bible and from the men who forced the Magna Charta from King John at Runnymede, but all other peoples in the world seem to be getting their ideas of liberty from us. That is what is the matter with the Old World to-day. The American idea is working like leaven. That is the force at work in France, where absolute divorce has just been proclaimed between Church and State. That is at the bottom of the movements in Russia, where the Stundists have just won religious liberty, and where, let us hope, all classes of people ere long will have won complete civil liberty. These people have felt the uplift of our American free institutions and they want them for themselves. They have heard 'Yankee Doodle,' and the 'Star Spangled Banner,' and 'My Country, 'tis of Thee,' and they cannot get the music of liberty out of their ears and their hearts. Broughton Brandenburg tells us that he heard some Italians who had been in America singing our classic song 'Mr. Dooley' in the vineyards near Naples."

_IV. What the Immigrants Say_

[Sidenote: Personal Testimony]

Let the immigrants themselves tell why they come. These testimonies are typical, condensed from a most interesting volume of immigrant autobiography,[9] fresh and illuminating.

[Sidenote: A German]

A German nurse girl says: "I heard about how easy it was to make money in America and became very anxious to go there. I was restless in my home; mother seemed so stern and could not understand that I wanted amusement. I sailed from Antwerp, the fare costing $35. My second eldest sister met me with her husband at Ellis Island and they were glad to see me and I went to live with them in their flat in West Thirty-fourth Street, New York. A week later I was an apprentice in a Sixth Avenue millinery store earning four dollars a week. I only paid three for board, and was soon earning extra money by making dresses and hats at home." Friends in Germany would be sure to hear of this new condition.

[Sidenote: A Pole]

Why do the Poles come? A Polish sweat-shop girl, telling her life story, answers. The father died, then troubles began in the home in Poland. Little was needed by the widow and her child, but even soup, black bread, and onions they could not always get. At thirteen the girl was handy at housekeeping, but the rent fell behind, and the mother decided to leave Poland for America, where, "we heard, it was much easier to make money. Mother wrote to Aunt Fanny, who lived in New York, and told her how hard it was to live in Poland, and Aunt Fanny advised her to come and bring me." Thousands could tell a similar story to that. "Easier to make money" has allured multitudes to leave the old home and land.

[Sidenote: A Russian]

A Lithuanian (Russian) tells how it was the traveling shoemaker that made him want to come to America. This shoemaker learned all the news, and smuggled newspapers across the German line, and he told the boy's parents how wrong it was to shut him out of education and liberty by keeping him at home. "That boy must go to America," he said one night. "My son is in the stockyards in Chicago." These were some of his reasons for going: "You can read free papers and prayer books; you can have free meetings, and talk out what you think." And more precious far, you can have "life, liberty, and the getting of happiness." When time for military service drew near, these arguments for America prevailed and the boy was smuggled out of his native land. "It is against the law to sell tickets to America, but my father saw the secret agent in the village and he got a ticket from Germany and found us a guide. I had bread and cheese and vodka (liquor) and clothes in my bag. My father gave me $50 besides my ticket." Bribery did the rest, and thus this immigrant obtained his liberty and chance in America. The American idea is leavening Russia surely enough.

[Sidenote: An Italian]

An Italian bootblack who already owns several bootblacking establishments in this country, was trained to a beggar's life in Italy, and ran away. "Now and then I had heard things about America--that it was a far-off country where everybody was rich and that Italians went there and made plenty of money, so that they could return to Italy and live in pleasure ever after." He worked his passage as a coaler, and was passed at Ellis Island through the perjury of one of the bosses who wring money out of the immigrants in the way of commissions, getting control of them by the criminal act at the very entrance into American life.

A Greek peddler, a graduate of the high school at Sparta--think of a modern high school in ancient Sparta!--after two years in the army, was ready for life. "All these later years I had been hearing from America. An elder brother was there who had found it a fine country and was urging me to join him. Fortunes could easily be made, he said. I got a great desire to see it, and in one way and another I raised the money for fare--250 francs--($50) and set sail from the old port of Athens. I got ashore without any trouble in New York, and got work immediately as a push-cart man. Six of us lived together in two rooms down on Washington Street. At the end of our day's work we all divided up our money even; we were all free."

[Sidenote: A Swede]

A Swedish farmer says: "A man who had been living in America once came to visit the little village near our cottage. He wore gold rings set with jewels and had a fine watch. He said that food was cheap in America and that a man could earn nearly ten times as much there as in Sweden. There seemed to be no end to his money." Sickness came, with only black bread and a sort of potato soup or gruel for food, and at last it was decided that the older brother was to go to America. The first letter from him contained this: "I have work with a farmer who pays me sixty-four kroner[10] a month and my board. I send you twenty kroner, and will try to send that every month. This is a good country. All about me are Swedes, who have taken farms and are getting rich. They eat white bread and plenty of meat. One farmer, a Swede, made more than 25,000 kroner on his crop last year. The people here do not work such long hours as in Sweden, but they work much harder, and they have a great deal of machinery, so that the crop one farmer gathers will fill two big barns."

[Sidenote: An Irish Woman]

An Irish cook, one of "sivin childher," had a sister Tilly, who emigrated to Philadelphia, started as a greenhorn at $2 a week, learned to cook and bake and wash, all American fashion, and before a year was gone had money enough laid up to send for the teller of the story. The two gradually brought over the whole family, and Joseph owns a big flour store and Phil is a broker, while his son is in politics and the city council, and his daughter Ann (she calls herself Antoinette now) is engaged to a lawyer in New York. That is America's attractiveness and opportunity and transformation in a nutshell.

