Part 3

Let us come straight to the fact that this absence of exclusive racial marks is the distinguishing physical characteristic of the American. True of him as of no other now or ever in the past, is the fact that he is, broadly speaking, the product of _all_ races. It is of our fundamental history and tradition from the beginning that in America all peoples may find destination, if not refuge, and upon a basis of virtual race equality mingle, and for good or ill, send down to posterity in a common stream their racial values--and their racial defects. Whether we like it or not, this is the fact. We are not a race, in any ethnic sense. At most, we are in the very early stages of becoming one.

Prof. Ulysses G. Weatherly, of Indiana University, said:[6]

Every great historical race is a composite of originally separate elements merged into a unity whose ruling characteristic is an increasing integration of culture rather than of blood. This process of merging is believed by Gumplowicz to constitute the very essence of world history.

And he quotes Gumplowicz, in _Der Rassencampf_, to this effect:

Throughout the whole history of men stretches a continuous process of amalgamation which, beginning with the smallest primitive synthetic groups and following a race-building law to us unknown, binds together and amalgamates small, heterogenous groups into even larger unities, into peoples, races, and nations, perpetually bringing them into conflict against other similarly constituted and amalgamated peoples, nations, and races, and through this conflict into ever new fields of conquest and culture, which again consolidates and amalgamates the heterogenous elements.

The American people has been and is being made by exactly this process. We are in the midst of the making of the “American.” It does not yet appear what he shall be, but one thing is certain, he is not to be of any particular racial type now distinguishable. Saxon, Teuton, and Kelt, Latin and Slav--to say nothing of any appreciable contribution by yellow and brown races as yet negligible in this aspect of the question--each of the races that we now know on this soil will have its share of “ancestorial” responsibility for the “typical American” that is to be.

NOT RACIAL, BUT CULTURAL

Leaving for the long future, then, the evolution of the hereditary type, is there so soon something “home grown,” some “integration of culture,” that is peculiarly our own? Every American knows in his heart that however subtle and elusive, however difficult of definition, there is something real that distinguishes “America.”

In the attempt to fix the boundaries for the new Poland, the Peace Conference sought in vain for some limits of language or of political unity on which to base their demarcation. It came down at last to a simple question:

“_Do you want to be Poles?_”

And the question was enough.

Who doubts the answer to the question: _Do you want to be American?_ There is something more than love of home, something higher than the liking of a cat for the warm place under the familiar stove, that stirs the heart of every normal American when he sees the Stars and Stripes. The alien who declares it his intention to become a citizen of the United States may not be able to put it in words, but he means, and he knows that he means, something real and vital, recognizes a substantial distinction, when he says that _he wants to be an American_!

There must be, there is, there has been always, in the midst of the racial chaos which to-day constitutes perhaps our greatest social problem, something that may be called nationally even if not yet racially _American_; something indigenous on this soil as on no other. It belongs to us. Up to a time beginning a quarter of a century ago, when the so-called “new immigration” from Southeastern Europe and southern Russia set in in full flood, and now anew in the experiences of the World War, it was and has again become, a thing shared by all of our racial groups and elements--_peculiarly American_. It answers the test set forth by Professor Weatherly in the paper already quoted, of the completion of the nationalizing process: “... when the things of the spirit are held in common and cherished by all, even if some specific ethnic or linguistic differences survive.” Or, in the words which he attributes to Renan:

To have a common glory in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to desire to do still greater--these are the essential conditions for being _a People_.

Professor Weatherly repeatedly emphasizes the great point--that “it is not sufficient that peoples should merely have undergone similar experiences” in order to be knit into a nation; “they must have undergone them _together_.” Most of the great modern nations, as he says, have passed through the same processes of social change, “but in actual adjustment to such change each has had its own separate career.”

Twenty-five years ago it was true that the term “American” meant one who, of whatever racial descent, represented something very definite, of tradition, experience, and achievement--and of promise, too--“a common glory in the past, a common will in the present”; “great things done together, and a desire to do still greater”; unity determined not by external facts alone, but by sentiment.

Now, dimly as we yet realize it, it is true again. A baptism of blood and suffering, of sacrifice and self-denial, and of common experience in a vast world emergency, and out of it a vision of better understanding and a great work before us to be done, have gone far to restore that unity of appreciation of “great things done _together_” and of will to do still greater which was our common glory--and was getting lost. We had, we have now, a right to be both proud and jealous of the heritage left us by our fathers of many races, and now watered by the blood of our own generation, and to look with concern, if not with dismay, upon what might portend a swallowing up of this moral, this sentimental unity, in a great inundation of newcomers, who, however well intending as individuals, have not shared our tradition and experience, and who seem not to have been fitted by any experience of their own to assimilate either the tradition of our past or our aspiration for the future.