[Sidenote: Foreign Mission School, Cause of Immigration]

A Syrian, born on the Lebanon range, went to an American mission school at fifteen, learned much that his former teacher the friar had warned him against, had his horizon broadened, gave up his idea of becoming a Maronite monk when he learned that there were other great countries beside Syria, and had all his old ideas overthrown by an encyclopedia which said the United States was a larger and richer country than Syria or even Turkey. The friar was angry and said the book told lies, and so did the patriarch, who was scandalized to think such a book should come to Mount Lebanon; but the American teacher said the encyclopedia was written by men who knew, and the Syrian boy finally decided to go to the United States, where "we had heard that poor people were not oppressed." His mother and uncle came, too, and as the boy was a good penman he secured work without difficulty in an Oriental goods store. As for his former religious teaching he says: "The American teacher never talked to me about religion; but I can see that those monks and priests are the curse of our country, keeping the people in ignorance and grinding the faces of the poor, while pretending to be their friends." In his case it was the foreign mission school that was the magnet to America.

[Sidenote: A Japanese]

A Japanese says: "The desire to see America was burning in my boyish heart. The land of freedom and civilization of which I had heard so much from missionaries and the wonderful story of America I had heard from those of my race who returned from there made my longing ungovernable." A popular novel among Japanese boys, "The Adventurous Life of Tsurukichi Tanaka, Japanese Robinson Crusoe," made a strong impression upon him, and finally he decided to come to this country to receive an American education.

[Sidenote: A Chinese]

A representative Chinese business man of New York was taught in childhood that the English and Americans were foreign devils, the latter false, because having made a treaty by which they could freely come to China and Chinese as freely go to America, they had broken the treaty and shut the Chinese out. When he was sixteen, working on a farm, a man of his tribe came back from America "and took ground as large as four city blocks and made a paradise of it." He had gone away a poor boy, now he returned with unlimited wealth, "which he had obtained in the country of the American wizards. He had become a merchant in a city called Mott Street, so it was said. The wealth of this man filled my mind with the idea that I, too, would go to the country of the wizards and gain some of their wealth." Landing in San Francisco, before the exclusion act, he started in American life as a house servant, but finally became a Mott Street merchant, as he had intended from the first.

[Sidenote: Fortune and Freedom]

Thus we have gone the rounds of immigrants of various races. The two ideas--fortune and freedom--lie at the basis of immigration, although the money comes first in nearly all cases. These testimonies could be multiplied indefinitely. Ask the first immigrant you can talk with what brought him, and find out for yourself. Mr. Brandenburg says a Greek who was being deported told him that all Greece was stirred up over the matter of emigration, and that in five years the number of Greeks coming to the United States would have increased a thousand per cent.[11] The reasons are the too onerous military duties in Greece and prosperity of Greeks in America. The remittances fired the zeal of the home people to follow, and the candymakers' shops were full of apprentices, because the idea had gone abroad that candymakers could easily gain a fortune in America.

[Sidenote: Showing only the Bright Side]

From these illustrations, it can readily be seen how widespread is the knowledge of America as a desirable place. The other side is rarely told and that is the pitiful side of it. The stories that go back are always of the fortunes, not of the misfortunes, of the money and not of the misery.

_V. Solicitation an Evil_

[Sidenote: Evils of Solicitation]

If immigration were left to the natural causes, there would be little reason for apprehension. It is in the solicited and assisted immigration that the worst element is found. Commercial greed lies at the root of this, as of most of the evils which afflict us as a nation. The great steamship lines have made it cheaper to emigrate than to stay at home, in many cases; and every kind of illegal inducement and deceit and allurement has been employed to secure a full steerage. The ramifications of this transportation system are wonderful. It has a direct bearing, too, upon the character of the immigrants. Easy and cheap transportation involves deterioration in quality. In the days when a journey across the Atlantic was a matter of weeks or months and of considerable outlay, only the most enterprising, thrifty, and venturesome were ready to try an uncertain future in an unknown land. The immigrant of those days was likely, therefore, to be of the sturdiest and best type, and his coming increased the general prosperity without lowering the moral tone. Now that the ocean has become little more than a ferry, and the rates of railway and steamship have been so reduced, it is the least thrifty and prosperous members of their communities that fall readiest prey to the emigration agent.

[Sidenote: Assisted Immigration]

Assisted immigration is the term used to cover cases where a foreign government has eased itself of part of the burden of its paupers, insane, dependents, and delinquents by shipping them to the United States. This was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, especially in the case of local and municipal governments. Our laws were lax, and for a time nearly everybody, sane or insane, sound or diseased, was passed. The financial gain to the exporting government can be seen in the fact that it costs about $150 per head a year to support dependents and delinquents in this country, while it would not cost the foreign authorities more than $50 to transport them hither. This policy seems scarcely credible, but Switzerland, Great Britain, and Ireland followed it thriftily until our laws put a stop to it, in large part, by returning these undesirable persons whence they came, at the expense of the steamship companies bringing them. It was not until 1882, however, that our government passed laws for self-protection, and in 1891 another law made "assisted" immigrants a special class not to be admitted.

[Sidenote: Other Causes]