ESSENTIALS OF “AMERICANISM”

There are essentials distinctively American upon which we can base our definition of “America” and typify her in the human being who by spirit, vision, and vigilance best represents our tradition and our aspiration. Such a definition will hold against the world--even against those of our own household who neither exemplify nor understand it. The sum total of these essentials is not paralleled now, nor in history, anywhere else on earth. For of America alone it may be said:

That however lamely and insufficiently we have lived up to it, _our country is traditionally the refuge for the oppressed of every land_.

That here the individual has found a fuller freedom to seek his happiness in his own way. More than any other nation, America has never recognized a political autocracy, has reckoned Man above every consideration of property, class, or dynasty.

That here only has _the individual male from the beginning been deemed the ultimate political unit_--“one man, one vote.” The country-wide adoption of Woman Suffrage extends this concept to include women.

That however crudely we have practiced it, we have aspired _to estimate essential justice and the common sense of right relationship--fair play between man and man--as the final standard and appeal of human conduct, over against every claim of precedent and authority_.

That from the outset of this nation, the distinguishing spirit of America has been _a protest against Militarism and the domination of the professional soldier, against compulsory military service in time of peace_. Our army and navy, always thought of as instrumentalities of last resort, reserved almost wholly for defense against aggression from without, have on principle been always under the control and direction of _civilians as such_, and in peace time have been recruited by voluntary enlistment. This one fact of freedom from military conscription has been the distinction of America which, more than any other thing, has attracted Europeans to our fellowship. They have fought for us and with us, but always with the American motive, embodied in the final great fact, which is America’s alone:

That when _we have gone to war, our civilians armed and fighting with the devotion, courage, and effectiveness inspired only by the sense of a righteous cause, it has always been for liberty_. At the beginning, in 1776, and again in 1812, we fought England to free ourselves. In 1845, despite the motive of the Slave Power to extend the area of slavery, so far as the motive of the people in general was concerned we were fighting Mexico to free our fellows in Texas. In 1861 we fought a great civil war to maintain our free Union and to liberate the negro slaves. In 1898 we fought Spain to free the Cubans, and notwithstanding this, our sole sin of imperialism, in the long run we shall have freed also the Filipinos. In 1917 we participated, no doubt decisively, in the struggle to free Europe from the threat of domination by the military autocracy of Germany. “To make the world safe for democracy”--that was the appeal which brought the hearts of the American people into the war. Of no other great nation can it be said that _it never went to war except for liberty_.

This is “America.” This ensemble of tradition and significance is what makes native and newcomer alike want to be an American. This is what stirs our hearts when we see the Stars and Stripes. We prize these things not alone because they are ours, not alone because in their power and glory they are peculiarly, exclusively American; but still more because they are worthy to be prized, and because they promise the ultimate incarnation of the dreams of men of good will since ever man first lifted his eyes from the ground and visioned Brotherhood.

II

NEW MEMBERS AND AN OLD GAME

It would be too much to say that the average immigrant from any country visions when he leaves his home the “America” outlined in the previous chapter, or even that he perceives it when, at some time after he arrives, he files his declaration of intention to seek citizenship. Doubtless in the ordinary case he comes merely to improve his personal, social, and economic condition; to put it bluntly, to get a better job. Nevertheless, we should do ourselves and our long-standing reputation in the world a great injustice if we did not recognize and take pride in the fact that the people of all races turn their faces hither not only with hope of opportunity to better their condition, but with a stirring of soul at the thought of what they believe awaits them in a land of wider liberty. That they do not always find us living up to our boast, so far as they are concerned, is the defect not of our tradition or, in the long run, of our intention, but of our practice.

At the outset the immigrant does not think about citizenship at all. The statistics gathered by this Study show conclusively that the average alien waits more than ten years before applying for citizenship. That even if he comes as early as sixteen he waits until he is twenty-eight before he files his final petition. And the vast majority of the men come between the ages of sixteen and thirty--just at the time of life when, it would seem, active participation in the political life of the country ought to be most appealing.

FACTORS IN IMMIGRATION

The alien does not come with any direct interest in citizenship. He comes to improve his status. And this motive has two aspects; the impulse is twofold--a push from behind and a pull from in front, sometimes one, usually both. The statistics displaying the fluctuations of what Prof. Frank J. Warne calls “The Tide of Immigration” are luminous in their reflection of this purely human fact. In order to see it stand forth, one must keep it vividly in mind that these tables of statistics are not mere exhibits of mathematical digits, but lists of human beings, inspired by motives precisely like our own. The 148,093 subjects of His Britannic Majesty--mostly Irish--who came to America in 1848 were, _each_ of them, a specific individual human soul, impelled by the fact that the potato famine, or whatnot else at home, interfered with the adequacy of his meals; and attracted by the belief that he would find things better in America. The one lone Russian recorded in that year presumably represented precisely the same interplay of motives. The heavy German immigration in 1852, 1853, and 1854 was made up of men, women, and children who found conditions intolerable because of the repressions ensuing upon the revolutionary movement of ’48. And so on. On the other hand, the shrinkages in the figures in various later periods, in a general way, coincide with the times of industrial depression, unemployment, etc., in this country; things were not so attractive here as to offer substantial improvement upon the situation at home.

The six sources whence we have derived the bulk of our new population are Great Britain and Ireland; the three Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia--in the seventy-eight years from 1840 down to and including 1918, when immigration virtually stopped owing to the conditions created by the World War. Immigration since then has been subject to influences so different from those prevailing before, and as yet so little understood, that intelligent comparisons would be perilous.[7]

Students of immigration have usually built their generalizations upon totals of inflow, frequently overlooking the striking disparity of time and numbers among the various racial groups. Yet there is much significance in this disparity. Professor Warne, for example, in the _Annals of the American Academy of Political Science_ (1920), in an analysis generally of the upward and downward curves of immigration from all countries during the century since 1820, says:

By studying the yearly figures ... and relating them to events of industrial or economic history, we are able to understand what is probably the most significant of all the operating forces or influences at work behind this great movement of population across the Atlantic. For illustration, the number of immigrant arrivals strikingly decreased from nearly 482,000 in 1854 to 200,877 the following year, a decrease of more than one-half. This falling off reflected the effects of the greatest financial panic ever experienced in the United States up to that time.

Well enough for a generalization based on totals; but it is not to be overlooked that at that very point the then comparatively small immigration from Italy more than doubled between 1853 and 1854, jumping from 535 to 1,263, and remained above 1,000 with the exception of one year, until 1860. Again Professor Warne:

The ensuing industrial depression was followed closely by the Civil War, and it was not until 1873 that the yearly inflow again reached as large a volume, the number being nearly 460,000.

But it was precisely during the hottest and most critical years of the Civil War that German immigration increased. It had been relatively low between 1854 and 1865 (in which latter year it was 58,153), but jumped in 1866 to 120,218, and (with the exception of 1871, when it fell to 82,554) remained high until and including 1873, when it almost touched 150,000. It would seem that something must have been going on in Germany to drive these people out against the adverse economic conditions prevailing here.

The year 1873 [continues Professor Warne] marks another panic, and a striking decrease the following years in the number of alien arrivals is again recorded.

But the Austrian, Italian, and Russian immigration, which had been relatively insignificant up to 1869 and 1870, was higher in 1870-75 than ever before, and with minor ups and downs increased more or less steadily up to the very high figures of the past two decades, which gave rise to the widely believed legend entitled, “The New Immigration.”

The question of means of livelihood, of a better job, is doubtless the chief factor, but it is not the only factor. Any job at all in a free country is better, for any man worth his salt, than a far better-paid job under conditions of oppression. The man who leaves his homeland to adventure even under adverse conditions, because he cannot tolerate political tyranny, used to be regarded _per se_ as fit for American citizenship. He is still fit, even though he belong to the traditional “New Immigration”; even though of late we have tended rather to discourage the idea that personal liberty is valuable in and of itself. It is still true that along with our fame as a land where economic opportunity is to be found, the men and women of other lands are attracted by what they still believe to be our atmosphere of liberty.

POLITICS WELCOMES THE IRISH

The Irish immigration was earliest in the field, and first to profit by the hit-or-miss methods of naturalization which prevailed in the old shiftless days. They occupied socially at the outset very much the same position that the “New Immigration” has occupied during the past twenty years; but the American politician, to whose mill any kind of a biped who might vote was grist, welcomed it, and quickly taught the Irishman the methods of the game.

How solidly the Irish were installed before the Germans began to arrive in large numbers appears in Table I, showing the two streams of immigration between 1820 and 1840. Prior to 1840 there was no appreciable inflow from any other countries. It should be added that it was not until 1854, and then only for that one year, that the German immigration overtook the Irish. It did not again equal it until 1867.

TABLE I

IMMIGRATION FROM IRELAND AND GERMANY EACH YEAR FROM 1820 TO 1840

============================= YEAR | IRELAND | GERMANY ----------+---------+-------- 1820 | 3,614 | 968 1821 | 1,518 | 383 1822 | 2,267 | 148 1823 | 1,908 | 183 1824 | 2,345 | 230 1825 | 4,888 | 450 1826 | 5,408 | 511 1827 | 9,766 | 432 1828 | 12,488 | 1,851 1829 | 7,415 | 597 1830 | 2,721 | 1,976 1831 | 5,772 | 2,413 1832 | 12,436 | 10,194 1833 | 8,648 | 6,988 1834 | 24,474 | 17,686 1835 | 20,927 | 8,311 1836 | 30,578 | 20,707 1837 | 28,508 | 23,740 1838 | 12,645 | 11,683 1839 | 23,963 | 21,028 1840 | 39,430 | 29,704 =============================

THEY ALWAYS HAVE BEEN DEMOCRATS

The traditional fidelity of the Irish to the Democratic party began forthwith. The elements in the population which were Whigs, and afterward became Republicans tended, on the whole, to be the more prosperous folk of the community; also they were largely of the Protestant faith. Very early in our political history, therefore, there came to be, to some extent, a division in which both social standing and religion played a part. Most of the Irish were poor, and nearly all of them were Roman Catholics. The Democratic party was rather the party of the poor and the foreign born, and when the great influx of Roman Catholic Irish injected also the religious issue, it was only natural that a kind of racial allegiance should attach the Irish to the Democratic party. The Know-Nothing and Native American agitations of the middle of the last century deepened the rift, and confirmed the Irish in their political faith.

Gustavus Myers says, in his _History of Tammany Hall_:[8]

About the year 1840 ... Tammany began to be ruled from the bottom of the social stratum.... The policy of encouraging foreigners, at first mildly started in 1823, was now developed into a system. The Whigs antagonized the entrance of foreign-born citizens into politics, and the Native American Party was organized expressly to bar them almost entirely from the enjoyment of political rights. The immigrant had no place to turn but Tammany Hall. In part to assure itself this vote, the organization opened a bureau, a modest beginning of what became a colossal department. An office established in the Wigwam, to which specially paid agents or organization runners brought the immigrant, drilled into him the advantages of joining Tammany, and furnished him the means and legal machinery needed to take out his naturalization papers.... Tammany took the immigrant in charge, cared for him, made him feel that he was a human being with distinct political rights, and converted him into a citizen. How sagacious this was, each year revealed. Immigration soon poured in heavily, and there came a time when the foreign vote outnumbered that of the native-born citizens.

It is true, but irrelevant, that in an earlier day Tammany had been as anti-foreign as anybody--originally it was decidedly aristocratic in tone. Myers recites how, on the night of April 24, 1817, two hundred Irishmen marched to the Wigwam “to impress upon the Committee the wisdom of nominating (for Congress) Thomas Addis Emmett, as well as other Irish Catholics on the Tammany ticket in the future.”

All this had long since become ancient history by 1840. Long before that time the Irish devotion to the Democratic party in general, and to Tammany Hall in particular, had become deeply rooted.

EARLY GERMANS BECAME REPUBLICANS

The Germans, who, as has been shown, formed the second great wave in the “tide of immigration,” began to come in formidable numbers about 1836, passing the 30,000 mark in 1845. While they were, on the whole, better educated and possibly more intelligent than the Irish, they were handicapped, as the Irish were not, by difference of language; so that for the practical purposes of the native American politician they were equally ignorant. And the mass of the immigrants of both races were peasants without experience in relation to political participation.

Very many of the Germans, however, had fled from the repressions at home preceding, accompanying, and following the revolutionary movements about 1848; they were to a great extent Protestants, and they were naturally opposed to slavery--though this is not to say that the Irish ever favored it. Generally speaking, Germans reacted favorably to the Republican party.

Both races took American politics as they found it. Let it not be supposed that corruption was the exclusive invention or hall mark of Tammany Hall! Even in England, at this time, politics was a dirty business. The Whigs did their best to beat Tammany at the game in which it had become expert. Myers says:[9]

In the fall election of 1838 the Whig frauds were enormous and indisputable. The Whigs raised large sums of money, which were handed to ward workers for the procuring of votes. About two hundred roughs were brought from Philadelphia, in different divisions, each man receiving $22.... Ex-convicts distributed Whig tickets and busily auctioneered. The cabins of all the vessels along the wharves were ransacked, and every man, whether or not a citizen or resident of New York, who could be wheedled into voting a Whig ballot, was rushed to the polls and his vote smuggled in.

This was the election which made William H. Seward Governor of the state of New York!

EFFECTS OF THE GOLD CRAZE